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I
The land rolls beneath her, a patchwork construction of myriad shades and shapes.
Glimpsed from above, the world is so serene, so beautiful, that one could almost dismiss as folklore the manifold monsters that stalk it. But Mairéad can’t dismiss them. For as long as she can remember, her task has been to seek them out. Over the years, she’s had her share of success, but it’ll all be for nothing if she fails to hunt down the monster who snatched Elissa Mirzoyan, Bryony Taylor, so many others.
Early this morning, under her direction, the tech team in Winfrith finally delivered a result. Ping data for the phone Kyle had called showed that it had received its signal from a tower in Hereford. Shortly after the ninety-six-second exchange, the phone started heading north towards the safe house. Since Kyle’s disappearance it hasn’t pinged at all, and Mairéad doubts it will again; but three hours ago, thanks to an expedited RIPA data request, she received details of every call and text message the phone made in the last twelve months. Another data request followed, this time for a second mobile device called frequently by the first, whichhad been near the same Hereford mast when Kyle first dialled out. Soon afterwards, the second phone headed west, all the way to the Pembrokeshire coast near Strumble Head, where it’s continued to ping ever since.
The revelation is extraordinary; rather than a single suspect, it seems Mairéad is hunting two. And thanks to a hack of the second device’s GPS, she has a location accurate to a few feet. Satellite imagery of the coordinates shows a disused coastal lookout on a wild peninsula surrounded by sea.
Now, sitting inside a black-and-yellow-liveried helicopter from the National Police Air Service base in Bournemouth, Mairéad races towards it. Point to point, it’s one hundred and forty miles. Already, she’s been in the air an hour.
Dyfed–Powys Police, into whose jurisdiction the location falls, have already been alerted. Ground vehicles are en route. All potential escape roads are being sealed off. A Nelson 38 has launched from the marine unit in Milford Haven, coordinating with the local coastguard service to prevent any departure by sea.
‘Two minutes,’ says her pilot. Beneath them, land surrenders to choppy ocean. The Eurocopter leans right and races north.
Watching the waves flash past below, Mairéad dares to wonder if Elissa Mirzoyan is still alive. She thinks of Kyle Buchanan, and the horror of his twenty-year confinement. Unimaginable, that he chose to reunite with those who snatched him.
Earlier, Mairéad took a call from Paul Deacon, the Meunierfields crime-scene manager. At Rufus Hall, his team had located a diary written by Leon Meunier. Many of its entries concern a small transient community living on his land, presumably at the abandoned lakeside camp. The wording is often cryptic, but it seems the community’s matriarch – referred to in the diary asA– had long been supplying thepeer with women. Whether those involved were paid prostitutes or trafficked members of the traveller community isn’t clear. While Meunier had started to suspect that something even worse was happening in the camp, he hadn’t yet worked up the courage to report it.
‘Whoever set that fire in the woods was long gone by the time we arrived,’ Mairéad says. ‘If Meunier knew their identities, that gives them the perfect motive for silencing him.’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ Deacon replies. ‘Which means you might not be looking at suicide after all.’
A jagged peninsula swings into view. Felted headlands terminate in cliffs of volcanic rock cracked open by wind and sea. Huge waves foam white around shattered stacks.
‘There,’ says the pilot, pointing.
Mairéad sees the Strumble Head lighthouse sitting squat on its island, and the stubby metal bridge connecting it to the peninsula. Further south-east she sees a U-shaped coastal road, blocked at either end by police vehicles.
The pilot isn’t directing her attention to the ground support. Instead, he indicates a dilapidated stone shack, some distance to the east. Parked outside is a rust-flecked white van.
‘That’s it!’ she shouts, adrenalin shortening her breath. ‘Take us down.’
II
As the Eurocopter plunges from the sky, Mairéad’s stomach rises into her throat. She grips the doorframe, her mind whirling with what-ifs.
At a command from DS Halley behind her, four police cars stationed at the eastern end of the coastal roadaccelerate along it. At its apex, a gravelled track leads up a steep slope towards the lookout perched at the top.
As if reacting to the helicopter’s approach, the door to a lean-to shed beside the lookout clatters open. Someone staggers out. Mairéad snatches up her binoculars and trains them on the figure.
It’s her. It’s Elissa.
Kyle
I
The average human body, I once read, contains around five litres of blood. But if Papa and I are any indication, that figure is a wild underestimate.
We’re drenched. Blood sticks my jeans to my legs, my T-shirt to my ribs. It pulses from the holes in Papa’s body and creeps out beneath him in an ever-expanding pool.
He lies between my legs, head resting on my shoulder. The chain from my manacle is still looped twice around his neck. Through the links, I see the weak echo of his heartbeat.
I’m done stabbing him. There’s a point, I think, where justice descends into barbarism. One thrust for each boy and each girl he snatched, that’s all. I didn’t count Gretel, because she took her own revenge.
My own wounds are almost as severe. Three times Papa plunged his blade into me. Two of those injuries I can now barely feel, but the pain from the third is stunning. I don’t want to die in this shed, with Papa lying between my legs. Before my strength fails completely, I need to go outside.
And before I do that, I have to kill him.