Anything for Her (26 page)

‘You have the right to be angry.’

‘You’re damn right I do. I trusted you to keep my wife safe and find my daughter. All you did was clean up the mess that bastard left behind.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t protect your wife and daughter. I apologise on behalf of my partner, the Metropolitan Police and the Gloucestershire Constabulary. I hope you accept it, because I’m not allowed to apologise – and I never have until now.’

He will never forgive her. They both know that.

They sit in tense silence for a moment.

‘You said I could see it.’

‘Michael, I really don’t think—’

‘Don’t go back on your word. You said once my trial was over, I could see it.’

‘I’m not going back on my word. I just want you to think about whether this is good for you.’

‘I have thought about it. I have thought about it every single night in my cell, looking up at the cracked ceiling, longing for it to crumble down on top of me and crush me to death. I need to read it.’

Her eyes linger on his face for a few seconds before she retrieves her briefcase. She pulls out a large pile of A4 paper.

‘Do you want to read the whole thing? The pages your wife wrote? Or just the killer’s part?’

‘Both,’ he replies. ‘Killer first.’

Jessica takes pages from the back. She places the bulk of the pile on her lap and reluctantly passes the remaining pages over the table.

Michael instantly begins to shake. He has waited to read the words the killer left for months. He needs to know why he did it, how he did it, when he did it. He takes a deep breath and focuses his eyes on the first page of the photocopied journal entries. The handwriting of the killer is bizarrely calm. It isn’t scribbled in haste – as though his confessions had gushed out of him and splashed on to the pages in words – but written with a steady hand, as though he had no emotions at all.

My name is Curt Grady. I’m the man who killed Louise and Brooke Leighton
.

This journal belonged to Louise. I write in past tense about her, for, although she is not dead yet, she will die tonight. And when this is read, I will be dead too. In her own words and with her own hand, she wrote about helping her daughter evade the repercussions of killing my child. She wrote about how, on the very same night, she stole the life of my only grandson with her own hand. If these details are not enough for you to understand why I killed them, then there is something sickeningly wrong with you
.

Michael takes a deep, rattling breath. He tries to stiffen his hands to stop the paper quivering in his grasp.

My daughter, Robyn, was rebellious and beautiful. She called herself Robbie – even though my wife and I hated it – and fell pregnant as a teenager, which sickened me for years. I was so angry with her: she had turned into a slut, just like her mother, who fell pregnant with her around the same age. Eventually, I forgave her. I let her apologise over and over and, eventually, I let her and her bastard child into my life. I’m glad I did. Jamie was the most beautiful little boy I had ever met. He was neither white nor black – similar to his mother, but paler – and even though he was a bastard child, unloved by God, I couldn’t help but love him
.

I first discovered that they had been killed the day after my forty-fifth birthday. Happy fucking Birthday. I had spent the evening with them, and woke up to the news that they had died. A car accident, the police said
.

I was distraught. I was a mess. My wife crumbled into such despair that I can hardly bring myself to document it. We waited days to hear how and why it happened. The police came back and told us the results of their brief investigation were inconclusive
.

In other words, the police didn’t think their deaths were important enough to continue investigating. A black mother and her black son were not worthy of their time. Racist swines. My wife and I were forgotten, left to deal with our pain and our questions alone. They had died in a car crash, with the other driver nowhere to be found. The man who found the crashed cars and the bodies told the police of two women at the scene, and yet the police couldn’t find them, couldn’t give my daughter and grandson the justice they fucking deserved
.

It only took a month for my wife to decide to die. And it took her no more than a second to step off the platform before an oncoming train and end the pain that was festering within her by beating and thrashing it out on the rails. The station closed for less than a day. Her remains were swept from the tracks and her blood was washed away with a hose, and life continued for everyone but me. Alone. Angry. Forgotten
.

For months I drank myself into a pitiful existence, loathing the world and everyone in it – all of the happy people, who were so undeservingly happy. I wished their children would die like mine; I wanted everyone to be as miserable as me. I wanted answers, I wanted reasons for their deaths, and – more than anything – I wanted
revenge. Sweet, slow, revenge. I wanted those bitches dead; the mysterious bitches who were at the crash site but couldn’t be found. I vowed to find them, torture them as they tortured me, and eventually kill them – slowly. Really fucking slowly. Make them beg for death, make them scream and cry, make them apologise over and over until I slit their sorry fucking throats. Revenge – that’s what I needed more than ever
.

I gathered all the information I had: the car that had hit my Robyn’s was a stolen car that belonged to a wealthy teen. It had been the night of a party, and whoever killed them had stolen it. The teen told the police he didn’t know who had taken it or why. Bullshit. I decided to find out
.

I drove towards the house in question, and waited until the parents left for work. I hoped to find the son inside, or at least some clues. I let myself in through the unlocked back door. I found him lying on a bed with his eyes glued to a television screen and his gut protruding from his T-shirt with junk food wrappers littering the bed. The fat, worthless slob didn’t even notice me as I entered the room – not until I grabbed him by the collar, slammed him up against the wall and clamped my hand around his throat
.

‘Who stole your car that night?’ I asked
.

‘What? Who are you? What do you want? I have
money, I have lots of money.’

‘I don’t want money, I want answers, and you’re going to give them to me, or I’ll come back and slit your fat fucking throat while you sleep.’

The boy squealed like a terrified pig, but still refused to tell me who had stolen his car. He would only tell me it was a girl at first. I grabbed his bollocks and he squirmed, tears falling down his face in streams, and eventually blurted out a name: Brooke Leighton. She would have been the only one to steal his car – he was sure of it. I released my grip on his bollocks and punched him in the stomach, laughing at him as he writhed around on the ground like a hog with indigestion
.

‘Tell anyone about this and I’ll kill your mother and make you watch.’

I had a name. Brooke Leighton. He said she was from London
.

The Internet is a marvellous thing. I simply put her name into a search engine and various websites promised her address. Various addresses around the world cropped up, but one address continued to flash before me. I found a photo of her from a social media page she had, and printed it off
.

I had an address and a photo, all in less than a day. Now all I had to do was plot how to avenge
my family, who had been wiped out in the blink of an eye for no reason at all
.

It took a few months, but eventually I had a plan. I was going to abduct Brooke and mutilate her. It was only when I discovered her talking with her mother on the phone that I heard that Louise was her confidante: she knew all about her daughter’s filthy, murderous secret. The more I listened to their conversations, the more I learned: her bitch of a mother was in on it. She was the second woman at the crash site. She had not only kept her daughter’s secret, but had been at the scene of the crime. She had seen my daughter’s dead body. She had taken her killer daughter and hidden her away
.

I knew then that I had two people to kill; two vile bitches that had to die for killing my own flesh and blood
.

Watching their lives fall apart was fun. I hadn’t even begun to meddle. The father was a dodgy businessman cheating on his wife – fucking his own wife’s sister! Their marriage and their wealth fell apart, which pleased me more than you will ever know. Then, when I had planned to put my promises into action, they made it difficult
.

Louise left the house one day with a suitcase. I followed her. She drove all the way to Gloucestershire to stay in a small village in the
Cotswolds
.

I had a big problem. The two sluts I had to kill were now hundreds of miles apart – and I couldn’t control them both, not at the same time. I had to become much more mobile. I had to sleep less. Drink less. I had to keep my plan alive
.

I had been following them for at least five months before Louise went to Gloucestershire. I had been living in my car outside the townhouse most of the time, only allowing myself to venture home for a few hours to nap, shower and eat. I watched every move they made and listened to every word they spoke from the baby monitor I had hidden underneath Brooke’s bed. I had a key made. I had slipped through an open window on a summer’s day, taken the key from the sideboard, and gone away with it to have a copy made. I returned the key within the hour and no one noticed a thing. Fucking idiots: they made it so easy
.

When I stayed in the Cotswolds, I stayed in an abandoned barn at the end of the lane where Louise was staying. I had decided to squat there for its great location, free accommodation – and the lack of attention I would draw from locals. I slept in my car, which I parked inside the barn. I had the outside as my toilet when the time arose. I ate canned foods with one trusty fork. I drank
water and whisky straight from the bottle, and wrapped up warm in various layers. I would shower in Louise’s house whenever I had the chance. If she left to go for a walk or to the shop, I would let myself into the house and shower. I’d snoop around. I’d eat some of her food and drink some of her booze
.

Travelling back and forth from the Cotswolds to London became expensive, yet thrilling. I would drive all night, stalk all day and exist on energy drinks, cigarettes and occasional power naps in the back of my car
.

I teased and tormented Louise. I would leave dead robins, poisoned with seeds that I had dusted with rat poison, plucked from the other breeds of birds that lay, poisoned, in a circle of dead bodies around the bird feeders. I collected and froze them over my months of planning. I left them for her to find and ponder about. The dumb bitch couldn’t even put two and two together – the dead robins symbolised my dead daughter, Robyn; the answer was staring her right in the fucking face and still she had no idea. The number of robins left on her bed (plus the first two robins on her doorstep) was the same as Robyn’s age: twenty-two. The two birds in the wrecked car symbolised my daughter and her son. One robin, left inside the smashed window of Louise’s house,
symbolised her own dead daughter – not that she knew it at the time. The last robin, which I will leave on Louise’s motionless, lifeless chest, is for my wife’s broken heart – broken because her own Robyn was taken away from her
.

I began to torment them both: travelling from one side of the country to the other and watching the sanity of each of them unravel. It gave me such pleasure that I didn’t even need to sleep most of the time; I simply existed on their pain and fear, and the excitement of it all
.

I had been snooping around inside the house on the second day of Louise’s stay when she spotted me. It was the most exhilarating experience of my life. I raced out of the back door and climbed over the garden wall. She followed. I ran through the woodlands. She followed. I made it to the barn and ran inside. I hid within the shadows. The door to the barn opened. She waited. She looked into the blackness. The door closed behind her. She spoke
.

‘I don’t know why you were in my house,’ she said. ‘But I definitely saw you.’

I don’t know why, but it gave me an erection
.

‘Whatever you want, you can’t get it from me. I don’t have anything left to give. Leave me and my house alone. Find another person to prey on.’

I wanted to grab her. Drag her into the darkness.
Do despicable things to her before ending her miserable life. My erection was throbbing. My heart was racing. I was elated. I have never felt so alive in my entire life
.

‘Leave me alone, and I won’t call the police. All I want is to be left alone.’

She left. I replied into the darkness. I lay down on a pile of rotting hay and released my erection, masturbating to the thought of strangling her neck, and ejaculated when her life came to an end in my excited mind. It didn’t take long at all. I cleaned up and rushed to my feet, planning to torment her one last time before dinner. I raced through the woodland, passing her as she walked up the lane, a dead robin jolting around inside my pocket, and made it to the front door of the house. I placed the robin on the doorstep and hid in the shadows of the woodland by the house. I waited for her to return and see what I had left. She was as terrified as I had hoped she would be. I wanted the bitch to be so scared she couldn’t sleep. I wanted her to regret what she did, and know that I was coming for her – that soon, I would kill her
.