Bull Running For Girlsl (21 page)

Within ten minutes, and within seconds of one another—just as the boy with the dirty hands was entering her—they passed out. She pushed him out of her. Maurice slumped from the bed to the floor. The last boy tried to stand up, but his knees gave way beneath him, and he crumpled to the floor like a string puppet.

The first part of Elena’s plan was complete. The hardest part was trying to drag them all onto the bed in the right position, but she soon managed it. There they were, all in a row, like the paper-doll men she often cut, but the paper men had been all joined together….

One boy was naked from the waist down so she took off his shirt. One was completely naked already and Maurice was still dressed. When she had removed his clothes and they were sleeping like little butcher’s dogs
—
that is how she now saw them
—
she prepared to carry out the next part of her plan. She removed from her bag a large, black wrap-around pouch and placed it onto an old bedside table. From it she took out the sharper knives. As she withdrew the first, she wondered if it would be sharp enough. It was. With careful precision she cut across the abdomen of the first boy, not too deeply at the first attempt. He groaned a little and shivered on the bed.

Elena sat back on her heels, pursed her lips and shrugged.

She lunged forwards and drove the knife straight through his heart, then quickly through the hearts of the other two. She proceeded with her work carefully cutting and pulling the slippery, pink-grey guts out of each of them, arranging and rearranging them until they looked just right. They would be hers forever.

She stood up, smiled and admired her handiwork again. She used the bed sheets to wipe her red hands. Her new boys were perfect. All lined up in a row, like the paper-doll men she liked to make, and
—
all joined together.

Lumbroyd Quaker Meeting and burial ground. Built 1763. Last meeting held 1847. Demolished 1859 Cubley, South Yorkshire.

Four children
—
missing. No bodies found. Four boys aged between five and seven, lost boys
—
disappeared without a trace with little hope of finding them again, and a sad trail of weeping relatives left behind.

Who would be next?

It came to me, as I was walking past the old Puritan Graveyard
—
I stopped to stare at an inscription on the stone plaque embedded in the wall; high up in the trees the rooks clung tentatively to the branches as the cold wind blew in from the moor
—

My sister and I would work together again.

Our lives, at times had drifted into periods of no contact or very little. The death of our mother brought us closer now and my sister told me that I had been her rock in our moments of dark despair; I know that she had been mine. I glanced at my watch and worked out how long it would take me to get home. It was normal for me to walk for an hour, four times a week, up and down the lanes around my home, which lay on the edge of the South Yorkshire moorland, not far from the Woodhead Pass. Home was a solitary old farmhouse blasted by the howling wind, with a two-hundred-year-old withering oak for company.

Yes, we would work together again. She would do the medium bit and I, Abbie Marshall, would do the leg work. She would have the visions and I would hit the solid ground running, dragging myself out into the cold to track down the murderer and solve the mystery.
Would she go for this case?
I wondered. I was afraid to be around spirits
—
ghosts creep me out. I would much rather face-off the real-life criminals, embezzlers and such. The wife-beaters, the phoneys and the frauds; I was fine with them. It was real people I was used to, with their dirty lives, dirty thoughts and wishes. Give me something tactile and I could work with it. The only spirits I was interested in were the whisky and gin I drank to numb my swollen gums.

The Woodhead Pass claimed numerous lives each year as many drivers became impatient behind big trucks, and death by overtaking was common. There was a memorial near an old stone bridge, for a young man who had come to a sticky end in a fast car on that road. A banner was tied to the fence at the spot where he died. It had his name, dates, and plastic flowers tied to it,
even
a racing trophy. Driving down that road one day I had wanted to stop and add to the banner, ‘Stupid Fuck,’ but my fear of outraged spirits wouldn’t let me.

Now, I had my mobile with me and I could walk and talk at the same time, if I could get a signal.

“Hi, Sylvia, I’ve been thinking. You said you would like to get involved with that boy’s disappearance but don’t like the limelight. The press don’t bother me. You could feed me the clues and I could act upon them
—
I know you don’t want to front it but I could. If you give me what you’ve got I’ll act upon it. It makes sense.” For a moment there was silence on the other end of the phone.

“What about the risk to you?” my sister asked.

“Yes I know about the risk. But
—
what do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

For another moment there was silence between us.

“Just think about it. If there’s something we can do, we should do it
—
now. Ring me later, Sis.”

Sylvia was eighteen years older than me and since our mother died she had been more like a mother to me; I used to imagine that Sylvia had given birth to me and that my mother had lied to hide a family scandal. Although in her late
fi
fties, my sister was still a beautiful woman. Well, she was to me, her little sister. Sylvia’s father was an American. I never knew anything about my father (except that I had blonde hair like him), because my mother never talked about our fathers. All I remember is that once, when I was playing cowboys and Indians with my brother’s friends, my mother said that Sylvia’s father looked like the boy who was shouting more than the others. I looked to find out who was shouting the most and he wasn’t a cowboy. Sylvia was of American Indian descent and appropriately enough her spirit guide was of her tribe too. Even as a child she saw spirits and it always scared me when she had conversations with people that I could not see.

The dark clouds followed me over the ridge and it began to pour just as I put my key in the door.

I used web and e-mail and that suited me and my clients just fine, as I preferred to work quietly and without much fuss. The parents, Elizabeth and Steven Patterson, did not want anyone except the police to know that I was involved. I had offered my services as a psychic detective to them before Sylvia had actually agreed. I had all the newspaper clippings with their bizarre guesses at what had happened.

The year was 1999 and Christ’s birthday was just round the corner. The Daily Recorder suggested that the boy had been taken for ransom, but no ransom demand had been made. Their son, Jake, had been safely tucked into bed in blue-check pyjamas and with his Snoopy dog. All the doors were locked and no one was staying in the B&B attached to the Victorian tea room. They lived in a small market town at the edge of the moors and the family did not have an enemy in the world
—
until now.

The wind and rain had not let up all day and it was well into the evening when it stopped, just as the phone rang.

“Hi, Abbie. You know I’ll do it, but I’m not happy about it. This isn’t just a case involving a lost will or a wife who has walked out on her husband. This is going to get dirty and I have to think about you.”

“Sylvia, I will keep my distance. Do you really want me to walk away from this one? The parents…think of what they are going through; think of me when I was little. Could you have lived with yourself, all those years ago, if you hadn’t helped?”

“That was different, you are my little sister. I don’t want you getting too close to this one. It feels bad, really bad.”

“Sylvia, Sylvia, come on now, think of the parents, this is the fifth child. Give me your best shot at it.”

There was a long pause; the wind picked up and then dropped again.

“…The boy is still alive but not for much longer. He is getting weaker…,” again, a pause, “…We’re in the countryside, I see for miles. It is very close to where you live, too close, Abbie. I’m not happy with this. All this is going on very near to you.”

“Don’t you see, Syl, that’s why I have to help.”

“…I see a few farmhouses but I’m coming to one that has a fence with moles nailed to it. I go down the track and past the old farmhouse door, past the barn and into the wood beyond. In this wood there is an old cottage, much older than the barn, and the cottage has boards on the windows…. That’s all that Sam is giving me. I’m sorry.”

“Is that were the boy is?”

“I think so
—
it isn’t at all clear. That’s all I get. Are you going to give this information to the police?”

“Yeah, and thanks, Syl. Bye.”

It was something at least. Did many farmers hang moles on fences?

The wind let up for a few hours but it was still a cold January day. I rang my contact in the local police force, John. He came round to my house, out of uniform, and I told him what my sister had said.

“Moles you say, not many farmers still nail moles to the fence. I think I know where that farm is.”

John telephoned it in and it did not take the police long to act upon it. They found the farm, the barn, and the moles. They took Jack Moffat, the farmer, in for questioning that night. I went down to the police station although I had promised Sylvia to keep my distance. I had to see him.

Moffat was a man in his mid-forties, dressed in tweed trousers, an old blue jumper, and heavy boots. He did not look like a murderer to me
—
but what does a murderer look like? Some serial killers look quite innocent, from their photos. Moffat was confused and uncertain, and I felt sure this was not the person who was responsible; they had not found the boy. Without evidence, they couldn’t keep him at the police station.

Sylvia rang me again the next day. I told her what I knew. “They’ve not charged the farmer, Syl. Nothing to hold him with. No evidence in the farmhouse, nor the barn, or anywhere on the property.”

“What I said is still right. They didn’t mention a cottage? I don’t understand it, but it is still right.”

It was crazy but I had to go and check it out myself. Sylvia would never forgive me, but I had to go. The farm was exactly as she described;
fi
ve moles nailed to the fence, then the track, then the farmhouse. An old woman, whom I supposed to be Jack Moffat’s mother, let me in.

“You’d better sit down for all the good it will do yer; cos I won’t be able to tell yer police anything else.”

I kept quiet about who I was and looked around the farmhouse as she made tea. The farmhouse wasn’t dirty, but it wasn’t exactly clean either. On the mantelpiece there was an old, light brown teapot. Too old for holding tea and was, in fact, a model of a World War One tank, complete with the head of some ruddy-faced Tommy as the handle on top of the lid. On a large oak table set against the wall, sat a huge pottery Alsatian that guarded the doorway to the kitchen, where an assortment of real sheepdogs sat, each keeping a watchful eye on me. An old oil painting of a highland piper hung on one wall, and a selection of hunting traps and guns on another. The old leather sofa had seen better days and had a faded, red throw sprawled across it, reaching out to cover the holes. I wanted to leave but felt that I had to stay until at least after the cup of tea.

The old mother set down the tray, pulled her tatty brown cardigan tighter around herself and fastened a button before she sat down, exhausted from her labour. She gestured at me and the teapot and in the next second I was pouring tea for a supposed murderer’s mother. I shook from the fact that the kidnapped boy might still be hidden close by, somewhere out in the cold. I wondered why the police had been unable to find him—as my sister was never wrong.

“I noticed the moles on the fence,” I said, taking a sip from the willow pattern cup. My mother had loved the story of the willow pattern and had told me it years ago.

“The moles
—
there t’ keep a reckoning.”

For a fleeting moment I remembered that five children had disappeared
—

“How do you catch the moles?”

“Jack does it now but his dad used t’ use a spring trap
—
pulled back and placed over a collapsed tunnel. When the mole builds the tunnel up again, the spring gets triggered and
no more Mister Mole
!
—
goodbye t’ the gentleman in velvet.” She laughed and the tea dribbled down her chin.

I looked at the gruesome traps that hung on the wall.

“He didn’t have any time for traps made with bent hazel and string as they was t’ soft for the little buggers, he said. We called him Mowly Jack, or mouldy Jack some days. Got a photo of him somewhere. He moved on then, t’ make quite a living at catching the moles with poison rather than traps cos it paid more for the moleskin yer see, t’ make waistcoats, and such like.”