LITMIR.BIZ

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Slim, leggy, and with small, pert breasts. She’d been twenty-one. An English major at UCSB. Liked dogs and children. Helped out at an animal refuge. Went to church. Wore a purity ring. A fucking do-gooder by any standards.

      Two: Amber Sullivan. A year younger than Stephanie. Long hair. Also blonde. A little chubby. Not quite the perfect all-American girl since she worked in a cheap burger joint and had a citation for smoking grass. Still, her mother’s pride and joy.

      Three: Chrissy Morales. About as far removed from Stephanie as you could get. The most used image was one of the girl in leather thigh-highs and a PVC miniskirt. Petite and very cute and, yes, blonde again. Chrissy usually worked the streets near Highway 99 in Bakersfield. A hooker – the fact even acknowledged by her parents – she was inevitably at the bottom of any list of victims the media chose to display.

      Four: Jessie Turner. Seventeen. Her pictures showed a fair-haired cheerleader with pom-poms and a lovely smile or else the news outlets played a video where she sang in a school musical. She’d auditioned for America’s Got Talent and, to hear her family talk, she was but one step away from superstardom.

      Five: Sara Horton. Nineteen. Footloose. Had spent a year in South America. Just about holding down a job in some fashion outlet. Like all the others, blonde and a real beauty. Everything to live for, according to her mother.

       Her mother …

      He cast a glance at the window once more. The mountains were falling away now, the green forests gone as the aircraft crossed the state line and entered Nevada airspace. He shook his head. He wouldn’t see the wilderness again except in his memories. His life from now on would be like the land below: dusty, arid and dull. He sighed and then leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, and slept.

      Malcolm Kendwick was thirty-two years old. He’d lived in the US for ten years, moving from the UK when the internet start-up he’d founded had been bought up by a company in California. That company had itself been subsumed into the workings of one of the software giants and he’d moved on to another tech firm. He’d grown bored of that after several years and, having plenty of money, he’d jacked in the job and pursued other interests. A new start-up, some time spent catching waves on the coast, several months just bumming around. Now though, he was heading back across the Atlantic, and not through choice.

       Janey Horton.

      Sara’s mother had been blonde but she hadn’t been young. In her late thirties, Kendwick considered Janey Horton flesh gone sour, a world away from the smooth-skinned beauties who’d died down there in the wilderness, five miles below. Horton was one of the ones who did bother to search. But then you would, wouldn’t you? If it was your daughter who’d gone missing.

      Sara had vanished from the small town of Morro Bay some one hundred and fifty miles up the coast from LA. Kendwick had been amused to hear she came from a little hamlet called Harmony a few miles along the Cabrillo Highway. Not that there was anything harmonious about her mother.

      When her daughter had disappeared, Janey Horton had looked far and wide, but instead of finding Sara, she’d found him. And he hadn’t had any answers for her. Not at first. Later, when she’d begun to torture him, he’d blurted out stuff. About her daughter, about the others. Anything he could think of really.

      And once she heard what he’d had to say, she’d decided to kill him.

       You fuckin’ piece of crap. I’m goin’ to cut your fuckin’ dick off and feed it to you, understand?

      He could well understand. She’d already carved three slices across his chest using a box knife, the thin blade like a razor the way the cuts opened up. Bloodless at first and then a weep of red painting thick lines down to his abdomen. He’d struggled, but try as he might, the ropes she’d secured him to the chair with held him tight. He’d opened up to her then, just like the cuts. Poured out what had happened, made up some story about how he’d been abused as a kid. Begged for his life. She wasn’t interested. She left him while she went to search for her daughter’s body. He’d been in that chair for two days. Crapping, pissing, bleeding. Crying, even.

      Kendwick awoke from a fitful sleep. The horrors of the long hours he’d spent in Horton’s basement still haunted his dreams. He shivered and then pressed his face to the plane’s window once more. The aircraft had met the night now and straight out there was nothing but a winking of a light on the wing tip, beyond the light, blackness. The interior illumination made it impossible to see the stars, but peering down beneath the wing, a glow marked a small town. Surrounding villages and hamlets spread out below as if somebody had flicked fluorescent paint across a black canvas.

      Or made a cut and watched blood spatter on the concrete floor of a dingy basement.

      The girls had bled too. All over a vein of pure white quartz high in the Sierra Nevada, miles from any highway. The dried blood had been scraped from the rock by men and women in white suits, taken back to the lab and analysed. The blood belonged to the five missing girls, the DNA results said. According to the coroner, the sheer quantity suggested they’d died there.

       You killed her, didn’t you? You raped her and then you fuckin’ killed her. Admit it, Malcolm. Tell me the fuckin’ truth! Tell me where my daughter is!

      He hadn’t wanted to tell her anything. Not at first. He pleaded with her, tried to convince her she had the wrong man.

      ‘I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me. For God’s sake, you’ve got to believe me.’

      ‘I don’t believe you. You killed Sara, I know you did. Just like you killed Stephanie, Chrissy, Amber and Jessie.’

      ‘Honestly, I didn’t do it!’ Kendrick said again, in a vain attempt to convince Horton. ‘I never killed those girls!’

      ‘We’ll see about that …’

      At which point she’d started to use the box knife on him. Not the chest to begin with, his right calf. Slicing the skin as if she was descaling a fish. Peeling back a layer and then digging the knife into the exposed muscle. Rotating the blade until—

      ‘Excuse me, sir?’

      Kendwick flicked his eyes from the window. A hostess leaned in from the aisle. Gestured at the overhead locker. Reached across to open the locker and push back the strap of his bag which had jammed in the door.

      He smelt the perfume and glanced up through the translucent material of her blouse at the magical swell of her breasts. Swallowed.

       You fuckin’ piece of crap. I’m goin’ to cut your fuckin’ dick off and feed it to you, understand?

      Kendwick managed a half smile at the girl and then looked away again. He stared into the dark sky beyond the wing tip and for a moment wished he was out there in the thin air. Falling, falling, falling to the ground below where the safety of death and oblivion waited.

      Then he turned back and watched the hostess walk away down the aisle. Took in her nylon-encased legs, the wondrous shape of her hips beneath the navy-blue skirt, the way her long blonde hair lay curled in a bun beneath her cap. Wondered about letting the bun free so the golden strands could brush over her shoulders as she stood before him. Realised that oblivion wasn’t what he wanted at all.

      The journey up had been easy. Saturday afternoon, light traffic, just a bit of a snarl-up at Cribbs Causeway in Bristol as those who had nothing better to do headed for the stores on a warm spring day. Nothing better to do such as driving to London to pick up a suspected serial killer.

      They’d booked two rooms at the Premier Inn at Twin Bridges in Bracknell, Enders and Riley sharing, Savage on her own. The hotel was attached to a three-hundred-year-old coaching inn, now remodelled as a Beefeater. As they pulled into the car park and unloaded their overnight bags, Enders was keen to point out the name.

      ‘Twin Bridges, ma’am. Like Two Bridges back home on the moor.’ He stared out at the busy A322 where cars streamed past, their windscreens glinting in the late-afternoon sun. ‘Only not.’

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