Read Online Blacklands by Belinda Bauer - Free Book Online

single detail. The photo would have looked equally at home on the sports pages—a young man who’d scored twice against Exmoor Colts or taken three wickets for the Blacklanders.

    Steven was thrown. He had expected … well, what
had
he expected? His mental image of Avery up until now had been vague—maybe not even human. Avery had been a dark shape in an Exmoor fog, a collage of movement and muffled sound lingering on the edges of a nightmare.

    But here was the real Avery, staring into a policeman’s camera with a shameless directness, his dark fringe flopped fashionably over one eye, his slightly snubbed nose giving him an amiable look, his wide mouth almost shut and almost smiling. Steven noted that Avery’s lips were very red. It was a black-and-white photo, but he could tell that much. As he studied it more closely, he could also see that the reason Avery’s mouth was only almost shut was that he had protruding teeth. A pixel of white suggested it.

    Steven tried to get disturbed by the picture but Avery looked more like a victim than the perpetrator of the crimes of which he’d been convicted.

    There were pictures of Avery’s victims although at this point in the proceedings the
News
called them “alleged” victims.

    Little Toby Dunstan was described in the caption as “youngest victim.” A laughing six-year-old with sticky-out ears and freckles even on his eyelids. Steven grinned: Toby looked like fun. Then he remembered—Toby was dead.

    There was a graphic on the front page too. It was a map of Exmoor. Steven unfolded a scrap of paper from his pocket and copied the shape—a rough, crinkled rugby ball. The graves of the six children who had been found were marked with Xs and arrows which pointed to six photos—one of each confirmed victim. The same picture of Toby Dunstan, a different one of Yasmin Gregory, then Milly Lewis-Crupp, Luke Dewberry, Louise Leverett, and John Elliot.

    Steven marked each child’s initials inside the rugby ball with a red pen. All of them were roughly clustered in the center of the moor. Shipcott was not marked but Steven could see the gravesites were between there and Dunkery Beacon. Three of them were on the west side of the Beacon itself.

    He had never seen the exact location of the graves marked before and was relieved that he’d been digging in the right general area all this time. Of course, what was a half-inch square on this map was several miles of open moorland in reality. But Steven felt new impetus seep through him just by dint of being reminded of his quest.

    He carefully folded up the scrap of paper, and started to read.

    The eleventh of June had been the first day of the trial at Cardiff. What this meant, Steven quickly realized, was that the prosecution told the court the highlights. It was like
Match of the Day
or those slick American TV dramas that always started with “Previously on
ER
…”

    Previously on Arnold Avery—Serial Killer
…

    The prosecution barrister, whose name had been (and likely still was) Mr. Pritchard-Quinn, QC, made it all sound as if Avery was undoubtedly, indisputably, irrevocably guilty. There was no room in his mouth for “perhaps” or “maybe” because it was so full of words like “callous,” “cold-blooded,” and “brutal.”

    Mr. Pritchard-Quinn told the court how Avery had approached children and asked them for directions. Then he would offer them a ride home. If they took it, they were dead. If they didn’t, they were quite often dead anyway, once he had tugged them headfirst through the driver’s window.

    Steven marvelled at the sheer cheek of it. The simplicity! No stalking, no hiding, no grabbing and running, just a child leaning over too far—a little off balance—and a shockingly strong and fast hand. Steven thought of Uncle Billy’s feet kicking through the open window and felt his stomach slowly roll over.

    “Make it work.”

    Steven looked up. Davey had brought the pink jacks to the