Marcie opened the door. Reached up and patted my shoulder hesitantly as I walked past her.
‘You must be under a terrible strain with your girl being so ill. I’ll keep everything crossed for her. Being a mother is such a blessing.’
I hurried away, tears threatening again. I couldn’t think about you, Beth. Not yet. Wouldn’t think about never seeing you again. Never hearing you. Never holding you… Much easier to pretend you were still in hospital, and that I’d visit you later.
Instead, I jumped into my car and popped to a chemist, then started the journey home, my head exploding with thoughts.
Ninety-One
When I had lived in Dunkirk, Nottingham, my neighbour’s teenager, Katie, had been the perfect patsy.
I was good with kids, and her parents often came to me, begging me to speak to her when they had problems. They called me ‘the voice of reason’, and were always amazed that she listened when I talked to her. But manipulating children and adults was something I had studied from an early age.
For years I had been satisfied with torturing innocent animals, but ever since my teens a fresh longing had been building inside me. I wanted to prove my power over life by killing a child. They are so treasured by the world, such a symbol of hope and purity.
But I didn’t want to just do it once, and then get jailed. If I were to be able to do it again and again, I would have to be careful. So I had taken my time, perfecting my plan. Watching people and their complicated, pointless emotions, so that I could insinuate my way into their lives and gain access to their treasures with their blessing. Building up to the point where I could pull off my project.
My second wife, Vicki, had got in the way last time I had got close to my goal. I’d made a stupid mistake, using my home computer to look at some interesting photographs on a very secret and specialised site. When Vicki had found them, she had thrown me out, but been too embarrassed to call the police for fear of what people would think of her, married to a man like me.
Annoying, but it had taught me a valuable lesson.
Marcie had not been as sharp. And I had been smarter this time. Hidden my tracks better, and slowly got to know young Katie’s parents. When they asked me to babysit her or be her ‘voice of reason’ when she was playing up, she had no clue they were encouraging their daughter to talk to a monster. They had no idea how often I fantasised about squeezing the life from her.
Chatting to her helped me refine my plan.
I’d been speaking to Katie’s parents one day when I heard an unusual ringtone. It was my big chance, and I seized it.
‘That’s really cool – or do I sound like a big kid myself?’ I asked Katie. ‘Where can I get a ringtone like that?’
She had grinned, glowing at the attention, as usual. I got the impression she didn’t get much at home – kids like that were easy targets for people like me.
‘’S’off the internet. There’s a site,’ she shrugged.
‘Hmm, I’m not very good with technology. Could I get it off your phone instead? Download it somehow? That way, if I have any problems, you’re here to help.’
No one seemed to find it odd that I apparently couldn’t figure out a website but knew enough about technology to transfer the ringtone from one phone to the other. Idiots.
‘Sure.’ She offered her phone to me, and I looked at her mum to make sure everything was above board. When she gave me the go-ahead, not even remotely interested in what I was doing, I almost laughed out loud.
‘Do you want to do it?’ I double-checked, proffering her child’s phone.
‘Oh no, I’m probably worse than you at that sort of thing!’ she chuckled. Just as I’d hoped.
That’s the thing about people: the more open you are about what you’re doing, the less they ask questions. If I had tried to be sneaky about getting my hands on her daughter’s phone, she would have been instantly suspicious, but because I was doing it right in front of her, she couldn’t have cared less.
Fingers working quickly, expertly, I got started. I opened up Katie’s contacts and quickly Bluetoothed the lot over to my phone.
‘Hang on, I’m in the wrong place,’ I lied to cover myself, not that anyone was looking closely. ‘Here we go. Have I… Have I managed it?’
I looked round at the blank, stupid, unsuspicious faces as I showed them my screen. Shrugs all round.
‘Could one of you call me to check?’
Katie did that. My phone rang with that ridiculous new tone. Proof that I had done what I had said I’d done. No one was suspicious.
Stupid sheep. Never realising there was a wolf among them.
As I walked away, I couldn’t stop the smile spreading across my face. I had a huge cache of children’s numbers, thanks to my cunning. I was spoiled for choice over who to target with my text messages.
While deciding, I bought a disposable phone and transferred the numbers to that before deleting them from my usual phone. To make extra sure nothing could ever be traced back to me, I made it known to everyone that I had ‘lost’ my old phone and got a different one, same number, when in reality I’d stamped on it until there was nothing usable left of it, then chucked the bits in various bins scattered around town. Now I had my new phone, free of any evidence, and my new burner phone that had the youngsters’ phone numbers on.
A few days later, at around 11 p.m., I decided to start my experiment. I wanted someone vulnerable, bored, easily hoodwinked. And once I got the ball rolling, I knew I’d have to act fast, so sent texts to several different numbers at once.
Who would get back to me first? I’d no idea what any of them looked like, but it didn’t matter. One girl was as good as another.
Ninety-Two
In the car, the miles home barely existed. The horror grew inside me as I thought of Glenn. Thoughts flashed past me faster than the white lines on the road.
He’d lied about Marcie being a bitch.
He’d lied about having a daughter.
He’d lied about the notebook.
He’d lied about being out of the country when Tiffany was murdered.
He’d lied about being useless with technology.
I’d thought it was odd when such a self-confessed technophobe made the connection between Snapchat and spreading the word about the raves. It didn’t fit with the Glenn I knew at all. But it fitted the person Marcie knew: the technical whizz.
Everything was circumstantial. But now I knew there was a connection between Glenn and Tiffany. He had been close by when she was killed. He had her notebook. He was a liar, a manipulator.
But was he a murderer?
I warned myself to calm down. Possibly I was adding two and two and making five, as I had with James Harvey. Perhaps I was convincing myself there was evidence of Glenn being a killer when in fact he was a totally innocent man.