Why wouldn’t she give him the love he craved? The love he was owed? For the first time, anger flared in him. It could all be so perfect. It was so perfect. So why did she insist on denying him? She was an ungrateful little b—

As fast as his fury rose, he forced it back down again, striving to gain control of his raging emotions. She had behaved badly – very badly – but now was not a time to lose faith. He must be patient – there was no rush. She would come round. After all, time was on his side, not hers. One way or another, she would learn to love him again.

50

Ruby’s hands shook as she rifled through the pile of papers, digesting every horrifying word. She had read cards, letters, confessions from three women now – Roisin, a Pippa somebody and another girl who simply signed herself ‘I’. Three women who had been torn from their loved ones and dragged away to this strange Hell.

Roisin’s birthday card to her four-year-old son had made Ruby cry. She didn’t know this woman – had never met her – and yet even in spite of her own suffocating sense of terror, she had been moved by Roisin’s plight. It must have been horrific for her, lying down here alone, imagining her little boy calling for a mother who didn’t come. Did the boy think that his mother didn’t love him any more? That she had abandoned him? It was clear that Roisin had begged to be given a pen and paper, so she could write to her young son and explain her continued absence. But the cards and letters that she’d written had never reached the intended recipient. The cruelty of her captor’s actions in keeping Roisin here took Ruby’s breath away.

‘Pippa’’s testimony was in diary form. She had less to say, she was just marking the passage of time, trying to keep herself sane by detailing the different phases of her life down here with her captor. There had been arguments, abuse and, worse still, rapprochements. Pippa had clearly hated herself for what she had to do down here, what she had become, and Ruby could see why. In the end, she had had to put Pippa’s diary down – it presented a vision of her future which she wasn’t strong enough to contemplate.

Grim curiosity drove her on to ‘I’’s writings, but they turned out to be the worst of the lot. They were dated a little over a year ago and were obviously written after she had discovered Roisin and Pippa’s hidden letters and cards. This discovery had been a sledgehammer blow for ‘I’’s morale, robbing her of any resistance or hope. Her letters thereafter were a mixture of apologies to people she’d loved and wronged in her old life and long, rambling descriptions of her suffering and incarceration – records which she hoped would be found one day.

‘I’’s deepest fear was that her fate would never be known. That her parents would remain for ever in the dark about what had happened to their little girl. The last letter, dated from May, began in bleak mood, ‘I’ declaring her avowed belief that she would die in this cellar, before going on to offer her final thoughts, her final expressions of love, as she faced the end of her short life. Horrifically, she never managed to complete her goodbyes to her family – the green felt-tip pen that all the girls had been using finally running out before she could write her last words.

Each letter was like a physical wound to Ruby. Each word a death knell. Ever since her abduction, she had feared she was going to be her captor’s slave. Now she knew she was going to be his next victim.

51

Hidden in a remote interrogation suite, DC Sanderson set about her work in earnest. Helen had tasked her with absolute secrecy, so she’d lied to the rest of the team, telling them she was heading home with a headache. In fact, she had scooped up the impressive number of missing-persons files she’d amassed during the day and spirited them away to a forgotten part of the station that was awaiting refurbishment.

It was an odd, lonely space to be and Sanderson’s mood of disquiet was deepened by the numerous sad stories she encountered as she pored over the files. Family break-ups, child abuse, domestic violence – the various scenarios that had prompted these young people to go missing were uniformly depressing and yet the faces that stared up at her from the files were all smiling. Anxious relatives always gave their ‘best’ photos of their missing loved ones, photos that suggested happiness and hope. Sanderson suspected these moments were fleeting at best and probably wholly unrepresentative of the subject, who had in all likelihood fled, committed suicide or been murdered. And yet for all that, and in spite of Sanderson’s battle-hardened cynicism, the photos were still affecting. The beaming, optimistic faces proved that the subjects had been happy once, that at some point they had occupied a space that was joyful and forward-looking, before their lives caved in on them.

With each file, Sanderson’s spirits sank a notch lower. It wasn’t just the unpleasant details of these young women’s lives – though those certainly were upsetting – it was also the sheer volume of cases. Sanderson wasn’t naïve, she knew the statistics on teen runaways, she knew how many young women ended up walking the streets or worse to escape a difficult home life. But statistics are just numbers – they don’t mean very much until you add up the individual cases one by one, until you are confronted with tiny details of scores of young lives gone awry. She had only trawled Southampton, Portsmouth and Bournemouth’s missing-persons lists, as Helen had instructed, but that had proved enough – more than enough – to keep her busy for the day.

She was now down to the last few files and there were currently six individuals who gave Sanderson cause for concern. Cheryl Heath and Teri Stevens had the look, but were frequent runaways who usually resurfaced when the money ran out. So despite some residual concerns, Sanderson had made the decision to put them on the backburner for now. Which left Anna Styles, Roisin Murphy, Debby Meeks and Isobel Lansley.

There was no question that these girls bore a strong resemblance to Pippa Briers. Long, straight, raven-black hair, piercing blue eyes and something enigmatic in their expression. They were all somehow beguiling, hinting at deeper layers if you could only get to know them better. Their appearance was different for sure – some were punkish and low-rent, some straitlaced and professional – but they all inhabited their look with the same spirit. If Helen was right – if Pippa’s abductor was a serial offender following a pattern – then Sanderson was in no doubt he would be drawn to these vulnerable women, most of whom came from difficult backgrounds.

Even as Sanderson thought this, she found herself self-editing, bridling at her own euphemisms. Serial offender was a loose term that covered a multitude of sins and was generally used to reduce alarm by softening the reality of the situation. But there was no point dressing things up. If Helen’s hunch was right – and increasingly Sanderson felt that it was – then they weren’t pursuing a serial offender. They were hunting a serial killer.

52

Ruby smashed the brick down with all her force. Then she lifted it and brought it down again. She was in a frenzy, beating out the rhythm of her terror on the door that kept her locked inside.

The letters lay scattered where she’d dropped them. She had been unable to move for the best part of an hour after reading them – her head spinning with the darkest thoughts. The earrings that her captor had made her wear – they weren’t new. They were tarnished and damaged in places. What was so special about them? Had they … had they belonged to one of the other girls? Or to this Summer?