things into action . . . but I’m going to need your help for the
next bit, Reverend.’
‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to get involved in this,
Muriel.’
‘Oh, I think it is, Reverend.’
Muriel stared at his face – at the worry etched in his features.
‘Sit down, Reverend. We need to discuss this now.’
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Chapter Thirty-Four
2019
Anna
Sunday 14th July
The three women sat around the dining table, now on their
second cups of coffee.
‘What are we going to do about it?’ Tina asked.
‘We have no proof it’s him. Not at the moment. We need to
catch him in the act, maybe?’ Anna said.
‘Don’t you think that might be too risky?’ Muriel’s attention
seemed to be lost in her mug of coffee.
‘Mum – I know you want this to just blow over, but if Auntie
Tina is right, Billy Cawley is out for revenge. I don’t think he’ll stop at a few bloody doll’s parts. That’s just the beginning. He’ll be working up to something. We have to inform the police. At
worst, we’re right – but then they’ll put him right back inside.’
‘And if we’re wrong?’
‘Then we can try and find the little shits who’ve been doing it.’
‘If we’re wrong, Anna, he’ll be angry with us that we’ve
implicated him, and that could actually make him do something against us.’
‘Do you still hold the monthly Mapledon Meetings?’ Anna
asked.
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A strange look passed between Muriel and Tina. ‘They were . . . well, disbanded, so to speak.’
‘Maybe now is the time to reassemble the group. It affects
everyone, doesn’t it? Everyone should come together for this.’
‘I’m not sure,’ Tina said, lowering her gaze. ‘It’ll feel like a
manhunt all over again.’
‘How do you feel about the man who murdered your daughter
being free, Tina? Free to terrorise this community again.’
Tina snapped her head up, her glowering stare fixing on Anna.
‘That’s unfair. You weren’t aware of everything that went on
– you were too young. Then, when you were old enough to
understand, you buggered off, never came back. Well, until two
days ago. Don’t start flinging your weight about now. It’s nothing to do with you.’
‘It is when he’s threatening my mother!’
‘You don’t know enough to say how we should handle it now,
though. It was my daughter. My hell. I should be the one to say how we deal with him.’
‘Well, you let me know what you two come up with then,
yeah? And I’ll just sit back and watch you make another huge
mistake.’ Anna slumped against the back of the chair, folding
her arms tightly across her chest. ‘I wonder who’ll suffer the
consequences of your poor decisions this time?’
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Chapter Thirty-Five
2019
Lizzie
They’d been in the dimly lit pub for an hour and Lizzie didn’t
feel as though she’d made any progress. Apart from finding out
another name – Bella – she’d come no closer to getting to the
heart of the matter: Billy Cawley. Surely, she’d done enough
chit-chat and groundwork now to gain Rob’s trust and be more
direct without setting off alarm bells. She had to go for it.
‘Auntie Muriel is worried about Billy Cawley, I think. I mean,
she hasn’t said it in so many words, but she seems distracted,
anxious.’ Lizzie thought it was a general enough response that
not just Muriel, but other villagers from that time might feel.
It would hopefully ring true.
‘Yes, I think you’re right. I haven’t seen her for a few days,
which is unlike Muriel. I’m not being funny, but well . . . she
Lizzie laughed. ‘None taken. I am quite sure it runs in the
genes.’ Her faced burned. She was beginning to feel guilty about
her lies.
‘And it’s their age, I reckon. It’s like they’ve less to think
about so they have to create a bit of drama to keep their minds
active. Running the shop is what’s keeping my mother going.’
‘But she’s not been working?’
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‘Nope. And, coincidentally, she’s felt under the weather since Friday. I get the vibe from her that she’s scared to leave the
house. Which is really unlike her as she’d usually delight at being at the heart of this kind of village gossip. It only comes along
once in a blue moon.’
‘In thirty years,’ Lizzie said, absently.
‘Exactly. And both times it’s been related to the same man.’
‘Do you remember anything from back then, from when Jonie
went missing?’
‘Not a whole lot, no. I was still at primary school, my last
year I believe. I only really remember the stupid game we all
played back then – Knock, Knock, Ginger – and the fact we
targeted Billy Cawley’s bungalow a lot more than any other
house. It was because it was the biggest thrill, of course: he was the strangest, most scary adult we knew. It’s weird, looking back, because we all thought he was so old. Old Man Cawley, the
village weirdo. God, he must’ve only been in his late twenties.
How mad is that?’
‘Twenty-five, actually.’
‘Shit, is that all? Why do I have the image of some ancient
old man then?’
‘Our recall will do that. We were kids. Don’t you remember
also thinking your teachers were at death’s door? And that your
parents were old fogies?’
Rob laughed. ‘Yes, that’s true. I still see some of the teachers
who were at our school, and they don’t seem any different!’
Rob was talking as though Lizzie had been at the school at
the same time, experiencing the same things. She hoped he
didn’t ask her any specific questions because she recalled very
little of her school years. She was younger than Rob, though, so
he wouldn’t remember her from his class at least. But there had
been fewer than a hundred pupils in the entire school, so there
was a possibility he’d realise her name didn’t match any from
that time.
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What will happen when he realises I’m not exactly who I say I am?
She drove the thought from her mind. ‘Remind me again,
how did they figure out it was him? How did they catch him?’
‘Ah, well – a lot of it was circumstantial evidence to begin
with. Timing of when Jonie went missing, what he had been
like in the run-up to her disappearance—’
‘What he’d been like? How do you mean?’
‘His behaviour, you know. He’d never been what you could
call stable, but when they took his
daughter, well—’ Rob shook
his head ‘—he kind of flipped out, mentally. People reckoned
he was trying to replace her. That’s why he took Jonie.’
‘Which people reckoned that?’
‘At the time, like a few weeks before Jonie was taken – and
as I said, I was young and can’t say for sure what I remember
is correct – the mums were all freaking out about Billy’s daughter, saying he was hurting her and that she was acting very bizarrely, and something needed doing. They talked about abuse. Of
course, at my age I hadn’t realised quite what they meant, but
later, I came to understand. Everyone believed he’d sexually
abused his own daughter. Makes me shudder.’
Lizzie looked down, focusing on her drink while she let his
comment sink in. ‘And they took her away from him. So, as
revenge, or as a replacement, he took one of their daughters. A daughter of one of the villagers who’d been instrumental in
taking his away?’
Rob shrugged. ‘It’s a theory. He never did tell anyone his
motives. Never told anyone where he dumped little Jonie’s body.’
‘That’s because he said he was innocent, didn’t he?’
‘To begin with he denied everything, yeah. Then his lawyer
must’ve told him to plead guilty in return for a reduced sentence, rather than whole life. He wasn’t innocent, Lizzie. Couldn’t have been. No smoke without fire, as they say.’
She paused. ‘Depends who started the fire.’
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Chapter Thirty-Six
1989
Blackstone Close
Friday 30th June – 19 days before
‘Eliza, come on in. Now!’ He barked his order, his voice hoarse
from the remnants of the flu, and the chest infection he’d had
on top of that. His forty-a-day smoking habit hadn’t gone any
way to help matters either.
The girl, sitting in the dirt of the front yard among her dolls,
had heard her father’s demand, but she’d caught sight of a
movement at the end of the cul-de-sac, which had taken her
attention. She pulled the head off the doll she’d been holding
and placed it carefully down beside the arms. The legs could
wait. She stood up and slowly walked towards the driveway
entrance, her hands hanging loosely by her sides. She hoped it
was a cat. She liked playing with live things.
‘Here, pussy, pussy,’ the girl called – her lisp making it sound
as though she were saying ‘puthy’. Laughter erupted from the
darkness of the bushes to her right. She stood still, putting her hands on her hips. She was disappointed it wasn’t a cat, but it
might be someone she could play with.
‘Hello? Who is that? Can you come and play?’ she called. She
knew she’d be in trouble though – her dad had just called her
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in for tea. She shouldn’t invite anyone in; he wouldn’t like it.
She was never allowed anyone to come to play. It was unfair.
There was more laughter before she heard voices whispering:
‘Eliithaaa, Eee-liii-thaaa!’ She huffed and turned her back. They didn’t want to play, they just wanted to be mean. She might
only be eight years old, but she knew when people were making
fun of her.
‘Never mind,’ she called out. ‘I’m going in now.’
As she turned and began walking to the door, something hard
smacked into her back. She screamed out in pain. Her back was
stinging. She wanted to cry, but instead turned to face her
attacker and shouted. ‘You shouldn’t hurt people. Not if you
don’t want to be hurt back.’
Eliza heard the squeals as they disappeared into the distance.
She swiped at the tears rolling down her face and kicked the
stone they’d thrown at her. Why did they have to be mean to
her? What had she ever done? Her dad was right: she didn’t
have any friends.
She didn’t have anyone but him. It was him and Eliza against
the world.
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Chapter Thirty-Seven
2019
Anna
Monday 15th July
Anna’s third night in her childhood bed had been no better
than the first. Her back was aching even more, and she felt as
though she’d aged twenty years overnight. Sitting on the edge
of the bed, she cupped her chin in her hands. She wasn’t ready
to face the day yet. Or her mother. She’d only managed a few
fitful hours of sleep in between dark dreams – disembodied
heads floating helplessly, dolls’ mouths twisted and screaming,
women wailing. Her mother in the middle of it all, calm and
strong. Is that how she wished her mother was now? The calm,
strong one? When she’d been a child, and when all of the stuff
with Jonie was happening, as far as she remembered it was
Muriel who held it all together. Muriel who’d guided Anna
through the horrors. Muriel had been strong. Strong-minded,
strong-willed – so much so, even Anna’s father hadn’t been able
to live up to the impossible standard she’d set.
Years after her parents’ separation, Muriel had still stuck with
the story that Eric had been traumatised and unable to come
to terms with his little girl being so close to being the one taken and the after-effects had caused a rift in their marriage. She’d
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simply told Anna that her father had sought comfort in the arms of another, without much further explanation. Anna didn’t
entirely believe that, though. She could understand the strain
of it all – of course she could – but to leave his family, travel to the other end of the United Kingdom to live? It didn’t ring true.
The explanation he was going to Scotland because that’s where
his new partner and her family were from seemed a stretch.
Anna later decided her father had wanted to get as far away
from Muriel as was humanly possible and that’s why he chose
Scotland. That made more sense.
But Anna had never forgiven him for leaving her like that.
Just when she’d needed her daddy the most, he’d abandoned
her. What was it with the menfolk of Mapledon? Were they all
useless at being fathers, husbands? Jonie’s dad hadn’t played a
huge role in her life if Auntie Tina was to be believed, and Billy Cawley’s daughter was so damaged and neglected that social
services removed her from his care.
Now Anna came to think of it, there did seem a dispropor-
tionate number of single women in the village from her
mother’s age group. Perhaps it was all linked to Jonie Hayes’
death – all the families struggled in the aftermath of her abduc-
tion and the parents’ relationships crumbled when she was
never found. There had to be something in it – a huge shared
traumatic event had to have a lasting impact. Anna rubbed her
hands over her face. How tragic it had been. And now, with a
surge of anxiety, Anna wonde
red if, somehow, it hadn’t quite
finished.
More trauma was to come.
With a reluctance that dragged her down so much it made
her feel heavier, Anna forced herself off the bed. A hot shower
might ease her muscles. And give her thinking time. Her thought
processes were always sharper while she was in the shower. With
luck, her brain would come up trumps and provide her with a
plan, a way forward. Because if she were to stay in Mapledon
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any longer, it wouldn’t only be her physical health that would suffer. She needed to either work out who was playing the new,
macabre version of Knock, Knock, Ginger – and why – in the
hopes of bringing it to an end, or, she would have to do what
James had suggested. Take Muriel to Bristol to stay with her and
Carrie for a while.
The latter option motivated her enough to get in the shower
and make a start on her day.
‘Anything happen in this place during the week?’ Anna asked
after she’d knocked back her first coffee of the morning.
‘The village hall tea and cake morning is at ten-thirty today
and that’s about your lot until Thursday. Then the church
wardens hold their coffee morning at the old Red Cross hut.’
‘I’m surprised that place hasn’t been converted into a house
yet.’
‘I think some have tried, Anna, but not much gets past the
local councillors. Unless, of course, the idea came from one of
them in the first place.’
‘God. Nothing changes. Let me guess, the new councillors
are the offspring of the ones who were throwing their weight
about when I was growing up?’
Muriel gave a loud sigh. ‘You don’t hold this place in high
regard, do you?’
‘Well? Are they?’
Muriel muttered something before answering, ‘Yes. Most of
them are.’
‘Proof is in the pudding, eh, Mum?’
‘ The proof of the pudding is in the eating, actually,’ Muriel corrected, with a shake of her head. ‘Anyway, what are your
plans for today?’ she said as a way of changing the subject.
‘I guess I’m off to the village hall for tea and cake,’ she said, smiling. ‘And you’re coming with me. Get ready, then.’
‘Oh . . . er . . . Anna. I’m not really feeling up to—’
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