Page 1 of Silent Scream

Prologue

Rowley Regis, Black Country, 2004

Five figures formeda pentagram around a freshly dug mound. Only they knew it was a grave.

Digging the frozen earth beneath the layers of ice and snow had been like trying to carve stone but they’d taken turns. All of them.

An adult-sized hole would have taken longer.

The shovel had passed from grip to grip. Some were hesitant, tentative. Others more assured. No one resisted and no one spoke.

The innocence of the life taken was known to them all but the pact had been made. Their secrets would be buried.

Five heads bowed towards the dirt, visualising the body beneath soil that already glistened with fresh ice.

As the first flakes dusted the top of the grave, a shudder threaded through the group.

The five figures dispersed, their footprints treading the trail of a star into the fresh, crisp snow.

It was done.

One

Black Country, Present Day

Teresa Wyatt hadthe inexplicable feeling that this night would be her last.

She switched off the television and the house fell quiet. It wasn’t the normal silence that descended each evening as she and her home gently closed down and unwound towards bedtime.

She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting on the late night news. The announcement had already been made on the local evening news programme. Perhaps she was hoping for a miracle, some last-minute reprieve.

Ever since the first application two years ago she had felt like a prisoner on death row. Intermittently the guards had come, taken her to the chair and then fate had returned her to the safety of the cell. But this time was final. Teresa knew there would be no further objections, no more delays.

She wondered if the others had seen the news. Did they feel the same way she did? Would they admit to themselves that their primary feelings were not remorse but self-preservation?

Had she been a nicer person there might have been a smattering of conscience buried beneath her concern for herself; but there was not.

Had she not gone along with the plan, she would have been ruined, she told herself. The name Teresa Wyatt would have been mentioned with distaste, instead of the respect she now enjoyed.

Teresa had no doubt that the complaint would have been taken seriously. The source had been devious, but believable. But it had been silenced forever – and that was something she would never regret.

But now and again in the years since Crestwood her stomach had lurched at the sight of a similar gait or a hair colour or a tilt of the head.

Teresa stood and tried to throw off the melancholy that shadowed her. She strode to the kitchen and put the single plate and wine glass into the dishwasher.

There was no dog to let out or cat to let in. Just the final night time security check of the deadbolts.

Again, she was struck by a feeling that the safety check was pointless; that nothing could hold back the past. She pushed the thought away. There was nothing to fear. They had all made a pact and it had held strong for ten years. Only the five of them knew the truth.

She knew she was too tense to drift off to sleep immediately but she had called a seven a.m. staff meeting for which she could not be late.

She stepped into the bathroom and began to run the water, adding a generous measure of lavender-infused bubble bath. The scent instantly filled the room. A long soak on top of the earlier glass of wine should induce sleep.

The dressing gown and satin pyjamas were folded neatly on top of the laundry basket as she stepped into the tub.

She closed her eyes and surrendered to the water as it enveloped her. She smiled to herself as the anxiety began to recede. She was just being hypersensitive.

Teresa felt that her life had been divided into two segments. There were thirty-seven years B.C., as she called her life Before Crestwood. Those years had been charmed. Single and ambitious, every decision had been her own. She had answered to no one.