“Alright,” I said. Aaron wasn’t going to listen to me playing devil’s advocate any longer. And the more he stood like that, the more it made me nervous. The more it made me feel like I was looking for excuses, when the evidence was staring me right in the face. Open windows. A cold cup of coffee. Work half-finished. Something had happened here. It didn’t need a policeman to work out that, at the very least, Alicia had been interrupted by something that had required her full attention.
It was at that exact moment, as we looked for an answer to Alicia’s disappearance, that Aaron’s phone beeped. He looked up immediately. The light in his eyes showed that he thought it might be Alicia. He made straight for his pocket, tugged out his phone, not wasting any time. But, as soon as he looked at the screen, his expression died. His mouth sinking into a bottomless pit.
“What’s wrong?”
Aaron closed his eyes. He held out the phone, inviting me to see for myself. My gut twisting, I took it from him. Looked to the text.
The first thing I saw was ‘Alicia’, in bold at the top of the message. I hoped it would be an update to her whereabouts; that she’d been on a stroll, or had to pop out for work, and she’d call us back soon. But, as I read, I felt everything inside me turn to ice.
The message was short. Simple.
“Devil’s Lake, 10pm. If you want to see Alicia alive, come alone.”
23
“He’s taken her! He broke into her home and he took her!” said Aaron. “How he did it, I don’t know. But the fact is that he knows about her, about us!”
My heart slowed a little. I tried to take a deep breath, to approach the situation with some sense of calm.
“Do you think he knows that we know he killed Samantha Lowry?” I said.
“Yes, most definitely.” Aaron rubbed a palm across his face. “This is my fault. All my fault. I should never have got her involved with this. I’m so stupid.”
I had a flashback to Stephen. When I too had involved a friend in our business, Stephen had paid with his life. I frowned, put out my hand and rested it on Aaron’s shoulder.
“It’s alright. We’re going to do what we can, okay? To get her back.”
Aaron nodded. The panic in his eyes was replaced by fury. “We’ve got all afternoon and evening to come up with a plan. I just hope that him being at Devil’s Lake doesn’t mean—”
I’d thought it too. I’d also pictured Samantha’s skin splitting and burning, turning to charcoal. Picturing it again now made me feel as if clay were in my stomach. However, I knew I needed to say something encouraging to Aaron.
“I know. But if we work quickly enough, then we can help her. We can stop him. Why don’t we call the police, send them down there?”
Aaron considered this for a moment. But then, he shook his head, grimacing. “I don’t think we can. What if they scare him off? What if he takes Alicia somewhere else, and kills her? The man is clearly a psychopath. He seems totally above reason.”
“So you think we should do this alone?”
“Yes. I think we have no choice.”
For the rest of the day, we watched every second that passed, like tiny grains of sand sifting through an egg timer. Neither of us were in the mood to do any more research. So instead, we just sat, making little conversation, pondering the enormity of that evening.
Mostly, I was occupied with my thoughts. More than once, I imagined Devil’s Lake. On the day I’d seen it, it had looked like a portal to some awful parallel world; a churned-up green mass. Surrounded by gnarly trees that reached for you in the wind, dead mud and grass and other lifeless things. And, all-in-all, the feeling of something dark, the feeling of something not at rest, desperate for vengeance. It made me shiver.
When I wasn’t thinking about Devil’s Lake, I was thinking about Peter, or his younger incarnation, or Samantha, or, of course, Alicia. I wondered where Peter was keeping Alicia right now; whether or not she was safe; what he planned to do with her. I prayed that it wasn’t what he did to Samantha. Please, not what he did to Samantha.
And, every now and then, I couldn’t help but think of Cassy. The night before, I’d reached out to her for the first time in months. I’d poured my heart into a text message that said everything about how I felt. But for the whole day, my phone had remained silent, and when I checked it, the screen was blank. I wondered if it was because she was too hurt to speak to me anymore. Or, if she’d simply forgotten about me. Perhaps she no longer cared about me, had seen my text and shrugged and put her phone away again. Maybe she’d met someone else.
All of these thoughts were like daggers hovering, but they couldn’t penetrate me. Not yet, anyway. Because I needed to remain focused for tonight. After this, maybe I could let the daggers in, feel the pain and grieve and forget. Eventually. Move on, and smile, and remember what was, but no longer is.
And so the day passed, tiny bit by tiny bit, slowly ticking closer to the devil.
We left at half-nine. Devil’s Lake was only a short drive from Aaron’s hotel, and we didn’t want to spook Peter by arriving early, risk leading him to do something dreadful to Alicia.
In the car journey, we continued to say little. All day, Aaron had been like a mine. Perhaps the faintest touch, the lightest bit of stress, might make him explode. Admittedly, I was stressed too. But at the same time, I felt oddly calm. I wondered if, worryingly, I was becoming used to these sorts of high-pressure situations. Megan Johnson in the burned house. Alice Pickering in the crypt. Peter Abbott at Devil’s Lake. Over time, my nerves must have steeled to the point where they were barely breakable.
When we reached a junction and saw a sign for the Devil’s Lake car park, pointing left, Aaron turned right. We’d discussed earlier that Peter probably didn’t want us parking in the visitor car park, then wandering down to the lake. There might be security guards around there anyway, particularly as it was home to the gift shop and café. Instead, we’d found a back route on Google Maps, an old road that twisted and turned right down to the lake. We considered it likely that Peter would be using this road, too.
After a few more turnings, the A-road turned to a silent country road. It was then that I felt my heart begin to pound, pumping adrenaline through my body. Okay, maybe I wasn’t quite as calm as I first thought.
It was now pitch-black, so Aaron took the road slowly, his car bumping and rising as we went. The road was clearly no longer used by any traffic. In places, long grass was growing through the tarmac, a sign of its neglect. In the car’s headlights, I could see that the road was cracked and broken, full of potholes.
“I just really hope they’re here,” said Aaron, the first words he’d said for some time. “I just really hope that lunatic hasn’t hurt her.”
Reaching the bottom of the road, I felt as if I’d been on a rollercoaster. The end of the tarmac revealed an opening in the trees, which had surrounded the road for its entirety, often attacking the car, whipping their branches against the windows and roof. The opening revealed that we were instead at the edge of the lake, just like I’d seen on Google Maps. The scene was illuminated dully by the car’s headlamps, the water an ugly, murky, spiteful green. It licked the small beach which we’d now driven onto, though to even call it a beach was stretching it. More, it was a patchwork quilt of sand and grass and stones, interwoven with moss and twigs and bits of fish bone.
I scanned my surroundings for any sign of human life. It took me a few seconds to see the giant black car, parked further down the beach. I knew with certainty that it was Peter’s Hyundai.
I turned to see Aaron also looking at the Hyundai. He’d put the car into neutral, and now he said, “I hate to think how long he’s had Alicia in that car for. What he’s done with her all day.”
I swallowed. It couldn’t have been easy for Peter to kidnap Alicia, a former police officer who knew how to handle herself. He must have used something to subdue her. I wondered what, and made a mental note to be careful, in case he tried to use it on us.
>
Opening the car door was like opening a spaceship on a different planet. Gone were the familiar, cosy surroundings of Peene. Now, we were swallowed by the blackness, which seemed to watch us as we moved, as if we were feeble prey asking to be hunted.
Aaron’s boots crunched against the stones as we walked to the Hyundai, another announcement that we were here. Peter most certainly had the element of surprise on us, having got here first. Also, it would have been impossible to miss Aaron’s car ghosting down the hill, the only light in the darkness.
We made no conversation as we went, instead trying to listen for any sign of Peter and Alicia. I resisted calling out, thinking that it might make Peter panic. Once or twice, I looked to Aaron, his facial features barely perceptible beneath his cowboy hat.
Reaching the car, and still with no more signs of either Peter or Alicia, Aaron whispered to me, “You check the left, I’ll check the right.”
I shuffled along the car’s right side, peered through both the rear and front windows. But there was nothing to be seen apart from a blinking red light, indicating the car alarm was on.
“No one is home,” Aaron said a moment later, from the other side of the car. He scanned the area again, but all we could see was blackness. “Let’s walk a little further.” He pulled his phone from his pocket, turned on the torch light. “Come on.”
We walked further along the beach, leaving the cars behind us, any form of escape becoming more and more distant. The only light created was from Aaron’s phone, creating a dim glow around us, but nothing more.
Hence why we nearly walked straight into Alicia, in the middle of the beach.
We’d both been looking to the woods at our side, looking for any sign of Peter, so seeing Alicia made us both jump. I instantly looked to Alicia’s eyes, a portrait of fear and panic. Her hair had fallen around her face, giving her a deranged look. I scanned her body, saw the tape over her mouth, her hands behind her back. It took me a few more seconds to see what she was attached to. The piece of wood was camouflaged by the dark, and you had to really concentrate to see it immersed in the ground. It was only thin, but it was enough. The branch of dying, rotting wood was a stake, the same they’d burned witches on. The small twigs, meant to be kindling, surrounded Alicia’s feet, hiding them from view. And, to compound matters, it was now that I sniffed. It smelt like a petrol station. Which would explain why Alicia’s skin was a glossy brown colour, rather than the pale white she’d been the day before. Why her clothes were soaking wet in places.
I swallowed. It was then that Alicia roared against the tape, as if she were begging us to free her from this nightmare.
Aaron stepped forward first, ripped the tape from her mouth.
“Watch out!” she shouted, the second the tape was resting in Aaron’s fingers. “He’s—”
Alicia stopped immediately, because the rest of the sentence wasn’t necessary. The deep, metallic click was enough to tell us that somebody was behind us. My stomach dropped.
As I turned, I wondered what could have made the clicking sound. What I never expected it to be was a shotgun, trained on Aaron and I like we were pigeons during a hunt. And, above the shotgun, Peter’s face, illuminated slightly by the torch. He was a picture of concentration, his eyes screwed, his mouth pursed and expressionless. For a moment, I was certain that Peter was going to shoot both Aaron and I. That he’d called us here to kill us, so that his tale remained protected for another twenty years. So that Peter could carry it to the grave.
I braced myself for the blast. I pulled in my stomach, waited for the buckshot to blow me in two.
But, as time groaned on, the shot still didn’t come. When Peter lowered the gun a little, and his face relaxed, I wondered if he was here to kill us after all.
“What do you want with us?” said Aaron, his voice breaking the night. He dropped the phone to his side, his and Peter’s bodies becoming silhouettes. As soon as he did this, Peter put a hand to his chest, flicked a switch. Torch light billowed before us, enough to make me squint.
I could no longer see Peter’s face, but I imagined he’d be smirking as he said, “More like what do you want with me?”
I was reluctant to tell Peter our true intentions, considering he had a shotgun, and I wanted to keep my head. But I knew there was no other way out of this, not now. “We know what you did to Samantha,” I said, as levelly as I could. “We know you burned her alive.”
“And how do you know this?”
“We found your diary, and we found her finger.” As I said this, I felt the familiar pool of sickness at the bottom of my gut.
“So you broke into my home? All for some spirit?”
“Not just some spirit. She was a real, living human being, and you killed her. You said you loved her, but that really couldn’t be any further from the truth, could it, Josh?”
I expected him to bite back, to shout at me and tell me that I was wrong. But instead, his voice dropped, and he spoke softly. “Trust me, I did love her. You might understand, being a kid yourself. When you’re that young, you love, and love hard. Some call it lust, but I don’t believe it is. I’m talking about a feeling that melts through your chest, conquers your entire body. That’s how I felt about Samantha. You read my diary, I trust?”
“A lot of it, yes.”
“Then you’ll know how she mistreated me. I met her when we were eleven, you know. That was when it started. Of course, I wouldn’t say I loved her until I was about fifteen. I think at eleven, you don’t know what love really is.”
“Around the time that I fell in love, she started hanging around with Jacob Tanner. They were together a month later, an inseparable item. Break, lunch, after school, they’d sit together, practically joined at the hip, while I was forced to watch. It was like a dagger to my chest, I’m telling you. To make matters worse, he was vile to her. Absolutely vile. He’d treat her like a princess, some of the time. But he was also a total control freak.”
“A bit like you then?” Aaron interjected.
Peter snorted. “You can think what you want. He used to shout at her, call her names, belittle her in front of people. I think he enjoyed it. If we’d been together, Samantha and I, I would never have treated her that way. I’d have treated her with the love and respect that she deserved.”
“Then why did you burn her alive? What was the point in that? Was it revenge?” I said.
Peter thought for a moment, before he said, “I guess it was. Though, at times, I do feel regret, eating away at me.”
“Your diary showed otherwise.”
“I know, but I was younger then. With time, I began to regret what I did. Okay, there were times, are still times, when I absolutely despised her. But I did love her, and sometimes I wonder if I should have just stopped at Jacob. If I should have let his absence die down, then worked at being with Samantha again.”
“What did you do to Jacob, Peter? The diary didn’t exactly make that clear,” Aaron asked.
“Oh, I killed him too. Of course I did. It was no way near as elaborate as killing Samantha, though. Quite simply, he beat the shit out of me a few months previous, because I was eyeing-up his girlfriend, as he put it. Anyway, I followed him to a party one night, and then I waited until he left. He walked home on his own. If he hadn’t, I would have left it for another day. When he turned down an alley, I followed him in and cracked him round the back of the head with a hammer. Not too hard, just enough to subdue him. To buy me enough time to knock him out with chloroform.”
“Chloroform?” I turned as I heard Alicia’s voice. “Is that what you used on me?”
“Yes. It’s amazing what you can buy on the black market. I always keep a ready supply, just in case. Anyway, I took Jacob out to this very lake, believe it or not, and I drowned him in the lake while he was still asleep. It was a shame, because I really wanted to hear him suffer in the same way that he made me suffer. But I couldn’t risk him fighting back. He was bigger than me, the silly, little goth boy, I
’ll give him that. Also, if I’d have bashed his brains in down that alley, it would have left a big pile of red evidence. I couldn’t have that.”
My insides were chewed. “So where did you put his body?”
“A long, long way from here. I went to Samantha first though. It had to be the same night, you see, as Samantha couldn’t find out before I told her. Before I showed her . . .”
I felt my jaw open. “You mean you showed her his dead body?”
“Yes. I needed to see her reaction. I needed to see how she really felt about me, to give her one last chance. I wanted to make it clear that now that controlling arsehole was out of the picture, we could finally be together. But when she didn’t agree, when she called me a psycho, lunatic, murderer – I had no choice but to take her down here. I’d already prepared the ropes, the wood for the fire. Just in case. All I had to do was organise it all, while Samantha slept soundly in my car. Next to Jacob, believe it or not.”
I shook my head. I didn’t need to hear the rest of the story. So it was a mystery as to why I said, “And then you burned her?”
“Yes. And she screamed and screamed, and I hate to say that, after everything, I enjoyed it. It felt like therapy to me. Literally, I watched as she turned into a piece of charcoal. Though she was dead before that, of course.”
I saw all this in my mind, as clear as day. Samantha’s flesh crisping, melting, becoming ash.
“You’re sick.”
“I don’t care what you think. Either of you. I’ve been watching you ever since you came to my home, you know. After all these years, I couldn’t believe that I was going to be foiled by some goth, and a teenage boy. But when you put this lady on to me, a private investigator – as I found from a quick image search – I realised that I had to take you seriously, especially when I saw her rummaging in my drawers. Seeing you hugging goodbye by her car confirmed it all. I’d already found her address on her website and, as I drove to her house, I knew what I had to do.”
The Witch Hunt (Jonny Roberts Series Book 3) Page 17