Nine Lives
Anita Waller
Copyright © 2021 Anita Waller
The right of Anita Waller to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2021 by Bloodhound Books.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
Print ISBN 978-1-913942-40-3
Contents
Love crime, thriller and mystery books?
Also by Anita Waller
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
A note from the publisher
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Also by Anita Waller
Psychological thrillers
Beautiful
Angel
34 Days
Strategy
Captor
Game Players
Malignant
Liars (co-written with Patricia Dixon)
Gamble
Epitaph
Supernatural
Winterscroft
Kat and Mouse series
Murder Undeniable (Book 1)
Murder Unexpected (Book 2)
Murder Unearthed (Book 3)
Murder Untimely (Book 4)
Murder Unjoyful (Book 5)
For my awesome beta-reading team: Sarah Hodgson,
Alyson Read, Marnie Harrison, Tina Jackson and Denise Cutler.
My eternally grateful thanks, ladies.
The punches are never pulled…
The last of the flooding, the last of the rain,
The start of the anguish, the start of the pain.
Calmness remains now where once torrents flowed,
Hearts were sore broken, the night of the flood.
Anita Waller, Aftermath, 1963
Foreword
Sheffield has five rivers: the Don, the Sheaf, the Loxley, the Rivelin and the Porter. This book is about the Porter, the smallest and possibly the prettiest of all five rivers, and a worthy character in its own right for this story.
The city is built on seven hills, and the Porter descends over one thousand feet from its source among the sedge grass on Burbage Moor at Clough Hollow, near the village of Ringinglow on the outskirts of Sheffield. It takes its name from its brackish colour, which is similar to the colour of Porter, a brown discoloration obtained as it passes over iron ore deposits on the way from its source.
It flows eastward through the Mayfield Valley to the first of the remaining mill dams. Beyond Forge Dam the Porter is defined as a main river. It drops down into Sheffield city centre, where it meets the River Sheaf under platform five of Sheffield’s Midland Station. They continue on to meet up with the mighty River Don which then flows onwards until it reaches the North Sea.
To reach this point it passes under many culverts, and in summer is a gentle river. In winter, in heavy rain conditions, it changes…
Prologue
27 July 2014
The body was staged carefully under a tree in Ecclesall Woods, positioned so that an early-morning dog walker would find it easily. The thrill was in the kill, and having the work admired; it wasn’t in hiding the bodies away and hoping they would never be found. In the moonlight, and with her blonde hair spread out around her, this one looked spectacular. Her small but perfectly formed breasts were framed by her arms as they crossed over her stomach, fingers interlinked, and her long slender legs led the eye to the light brown triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs.
The hope was that as it was almost midnight, late-night dog walkers wouldn’t venture into the woods to disturb the scene; it wouldn’t look so good in the dark. This was all about cause and effect, the beautiful symmetry of the girl who had said her name was Lilith. The double-barrelled surname was irrelevant; it was all about the Christian name. Lilith, indeed a beautiful one, and for a moment Lilith’s killer wondered what such a pretty name meant. Something to explore later when the whole thing was relived in the early hours when sleep wouldn’t come.
With the body of the young girl in place, the black-clad figure stepped back in admiration. A sight for tired eyes; time to leave it, after the final act.
Crouching down, clutching a sharp craft knife, the roman numerals IV were carved with precision into Lilith’s right palm. Number four, and the thought in the killer’s mind was full of confidence that the police didn’t seem to have any idea who had killed the first three.
Snipping off the tip of the little finger on the same hand was easy, and the fingers were once more interlinked. Silently the killer stopped for a moment to fill the backpack with Lilith’s clothes and to survey the scene, before moving swiftly out of the woods and back to the entrance. A glance around and the killer morphed into a jogger, running up the road to the posh houses where the car had been hidden in plain sight, false number plates an additional protection.
Fifteen minutes later the evening’s entertainment was over, the fingertip had joined three others in the freezer, the cat had been given some milk, and all was right in a murderer’s world.
1 Sunday evening, 27th October 2019
Katie Davids held up a hand and waved as she saw Rebecca Charlesworth walk into the pub.
‘Over here,’ she called, more in hope than belief that Becky would hear her.
Becky clearly didn’t as she did a full three hundred and sixty-degree turn before spotting
