In the Moors (21 page)

“I don't understand.”

“She's going to put Mrs. Gale on the witness stand and get her to admit that she's never liked me.”

“Counter argument.” I tried to keep the smile on my face. I had trouble with the image of that cross-examination; transforming a dour-faced woman into a credible witness for the defence. “Tough call!” I laughed, challenging him to laugh too. “Cliff, I'm so sorry I haven't been of help.”

“You tried your best.”

“But now you've
got
the best. Linnet. She'll look after you.”

He rubbed his fist across his eyes. “Since that time. Even though I never remembered what happened. I sort of knew.”

A robotic hand gripped my stomach and twisted. “Knew what, Cliff?”

“That the trouble wasn't over.”

My hands covered my stomach, protecting it from the internal grip. “What d'you mean?”

“I don't know. I think those people have followed me all my life.”

“Those … the Wetland …”

“Yes. Like they were inside my head. They got inside my head and I didn't even know they were there, but they're there all right. They've ruined my life.”

Caroline had said the same—Cliff never became the person he should have been. I took a breath. “There's a couple of things I've been researching. The name you remembered, Patsy. You were right. A girl disappeared before you did. She was never found. I've got her details, and I'm going to try to find out more about her.”

“I told you,” said Cliff. He did not sound surprised. “She was the first victim.”

I gave a solemn nod, as if to acknowledge her demise. “Do you think the other two names will come back to you? The woman and the man?”

He shook his head, not as a negative, but to shake thoughts out of it, like a dog shakes water from his coat.

I said, “I think I know their names.”

“What?” His fingers wandered up to his lips and jerked as if they were rubber. I fought back the temptation to gently pull his hand away, as if he were a small child.

“Some of the signs that were in the journeys we did together, they led me to Brokeltuft.”

“What
?”

I leaned over the table. “I found it, Cliff. It's derelict now. But your tree is still there; it got me in, I went inside.” I broke off. The news was too much for him. He began to shake like he had a fever. Sweat broke out on his face, which was stony white. “Cliff,” I said. “It's all right. They're dead. They're dead.”

“Jesus.” He looked away, then back at me. “How d'you know?”

“I saw them, the bones of them. They came to me as spirits. She … the woman … spoke to me.”

“Kiss,” said Cliff, his voice rising up over the other hushed mumbles. “
Her
, and
him
… ”

“Quietly, Cliff,” I said, my voice a whisper.

“God—oh God in hell!” wailed Cliff. “Kiss and Pinch—oh Jesus Christ!”

I could see that he'd alerted the officers on duty. One stepped towards our table. “Cliff,” I whispered, “calm down, or they'll take you back to your cell. Calm down, please.”

He nodded frantically. “Yes. Calm. Yes. Not easy in this place.” But he was calming, his voice back to normal. The officer stopped, although his gaze was now permanently on Cliff. “I keep having dreams. I wake up yelling out. They don't like that.”

“The officers?”

“The men.”

I looked closer at him, at the sallow skin of his face. There was a bruise on one temple, and what I'd thought was a shaving mark looked suspiciously like the sort of wound a ring would make.

“Can't they separate you from the other men?” I asked.

“Not all the time.”

“Tell me what your dreams are about,” I said, desperate to move the subject on. If I knew for sure how the other men were treating Cliff, I would never be able to report this visit back to Caroline without her seeing it in my face.

“I'm on a sort of moorland. I hear the sound of hooves. I look back and there's this horse pummelling towards me. Pitch black horse, and the rider all in black. I take to my heels, but I can't run—”

“That awful slow-motion thing,” I whispered, not meaning to interrupt. “Like your legs are tied to the floor.”

“Yes. But he catches up, leans off the horse, and clamps a hand on my shoulder. I try hard not to look at him. It's like my face is forced round … and it's him.”

“Pinchie?”

“Yes. I know because I feel that fear. The shock that stops your heart. Then I wish he really had scared me to death and I'd never woken back up to all this.”

“Please don't lose hope,” I whispered. “Please don't give up.”

He lowered his head into his hands. I thought he was about to cry, but after a moment, he spoke again. “All he did was laugh. Bloodcurdling laugh. It shot through me like a pain. I woke up straight away. But, you see, that's the problem, the waking up.”

I swallowed. I had no need to ask what he meant. I understood. The dreams were jogging the memories, and that was where the true horror lay.

“It's all coming back,” I said. He nodded, over and over, his hands still tight to his scalp, the hair grating under his fingers, a small repulsive sound.

“They had a sun lounger. Turned it into a
contraption
. A place of torment. Pushed you down on it, held you down, belt across the chest, stop you moving, belt across your neck, stop you breathing. Head and legs bent back, on your stomach, on your back. They called it an operation.”

I turned my head away and closed my eyes. No wonder Cliff had hated lying on my lounger. Without meaning to, I let out a moan.

“That's right,” said Cliff, suddenly fierce. “You moan. Moan for me. Why not? I did. Moan, cry for my mummy, scream … but they didn't want tears. Or screams even. They wanted white fear. You know what that is? White fear?”

I nodded, once. The terror that silences your mouth—numbs your brain. Stops your heart, finally, if you're lucky.

“They were terrible people,” I managed.

“Oh God! No one in this world more evil. Ever. Worse than cruel; cruel people want to make you cry. Not them.” He flopped back, exhausted.

I thought about Rey, how he wasn't convinced Cliff had been part of the Wetland Murderer cycle. If he could hear this, surely he'd understand. But then, wouldn't he still say that none of this was relevant to his enquiry, except to bring Cliff into it?
They are long dead
,
Sabbie …

“Did they,” I struggled with a sensitive way of asking, “leave marks on you?”

He nodded once, a slow up and down.

“I just ask because your mother never said.”

“Mum never saw. Well, I was gone eleven. I was never going to show her what they did. And I was lucky, I guess. I wasn't in that house more than two days. The others … they weren't so lucky.”

“Matthew,” I whispered. “Nicolas, Joanna, John. And Patsy.” By the time Cliff left the clutches of Kissie and Pinchie, Patsy Napper must have been damaged beyond repair and destined for an unmarked grave.

“It was her who got me out,” said Cliff.

It came out of the blue. I felt my spine tense. “Can you remember what happened?”

“I remember it was always dark. They pinned the curtains across the windows, nailed into place, I suppose. Thick, dark curtains. The second night, the door opens to my room. I don't make a sound. See, I've already learnt that doesn't help. She comes over with scissors in her hand. I know it's her, but that doesn't mean I trust her. I hadn't even seen her since I'd been in the car. She's in jeans. So am I—the clothes I'd come in. She cut through the stuff they'd tied me with, ripped up sheets, I think. Then she went to the window and yanked at the curtain. It fell down in a cloud of dust. I was still on the bed, paralysed, sitting up looking out into the night. It was drizzling.

“She hissed at me. ‘Can you climb trees?' It seemed a daft thing to ask. I just gawped. She pulled up the sash window and pushed me towards it. She didn't say ‘hurry up,' or anything, but I didn't need to be told. I got onto the sill. The end of one branch was just brushing the pane right above my head. I had to pull at the thin end of it, yank it down, slide my hands along it, and try to shinny out of the window.”

His voice was muffled. I had to strain to hear each word. I was hardly breathing as I listened. I could see the images so clearly. I'd been in that bedroom, seen the mattress and the metal ring.

“My heart is racing. I'd never climbed as high into a tree as I was when I went out that window. But somehow I land on the branch, somehow I keep my hands around it, wriggle towards the trunk. The girl hisses ‘fucking hurry up'. It shocks me. None of my friends swear like that. She's waiting for her turn. The leaves drip rain. The branches are wet. I cling on for my life, but my fingers are slipping. The entire branch is bending under my weight. I hear the creak—the crack. I don't understand. I look up and see her mouth open in horror. Then I'm flying. Just like in the dream. Still hanging onto the branch. It's falling with me. I think it gets caught on a lower bough, because something slows me. I land flat on my stomach in wet earth with the wind out of me and the palms of my hands stinging, but I get up straight away. Right in front of my eyes is my bike. They'd thrown it onto a pile of rubbish in the garden. The back tyre's soft, but I'll get away quicker on it. Anyway, Mum would slaughter me if I didn't bring it back.”

Cliff grinned. It wasn't a very humorous grin and it certainly didn't light up his eyes, but I smiled back at him in some sort of hope.

“She helped you escape.”

“You don't understand. I think she planned to get through that window. When the moment was right. It must've been the only route out of that house of terror. Then I turn up and, well, she decided it was now or never, or maybe they'd taken their eye off her, now I was there. She took her chance, but she let me go first.”

“Of course,” I said, keeping my voice low. I could see the window in my head, see the darkness outside, feel the chill of the rain as it lashed into the room. “Of course she did. You were younger. You didn't know what was going on.”

“But I broke the branch.”

“Your weight broke the branch. Hers would've too, wouldn't it?”

There was silence between us. I wondered why Patsy hadn't just thrown herself into the tree, even though the bough had broken. Was she already too terrified? Or too brainwashed? Or were Kissie or Pinchie stirring? I wondered about the scissors, the clean cut through the bindings. I tried not to imagine just how mad they would have been, but clearly Cliff could imagine. The memories were returning.

“She gave her life for me.”

“One life saved. Isn't that a good thing?”

He looked up. His eyes were raw from broken sleep and tears. “She didn't mean to give her life. But now I know that she did anyway, it makes me feel …” His jaw moved, teeth grinding.

“You
will
get out of here,” I told him. “You won't be found guilty, not by twelve ordinary, honest people.”

He shook his head. “It's not the injustice. I never expected justice. Now I remember about Patsy … well, I don't honestly want justice. Someone must pay. Because of the little boy.”

“Aidan?”

“They think I've got him somewhere. But I've got no idea where he is, or what he's going through.”

I nodded. We would both be having the same sleepless nights, wondering about little Aidan.

“He's been gone five days. That's too long.”

Cliff was right. Time was running out and no one was getting any closer.

SEVENTEEN

The Missing Person form
that Rey had photocopied gave me tiny glimmers of information about the girl who might have been the Wetland Murderers' first victim.

Twenty-three years ago, Patsy Napper had been fifteen and living with her parents, Diane and Arnold Napper. I had the date of her disappearance and the date when they closed the case. And I had her old address—a high-rise block of flats in Taunton.

I tried to reckon out the chances of finding Mr. and Mrs. Napper still at the same address. How long did people live in one place? Most of my various friends moved round a lot, but Gloria and Philip had lived in Oak Villa in Bristol since Charlene was born, and I knew that Bren and Rhiannon had moved into their little house outside Bangor the day they were married.

I had no clients booked for the whole day. My Reiki client had cancelled by text, adding to my sense of overall failure. But the glimmer of weak sun that warmed the spring morning brought my spirits up; that and the stupidity of my hens. Juniper and Melissa are usually satisfied to stay in the hen run while I clean it out, but if the door's left ajar for even a second, Ginger will escape and be off on some intrepid adventure. I found her in my kitchen, kindly pecking breadcrumbs from the corners and not so kindly leaving a trail of muddy hen-shaped footprints over my kitchen floor.

Magic, according to the shaman I trained with in Glastonbury, is a combination of the power of will and the power of coincidence. If you want it, you must make it happen. I really wanted to find Patsy's family, although I hadn't actually got round to asking myself why or wondering what I'd say to them if I did find them.

I lit a candle and burned some rosemary oil with frankincense—the first for memory and the second to open my mind to the spirit world. I asked my guardians for a boon … a little bit of luck … a chance to find out what actually had happened to Patricia Napper twenty-three years ago.

Taunton was our nearest big town and offered a night life that Bridgwater could not provide. But perhaps surprisingly, a few of my clients took the half-hour drive over to keep appointments with me. There are alternate therapists in Taunton, but maybe I have something they don't. Hope so.

Twenty-three years ago, the Nappers had lived on the other side of the town, in the centre of what was reputed to be the worst housing estate in Taunton—what used to be called a sink estate. When the Wetland Murderer was hunting for small children, it must have been heading towards its most sunken status, but it had grabbed itself by its bootlaces and started to haul itself out of the mire. Four 1960s tower blocks rose up at me, monolithic in height and and shape. They still belonged to the local authorities and had recently been painted; one in salmon pink, one in a soft yellow, one in sky blue, and the final one in a sort of khaki shade, as if it needed camouflage.

The address for the Nappers was way up inside the khaki tower block. I saw the warden as I parked my car. He was tending the rose bushes that grew around the front of the complex.

“Nice day for gardening,” I called out, eager to pass for a bona fide member of the visiting public. He doffed his hat in a jovial manner—a bright red baseball cap he was wearing back to front—and went on wielding his gardening shears.

I walked around the massive walls. The block was called Watchet House, Watchet being a harbour-side town on the coast to the north of Taunton, so I guessed that the other blocks were also called after local seaside places. Maybe to bring a feeling of salt air and fun days into the minds of people who lived in faceless corridors that oozed depression and limited opportunities.

As I reached the entrance, I had one of those tiny sparks of memory. Me and my mum had lived in a tower block like this. It must have been in Bristol, where there are high-rise flats all over the city, but I'd forgotten about it until this moment. I must have been quite tiny, maybe three or four, because I could suddenly recall just how high the walls had loomed and how I'd run along the corridor that seemed to go on forever, looking for our door. I had stronger memories of living in basement apartments and even sleeping on people's floors, but at one time, we must have been council-housing tenants.

I shook the memory away. I hadn't asked for it and didn't want it. I was here for my client. I pressed the buzzer for number thirty-four, where hopefully Mr. and Mrs. Napper were still in healthy residence. I waited and buzzed again. If they lived here, they weren't at home to callers.

Deflated, I wandered in the direction of my car. I decided to go into town and window shop, then come back in an hour or two. The warden had finished his pruning and weeding and was trundling a wheelbarrow away from the beds.

“You okay there, missie?” he called out in the bur of his Somerset accent.

I shrugged. “I was hoping to catch the people who live at number thirty-four. That is, if the people I'm looking for still live here.”

He pulled the cap from his silver hair. “Who wants 'em?”

“Ah. My name's Sabbie Dare. I've never met Mr. and Mrs. Napper. They don't know me.” I chased around for a good excuse to be visiting. “I'm sort of asking after their daughter, Patricia.”

The pretty fib slipped off my tongue. I wasn't expecting any sort of reaction, but the warden's face took on a transformation. His ruddy colour turned to grey and his lips thinned into a straight line.

“I be Arnie Napper,” he said. His eyes were sombre and shocked, with a wary element deep down. “You never knew my daughter. You wouldn't call her Patricia if you did.”

“Patsy,” I said. “She was Patsy.” It was a confirmation for me.

“My daughter ain't been around since you were a babby.” Arnold Napper lifted his wheelbarrow and marched past me, his eyes on his pile of cuttings.

I skittered after him. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. I'm desperate to find someone I can talk to about Patsy.” It was hard to keep up with Arnie's long, fast stride. The barrow tilted this way and that as it bumped along in front of him. He was going so fast that I almost careered into him when he stopped in front of a galvanized bin.

He twisted off the lid and I took my opportunity in both hands, literally. I scooped a large armful of the clippings, rose thorns and all, and tossed them into the bin. “Won't this take ages to compost down?” I asked.

“It's for burning.”

“Oh.”

He watched me empty his barrow, a bemused smile beginning to smooth out the lines of irritation. “Like gardening, do you?”

“Love it,” I said, flinging the weeds in after the thorns.

As soon as the barrow was empty, he grasped the handles in his firm hands, the backs of them as brown as hen feathers, and marched off again, moving into the shadow against the wall of the flats.

I did not follow. I stood still, watching him go, my hands already beginning to prickle with scratches. Will I ever learn? I had craved a boon from my spirit guardians, but it looked as if they'd chosen to show me that half-truths could cost me dear.

Arnie manoeuvered the barrow to turn the corner of the building. He had almost disappeared from view when he looked back at me across his shoulder. “I'll put the kettle on, eh?”

Arnie's apartment was over-warm and filled with the ticking of the mantel clock. It was crammed with the memories of his life, but there wasn't a dirty cup or speck of dust to be seen. Local papers were tidily piled on a table in the hall, under which his slippers were lined up alongside a pair of polished brown brogues. Arnie untied the laces of his trainers and pulled them off. He swapped them for the slippers. “Just me, now. Me wife's been dead these twenty years.”

It was clear he lived alone. In the living room, the one easy chair was positioned directly in front of the telly. By the side of the chair was a trolley that vaguely resembled the one Caroline pushed crustless sandwiches about on, but this held everything that Arnie might need in his day—crossword book, newspaper, ashtray, cigarettes and a pile of cheap lighters, a biscuit tin decorated with red and yellow roses, a half-full glass of diluted orange squash drink, and a half-full (but definitely not diluted) bottle of Three Bells Scotch.

Photos placed into cheap certificate frames adorned the wall above the gas fire. The most recent was a wedding picture with an almost identical groom and best man. Photos of babies in cots or on shawls were dotted around, some very new, some with faded colours. A girl laughed down from a farm tractor, her legs long and her shorts short. For a moment I thought it was Patsy, then I did my sums and realized it had to be her mum at about the same age. Finally, there was Arnie, alone and clearly still in his teens, his uniform cloned with all the others in the passing-out parade, his shoes as glossy as the ones under the hall table.

He saw me looking. “Cyprus. Somerset Light Infantry.” He sniffed. “Better get that kettle on. How d'you like your tea?”

“As it comes,” I said. “Milk, no sugar.” I wasn't sure whether or not to stay where I was, but he continued to talk to me while the taps hissed and the kettle clicked on, so I wandered into the glistening kitchen. I'd've thought the cooker had never been used if it hadn't been for the overpowering smell of artificial cleansers.

“Army were the making of me. I made sure my two boys went into the armed forces straight from school. Derek went into the Grenadiers, and Richard took to the sea. They were twins, meant I lost 'em both together, only months after our Patsy walked out. Before that they were a right worry, heading for the clink! I dragged them off to the recruiting office kicking and screaming. That did the trick. Gives you a sense of discipline, see. Both married now. Brings their kids to see me. Little imps, they are.” He nodded to himself, and I had an image of small children chasing in circles around the tea trolley.

“You don't have many photos of your daughter.”

“That baggage.” He sloshed a small amount of UHT milk into two large mugs before pouring in a liquid the colour of molasses.

Arnie motioned me into the winged chair and pulled a hard-backed seat from the miniature dining table for himself. He was an old soldier, so I didn't quibble. I placed my mug down, its contents straining at the sides, and tried to summon up the right words. I couldn't sit and make small talk until he knew why I was here. But I had no idea how Arnie would react to the things I wanted to discuss with him. “What do you mean, she walked out?”

Arnie coughed into his fist. “She were getting to be a handful, the minx.”

I gulped back a brave sip of tea. “Was she destined for the army too?”

Arnie gave an almost pensive shake of his head. “She weren't really like the twins at all. Broke the mould, she did. Always writing stories and making up games. Used to wonder if she did take after me a mite, 'cause I reckoned if I'd've been born different I'd've made something of meself.” He blinked a couple of times, and I was sure that he'd turned slightly pink. “The boys were never going to amount to much—no discipline to them, only boisterous bother—and me wife were a lazy git. Sorry to speak ill of the dead, but that's the truth of it. She liked her drink, did Diane. Well, we both did, but I could take mine, if you get me meaning.”

“And Patsy?”

“Patsy were different. Mind you, she were a bossy bugger from early on. But soon as she hit her teens, she changed. Makeup plastered on and a yard of flesh between her jeans and whatever passed as a top. And that mouth! Teachers saying that she'd lost her promise, our Diane tearing 'er hair out about drugs.” He glanced up at me, suddenly, as if he'd forgotten I was in the room. “Vanished, she did. Cleared out one day and never did come back.”

“She went of her own accord?”

“She went of her own bloody-mindedness. She were nowt but fifteen, and she turned her backs on us, never gave any of us a second thought.”

“Didn't she leave a note, anything like that?”

“No, but she nicked 'er mum's suitcase and twenty quid out my wallet. Even so, I went all over the estate asking. Got soaked through, more than once, and I was thinking … she's out in this, somewhere, stupid chit.”

“She hadn't gone to friends?”

“They'd caught no sign of her, thought she might've got the bus to Bristol, or London.” He stopped and slowly shook his head, staring into his mug. “We'd had trouble with the boys, but it felt worse with Patsy, because we did all wrong, see? After she went, I wished I'd paid her more attention when she were a good little girl. If I'd got to know her earlier, when it mattered … well, it might've helped, that's all.” He shrugged. “Don't know why I'm telling you all this. Haven't thought about it in years.”

“Yes,” I said. “I'm sorry to haul it all up again, I really am, but—”

“See, she never did know. Never had chance to tell her. Weren't that sort of family, is the truth.”

“Never knew what?”

“That we were proud of her. Loved her. That I didn't mean to be so quick with the flat of my hand. One row, I brought her eye up in a bruise. Didn't know my own strength.” He swallowed, and continued in a quieter voice. “Didn't know my own anger. It were okay with the boys. I dunno, they sort of expected it. But Patsy—she came home one night pissed on drink and I slapped her full across the face. And she screamed at me. She said we hadn't ever loved her, so why should she care what we told her to do? It felt too late to say I'd been scared off by the way she'd answered back.

“She ran off into her room. She'd had the little box room since we'd moved into the flat and I guess at her age it were a mite too small for her, but what could we do? Anyway, it went all quiet. I were congratulating meself on winning. All I wanted was me little girl back. The one that got on with 'er homework.” He suddenly stopped, as if his lungs were heaving for air he wouldn't let them have, lest tears came alongside. “Are you going to tell me who you are, missie?”