Nine Lives by Anita Waller (best english books to read .txt) 📗

The waterfalls that would have been not much more than trickles in the summertime cascaded over, and she took out her phone to snap some pictures, purely for her own pleasure. This really was a lovely river, and she understood now how it came to be a major player in the manufacture of Sheffield’s famous steel. The force of the water was enough to turn any waterwheel, and she knew one day, in the summer, she would come with Frannie and they would make better memories of this stretch of the river, and visit the still-working wheel.

She sat on another rock for some time, looking, letting her thoughts gather apace; the forefront of her brain held the image of that car. She knew within seconds of Susanna getting into the vehicle, a syringe would have been stabbed into her neck, and she wouldn’t have been awake longer than a few seconds.

Susie Roebuck was the only one of the victims they could actually pinpoint the time and place of abduction. She obviously was the one on which to concentrate; and yet Erica still felt they knew nothing. Back in twenty-fourteen they had also known nothing – no abduction area because they hadn’t had information on the last sightings of any of the four girls. They didn’t know where either Clare or Imogen had climbed into that car, and yet every single victim had probably known the driver. Nobody gets into a car with a stranger. This mantra was constant in Erica’s mind.

Nobody gets into a car with a stranger.

It was a day to be alone, to think. Erica stopped at McDonald’s for a late lunch shortly after two, completed some thoughts in her notebook, and enjoyed her cheeseburger Happy Meal. The minion toy joined all the other McDonald’s toys in her glovebox.

Her couple of hours by the river had made her restless, and it was with a feeling of unsettlement that she entered the briefing room. She had a car boot seemingly half-filled with Haribo sweets, and a glovebox filled with McDonald’s toys. Was she old enough to be doing this job?

She stared around at the roomful of people, took a deep breath, and approached the whiteboard.

‘Okay, everybody. I know you’ve all been beavering away on various follow-up jobs this morning, and thank God we didn’t have another call-out, but this isn’t so much a briefing as a thought-gathering exercise. When we’ve finished, get off home and wait for the witches and wizards to come visiting.’

She heard a few groans and smiled. She loved Halloween. ‘Mardy arses. Now, this car. I spoke with Will earlier, because we both feel this car is possibly the same one used in twenty-fourteen. I don’t think it’s on the roads other than to abduct the victims and transport them to wherever he wants them to be posed. Will?’

‘That’s right, boss. I reckon it’s kept in a lock-up, and I think that needs to be mentioned when they do the broadcast and show pictures of the vehicle tonight. If we can get everybody watching lock-ups or out-of-the-way garages…’

‘The car was made in the early to late-noughties, we can’t be sure of the exact year, and has almost certainly been used to offer lifts to all three of our current victims because of the bad weather. They would accept gratefully, especially if they knew the driver well. I think they did.’

‘Are they going to push the serial killer aspect tonight? Make people more aware?’ Flick’s voice came from the back of the room.

‘He isn’t a serial killer,’ Erica said, letting her voice carry. ‘If there are three victims or more in any thirty-day period, the killer becomes a spree killer. We need to stop this spree before it becomes a rout.’

16

Erica continued with her captive audience, keen to get them on their way home. Most had children, and she recognised the need to be with them at special times in the year.

‘So,’ she began, capturing their attention with the one word. ‘I’ve done a lot of thinking today. I’ve spent quite some time up at the river, and I had occasion to ring Will to ask him about the car, what year it was probably made, that sort of thing, and he countered with something he’d clearly been mulling over, sex.’

There was some laughter, some ribald comments, but she saw a grin on Will’s face and knew he could take it. She held up a hand and silence descended once more. ‘It started because I said “he”, in reference to our killer. Will quite hesitantly queried that statement, because he felt if it was a man why wasn’t he screwing the girls. His words, not mine, I might add. You can see from the photographs on here,’ she pointed behind her, ‘that all of these girls, women, are extremely pretty, have stunning figures, and yet there’s no evidence of sexual activity. In view of Will’s words, I have asked Ivor Simmonite to double-check if there could be any evidence of even gentle sex. I’ll let you know what comes from that. He did confirm there was no evidence of semen anywhere on the bodies.’

There was silence. Then Flick spoke, still somewhere at the back of the room.

‘It could be a woman? I know we’ve always said we’d keep our minds open on this, but is it more than keeping them open now? Is it a strong possibility that it is a woman?’

Erica took a deep breath. ‘Right from the start it’s been on my mind that a woman should never get into a car with a stranger. This killer is not a stranger to them, and they would feel reassured that it was a woman. I can’t say this with any definition, as you know, but I think it should be something we’re looking at closely, instead of it’s a man being always at the forefront of our minds, because deep down we don’t want to believe a woman could do this.’

‘I couldn’t do it,’ Flick