As Dan went into the living room, he saw the remnants of the night before. There were papers scattered across the floor, dirty glasses alongside. His computer was on, the light on his printer blinking red. She’d used up all the paper.
At least the place looked lived in.
He caught his reflection in a mirror. His hair was dishevelled and there were dark rings under his eyes, his stubble showing. It was too early for this.
He opened the curtains. ‘Let’s have some light,’ he said, before wincing at the brightness of the sun, low and sharp along the water, the old mill further along the canal still in silhouette.
She passed him a coffee and told him to sit down. ‘You’re very good at telling me what to do. Now, it’s my turn.’
He did as he was ordered, as Jayne knelt on the floor to gather up the papers before she joined him on the sofa.
‘I know you think the idea of Leoni killing children is crazy, but it’s nothing new,’ she said, waving the papers at him. ‘Children have been killing other children for centuries. We’ve all heard of James Bulger, tortured and killed by two angel-faced ten-year-olds. That was just a few years before Rodney’s case, but there are so many others. Take Mary Bell.’
‘I’ve heard of her, but don’t know much about her.’
‘Oh, she was a real young psycho. She killed two small boys: one, four years old, and the other, three. This was back in the sixties, in Newcastle, when she was just eleven. It was sadistic stuff, and she revelled in it. She went to the home of the first boy she killed, and when she was told that he was dead, she asked to see him in his coffin. She’d scratched her initials into the body of the three-year-old. Can you imagine that, at eleven?’
‘What reason did she give?’
‘She didn’t really, but she had a really bad upbringing. Neglected by her parents, abused at times by clients who paid for sex with her mother, but that doesn’t explain everything. She lived in a poor part of town, with a lot of people having social problems, but they didn’t go around killing toddlers. Mary was different though. Cold, manipulative. Do you know what she said to the guards who were looking after her? “I like hurting things that can’t fight back.” Can you imagine that? Look at Mary Bell and then look at Leoni Walker and the pattern fits. William and Ruby were both younger than her, less able to fight back. And what about the boy who killed himself? Quiet, sensitive, a victim of school bullies. His whole life was about not fighting back.’
Dan looked through the pieces of paper Jayne was thrusting into his hands. ‘But Leoni and David were friends, attracted by the feeling of being outsiders.’
‘He’ll have stood out like a beacon to her,’ she said. ‘A toy to play with, but children get bored with their toys, and murders like this happen regularly and all over the world. Take these news reports.’ She passed over another couple of printed sheets taken from online newspapers, the pictures showing a teddy bear and candles, the remnants of a vigil. ‘A ten-year-old boy from a small place called Ljungby in Sweden killed a four-year-old boy, strangled him with a skipping rope, just for the hell of it. We don’t know his name, because he was too young to be prosecuted in Sweden, but it shows that it happens. And Scandinavia’s a real hotbed for it. In Norway, two six-year-olds beat and strangled a five-year-old girl to death, just a few years before William and Ruby were murdered in Brampton.’
‘Okay, I get the fact that children sometimes kill, but that doesn’t mean Leoni did.’
‘It doesn’t, but it means the police should have looked closer at her. They saw the obvious, that Rodney was the predator, because of all the things that linked him, and he dumped the body, but they didn’t consider the alternative, that he was just covering up for his daughter. Remember Chris Overfield, Ruby’s brother? He knows it wasn’t Rodney, and he told the police that but was talked out of getting involved because it might derail the case. But it should have just created a new case, a new suspect. Perhaps Mark Roberts followed the same trail I have and it cost him his life?’
‘What’s Leoni’s motive though?’
‘There isn’t one, and that’s the whole point. That was the thing with all these kids, and there are plenty more. With adults, you begin to understand, or even those teenagers who’ve reached puberty, as if somewhere in the growing-up process the wires became crossed. A twisted sexual drive is the usual explanation, or a psychosis, hard to control, a compulsion. It all fits because we can understand it, but with the younger killers we can’t understand it, because it feels like boredom, nothing more. Here.’ She passed some more articles across.
‘How many have you got?’
‘Oh, plenty. The next one, Amarjeet Sada, was an eight-year-old boy from India who murdered three babies. Strangled one cousin, then bludgeoned another to death. He was only caught when he murdered a neighbour’s baby. Another one,’ and she passed Dan some more printed sheets, ‘Eric Smith. A red-headed thirteen-year-old who battered to death a four-year-old boy, smashed in his skull with rocks and then posed the body. He went into the police station and offered to help, as if he enjoyed the fuss.’
Dan held up his hands. ‘All right, I get it, plenty of children kill.’
‘But they all have similar traits. Loners who don’t fit in, often from families where they are neglected. Eric Smith was bullied by the other children and spent a lot of time on his own. If you look at the pictures from his court hearings, or even now, he’s dead behind the eyes. I’ve met Leoni’s mother and she’s just a selfish drunk. Rodney was out working and Leoni was quiet, introspective, and neglected. It takes a perfect combination to make a killer, but it’s the truth no one likes to acknowledge. Going back to the James Bulger case, what was the most shocking aspect? The death of a child, or that he was killed by two young boys just for the fun of it?’
‘The latter, I suppose.’
‘There you have it. That’s why Leoni was ignored. Rodney was the better fit. A twisted child killer. And do you know what the really sad thing is?’
‘Go on.’
‘They didn’t have to be like that. Mary Bell grew up to be a good mother and responsible adult. Some of the ones from Scandinavia went on to lead normal lives. All they wanted from the start was just some good old-fashioned love and attention, but they never got it. Just like Leoni.’
Dan drained his coffee as he thought about what Jayne had said. ‘And if no one knew it was Leoni all along, her behaviour wasn’t challenged,’
‘Exactly. She was shunted from relative to relative and then dumped onto the streets to find her own way. She never got that love and attention she needed. She changed her methods, that’s all, and with her boyfriend in Wakefield, she found a perfect method. A slow torture, where she got to really enjoy the process, nudging him towards suicide.’
‘We need to find Leoni,’ he said, more animated now. ‘She ended up here, in Highford, but dropped off the radar. If we locate her, we can see what else she’s been up to, see whether there’s a pattern. If we can show that Mark must have been on her tail, we start to create a new suspect, which makes Nick’s story ring true.’
Before Jayne could say anything else, Dan’s phone rang. It was Barbara. ‘I was sorry to hear of your office, but the trial is close by. Have you got any news for me?’
Dan pondered on what to say. There was something about her he couldn’t quite pin down. ‘I’d rather talk in person.’
‘I’m in my hotel,’ she said, and then she hung up.
He turned to Jayne. ‘Good manners aren’t Barbara’s thing.’
‘She’s a grieving mother.’
‘We’ll see.’ He lifted his cup, now empty. ‘I’ll need some more of this, because it’s going to be a long day.’