Silas Nash book 1: Hush Hush Honeysuckle: Chapter 17

The boys were found within three hours of each other. On both occasions, it was the scent of honeysuckle that made the parents investigate and find their sons. Nash would never forget the image of Annie Wilson rocking her decaying son and singing to him.

After two and a half weeks of being frantic and worrying, her baby was home where he belonged. The boys were left in their own bedrooms. Gareth Wilson was twelve and an only child. He was brought home while his parents ate dinner in the dining room at the back of the house.

His mum noticed the scent of the flowers as she went to the bathroom. She knew it was The Florist the second she inhaled it and realised it was coming from Gareth’s room.

The sob was already in her throat as she turned the handle, but she was bathed in golden hope when she saw Gareth kneeling beside his bed. They’d never been a religious family, but he knelt in prayer, and she didn’t question why he hadn’t called for her or what he’d been through to make praying the first thing he did. She felt such a fierce love as any mother would. She shouted for Jim and ran to her son, sobbing in earnest. Annie gathered her little boy in her arms and said his name as she rocked him.

After the horror came to her, she continued to cradle him, and her husband wasn’t strong enough to prise her away. ‘Don’t you bloody touch me. Get away.’ He’d never heard his wife swear before, but he was so deeply immersed in the shock that came over him so fast that he barely registered that his wife was elsewhere. She was back in time to a day when her son was alive in her arms. He had to leave her there rocking with Gareth when he called the police. He gave a full account of what had happened before taking the police into Gareth’s bedroom.

And that’s how Nash and Brown found her. Jim was talking again. ‘She didn’t turn the light on when she saw him, and the smell was masked by the scent of the flowers, but only until he was moved.’

Gareth wore pyjamas, but they weren’t his jammies. They were new and didn’t smell of him, but then, he didn’t smell of him anymore, either. His hair had been cut. It was jagged and dirty. The soles of his feet were black.

‘He was kneeling by his bed with his hands pressed together in prayer. A rosary was wrapped around his fingers. My boy’s throat was cut, Inspector, and his face was dirty and pale.’

Nash looked at the body in his mother’s arms. There was no blood. He’d been exsanguinated, and from his colour, it looked as though he didn’t have a drop of blood left in his body. ‘There was a teddy bear sitting beside him on the bed, but it wasn't his teddy.’

And his mother held him.

Nash called the coroner, and when Robinson came, he had to give the mother a strong sedative. Mr Wilson stood in the doorway like a statue frozen in a rictus of horror. He only spoke once more. ‘Please take my precious son away from her. My little boy. My poor Annie.’

But they wouldn’t prize the horror of the dead child from her arms. Nash talked to her and got her to agree to have something to take the edge off. He spent time with her and got down next to her on the bedroom floor, and asked her to give her son to them when she was ready. He promised they’d look after him and that he wasn’t in any pain now. Mrs Wilson gripped the body of the child tighter, and Molly Brown talked to her in a soothing voice and gave her the time she needed until she was ready to offer Gareth up to Nash. He lifted the child from her arms and lowered him when his mother screamed that he hadn’t had a goodnight kiss.

Bill Robinson helped Mr Wilson get her into bed, where she’d sleep for a while, but nowhere near long enough. Not for the million years she’d need for the pain to ease.

Jamie Little was only eleven and had never been away from home. Mr Little had been out all day searching for his son with their dog. The number of volunteer searchers had gone down as every day passed. On day one, it had been almost every man, woman, child and dog in the town. Day two was half that amount, and when almost three weeks had gone by, only six people had turned up to search the dunes at Roan Head. Paul Little didn’t know who made the decision to search there, but they thought it would be the ideal place for a killer to drop a body after dark. Paul told Nash that he’d overheard somebody say that, but he couldn’t remember who it was. That would have been great if they were searching for a body, but they weren’t. They were searching for Jamie and his mate. That’s all. No bodies.

Nash had patted his shoulder and felt the weight of his hopelessness. Little had come home at seven. They’d had dinner—homemade cheese pie, chips and beans, the boys’ favourite. Only Adrian, Jamie’s younger brother, had seconds. He was ten and hungry. They watched TV for a bit, and Eileen had nagged Adrian about his homework, but only a little bit, not like before, and only to be normal. Adrian said he didn’t want to do it, and Eileen said he didn’t have to.

‘I bet he was chuffed about that,’ Nash said. ‘But normal is good, you know. He won’t break.’

‘He might, Inspector, and where would we be then? The little bugger smirked and then played me for ice cream. And he got it, too.’ Mr Little looked at the closed bedroom door and turned away from the slaughter waiting for them inside.

They put Adrian to bed at nine o’clock. He’d never had the room to himself until Jamie went missing, and he’d been unsettled since then. They had to leave the hall light on for him and the door open, and he was allowed to have his tablet in bed with him.

Mr and Mrs Little were thinking about going to bed and said it was about eleven when Paul heard a noise outside. He ran to the front door in time to see a figure running down the street, it was a fleeting glimpse before they turned the corner, and he couldn’t give Nash much of a description. All he saw was somebody running away in the dark. Eileen heard her husband shouting. She panicked and went to check on Adrian. Paul told her to ring the police, but she was already halfway up the stairs. They both smelt it as they ran up to their son’s room, the sickly smell of flowers.

They ran into the room. Their son, Jamie, was home, but they knew straight away that he was dead. He wore pyjamas, but they weren’t his. They were new and didn’t smell of him. His hair had been cut. It was jagged and dirty. The soles of his feet were black. He knelt by his bed with his hands pressed together in prayer. A rosary was wrapped around his fingers. His throat was cut, and his face was dirty and pale. There was no blood. He’d been exsanguinated and didn’t have a drop of blood left in his body. There was a teddy bear sitting beside him on the bed, but it wasn’t his teddy. It was new and smelt of a supermarket.

Mr Little told Nash he’d covered his ears, but he didn’t think it was to drown out his wife’s screaming, ‘Just the sound of my own inadequacy,’ he’d said. ‘I couldn’t do anything.’

‘I know. We’ll find him,’ Nash said, but he wasn’t talking about the murderer. There was a new and equal horror. When his mother saw it, she screamed for her eldest son, who had taken his last breath and then she screamed again for her kidnapped youngest son.

Adrian’s bed was empty.

Nash rang the Coroner. Bill Robinson was in the mortuary. He said he’d hardly scrubbed in for Gareth’s autopsy when he was called out again. ‘The other one?’

‘Jamie Little,’ Nash said. ‘I’m going to need anything you’ve got on Gareth Wilson in the few minutes you’ve looked at him. Anything at all. Our perp brought the body of Jamie home but took his brother.’

They put out a countywide APB. When it comes to kidnapping, the beauty of Barrow-in-Furness is that it’s one road in and one road out. The A590 had been closed from Ulverston, and just in case he got through, as a precaution, it was closed again at the motorway in both directions. The road into Askam was shut, and higher up at the junction for Broughton and Millom, there were roadblocks. All the little dogleg roads like Soutergate and Kirkby were shut down. Everywhere he could escape had roadblocks and a police presence within ten minutes of him having left the Little’s household. Every vehicle on the roads was stopped and searched, and by the time the South of the county was closed, they had police helicopters up and searching woodland and farm tracks.

He’d gone to ground.

The last train pulled out of Barrow towards Ulverston at 21:46. The first train the next morning came into Askam at 04:49. Station attendant June Alder was the first person on the platform that morning. She found the little boy in his pyjamas and barefoot. He was frozen, and at first, she thought he was dead.

Nash hadn’t been to bed. He was there ten minutes after the first responders. He knew he wouldn’t sleep and hadn’t gone home. He was waiting for the sunrise outside the police station when the call came in. The road was empty, and he didn’t give a shit about traffic lights.

He wanted to be the one to tell the parents their second child was alive.

It was a game. The killer was playing with them. One in, one out. What fun. They took Adrian to the hospital to be checked. Nash insisted on talking to him when he’d been given the all-clear and had Mum and Dad beside him. He promised to be gentle. For a single hour beside their son’s hospital bed, that one on its own, they put their grief over Jamie to one side and gave in to the joy of having Adrian safe.

Nash said, ‘Hi, Adrian. You had quite an adventure, didn’t you, buddy? Look at you with a drip bag and everything. I’m going to ask you to turn on your Spidey-sense for me. Do you think you can do that?’

Adrian was still groggy after being drugged by The Florist, but every second was important. The little boy nodded with large frightened eyes.

‘Do you remember what happened last night after you went to bed?’

He shook his head and began to cry.

‘It’s okay, son. Don’t get upset. You’re doing great. Just tell me what you can remember.’

‘Nothing. I was playing Roblox, and then I went to sleep, and then I woke up at the trains, and the men put me in the ambulance.’

The doctor confirmed that he’d been drugged with a sedative. They’d found a hypodermic spot on his thigh, and it was likely that Adrian never woke up through his ordeal.

‘That’s fine, Adrian. You did great, matey. Good lad.’