Kim had thrown herself to the floor, opened her mouth wide and sunk her teeth into her mother's calf like a rabid dog. She applied every ounce of pressure she could muster and wouldn't let go. Her mother had spun around and the pillow fell from the bed, but still Kim didn't let go. Her mother had staggered around the room, screaming and trying to kick her free, but only when they were a safe distance from the bed did Kim unlock her jaw.
She remembered running over to the bed and shaking Mikey awake. He spluttered, coughed and gulped at the air. Kim ushered him behind her and stared up at her mother.
The hatred in the eyes of the woman who had birthed them took Kim’s breath away. She backed up the bed, keeping Mikey behind.
Her mother moved closer. ‘You stupid little bitch. Don't you know he's the fucking devil? He's got to die and then the voices will stop. Don't you fucking get it?’
Kim shook her head. No, she didn't. He wasn't the devil. He was her brother.
‘I'll get him, I promise you, I'll get him.’
From that point on, Kim had had to remain one step in front of her mother at all times. There were further attempts during the following year but Kim was never far from Mikey's side.
During the day she kept a badge in her pocket and pricked her lower arm to keep herself alert. At night she took handfuls of coffee from the jar and placed them straight into her mouth, absorbing the bitter granules into her tongue.
Only when she heard the rhythmic sound of her mother's snoring would she allow herself to rest.
There were occasional visits from social services. An overworked individual conducting a ten minute cursory inspection with a mental clipboard; a test she somehow managed to pass.
Kim had wondered many times since just how low the pass grade would have had to have been for them to remain in the care of their mother.
No evidence of crack cocaine – check.
No evidence of parent stumbling and drunk – check.
Children free of obvious scarring – check.
A week after their sixth birthday Kim had exited the lavatory, to find her brother attached to the radiator with handcuffs.
Kim looked at her mother with horror, confused for a few seconds. It was all the time her mother needed. Kim felt her hair being grabbed from behind and bunched in her mother's fist. She was dragged to the radiator and cuffed to her brother.
‘If I've gotta get you to get him then that's what I'll have to do.’
Those were the last words she ever heard from her mother.
By the end of that day Kim had managed to squirm her right foot beneath the bed and dislodge a pack of five cream crackers and a half bottle of Coke.
For two days she had been convinced that her mother would return. That one of her rare lucid moments would occur and they would be freed.
On day three she realised that their mother was not coming back and had left them to die. With only two crackers and a few mouthfuls of Coke remaining, Kim stopped eating completely. She divided the last two crackers in half and half again, making eight bites for Mikey.
Every few hours she would try and force her hand through the cuffs, removing slivers of skin each time.
By the end of day five the crackers were gone. A single mouthful of liquid remained in the Coke bottle.
Mikey turned his face towards her; so thin, so pale. ‘Kimmy, I peed again,’ he whispered.
She looked into his eyes; so distraught at one more puddle amongst the foulness beneath them. His earnest expression made her laugh out loud. And once she started laughing, she couldn't stop. Even though he didn't know why, Mikey joined in until the tears rolled over their cheeks.
And when the tears stopped falling, she held him close. Because she already knew. She whispered into his ear that Mummy was on her way with a meal and that he just had to hang on. She kissed the side of his head and told him she loved him.
Two hours later he died in her arms.
‘Sleep tight, sweet Mikey,’ she whispered, as the last breath left his battered, fragile body.
Hours or days later there was a loud noise and then people. Lots of people. Too many. They wanted to take Mikey and she was too weak to fight them off. She had to let him go. Again.
The fourteen day stay in hospital was a blur of tubes, needles and white coats. The days had melded into one.
Day fifteen was much clearer. She was taken from the hospital to the children's home. And she was given bed number nineteen.
‘Excuse me, Miss, are you okay?’ asked a voice from above.
Kim was startled to realise that she had slid down the wall and was now sitting on the ground.
She wiped away the tears and sprang to a standing position. ‘I'm fine, thank you, I'm fine.’
The ambulance driver hesitated for a second but nodded and then wandered away.
Kim stood and breathed deeply to dispel the overwhelming sadness as she placed the memories back in the box. Never would she forgive herself for her failure to protect her brother.
She unlocked the helmet from the wheel. Her body now filled with fight and determination.
No, she would not have it. Kim would not fail these girls because damn it, they mattered to someone. They bloody well mattered to her.
Sixty-Four
Stacey leaned back in her chair and stretched. A heat burned across the muscles in her neck. She rolled her head to the left and then to the right. Something clicked in her right shoulder blade.
The Guv had said go home and that's what she intended to do.
She closed down the Facebook page and her emails beneath. There were a few at the top still in bold and unread but she would see to them on Saturday morning. All she craved right now was a long hot soak in a bubble bath followed by a takeaway pizza and a dose of Real Housewives. She didn't care which one.
The whirring of the computer came to a halt, plunging the room into silence.
Her feet slipped into the shoes beneath the desk. Stacey donned her jacket and walked to the door.
Her left hand hesitated over the light switch but something nagged at the back of her mind. Something she'd seen but couldn’t work out the meaning of just yet.
She growled as she stepped back to her desk. The whirring seemed louder, as though it were under duress. Stacey guessed she was projecting.
She keyed in without looking and went straight to her emails. It was the second unread message that quickened her heart. She read from the beginning, her eyes open wide.
By the time she reached the end of the text her mouth had run dry.
With trembling fingers, Stacey reached for the phone.
Sixty-Five
Kim parked the bike at the side of the fenced-off building. She dismounted and stepped to the side.
It was only eight o’clock but it felt much later. The cold night air had already dropped below freezing, driving families to lock the doors, close the curtains and curl up before a flickering orange flame and a night-time film.
It was a notion that had occurred to Kim when she’d briefly stopped by her home, a place she'd barely seen for the last week, but she knew she couldn’t rest. The answers were emerging from the fog but there was one missing piece that still troubled her.
The dig site was now empty. All traces of activity had been removed. To see the site shut down was eerie. The white tents were back in storage awaiting their next victim. The equipment had been removed and would be gone the next day. Along with Cerys.
To the naked eye and in the darkness, the land looked as it had one week earlier. Even the few bunches of flowers and teddy bears had now disappeared.
But Kim knew she could walk to all three graves and identify their exact location. And that fact would remain long after the scars of the landscape had healed.
Kim couldn’t help but wonder how long the girls would have remained lost had the professor not been so determined to find buried coins.
But because of his tenacity, three young girls who had lain beneath this unassuming
piece of land would now be afforded proper burials. And Kim would attend every one.
She knew the case had touched them all. Cerys had removed the bodies from the ground. Daniel had examined the girls to indicate the manner of death and now it was up to her to pull it all together.
She looked over to the middle house. There was activity inside. Lucy and William were back from the hospital and their life together would continue as normal. For now.
Kim pulled her gaze away from the illuminated window. The time had come for her to have a very difficult conversation with William Payne; but he wasn’t going anywhere and there was one missing piece she had to find first.
The denture was here somewhere and somehow, it mattered. That it was not on the body and not in the grave meant that it was still in the building. The location would tell her everything. And this time Kim had come prepared.
She reached into her saddlebag and took out a hammer. She reckoned that by removing two fence panels she’d be able to climb through the gap.
Kim removed the black leather gloves and placed the pencil torch in her mouth. She used the claw of the hammer to remove the nails that held the rough wooden panels against the vertical stumps.
The first two dislodged easily. She tried to prise the panel away from the post but the two fixed to the other side held fast. The top one came loose easily but the bottom one wouldn’t budge. She was able to swing the panel down so that it hung vertically, still fixed with one stubborn nail.
It was clear that ten years ago the council budget for decent workmanship far outweighed the budget for quality materials.
Kim repeated the same process with the second panel, providing a space wide enough to climb through. Once on the other side she shook her hands and cupped them to her mouth. The raw wind on her exposed fingers had made the tips numb.
She had deliberately not informed Bryant or the rest of the team of her plans. She had no legal right to enter the building and a warrant would have taken far too long.
Woody’s message about the loyalty of her team had been received loud and clear.
Without the aid of daylight, she had to recall from memory the layout of the back of the building. She lit up the ground using her torch. The land was overgrown and littered with bricks and debris.
Kim shone the torch at the open window through which she’d entered the building previously. She tried to traverse a direct path from point A to point B but stumbled over a breeze block. She swore but carried on.
She reached the window and realised she had used the bin to get back over the fence. She travelled back, taking care to avoid the breeze block, then picked up the bin and placed it beneath the broken window.
She shone the torch around the outer edge of the opening to get an idea of where the shards were placed. Kim put the torch in her mouth and used both hands to ease herself through the broken window.
Yes, she was in.
Sixty-Six
I knew I'd been right when I first saw her. Her diligence and tenacity had served her well. Perhaps too well.
Because it had brought her back to me.
I had initially thought that we would not meet but that was no longer the case.
My insurance, my clever misdirection, had not been enough. For some it would have been. But not for her.
Here she was, alone, late at night, gaining entry to an abandoned building, searching for answers. She would not rest until she had uncovered the secrets.
All of them.
It was only a matter of time before her methodical reasoning brought her to me. I couldn't take that chance.
Had she not been so clever I would have allowed her to live. People have to take responsibility for their own actions.
I remember when I was twelve in the lunch hall. Robbie had a chicken salad sandwich. It looked so much tastier than my ham and cheese. I asked him to trade and he laughed in my face.
A broken rib, a black eye and two fractured fingers later, I had the sandwich and it tasted good.
See, it needn't have happened. If he'd just traded, he would have been fine. I tried to explain this to the teachers but they couldn't understand. They all made excuses for my lack of remorse.
I wasn't troubled. I wasn't seeking attention. I was not acting up because my grandma had died.
I just wanted the sandwich.
It was a shame that the detective had to die. The presence of her keen mind and unerring drive would be missed but she had brought it on herself.
It wasn't my fault.
My only fault lay in the mistake I made some years before, but it was one that I hadn't made since.
But then, even the greatest minds occasionally made errors.
And as I watched her climb in through the fence, I realised that the detective had just made her last.
Sixty-Seven
Kim’s feet landed on the Formica worktop and the glass crunched like gravel beneath her boots. In the dark silence, the sound seemed deafening.
She eased herself down onto the ground and cast the torch around the kitchen. Nothing had changed in the few days since her last trespass and this wasn’t the area that held her interest.
Still, she paused for a moment, visualising the girls sneaking in when no one was around for a packet of crisps or a drink. How many times had Melanie wandered in and out of this room before she was so brutally beheaded?
Kim headed forward through the room and jumped when something settled on her face. She clawed at her cheeks, dislodging the soft fibres and raised the light to a head-shaped hole in a cobweb at the doorway. She shook her head and rubbed at her face and hair. A single thread tickled at her ear.
As she stepped from the hallway to the corridor a gust of wind howled from above, entering the building through the broken windows. A beam creaked above her head.
For a second, Kim questioned the sensibility of her own choice to enter this building alone and at night, but she would not be frightened off by insects and wind.
She moved along the corridor, taking care to mute the torch as she passed open doorways of rooms that were on the front of the property.
Although the building was surrounded by fencing she couldn’t take a chance that the light would be seen from the road or the houses opposite.
On her left she passed a utility room and on her right was the common room. She pictured Louise in that room, holding court, rallying her troops as the group leader ‒ until some bastard tried to saw her in half.
Kim headed for the room at the bottom of the hallway. The room where the fire had been started. The manager’s office.
As she entered, she switched off the torch. A streetlight next to the bus stop cast a shadow into the room.
Did you stand in here and ask him for help? Kim silently asked Tracy. Did you come to Richard Croft and seek his advice before you were buried alive? Kim suspected not.
Kim shook away the thought and surveyed the room. Two filing cabinets stood behind the open door. She opened each drawer in turn. The light from the street lamp did not illuminate that far into the room. She searched each one by hand.
Nothing.
She moved to the bookcase on the other side of the doorway. It was a heavy, wooden structure that ended six inches from the ceiling. She ran her hand along each empty shelf, standing on the second shelf up to examine the top. Although her hand was blackened by dark, dusty soot there was nothing to find. She blew away the loose blackened powder and wiped the remainder on her jeans.
She moved to the desk nearest to the window and opened each of the drawers. In the bottom she found a small petty cash tin. She shook it lightly. It was empty.
Kim stood and surveyed the room. The denture was here. She felt it. Where would it be placed to try and ensure its destruction?
Her eyes wandered back to the bookcase nearest the door. The fire had been started in the hallway outside the office door, at the furthest point from the bedrooms of the girls. Somehow the fire had chosen its own direction and headed do
wn the hallway, leaving Croft’s office intact.
She put the torch in her pocket and stood before the bookcase. This time she examined every shelf, top and bottom and side panels. She knelt on the floor searching for any gap beneath the lowest shelf.
Nothing.
She sneezed as the dust and soot lifted from the surfaces she had touched.
She stood before the bookcase and opened her arms. She could just about manage to embrace the whole object in a giant hug. She pulled at one side and then the other, budging it forward by an inch at a time. After a few attempts, the bookcase and the wall were separated by about eight inches. Not much, but enough for her to reach behind.
Kim started to move her hand across the plywood backing, sweeping from side to side. Her face was pressed against the side panel as she reached for the furthest point.
The tips of her fingers glided over a smooth surface at odds with the rough plywood. She pushed as far as she could, straining at the shoulder. She touched again. Tape. Her fingers had found the edge of a strip of Sellotape. With one almighty push, she forced herself into the corner.
Instantly, she was reminded of foster family number three, who had used the naughty corner as a form of punishment. She would estimate that approximately one-third of her five-month stay had been spent in that corner. And it hadn't always been her fault. Sometimes it had just been made to look that way.
Kim froze as her hand closed around the unmistakeable shape of a tooth.
The word punishment flew around her head and she closed her eyes. She shook her head with disbelief. Why the hell had she not seen it sooner? It had been staring at her from the wipe board. Beheading, Premature Burial and Death by Sawing; all forms of capital punishment.
She retracted her arm from behind the bookcase. The denture could wait. It no longer held the importance that it had earlier.