As I apply Carmine to my lips, ready to kiss Edgar for the last time, I hear the intruders above me, moving through the house like a pack of hungry wolves. I hold my breath, as I did in this cellar when I was a child. I’ve become accustomed to the low ceiling over the years, but the witch and her huntsman didn’t like it, unwilling to crawl and bend.
It isn’t long before the silence returns. Should I remain hidden, or should I take their visitation as a sign that I should flee? It’s then I hear movement outside, their voices low, muttering secrets.
When the talking stops, I creep to the cellar door, barely opening it, the rug beneath the kitchen table sliding back. I’m surprised to see a woman standing at the fireplace. She doesn’t stay long. I hear her walking up the stairs, opening the doors to each of the rooms. I check that I still have the knife. Pulling myself up, I wipe Edgar’s blood off it, crawling across the floor out of sight of prying eyes.
I see her go into my bedroom, the meddling bitch. Just like the witch, she thinks she can intrude, pry, plunder and take what’s mine. As I climb the stairs, away from the windows, the light of the bare bulb behind me, I see my shadow creep beside me, and I smile.
KATE
LOOKING AT THE photographs and paintings, Kate was getting a real sense of Cassandra Connolly, and the madness that engulfed her. Was she capable of killing her grandparents? Most certainly. Was she at risk of killing again? There was no doubt that she was. Things had advanced too far for any hope of a normal life for her. Maybe if she had received help earlier, if someone, anyone, had intervened, stuck their neck out and taken her away from an environment that was warping and maiming her, she might have had a chance.
Kate walked back to the smaller photographs on the wall and lifted the one of the young girl partially reflected in the window. Was it Sandra, Cassie or both? The answer didn’t matter now. What mattered was that back then the girl had been scared. She had needed to make sense of her world. She had desperately sought answers by experimenting with fantasy, using numbers to gain a level of control, and later her sexuality to grasp the faintest glimpse of emotional connection. It had led her to forge a way out of the terror: she had split her mind to protect herself, creating an alternative self, one who could walk in the dark without fear, a self who had become her damnation.
Not for the first time in her career, Kate lamented the harm humans do to one another. How evil within families can breed a fresh incarnation in a vicious self-fulfilling prophecy, with the innocents suffering the most. She pinned the photograph back to the wall in the exact place the killer had left it. Her work was done. With any luck they would find Edgar and Sandra soon, and another sordid case would be over. She could go back to Charlie, tuck him up in bed, and use the leftover ingredients to make pancakes for their breakfast.
Turning, she saw what looked like a diary on the bed. Lifting it, she felt the knife glide across her throat and the warm breath of another close behind her. ‘Put it down,’ the woman said, and a droplet of blood slid down her neck, touching her breast, as gentle as a moth.
ELLIOT FOREST, COUNTY WICKLOW
THEY HAD MANAGED to get a number of volunteers from the village, mainly because of Barry Lyons’s involvement. As the ex-school principal, he still wielded power, and the vast majority of the search party was made up of ex-pupils of his school. With the back-up arriving from Dublin, each local was teamed with two detectives, with the strict instruction to act only as guides: no heroics were required.
Mark Lynch’s mood had deteriorated, the difficult terrain starting to bother him.
‘Maybe we should leave this until daylight,’ Adam suggested.
‘We could have a dead body by then, O’Connor. I’m not taking the risk.’
‘Barry knows the woods better than anyone. He’s divided the area into six key blocks.’
‘Good,’ Lynch replied, looking into the woodlands. ‘By the way,’ he turned back to O’Connor, ‘there’s a car bringing Alice Thompson down.’
‘What for?’
‘She and Sandra lived in the woods as kids. If Sandra has a number of places to go, Alice will know them.’
Adam heard a car pull up near the gate. ‘Perhaps this is her now.’
When she stepped out of the car, and Adam saw her bright blonde hair blowing wild and free against the backdrop of the woods, she looked even more beautiful than she had done earlier. She nodded to him.
He joined her. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you think you know your friend, but she isn’t the little girl you grew up with, not any more.’
‘I know her better than anyone else does.’
‘Maybe so, but you need to remember she’s a killer.’
Again, her response was silence, but her face told him she understood that she was in unknown territory.
‘Right, O’Connor,’ Lynch yelled over the night breeze. ‘Get whatever information you can from Alice, and then let’s move.’
I
‘TELL ME WHY I shouldn’t kill you,’ I ask the bitch, as I hold the knife tight to her throat.
‘Maybe there has been enough killing, Sandra.’