I hadn’t been back to Fenmere in years. Why the hell would I? But reading about Jacob Oak had given me an idea. I could return to my childhood home and live vicariously on Melanie Oak’s pain.
Leaving Marcie had been no hardship. She was a whiny, pathetic woman I never should have saddled myself with. But it was easier for a married man to befriend people with kids than a single bloke; that’s why I’d been married three times. I had stayed around long enough after Tiffany’s murder to avert suspicion, and had sold the car – putting its real number plates back on first, of course – and bought the van straight after the attack. There was no longer a reason to stick around, and when I left Nottingham it was with a clear conscience.
It had been so easy to become Melanie’s friend. She had been desperate for someone to understand her. All I needed to do was listen – and I’d been more than happy to do that. What a rich seam of pain I had struck! Melanie was full of rage, and so articulate that it was a joy to listen to her. When I probed, she gave up her secrets willingly, spilling her deepest, darkest, most raw feelings to me. Looking into her eyes, brimming with horror, had been wonderful. When she had imagined herself in the place of her child… my God, it had almost been as good as being there.
She was clearly cracking up, though. All that talk of being able to feel Beth when she was on the marsh was nuts.
I didn’t particularly care who had hurt her kid, of course, I was just bloody grateful they had. But it hadn’t taken a genius to ask the right questions, watch the body language and put two and two together. After years of studying people in order to manipulate them, it was easy to see the whole village was covering something up, but that Chloe was clearly guilty as hell. I could have told Melanie that, but why bother? It was so much more entertaining to wind her up and point her in the wrong direction – and hell, sometimes the right one, just to see how she would muck it up.
Making her into a pitiful laughing stock had been easy, as I encouraged her to drink more and more. Sometimes I slipped a little top-up into her glass from my hip flask, when no one was looking. It had never required much effort to get her to have a go at people, point the finger or even call the police with her suspicions.
She had been my little lab rat, trapped in a maze of my creation. Thinking about it, sometimes, in the privacy of my own home, I’d laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes.
Ninety-Eight
I saw Glenn through fresh eyes. Like a glass in a pub that looked clean until the sunlight hit it, and abruptly the smears were in plain view. He was something grubby that needed to be scrubbed off the face of the earth.
A moan escaped my lips as my stomach clenched again, trying to eject the disgust I felt at this man. I held the rim of the loo a little tighter, and spat bile into the white bowl.
‘Mel, are you okay? Should I call a doctor?’ asked Jacob.
‘I’ll be fine in a minute. Honestly.’ My voice sounded weak, but I stood on wobbly feet and ushered your dad from the room. Some things required privacy.
After shooting the bolt across, I grabbed my handbag and rifled through it. What I searched for lay at the bottom. The pregnancy test that I had bought earlier, after leaving Marcie’s house.
Since you had been found a month earlier, I had been nauseous every day, which I had written off as stress. Marcie’s talk of wanting children had made me realise, though, how late my period was – about five weeks. Everything tasted strange to me; I was tired all the time, and my emotions were all over the place. Grief was one explanation. But there was another.
Sitting on the loo, I did what had to be done. And waited for the answers to come. There was so much to think about, Beth. Too much. Jumbled and disjointed thoughts twisted and clashed in my mind. You. Chloe. Pregnancy. Glenn. Tiffany. Roza. Fenmere’s lying residents. Everything created a whirlwind in my mind.
Glenn was the person who had lured Tiffany from her home by posing as a boy through a series of texts. He had brutally murdered a twelve-year-old child. Now he was looking to do the same with a girl from Fenmere. His next target was either Roza or Sally-Mae. Time was running out for them.
The look on his face when he’d been talking to Roza while I spied through the hedge haunted me. He’d looked so happy, so triumphant. He’d positively glowed. Then when he’d seen me his expression, for a second, had been one of fury. I had had a glimpse into the abyss.
My heart thumped like a rabbit’s caught in a fox’s gaze. I could not let him kill again. Poor Tiffany. Her body touched and mucked about with after death. I heaved but nothing came up. Nothing was left any more.
Little Chloe Clarke may have smashed the life out of you, Beth, but she was in a different league to Glenn. He was pure evil.
I’d let him get close to me. I’d told him my deepest, darkest feelings; told him things I would never even admit to Jacob. Why had he befriended me?
The answer made me clutch the pregnancy testing stick so tight that it almost snapped. He was like one of those murderers who insert themselves into an investigation of a crime they themselves have committed, so they could relive the thrill. Only he had been living off the thrill of my pain. My investigation.
Beth, I knew now that Glenn had sullied your memory by using your attack for his own twisted purposes.
I could go to the police and tell them what I suspected he had done to Tiffany. Chances were they wouldn’t believe me, though, not after all the calls I had made about you, Beth. They would think I was going crazy, seeing crimes where none existed. If he got wind that they were investigating him, he might throw away the notebook and his burner phone, destroying what little evidence there was. Evidence was everything, and without it, he would get off scot-free.
I hung my head in despair. Looking back up at me, the test stick announced one word.
Pregnant
Beth, you were going to be a big sister! The laugh I gave was a blade of both joy and pain. You should have been around for this. You would have been such an incredible sister.
The knowledge that I was bringing another life into the world hardened something in me. Suddenly I knew that I must do whatever it took to make the world a safer place for my unborn baby. Even if it meant briefly placing myself and my child in danger. I would never let her down the way I had you.
A plan began to form.
I would have to be careful. To my knowledge, Glenn had already killed once, and was planning to do it again. What’s more, he kept a machete and a shotgun in the back of his van. He probably wouldn’t hesitate to use either of them on me and my unborn child.
But doing nothing wasn’t an option. I had to protect my family and other innocent kids. I had to stop another mother suffering the pain of my grief.
Ninety-Nine