When they finally left her—after they’d extracted every painful secret she’d ever held close to her heart—Colleen went and fetched her nicest notepad, the one she had never used to write to Michael. She sat down at her own kitchen table and, just like her daughter, she tried to find the words.

CHAPTER

47

THE FOREST DID not seem darker with him in it. The birds still sang, the sunlight still filtered down through the branches, a dappled blessing on the earth and grass. Michael Reave walked with his face turned up, trying to take it all in, and Heather watched him closely. It seemed wrong that Fiddler’s Woods did not recoil from him, that the skies didn’t turn black and the trees die, but then, she reminded herself, he was their creature. He had fed the roots and nourished the ground, in his own way.

“Heather?” He turned to face her, smiling. “Look, do you see that there?” He nodded toward a hole next to a small mound of fresh earth. “That’s the entrance to a badger sett. I used to see them sometimes, but they’re shy animals. They can have big families living inside them, the larger setts. A clever little network of tunnels.”

“This isn’t a nature walk.”

“No, lass.” He put his smile away, and his eyes drifted up to look over her shoulder. “No, you’re right there.”

Behind her, she knew he could see the police gathered, DI Ben Parker among them. They were never far behind.

So far, Michael Reave had led them to the remains of four women, one of which, he said, had never been listed as one of his official victims. Identifying them was going to be difficult—he had only ever buried what he called “the soft parts” of them within the woods, although he had sometimes included other things—trinkets, items from their purses, or hairclips, even a shoe. He had agreed to do this as long as Heather continued to visit him and came with him on these little jaunts to Fiddler’s Woods. With the death of Albert “Bert” Froame and the capture of Lyle Reave, all his pretenses of innocence had vanished.

“You’re happy here.” It wasn’t a question.

“Aye. I was happy here, once.” He stopped, so she stopped. His hands were bound behind his back with steel cuffs, and he had made no threats toward her, but she still didn’t like to get too close. “Before it all really started …” He shrugged. “There was a bit of time where I thought I was free, and I spent it here, with these trees. Those were good memories.”

She nodded. She supposed, that if you didn’t know what was buried here, it could seem like a peaceful place.

“I wanted to ask you …” Heather glanced back to the police, both making sure they were close enough to help, and far away enough not to hear. “About the woman in the red coat.”

Michael Reave straightened up. He took a long, wavering breath in, then held it for a moment. His eyes were too bright.