The Winter Foundlings (21 page)

‘I hope it’s a great year for you, sweetheart.’

When he spoke again, his tone sounded urgent. ‘You should leave that house, Al. There are bad spirits in every room.’

‘You think so?’

‘Seriously. Find yourself somewhere else.’

After another blast of hardcore disco, the line cut out, and I scanned the lounge. It was shabby but comfortable, firelight landing on the worn-out furniture. If ghosts existed, they were busy haunting someone else tonight.

I was about to collect a glass of water when an unexpected sound came from upstairs, an odd, fizzing noise. The lights flickered then failed completely. Darkness pressed in on me, so suffocating that I could hardly breathe, and my mind flooded with panic. The new lock on my door meant nothing. Someone could have jemmied a window and hidden themselves upstairs. I listened for sounds, but all I could hear was my own frantic breathing. I fumbled my way to the mantelpiece for a candle and matches, but it took all my courage to leave the room. The candlelight wasn’t helping. Shadows flickered across the ceiling, until the room seemed to be full of spirits.

I forced myself to climb the stairs, ears straining for sounds. It took forever to find the circuit box, but once I’d replaced the blown fuse, the lights blinked on immediately. My heart battered the wall of my chest, until I heard the grumble of a van’s engine starting up in the distance. I don’t know why the noise calmed me. Maybe it was just a reminder that there were real human beings out there, going home from New Year parties, while I grappled with my ghosts.

29

‘No arguments, all right?’ the man hisses.

Ella nods silently, too frightened to reply.

‘Get in the front seat, and stay under the covers so no one sees you.’

The man drops a rough woollen blanket over her, and she takes care to keep still. Once the van begins to move, she shifts the fabric slightly, so she can glimpse through the window. Soon the city is replaced by villages and country lanes. Ella reaches down to see if the door’s still locked, but the handle won’t budge. She wants to pull back the blanket and ask the man about Amita, but he’ll hit her if she speaks again. All she can do is stare through the narrow gap at the cottages slipping by. Soon the heat from the radiator sends her to sleep, and the next time she wakes, they’re driving through woodlands, snow piled high on the sidings.

The van finally stops by an embankment, covered with trees. She hears the man get out, and pulls the blanket down a few inches. He stands in the headlights’ beams, with a cardboard box balanced in his arms. The man’s holding it so carefully, the contents must be fragile. He waits there without moving for a long time. Ella watches him lay the box at the foot of a tree, and when he returns to the driver’s seat, he seems upset. The man puts the key in the ignition, then sits there, staring through the dark window. After a few minutes she remembers what her granddad says when she has bad dreams, and reaches out to touch his sleeve.

‘You’ll feel better when morning comes.’

She expects the man to be angry that she’s pulled down the blanket, but he doesn’t make a sound. His head bows over his knees, like he’s saying a prayer. He takes a minute to recover then turns to look at her.

‘I’m better than this, Ella. I’m doing what he wants because I owe him everything. I hate it, but I can’t refuse. Do you understand?’

The man’s voice is so fierce, she’s too scared to reply. The only thing she can do to calm him is reach out and touch his hand.

30

The sky was a bright, deceptive blue when I peered out of the window on New Year’s Day. Apart from the fresh fall of snow, it was a perfect counterfeit of a midsummer day. I took a sip of orange juice, but my appetite still hadn’t returned. I was forcing down a piece of toast when my mobile rang. Burns sounded like he’d sprinted up a long flight of steps.

‘We found her.’ The bleakness of his tone warned me that he’d discovered a body, not a living child.

‘In Camden?’

‘She’s in Edgemoor Woods. You know where that is, don’t you?’

I stared at the snow-covered trees in disbelief. ‘I certainly do.’

‘Follow the path from Charndale till you reach the bridge.’

I locked the door and set off at a jog, turning left down the bridleway I’d taken on Christmas Eve, when I’d been convinced someone was chasing me. It looked like a battalion had marched through the woods, the snow trodden to polished ice, twigs stamped into fragments.

Burns was standing beside Pete Hancock; he was so much taller that it looked as if he was explaining something to a child. Hancock scribbled my name on his list, and I put on the Tyvek suit and plastic shoes he handed me before crossing the cordon.

‘Are you ready to see her?’ Burns asked.

His face was expressionless with shock as he led me deeper into the woods. A brown cardboard box lay at the foot of a tree, and part of me wanted to run back to the cottage. Children’s bodies are always the worst. They linger in your nightmares for weeks. I wanted to ask which girl had been found, but my tongue had stuck to the roof of my mouth. A photographer was blocking our way, his flashgun releasing flares of yellow light into the thick shadows between the trees. Burns motioned for him to leave and, when I looked down, I saw that the girl inside the box was Amita Dhaliwal. She was barely recognisable, her black hair a mess of tangles, pinched face disfigured by bruises. I closed my eyes and thought of Usha standing in the cold, waiting for her adopted daughter to come home.

‘When was she found?’

‘Six this morning,’ Burns replied. ‘A woman was running with her dog.’

I knelt down to look more closely. This time the killer had taken less care. The cardboard coffin was too small for the child’s body, her knees cramped against her chest. But the white dress was identical to Sarah Robinson’s, a row of pearlised buttons running down from the collar. Judging by the wounds on her arms and face, she’d suffered more than the first victims. He was gaining confidence; if the series continued, his violence would escalate further.

‘Why here?’ I mumbled to myself.

‘Good question. He’s fifty miles west of his catchment.’

I stood up, wiping the snow from my knees. ‘It’s a tribute, isn’t it? The woods border Northwood’s grounds. He’s left her on Kinsella’s doorstep.’

It struck me that the child had been placed close to my home too. The roof of the cottage was visible above the line of trees and I was about to point it out to Burns, but he was staring at the snowy ground like he wished it would swallow him.

‘What happens now?’ I asked.

‘Tania drives to London to inform the mother, the girl’s body goes to the mortuary, and I get hung out to dry.’

Burns left me standing there while he supervised the team of SOCOs. Soon half a dozen officers in white suits were crawling across the ground, performing a fingertip search. I made myself look down at Amita’s body one last time, and I had to swallow hard to suppress my nausea when I saw the ring of bruises around her neck. The bastard had stood over this child, fingers tightening round her throat, intent on watching her die. My hands balled into fists as I turned away.

When Burns drove me back to Northwood, it was obvious from the throng of press vans that the discovery had been leaked. A photographer sprawled across the bonnet of the car, taking snaps with a heavy-duty Nikon, his triumphant smile reflecting the fee he’d receive. The girls’ disappearances were still the country’s biggest news item, all the papers crammed with possible sightings. Every crank in the land was claiming to have seen Ella or Amita since they’d been taken.

‘Fucking vampires,’ Burns grumbled to himself.

It was unusual to hear him swear. In the old days he turned the air blue on a regular basis, but now he seemed determined to set a good example, and I wondered how he kept a lid on his stress. Someone yelled a question so loudly that we could hear it though the closed windows.

‘How do you feel about another girl dying on your watch, DCI Burns?’

He stared ahead fixedly as we drove into the car park, hands clenched round the wheel, and I knew better than to attempt conversation.

The incident room smelled of anxiety and stale cigarette smoke. More staff had been drafted in from London, and spooky shots of Edgemoor Woods were already plastered across the evidence boards. The photos showed SOCOs in their white suits, flitting like spectres between the trees. Pictures of Amita in her disposable coffin were pinned beside ones of her beaming at the camera, exuberantly alive. Death had caught her by surprise. Her brown eyes looked startled, and I hoped someone would show enough decency to close them before her mother arrived.

Alan Nash glowered from the other side of the room, surrounded by young detectives who were vying to refill his coffee cup and polish his ego. When I looked up again, Burns looked more truculent than ever, preparing to address the crowd. Frustration had made his tone harsh and accusatory.

‘This is where you lot live from now on. If we don’t find Ella Williams soon, she’ll end up in a box, just like Amita, and all of us will have failed. Every villager in Charndale needs a doorstep interview – you can bet your life someone saw that van arrive in the middle of the night.’ His eyes blazed as he scanned the room. ‘The girl’s been gone twelve days. If Ella’s still alive, she must think the whole world’s forgotten her.’

The tension in the room increased as he gave his update. The Sex Crimes Unit had checked the offenders’ register: over three hundred ex-cons with records of crimes against children had been accounted for. Only fifteen had passed through Wakefield Prison or the Laurels during Kinsella’s stretch, and they all had alibis. Every member of staff at St Augustine’s had been investigated too, but so far only Roy Layton had been arrested. He had been ruled out of the investigation because he was in custody when Amita was abducted. Several teachers had confirmed his story that he’d allowed pupils to play in the back of his van, which explained the presence of Ella’s DNA. But he was still off work, facing a criminal prosecution for owning child pornography.

‘The getaway van’s still a mystery,’ Burns continued. ‘The CCTV’s being checked, but so far no unmarked vans came down the M4 yesterday. He could be using fake plates, or he took an indirect route. The camera on the main road through the village didn’t clock him, so he could be back in London by now.’ Burns hit a key on the laptop beside him and a photo of a child’s white dress appeared on the wall.

‘Sarah Robinson was found in this, and it looks like Amita’s is identical. But there’s a difference from the dresses that Kinsella’s victims wore. He got a seamstress to make them; he said they were angel costumes for his school’s nativity play, but these ones have been mass produced. You can buy them from any branch of John Lewis. It’s a nightdress from their Victorian range, for girls aged five to thirteen. Small alterations have been made by hand − cutting out the labels and changing the collar from square to round, so they look like the ones the original foundlings wore. He’s done his best, but his sewing’s pretty crude.’

‘What are you saying, boss?’ A voice piped up out of nowhere.

Burns frowned. ‘He’s planned ahead. John Lewis sells thousands of these every year, which makes traceability a nightmare. We’re looking at their credit card transactions, but chances are he’s paying cash, and buying each one from a different store. Then he takes them home and customises them. Either he’s making the alterations himself, or he’s got someone untrained giving him a hand.’

There was silence as the information sank in. The idea of a serial killer patiently adjusting a child’s nightdress with needle and thread was hard to absorb. This man, or woman, went against every known stereotype. Child killers normally murder their victims straight after raping them. But this one was the soul of patience. He’d waited nineteen days for Sarah Robinson to die of natural causes, and Ella might be suffering the same fate, the long delay adding to his sadistic pleasure. So far only Amita had died within hours of being captured.

The team melted away as soon as the meeting ended. Some officers were heading back to London to brief the team at King’s Cross, and others were returning to the woods. The rest would search Charndale, street by street. The incident room emptied, apart from half a dozen detectives staring at computer screens. Burns beckoned me over to Alan Nash’s table.

‘We need to agree a strategy,’ he said quietly.

Without his disciples, Nash looked diminished, an old man in need of a rest. ‘I’m prepared to let bygones be bygones and interview Kinsella this afternoon.’

‘Thanks for the offer, Alan, but he’ll only speak to Alice.’

Nash’s mouth flapped open but no sound emerged. The prospect of another tête-à-tête with Kinsella made the hairs rise on the back of my neck, but I kept my expression neutral and focused on my report. I’d tried every possible technique to work out where the killer lived: crime linkage, data analysis and geo-profiling. I’d used the latest Home Office software to map the co-ordinates of each crime scene. All five girls had been abducted inside a one-mile radius, but the team had searched the streets I’d highlighted and found nothing. Now the parameters would have to be redrawn. The killer had extended his boundary by fifty miles. Nash looked as frustrated as I felt.

‘Kinsella told me in his original confession that someone would finish what he started,’ he said, frowning. ‘It’s obvious that he trained someone before he was caught. Why aren’t you looking harder at his old contacts?’

‘Believe me, we are, Alan,’ said Burns.

‘I think we should increase the focus on the staff here at Northwood. He obviously knows this area, because he found the ideal spot to leave Amita’s body,’ I said. ‘But the foundlings are at the heart of it. I’m sure the museum’s part of his motivation. The killer’s choosing girls he sees as orphans, which makes me wonder if he’s an orphan too.’

Nash pursed his lips. ‘Or the abductions could be opportunistic; he’s just seizing them where he can. The white dresses and the girl’s body at the museum are a tribute to Kinsella, nothing more.’