Chapter Three #2
She shook her head and led the way past an untamed holly bush around to the back of the house.
‘It’s hard to tell when anyone was last here,’ she remarked, opening up a black wheelie bin and finding nothing but dirty rainwater inside, ‘presuming no one’s hiding out in the attic or basement, but I’m not feeling it, are you? ’
‘Just a tad creeped out and bloody freezing,’ he admitted, zipping up his coat. ‘Was it like this the last time you came?’
‘Not a bit. It was much more … lived in and colourful, but obviously, it was summer then.’ She stopped on a cracked and weed-filled back patio, where half a dozen tubs containing bedraggled plants and undrained water formed a balustrade of sorts between the unfurnished seating area and the long, sloping garden beyond.
Things seemed to be growing: onions, parsnips, brown slimy rhubarb leaves, and a small greenhouse on the second tier appeared to be in fairly good nick, as was the rotary washing line: no laundry, just a couple of wet rags and a pair of gardening gloves dangling from plastic pegs.
She turned to gaze up at the back of the house. It seemed taller from this angle, even slightly grander. The back door was locked, and all the windows, curtained and firmly closed, seemed fixed like unblinking eyes over the tops of the trees below.
‘I guess those are the woods that were dug up during the search,’ Connor said, gazing down over the desolate garden to the stream and small wilderness beyond.
Nodding, Cristy found herself caught in the past, listening to the echo of voices shouting, a helicopter roaring overhead, dogs barking, more sirens, radios squawking and someone yelling.
Pulling herself back to the present, she looked around as she said, ‘It’s obvious no one’s here, so let’s do a recording.’
Dumping his heavy shoulder bag onto the wet ground, Connor pulled out a small device and much larger, fur-wrapped mic. ‘Do you want me to kind of interview you,’ he asked, settling his headphones around his neck, ‘or just roll with it?’
Still feeling oddly haunted, she said, ‘Come in where you feel it’s right.’
Moments later, levels checked and mic tilted from the wind, he gave her a cue to begin.
CRISTY: ‘We’re outside number 42 Randall Lane, made infamous twenty years ago by the events believed to have taken place inside. Some of you might remember, but for those of you who don’t, Noah and Abigail Ivorson, eleven-month-old baby twins, disappeared one summer’s day back in 2005.’
She paused, giving herself a moment to get past the images her own words had brought to life: the babies’ sweetly smiling faces and chunky little bodies; their tangles of golden curls and the sound of their laughter, which she’d never heard of course, and yet it seemed to be coming to her now as if they were somewhere nearby, playing hide and seek.
She continued.
CRISTY: ‘Noah’s and Abigail’s bodies have never been found, in spite of extensive searches at the time and heartfelt pleas from the family for someone to come forward if they knew anything.
‘Nicole, their mother, aged only nineteen, was charged with their murder just days after the police were first called in. She was tried at Bristol Crown Court ten months later and found guilty of the crime. She’s now out on parole after serving nearly twenty years of her life sentence.
‘So what happened back in 2005, when those tiny twins vanished? How many of the rumours, half-truths, conspiracy theories and horror stories are actually true? I can tell you that most of us who remember the trial were left on the final day with more questions than answers.
‘Not so the jury. Their guilty verdict was unanimous.
‘So what did they know that the rest of us didn’t? Or were they simply persuaded by a brilliant prosecutor who outclassed the defence on just about every level?’
She stopped again, wanting to get her memories straight, to stop them clashing or falling over one another and stumbling into territory she couldn’t be certain was real or imagined or simply distorted by time.
She guessed she wouldn’t know for sure until they’d done the research and brought it all back into the light.
Funny how she felt slightly unnerved by that, resistant even, as if the past was going to reveal truths that maybe ought to remain hidden.
CRISTY: ‘Something I’ve long wanted to know was why the prosecution never asked Nicole about the rumours of sacrifice and ritual.
There was plenty about it in the news, both before and after the trial: reports of how she had joined a cult that demanded the life of a firstborn child.
It was said by some that she, unable to make a choice between the twins, had offered up both. ’
Cristy stopped again, as her heart contracted with an inextinguishable sense of horror.
‘Are you OK?’ Connor asked. ‘You’ve gone pale.’
Distractedly, she said, ‘I was pregnant with Hayley when the twins went missing . I didn’t know until after Nicole was sentenced, but the whole thing had a kind of …
destabilizing effect on me. I kept thinking about Nicole and wondering if she’d really faced that sort of choice.
I started having nightmares about being in her position, having to give up my baby …
’ She gave a small, self-conscious laugh.
‘Hormones can make you crazy at the best of times, especially when you’re already spooked by the brutal murder of two innocent little souls. ’
‘So you believed in the sacrifice thing?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not sure what I believed, given what a weird headspace I was in. But nothing was ever found to substantiate the claims, so that’ll be why it never got mentioned in court. The rumours, though …’ She cut herself off and gestured to the mic, ready to begin again.
CRISTY: ‘Nicole always insisted they’d been abducted, and she was taken seriously in the first few days.
The trouble was: no one ever came forward to say they’d seen or heard anything to make a case for abduction, and then everyone was thrown off-course by the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London.
After that, almost immediately, every force in the country was focusing on the chance of repeat attacks and the hunt for terror suspects.
There was hardly any space for anything else, until suddenly we learned that Nicole had been charged with the double murder. ’
CONNOR: ‘On what grounds?’
CRISTY: ‘It was the blood, apparently. They said it was everywhere, all over the house, although I think the accounts were exaggerated, quite often by the press, especially the tabloids who like nothing better than a gory story. In the end, it turned out that most of the blood belonged to birds, rodents, all kinds of creatures, but there was also some from one of the twins. That’s when it all really kicked off and the rumours of ritual sacrifice got going. ’