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THIRTY
The police never found Lydia Deval, a Madonna-mad au pair from Rouen who’d come to the UK to polish her English and dance the nights away under the London lights. The family she worked for in Belsize Park, two stops away on the Tube from us, assumed she’d disappeared off in search of adventure when she failed to return home the night of her murder. Two days later they’d engaged a new nanny. Only their little boy cried for Lydia.
To this day, no one knows for sure what happened to her or whether she was even a victim of the Shadow. Although all the hallmarks were apparently there, thousands of people disappeared from the capital every year. Lydia Deval could have been a murder victim. Or just another missing person case.
‘It’s the not knowing, that makes her death so hard to deal with,’ her sister, Chloe told the Post.
‘Lydia fitted what they say is Melgren’s victim type. But unless he confesses, we’ll never know if he actually killed her.
‘My mother went to her grave not knowing what had happened to her. While all I know is, the last time I spoke to my sister I said things I shouldn’t have. Now I’ll never get the chance to put it right, to tell her I’m sorry. That I loved her.
‘Melgren’s victims are dead. But their families are still alive to feel pain and loss. Felled doing the most mundane tasks. Watching TV, drying the dishes. . . You’re never prepared for what might trip you up.’
She went on to beg Matty to admit the truth and reveal what he’d done with Lydia, along with the names of his other victims. The scores of missing women, who like her had never been found but whom police suspect he killed.
‘If you have an ounce of humanity, tell us,’ she pleaded.
But to this day, he’s proclaimed his innocence to anyone who’ll listen. My pain isn’t the same as Lydia’s sister’s, but like her I yearn for the truth. And I too feel the constant pull of quicksand, the suffocation of uncertainty.
Is Matty the Shadow? Did he kill those women? How many other lives did he take?
‘There’s been another one.’
Matty let himself into our flat, a bag of bagels in his hand, newspaper under his arm.
My mother was sitting at the kitchen table sipping her morning coffee. Her ‘fix’. I can’t do a thing till I’ve had it. After Matty’s arrest, the coffee went by the wayside. By then, she had other fixes she couldn’t do without.
He slapped the paper down on the table.
‘Seen this?’
He tapped at the headline with his index finger.
Shadow Latest: Another woman killed and discarded like litter.
‘Good God.’ She held his eyes, inhaled deeply. ‘How many is that now?’
It was rhetorical, but Matty answered without missing a beat.
‘Nine.’
‘Keeping track, are you?’ I teased.
‘Nice pun, pumpkin.’
I was confused, asked what he meant.
My mother read aloud. Keeping me from the news was a losing battle.
‘Residents today will be shocked to learn that the body of Gemma Nicholls, a seventeen-year-old woman believed to be yet another victim of the killer nicknamed the Shadow, has been discovered discarded in bushes by the running track in Parliament Hill.’ She inhaled deeply, shook her head. ‘I was by the running track on Friday. To think. . .’
Matty gave her a pointed look.
‘I told you the park wasn’t safe.’
‘But—’
‘Trust me, Ams. Last time I was there, I saw a bunch of kids shooting up.’
