Girl Number One: A Gripping Psychological Thriller (31 page)

But
surely she would not have worn her ID while out running, even if she had gone
to the woods straight after work; she would have removed it in the car, perhaps,
and put it where? On the passenger seat of her Renault? In the glove box?
Either of those seems likely.

So
how did it find its way into Tris’s pocket?

The
track to the old mill is bumpy and overgrown with rough grass and brambles, but
I can see where it has been used recently by a van, probably carrying a heavy
load. The mud ruts are higher in places than others, fresh tyre marks carved
out on the edge of some indents.

Tris
stops the bike at one point and jumps down, leaving the engine running, to move
aside a thick wire fence blocking the track. The roll of wire fencing delivered
to the farm by Dick Laney, and that I helped him carry out of his van.

Tris
climbs back into his seat, not looking at me, and kicks the quad bike into gear
again.

Through thick undergrowth I catch a glimpse of
high grey stone walls ahead. Then we round the bend in the track, the rhododendron
bushes give way, and I see the whole house. It’s a disused mill house with
water course running alongside, a lichened stone channel diverting water from
the nearby stream, and a broken-down wheel still attached to the far wall, the
wood cracked and rotten, spokes missing.

Like
many Cornish buildings of its age, the mill was built hard against the slopes
behind, providing some shelter from the winds that tear down off the moors in
winter. That did not help the house escape decades of neglect though. The slate
roof is sagging in several places, slates missing, and the walls are overgrown
with greenery, nature attempting to take it over. Two narrow, ivy-thick window
frames without any glass left yawn into a gloomy interior.

And there’s his dad’s old van, rusting near the
front entrance. I see him glance at it before stopping the bike a few feet
away.

The
silence is deafening after he turns off the engine. Tris gets off the bike and
stands there, watching me climb out of the trailer.

‘Dad had big plans to renovate this place,’ he
says, turning to look up at the old building through narrowed eyes. ‘But he ran
out of money. So it just sat here and rotted away. Like him.’

The place is perfect for a psycho killer’s
lair, ruined and remote. It even has its own witch’s familiar. There’s a shabby
black crow perched on the roof as we approach. It cocks its head, watching us
with one ironic eye, then caws loudly and flies away into the trees.

‘You sure you want to do this, Ellie?’ he asks,
looking back at me with an expression I don’t recognise.

‘No,
but I’m going to anyway.’

He
takes a deep breath, rather like I did on leaving the cottage, then walks round
to the front of the old mill and stands there a moment, scanning the
ivy-covered walls and broken windows. There is not a sound.

He
cups his hands to his mouth. ‘Connor? Are you here, Connor?’ He waits,
listening to the silence that follows his call, then rubs a hand across his forehead,
closing his eyes.

‘Looks
like we’re alone,’ I say.

He
nods.

‘What
now?’ I ask him.

Tris
opens his eyes again, considers me in silence, then nods his head towards the
back of the old mill.

‘Come
on,’ he says heavily, ‘you want to see it, I’ll show you. But don’t say I
didn’t give you a chance to turn back.’

His
voice is bitter now too, like he hates me. Which perhaps he does. I remember us
in bed together, and fight to block out that memory. The whole thing was an
act, designed to draw me in. A honey trap, with him as the bait.

My
head is a mess but I’m looking down on it from above, keeping a safe distance
from the emotion. I let this man touch me, kiss me, even make love to me. I believed
him, let him work his way into my heart. And he’s a stone-cold killer.

‘Lead
on,’ I say.

We walk round the
back of the old mill. It’s a large building and mostly in serious disrepair,
though I can see where small efforts have been made to renovate parts of it. The
traditional Cornish gardens are badly overgrown once we move away from the
front of the house, all sprawling rhododendrons and palms and vast-leaved
gunnera blocking out the sky, but there’s a path through wild, tangled
shrubbery that Tris takes, hesitantly, looking back at me occasionally as
though he expects me to change my mind at any moment.

Past
the mill wheel, hidden away in the shadowy green light of the overgrown shrubs,
there’s a crumbling flight of steps down to a trapdoor into a basement or
cellar. The area must have flooded badly several times over the years. It’s
boggy, pitted with marshy tracts bulging with reeds, almost more water than dry
land. But either Tris or Connor has been hard at work, keeping the stream at
bay with the sacks of soil and sand dutifully delivered by Dick Laney.

Tris leads me along an uneven pathway made of
damp sandbags, and pauses just before the open trapdoor, staring down at the
dark space of the cellar.

‘What’s
down there?’ I demand.

He
shakes his head.

‘What,
you don’t know?’ My voice is bitter, laced with contempt. I’m burningly angry,
and it’s showing. I pull the ID badge out of the coat pocket and hold it up, showing
him. ‘I suppose you don’t know anything about this, either?’

He
stares blankly. ‘What is that?’

I
fight the urge to choke him to death with Jenny’s ID badge. ‘You should get a
bloody Oscar. This is your coat, Tris. So explain to me how my friend’s ID
badge got into your pocket, and use short words because I’m in a hurry.’

‘I
don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Dick
Laney didn’t murder those two women, did he? Or abduct Jenny. I have no idea
why he confessed, though I have my suspicions. But the killer is someone
completely different, isn’t he?’ I face him, my heart beating a tattoo in my
chest, hard and fast. ‘Or perhaps I should say,
aren’t they
?’

His
eyes fix on mine as though trying to gauge how serious I am, how much of a
threat. Then he turns abruptly away, saying, ‘Okay, this has gone far enough. I’m
taking you home.’

Coming behind him, I thrust my knee into the
back of his, catching him in the vulnerable spot just below and to the outer
side of his kneecap. Tris gives a gasp of pain, and his knee starts to fold. As
he collapses, I dance away, grabbing his right arm, then use the momentum of
his body as he crumples sideways to drag it behind his back, rendering him
helpless.

The
coat hampers me, which gives me a split-second of doubt. But he goes down
anyway. It’s a textbook move I’ve demonstrated hundreds of times on a mat in a
gym. It’s only now, kneeling above him, my knee set into his back, holding him
immobilised by twisting his arm, that I realise how deeply satisfying it is.

Tris
grunts, heaves, struggles against the painful joint lock, then gives it up,
breathing with heavy resentment beneath me.

‘Very
wise of you,’ I say into his ear, leaning forward over his back.

He
says nothing.

I
can smell his aftershave, spicy, lingering on the air. Below the razored cut of
his hair, the skin on the back of his neck is tinged faintly red. I feel a
crazy impulse to kiss his neck but resist it. Any show of weakness now could be
fatal.

I’m
tall for a woman at five foot eight. Muscular too, what some people might call
an athletic build. But Tris is easily six foot one, maybe two, and broad with
it, a big man. So he has at least thirteen stone on my nine stone, eleven
pounds. Possibly more. And I’ve brought him down with a basic Jujutsu grapple
and joint lock.

Suddenly there’s a noise from somewhere inside
the millhouse, and we both look round. A muffled echo, like a door banging shut.
Or something heavy and metallic falling to the ground.

I look down at him, suddenly very still. ‘Now
what was that, would you say?’

‘A rat,’ he says harshly.

‘Let’s
find out, shall we?’

‘Ellie,
don’t.’

But
I drag him up, and he does not resist, his face darkly flushed. With anger or
shame, though?

‘Come
on,’ I insist, ‘time to go rat-catching.’

I
push him forward, foot by shuffling foot, towards the yawning black hole of the
trapdoor, careful to keep his right arm twisted hard behind his back. I don’t
intend to break it, but the pain and stress of that position should control
him, keeping resistance to a minimum.

Once
we’re standing on the lip, I see a flight of steps leading down into darkness.
There’s a strange mechanical hum from below. Tris stiffens, listening to it
too.

I
nudge him forward until he’s standing on the top step.

‘You
first, darling.’

I watch him take
the first few steps gingerly down into darkness. I follow, still attached to
him, so close I can feel his body warmth, keeping his arm twisted behind his
back like an umbilical between us.

‘Easy,’
I warn him when he nearly slips. ‘Watch your step. Take it slowly.’

We
reach the bottom step and pause, letting our eyes adjust. There’s just enough
light filtering down from the trapdoor above to see a few feet in front of me.
But further into the cellar there is nothing to see but shadow. I try to assess
the size of the place. Maybe twenty-five feet wide, the ceiling about eight
foot high, but how far back does this pitch darkness go? Impossible to tell
without speaking to test the acoustics.

I
smell oil and dust and mildew, just as you would expect in any cellar, any
general utility room. But something more pungent on top of those. The stink of
acrid sweat, of unwashed flesh. I half close my eyes, concentrating on my other
senses. There’s a low hum somewhere in the deepest shadows at the back.
Something continuous and mechanical. The sound I heard from above.

‘What
is that?’

‘I
don’t know,’ he whispers.

A
voice speaks from the shadowy interior of the cellar. ‘It’s a generator. It
used to be powered by the wheel, now it runs on oil.’

A
shaft of blinding light bounces off damp stone walls, feels its way towards the
steps, seeking us out. Tris takes a hurried step back, colliding with me. I
tighten my hold on his wrist and he stops, rigid.

Connor
steps out of the darkness, a torch in his hand, wearing a grey hoody, the hood
pulled up to partially obscure his face. ‘Hello, Eleanor.’ He shines the
powerful torch beam directly into his brother’s face, temporarily blinding us
both. ‘Did you bring her here, Tristan? That wasn’t very clever, was it?’

‘Connor,’
he begins urgently, and I twist his arm higher up his back.

Tris
yelps, then mutters, ‘Fuck,’ under his breath. I can hear the pain in his
voice. He’s not going anywhere, not while I have him trussed up like this.

‘What
do you need a generator for?’ I demand. Like the torch beam, my voice bounces
off stone, echoing everywhere, distorted. ‘I thought the mill was disused.’

‘Do
the police know you’re here?’ Connor counters with a question of his own,
interrogating me with that bloody torch beam. ‘Are they on their way? Tris?’

His
brother says nothing, standing passively in my grip now. I duck my head behind
Tris’s shoulder, blinking, knowing my eyes will retain the after-image of the
light for several minutes if I let him dazzle me.

‘Well,
I don’t suppose it matters much,’ Connor says, surprisingly calm. ‘Not now
you’re here at last.’

He
switches off the torch and we are plunged into darkness again, this time all
the more complete because our eyes have no longer adjusted to it. I stiffen,
fearing an attack. But the dark shadow that is Connor merely turns and gropes
his way along the wall, then another light comes on above us. It’s an unshaded
bulb, one of the old-fashioned types, hanging from the roof on a thin electric
wire, and its illumination of the room is harsh but patchy.

When
I stop blinking at the sudden light, I realise that I’m looking directly at
Jenny.

She’s
hanging opposite us on the far wall, attached by her wrists and ankles to some
kind of metal frame. The frame looks rusty, but strong enough to hold her
weight. I remember Sarah McGellan in the shallow grave, the fading bruises on
her wrists. I thought she must have been manacled somewhere before death.
Presumably here.

‘Oh
my God, Jenny,’ I say.

Jenny
is pale but clearly still alive. There’s silver tape across her mouth, though I
don’t imagine many people would ever come close enough to this wilderness to
hear someone shouting for help. Above the tape, her wide eyes stare back at me
in apparent horror. No doubt she thinks I’m about to become their next victim.
And perhaps she’s right, but I intend to get her out of this place first if I
possibly can. One of us has to survive.

Her
clothes have gone, but she is wearing knickers and bra, and, to my relief, does
not appear to be marked or cut anywhere. Dawn Trevian and Sarah McGellan were
both found naked, with signs of bruising, and I had worried that the brothers’
tastes as torturers might be extreme. She’s filthy and unkempt though, hair
hanging greasily about her face. The place stinks of stale urine, and I can
guess the reason. The stone floor is clean though and looks damp in places,
like it’s been washed down recently. There’s a hose on a reel against the wall,
attached to an ancient green-crusted tap that must connect to the water course
outside.

I
shudder to think why he would need a hose down here.

‘Oh
Tris,’ I mutter, ‘what have you done?’

Connor
turns to put the torch away on a low table at the back, pushing down the hood
of his grey hoody. I squint round the cellar while he’s bending, and spot a
narrow shelf near the metal frame, bracketed into the walls at an angle across
a corner. It’s dusty but holds a useful selection of tools: screwdriver,
pliers, saw, hammer, a few glass jars of nails and screws. Connor the workman,
with his tools. I can readily imagine him making this sturdy metal frame. To
keep women like Sarah McGellan and Jenny Crofter prisoner.

When
Connor turns back, he has a shotgun in his hand. I remember seeing it in the
farmhouse, chained and locked up for safety. Now it’s levelled towards me, and
he’s smiling.

‘Welcome
to the old mill,’ he says, apparently without irony. ‘It’s good to have you
here at last, Ellie. I’ve been waiting for you.’

I
remember the face I saw in the dark waters when I was drowning, the man holding
down the board, trying to prevent me from rising. The eyes that watched as I
fought and struggled to be free. Not their dead father, as I’d thought at the
time, my head muddled with lack of oxygen and vile, repressed memories. Not
Pete Taylor, my mother’s secret admirer. Maybe her lover too, I don’t know.

No,
it was his son, Connor Taylor, that tried to drown me in the ocean. And his
dark figure I have been seeing at the foot of my bed, watching me while I
sleep.

Shadow man, shadow man.

My
grip on Tris’s arm must have slackened, because suddenly he twists away and I
am knocked sideways, taken off guard.

I
am back on my feet in seconds and crouched, ready to fight. But Tris is shaking
his head, staring at me as he backs towards Connor and the shotgun.

 
‘Run, Ellie,’ he says urgently. ‘And
don’t stop running until you’re clear of this place.’

Run, Ellie, run!

I
stare at him, struck by his wording. Almost exactly the same words my mother
used eighteen years ago in Eastlyn Woods. I hear her voice in my head again.
Run, Ellie, run!
I ran that day, ran for
my life, ran like the devil was after me. But then I could not run any further.
Not without Mummy. So I came creeping back through the crowded trees, and saw
the face of her killer.

I
straighten out of my defensive crouch. I refuse to run this time. As I should
have refused to run in the woods. Though I would probably have died too.
Perhaps Mum was right. She saved my life, and not just by telling me to run.
She saved my life when she made me promise never to tell anyone about the man I
saw in the woods that day.

And
it was my silence that has kept me safe all these years.

‘It
was your father,’ I say clearly, ‘Pete Taylor, who killed my mother in Eastlyn
Woods eighteen years ago.’

Tris
makes a strangled noise, shaking his head.

Connor
sidesteps his brother, pointing the shotgun directly towards me. ‘Yes,’ he
agrees, looking almost relieved that he can finally admit the truth.

‘Pete
Taylor strangled her because she refused to keep seeing him and he couldn’t
bear it. Or maybe she wouldn’t go to bed with him and was threatening to tell
my dad that he wouldn’t leave her alone. I suppose we’ll never know. But it was
Pete Taylor who killed her. I remember everything now. How he followed us into
the woods, how he strangled my mother, the flash of his trainers as he ran away
…’

‘I
knew you would remember eventually,’ Connor says. ‘But when did you guess about
me, and this place?’

‘I
only knew for sure today when I found Jenny’s ID badge in the pocket of Tris’s
coat.’ I put my hand in the pocket of the coat I’m still wearing, and produce
her ID badge. ‘See? He lent this to me yesterday after you tried to drown me.’

Tris
turns to stare at his brother. ‘That was you? You tried to drown her?’

Connor
shrugs.

‘I
don’t understand.’ Tris sounds distraught. ‘Why would you want to kill Ellie? I
thought you wanted her for yourself, that you loved her.’

I
stare at the two brothers, bewildered. ‘What are you saying, Tris? That you had
nothing to do with this?’

‘Eleanor
was always going to be my Number One,’ Connor tells him coolly, ignoring me. ‘I
just didn’t know how it was going to happen until yesterday when you told me
she was surfing out at Widemouth Bay.’ He looks across at me, his eyes intent.
‘Drowning is so easily seen as an unfortunate accident. I wasn’t happy about it
though. I had wanted to talk to you first. Talk properly, like we’re doing now.
Only you were making too much of a nuisance of yourself. It wasn’t fun anymore.
I knew I had to end you, and quickly.’

‘Okay,’
I say, glancing at Tris in apology. I pause to adjust my thinking: Tris not
guilty of anything; Connor guilty. It takes some doing. ‘So you were never
involved in any of this?’

‘I
tried to tell you,’ Tris says flatly. ‘You wouldn’t listen.’

‘It
wasn’t your coat.’

‘Connor’s,’
he agrees. ‘Though it used to belong to Dad.’

‘Sorry,
my mistake.’ I stare at Connor, hating him more than ever. ‘But why did you
have to kill Hannah? And I want the truth. She was my friend.’

‘I
didn’t want to. But she saw me. In the water. I couldn’t let her live.’ Connor
looks regretful. ‘A pity too. I liked Hannah.’

I
dig my fingernails into my palms, resisting the urge to spring at him. The
double-barrelled shotgun between us would make any attack suicidal. ‘Hannah
wasn’t wearing her glasses in the water. She probably didn’t even recognise
you. Didn’t have a clue who you were. You could have let her live.’

He
stares, a flicker of emotion in his face.

I
press him. ‘You wanted to kill Dawn Trevian and Sarah McGellan though.’

‘I
didn’t mean to kill Dawn. It was an accident.’

‘So
you panicked and tried to hide what you’d done by storing her body in a
freezer.’ I tilt my head, listen to the mechanical hum in the background. That
was why he brought a generator down here, to run the freezer and the light. At
last I begin to understand his twisted logic. ‘But then you remembered how
close it was to the anniversary of my mother’s death. Tris and I were getting
too friendly, weren’t we? And you didn’t like that. So you decided to play a little
trick on me, see how fragile my mind really is.’

Connor
nods slowly, his gaze on me. ‘I enjoyed watching you suffer.’

‘But
why?’ Tris exclaims, moving towards him.

The
shotgun, which has been wavering, comes up at once, aimed at my heart. ‘Get
back, or I’ll shoot her. You don’t understand. How could you?’

I
can see that Connor is beyond reason. Worried he will shoot one or both of us,
I try to distract him, to keep him talking.

‘You
must have moved quickly to shift her body before the police arrived, then get
home before Tris missed you.’

‘It
was a close call,’ he agrees. ‘I nearly made my first mistake then. Tris walked
in while I was scraping mud off those white trainers, telling me he’d had a
phone call and we had to get up to your place immediately. But he’s so obsessed
with you, he didn’t even notice what I was doing.’

‘And
then you killed Sarah, I’m not sure why.’ I frown. ‘But you couldn’t stand
seeing me dancing with Tris in Newquay, so you spiked my drink, then stole my
anklet. You left that note on Denzil’s windscreen.’

Connor
is unable to stop himself smiling. He’s proud of what he has done. ‘Very good,’
he agrees. ‘That’s pretty much how it happened.’

‘But
if I’m your Number One,’ I say sharply, ‘then why is Jenny here? If this is
supposed to be a serial killer’s countdown, you’ve fucked it up. You started
your countdown at three. If I’m number one, what number is Jenny? Or isn’t
maths your strong point?’

Connor
looks at me with distaste. ‘Have I killed her yet? Have I? No, and for that
very reason. Jenny was never part of my plan. But she had to be got rid of.’

‘Why?’

‘Because
she called me on Friday. Mentioned the old mill. She knew the police were
searching empty properties in the area and wanted to know if they had searched
here. Well, I couldn’t risk her going to the police with that suggestion. They
might have found this cellar, checked it for DNA. Then I would have been
screwed.’ He shrugs. ‘So I told her to meet me in the woods.’