He threw a glance to his right. His left. Straight ahead.
He took off in the direction of the woods, seeking the cover of trees.
Behind him, the shouts of police officers on his tail. He was a fit man, but they would catch him. Wildeve was running too. She was running as if her life depended on it. Because it did.
As she headed towards the mass of woodland, Wildeve threw a look over her shoulder at the house behind her. 27 The Avenue. Modest. Respectable.
Years later, when she was retiring from the police force, a life spent pressed up against the dark heart of human nature, she would still remember Audrina Clifton sitting in that doorway in her wheelchair, a hunted look on her face.
103
Wednesday, 1 August 2018
The Avenue – 6.37 a.m.
Across the street, the postman was pushing an envelope into a letterbox when a series of shouts ruptured the stillness of the early morning.
His head jerked upwards.
Five minutes earlier, he’d been halfway up the Cliftons’ garden path when the scream of police sirens had forced him into the shadows, but he’d been on high alert, a familiar fizz in the pit of his stomach.
The tall hedge of number thirty obscured the postman from view, but his sharp ears caught the sound of footsteps. He stood up and looked over the hedge.
Cooper Clifton was running across The Avenue, towards the entrance of Blatches Woods. The old man was a hair’s breadth away and had no idea the postman was there.
He dropped his mail pouch and took off after him.
His soles stung as they slapped against the pavement, but the postman was alive with the joy of the chase. Cooper swerved into the woodland and the postman followed him, light-footed and sure, way ahead of the police officers who were somewhere behind them. Clouds of aphids filled his mouth. Twigs and bracken and the mulch of the forest floor. The blood sang in his veins. The postman was closing the gap between them, but Cooper had the advantage of local knowledge. He knew the paths of this place like his own hand.
The heat of the day was making the postman sweat. It trickled into his eyes, stinging and blurring his vision. His mouth tasted of salt. The pump and flow of his blood roared in his ears. He swiped at his face, trying to clear his sight. And he couldn’t see Clifton anymore.
A buzz of panic electrified him.
Alone amongst the trees, he turned on his axis, spinning around, looking for clues, failure taunting him, teasing him. He’d lost him.
But Cooper was twenty-six years older than the postman.
His own heart was thundering in his chest, his legs burning with lactic acid. He stumbled and tripped over the stump of a dead oak.
In the silence of the woods, the postman heard the thump of a body falling. North-west. He swung around to the left, following the path deeper into the shadows.
Last time, he had done nothing. He had stood there, and he had stayed silent, and he had let them kill her. The woman he’d persuaded to risk everything. The woman who’d betrayed her lover and turned informant. The woman who had, even at the brutal, bloody end, protected him, and kept his identity a secret from the drug-running gang he had covertly infiltrated.
But this time he was not going to stand by.
Cooper Clifton was lying on his side, his bound hands in front of him.
The postman straddled him, fumbled in his pocket for another pair of handcuffs.
Cooper stared at him, silent, eyes like saucers.
The postman cuffed his ankles, then flashed his warrant card, his own secret revealed.
104
Wednesday, 1 August 2018
Blatches Woods – 6.43 a.m.
Wildeve Stanton had a stitch in her side. She’d barely eaten over the last couple of days and the pain made her want to bend double, to fall to her knees, but she fought against it. She would not weaken now.
Despite the early hour, sunlight was dappling the leaves, streaming through the gaps between the trees. Woodlice crawled over the bark. The woods were waking up.
Mac was at her side. ‘All right?’ he said. She nodded, still catching her breath. He checked his phone. ‘They’re at the north-west corner. Fifty metres or so.’ He took in a lungful of air. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you.’
She understood. An undercover police officer deserved the protection of his senior officers, no matter what. Mac – a former head of Essex Police’s specialist undercover unit – had personally requested him for the job. Adam had known about the operation, too, but not the mechanics of the surveillance or the officer’s name. And later, Roger Sampson was also made aware. But the ‘postman’s’ loyalty had remained with his guv’nor, even if he had been forced out. That’s why Sampson and his team were still lumbering through the woodland. Old habits die hard and he’d tipped off Mac first.
When Wildeve reached them, Cooper Clifton was sitting up, leaning against the trunk of a hawthorn tree, his hands and ankles cuffed. The undercover officer nodded at her, laid a hand on her shoulder.
‘For Adam, eh?’
For Adam.
Adam’s investigations into the disappearance of Joby Clifton had pointed the finger of suspicion at the boy’s father, Cooper, who had recently been placed under surveillance. In a bid to maintain his cover, and because Royal Mail did not deliver on Sundays, the postman had been absent on the morning that Adam disappeared. A fuck-up with rotas, a lack of bodies, meant no one had filled that gap.
She kneeled beside the old man. His face was grey, patches of sweat in semi-circles beneath his armpits. His right hand was curled into a protective fist.
One word on her lips. ‘Why?’
Cooper shrugged, his eyes sliding away. But there was something in his expression. Resignation, yes. But more than that. Acceptance.
She gripped his shoulder. ‘Tell me.’
‘Greater love has no man than this: to lay down one’s life . . .’ He was mumbling now, the words spilling from him. He closed his eyes and smiled, as if staring into the face of God himself.
‘What do you mean?’ She was shaking him now, and he was unresisting, his head flopping back and forth. ‘Tell me.’ A scream was rising in her, a fury so bright and blinding that she did not know if it would ever dim. In her heart, she knew what he had done. Guilty. Plain as day. Written in the slump of his shoulders and the coy smile and the infuriating refusal to explain himself.
Mac pulled her away and she struggled against him, resisting. ‘Let me go,’ she said, tugging at his arms. ‘Get off.’
‘Stop it then,’ he said. ‘Don’t give Sampson the satisfaction.’
She threw him off and stalked towards the tree, circled around and back again. Crouched next to Cooper Clifton with fire in her eyes and her heart.
‘If you won’t tell me why, then tell me how.’
The old man raised his eyes to meet hers. A watery blue sea surrounded by yellowing sclera. His pupils were dilated in the murk of the trees. Tiny red capillaries. Witness to so many horrors.
The wood seemed to still. Time did not march on, but paused, to see what would happen next. The other officers burst into the clearing. DCI Roger Sampson. A couple of uniforms. Five seconds from justice. That was all. The time it took for Cooper Clifton to execute the plan he had so carefully conceived.
In a graceful movement, he lifted his restrained hands to his mouth and funnelled in the contents of his tingling palm.
Four.
Five.
Six of them.
One missed his mouth, and it rolled down the front of his polo shirt and came to rest in his lap.
A small, dark seed. Innocuous. Like the brown button eye of a bird. Or the pupil of a porcelain doll.
Cooper’s face twisted at the bitterness, but he forced himself to swallow them, fighting an instinct to spit them out.
The toxins began to work almost immediately, numbing his face and his mouth, slowing the muscles of his heart, triggering respiratory paralysis. He slid down the tree,
his breathing laboured, and closed his eyes.
A cry leaked from Wildeve.
She threw herself at him, pumping his chest, willing him to live, the anguish splitting her face almost too painful for her colleagues to witness.
On her hands and knees, she leaned into him, so desperate for him to survive that her judgement was clouded, but Mac was by her side, wrestling her off. ‘Don’t be stupid, Wildeve,’ he said. ‘Not mouth to mouth.’
By the time the paramedics arrived, Cooper Clifton was dead.
105
Wednesday, 8 August 2018
Southside Hospital, Essex – 11.31 a.m.
‘Aconitum napellus or Monkshood, also known as Devil’s Helmet, Wolfsbane and the Queen of Poisons,’ said Mathilda Hudson.
The pathologist looked over her glasses at DS Wildeve Stanton and DCI Roger Sampson. ‘Fun fact: its deadly toxins were once painted onto arrowheads and used to kill wolves. All parts of the plant are poisonous, especially the seeds and root. Principal toxic alkaloid is aconitine. Causes a numb, burning mouth, hypotension, cardiac arrhythmia and muscle paralysis, although –’ she grimaced – ‘the brain is still conscious at the end. Invisible in toxicology tests, unless you’re looking for it.’ She sighed. ‘I’m not justifying myself, though. The signs were there. If only I’d known what they meant.’
Sampson cleared his throat. ‘There’s no blame here, Mathilda. We got the bastard. I’m just relieved he’s not around to do it again.’ He glanced at Wildeve. ‘And we got a result for Adam.’
Wildeve tried to smile. But in truth, she felt cheated. Cooper Clifton was dead. No justice for her or the families. No court case. No victim impact statements. No prison sentence to darken the twilight of his life. No Adam. The future stretched ahead of her, an empty tunnel.
And still so many unanswered questions.
Cooper Clifton had been cultivating the plants in his greenhouse, using his expertise as a gardener. His poor wife had shown them the pots of seedlings, so toxic that even brushing against the leaves with a cut finger could cause harm, and the mature plants by the fence.
‘I had no idea,’ she said. ‘I just thought they were pretty flowers.’
Poor Audrina Clifton. As well as his suicide, she’d had to cope with the knowledge that her mild-mannered and loving husband was a serial killer who had beaten their son and the boy’s grandmother to death.
The police had found a handwritten note in his trouser pocket, confessing to seven murders: Bridget Sawyer; Joby Clifton; Natalie Tiernan; Esther Farnworth; Will Proudfoot; Elijah Outhwaite and Adam Stanton.
Adam had been killed because his suspicions about the disappearances of Joby Clifton and Bridget Sawyer had led him to Cooper.
But it was still unclear as to why the other victims had been targeted. Thanks to Cooper’s revelations, they had studied the newspaper caption in Adam’s belongings, and confirmed that the five children in the photograph, which included Joby Clifton, were at the Doll & Fancy Dress Emporium on the day of the Grand Reopening in 1985. Cooper had killed them all.
Confused and elderly, his wife was less help than they’d hoped. Apart from her family, she was unfamiliar with the names of his victims, except for Adam, and even then, she had only recognized him because he was a police officer who had been working on the case.
As Audrina Clifton explained, she had no idea how Cooper had poisoned his victims, or when or where, or even why. Life had continued as normal, she had explained to them. There had been no signs. None at all.
Wildeve did not think she would ever forget the look on Mrs Clifton’s face when she had explained, so gently, about the discovery of the child’s bones in the crate after Olivia Lockwood had banged her head.
‘We can’t be sure,’ she told the old woman. ‘But the size of the skull is consistent with a child aged around ten.’ She had left the rest of the sentence unspoken.
‘You think – could it – might it be Joby?’
‘It’s highly likely,’ she said. ‘I think you need to prepare yourself for that eventuality.’ She had explained to Mrs Clifton that if it had not been for Olivia Lockwood, her son’s fate may have remained a mystery. That the tape recording handed in by the Lockwood children was evidence that Joby had been beaten before his death. That Olivia Lockwood’s fall in the garden had triggered a chain of events that had led the police back here. To Cooper.
And the skull of her missing son was a key piece of evidence.
Then there was Bridget Sawyer.
Trefor Lovell had shared with them what he and Fletcher Parnell had uncovered on the walls of the shop. Advances in DNA techniques meant they would be able to confirm it. It seemed Cooper had been trying to frame Trefor and tie up loose ends.
Lovell had been bailed but he was due in court next month to face a charge of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life and grievous bodily harm. He had accepted a caution for failing to register a death.
As for Fletcher Parnell, his suicide had been unfortunate. He had been trapped in the noose of his own guilt and fear.
He, too, was unconnected to these murders.
But something still bothered Wildeve. Cooper had been a calculated and methodical man. Why had he run? She would never know the answer, but she guessed it was for two reasons – because he knew he would be searched before getting into the police car, and he would not defile Audrina’s memories of their happy home by killing himself inside it.
DCI Sampson was jubilant at the triumph of Essex Police in tracing a serial killer. He had been garlanded in the press. He had apologized to Mac, who had shaken his hand, and decided that retirement suited him after all. DC French was on extended sick leave. The case was closed. The dizzying whirl of long hours and no sleep and little food was over. All that was left for DS Wildeve Stanton was to fall apart and begin the long road of grieving the death of her husband.
106
Wednesday, 29 August 2018
25 The Avenue – 2.17 p.m.
It was nearing the end of the holidays, one of those afternoons when the dog days of summer were packed up and put away, when the season was beginning to turn and autumn was a promise in the smell of the air and the lifting leaves. The start of the new school term was a few days away.
A FOR SALE sign stood on the front lawn of 25 The Avenue.
Garrick Lockwood pushed his wife Olivia’s wheelchair into the sitting room, which overlooked the garden. He tucked a blanket around her legs, careful not to knock the plaster cast. Her head was healing, but she would have a scar.
‘Are you sure you’re going to be OK?’
She smiled up at him. ‘I’ll be fine. I’m going to read and watch the trees and enjoy the peace and quiet.’
He checked his watch. ‘Your sister will be here around six. I’m going to get on the road. We’ll be back in a couple of days, once I’ve seen my mother and shown the children the new house. Make sure you rest, Liv. Enjoy the breathing space.’
She grabbed his arm, surprised by her sudden reluctance to let him go. Instead she said, ‘I’m glad we’re giving this another try, Garrick.’
He kissed her forehead. ‘Me too. But we love each other, don’t we? That’s got to be reason enough.’
Against all odds, Garrick had landed the job at the architect’s firm in London. His salary would be enough to rent a small house on the other side of the city while they waited for 25 The Avenue to sell. They had found new schools for the children. Remaking their marriage, their lives. This time they were both determined it would work.
Aster was next to say her goodbyes. Mother and daughter had developed a new closeness in recent weeks. Aster had plaited her mother’s hair and painted her nails. Now she kissed her cheek. ‘Can’t wait until you’re well enough for us to go shopping again.’ They had both laughed.
And, lastly, Evan. Her precious boy.
‘Can’t I stay with you, Mum?’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘I’ll help look after you.’
‘I know that,
sweetheart. But Granny wants to see you, and Daddy wants to show you your new bedroom. You’ll have fun and you’ll be back before you know it.’
Olivia did not know if Evan understood the extent of their neighbour’s killing spree, or how close to danger he’d been. She had not pressed him, and he had not volunteered much. But he had wet the bed a couple of times since he had dragged home the crate containing that young boy’s remains. And every day she thanked a God she didn’t believe in for sparing her son from Cooper Clifton.
The hallway filled with suitcases and shouted goodbyes. With silence.
Olivia watched the first sycamore seeds of the season spin in the wind, like tiny helicopters. She had not heard from Orson since the night of her accident and she had not contacted him. But her brush with death had opened her eyes. She loved her family, and she would fight for them. A part of her was uncertain, frightened by the future. But she felt lighter than she had done in a long time.
Half an hour later, the doorbell rang.
She grinned. She knew who it was.
‘It’s open,’ she called.
Audrina Clifton bustled into the sitting room. Olivia had put on some music and the swell of the notes filled the room. The women had become closer over the last few weeks, bound together by their shared sense of loss. Olivia’s affair was over and Audrina’s husband was dead. Both widows, in their own ways.
Audrina hung her coat on the back of the chair and made sure that Olivia was comfortable.
‘How about a nice cup of tea?’ the older woman said.
When the neighbour returned to the sitting room, she was carrying a tray. Two teacups. A teapot. Milk jug and sugar bowl.
And a plate filled with thick slices of Dundee cake, bulging with raisins.
107
Wednesday, 29 August 2018
M25 motorway – 2.37 p.m.
In the car, Garrick and Aster Lockwood were singing along to the radio.
His father had not been this happy in months and it gave Evan a warm feeling inside.
The Neighbour Page 26