Page 94 of The Unforgiven

He kept his head up, watching me intently. “A little flat she rents privately. First place she moved to after she left student accommodation. She leaves there though at the end of this academic year – just a couple of months and I’ll need a new assistant.”

“She was in Irk Vale Halls in her first year.” It was where I had stayed. “It’s due to be demolished this summer.” I looked at other address; Redbrick Tower, part of the same halls, but used by mature students.

There had to be somewhere she kept Morgan. There had to be somewhere she killed Evelyn. If it was her.

“Daniel, what did Justine tell you about Aberwyn?” I folded the piece of paper and put it in my pocket.

“I told you, I didn’t know she was Kelly-Anne.”

“You’ve always been a terrible liar.” I headed for the door. “I’ll be back, Daniel.”

I heard him speak loudly as I left. “You always do.”

He would be right.

Chapter Forty-One

I didn’t go to Cavendish Gardens, although that was where I directed Lachy and Verity. I knew Justine wouldn’t be there, she wouldn’t take her past back into her present, the place that was her springboard. If she was our killer, the chubby, awkward teenager that had been picked on by the popular girls in Aberwyn, she’d keep that life in the last place she’d been that person, the last place Kelly-Anne would’ve lived.

Irk Vale Halls were a relic of the sixties, concrete and crumbling, even ten years ago when I’d been a resident there. The rooms had been small, the bathrooms shared, which current students would never cope with. They were about two miles away by road, but there were short cuts, ones I’d walked and ran along many times, knowing the spots where it was darker, where unknown faces loomed, and the ginnels and snickets where it was best to avoid, if you could.

Vinny was ringing me as I got closer, Harris fencing blocking off entrances to the halls, ‘Danger! Keep Out!’ signs colourful with graffiti. The halls had been condemned at least four years ago, the place now a haunt for teenagers and addicts, the occasional homeless person and urban explorers, some of therooms still containing the relics of years ago, posters drooping off walls, beds left unmade, waiting for a body that would never return.

I didn’t answer the call. I didn’t have time to listen to Vinny tell me to wait for back up, wait for him, or Nick, or one of the others. If it was Justine, if Justine was Kelly-Anne Marsh, then Sophie was the last one. Just this one, then revenge would be had.

Her job would be done. Her therapy complete.

I thought of Mike as I knocked away the rest of the glass from a broken window, seeking the quickest way in. Irk Vale used to house six hundred students, usually first years, most of the rooms singles. There were four common rooms, one for each wing, and two bars, the sorts of places where it would be a quid for a shot, always on a Wednesday when the rugby players had finished on the pitch and the drinking games began.

I’d avoided them, going to the gym instead, boxing and fighting and kicking, getting stronger, quicker, faster.

I ran through the corridors, barely making a sound as my feet fled through silent halls, dust and old plates and tatty curtains in car wrecks of rooms. My phone vibrated again. I took it out, dismissed Vinny’s call, and then shared my location with him.

A text came straight back through.

On my way.

For seven years he’d been irritating me. For seven years he’d had my back.

I was walking through the ground floor corridor in the third wing when the air particles changed. They were charged with something else: breath, fear, excitement. Something wasn’t still anymore, there was movement.

So I froze.

I listened, heard nothing, just the quietness of dying memories as the halls faced their last days, a slice of history about to fall. I was in the Medlock block, the wing furthest from the main road, but behind it were the garages for university vehicles, although even by the time I lived here, they were empty, disused. I started to walk again, slowly, like a cat skulking away from a tormentor, trying not to be seen, not to be noticed. Two more bedrooms were empty, old beds and mattresses soiled and damp, the stale smell of decay overwhelming. I passed plumbing for a washer in a cove off the hallway, then a kitchen, coated with dust and grease and with a dead rat on the floor. There was a fire door, open, leading onto the gravelled yard, the old garages through the overgrowth half visible.

I headed outside, checking behind me, aware of the silence, the fractured stillness, the sound of birdsong because nature had taken back over here.

There was stupidity in what I was doing. I had no weapon with me, no ASP to draw on, no back-up. The expanse of the gravelled yard seemed vast, too open, but then if someone was going to come at you with a weapon, you were better seeing it in advance.

Four adjoined garages stood there, rotten wood and flaking paint adorning them, spinsters watching a ball. I headed closer, spotting a dark car tucked away behind ivy tangled privets, just the bumper and end of the boot exposed.

The garages were a perfect place to bring someone. Nothing overlooked them apart from the empty eyed windows of the halls, seeing nothing. Behind the trees was a field, used for sports, dog walking, muggers and flashers. It was an oasis of loneliness in a forever moving parade of city life.

The garage doors had been blocked up with metal sheets, more danger signs pinned up and defaced. Each had a door that had once been padlocked but were now all agape or fullywarped. One was closed, and I headed to that one first, holding my breath, tuning out the birdsong, listening for movement, anything that didn’t fit.

Nothing.

More stillness. More silence. But something wasn’t right.