After steering carefully into the sparsely gravelled, overgrown plot of wasteland and squeezing out of the driver’s side, Connor said, ‘I’ll leave you to go and find out if anyone’s at home while I unload the gear.’
Starting along the narrow pavement next to the crumbling dry-stone wall, Cristy glanced at the houses opposite, and felt thankful the rain had eased off. Nevertheless, it remained a dull and dreary day. Everything was damp and dripping, cold and lifeless – so very different to when she’d come as a much younger reporter in the middle of summer, when the gardens had been bursting with colour and the neighbours had grouped around their front doors, appalled and fascinated by what was going on across the road. Number 42 had been cordoned off, of course; no one had been able to see past the forensics tents or even get close to the house. For days, press and public alike had been left to speculate on what was happening inside. All they’d known for certain was that Nicole Ivorson’s eleven-month-old twins were missing and that search parties were quickly being formed.
Clanking open the old iron gate, Cristy picked her way along the broken path that led to the front door, which didn’t appear to have been painted since that terrible time back in 2005. It hadn’t been repaired either, if the scratched and damaged panels were anything to go by. Those particular scars, she recalled, had been inflicted by angry neighbours wanting to show their disgust, and by thugs who got a kick out of terrorizing the people inside.
Raising the stained brass knocker, she rapped three times and leaned in to listen for the sound of someone moving around.
Silence – apart from the passing traffic and a siren somewhere in the distance.
She knocked again and stood back to survey the windows. The curtains were pulled – all of them, upstairs and down – but there was a chink in what she guessed might be a sitting room, so she went to peer inside. It was too dark to make anything out, although she couldn’t escape the sense of forlornness that seemed to emanate from the place in waves.
‘Nothing?’ Connor asked, coming up behind her.
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 thesearch,’ 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 andheartfelt 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 firstbornchild. 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.’
