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I’ll never forget the sound of cats crying when I got closer.
The shed door had a padlock and I had to use a rock to smash it open. When I did, the first thing I saw was that the wood inside was covered with scratch marks.
There must have been ten cats in there, all skinny and starving. I felt sick and a little unsteady on my feet, as I realised that the fur coat Zoe had made for Rachel hadn’t been fake at all. I recognised some of the cats from the ‘Missing’ posters dotted around town, and suddenly the twisted pieces of the puzzle slotted together to reveal a very ugly picture. Zoe had been stealing people’s pets, returning them if owners offered a cash reward, keeping them for her sewing projects if not. The horror of it was hard to conceive, but I knew I was right.
The cats ran out, leaving just one in the corner: Kit Kat.
She looked thin and scared, and had a bloody stump where her tail used to be.
I picked her up and carried her home, tears streaming down my face the entire time. I put her in the cat carrier, where she would be safe until Mum got home. Then I went up to my bedroom to write a letter.
I never stopped feeling terrible about what happened to Catherine Kelly. I thought it was all my fault; I invited her that night. I didn’t know whether the rumours about her committing suicide were true, but I decided that if anyone deserved to die, it was me. I wrote it all down, everything that had happened, so that my mum wouldn’t blame herself when she found me. I planned to use my school tie to end it all, but I couldn’t go through with it, so I tore up the note and threw it into the fireplace in my bedroom.
I did nothing but study for the next few months. I got straight As in my GCSEs, and won a scholarship to a boarding school far away. It broke my mother’s heart, but the school had a fantastic reputation and she didn’t try to stop me. I never told her the real reason why I wanted to leave.
My fingers frantically search for the phone I just dropped in the dark, feeling amongst the dead leaves and mud on the forest floor. When they find it, accidentally illuminating the screen, I see that I have one bar of signal. I stab the Contacts button and dial Jack’s number.
‘Pick up. Pick up. Pick up,’ I whisper.
I’m so surprised and overjoyed when he does, that I don’t know what to say. Then the words rush out all at once.
‘Jack, it’s me. I’m in trouble and I need your help. I know who the killer is. The fifth girl in that photo is a woman called Cat Jones. She’s a BBC News presenter, but we went to school together and something bad happened. It was twenty years ago, on my birthday, maybe that’s why. There’s a house, I don’t know where, but I’m in the woods. I think she’s killed him, I think she’s killed them all and she’s coming for me. Please hurry.’
‘Ms Andrews, this is DS Patel. Jack is driving at the moment,’ says a voice on the other end.
Her words are obscenely relaxed, as though the person who spoke them didn’t hear a thing I just said.
‘I need to speak to Jack, right now.’
I am shouting and crying at the same time. I hear a branch snap somewhere behind me, but when I spin around, all I can see is eerie darkness and the ghostly shapes of dead trees.
‘I need you to stay calm,’ says the voice on the phone. ‘We are on the way, but we need a location. Can you tell me anything more about where you are? What can you see?’
I blink away my tears, and peer into the darkness again, but there is nothing except the woods. I can’t tell them exactly where I am, because I don’t know. I wipe my face with the sleeve of my jacket, then I turn and see something else.
She is standing right behind me, dressed in white.
Him
Thursday 01:30
‘Anna hung up,’ says Priya.
‘What? Where is she? What did she say?’ I ask, driving as fast as I dare on dark country lanes in the middle of the night.
We’ve taken Zoe’s car. I feel more comfortable being behind the wheel, and I still don’t trust Priya. She grabbed my phone as soon as it started ringing, as though she didn’t want me to answer it. Although that could have something to do with my speed – she’s checked her seat belt several times.
‘Anna mentioned the woods,’ she says, holding onto the side of the car as I take another bend more quickly than I should.
‘Great, that’s a big help in a town surrounded by trees,’ I snap.
‘I’m just telling you what she said.’
‘Was it definitely her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Call the tech team, get them to triangulate the signal from her phone right now. Then call Anna back.’
Priya does as I ask, but I can only hear one side of the conversation she is having with someone at HQ. Her tone changes towards the end of the call.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ I ask when she hangs up, but she doesn’t answer.
I take my eyes off the road for just a second to look at her, and when I turn back, there is a stag standing directly in front of us. The deer’s eyes shine in the headlights, its enormous horns look lethal, and it doesn’t move. I hit the brake and only just manage to swerve in time to avoid hitting it. Seconds later we smash into an old oak tree instead.
For a moment, I think I am dead.
‘Jesus Christ,’ says Priya, reaching for the back of her neck as though in pain.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, mentally checking myself for injuries, but finding none.
My chest hurts, and I’m still gripping the steering wheel so tight that my knuckles look as though they might burst through my skin. I notice the deer has disappeared.
‘It’s OK, I’m still in one piece, are you?’ Priya asks.
‘I think so.’
She leans down into the footwell. At first, I think she might be about to vomit, but she picks up her phone, and dials Anna’s number. I decide that I was wrong not to trust her; she is trying to help me. Even now, when I almost killed us both.
‘Anna’s mobile is going straight to voicemail again,’ she says. ‘Maybe her battery died, or she lost signal—’
‘Or someone turned it off,’ I say, finishing her sentence.
‘The good news is, according to Google Maps, Catherine Kelly’s old house is five minutes away on foot.’
She unfastens her seat belt and feels the back of her neck again.
‘Are you sure you’re OK to walk?’ I ask.
‘Guess we’ll find out.’
We abandon the car, which seems wise given the dented bonnet and flashing warning lights on the dashboard. I don’t even take the keys or bother closing the door, it feels like there is no time to waste. Priya is surprisingly fast. She navigates a path for us between the black branches of ancient trees, running ahead, almost as though she has been here before and knows the way. My chest hurts every time I breathe in. I slammed into the steering wheel when we crashed, and I suspect I may have cracked a rib. The volume of my wheezing laboured breaths seems to increase with every step.
Priya stops just ahead of me.
‘Did you hear that?’ she whispers.
‘What?’
‘Sounded like someone running in the opposite direction.’
She stands a little straighter, her body poised and perfectly still, like the startled deer we saw a few minutes ago. But her head reminds me more of an owl, turning slowly from side to side as her brown big eyes blink into the gloom. I don’t hear anything, except the normal sounds of the woods at night, but I remember Priya is a city girl.
