‘Yes, horrible,’ she said, not taking her eyes off him.
He swallowed again and got a grip of himself. If the police knew his number plate or his name they would have been to the farm by now. They were clueless. They had just put a few of the pieces together. Mary stared at him for a moment longer, studying him intently, then she switched her attention to the television behind him. The appeal had now finished and the newsreader was reading out the number that people could call to give the police information.
‘I think we should get one of those High D tellies,’ she said, shuffling back over with her drink. ‘I can’t read that number.’ She sat heavily on the sofa, her breathing laboured. ‘Eat up. I’ve made some jelly for afters.’
Darryl saw that she had that same alcoholic haze in her eyes, and the sharp curiosity had gone. He smiled.
‘Dad won’t give you the money for a high definition television?’
‘I’ve been putting a little of the housekeeping he gives me to one side for quite some time,’ she said, leaning over and patting him on his still trembling leg.
‘I could check them out online,’ he said, forcing a smile.
‘Thanks, love, now eat up.’
He forced himself to make bland conversation and eat the rest of the bland food on his plate. As the television news moved on to the immigration crisis in Europe his heart began to slow. They hadn’t mentioned Ella. If they had his number plate they would be knocking on the door, wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t they? He’d made sure that it had been obscured by the dirt. When he took Janelle, he had been lucky that the number plate was so filthy after summer storms and driving around the farm. The winter weather had been a gift. When he’d started looking, he was shocked at how many people let their number plates become so dirty that they were obscured.
He looked back at his mother and saw the gin was really kicking in. Her eyes were drooping; she was having trouble focusing.
‘Here,’ he said, getting up and taking her glass. ‘Let me pour you another.’
* * *
Snow was falling thickly when he emerged from the back door an hour later. His mother was now dozing drunkenly on the sofa; his father was away with his lover. He would be left alone. Grendel barked in protest when she saw he was leaving without her, but he gave her a treat and closed the door behind him.
He walked down the yard, weaving along to avoid activating the lights and cameras, and when he reached the gate he vaulted it with ease.
The snow squeaked and crunched as he moved through the dark fields, until the outline of the Oast House loomed ahead. His eyes had adjusted to the dark, so he kept his torch off as he unlocked the padlock and slid the door open. It was pitch-black inside, but he could smell her. The soft smell of her freshly washed hair and perfume had been replaced with stale sweat, piss and shit. Very softly, he could hear her sobbing.
‘Good, I’m glad to hear you’ve held on just a little longer,’ he said.
He slid the door closed, and moments later Ella began to scream.
Chapter Forty-Three
The phones in the incident room started ringing shortly after the evening news reports. There were the usual calls from the whack jobs and the crazies – not words officially sanctioned for use by the Met – but unofficially, that’s how they were known.
One of the calls that came through was flagged by Crane and, along with Moss and Peterson, he did some digging. They then took it to Erika.
‘How can we be sure this isn’t another crazy person who thinks they saw something?’ asked Erika, looking across her desk at Moss, Peterson and Crane squashed into her tiny office.
‘The witness is a Mrs Marina Long,’ said Moss. ‘She’s married, with two young boys. They live in the village of Thornton Massey, which is just a few miles off the M20, close to Maidstone. Marina and her husband work as teachers at the local primary school. Their house backs onto farmland, and an old Oast House.’
‘What’s an Oast House?’ asked Erika.
‘They were used for drying hops,’ said Peterson. ‘There used to be hundreds of hop farms around Kent, and Oast Houses have a furnace and racks for drying them out so they can be brewed for beer.’
‘Okay. What does this have to do with our appeal?’ said Erika.
‘Marina Long says that several times in the last few months, late at night, she’s seen a small red car driving across the fields towards this Oast House,’ said Crane.
‘How could she tell the car was a red, if she saw it late at night?’
‘Well, she says that often the next morning, it’s still been there, parked outside. She also says she remembers seeing the car there on the August bank holiday, the twenty-fourth,, when Janelle went missing, and she remembers seeing car lights moving across the field on the fourth of January,’ said Crane. ‘The night Lacey Greene went missing.’
‘Do we know who owns the land?’
‘The land belongs to Oakwood Farm. The farmer and his wife live there with their grown-up son,’ said Peterson. ‘And, get this. A red Citro?n C3 is registered in the son’s name.’
Erika was silent for a moment, rolling the information over in her brain. She looked at the clock; it was coming up to 8.15 p.m.
‘We’ve been working on the theory that he abducts them, and holds them for a few days before killing them, so this outbuilding, this Oast House, would support this theory…’ She sat back in her chair and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘But this is far out of London. Why take them so far? Why risk all the surveillance and CCTV cameras coming in and out of London? Why not just grab local girls?’
The phone rang and she picked it up. It was Melanie Hudson. She covered the receiver and asked if Moss, Peterson and Crane could wait outside. When they’d gone, Erika quickly brought her up to speed with the appeal, and that she believed the daughter of a retired senior police officer was being held by the same killer.
‘If it’s like the last two victims, then he’s had Ella Wilkinson for three days. We need to move fast,’ said Erika.
Chapter Forty-Four