Page 51 of The Tapes

It had been over a decade since the Earring Killer had last found a victim and yet, in the space of a week, there were funerals for two more.

Owen Jefferson was a recent graduate, working at a landscaping firm while figuring out what to do with his life. He did part-time shifts at a podcast studio, where he’d agreed to try to clean up a spotted, damaged audio cassette.

Ultimately, it was that which made him the first male victim of the Earring Killer. No trophies were stolen from him, though that doesn’t make him any less a casualty.

We’re in the function room of Sedingham Labour Club; the same one in which Lorna did shifts after leaving Prince Industries. It feels like a throwback to another time, with posters advertising tribute bands like Pet Store Boys and The Strolling Stones.

‘I dread to think how much money Dad spent in here over the years,’ Eve says. ‘He’d call me and said I’d missed a cracking night watching Kiss, then it’d turn out it was some tribute band called Snog, or something like that. He found it hilarious.’

There are a few reasons why the Earring Killer was finally caught – and Eve is primary among them. Previous chapters describe how a cassette tape finally led to justice – but the final word has to go to Eve herself, no matter how reluctant she was to be a part of this book.

‘Mum was the reader in the family,’ Eve says.

‘But she was never really a writer. She liked to talk, which is where all the tapes came from. She left about three-dozen cassettes with her thoughts on life, and everything. I listen to snippets here and there, almost like it’s radio in the background. ’

Eve and I have been in one another’s lives ever since that afternoon in the shed. We speak most days, even if that’s one of us texting the other to ask how things are.

‘I blame myself for Owen,’ she says. ‘It was me who involved him and it was me who told Kieron what was going on.’

I tell her she had no way of knowing that at the time – but Eve simply shrugs that she should have known.

‘When I heard Mum’s fingerprints were on that gun, there was a part of me that wanted to think she was alive – except I also knew she wasn’t. I sort of believed two different things at the same time and wasn’t sure how to handle it. I was surprised at how much I wanted it to be true.’

I wonder if there’s any consolation or comfort in knowing that the final thing her mother did was bargain for the safety of Eve, plus Eve’s own daughter.

‘Some comfort,’ she says. ‘But was it the right thing to do? Would Kieron really have stopped? And it doesn’t bring her back.

I think family is a complicated thing for me.

There’s my daughter at number one and then everyone else.

I have a brother but we aren’t close. There were times in that week I was suspicious of him for no reason, really.

We’re very different people – but maybe that’s all right. ’

After the arrest of Nicola and Kieron Parris, the police discovered the jewellery box containing the stash of stolen earrings in Nicola’s car.

Further evidence was found in a storage unit in Kieron’s name.

There was also long, sometimes muffled audio recorded on Eve’s phone.

It might not have been enough in and of itself – but, together, the police were able to build their case.

Nicola’s daughter remains friends with Eve’s, despite everything. ‘I’m trying to be there for her,’ Eve says. ‘She’s gone through a lot, with her mum and her granddad.’

Was she worried after waking up, cuffed to that rail in the shed?

Eve thinks for a surprisingly long time about this.

She sips from a mug, then tells me she doesn’t even like tea.

‘I wasn’t worried for myself,’ she says.

‘I was for my daughter. I think you can cope with a death – but not knowing is worse. I wouldn’t have wanted to leave her another question. ’

It’s apt, of course, because there were dozens of people from Sedingham and beyond left with only questions when it came to the fate of their loved ones. They now have answers, albeit perhaps not what they might have expected.

‘My daughter thinks I’ve lost it,’ Eve says after a while. ‘I’ve been recording voice notes of myself going about my day. Little memories here and there. She says talking to myself is a sign of madness.’

I ask Eve what she thinks and she has a moment, taking in the tinsel and the posters.

‘I remember the first time I heard Mum’s voice again after all those years.

The way the tape crackled and then she was speaking.

It was…’ Eve stops, smiles and shrugs, unable to put it into words, before she makes her conclusion.

‘I think my daughter will change her mind one day.’

***

If you were addicted to the twists and turns in The Tapes , you’ll love The Child in the Photo , another gripping thriller by Kerry Wilkinson. When Hope is sent an anonymous newspaper clipping of a missing baby from thirty years ago, she realises it could be her…

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