HOURS LATER, AVA AND HER sisters were in Town with their dad, looking for Christmas presents, and their trek culminated at the Rag Market. Ava usually loved the Birmingham Rag Market. It was a city within the city: streets upon streets of stalls. Colour was everywhere: the wares, the produce, the language, the clothes. The smells. Voices rose to the ceiling where echoes collided.
But Ava wasn’t enjoying the bustling market. She wasn’t interested in anything. The noise and crowds bothered her, even scared her. If someone brushed against her by accident, she wanted to scream. She couldn’t enjoy the lights and the excitement of the crowds, she was too busy thinking and worrying. Since her last visit to see Neville Coleman, she hadn’t slept well and she’d lost her appetite. She couldn’t escape the twin hunters of dread and denial that were stalking her at close quarters, threatening to leap on her and drag her down. She had to lock her suspicions and her fear inside while ensuring that her stress didn’t show on the outside.
She needed to speak to John immediately but immediately was out of reach.
In a queue for hot dogs, Ava observed a big brother teasing his little sister, making her cry. Little kids were rarely frightening to big kids. Children were frightened by other children the most; not by creatures in nightmares, horror films or the-thing-under-the-bed. In daylight, children knew such things didn’t exist. Bullies were always going to be the real monsters and children could get away with murder simply because they were children, like Mary Bell and . . .
Ava went numb. The name was the key to unlock her.
Mary Bell.
Clinical lycanthropy was, if anything, secondary to something else entirely. Having this disorder wasn’t the reason the killer hadn’t been caught – he’d evaded capture by donning the best disguise of all. Everyone had been looking in the wrong direction because they’d been searching for the most obvious demographic, the typecast murderer: a grown-up.
Ava stood in the queue and wondered how she’d been so stupid.
The kid killer was another kid.
And she thought she knew which kid.
* * *
During times of fear and misery, the last people on earth Ava considered running to for help were her parents. But who else could she turn to? Mrs Rose was on maternity leave, and she trusted no other teachers. Her grandparents were too hard on one side and too soft on the other. Plus, none of them would believe her. Ava had been in denial the whole time. The Wolf was another child, a teenager – one of their tribe. Nobody would suspect a child of killing children. Mary Bell was old news best forgotten. The Wolf knew every inch of the area because his job took him all over it – he knew everybody and everybody knew him. He attended the local school and he knew his peers’ siblings – especially those with younger brothers. He was charming and he knew just how to inveigle his way into children’s trust.
Nathaniel Marlowe.
There was a conviction that played on a loop in her head like a pop song: Nathaniel is good. He looks out for me. It’s not Nathaniel. It can’t be.
Absolutely everything made him the principal suspect. Who else could make a den on Banlock Farm other than the heir to its tragedy?
Nathaniel Marlowe had to be related to Neville Coleman. DS Delahaye had told her that Mr Coleman’s grandson had been adopted in another county but what if he’d somehow come back? She couldn’t guess how but what if?
Nathaniel Marlowe had to be Neville Coleman’s grandson. And every time she tried to touch on what that might mean in relation to the murders, she shied away from it.
Nathaniel is good. He looks out for me. It’s not Nathaniel. It can’t be.
Nathaniel was a murderer.
She balked at this revelation because it was hard to see the worst in someone who always showed her his best but . . .
The daisies placed on Tisiphone’s grave and, on Zasha’s, the cat skull.
Had he been responsible for the other skulls and bones found at Banlock Farm? She closed her eyes. Yes. Had he been the person who had returned the black teddy bear to his grandfather’s possession? Yes.
And he shared exactly the same kind of heterochromia iridum as Mr Coleman who was the owner of Banlock Farm.
Nathaniel Marlowe was Neville Coleman’s grandson.
Nathaniel Marlowe was the Wolf.