Blacklands (8 page)

When Steven’s last trainers had been put out with the bins after two years of constant hard labor, she had been sour for a week because he hadn’t removed the “perfectly good” laces.

Now Lettie rummaged through her purse and brought out a list which she frowned at as people jostled past them.

“Right,” she said. “I’ve got to go to Butchers Row, the market, and Banburys.”

Tiverton was easier and closer, but Barnstaple had Banburys.

“What do you need in Banburys?” said Nan suspiciously.

“Just some undies.” Steven heard the brittle tone in her voice—stretching it to keep it light.

“What’s wrong with your old ones?”

“I don’t really want to discuss it here, Mum!” She smiled with her mouth but not with her eyes. The lighter her voice got, the thinner it got; more likely to crack.

Nan shrugged to show it was no concern of hers if Lettie wanted to waste money on underwear.

Lettie put her shopping list away and turned to Steven. “You take Davey to spend his birthday money and we’ll all meet at twelve thirty.”

Davey brightened. “In the cake place?”

“Yes, in the cake place.”

Behind Lettie, Nan decided to air her views after all and said quite loudly: “It’s not as if anyone’s going to see your knickers.”

Lettie didn’t turn away from the boys, but Steven saw her lips tighten across her teeth. Davey’s excitement became anxiety in an instant as he looked from his mother to his grandmother, not understanding the words, only their effect.

Lettie gripped Steven’s light jacket by the collar and yanked the zip up as far as it would go, knocking his chin.

“I swear, Steven, you deserve to catch a cold!”

He said nothing.

“Now take Davey to spend his money. And don’t let him waste it, understand?”

Steven knew he’d get stuck with Davey. Bloody Nan! If only she’d kept her mouth shut Mum would have been happy to let her have custody of Davey, and he could have gone to the library. Now he had Davey in tow.

Davey had birthday money. Three pounds. Steven fidgeted impatiently while Davey picked every rubber dinosaur out of a box and looked at it and then didn’t even buy one. He moved on to the next box, which was full of small clear balls with even cheaper toys inside them. After long and careful deliberation he chose one filled with pink plastic jacks; it cost seventy-five pence.

Steven took Davey’s hand and hurried him towards the library but Davey made himself heavy and awkward as they passed a sweetshop and once again Steven had to wait while Davey peered at every bar, every packet, and into every jar until finally he emerged with a quarter of jelly worms and a Curly Wurly. He tried to stop again at the shop on the corner selling radio-controlled cars, but Steven yanked him onwards.

Without the sun to struggle through its high, dirty windows the library was gloomy and cold.

The librarian—a young man with an earring, a zigzag shaved into the side of his head, and a name tag reading “Oliver”—led Steven to what he grandly called “the archives” with a suspicious air. “The archives” was an alcove behind the reference section—and out of sight of his desk.

“What year?”

“June ’90.”

“1890 or 1990?”

Steven pulled a puzzled face. It had never occurred to him that they would have newspapers going back to 1890.

“1990.”

Oliver sighed and peered up at the giant books on the top shelves. Then he turned on a pulsing fluorescent and looked again.

Then he looked intently at Steven and Davey as if trying to find something wrong with them—something that would give him an excuse not to help them.

“He can’t eat those in here.”

“I know,” said Steven. “He won’t.”

Oliver snorted and held out his hand for the sweets. Davey instinctively withdrew them.

“I’m not having Curly Wurly all over my archives.”

Davey looked at Steven for guidance.

“Give them to him, Davey. He’ll keep them safe for you.”

Reluctantly Davey handed them over.

Oliver kicked a stool noisily across the floor and climbed onto it, dragging down a huge bound volume which he then dropped onto the desk with a petulant bang.

“No eating, no cutting out, no folding or licking the pages.”

Steven blinked; why would he lick the pages?

“Got it?”

“Got it.”

Steven sat on the only chair and Davey sat on the floor and started to open his jacks. Oliver hovered in the doorway but Steven ignored him until he left, then opened the giant book.

The
Western Morning News
used to be much much bigger. It was weird to see the same banner title on this huge newspaper. Steven felt like an elf reading a human book as he paged carefully through the tome. He giggled at the thought and Davey looked up at him.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing.”

The internet had been okay but patchy. Avery’s case predated the internet, and Steven had the frustrating feeling that there was lots it wasn’t telling him. At least the internet didn’t smell like old socks, though.

Davey was struggling to open the plastic sphere, his tongue stuck out in concentration.

“You want me to do that?”

“I can do it.”

The paper was yellowing and painfully thin. In places the ragged edges were torn. Steven stood up so he could handle the tome more efficiently.

ABUSED, TORTURED, KILLED
. The headline ended Steven’s search.

There was a picture of Arnold Avery—the first Steven had seen. He instinctively drew closer to the page so as not to miss a single detail. The photo would have looked equally at home on the sports pages—a young man who’d scored twice against Exmoor Colts or taken three wickets for the Blacklanders.

Steven was thrown. He had expected … well, what
had
he expected? His mental image of Avery up until now had been vague—maybe not even human. Avery had been a dark shape in an Exmoor fog, a collage of movement and muffled sound lingering on the edges of a nightmare.

But here was the real Avery, staring into a policeman’s camera with a shameless directness, his dark fringe flopped fashionably over one eye, his slightly snubbed nose giving him an amiable look, his wide mouth almost shut and almost smiling. Steven noted that Avery’s lips were very red. It was a black-and-white photo, but he could tell that much. As he studied it more closely, he could also see that the reason Avery’s mouth was only almost shut was that he had protruding teeth. A pixel of white suggested it.

Steven tried to get disturbed by the picture but Avery looked more like a victim than the perpetrator of the crimes of which he’d been convicted.

There were pictures of Avery’s victims although at this point in the proceedings the
News
called them “alleged” victims.

Little Toby Dunstan was described in the caption as “youngest victim.” A laughing six-year-old with sticky-out ears and freckles even on his eyelids. Steven grinned: Toby looked like fun. Then he remembered—Toby was dead.

There was a graphic on the front page too. It was a map of Exmoor. Steven unfolded a scrap of paper from his pocket and copied the shape—a rough, crinkled rugby ball. The graves of the six children who had been found were marked with Xs and arrows which pointed to six photos—one of each confirmed victim. The same picture of Toby Dunstan, a different one of Yasmin Gregory, then Milly Lewis-Crupp, Luke Dewberry, Louise Leverett, and John Elliot.

Steven marked each child’s initials inside the rugby ball with a red pen. All of them were roughly clustered in the center of the moor. Shipcott was not marked but Steven could see the gravesites were between there and Dunkery Beacon. Three of them were on the west side of the Beacon itself.

He had never seen the exact location of the graves marked before and was relieved that he’d been digging in the right general area all this time. Of course, what was a half-inch square on this map was several miles of open moorland in reality. But Steven felt new impetus seep through him just by dint of being reminded of his quest.

He carefully folded up the scrap of paper, and started to read.

The eleventh of June had been the first day of the trial at Cardiff. What this meant, Steven quickly realized, was that the prosecution told the court the highlights. It was like
Match of the Day
or those slick American TV dramas that always started with “Previously on
ER
…”

Previously on Arnold Avery—Serial Killer
…

The prosecution barrister, whose name had been (and likely still was) Mr. Pritchard-Quinn, QC, made it all sound as if Avery was undoubtedly, indisputably, irrevocably guilty. There was no room in his mouth for “perhaps” or “maybe” because it was so full of words like “callous,” “cold-blooded,” and “brutal.”

Mr. Pritchard-Quinn told the court how Avery had approached children and asked them for directions. Then he would offer them a ride home. If they took it, they were dead. If they didn’t, they were quite often dead anyway, once he had tugged them headfirst through the driver’s window.

Steven marvelled at the sheer cheek of it. The simplicity! No stalking, no hiding, no grabbing and running, just a child leaning over too far—a little off balance—and a shockingly strong and fast hand. Steven thought of Uncle Billy’s feet kicking through the open window and felt his stomach slowly roll over.

“Make it work.”

Steven looked up. Davey had brought the pink jacks to the table. Now he held two of them out to Steven, pressing them together.

“What?”

“Make it work!”

“What do you mean?”

Davey got his grizzly face on. “It won’t stick! Make it stick!” At the same time he tried to force the two jacks together as if willpower alone could meld matter.

“They don’t go together. That’s not what they’re for.”

Davey looked at the jacks with mounting discontent.

“Look, I’ll show you.”

Steven picked the jacks off the floor and found the small red rubber ball where it had rolled against the wall. He bounced the ball and picked up a jack, then bounced it again and picked up two.

“See? That’s how it works.”

The disgust on Davey’s face was plain.

“You want to try?”

Davey shook his head, slowly working out that he’d spent a large portion of his birthday money on something he had no interest in.

“I don’t want them,” he said crossly. “I want my Curly Wurly.”

“You can have it when we go,” said Steven.

He knew the moment the words were out of his mouth that they were an invitation to Davey, and Davey seized it and RSVP’d in an instant …

“I want to go.”

“In a minute.”

“I want to go now!”

“In a minute, Davey.”

Davey threw himself onto the dusty tiled floor and started to grizzle loudly, flailing his arms and legs about and scattering his jacks across the room.

“Shut up!” Steven shushed but it was too late.

Oliver appeared in the doorway, and they were out.

The rain had stopped and the sun was trying its best but the cars still hissed past and sprayed unwary pedestrians.

Steven knew he was walking too fast for Davey but he didn’t care; he yanked and tugged at his little brother to keep him going, ignoring the boy’s whines as he half jogged to keep up. It had been a wasted day; they only came to Barnstaple three times a year—Christmas, school clothes shopping in August, and for birthdays. Steven’s was in December, so his birthday trip was combined with the Christmas trip, but this was Davey’s birthday trip—1 March—so it would be months before Mum brought them back in to moan about the size of Steven’s feet and the rips in his school shirts.

And what did he have to show for it? Nothing. A crude map and an enemy in the form of Oliver who would probably never let him back into the archives, or perhaps even the library. Stupid Davey with his stupid jacks.

As they hurried, the faces of the throng of shoppers started to emerge at Steven as if he were noticing for the first time that a crowd was made up of individuals.

Individual whats? Individual farmers? Chemists? Perverts? Killers?

Steven felt a sudden eerie fascination with the shoppers of Barnstaple. Arnold Avery would have shopped. He would have appeared normal to his neighbors, wouldn’t he? The books Steven had read under his sheets were filled with quotes from friends—even family members—who were baffled when their “normal” neighbor, son, brother, cousin was exposed as a homicidal maniac. The thought of Arnold Avery or someone like him walking free on this street made Steven feel nervous. He looked around him warily and his grip tightened on Davey’s hand.

A grey-haired man stared about as his wife cooed over something in Monsoon’s window, his eyes hooded and predatory.

A girl in a dirty skirt played an old guitar badly and sang “A Whiter Shade of Pale” in a dull monotone while her lurcher shivered on a wet blanket, too dispirited to make a break for it.

A young man walked towards them. Scruffy yellow hair like Kurt Cobain, a brown goatee, bike jacket. Alone. Was alone bad? Steven caught his eye and wished he hadn’t. The young man appeared uninterested, but maybe that was a ruse. Maybe he would walk past Steven and Davey to lull them into unwariness and then turn and slip his fingers around Davey’s right arm, starting a tug-of-war which a screaming, pleading Steven could never hope to win, as shoppers stepped politely around them, not wanting to get involved …

“Ow, Stevie! You’re hurting!”

“Sorry,” he said.

They were almost at Banburys.

“Where you going, Lamb?”

The hoodies.

Steven’s heart bumped hard, then sank; he was a good runner and fear made him a very good one. On a Saturday in Barnstaple he would have lost the hoodies easily. Without Davey, that is. His anger at his brother flared again.

“Nowhere.” Steven didn’t look into their faces.

“We’re going to meet Mummy,” said Davey. “We’re going to have cakes.”

The hoodies laughed, and one made his voice squeaky and gay. “Going to meet Mummy. Going to have cakes.”

Davey laughed too and Steven suddenly felt his anger swing from his brother and redirect itself at the leering hoodies. He couldn’t fight them, and if he stayed where he was he was going to get pounded. His only advantage was surprise—right now, while Davey was laughing …