A Place To Bury Strangers (Atticus Priest Book 2) Read online

  “Please,” Mack said. “Carry on.”

  “Molly,” he said. “Her behaviour started to change. She’s always been a difficult child, but we’ve always got along, especially since her mother left. Not anymore. She became disobedient. Stopped talking to me, and, when she did talk, it was all attitude and sass. I started to suspect she was using drugs. She was seeing a young lad in the city who I found out was dealing from his flat. I confronted her about it, and we had a row. I said she couldn’t see him anymore, and she told me that I had no right to tell her what to do. I remember her words exactly: ‘Who are you to tell me what to do after what you did?’ I made her tell me what she meant, and she said that she’d been home when I’d killed Alf. She said she’d been smoking a joint in the field and that she saw me use the bolt gun on him. She saw all of it.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Ran away. I thought about going to the police, but I knew I couldn’t. What if she told them what she’d seen? But then, on the other hand, what if they didn’t get her back? She could tell someone else what had happened—the result would be the same. I remembered seeing a local private investigator on the television after that big case at Christmas.”

  “Mr. Priest.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I decided that was my best option—tell him that I was worried about Molly getting a criminal record so he wouldn’t involve the police. I went to see him, and he found her for me in London.”

  York looked down at the table, and Atticus caught the sound of his snivelling.

  “Have another drink, Mr. York,” Mack said, indicating the plastic cup in front of York.

  He finished the coffee and set it back down.

  “I drove up to London, and Molly came outside as I was waiting for her. I was able to get her into the car and drove away before she had a chance to say anything.” He stopped again, biting his lip. His eyes were wet when he continued, but, this time, he did not wipe them dry. “We argued again. She made me stop—we were in a lay-by just off the M3—and she got out of the car. She told me that she couldn’t live in the same house as me, and that if I tried to make her stay, she’d go to the police and tell them everything.” He stopped, his shoulders shuddering.

  “What did you do?”

  “Hit her.”

  “A little louder, please.”

  “I hit her. I didn’t mean to, but I lost control. She fell, and… she banged her head against the side of the car. She didn’t move—I thought she was dead. I…” He paused. “I wasn’t thinking. I panicked. I put her in the boot and drove home. She was awake again when we arrived—but she was hysterical. I took her up to the barn and put her in the cellar. I couldn’t control her. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “How long was she in there?”

  “It was Tuesday when we got back from London.”

  “And it’s Monday today. So six days?”

  Atticus watched the screen: Mack was writing in her notebook; DS Archer was hunched over, his fists clenched; Aikenhead didn’t appear to know where to look; York was biting his lip to stop from crying. Atticus felt uneasy. Something about the confession bothered him, and he couldn’t say what it was. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something in the shadows, something important, something that York had not revealed.

  “What were you going to do with her?” Mack asked him.

  “What choice did I have? I took her phone and texted the lad she’d been seeing in the city before she went to London with the other one. I pretended to be her and told him to come over to the farm. I used the bolt gun on him. I thought that if he disappeared at the same time as Molly, it’d look like they were together. Then the detective who had been working with Priest—”

  “DC Edwards,” Archer said.

  “Yes. She came to the farm yesterday afternoon, and I told her the story I made up about what had happened. I thought she believed me, but then the other lad from London phoned her. I’m not sure what he said.”

  “Your daughter had told him what you’d done,” Mack said. “He told DC Edwards.”

  York nodded his understanding. “That’s what I thought. And then Molly’s phone went off in my pocket, and Edwards knew what had happened. She tried to leave. I had to do something. I couldn’t let her go. I shocked her and put her in the cellar with Molly.”

  “What were you going to do with them?” Mack asked him. “Tonight, I mean, before we interrupted you.”

  “What I had to do. I was going to bury them in a wood on the edge of the farm. Molly had played there as a child. I thought it would be a nice spot for her.”

  It appeared that York was at the end of his confession. Neither Mack nor Archer spoke, until Mack checked her watch—it was two fifteen in the morning—and announced that she was going to stop the tape, and that they would continue later.

  “Up you get,” Archer said. “I’ll take you to the custody sergeant and get you in a cell for the night.”

  “Will I be charged?”

  “You’ve just confessed to multiple murders,” Mack said. “You’ll be charged.”

  “Thank you,” York said.

  Mack slipped her notes into a folder. “For what?”

  “For listening. I’ve been wanting to tell someone my story for years. It’s a relief that it’s done.”

  Mack and Archer stood.

  Atticus stared at the screen as York looked up into the camera. His cheeks were wet with spilled tears, but, for a fraction of a second, his eyes shone with a wariness that should not have been there.

  York was lying; Atticus was sure of it.

  79

  Mack came through into room four again and sat down on the opposite side of the table to Atticus. “What do you think?”

  He massaged his temples, kneading them with his fingers. “I suspect that some of the story is true. Molly, for example. I think that’s probably not far off what happened. The story about Londonderry feels authentic; plus it’ll be easy enough to corroborate with the PSNI. He’d know that. The rest of it, though? I don’t know. Something about it is off.”

  “It’s a confession,” Mack countered. “And it’s tallying with what we know so far.”

  “Could Alfred Burns be the killer of the girls in the cemetery? Definitely. I’m just not sure that we’ve been told the full story, and I can’t put my finger on why. I wish I could be in there with you. It’s difficult trying to read him from here.”

  “We can’t do that,” she said. “You know we can’t.”

  She pointed to Atticus’s hip flask. He unscrewed it, poured a shot into his empty plastic cup and slid the flask across the table. Mack poured some into her own cup and sipped. “Thanks.”

  “We need to see York’s medical records,” Atticus said.

  “Why?”

  “Did you notice him coughing?”

  “Yes. He’s got a cold.”

  “It’s not a cold. Compare what he looks like today with the pictures on his Facebook page. He’s lost weight. I didn’t really pay attention to it, but now I wonder if it might be relevant. Get a court order and go to his doctor. I bet he’s being treated for something nasty. I think that might be very relevant.”

  “Because if he’s sick, he might not have anything to lose by confessing?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You think he’s protecting someone?”

  “Maybe. Miller, perhaps.”

  Atticus poured out the last of the hip flask, splitting the alcohol between their plastic cups.

  “I’m tired,” Mack said.

  “You need to speak to Miller,” he said. “You can’t postpone it. Don’t give him any more time to think than necessary.”

  “I know that,” she said. “I’m just fishing for sympathy. How would you do it?”

  “Give him a prompt about what York said, but not too much. He won’t be able to deny that he knows York and Burns—he knows we’ve seen the photo of them together. Tell him that York has explained what happened in London
derry and see where he goes after that. We need to establish a connection between the three of them here, when they got back.”

  Atticus saw movement on his monitor and turned to see Richard Miller as he lowered himself into the chair that York had just vacated. His solicitor was next to him, a woman from a local firm with whom Atticus had had dealings in the past.

  Mack stood and smoothed down her shirt. “Same again,” she said. “Buzz me if there’s anything you think I need to cover.”

  Atticus said that he would, wished her luck and waited as she made her way back to the interview room.

  Atticus watched as Mack started the interview.

  “You’ve told us about your relationship with Alfred Burns,” she said. “Tell us about James York.”

  “We were in the army together in Londonderry. You know that already, though, don’t you? Your colleague saw the regimental photograph with the three of us when he looked around my house during your visit.”

  Atticus stiffened, surprised by Miller’s perspicacity and wondering whether he was going to make an issue of his search of his property. He didn’t.

  “I was a senior platoon commander and York had just been cross-posted into my platoon. I knew him as a soldier in the battalion, of course, but obviously I knew the rest of my platoon much better. He wasn’t an easy chap to get acquainted with, to be honest.”

  “Did you know he was in Salisbury?”

  “No—is he?”

  He spoke with an assuredness that had not been there to quite the same degree before; he had had time to consider the situation in which he’d found himself.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Burns was blackmailing you.”

  “Yes. I already told you that.”

  “He was blackmailing James York, too.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “We arrested Mr. York this evening, too.”

  “For what?”

  “The murder of Alfred Burns. He’s admitted to it. He’s also admitted to the murder of at least five young women whose bodies we found in the graveyard at Imber.”

  Atticus stared at Miller on the screen, looking for signs of the surprise that would be there if that really was something that was unexpected. But the colonel had turned his face, and all the camera could catch was the side of his head.

  “My God,” he said. “You think… Please, Chief Inspector, please. That’s ridiculous. You think I could have been involved in murdering him?”

  “You had the motive,” she said. “Just like Mr. York.”

  Atticus heard the sound of feet running down the corridor. They went past his room and continued. He heard a knock and, turning his attention back to the screen, he saw Mack look behind her and invite whoever it was to come inside.

  It was Francine Patterson. She looked panicked.

  “I’m sorry, boss. I didn’t want to disturb you, but this is an emergency.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s York.”

  Mack told Archer to take care of the procedural niceties for pausing the interview, got up and followed Patterson out of the door. Atticus stood quickly, his chair scraping against the floor as he pushed it away, and went to the door just as Mack and Patterson were passing.

  “What is it?” he said.

  Mack didn’t stop.

  “Come with us,” she called back over her shoulder.

  80

  They hurried to the custody suite. The corridor was painted in a neutral white with an alarm strip on the left and doors on either side. DS James Boyd was the sergeant on shift. He was pacing the corridor, his hand pressed to his forehead. The door to the cell at the end of the corridor was open, and the first aid case that they kept behind the reception desk had been discarded on the floor, the lid open and the contents spilling out.

  Mack went into the cell, and Atticus followed behind her. It was a small space that was also painted white, with a thick blue stripe between the floor and the ceiling. James York was sitting on the blue mattress with his back to the wall. He was dressed in a standard-issue replacement tracksuit, and his right arm hung loosely, and his left hand rested on the mattress. His face was slack and pallid. Blood had pooled on the waterproof surface of the mattress, and there was a puddle of it on the floor beneath the dangling right arm, a shocking red against the white.

  PC Dave Betts was sitting on the edge of the bed by York’s knees, turned to face him. He had a piece of gauze in his hand and, as Mack and Atticus watched, he held it against the man’s right wrist.

  “Is he still alive?” Atticus said.

  “I don’t know,” Betts said.

  Atticus swore under his breath, stepped around Mack and went over to the bed, shoving Betts aside. He reached down and pressed his index and forefingers to York’s neck. There was no pulse. He moved his fingers a little and pressed harder, but there was still nothing.

  “Gone.”

  “Shit,” Mack said.

  Atticus saw the glint of metal on the floor next to the bed. He took a piece of gauze and, with the material pinched between his fingers, knelt down and picked it up. He held the object up so that Mack could see it.

  “A razor blade?”

  Atticus stood. “Betts? Betts!”

  Betts was fidgeting by the door. Atticus held the blade up so that he could see it. “Where did he get this from?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t you search him?”

  “Of course I bloody searched him.”

  “And you missed a razor blade?”

  “I didn’t miss anything. The FME checked him, too.”

  “You say that, yet there it is…”

  “Stop it,” Mack said. “Both of you.”

  Atticus bit his tongue, aware enough, for once, that there was no profit in an argument.

  “When was he searched?” Mack asked Betts calmly.

  “When we booked him, boss. It was a full strip search, his clothes were bagged, and the FME body mapped him. There’s no way he had a blade on him when he came in.”

  Atticus looked at the razor, the sharp edge sticky with blood. “Has anyone been close enough to hand him something?”

  “No,” Betts said. “Not since he was brought down here.”

  “His lawyer?” Mack said.

  “Where is he?” Atticus said.

  “He left after the interview finished,” Archer said.

  “Find out where he lives,” Mack said. “Send someone to pick him up.”

  “Where did York speak to him?”

  “In one of the empty interview rooms.”

  “Was the camera on or off?”

  “It’s his solicitor,” Archer said. “It’s confidential. Of course the camera was off.”

  Atticus closed his eyes and took a breath. The corridor outside was busy with the sound of urgent conversation, and it distracted him. It was possible that York could have killed himself after his confession. He would have known that he faced life in prison, either for what he had admitted to doing during his time in the army or especially for his murder of Burns. He had been distressed during the interview, but suicidal? Atticus hadn’t seen anything to suggest that. His mind raced with competing ideas and possible explanations, but there was too much clamour for him to be able to unravel the one thread that would bring him to the truth.

  He needed quiet. He needed to think.

  Part IX

  One Week Later

  81

  The roads through the New Forest were unusual for their beauty and, more, for the animals with which the traffic had to contend. Atticus dabbed the brakes and crawled between two wild horses that were walking on either side of the road. Ahead, a family of wild pigs snuffled in the undergrowth for morsels to eat. Bandit was alert in the back of the car, standing up to his full height and staring through the rear window, his docked tail pointed straight out behind him. Atticus pulled off the road and into the car park next to Godshill Cri
cket Club, slotting his beat-up old Volvo next to Mack’s similarly dishevelled Range Rover. He looked over and saw that it was empty, as expected; Mack had told him that she would meet him on the trail.

  He got out and opened the back so that Bandit could vault down. The dog was itching to run and, after assuring himself that there were no other horses in the vicinity that he might worry, Atticus slapped him on the hindquarters to send him on his way. Bandit sprinted off at top speed, blasting through the gorse so that he could barrel down the slope that led to the bottom of the gentle valley. Atticus set off after him. The track wound down, crossed a brook by way of a wooden bridge, and then climbed up to the other side. The view was spectacular, with miles of open lowland heath fringed in the distance by forests of ancient trees. The last week had been unseasonably warm, and the first spring flowers were stirring. Atticus saw early flowering orchids, wild garlic, lesser celandines, bluebells, primroses and snowbells sprouting amid the gorse and bracken.

  Atticus continued down the track, splashing through puddles of standing water and patches of thick, sticky mud. He saw Mack waiting by the bridge, leaning against it as she held up a pair of binoculars. She enjoyed watching the birds and the other wildlife and, as she swung the glasses around, he raised a hand in greeting. Bandit had seen her, too, and set off toward her at a flat sprint. Atticus grinned as the dog reached her and reared up, planting his muddy paws on her coat so that she might be persuaded to rub his ears. Atticus jogged down the slope to the bridge.

  “Sorry,” he said, gesturing to the mud that had been smeared across her Barbour jacket.

  “Worth every stain,” she said, ducking her head so that Bandit could press his snout into her neck.

  “He likes you,” Atticus said.

  Bandit lowered his paws to the ground and dashed away again, splashing through the brook and starting up the slope that led into a wooded enclosure.