Chapter 37

DCI Kyle arrived a little after 10 o’clock, “we’d have been earlier, but for a slight sat nav failure,” he laughed, looking at Terry.

“It’s a good job you didn’t,” Millie told him as she led them into the staff common room, “the rest of the girls have only just left. They’ll be back around 6, so that’s your window.”

“That should be fine, we just need Gabbie to look at some photos and video clips and tell us where they fit on the 3D model Terry’s created, a few hours work, but I know how they like to chat, so probably closer to 8 hours.”

“I’ll try to keep them in check,” Millie smiled.

“Are you stopping?” Kyle asked.

“I’m afraid I have to, while they’re here, I have to be here, as far as the law goes, I’m their parent while they’re in school.”

‘Super, well I congratulate you on your parenting skills, they’re excellent girls, if a little chatty at times.”

“They’re utterly besotted with each other, and love makes you a little crazy,” Millie replied wistfully.

“Ahh yes, I remember that when I was their age.”

“Mmm, I wish I did, and that takes me back to what we were talking about late last night, which is where I’ll leave that topic and fetch Gabbie and Lucy. There’s coffee and pastries on the table over there, Harry’s left a box of every conceivable lead to connect your computer to the big TV on the wall.”

“Thanks Ms Warner...”

“Millie, please.”

“Thanks Millie, I’m Kyle, Terry’s crawling about on the floor and Darcy is already helping herself to pastries.”

“She’s got the right idea, once Lucy gets here, you’ll have to fight for them.”

Lucy was just finishing some English prep when Millie knocked on their door, “Oh, your mate DCI Kyle must be here, Gabbie. Are you ready?”

“Kind of...” Gabbie called from the bathroom.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, I’m kind of ready, but I’m in the middle of an anxiety poo, and I don’t know how long this is going to take me.”

“They’re here to see you Gabbie...”

“I know,” Gabbie replied plaintively.

“Should I invite them all up here so you can work from the toilet?”

“Mmm, I don’t think they’ll all fit in here.”

“Exactly. Look, why don’t you clean yourself then come downstairs, if you need to dash to the toilet there’s one near the kitchens.”

“Will you hold my hand, please?”

“While you poo?”

“No silly, when we’re working downstairs.”

“Will you wash it first?”

“Of course...”

A few minutes later, they joined Millie, Kyle and his team in the staff common room. Lucy put a selection of pastries on a plate while Kyle introduced everyone, then Lucy brought the plate and two cups of coffee to the table as Terry explained what he needed Gabbie to do.

“I’ve got dozens of photos and video clips on my laptop, as I show you each image...”

“Are the images ... err ... messy?” Gabbie asked.

“In what way,” Terry asked, puzzled by what she meant.

“I think she means are there any bodies in the photos,” Lucy advised.

“Ahh, yes. In a few, but the bodies are in the main very old, so they’re mostly bones.”

“Ahh yes, I think I can cope with that.”

“Excellent, and we’ll take plenty of breaks so you can relax, get some air or whatever. So, as you look at each image or video, I’d like you to tell me as best as you can, where it is. I’ll put a big 3D plan of the house on the TV, you tell me where the photo is from the grid over the house.”

“Excuse me,” Millie interrupted, “if you, or some other police people took the photos and videos, don’t they know where they were when they took the photos?”

“Ahh, you’d think that wouldn’t you. All the videos and photos were stored on a couple of laptops, and we’d noted the locations and stuff on the laptops and in physical notebooks. The laptops and notebooks were lost in the fire, we’re lucky the cameras we use automatically upload everything to our network, or we’d have lost these as well.”

“Ahh, I see...” Gabbie replied quietly, “about the fire, do you know what caused it?”

“We’d installed a big generator in the basement to power some of the heavy equipment we were going to use to break up the floor down there. As best as we can tell, someone plugged the lights into the wrong outlet on the generator, they got too much power and blew up.”

Gabbie looked relieved as she glanced across at Lucy, “so it wasn’t me.”

“Oh, we know it wasn’t you, Gabbie.”

“You see, on Friday we were doing an exercise my therapist told me about. We went into a trance and told all the people who abused me to leave me alone. All but one of them disappeared, when we got to Charles, my birth father, he kicked over a can of something and set himself and the house on fire. This would be roughly the time the real fire started.”

“OK, well that’s not something I hear every day. Have you spoken to your therapist about this?”

“Yes, she said it was something like a live premonition, if there is such a thing. I have some psychic abilities, they’re strongest when I’m stressed, and Lucy acts as an amplifier. I had this overwhelming feeling of dread the day Katherine killed Charles, that was the first time it happened.”

“You said you were banishing the people who abused you, is that right?”

“Yes, we sat in the dark and thought really hard, and then we were both in the basement and all the people were there, we named them one by one and told them we knew what they’d done to me, and they can’t hurt me anymore, and one my one they faded away and now my head is clear.”

“You’ve given us some names; 13 I think so far. Are there more?”

“I remembered 22 people altogether, including my birth parents...” Gabbie replied.

“I’ve got them written down in our room,” Lucy added, “with a basic description that will help you identify them in your files.”

“They’re all dead though, every single one of them,” Gabbie told them.

“It’ll be handy if we have the names, so we can cross reference them.”

“Gabbie, can you fetch the list, it’s in my Riverdale notebook at the side of the bed. I’ll update Kyle on what we found out last night. If I do it you won’t have to remember everything again.”

“Thanks Lucy, you’re an angel,” Gabbie replied as she almost ran out of the room.

“OK, so here’s what happened last night, Millie was there, she witnessed everything. Gabbie was chatting about some nice memories of the house and grounds. She was very relaxed and just slipped into a trance, mid-sentence almost. One minute she was awake, the next she was actually at home, watching Chelcey, Chelcey’s mum and Charles from up in a tree.

“I asked her if she was in the room and she said, ‘I’m in the tree, silly, that’s why I can see Charles and Chelcey and Chelcey’s mum.’ She then went on to describe Charles handing Chelcey a spade, I remembered how you told us about Chelcey burying bodies, so I woke Gabbie the way Sylvie and Alison, the lady who hypnotised her, showed me.

“At the time it’s like Gabbie didn’t remember anything that happened, then a few minutes later it all came back, and she remembered Jordan was there and they both saw Charles kill Chelcey’s mum, then she told us about a time Charles whipped her and Jordan. Up to now she’s been sure Jordan was never abused, but that time he was, and he was almost raped but a noise from upstairs interrupted him and Gabbie took Jordan back to her room.”

Kyle thought for a moment before replying, “OK, so we think we’ve found Charity, that’s Chelcey’s mum. She showed us a grave she remembers digging soon after she arrived, that’s about 5 years ago she thinks, although she’s very vague about times and dates. We’re waiting for DNA tests to confirm. Regarding DNA tests, Alexa is Charles’s, and so is Chelcey.”

“Ahh, I thought Alexa would be his ... hang on, did you just say Chelcey is Gabbie’s sister?”

“Yes, we wondered about why he let her live in the grounds instead of killing her once she was too old for his tastes, so to speak, so I had the lab compare Chelcey’s DNA with Charles. It’s not as improbable as it sounds, travellers visit the same places year after year.”

“Oh fuck,” Lucy groaned as she slumped back in her chair, “how do we tell Gabbie?”

“Tell me what?” Gabbie asked as she handed Lucy her notebook.

“Ahh, you like Chelcey don’t you?” Lucy asked.

“Yes, it’s so sad, she’s a lovely girl, but a bit, err, slow. Can I say that, is it allowed?”

“It’s not really a term we use anymore,” Millie cringed, “but we know what you mean.”

“You feel a kinship with her,” Lucy continued, “and you want to help her.”

“Yes! I’ve always felt a link to Chelcey, we both suffered at his hands.”

“Well ... you see, the link, it’s err, real, you see. She’s your half-sister.”

“What!” Gabbie cried, “he’s Chelcey’s father? How did that happen?”

“Well...” Lucy started, but Kyle broke in to save her the trouble.

“Travelling folk, err, travel along the same routes year after year, stopping at the same places pretty much at the same time each year. I’m willing to bet Charity, that’s Chelcey’s mum by the way, and her family stopped off in your town every year, and Charles will have known this and preyed on the group. I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t some more of Charity’s family buried around the grounds. We don’t think she was ever reported missing, but that’s not uncommon in their community, people go missing all the time and their family just assume they’ve wandered off somewhere different.”

“Charity looked young in my trance, between our age and Millie. I don’t know if my trance visions are accurate or if I change them a little.”

“Don’t worry,” Kyle replied, smiling pleasantly, “you won’t need to testify about any of this, so the accuracy of your memories and trances won’t be a problem. An accurate timeline is difficult, and we’ve still not found Chelcey’s birth certificate, there’s a chance her birth was never registered. As best we can work out is Chelcey disappeared from school 5 years ago, she’s 14 now, we think, so was probably around 9 in your vision last night. We also have a similar problem with Charity, we don’t think her birth was registered either...”

Kyle was interrupted by a phone call, “ahh, I need to take this, won’t be a second.”

“You can go through that door into the kitchen,” Millie advised, “there’s nobody in there.”

Darcy took over as Kyle left the room, “OK Gabbie, my job today is to place the images on the map, so after you’ve looked at each photo or video, I’d like you to tell me where it is in the building. I’ve put our 3D model on the big screen, we can zoom in on any part of it, you just tell me where and I can make the section fill the screen so we can drop the photos or video clip in exactly the right place.”

“Oh, this is so cool...” Gabbie exclaimed as she and Lucy walked to the screen on the wall over the pastries, “can you zoom in on this bit?” She asked, pointing at a section on the top floor above the front door.

“We can go inside the house,” Darcy replied, “like this.”

“Oh wow!” Gabbie and Lucy cried as the found themselves looking at the landing, they could see the floorboards and peeling wallpaper that had already been inserted, “so you know where some bits fit already?”

“Yes, we have some records, so Terry and I filled in some sections yesterday.”

“We can’t get where I want to be from here, can you take us down to the kitchen, then up the stairs.”

“To the servants’ quarters?” Darcy asked, innocently.

“Yes, but we didn’t have servants, we’re going to my bedroom.”

“Oh shit,” Darcy gasped, “they had you sleeping in there, it was so cold and damp when I took these photos.”

“Yeah, do you see why I’m so glad to be rid of that place.”

“I’m amazed you didn’t get pneumonia.”

Kyle returned, slipping his phone into his jacket pocket as he strode into the room.

“So, that’s the DNA test results back, the body we found is Charity, Chelcey’s mum. We also got another surprise. Charity is also a match for Charles.”

“What the fuck!” Gabbie exclaimed, “Oh my god, so Alexa was his daughter, and his granddaughter? How does that work?”

“It’s not all that common, but I’ve come across it before. It’s definitely not a good idea, a child born from a brother and sister has an elevated risk of birth defects, a child whose parents and grandparents are blood relatives has a doubly elevated risk.”

“Alexa was lovely, and from the few times I saw her, she was probably smarter than Chelcey. All this is utterly heart-breaking, I so wish he wasn’t dead so I could look into his eyes as he got sent to prison for the rest of his life.”

Lucy wrapped her arm around Gabbie, “he’s gone, he can’t hurt you anymore, we saw him go.”

“If that’s the case, why do I keep getting reminded about him.”

“In time the world will forget he ever existed, but for a few weeks I’m afraid he’ll be all over the news, so I suggest we don’t watch telly for a while.”

“You’ll keep me safe?”

“I’ll always keep you safe Gabbie.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, kissing Lucy quickly before she took a deep breath and turned to Kyle, “OK, I’m ready, hit me with the first picture.”

Terry and Darcy turned to their laptops, Terry brought up a short video clip, A tracking shot along a corridor, we could see unlit lighting fixtures on the wall, a few paintings, dull with grime and age, and a hole in the wall, about chest height, halfway along the corridor.

“The hole is new,” Gabbie observed, “at least it wasn’t there last time I walked along here.”

“We made the hole,” Kyle replied.

“I walked around the house with an ultrasonic scanner,” Darcy added, “we used it to detect disturbances in the walls, every time we found one we marked the wall and someone followed behind and made the holes.”

“Ahh, I see,” Gabbie replied quietly, “it’s a good job I wasn’t interested in keeping the house, I’d need a lot of filler to fix the holes. Anyway, can you wind back a few seconds, I want to double check something.”

She waited while Terry wound the video back and replayed the last few seconds.

“Ahh yes, so many of these corridors look the same, and some of the family portraits were creepy, so I avoided those places. This one though has my great-great-grandmother Ruth, she was so pretty, I liked looking at her picture. Can you zoom into section G4 on the ground floor, please.”