No Place to Hide (27 page)

Then Maddy arrived, so stricken with fear that she could only sink to her knees, her hands clasped together as if in prayer:
Please let my children be safe. Please God, I’ll do anything, just let my children be safe.
Ronnie put a hand on her head; his eyes were glassy, fixed on the inexplicable chaos still unfolding in front of him.

Time passed; Justine had no idea how much time, only that she was on the ground now with a blanket around her. It was too hot for a blanket, and yet she was icy cold. She still couldn’t speak, could hardly think. She could only watch as tents were erected in the park, and people in white coveralls moved around them like aliens in a slow-motion movie. She heard a plane passing overhead, a car alarm in the distance, a dog barking. And all the time the terrible, incessant burbling of the surreal scene around her went on.

She saw Maddy and Ronnie being escorted into their cottage next to the footbridge. Melanie was with them, and Cheryl.

She became aware of someone next to her, sitting very close.

She turned and saw it was Matt.

How long had he been there?

“Mr. McQuillan?”

They both looked up, squinting against the sun.

A slight woman with blonde hair and dark-rimmed glasses provided a shadow so they could see her. “You’re Ben McQuillan’s parents,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

Matt barely nodded.

“I’m Detective Sergeant Liz Purl,” she informed them. She gestured to a stocky man beside her. “This is DC Hamish Cole. You need to come with us.”

It took a moment for the words to register.

Justine tried to get up, stumbled, and Hamish Cole caught her. “My daughter,” she murmured, the words dribbling through terror, disbelief, denial. “She’s in there…”

“Where’s Lula?” Matt asked.

She turned to him. How could she have forgotten Lula? “She’s at playgroup,” she answered. “I need to…Do you have your phone?”

He didn’t, so Liz Purl offered hers.

“Yes, Lula’s here,” Justine was told, “but I’m sorry, you’ll have to come and get her. I know it’s not her fault, but…Please, just come and get her.”

Justine handed the phone back to Liz Purl. “I have to go,” she said absently.
What wasn’t Lula’s fault? Why would anyone say that?

“We’ll send someone for her,” Liz Purl insisted.

“She’s been taught not to go with strangers,” Justine told her.

Firmly, but not unkindly, Liz Purl said, “It’s not a good idea for you to go.”

“But I…” Realizing she was being advised to stay away for her own sake, Justine put her hands to her head. This nightmare had to end, it just had to, because she didn’t know how to get through it.

“Take the dog,” Matt said hoarsely. “She’ll come if you have Rosie.”

They all climbed the hill to the farmhouse together, and a young female officer was dispatched with Rosie.

Hearing movements upstairs, Justine was about to run up there, certain it would be Abby or Ben, but she knew on a level that didn’t seem a part of her that it was the police going about their duty.

Abby! Oh dear God, Abby.

With a wrenching sob she turned to Matt. Clutching her hand between both of his, he pressed it to his mouth.

My precious girl is down in the park…No, please God, don’t let this be true.

Turning to the detective, she started to speak, but Matt was already saying, in a voice roughened by shock, “Where’ve they taken Ben?”

“I’ll find out for you,” Liz Purl replied. Her eyes were hard, yet not unsympathetic.

Justine felt nauseous. She took a breath to steady herself. She knew what she must ask now, but didn’t know if she could bear to. Panic overwhelmed her and she started to shake.

“Sit down,” Liz Purl advised gently.

Justine sank onto a chair. “What—what happened?” she finally blurted.

Before Liz Purl could answer, Matt said dully, “He used his crossbow—actually, it was the compound bow…”
Faster, lighter, more accurate
…“I should have spotted him going down there, but I didn’t. No one did. He must have been in the tree before any of the kids got there…” His voice cracked, and Hamish Cole put a hand on his arm.

Liz Purl took a call on her mobile. When she’d finished, with very real anguish in her eyes she said to Matt, “They’re removing your daughter’s body…”

“
No!
” Justine sobbed, jumping to her feet. “Please…She has to come home. She’s got a concert tonight.”

Drawing her to him, Matt said, “Ssh, ssh. We have to pull ourselves together for Lula. She’ll be here any minute.”

Liz Purl took Matt to one side and spoke quietly in his ear.

Turning back to Justine, he said, “They want me to identify the body…”

Justine choked as she cried, “No! No! She’s not a body, she’s our girl. Please, Matt, bring her home.”

He looked so beaten, so wretched that she banged her fists into his chest.

“I’m coming with you,” she begged.

“No,” he said firmly. “You need to be here for Lula.”

Liz Purl sat with Justine while Hamish Cole escorted Matt down to the park. The crime scene officers were still moving about upstairs, or tramping in and out of the front door, speaking quietly to one another, occasionally glancing into the kitchen. The phone started ringing, and Justine suddenly realized that it had hardly stopped since they’d come in.

“It’ll be the press,” Liz Purl said gently. “I’m sure you don’t want to speak to them.”

Justine shook her head. It would be all over the news by now, and she just couldn’t stand the ruthless compounding of the horror with cameras, lights, speculation, blame and shame. She had to push it away, somehow keep herself aloof from it, as though it was happening to somebody else. “I should call my brother,” she said. “He could be trying to get through.”

As she went to pick up the phone, Lula and Rosie burst in through the door. Lula was the palest Justine had ever seen her.
Dear God, how much did she know?

“Mummy,” she whimpered as Justine scooped her up. Wrapping her arms round her mother’s neck she clung on tight and wouldn’t let go.

It was early evening by the time the detectives and crime scene officers left, taking only they knew what of Ben’s with them, leaving tape across his bedroom door preventing unauthorized persons from going in.

His parents fell into that category. As did his uncle Rob and aunt Maggie, who’d arrived about an hour ago. They were going to take Lula back to London in the morning. Chippingly was no place for her to be over the coming days and weeks. After that…

Justine stood with Matt looking at the sealed door to Ben’s room, trying to imagine where he was now, what might be happening to him. Did he realize his life was over, that there would never be any going back from this? Did he care what he had done to his family, and the families of the children he’d grown up with? How long had he been planning this insane attack? What terrible, evil force inside had made him carry it through?

She knew now that Matt had heard the screams and run outside to investigate. When he’d spotted Kelvin Sands racing down the hill he’d followed, but by the time they’d got to the park it was already too late.

No one had escaped Ben. With lightning speed and terrible precision he had ended five teenage lives: one of them his own sister’s, another his cousin’s, another his lifelong best friend’s. For some reason the use of a compound bow felt worse than if it had been a gun. Justine wasn’t sure why, except it seemed a more visceral act because of the way he would have had to hold the weapon, embrace it even, put a cheek against it, and then let the arrow fly like a satisfied breath.

One, two, three, four, five.

Abby, Wesley, Chantal, Connor, and Neil. Nelly had gone to the kennels after all or she would have been there too, and Maddy and Ronnie would have lost both their children.

Neil
. Justine clutched her hands to her face. He’d fought so bravely and cheerfully to hold on to his life, his parents had prayed for him every day, and now for him to go like this …

Wesley, her wonderful nephew, Simon and Gina’s only son and greatest joy…

Connor, Melanie and Kelvin’s adored youngest…

Chantal, Cheryl and Brad’s only child, beautiful and gentle, always kind and so full of life…

She turned to bury her face in Matt’s shoulder. She couldn’t bear to think of them anymore. It would have to wait. She simply couldn’t cope with the enormity of it.

And yet there would never be a day when she could cope, because she realized already that this was just the beginning.

Present Day—Culver, Indiana

Justine was standing at the window of Waseya gazing through the steamy panes across the porch, down through the golden avenue of trees to where raindrops were spattering the lake. There had been a heavy downpour a while ago, shining, silvery blades streaming from the sky as though to cleanse this innocent place of the tragic ugliness her confession had brought to it.

She was still seeing it, feeling it; it would never let her go.

Her eyes refocused on the orderly piles of leaves David had left behind. He’d come into the house when he’d finished, but Sallie Jo had shaken her head, letting him know that it would be best for him to go.

Justine had expected Sallie Jo to leave soon after that, but she was still here, sitting at the table, her hands covering her face as though the pictures Justine had conjured were refusing to fade. Justine could see her ghostlike reflection in the window, a manifestation of the world’s speechless horror.

She wouldn’t tell Sallie Jo about the time that had followed, when she’d had to be sedated to help get her through the shock and the grief. If it hadn’t been for Lula she was sure she’d have ended it all, and she was certain Matt had felt the same. They simply hadn’t known how to cope, what they were supposed to do or say, how they could ever even begin to recover from what had happened. For a long time neither of them had been able to go out; they were too dazed, too ashamed and afraid of facing the world. They’d stayed at Rob’s or with Camilla, alternating between them in the hope of avoiding the press. The stress caused a problem for Matt’s heart and she’d had so many panic attacks, deep shuddering spasms racking her body and making it almost impossible to breathe, that her loved ones became afraid to leave her alone. No one went to see Ben although Matt and Rob tried, several times, only for him to refuse the visit. The two occasions they managed to see him happened across a courtroom when he was charged, and again when he pleaded guilty. Apparently he’d looked their way and winked, as though it was all a game and one he seemed to think he was winning.

Unsurprisingly, the media couldn’t let go of the story. It was on every bulletin, every front page for weeks, maybe months. Nothing of this magnitude had happened in Britain before, a student from an apparently decent home and background setting out to kill his sister, cousin, and friends, and succeeding in the most brutal and callous way. It was as though no one could quite believe it, and the fact that he was said not to be showing any remorse sent the pundits into a frenzy of opinion and hyperbole. It seemed everyone was analyzing him now, declaring him psychotic, schizophrenic, sociopathic…

Justine and Matt were advised not to watch TV or engage with the press at all. They had no problem doing this; all they wanted was to hide from the world and work out how on earth they were going even to begin to move forward once all the fuss had died down. They were in regular touch with the psychiatrists assigned to Ben’s case, spent many hours talking with them, so they were aware that their son was not, at this time, interested in any kind of mitigation that might help him.

“Psychopathic tendencies” was the phrase they heard most often. Apparently, it wasn’t done to label someone Ben’s age an outright psychopath. Tendencies allowed for change and rehabilitation.

Nothing was allowed for Abby, or the others. It was too late for them, and Justine’s grief and anger were only surpassed by the helplessness and despair that made it all but impossible to face each day. God only knew how it was for the other parents. She and Matt sat for hours trying to compose emails of regret and apology, but no matter how carefully chosen and sincere their words, nothing was ever going to bring the children back. And that was all the parents wanted.

It was all they wanted, too.

When it came time to clear Abby’s room, Justine had to leave it to her mother and Catherine. One foot inside the door and she’d sunk to her knees, howling and sobbing and begging Abby to come back. Matt took her downstairs while the two grandmothers began packing, and Justine hadn’t found the will to try again. It was as though each part of her shattered heart had a different way of coping and the strongest of them all, at that time, was denial. It helped her to carry on, mainly because it managed to convince her, once in a while, that Abby was simply away on her world tour with Wes. She, Matt, and Lula would probably fly out to join them soon. They’d let Abby decide whether it should be Dubai or Bangkok or Singapore. She even surfed the Net for flights and hotels, made lists of what they should pack, and sent emails to Abby’s account asking if there was anything she needed her parents to bring.