Grind Their Bones (22 page)

Chapter 72

The Grey Man listened to the sounds of Madeleine and the girls going about their daily routines in the house without him from his vantage point up in the loft, and felt a sense of nervous excitement descending over everything again. He had been up here for almost twenty four hours, but the space was exceedingly well insulated and had a small discreet fridge with modest provisions inside, so he was relatively comfortable after his eyes adjusted to the absence of light. He’d planned for this day for some time, even though he had often kidded himself that it might never come, but now the end of everything was finally in sight he felt at peace with the monster inside.

The discussions with his wife of so many years the previous evening had been the final deciding factor for him, along with the growing realisation that his control over the part of himself that lived to maim and kill was disappearing from view. He couldn’t go on, and now was the time to make that decision on his own terms.

He waited until late afternoon, existing in a state of near meditative contemplation, and watching mental re-runs of his career highlights on repeat on the vast imaginary screen that his eyes projected for him. Finally the quality of the meagre light that crept in through small slits in between the roof tiles began to change perceptibly, and the movements down below took on a more sluggish note that suggested bed time for Lexie and Annabel was approaching. He waited for the sound of running water to come as Madeleine filled the large free standing bath tub with its clawed lion’s feet, followed by the rapid patter of bare feet across the wooden floor, and then he began to stir, rubbing feeling back into temporarily immobile limbs to get the circulation flowing again.

He lifted up the hatch and lowered the loft ladder down noiselessly through the hole, until it rested on the rug that neatly filled the floor space beneath and prevented any contact between the foot of the ladder and the polished floors that would have advertised his presence. The girls were splashing around now, giggling uncontrollably over something and nothing like normal children were apt to do. Of course his own upbringing had been devoid of laughter, so the sound was all but meaningless to him. He stepped over one of the boards that usually squeaked under foot and pushed the door open with his foot, as he rearranged a loop of knotted rope into the required shape with a deftness born of considerable practice.

He had been expecting to see the back of his wife bent down low over the tub applying shampoo or conditioner to the girls hair, but for some reason she was sitting over on the closed toilet lid, which put her a good six feet away from where he’d been planning to ambush her. The extra seconds delay as he realised that fact gave her the opportunity to see the rope in his hands first and react, and to his intense surprise and her credit she did just that, snatching up a ceramic dish and hurling it straight at the centre of his forehead with considerable force, propelling him back out of the doorway. He forced himself forwards again, dazed and with blood running down into his eyes, and jammed his bare foot into the gap between door and frame a moment before she threw herself against it to try to keep him out.

The pain was intense and he made a noise like a wounded bull but kept his foot wedged in place and slowly pushed his way in. Both girls were screaming fit to burst, striving to press themselves as far back into the corner of the bath as possible and wrapping the shower curtain around themselves, and Madeleine lashed out at him again, trying to get her nails into his eyes, fighting for their sakes if not her own. He batted her arm away and punched her hard in the face, feeling something crunch and tasting his own flowing blood on his lips as she fell.

‘I was going to spare you some of what they will face for old time’s sake, but I believe that moment’s passed us by now dear.’

He said in a low hiss, looping the rope around her neck and starting to pull it tight.

Chapter 73

By the time that I’d arrived back in Warwickshire the sun was dropping down below the horizon and painting the landscape in shades of red and gold. It should have been the end of my shift for the day, but I was still in the hold of my intense excitement at discovering what Hardwick had been holding back from us before he was killed. I’d managed to raise Lee on his mobile phone as I drove back, for once using the fiddly to fit hands free kit that was standard issue in unmarked police vehicles these days, and he was picking out a list of ‘John’s’ from the hundreds of short interview transcripts that we’d begun wading through the previous day. I secretly prayed that by some miracle there’d only be one man named John on the list.

Gripped by new urgency, I virtually ran up the stairs to the top floor of the police building, which was probably an infinitely more dangerous pursuit than tracking down murderers and rapists, considering the threadbare state of some of the carpet and the fact that I was wearing heels. As I entered the offices I noted that Geeta Badal had elected to stay behind too, her keen instincts evidently alerting her to the prospect of something interesting to get her teeth into, although she was not yet in the loop about what was keeping Lee and myself here late.

‘What have you got so far, Lee?’ I asked breathlessly, seeing stray curls of my hair performing interesting feats in my peripheral vision, and catching Geeta openly listening to what was being said.

‘There were eleven John’s to begin with, but I’ve already been able to narrow it down to six due to a couple of premature deaths and another couple staying at Her Majesty’s Pleasure at the time of some of the offences. Do you recognise any of the names?’

I leaned over and scanned down them quickly, feeling a surge of disappointment and confusion that none of them seemed remotely familiar to me. So what was the connection to me? Perhaps we’d managed to convince ourselves that we’d seen something that wasn’t really there to see.

‘Geeta?’

I watched her flinch fractionally at the unexpected use of her name, before she swiftly regained control of herself.

‘Ma’am?’

She sat bolt upright, looking poised for action, her eyes locked onto me in readiness.

‘Are you able to obtain details of marriages registered on your system, based solely on a maiden name?’

I’d usually made enquiries directly with various registrars and records offices, as I’d been taught to do, but I remembered that many of these records had now been computerised, and techno savvy newer officers gathered much of their information in an investigation without leaving their desks.

‘Yes, Ma’am. What name am I looking for?’

She looked down at her keyboard and began to access the necessary parts of the system in preparation.

‘Madeleine Reilly-Dunstan.’

I spelled out the names, mindful of the various different possibilities and paused to allow her to complete the screens, holding my breath in anticipation.

‘Okay, let’s see what we get back.’

She tapped more keys and read briefly before tapping away some more. The sound of the printer at the end of the desk started up as she looked up.

‘I’ve printed out the most likely looking entry. It looks like they got married in Plymouth quite a lot of years ago. Does this relate to the Grey Man case, Ma’am?’

I debated my options for a split second and decided that her hard work deserved to be rewarded.

‘Yes it does. Any chance of you doing an electoral register search for a last known address on her too?’ I said snatching the single sheet off the printer and scanning the details of the entry. I stopped when I reached the end and immediately went back over it, reading again to make sure that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. The sound of rushing blood suddenly filling my ears with white noise.

‘Zara, are you alright?’

Lee must have seen something terrible in my face, because he forgot to address me formally and reached out to take the sheet from my hands, scanning the details for himself.

‘I don’t understand…’ he began.

‘They did something unusual with their surnames, Lee. They combined the Reilly part of hers with Moore from his to make Reimoore, which was enough for me to miss him in the list.’

I stopped and looked at first him and then Geeta, who had stopped typing.

‘John Reimoore is my sister’s father-in-law, I’ve met him on several occasions. That’s what the connection between him and me is.’ 

Chapter 74

The Grey Man placed his securely bound wife in the boot of the Jaguar and closed the lid down hard, before returning to the rear passenger’s seats of the car and ensuring that the woollen blanket covering the girls was still in place. It was highly unlikely that they would be stopped on their short drive up to the cottage, so doubtless these modest precautions were entirely unnecessary, but he didn’t want to risk disaster at this late stage of proceedings. As a backup he had a loaded crossbow and a large bowie knife within easy reach in the front of the car, and he was an expert with both. Anybody stopping him this evening wouldn’t live for long enough to realise their mistake.

He got in and started the engine, ignoring the sounds from the youngest girl under the blanket, who had not been able to control her hysteria for long enough to avoid the need for tape across the mouth. The eldest had been far more amenable, accepting her situation much more readily with only the occasional fit of sobbing. Why did they so often cry, scream and plead when it was patently obvious that those actions carried absolutely no meaning for him at all?

He remembered one of the earliest targets, a spoilt little faux rich girl away from home and her parent’s money, ridiculously easily flattered and seduced by the prospect of a sugar daddy with a bottomless wallet. Please don’t kill me, I’ll do anything that you want me to, I don’t want to die. She’d said when she’d seen the selection of shining steel cleavers. Her arms had been tied tightly to her sides and he could still recall the mascara tears that were running all the way down both cheeks. She’d parted her legs slightly under his gaze, as if that had been what he was after, and as if he couldn’t have taken it with her consent simply by taking her back to a room in a plush sweet and plying her with champagne for the evening. You’ll do anything that I want you to anyway. He’d replied and begun to slice ignoring the piercing shrieks.

A thumping noise from the boot told him that Madeleine was starting to regain her senses, but nobody would be there to hear it over the rumble over the engine on darkened country roads. She’d surprised and pleased him with the ferocity of her attack back in the house, and he’d had to close the deep wound on his forehead with surgical tape from the first aid box before once he’d got the three of them safely secured.

He listened to the gravel crunching satisfyingly underneath the wheels as they moved along the grand driveway and up to the electric gates with their clever sensors. He’d had this home built to his own specifications when the wanderlust had subsided and he’d decided that it was time to put down roots and get back into the world of business again. Madeleine had not been involved in the choosing of the site, he’d only permitted her to begin visiting when the old building had been removed and the new one was nearing completion. So she’d die never knowing that the land had once housed an abattoir, and that the ground she walked over each day was saturated with decade’s worth of blood and suffering.

As a boy he’d been taken to such places on countless occasions when his father had decided that one of their ‘trips’ was in order. Mother had always remained at home, never arguing with John Moore senior, and the old man had taken a keen interest in spending time with him, moulding the boy in his own twisted and violent image. Can you smell that, John? His father would ask, breathing in deep lungs full of the slaughterhouse air, and he’d followed suit, nostrils heavy with the smell of death. That’s the smell of cattle becoming meat, John, and it’s what we’re made from too. There are many places around the world where people used to eat each other as food, and in famines and wars it sometimes still happens. What do you suppose we taste like?

Ten years later they’d hunted a girl with crossbows and knives together in remote woodland, and he’d let the boy find out the answer to that question for himself.

Chapter 75

John Reimoore, a man who I’d looked in the face and berated for the behaviour of his only son, was an horrific murderer of the worst kind, a psychopath and a cannibal who’d been killing for decades and never been caught. He was also the joint temporary custodian of my sister’s two young girls, Lexie and Annabel. My first instinct had been to rush straight out to arrest him, but Lee and Geeta had insisted on organising an armed response unit to take care of the entry to his home and the subsequent apprehension of one of the most dangerous men imaginable. Now all that could be done was to wait and hope, passing the time by looking back into any surviving records that detailed the life of a monster who had hidden in our midst.

I read back over what Geeta had been able to find for me with her superior computer skills, while she went to make coffee and Lee headed for the toilets. In a relatively short period of time we’d been able to establish that he’d been dishonourably discharged from the Navy a short while before his widowed father, John Moore Senior, had passed away suddenly and left him the heir to a sprawling country manor and a significant fortune. With the benefit of hindsight the timing of his father’s death at the precise point that John junior had most needed money was convenient to say the least, and I made a note to look very closely into the pathologists report at a later stage. Unfortunately, I had no authority to access records about military service and the circumstances of his discharge from duty, but I’d bet my house on it being related to violence against a woman or more than one.