He folded his arms against his body in an effort to warm them up. He hopped from one foot to the other in an attempt to generate some warmth. Despite the fact that he was wearing a jacket, he felt as if his heartbeat had slowed down so much that it was barely pumping blood around his body. Maybe it would freeze completely, and he’d die here, on Ruth’s grave. He supposed that would be a fitting end for him. There was a sort of poetic justice to it.
He couldn’t leave this world yet, though. Not while his mother was still in it. She had to go first.
When he finally felt feeling returning to his fingers—pins and needles that pricked his nerves—he leaned against the back of the barn and looked down at the gravestone which was rapidly disappearing beneath the snow.
“I’m sorry, Ruth,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I didn’t save you.”
He knew the exact moment he’d betrayed her. Christmas Eve ten years ago. In fact—he checked the time on his watch—it was about this time that she’d called him into her room and asked for his help.
She was no longer talking in vague terms about him protecting her from their mother; she had a deadly plan for him to carry out.
* * *
December 24th, ten years ago
“Michael!” she whispered as he walked past her bedroom door, “Come here.”
The door was open a crack. He pushed it open fully and went inside.
Ruth was sitting on the bed in her white nightgown, her eyes and cheeks wet with tears.
“What’s wrong?” He sat on the bed next to her and put an arm around her shoulder.
She leaned against him, sniffing. “She’s going to kill me, Michael, I just know it. I can see it in her eyes. The other day, she said there’s no way this baby is coming into the world.”
“I didn’t hear her say that.”
“You weren’t here. She only says things like that when you aren’t here to protect me.”
“She shouldn’t have said that; it’s a terrible thing to say.”
“I know what we can do,” Ruth said. She pushed herself off the bed and went to the chest of drawers where she kept her underwear. She reached in and took out a hunting knife. As she held it up, the blade glinted in the sunlight suffusing through the net curtains on the window.
“What are you doing with that?” he asked. “That’s grandad’s knife.” The last time he’d seen the knife, it had been in a box in the attic, along with their grandad’s war medals and some old, faded photos. He and Ruth had discovered it a few years ago when they’d been looking for a quiet place away from their mother’s attention. A secret place.
He’d forgotten all about the box and knife until now.
“This is how we’re going to solve all of our problems,” she said, reaching for his hand and opening the fingers. She pressed the handle of the knife against his palm. It felt cold.
“Take it,” Ruth said.
Michael closed his fingers around the handle. “How is this going to solve our problems?”
She lowered her voice. “You’ve got to use it on her.”
“On Mum?”
She nodded solemnly. “It’s the only way.”
He looked down at the weapon in his hand. Could he actually stab another person with it? Not just any person, but his own mother? He didn’t think he had the stomach for it. “Ruth, I don’t—“
She pressed a finger to his lips, quieting him. “Listen carefully. If you don’t do this, she’s going to kill me and the baby. There is no future where all of us live under this roof together.”
Lowering herself onto the bed next to him, she snaked an arm around his waist. “You need to decide which future you want; the one where I’m dead and you’re left here with her, or the one where she’s gone, and this becomes our house.”
Given such a choice, he’d always choose the latter option, but did he really have to kill their mother? Why couldn’t things go on as they were now? He was sure his sister was being paranoid; he’d never seen their mother aim so much as an antagonistic glance in Ruth’s direction.
He gazed at the sunlight reflecting off the blade. Ruth had obviously polished the weapon with great care. “Do I really have to do this?” he asked.
“If you want a future with me and the baby, yes.”
He sighed. “I don’t know, Ruth.”
“You don’t know what you want?”
“I know what I want but I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Of course you can. I’m putting my faith in you.”
* * *
Pushing away from the back of the barn, he wiped cold tears from his cheeks with the sleeve of his jacket. His sister had put her faith in him and where had that got her? In a grave behind the barn.
She’d lost everything, thanks to him.
* * *
He’d hidden the knife in the top drawer of his bedside table and tried to summon up the courage to use it. Around midnight on Christmas Eve, he’d even taken it out of the drawer and—holding it unsteadily in his hand—had entered his mother’s bedroom.
She’d been sound asleep—or unconscious might be a more apt term, given the almost-empty bottle of vodka on the floor next to her bed—not stirring even when he’d stood over her, brandishing the knife. It would be so easy to do it now. All he had to do was plunge the blade into her body a couple of times. She’d never even know about it. She just wouldn’t wake up ever again.
But he stood there in the shadows, listening to her breathing deeply, for almost half an hour and still didn’t have the guts to go through with it.
Eventually, he left her room and went back to his own, squirrelling the knife back into the drawer and lying on his bed wondering how he was going to explain to Ruth that he couldn’t do as she’d asked.
The next day, he’d found himself unable to say anything to Ruth about his failed attempt to kill their mother. He couldn’t bring himself to do it anymore than he could bring himself to use the knife the night before. He couldn’t bear to see her disappointed, especially disappointed in him.
So he’d kept quiet and sullen and mostly ignored both his sister and mother by driving out to the cliffs at Whitby and spent almost all of Christmas Day there, staring at the sea. He hadn’t gone to his and Ruth’s spot on the East Cliff; that place was for them and he didn’t deserve to go there right now, considering how he’d let his sister down.
Instead, he’d spent the day on the West Cliff, telling himself over and over that he had to man up and perform the deed Ruth had requested. He’d once told her that he’d do anything for her and now he was hesitating to do this one simple thing?
After almost an entire day of berating himself, he got back into the car and headed for home, determined to do what he considered to be his duty. He’d go straight upstairs, grab the knife, and use it before he had a chance to even think about what he was doing.
He drove home as quickly as he dared without breaking the speed limit. The police seemed to be everywhere at this time of year, looking out for drunk drivers. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself.
When parked outside the farmhouse and got out of the car, he heard shouting inside. The voices were his mother’s and Ruth’s. If they were arguing, now would be a perfect time to rush upstairs and get the knife.
As he pushed the front door open, he realised that his mother and sister were at the top of the stairs. They weren’t just arguing; they were physically fighting. His mother had her arms on Ruth’s shoulders and seemed to be trying to push her down the stairs. Ruth was struggling, clawing at her mother’s face and neck.
“This baby must not be born,” their mother was shouting. “It’s an abomination.”
Samuel could see that his sister’s bare feet were perilously close to the top step. If he didn’t stop this right now, Ruth would fall.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Stop it!”
His sudden shout caught the attention of both women and they paused in their struggle to look down at him.
“Michael!” Ruth shouted. “See what she’s doing? I told you!”
His mother seized that moment of distraction to shove Ruth with all her might.
What happened next seemed to happen in slow motion. Ruth’s feet stayed on the landing, but her upper body pivoted backwards over the staircase. Her arms scrambled for purchase but there was nothing to grasp, and her hands clawed desperately at the air. The sleeves of her white nightgown billowed out around her like angel’s wings.
When her feet left the landing, Ruth’s body seemed to be floating above the steps. It looked, to Michael, like one of those magician’s tricks where he levitates his glamorous assistant into the air and passes a hoop over her body to prove there are no wires.
This was no illusion, though. Ruth wasn’t being suspended by anything and, finally, gravity grabbed her and pulled her down.
Her back hit the steps first, and Michael cringed as a sickening crack reached his ears. It wasn’t the hard wood of the stairs that had broken; it was his sister’s body.
Ruth’s head hit the steps and this time, the noise was a heavy thud. She slid down the stairs headfirst, on her back, until she came to rest in the hallway, at Michael’s feet. Her eyes stared up at him accusingly.
But they couldn’t see him. Those beautiful, dark eyes wouldn’t see anything ever again.
He stepped back from her dead body, unable to face those accusing eyes, and heard an angry animal-like sound rip from his throat. His back hit the wall and he slid down it, his legs no longer able to support him.
“Michael! Michael!” His mother was running down the stairs. She stepped over Ruth’s body and rushed to him, crouching in front of him and pulling him to her chest, hugging him so hard that he had trouble breathing.
“You saw what happened,” she whispered. “I was defending myself and she fell. It was an accident.”
He tried to shake his head, but she held his face too tightly against her chest for him to move.
“It was an accident,” she repeated, stroking the back of his head. “Now, listen to me closely, Michael. We have to deal with this ourselves. There’s no point calling an ambulance; it’s too late for that. And we can’t have the police coming in here and snooping around. She’s gone and nothing can bring her back. So we have to sort this out. You and me.”
She pushed his face away from her body and held it between her hands, gazing firmly into his eyes. “Do you hear me? We need to do what’s right.”
His eyes wandered across the floor to where Ruth lay, motionless.
“Listen to me,” his mother said, turning his head away from the sight of his dead sister. “Go and get the shovel and dig a hole behind the barn. Make it deep. Do you understand me?”
He nodded. He understood. They were going to bury Ruth behind the barn.
“You’re a good boy,” she said. “Now go and get that shovel.”
He got to his feet, leaning against the wall for support. Taking a deep breath, he walked shakily to the back door, keeping his eyes averted from the body at the foot of the stairs.
The shovel was leaning against the wall in the outbuilding. He’d put it there a couple of days ago after using it to clean out the hen coop.
Ruth had been alive then. Until a few minutes ago, his sister had been a part of his life. Now, she was gone.
He took the shovel to the area behind the barn and started digging. It was a cold day but at least the earth wasn’t frozen as he dug the shovel’s blade into it with powerful strokes born of anger. He was furious with himself. If he’d been man enough to go through with his plan last night when he stood over his mother’s bed, Ruth would still be alive. It was all his fault.
It took him over an hour to dig the grave deep enough for his sister’s body. By the time he was done, the hole was at least six feet deep. He could barely see over the edges when he stood inside it.
Clambering out and brushing dirt from his clothes, he leaned the shovel against the back of the barn and sauntered to the house. He wasn’t in any hurry to put Ruth in that hole. There was a cold finality to it that he didn’t want to face.
When he got inside the house, his mother was sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of vodka. That seemed to be her answer to everything these days. Your daughter tells you she’s pregnant? Drink a bottle of vodka. Pushed your daughter down the stairs and killed her? Well, just take a few swigs of that potato liquor and forget everything.
She’d at least had the decency to cover Ruth’s body before she’d embarked on her journey into the bottle; a white sheet lay over the floor at the foot of the stairs, his sister beneath it.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen, Michael,” she said. Her words were already slurred, and he wondered if she’d started drinking the moment he’d left the house.
Ignoring her, he went to Ruth and tucked the sheet beneath her lifeless body. There was no use asking his mother for help; he was going to have to do this all by himself. Ruth would have preferred it that way, anyway, he supposed.
“I read somewhere about women falling downstairs and losing their baby,” she said. “Or I saw it on TV. I can’t remember. Anyway, I thought that if she just took a little tumble, everything would be all right again.”
He hefted Ruth’s body over his shoulder and took her outside, ignoring his mother, who was now crying softly.
He managed to get Ruth all the way to the grave without stopping. Once he was there, he laid her on the ground carefully and got into the grave himself before reaching over the edge for Ruth and gently pulling her in with him. He laid her across the bottom of the hole and eased himself out of the grave.
He supposed he should say a few words, so he looked down solemnly at his sister’s sheet-covered form and said, “I’ll avenge you, Ruth. I didn’t do what you wanted me to do and I’m sorry for that. But I’ll make it better. I’ll make sure justice is done. I swear it.”
* * *
“And I never kept my oath,” he said, looking down at the snow-covered grave. Here he was, ten years later, standing over the grave, and his mother was still alive. Despite his impassioned oath all those years ago, he’d become depressed and listless after Ruth’s death, barely able to get out of bed in the morning, much less kill anyone.
Then his mother had suffered a nervous breakdown in a shop and had been taken to hospital. He’d thought that God was doing what he’d sworn to do himself, taking the burden from him.
But his mother hadn’t died; she’d merely convalesced in a mental hospital for a while. And the funny thing was that when she came out, she was even worse than when she went in. She’d found religion—or her own brand of it, anyway—and it had dug its claws into her even deeper than the drink had. She came home and changed their names to Mary and Samuel.
Ruth’s name became taboo.
He turned away from the grave and trudged through the snow back to the house.
He found his mother in front of the TV, watching one of the morning chat shows she liked. At least she wasn’t lying there with a bottle of vodka like in days gone by; she was sitting there attentively, watching the screen.
He glanced at the TV and half-recognised the hosts. The grey-haired dude was Martin-something and the plump blonde woman was Joanna Rose.
Martin was looking at the camera, saying, “Yesterday we spoke to Chief Superintendent Ian Gallow about the new police initiative called Murder Force. It seems that the case involving Tanya Ward, a nurse from York, and Abigail Newton, a schoolgirl from Derbyshire, has been developing. Police believe that the disappearance of Teresa and Gemma Matthews, a mother and daughter from North Yorkshire, could be linked to the ongoing Ward and Newton case.”
“Unfortunately, Chief Superintendent Gallow isn’t here in the studio today,” Joanna said, looking into the camera with her smoky blue eyes, “but we can replay our interview with him yesterday.”
The screen changed to what was obviously a pre-recorded piece with a uniformed policeman talking to the hosts. He mentioned
a new team called Murder Force, which was trying to solve the case. Two newspaper headlines appeared on the TV, showing the two star detectives in the team; DCI Battle and DI Summers.
So this old bloke and his bimbo sidekick were after him, were they? Well, they’d have a job. He’d made sure to cover his tracks. Let them try their best; they’d never find him.
He looked up at the clock on the wall. It was almost twelve noon. When he’d come home from Whitby ten years ago and seen his mother push Ruth down the stairs, it had been four o’ clock in the evening. So it seemed only fitting that he go out to the bunker at four and do what must be done with the mother and daughter he’d locked in there.
Four hours. Not too long to wait.
After that, the old DCI and his pretty sidekick could search all of Yorkshire if they wanted.
All they’d find would be two dead bodies.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Christmas Day, 1:04 p.m.
Half an hour after leaving Tarnby, Battle was driving across the moors, squinting to see clearly through the snow that the wind whipped against his windscreen. He checked the rearview mirror to make sure DS Morgan was following. He could barely see her cherry red Yaris through the swirling snow, but it was there.
His phone rang. He answered it with the hands-free controls. “Battle.”
“It’s Chris Toombs,” the voice that filled the car said. “We met earlier. I’ve been looking at a laptop that belongs to Teresa Matthews. I was asked to find an order for a TV.”
“What have you found?” Battle asked.
“Yeah, I got the order no problem. The laptop wasn’t even password-protected and the online store was in her history. The receipt for the purchase was in her emails, which I simply clicked into. Terrible security.”
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