AllFreeNovel
Share Us
74
THERE WERE FOUR of them in the end. The dead girls. Grace, Rebecca, Claire, and Nicola. She hadn’t known their names until their happy faces shone out of the front pages of every national newspaper. At the time, she could only identify them by their screams, their begging. The drag marks they left on the lawn. Their hands clawing the mud as he pulled them into the shed.
Romilly sits in the warm sitting room, the fire burning in the hearth, the Labrador snoring. She has a cup of tea in her hands, but she doesn’t sip from it.
A detective sits in front of her, his eyes intent, listening. He’s older than she remembers, but it was nearly thirty years ago. He must be in his early sixties now. On the other side of her is Adam. He waits, silent. She can still see the ravages of the previous day: his face pale, the cut red and raw, black and green bruises on his forehead.
In the night, while he slept, she heard him murmur, his head thrashing from side to side, in the grip of a horrific scene playing out in his dreams. In the morning he said he didn’t remember, but he will, she knows. He will.
But right now, it is about her.
“I knew, Detective Shepherd,” she says. Neither man speaks, waiting for her to continue. “But you were aware of that, weren’t you?”
He nods.
“It must have been the second girl to be abducted. Rebecca? Was that her name?” Another slow nod. “I heard his car coming back and the garden gate being opened.”
Romilly remembers all too clearly. The shine of the moon lighting up the garden as if caught in floodlights. Her father coming around the back, something over his shoulder. Something heavy, unwieldy. And then she’d realized: it had a head. And a long flow of hair. It moved, struggled, but her father held tight. He carried it to his outhouse, and then they were gone. She waited, but he didn’t emerge. Confused, she went back to bed.
In the morning she thought she must have dreamed it. Her father sat at the breakfast table, his coffee and bran flakes in front of him as usual.
“Did you go out last night?” she asked.
He stared at her. “What makes you think that?”
No denial.
“I thought …” She shook her head. “Nothing.”
But it played on her mind all day. And when she got home from school, she went out to the outhouse and pulled at the door. It was locked. She’d never known it to be locked before. She tried to look through the windows, but they were covered. She listened: nothing. She frowned and went back to the house.
After that, she kept a look out at night. He would go to the shed, but always by himself. He’d stay there for a few hours, then walk back. Slowly. Relaxed.
“What are you doing out there?” she asked.
“Carpentry.”
“Why is the door locked?”
He turned to her and grabbed her hands in his, so hard it hurt. “You keep away, you hear me?” he said. Then, calmer: “There are tools in there. Things you could hurt yourself with.”
But it wasn’t her being hurt.
The second girl she saw screamed as he carried her across the lawn. She fought and bit and got away. She made it halfway back before he caught up with her: his hands grabbing her hair, pulling her to the ground. Romilly watched as he punched her in the head, over and over, then carried her, unconscious, to the shed. She stood, her hands gripping her windowsill, her feet numb, waiting. Waiting for him to come back out.
And an hour later, he did. He walked halfway across the lawn, and then, as if sensing her, he stopped. He looked up to her window, straight into her eyes.
She gasped and ran to her bed, pulling her duvet up over her head. She lay, shivering, as she heard the back door close, his footsteps on the stairs, then her door creak open. She felt his weight on her mattress, sitting down slowly next to her.
“Romilly,” he said.
She didn’t move.
“Romilly.” The duvet was slowly pulled away. She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes.
The curtains were still open, and the moonlight cast a dim glow across his face. His cheeks were streaked with mud and dirt, and something else she didn’t like to think about.
“Romilly. What did you see?”
