Crossbones Yard (27 page)

Authors: Kate Rhodes

BOOK: Crossbones Yard

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I sat on the chair by his bed, watching him fall asleep, exhausted by so many questions. And then the pieces began to slot into place. My long night of sleep had shifted fragments of information into the correct position. Marie Benson’s face appeared in my mind, with its leering, Cheshire cat grin, and I remembered the pattern she had drawn. A five-point star above a rectangle, doodled on every page of the notes her writing tutor had stolen. It reminded me of a poorly drawn compass mark, like the ones I’d seen scribbled in the corners of early maps in the British Museum, the cartographer racing to note down every hill and inlet.

I realised that Marie had been drawing her own map. The reason for the Bensons’ kindness to Morris Cley’s mother made sense at last. Those dull trips to bingo had a purpose, and the afternoons when Marie drank endless cups of tea in her kitchen while Ray toiled in the garden on Keeton’s Road. I pulled my phone from my pocket and Burns answered in seconds.

‘Alice, how are you doing?’ His accent was veering towards Bermondsey that day, as though he’d finally cut his Scottish roots.

‘Never mind that,’ I cut in. ‘I know where Ray and Marie buried the last five girls.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Get over to Morris Cley’s house and start digging.’

Burns’s pen scratched noisily across a piece of paper as I explained where to look. God knows why I hadn’t worked it out before. Marie Benson’s doodle was a burial map, drawn
again and again, before she lost her sight. The rectangle was the Cleys’ house, and the five-point star showed the location of each girl’s body in the grounds. Ray must have spent hours in the garden, digging his shallow graves. Burns rang off before I could say goodbye, eager to start immediately. A team would start clearing Morris Cley’s garden that afternoon. It would take weeks for the ground to be excavated, but at least the girls’ parents would get their daughters back. Each of them would get a proper burial.

I glanced across at Will. He was out for the count, his broken body grabbing the energy required to heal itself. I relaxed back into the chair and was drifting into a relieved sleep when the door swung open. The outraged nurse who had tried to stop me leaving had finally caught up with me. Maybe she had spent the last twenty-four hours sprinting from corridor to corridor. Her expression was so sour she must have existed on a diet of grapefruit.

‘There you are,’ she barked. ‘You’re coming with me, young lady.’

She marched me back to my room and I was too weak to argue. I let her tuck me into bed, tutting under her breath, but the urge to sleep had passed. I lay there for the whole afternoon, doing my best to keep my mind as empty as the blank winter sky.

EPILOGUE

Lola is waiting for me at Borough tube station. She flings her arms round me as usual, but her mile-wide grin travels across her face a fraction more slowly than before.

‘Are you ready for this?’ I ask.

‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

She looks beautiful today, in a long green dress two shades darker than her eyes. It’s April, but the sun’s so warm it could almost be summer. We cross the road and retrace the route I took in January, past shop fronts blackened by decades of polluted air.

‘Hang on.’ Lola stops outside a florist’s. Through the glass I watch her chatting to the assistant, deliberating over which flowers to buy. She emerges with two huge bunches of gypsophila, blossoms white and frothy as whipped cream. She hands me one of the bouquets and we make our way to Crossbones Yard. The gates look just the same as when I found the first girl there, wrapped in her plastic shroud, hundreds of tributes tied to the bars. A man in a blue uniform is waiting for us, jangling a heavy set of keys.

He gives us a stern look. ‘Ten minutes, ladies, and that’s your lot.’

When the gates swing open we walk to the centre of the site. It’s
thirty metres square, weeds flourishing in every crevice, scraps of newspaper shifting in the wind. I bend down and touch the warm tarmac with the flat of my hand. It’s easy to imagine a thousand women lying just below the surface, face up, longing to be released. My breath snags in my throat. When I turn round Lola has made herself comfortable, sitting cross-legged beside her pile of flowers. The man from London Underground stands by the entrance, tapping his foot.

‘Ignore him,’ Lola says. ‘I’d love to see him try to chuck me out.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

Lola looks about fifteen with the sun on her face, waiting for someone to explain what to do next. ‘Do you think we should say a prayer?’

‘We can’t, Lo. We’re not religious.’

She looks disappointed. ‘A minute’s silence then?’

‘That’s better.’

She takes off her watch and places it between us. I close my eyes and listen to the city’s heartbeat, planes buzzing overhead, reggae drifting from an open window. Lola opens her eyes, as if she’s woken from a long sleep.

‘Let’s go home,’ she says. ‘The miserable sod can lock up again.’ She links her arm through mine and I glance back at the gift we’re leaving behind. A cloud of flowers, pale and blameless, fluttering in the breeze.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the following people, all of whom have given me excellent support and advice: Teresa Chris, Ruth Tross, Hope Dellon, Dave Pescod, Miranda Landgraf, Martin Simmonds, Julian Earwaker, Shirley De Marco, Andrew Burton, Clare Crossman, Helen Johnson, Elizabeth Foy, Jessica Penrose, Melanie Taylor, Digby Beaumont, Andrew Taylor, Manda Scott, Joy Magezis, Bob Biderman, Joanna and Ted Kraus, Mandy Green, Honor Rhodes, David Levy, Sarah Shaw.

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

www.minotaurbooks.com

eISBN 9781250014290

First eBook Edition : January 2013

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rhodes, Kate.

Crossbones yard / Kate Rhodes.—1st U.S. edition.

p. cm.

1. Women psychologists—Fiction. 2. Serial murder investigation—Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

PR6118.H48C76 2013

823’.92—dc23

2012038716

First published in Great Britain by Mulholland Books,
an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, an Hachette UK company