Pamela Whittaker pressed her thin lips together. “He was there. There were others, too. I told the police later, when all that came out … I can’t talk about it now.”
“What happened? Did they threaten you? Who else was part of this circle?”
The old woman shook her head slowly, her face creased with distaste. “There were always rumors flying about. Rumors about sex parties in the woods, what those led to, the aftermath. I got to know a young woman called Anna. She was very fragile, very vulnerable, and she should not have been in a place like that … I didn’t realize until it was too late, of course.”
“What happened to her there?”
“Truly? I don’t know. But she left Fiddler’s Mill deeply changed. I won’t lie to you, Miss Evans, Anna wasn’t entirely well to begin with. In the head, I mean. But when I saw her afterward she told me that she had gotten pregnant at the Mill, and she had had it, out in the woods. And then creatures came and took the baby away, stole it from her.”
“Monsters stole her baby? That’s what she said? Did you see her pregnant while you were there?”
Pamela Whittaker heaved her thin shoulders into a shrug. “I wasn’t always there. I drifted in and out for a while, looking for work in the area, but I do remember there was a time when she seemed happy. She wouldn’t tell me why, but she kept her hand on her stomach a lot then. I should add,” she looked at Heather from under her eyelashes, “she didn’t look pregnant to me then, and she was a tiny slip of a thing. A pregnancy would have stuck out like a bowling ball.”
“Didn’t she go to the police, if she thought her child had been stolen?”
“You don’t understand. Anna was … unreliable. A woman like her now would get help, be on all sorts of medications, but then … She fell through the cracks, and Fiddler’s Mill made her worse. I felt so sad for her. Still do.”
Heather sat back a little in the overstuffed sofa. There was no way to tell if anything she was being told was useful at all. “Did Anna know Michael Reave?”
Pamela Whittaker turned her head away. “Not that I saw. But he was an enigma. He would come and go all the time—I’ve no idea who knew him there, not really. This is all very upsetting, you realize. Bringing all this back up.”
“Pamela, I’m sorry, but I think my mother was there, too, and I really need to know why. Would you have known her? Her name was Colleen, she would have been in her teens at the time. Skinny, blond.”
“Your mother? Is this what it’s actually about? I have no time for liars, young lady.”
Abruptly, Pamela Whittaker stood up and stalked from the room. Heather watched her go, wondering if she was going to come back with a rolling pin and chase her out of the flat. She pursed her lips. She’d gone in too strong, as usual, and frightened the woman off.
Instead Pamela returned with what looked like a thick black photo album, which she passed to Heather. Her face was closed again, the hectic pink of her cheeks sunken back to the color of old cheese.
“I didn’t know anyone called Colleen, but there were a lot of us there. Here, this is my work from that period, I had copies made. This is how I file things, how I keep track. Perhaps you’ll find something in there.”
Heather opened the album. Instead of family snaps, it was filled with decent quality color prints of paintings and photographs, most of which were A4. There was a date painted on the leather cover in white Tippex: 1978–83.
“Take it, borrow it. Anything I have to say about Fiddler’s Mill is in there. It might help you, with whatever it is you are doing, Miss Evans.” She took a deep breath, hovering over Heather, clearly wanting her to leave. “And go and speak to Anna. I’ve written the address on a Post-it on the inside. I don’t think you’ll get much sense out of her—I haven’t been able to, not for a long time—but I don’t know, maybe it’ll do her good to think that someone cares about her baby, or whatever it was.” She suddenly looked to be on the verge of tears. “Terrible things happened there, Miss Evans, but forgive me, I don’t want to expose myself to that again, not even to remember the details you want.” She shuddered all over. “It’s a wound that never heals.”
Heather looked up, but Pamela Whittaker was already turning away. She thought of her mother’s suicide note again: monsters in the wood.
“Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I have a lot to be getting on with.”
On her way back down the cold concrete steps, Heather’s phone rang. Pausing by a battered and ancient telephone box, she pressed receive.
“Miss Evans?”
“Oh, DI Parker. Hello.”
“I got your voicemail. You have something on Fiona Graham?”
“Yes, I sent you an email. It’s not much, but there’s a photo I think might be her. My dad took it, years ago.”
“Do you think your parents knew Fiona Graham?”
The question threw her for a moment. What was he suggesting?
“Well, I don’t know. It’s probably nothing.”
“Would you come in to the office tomorrow? I’m back in London.”
“Here I was thinking I’d lost the chance to see you again.”
He made a small noise of amusement, and Heather was surprised by how much it pleased her to have amused him, even a little bit. It was good to smile after her unpleasant conversation with Ms. Whittaker.
“No such luck,” he continued.
“Does this mean you’ve found Fiona Graham?”
There was a pause, and within it Heather imagined all manner of terrible fates for the girl she might have met fleetingly in her childhood. She
