WITH FIZZ, AVA WAS ALMOST invincible, and because he was aggressive towards men, Colleen allowed Ava to walk him whenever she liked.
Ava liked 5 a.m. The excitement of going out in all weathers, alone with her dog, at a time when few other people were about, was addictive. Ava could take stock of the day before, and prepare for the day ahead.
It was a Sunday and most people enjoyed a lie-in. Ava, emboldened by her short conversation with Mr Coleman, was going to Banlock Farm to see if she could find the three graves pictured in the Polaroid she’d pilfered. She just wanted to see if she could find them, infused as she was this bright morning with an implacable curiosity. She really wanted to discover the names inscribed on them.
Fizz pulled Ava across the road to the Quarry side and immediately found something reeking to roll in. Dogs loved rolling in crap, and Fizz was the king of crap discovery. Ava prevented him from sliding into what had once been a cat. She discerned that the cat had been dead for a week or so, but the hot weather and storms must have caused its decomposition cycle to accelerate as it was mostly skeletonised. She couldn’t possibly tell how it had died but she made a note in her Red Book anyway, which she always carried with her on her walks. Fizz pulled to move on. Ava may have retired her official roadkill body farm, but Fizz gave her cover for a more casual form of study.
Ava checked her watch – she still had ages before she’d have to return home. She couldn’t dawdle; she needed her wits about her. It was far too early for a girl to be out walking in the boonies but she was on alert, with her blue pencil in her pocket and the furious Fizz beside her.
It was a year ago – almost to the day – that she’d followed Mickey to Banlock Farm. Ava saw the mouth of the driveway that led up to the farm, and her breath quickened. Fizz caught her anticipation and pulled harder. The earth was even more rutted due to the heavy diggers passing this way to plough up and knock down what was left of it. It smelled of brick dust, of turned earth, of green gone wild – but not death.
They scrambled up the short incline engulfed in brambles where scrub grass and wildflowers fought for the sun. Ava gazed across the field beyond. The concrete pillars of long-gone outbuildings remained untouched. She climbed over the fence (Fizz shuffled under it) and together they ran, sliding to a halt just before the markers behind the kennel ruins – a small pet cemetery.
The forensic team and police must’ve been here to find further evidence, Ava assumed, but lost interest when they discovered nothing of value. There hadn’t been heavy feet wearing a path into the earth for years.
A little further back was a small but dense copse with a daisy path leading to a hollow, which she was certain led to another, secret place.
She bent to enter the arched portal, Fizz by her side, and they stepped into an antechamber created from tree branches and hawthorn bushes; its vaulted ceiling bristling with leaves so thick only spatters of sunlight reached the earth. It was quiet and the wind had no voice here, lending a peace usually found in chapels.
Further in and along, past a bush that grew in the centre of the aisle, she spotted them: the same three graves pictured in the Polaroid. There were two headstones for humans, and one with a smaller marker at its side. Ava saw the larger stones were of marble, white as Polo mints, the roughly chiselled letters were shallow, uneven. The smaller plaque was made of wood painted white.
The grave on the left had inscribed: Beloved Sophia Coleman – 6th September 1910–15 May 1960.
The stone in the middle: Tisiphone Coleman – 17th April 1949–12th November 1967.
The smallest marker had simply Zasha scribed in black paint.
When she saw what was placed on Tisiphone’s and Zasha’s graves, she froze. The hairs on her nape rose, and goose pimples popped their way along her arms. On Tisiphone’s grave was a bouquet of large daisies tied with string. They looked freshly plucked, no doubt from the verge outside this hallowed chamber.
On Zasha’s grave was a cat skull.
It was placed in the middle of the grave, and its contours speckled with dappling sunlight. It had been cleaned out of all of its tissue, its pate stained with blood and the mandible still attached by dried tendons.
Fresh daisies. A cat skull. If it had been just the daisies, Ava would have been curious about them but would’ve dismissed them. Flowers on a grave were not unusual. The cat skull, however, set off alarm bells. Ava deduced, with a fear that settled in her belly like solid rock, that the killer of cats and wildlife at Banlock Farm, the killer of Mickey and Bryan, and possibly Gary, had returned to visit these graves. And this meant that the people lying within them were important to the killer. They were still loved enough to be honoured with small gifts that were symbolic in some way. And the killer had been around here recently. In fact, a small voice whispered with glee in her mind, He might be still here! And you’re trespassing!
Mickey had trespassed on Mr Coleman’s land. He’d been killed on it. ‘Get a grip, you silly cow, it might not be the killer at all,’ she murmured to herself as Fizz sniffed each grave. ‘You’re jumping to conclusions, the worst-case scenario.’ But, just in case, I will let the police know. She’d contact DS Delahaye – not as Miss Misty, but a simple letter sent direct to his desk.
Her hand felt for her blue pencil. She couldn’t stop looking at the cat skull. Delahaye had told her that Neville Coleman’s family were dead and he was the only one left but if that was so, who was visiting these secret graves? It could be a friend who had loved them too who came to pay their respects, but the cat skull seriously unnerved her. Did Neville Coleman steal out of the care home at night without being noticed and come here? It was unlikely but not impossible. The dead women in the graves shared Neville’s surname – wife and daughter? Family. It was the cat skull that made Ava suspect that the killer came back here. And the daisy bouquet? Daisy crowns on a dog’s skull.
‘Let’s go,’ she murmured. Ava ran across the field with Fizz jump-running to catch up, the undulating grass whipping at his legs.
At a distance, Ava turned to face the gravestone nook, invisible to anyone not looking for it. Having met Neville Coleman, she didn’t really think he could be the killer, but perhaps her bias towards old people being harmless was working against this possibility. Look at Albert Fish, the so-called Werewolf of Wysteria, who had been a child-eating killer in his sixties. Perhaps Mr Coleman was entangled within the horror but unaware of it, his dementia shielding him from its sordid reality – unless he was using dementia as a cover. After all, a physically fit old man could easily make the walk from the hospital to this farm, especially under cloak of night.
If she’d made it in without seeing another person, she bet the killer could too.