There were spots in front of my eyes. Blood loss would soon make me pass out. The realisation made me desperate enough to try something different. The tears fell faster – I was a good actor.
‘Okay, Mel, I know you know what I did to Tiffany. But I didn’t mean to. I… I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I need help, psychiatric help, I know that. You’re my friend; you know the goodness in me; you know I’m not a bad person; I just did a bad thing. I think it was losing my mum at such an early age. It broke something in me. My dad used to beat me. He did terrible things to me…’
It was all rubbish, but would get a reaction. Sure enough, she crouched down so that she could see into my eyes better.
*
His small, bright blue eyes begged me. Pleading. He had never really known a mother’s love, he said. His father had abused him.
As I crouched down the wind blasted my face, making my eyes water with crocodile tears.
‘Glenn, even if I called for help, it wouldn’t arrive in time. Look at the water level. The tide is coming in.’
*
I knew then. I recognised the look in her eyes as she crouched in front of me, because it was the look I have given to my victims: no mercy.
All that time spent with her, laughing, manipulating, and I never once realised the real reason I had been drawn to her. She was a kindred spirit. There was a streak of something diamond-hard inside Melanie Oak.
Still I pleaded and begged. Perhaps she would pity me. I was an animal caught in a trap, and I would do anything to survive. Anything. If it meant gnawing my own leg off, I’d do it. If it meant supplicating before Melanie Oak, I would.
But she stood. Gazed down at me. Started walking away. Slow, nonchalant, no hesitation in her step.
‘Come back. Melanie, come back!’
She was right. The tide was coming in faster than a man could walk. Its distant rush grew closer, the water level rising around me. I was knee-deep now. I didn’t have long. Once I got out of the creek, how long would it take me to crawl across the boggy land? For a second I allowed myself to picture the sea closing over my head, not in a series of waves but one continuous, unstoppable, inescapable motion.
No, I would not die that way.
I pulled at my leg again. Rusty metal carved flesh, ground bone. The pain was agonising, but the will to live was stronger. I yanked at my limb, gritting my teeth and roaring. Already I was weakening, the black spots in front of my eyes growing bigger, my head spinning dizzily. I wouldn’t be able to stand for much longer.
I could not die here, at the hands of a mother. A housewife.
I was a god.
I was all-powerful.
I controlled life and death.
I was as relentless as the tide…
‘Help me! Please help me!’
The full moon was an all-seeing eye gazing down at me, unable to help. I would not give up until I had breathed my last. I would kill Melanie Oak. I would annihilate her family. I would…
The water was rising. It was at the top of my thighs now. My heart pounded, and there was an unfamiliar feeling taking me over, making me splutter and gasp. I had seen it in the eyes of others but never felt it myself.
I was terrified.
One Hundred Six
When I stood and looked down at him, no pity stirred my blood. Yes, there were tears in his eyes, and genuine fear. But I was pleased, because all I could think of were the countless children who would be saved from a horrifying death at his hands. He would never have shown them a drop of mercy.
Are you shocked, Beth? I’ve told you everything that happened from the moment you disappeared, because you need to understand what brought me to this moment. What I had done was for you and your father – and now for your little sister or brother. Although I had changed from the person you knew, nothing would ever change how much I love my family. You and your father always wanted to make the world a better place. I had done that by ridding it of Glenn Baker.
I was no longer the woman who’d run around the village a month earlier, panicking and placing my trust in others. I had learned from the liars and manipulators who surrounded me and took advantage. Now I knew that I could only truly trust myself, because anyone else would let me down.
So when I found out about Glenn, there had never been any chance of me going to the police. Collecting evidence had not been my plan, Beth.
If he went to prison, his punishment would never be enough for the pain he had meted out to his victim and her family. He would get out in a few years’ time, and be free to kill again. No one would be safe from him. Not unless I took action.
So I lured him to the marsh. This place of peace and war, of life and death, that had been bombed and machine-gunned by the RAF, then reclaimed by nature. A place of extremes. It seemed fitting.
When I took both his mobiles from his pocket, it was not in order to give them to the police. I had deliberately let them slide onto the floor so that he wouldn’t be able to call for help as I murdered him. I’d been careful to wear my woollen gloves, and rubbed them over the phones as much as possible to smear my fingerprints, should the police choose to check them. But it was doubtful that they would – why would they, when everything had been set up to point to Glenn’s death being a tragic accident? Everyone was familiar with his habit of chucking his coat onto the passenger seat, and it was feasible his phones had fallen from his pockets as he did that.
I had realised he was bound to attack me, though I’d thought it would be when we were out in the open. The plan had always been to run, Beth, knowing you would show me the path across the marsh. Thanks to you, I knew just where to go, and exactly where to leap over the creek so that Glenn would fall into it and go through the rusted drum. I knew you would keep me safe.
I’d even gone online earlier in the evening to double-check what time the tide would be coming in. With the full moon, the spring high tide due in would be a big one, strong and sudden. If blood loss didn’t kill Glenn, drowning would.
It would appear as though he had wandered onto the marsh and been caught out by a tragic set of circumstances. After all, who would want to kill a caring, pleasant guy like him?
There was nothing to link me to any of it. Witnesses at the pub had seen me leave with Jacob; no one had spotted me returning. I was fairly certain I’d get away with murder. And if I didn’t, well, a mum sent mad with grief would receive a lighter sentence, particularly as I was pregnant – I had googled that too.
I’ll admit, Beth, that I surprised myself with how cold and calculating I was. But I had learned from some of the best.