‘Shall we sit down, Claire?’ Kim asked, stepping towards the doorway to the lounge.
Claire allowed herself to be ushered into the room and took a seat on the two-seater sofa. Kim took the single chair, and Bryant stood just outside the doorway.
Kim turned towards Claire and leaned forward in the most open and non-judgemental stance she could think of.
‘Claire, we need to ask you a couple of questions about your relationship with Grace.’
She looked genuinely perplexed, which gave Kim no comfort in having to press on.
‘I know the two of you are close but is there any time you’ve lost your temper with her?’
‘Absolutely. There are times when I snap. I’m a single parent, still grieving and I’m only human.’
Kim felt the unease grow in her stomach.
‘Have you ever lashed out or pushed—?’
‘Get out,’ Claire said, standing up and pointing towards the door.
Kim ignored her and remained seated.
‘How dare you try and twist my words? When I said snapped, I meant verbally. Sometimes I’ve shouted when it wasn’t necessary. I may have overreacted occasionally.’
‘But never physically?’ Kim asked evenly.
‘Never,’ Claire said, sitting back down.
‘I’m sorry we have to ask, but Grace has this bruise – it’s a big one – on her left arm.’
Claire appeared confused for a second until the fog in her memory cleared.
Kim raised an eyebrow as Claire lifted her T-shirt as high as her lowest rib. ‘Does it look a bit like this one?’
‘Similar,’ Kim said, and waited.
‘Paintballing, last week – and before you ask if Grace is too young, they do special days for kids’ events. It was a classmate’s birthday. They take extra precautions but nothing can defend against a twelve-year-old little shit who wants to break the rules. Got us both.’
Kim was both relieved and curious in equal measure.
‘You thought I’d done that to her?’ Claire asked.
‘We had to ask. We hope you understand.’
Claire looked as though she wanted to argue the point but didn’t have the energy.
‘Claire, has Grace ever had such bruising visible before?’
She shook her head. ‘Not that I can think of. Why?’
Because that means Steven Harte had to have seen Grace some time since the paintballing event to feel that she was being mistreated.
‘Claire, there’s something I need you to do for me and it may be very important.’
Her earlier defensiveness was forgotten as her eyes lit up with the prospect of doing something to help.
‘I need a list of every place the two of you have been since the day that Grace got the bruise. I need the day and the times as close as you can get them.’
‘Okay, I can do that but…’
‘Trust me, it’ll help,’ Kim said, standing.
Harte had to have seen her sometime between the paintballing day and Monday lunch time, when she’d been abducted from the day-care centre.
If there was any way they could catch Steven Harte on CCTV at any one of the locations, it could be enough to rattle him into revealing something.
Kim left the house with a feeling of relief at the explanation offered them by Grace Lennard.
You couldn’t always tell the kind of person you were dealing with. She had spoken to people not knowing they were murderers, rapists, armed robbers so good was the disguise they adopted, but her gut had told her that Claire Lennard had done nothing wrong. Just as her gut told her that Steven Harte most definitely had.
Fifty-Seven
‘I’ve got one,’ Stacey called out. Right after putting the phone down to the boss, she had resumed her search for more potential victims.
‘So have I,’ Penn cried out straight after.
‘Well, aren’t I just the party pooper then?’ Alison added.
‘Eight-year-old Paula Stiles,’ Stacey continued. ‘Abducted fourteenth of August in 2000 from a day trip to a wildlife park in the Cotswolds. She was on a trip with twenty-six other kids from a children’s home in Evesham. Oh, Jeez, look at that face,’ she added, turning her screen.
‘Just as pretty as the others,’ Alison agreed. ‘It’s in the parameters of his favourite dates, and she was in the care system.’
‘Apparently, there was no family member to do the public appeal, and it was done by one of the care workers who actually got her age wrong.’
A sense of sadness stole over Stacey for that fact alone. Who had been waiting for this child to come back? Who had been praying for her safe return? Who had been crying into their pillow because of her absence? However fond the staff had been of Paula Stiles, they’d had another two dozen kids at least to take care of.
‘Bloody hell,’ Alison said. ‘Who the devil did the kid have to come home to?’
‘She didn’t. That’s the point,’ Stacey said, feeling a rage begin to burn within her. All these little girls just being picked off as though they were nothing, as though someone felt they had the right to just pluck them from their lives.
‘Okay,’ Penn said, moving around pieces of paper. ‘Should we continue along the same timeline of him keeping them a year?’
‘I think we have to,’ Stacey said. ‘Lexi Walters was taken in ’98 and buried in Hawne Park one year later. Same time frame as the ones he brought back.’
‘Okay, Harte only worked on one project with Butler in the year following Paula Stiles’s disappearance.’
‘And?’
‘Well, let’s just say the boss is gonna love this one.’
Fifty-Eight
‘Really, guv?’ Bryant asked, as they pulled into the car park of Wyley Court on the outskirts of Bewdley.
‘Well, it would suit the history of the place, wouldn’t it?’
‘Oh yeah, the missus came here a couple of years back and it gave her the heebie-jeebies for days.’
‘Bryant, what exactly is a heebie-jeebie?’
‘Dunno, but I’m sure they had a hit with “Night Fever” or something.’
Kim rolled her eyes in response.
Wyley Court was an Italianate mansion built in the seventeenth century on the site of a former manor house.
It was sold in the eighteenth century to the Denleys of Northumberland. The family appeared to live relatively peacefully for a couple of years until John Denley began philandering around the local area. One night, in a fit of jealous rage, Eleanor Denley cut the throats of all four of her children before throwing herself from the roof of the building. Unable to bear the loss, John Denley had gifted the house to the village along with a sizeable donation. Trustees from the village were appointed to oversee the upkeep.
When the money had begun to dwindle, the clever Victorians had attracted paying visitors with tales of the macabre and ghostly sightings of the Denley children. The ground floor had been turned into a museum celebrating all things horrific, showcasing the most horrendous murders and attracting visitors from around the world. Over time the site had become known as a paranormal hotspot and now hosted all kinds of ghost-hunting teams that performed vigils and seances.