The Sister Read online

  "You go on ahead, I'll catch you up. I want to check those two out," he said pointing at the couple across the street, as he crossed over. His colleague strode off, quickening his pace as he got further down the road.

  "Are you all right Miss?" he enquired.

  She didn't answer straight away; she tried, without success, to think of something witty to say so he wouldn't realise she was drunk.

  "Yes, I'm really tired."

  "I can see that," he said with a polite edge of sarcasm.

  "Do you know this man?"

  "Course I do! He's the one who had the fight earlier." She referred to it casually as if the policeman already knew about it. The stranger cringed.

  The officer looked away from her to the stranger, noticing the swollen right eye, the damage to his mouth. "How did that happen?" he said, fixing his gaze on the wounds as he took his notebook out.

  "I had a bit of an altercation over a spilt drink . . . no harm done. Looks worse than it is; we shook hands and had a drink together after." He jerked a thumb in her direction. "She's a nurse. I know her from the Hospital. I'm a porter there."

  The officer looked at her uniform and asked her again. "Are you sure you're all right Miss?"

  She started humming, 'The Girl is mine', her eyes lighting up as she suddenly exclaimed. "Michael!" she covered her mouth, surprised at the loudness of her voice. "Michael, that's his name. I keep forgetting. 'Course I'm all right! He's taking me home."

  "That's right. That's what I'm doing," the man said.

  "What's your full name and address, Michael?" The officer asked.

  Before he could answer, violent shouts from the disturbance further down the street drew the officer's attention, distracting him. The Constable broke into a jog, turning to call back.

  "Michael, make sure you get her home safely . . . okay?"

  "Oh, I will," said the stranger softly behind the officer's back. "I definitely will."

  Her left leg buckled, pitching her down and away from him. Catching her before she hit the pavement, 'Michael' manoeuvred her into the front passenger's side of the car with difficulty, brushing his hand across her breasts as he strapped her seat belt on. Although her eyes were closed, she wasn't actually asleep. She mumbled something unintelligible, and then sighed, exhaling slowly. Within moments, she began to snore.

  'Michael' started the engine.

  Ten minutes later, her head lolled and bucked with every pothole the car went over as it lurched its way down the dark lane, headlights bouncing up and down, illuminating the shadowy trees before coming to a halt. He turned the lights off, and the moon, almost full, bathed the car in its silvery light.

  For a moment, he watched her shallow breathing, and then he leaned over, inhaling her exhaled breath, running his hand up the inside of her thigh. She stirred. He hesitated, and then hooked a finger into her panties, pulling them to one side.

  "Huh?" She said groggily, "I hope you didn't do that on purpose . . ."

  Chapter 31

  Kathy Bird never made it back home that night. The weeks and months rolled by, turning into a long nightmare from which there was no awakening. The appeals and campaigns were in vain; they didn't turn up anything. The case even featured the following year on the pilot Crimewatch programme. Nobody came forward with any new or significant leads.

  After a year of endless campaigning, on the first anniversary of her disappearance, her mother broke down.

  "I can't take this anymore; she's gone hasn't she . . ." Her small shoulders looked frail, slumped in defeat. She shuddered as she took another breath. A deep sob racked her chest. "We're never going to see her again," she said it as a matter of fact, a strange light in her eyes.

  "Don't ever say that again." Kathy's father took her in his arms and held her. "She isn't dead. If she was, I'd know. I would feel it . . ."

  "You believe that?"

  "I believe it with all my heart . . ."

  Her lips found their way onto his. The surprise both of them felt, melted into a kind of urgency, a clinging to life and each other that they hadn't experienced since she'd disappeared. She began to act strangely as if in possession of a new vigour. He was unsure exactly what she was going through, but suspected from their frenzied and frequent couplings that she was hoping for a baby. Finally, he'd asked her as they lay in post sexual silence.

  "Yes, I want another little girl, or I'm going to go crazy . . ."

  "What if you do get pregnant, and it turns out to be a boy?"

  She rolled over onto her side and looked at him with absolute conviction. "It will be a girl."

  Her parents named her Stella because the name reminded them of the stars. Mrs Bird brought her up as far as she could tell exactly the same way as she did Kathy.

  Not long after learning to walk, Stella realised there was a room that was always kept shut. When she was tall enough to operate the door handle, her mother took her inside to satisfy her curiosity. "You have a sister; you look just like her, apart from your hair. She had dark hair and . . ." she told the little girl all about Kathy, every little thing she could think of.

  She stared at her mother and asked innocently, "If she is my sister, where is she?"

  Her mother gazed into the distance beyond the window. "She's out there somewhere, lost. We will find her one day, your father and I," her eyes misted with tears as she continued. "For now, all we have is that photograph, and you of course." She forced a smile. "She'll come home one day…"

  Stella did not recognise the look in her mother's eyes - not in those days - as she stared out of the window into far distant place. It would be years before she realised that her mother was lost, too, and that while Stella was young enough to depend on her, she was just distracted enough to continue to cope.

  As Stella got older, a fear grew up inside her mother. Terrified at losing her too; she lost faith in Kathy ever returning. It all proved too much. When she reached eighteen years of age, her parents killed themselves in a suicide pact.

  Chapter 32

  North Cornwall, July 1991

  The driver possessed photographic recall, or more accurately, an eidetic memory. His mind was like an on-board video camera. When he wanted to remember something vividly, something turned on in him and recorded it forever. It meant he could switch his voice to match any of a repertoire of famous actors, or any voice he chose from his considerable memory banks. It was why he never needed to take trophies. All the details – sight and sound; touch, taste, and smell, were only a moment of concentration away.

  Summer of 1967 . . . The last time he came here. Apart from its freshly painted appearance, the signpost looked the same, but he noticed that the directional pointer to the old mine had been removed. Few used to go in that direction anyway, now it would be less. Back then, most preferred the walk across the top from the other side of the hill.

  Ahead, the road shimmered with rising heat, silver phantom images of water pooled like distant oases, never getting any closer, eventually disappearing as the road changed direction.

  Soaring temperature levels charged the air with static. Sweat ran down his face in rivulets. The heat was making him cranky.

  A ferocious electrical storm had disturbed him as he slept in the car the night before. Alerted by a flickering flash of pale blue light, he'd sat up, half-dazed, listening to the thunder rumbling away in the distance and lighting a cigarette he waited for the rain. None came.

  A trader in just about anything, he was a travelling man, always doing a bit of this and that. An asbestos removal contractor by trade, he looked far too bulky for a job that was mostly carried out by smaller men. He felt like Gulliver on a few of the sites he'd worked on, the other guys were so small. Self-employed, it gave him an excuse to be places, and the dirty work a reason for keeping a few spare sets of work clothes in the boot. He criss-crossed the whole country, and soon became familiar with places he'd never have found otherwise.

  Sweet Mary, it's hot! The cloying heat enveloped
him like a cloak of steam. Even with all the car windows open, the inside was like an oven, the fan just pushing warm air around. He would have loved to floor the accelerator to get the air moving faster, but on this stretch of road the police often lurked in the bushes, stepping out with the speed gun and zapping any car doing more than 40 miles an hour. Although he was tempted, the thought of the police pulling him in, kept him on the limit.

  He reached over and pulled a cigarette out of the pack on the dashboard, and lit it with one eye on the road, the other on the cigarette. It made his eyes cross, and one stuck there, an ongoing residual effect of the lazy eye he'd suffered from as a kid. Afterwards, it ached as it always did, and he shook his head to clear the pain.

  He leaned forward to drop the lighter back in the tray; his shirt, damp with sweat, felt cold and uncomfortable when he sat back again. To and fro, he rocked, easing back against the seat several times, despite the discomfort, just to feel the coolness on his back.

  The first few deep drags burned the back of his throat as he inhaled, and though he knew it was a crazy thought, it helped to cool him down.

  He mused about the benefits of smoking. Cigarettes make so many things so much more tolerable. If you were down, a cigarette would lift you. In a temper, a cigarette would calm you down. After sex and drink, a cigarette was the best thing in the world, and if you combined all three … he grinned at the thought, then toyed with the order. Sex first, then a cigarette…

  The doctor recently told him that the amount of cigarettes he smoked would kill him for sure. That may be so, Doc, but I know someone who smoked all his life. He was told by a doctor to stop, and a few weeks later, he died of a heart attack. Giving up cigarettes killed him.

  "That won't be me," he said, surprised he'd said it aloud.

  Around a snaking bend in the road, halfway up the hill, a car park sat among the trees, three sides of it contained by man-made mud banks. A wooden sign pointed in the direction of several footpaths.

  He guessed that if anyone were walking today, it would be at the top, to catch the cooling breeze that always seemed to blow up there.

  Tired of driving, he found some shade, parked and closed his eyes.

  Too hot to settle, he gave up on trying to nap. A coffee might perk him up; he poured one from the thermos. It was so warm outside there was no steam. Fooled into thinking it wasn't that hot, the liquid scalded his lips. Mother of Shit! he spat through gritted teeth, and bunching his left fist, threatened the windscreen with it.

  "Jeez!" It took a lot of self-control to stop himself punching the screen out. Now he needed a cigarette.

  The coffee made him want to piss. Although there were a couple of other cars parked, and he hadn't seen anyone around, he decided to go into the bushes to urinate. He wouldn't want some old woman to say he flashed his cock at her. A smirk crossed his face at the thought. Would you be able to tell us what he looked like? "Well officer, I didn't actually see his face." Shaking himself off, he zipped up his fly.

  Destiny pulled him along the valley path. He wondered if the stream still ran on the same course… If the woods had changed. The demons of dark desire came alive at the memory of the naked girl and the others he'd met there. He suddenly remembered the boy. Did I give you bad dreams, kid? He decided the kid was too young to understand what he'd seen, but the old man . . . he'd given him the creeps. He'd looked straight at where he hid in the undergrowth. How did he know? Although he shook his head, he acknowledged that if it hadn't been for that, he might have been tempted to stay, and if he had . . . Yeah, did me a favour. He was back today; if any one should ask, he was watching for birds - his favourite pastime. You never know who you're going to bump into. The element of surprise was what he loved best.

  Half an hour later, he reached the broad shale beach, where the stream flattened out on a bend, before dropping away. The water gurgled, as it darted shiny and silver, through the rocks. The dense woods looked unchanged, except that someone had put up more clooties. This puzzled him; there were dozens of them tied in the branches of a whitethorn tree hanging over the bend in the stream. There wasn't a spring there. What did these damn ignorant, new age, seekers-after-something, think they were doing? Fighting back the urge to tear them down, he lit a cigarette. The smell of the woods set his heart thumping as a parade of memories started in his head, he felt himself becoming aroused. About to embark on a few minutes of fantasy, he unzipped himself, and then almost panicked when he heard female voices carried on the breeze. Tilting his head, he stood still, listening intently, tuning into the direction of the sound.

  He moved away from the undergrowth, and stopped in his tracks, retreating into the cover of the shade once more. Three girls were moving away from him. He looked at the stub of the cigarette, took one last drag, right down to the butt and flicking it away, started up the slope just inside the tree line, stalking them.

  Higher up, the path moved away from the trees leading to an open meadow of tall grass. From there, it climbed steeply up to the ridge. The stalker closed the gap with surprising speed, halving the distance between them. One girl lagged behind. The other two, clearly engrossed in conversation, marched on ahead, oblivious to the lengthening gap.

  He measured the distance to the top and gauged the pace with which they were walking.

  It was too risky. If he'd given in to reckless temptation every time the desire was on him, he would have been behind bars long before now for sure.

  Outlined by the sun shining through their thin summer dresses, the silhouettes of their bodies bound him in a spell. The leader girls were skinny; he'd no time for skinny girls. The other had fallen behind, now over a hundred yards from her friends. Fully developed, the shape of her excited him; the roundness, the curves, the gap at the top of her legs where the sun glared through the thin cotton dress. His brief masturbation stirred up feelings, which now overpowered him. The two girls disappeared over the lip at the top, out of sight. He knew it was too risky, but if he moved quickly…

  The long grass allowed him to creep close to her, just outside her peripheral vision. He avoided looking at her directly, just in case she got the feeling that someone was watching her.

  Despite his precaution, she turned quite suddenly and looked in his direction.

  He dropped out of sight instantly. A few seconds later, he peered out from his hiding place, heart hammering, and mouth watering. Too late to turn away from it now.

  He broke cover on her blind side, crossing the space between them like a lion closing in on its prey and then he was on her, drawing the cold steel tip of his knife across the skin of her face, she shivered at its touch. Sweet, plump, beautiful, within seconds he was inside her. The realisation she was a virgin drove him crazy; when the revulsion on her face registered with him, she only hastened the end.

  He started to choke the life out of her. What happened next took him aback, for a second she looked different, as if someone had swapped places with her. Those few decisive seconds saved her life. As he tightened his grip around her throat once more, a clear commanding voice shouted at him. "GET - OFF - HER!" The voice held no fear. It stopped him dead. He looked up sharply; he could have killed all three if he chose. That was what set him apart. He was clever. Sparking a manhunt didn't feature in his plans. Quickly turning away, he took off and ran, crashing and stumbling back to the car, his only thought was to get away. This time he'd fucked up, gone too close to the wire.

  It had been too risky; he shouldn't have gone for it; he knew that, but he'd gone for it anyway. Jeez! Out of control, head spinning - he couldn't focus. What just happened had never happened before. These were credible witnesses to his crime, not like the kid.

  Change unsettled him. Now it was inevitable. A fury rose within him, and it was hard to control. If he didn't get a grip, he would end up doing something stupid and all the years of meticulous care . . . undone by a few crazed moments. He had to get home; he would shave his face clean, cut his hair and dye it.

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sp; He roared out of the car park, out into the country lane. In a daze, driving faster than the road allowed, he pulled a cigarette from its pack, lit it and almost careered off the road.

  Deep inhalation, slow exhalation, deep, slow, calming . . . he wound his window down, to get air into the car, to cool down and clear his head.

  He arrived at a T-junction and turned left. He was now on a B road headed towards home.

  "Be careful now!" he hissed to himself. "Slow down. It's the last thing you want, bombing along drawing attention to yourself!"

  The police would be out looking soon, and he wanted to get as far away as possible from where he'd just been. He started getting angry, berating himself with a woman's voice. It startled him. His mother's voice!? Sweet Jesus, am I going crazy? If she'd kept up with her friends, it would never have happened.

  The more he tried, the harder it was to concentrate. He ran through the things he would have to do now. The job he had lined up. Can't take that now; she's fucked that up for you. No, wait, if you don't . . . Will somebody think . . . No - just get away. You can think it through later.

  That night as he lay in bed, he counted the way he always did, to bring his thoughts into order. He drifted afterwards until he thought about all the girls he'd ever known, albeit, most of them he'd known only briefly, playing through the different outcomes that might have been. It beats counting sheep. A few minutes of that and he would be asleep, but not tonight. Tonight he was thinking about the one that got away.

  In his entire career, it was only the second time there'd been witnesses, but it bothered him. The first time was sheer bad luck, and he never gave it a second thought. How could he have known that a kid would get lost and have half his family looking for him? No, this was different. He'd lost control, gone too far, and that disturbed him.

  They were probably all over her body right now, looking for hair, clothing fibres, bits of skin and worst of all – he'd shot his semen inside her. If he hadn't been disturbed, he would have carted her off, and they'd have had nothing. Still, they had to catch him first. He would make sure he was never careless like it again.