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After they’d hacked and slashed the two bodies for several minutes, they danced on them. The firelight of a dozen torches glittered on their wild, rolling eyes, on their upraised blades, on the blood spattered liberally across the carpet of smoothly mown grass. Their shouts of delight filled the seething night. But when the little girl came out and stood on the veranda, there was a silence like a thunderclap. For a moment she seemed too pure to be in the midst of such mayhem, too angelic – a white-as-snow cherub, who, for all her tears and soiled nightclothes, brought a chill to the muggy forest by her mere presence, brought a hush to the yammering insects, brought the frenzied rage out of her captors like poison from a wound.

If it wasn’t the little girl herself, it was the thing she held by her side.

The thing they knew about by instinct.

The thing they’d seen only in nightmares.

*

It was late afternoon when Don and Berni drove onto the estate. Not surprisingly, there were police everywhere: patrol cars parked on the street corners, uniformed officers traipsing door-to-door with clipboards. Don’s blue Nissan Micra was subjected to a stop-and-check.

“Don Presswick,” he said, after powering his window down. “This is my wife, Bernadette. We’re visiting my mother for a couple of days. She lives at The Grove.”

The officer, who was young with fair hair, but wearing a grim expression, gave them a curt once-over. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any ID, Mr Presswick?”

Don didn’t have, but Berni rooted in her handbag and handed over a couple of credit cards. This seemed to satisfy the officer, though he still didn’t smile.

He passed the cards back. “You’re aware what’s been going on?”

“That’s why we’re here,” Don said. “To babysit Mum ’til it’s over.”

“Good idea.” The officer tapped the roof with his fingers. “Okay, that’s fine.”

“Listen …” Don adopted a confidential tone. “How’s it going? The investigation, I mean. Obviously it’s a concern, with my mum living on the estate.”

“Sorry Mr Presswick, there’s nothing I can tell you.”

“I’m ex-job. Don’t know if that makes any difference.”

The officer shrugged. “I can’t tell you anything because I don’t know anything. Enquiries are ongoing, as you’ll understand. We’ve a lot of bodies working on it.”

Don thanked him and drove on.

“Bloody woodentop,” he said.

“You were only a PC,” Berni reminded him.

“I had a lot more experience than him.”

“They all have to start somewhere.”

“Suppose so. Just wish it wasn’t on Mum’s estate, at this moment.”

It was only the third time Berni had visited The Grove since she’d married Don, but again she was reminded how lovely an old property it could be.

A large, five-bedroom detached, built well before the rest of the housing estate, it had been constructed in the Jacobean style – though it was actually Victorian – and was almost entirely clad with white plaster and black beams. Much of this was now weathered, the little you could see of it thanks to the high wall surrounding it, not to mention the tall trees in its front, rear and side gardens. Glimpsed through the red autumn foliage, the plaster had turned green and was flaking; the beams were covered in lichen, those sections that weren’t being eaten away by a shroud of crawling ivy. The roofs, which stood at numerous levels and angles, were also eroding: crabby with moss, their guttering packed with birds’ nests.

“Such a shame,” Berni said.

“All be yours someday,” Don replied, getting out to unlock the large timber gate.

“Assuming there’s anything left of it by then.”

Don eased the Micra through, climbed out again and closed the gate behind them. From here, the drive circled around the front garden to the rear of the house. Don only had a key for the back door, so that was where he usually parked. But before they’d driven more than a couple of yards, the front door opened and Helga, his mother’s cleaner and cook, emerged, wearing her mackintosh and brandishing her bag. Don applied the brakes, his tyres crunching gravel.

Helga was a burly woman with broad, heavy cheekbones. Her dark hair was shot with grey. Untidy straggles of it hung loose from the bun at the back of her large, square head. Not for the first time, Berni wondered why Don’s mother, Miriam, needed a cleaner at all. She lived here alone, in a house that was patently too large for her, and despite being wealthy, led a frugal existence. What there was for Helga to do all day, apart from cook the occasional meal, was a mystery. No doubt Helga didn’t complain, though it was understandable that she didn’t want to hang around at The Grove now it was getting dark. Don and Berni climbed from the car, Berni suggesting quietly that Don give Helga a ride to the bus stop on the edge of the estate.

“Thank Heaven!” Helga said brusquely.

She might be employed by Don’s mother as a domestic servant, but she never behaved that way. Quite the opposite. Her tone seemed to imply how ridiculous it was that they hadn’t been here several hours earlier, though they’d only been able to leave Stockport once Berni had finished for the day at the legal firm where she worked as a secretary, and in that respect had made good time.

“The heating’s on and there’s plenty of hot water,” Helga said. “I’m afraid I haven’t had time to prepare any tea for you.”

Don waved it away. “That’s fine, we’ll just …”

“I’m supposed to be in at nine tomorrow,” Helga interrupted. “Though I must tell you I’m not happy, the way things are.”

“So … you won’t be in tomorrow?”

She shrugged. “We’ll have to see how it goes.”

“Okay … if that’s what you want.”

“It’s hardly what I want.” Helga let that point hang; again, the implication seemed to be that if anyone was at fault here, it was Don. “Anyway, I must rush.”

She set off down the drive.

“I’m not sure it’s as bad as all this,” he called after her. She glanced back at him. “What I mean is … there are police officers all over the estate.”

“They haven’t done much good so far, have they, Mr Presswick?”

And that, Berni supposed, was true. Don had said what he’d said in an effort to suppress the woman’s anxiety. But it had been a little crass given that in the last three nights on this housing estate three different women had been murdered and their killer was still on the loose.

“They’ll catch him,” Don said, rather lamely.

Helga gave him a withering stare in which all the doubts she’d ever had about his knowing anything worthwhile were implicit, before saying, “I’ll call Mrs Presswick tomorrow.”

She continued down the drive, Don watching her broad back and large, sagging bottom until she’d vanished through the gate.

“I doubt she’s got much to worry about,” he said.

“At least one of the victims was middle-aged, wasn’t she?” Berni replied.

“Would you try and tackle Helga?”

“I don’t think it’s funny, Don.”

“Neither do I.” He climbed into the car and started the engine.

Berni climbed in too. “I thought you were going to drive her to the bus stop?”

“I never agreed to that.”

As they prowled around to the rear of the house, Berni said no more on the matter. Don had served as a policeman for the first twelve years of his working life, and as a security officer ever since. Now that he was in his late-thirties, he’d gone a little to seed, but he was still a rangy, raw-boned chap who stood six feet two inches tall. His hair and beard were greying, but he was handsome in a craggy, masculine sort of way. He regarded himself as a man’s man, which made it all the more galling for him to have to put up with Helga’s domineering manner. Not that this was an unusual experience for him. In many ways, Helga was an extension of his mother and, in that respect, petty victories, like refusing to offer her a ride when she was in a hurry, were the only ones he would ever really have over her.

They entered the house through the kitchen, which comprised dark wood panelling with a linoleum floor. Beyond the kitchen lay the dining room, the hall and the lounge. It was all very tidy, but the furnishing and decor throughout was sombre and old-fashioned. The rooms were tall with elaborate, hand-painted cornicing around their ceilings, but there were heavy curtains drawn everywhere, which made the interior dim to the point where it was almost difficult to find one’s way around. Carpets and rugs, many threadbare and frayed, muffled all sound as Don and Berni entered the lounge. There was scarcely a peep from the outside world. The windows, which were double-glazed, were presumably closed and locked. The walls of this house were very thick, and then of course there was the tree-filled garden encircling it, and the high wall surrounding the garden.

Thanks to the radiator in each room, the house was warm, as Helga had said, but it felt stuffy and lived-in. The air smelled stale. Berni gazed at her reflection in the large mirror hanging over the stone fireplace; because of its deeply tarnished glass, only a fogged spectre gazed back. When she ran a fingertip along the top of the mantel, it drew a visible trail. Don made no comment when she mentioned this. Instead, he grabbed their two holdalls – his blue/grey in colour, hers covered with pink flower patterns – and took them up the steep, creaking staircase to the first floor.

Berni glanced around, irritated as always by the steady process of neglect that continued to reduce her husband’s nest egg to a pathetic shadow of what it once must have been. Upstairs, she heard the strident tones of Don’s mother as she berated him for not getting here sooner.