As her car pulled away she gave Beth a wave through the window, and she was gone.
Beth shut the door, sliding the security chain on.
‘I’m heading up to bed,’ she called through the living room door as she passed.
‘Night then,’ Charlie replied. When he was sure she was upstairs, he pulled the newspaper from his pocket, unfolding it.
The story had been written the day after the trial verdict was reached.
The nation is outraged as seven-year-old Kitty Briscoe walked free from court yesterday. A jury found her not guilty of the abduction and murder of two-year-old Billy Noakes in July.
Billy was snatched from a fair in Perry Barr, Birmingham where he had been enjoying an evening out with his mother, Wendy (29). Briscoe, referred to throughout the trial simply as ‘Girl A’, along with eleven-year-old Kieran Taylor, referred to as ‘Boy B’, took Billy from his mother’s side. They lured him away, then walked with him for over a mile to a disused hotel.
Once at the hotel the pair tortured and killed Billy, inflicting over fifty separate injuries. The toddler’s parents had to leave the courtroom as pathologist Dr Michael Parkes spent over twenty-five minutes outlining the various injuries sustained. He concluded that the child had suffered a painful, systematic beating.
There were various knife wounds on the young boy’s body. The police reports suggest that one or both of the accused had visited Billy’s body several times after his death. The killer, or killers, had also cut some of Billy’s hair off. Eventually the tiny body was set alight (the police believe in a juvenile attempt to dispose of it) but the fire failed to take hold.
The remains were discovered by the local fire crew, who were alerted to smoke by a passing member of the public.
Briscoe denies playing any part in the torture and subsequent murder. She places full responsibility at the hands of Taylor. Taylor also denied all charges through his legal aid but refused to speak during hours of police interviews.
Briscoe’s lawyer, Beverly Whitehouse, claimed that Taylor had coerced Briscoe into helping him abduct Billy. She also claimed that Taylor had at times been violent to Briscoe if she did not do what he told her to. She was afraid, and claims that was why she helped Taylor abduct Billy. Whitehouse surmised that traces of Billy’s blood found on Briscoe’s clothing were transferred to her when she had comforted the child after Taylor struck him to stop him from crying. Whitehouse also argued that Briscoe was too young to understand the differences between right and wrong. She claimed that Briscoe would also not have completely understood the severity of her actions. Briscoe maintains that Billy was fine when she left the hotel.
The T-shirt Billy had been wearing when he disappeared, the lock of his hair, and the knife have never been recovered.
The jury cleared Briscoe, agreeing that at her age she was incapable of mischievous discretion, but found Taylor guilty of the abduction and murder. There was obvious shock from the public gallery as the jury delivered their verdicts. During the investigation, the Record spoke to chief investigating officer Detective Matt Simms who claimed that being in a room with ‘Girl A’ chilled him to his core.
The judge has ruled that Taylor’s identity may be reported but has banned publication of Briscoe’s identity. The Record is in contempt of court today by printing Briscoe’s name and picture, but we believe the public has a right to know who this monster is. We believe she is a danger to all children, and we think her face should be made public. Her own father agrees and has provided us with her photograph.
We graciously await our punishment.
He placed the paper on his lap. Even now, over thirty years later, the story was shocking. He remembered it, of course, from when he was a kid. It was a huge case. The entire country lapped it all up, everyone feeling the pain of poor Wendy Noakes; a mother who took her eye off her child for a second and would have to live with the painful consequences for the rest of her life.
Charlie would only have been young; around the same age as Kitty Briscoe. His parents protected him from some grizzlier facts. Rumours had circulated the school, as they always did. But a lot of these details were new to him.
Feeling nauseous, Charlie tried to imagine what that poor boy must have been thinking as he was led away by two children.
As he was beaten, stabbed and tortured.
As he cried for his mother, but she never came.
Charlie stared at the grainy picture of the little blond boy, grinning out from underneath the larger photograph of Kitty Briscoe. At first glance it was two happy children. The sinister truth revealed by the shocking words below.
He thought of his own precious Daisy. Looking towards family photos on the shelf opposite him, he saw himself holding her in the park when she was roughly the same age as Billy Noakes.
So small.
So trusting.
So innocent.
He shook his head and folded the paper into quarters, placing it in his pocket, before switching out the lights and heading up the stairs to bed.
18
Zoe Granger sat at a bus stop. The early morning sun bounced off her freckled face. Her ginger curls tumbled loosely about her shoulders, her mother’s emerald silk scarf knotted round her neck. She would have it folded neatly back where it belonged, long before her mother returned from work. Holding her phone in one hand, she unlocked it, scrolled for a few seconds with her thumb, then locked it again. A moment later she repeated the entire sequence.
She tapped like on a few of her friends’ photos without paying much attention to what they were of.
She scrolled some more. Checking the time, she noted that the bus was late as usual. She glanced around and realised she was alone, so she checked her phone again to kill some time. In case she had missed something
