Six months ago, Charlotte almost lost everything. Now, she’s determined to keep her daughter, Elle, safe. So when local girls close to Elle in age and appearance begin to go missing, it’s her worst nightmare.

Charlotte’s fears are confirmed when a frantic search becomes a shocking murder investigation. The girls’ bodies have been found – half-buried, and with traces of mud and wildflowers under their fingernails.

As Charlotte’s obsession with keeping her daughter close pushes her marriage to the brink, local DI Madeleine Wood embarks on a gruelling search for the killer. And, as they dig deeper into the lives of the people they call friends and neighbours, they uncover secrets more terrible than they ever imagined . . .

Pretty Little Things is the nail-bitingly terrifying new serial-killer thriller from T.M.E. Walsh – the perfect read for fans of Close to Home, Behind Her Eyes and The Child

Also by T.M.E. Walsh

The DCI Claire Winters series:

For All Our Sins

The Principle of Evil

Trial by Execution

Pretty Little Things

T.M.E. Walsh

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

T.M.E. Walsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 978-0-00-823892-6

Tania (T.M.E.) WALSH began writing full time after becoming a casualty to the recession in late 2008 and pens dark and raw twisty thrillers.

She successfully self-published the first two novels in the DCI Claire Winters series before being picked up by HQ – a division of HarperCollins – in 2015.

Tania is currently working on a fourth book in the DCI Claire Winters series with plans for another standalone thriller to follow her latest novel, Pretty Little Things.

In 2011 Tania was the winner of the Wannabe a Writer Blurb competition sponsored by Writing Magazine and judged by Matt Bates, the Fiction buyer for WHSmith Travel.

Tania has previously produced digital artwork that was published on a DVD-ROM for ImagineFX magazine’s FXPosé section twice in the early and latter part of 2007, which has been published worldwide.

Tania lives in Hertfordshire with her husband and young daughter.

For the latest information on T.M.E. Walsh, you can follow her on Twitter @tmewalsh, or visit her website www.tmewalsh.com and Facebook page www.facebook.com/tmewalsh

For Team Walsh.

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Author Bio

Dedication

Prologue

Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Part 2

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Part Three

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Letter from the Author

Excerpt

Endpages

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

ANON

It’s the blood that gets to you first. It’s messy, gets everywhere. Under your nails, in each line, every crevice. It’s a bitch to clean. It’s practically impossible to remove. No matter how much you scrub, on hands and knees, sponge in hand, if you look hard enough, you’ll find a trace.

That’s why I’m careful about where I do it, where I make the final cut, where I end it all.

It’s in a cabin in the woods.

I know what you’re thinking – cliché? Am I right? OK, sure, I can see why you’d think that. Frankly, I don’t care what you think. I never set out to be original. This life chose me. I’m not a product of my environment.

I was born like this.

Now, isn’t that a scary thought?

So . . . the blood.

After the blood, comes the elation. That feeling of pure ecstasy, running through your veins – at least, that’s what it’s like for me. Each of us is different. Someone else like me might tell it differently. One thing we all have in common, though, is the knowledge that we can’t stop.

Doesn’t matter how many times I hear an innocent beg me to spare their life. It doesn’t matter how many times I hear them cry, or scream, or feel them lash out, trying in vain to fight me off.

No, it doesn’t matter.

The result is the same every time.

They are dead and I’m riding that euphoric wave I can’t ever find the words to describe accurately.

They are dead . . . or they are dying.

Like this bitch is right now, her body twitching under my weight. There’s no sound except for the gurgling as her blood gushes out, bright-red, arterial spray decorating the plastic sheeting I’ve pinned up around the walls and floor of the cabin.

Her name is Bryony Keats.

She’s just celebrated her seventeenth birthday. She didn’t listen to her mother about getting into cars with strangers.

How many? I’m not sure I can rightly say. It’s either three or four. Reason why I say it’s possibly four depends on how you look at it.

Number four had a fucking asthma attack midway through it all, which, frankly, spoilt the whole thing for me, it really did.

Did she die because of me? Well, yes and no. I’m sure her body wouldn’t have gone into overdrive had I left her alone. BUT, she had asthma – an underlying health problem.

Properly managed, she could have lived another fifty-plus years. So, I can’t take complete ownership of it.

Mother Nature played her part.

She could just as easily have had a fatal attack next week, next month, next year . . . had she not fallen into my path.

Her name was Katie. Pretty sweet little thing she was. She was my youngest, about fifteen. Just.

Young.

Did I mention that I like them young? Well, youngish – I’m not a total monster – but I do get off on that sweet smell of youth. The skin has to be soft to the touch, like a peach. Ripe fruit meant for tasting.

That first sweet bite.

It gets me every single time. That and the precious moment when the light, the life – everything that makes that person them – has slipped away.

Speaking of which, Bryony here has just left us.

Her legs under my weight have fallen still at last, and her nails have stopped trying in vain to claw my eyes out.

I’d kept my face out of harm’s way, head cocked to the side, just so, watching as she bled out.

I picked her up on a winding country road in the Chilterns, en route between the county of Buckinghamshire and Kennington, Hertfordshire, not to be confused with Kennington, London, not far from MI6 – I should be so-fucking-lucky – ’cos that’d be pretty cool.

I’d been out on one of the drives I like to do when not at work.

I can literally just drive for miles, with no real destination in mind, just enjoying where the roads take me.

Admittedly this means I can scope out the area, understand my limits, respect the boundaries I have to force on myself so I don’t get caught, but it’s a real pleasure.

A Sunday-morning drive is how I found the cabin in the woods.

It was an old site that used to hire out wood cabins to families, on a self-catering basis. It was supposed to be all about getting back to nature, immersing oneself in the woods, leaving the rat-race behind – that type of shit.

This place thrived in the nineties. Then we hit the noughties, and it went to the dogs under new management.

This place was soon forgotten. It’s not even on my satnav.

Completely isolated, forgotten, broken and unloved. Until I found a use for it.

Anyway, I digress.

So, Bryony . . .

She said she’d had her thumb stuck out for about thirty minutes before I stopped at the side of the road.

When she lowered her head to give me the once-over, her eyes did show a flicker of recognition.

I did the same. I was pretty sure I’d seen her somewhere before.

‘Where you heading?’ I’d asked.

‘Anywhere but here,’ she’d replied, breezily, not seeing me as a threat.

I asked her what she meant. She told me she’d had enough of her mother’s new boyfriend, and was running away. Then she dropped her rucksack on the backseat of the car, and climbed in beside me.

Just like that.

Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly . . .

I admit, my smile was beaming. Ear to ear.

Bryony – she told me her name, with a flick of her chestnut-coloured hair over her small shoulders – was beautiful.

‘Take me as far as you’re going,’ she said.

I felt duty-bound to oblige.

After some small talk, she said she needed a piss. With no services nearby, just narrow country lanes, I pulled over and she ran into the thick of some trees.

I knocked her unconscious with one blow to the back of the head with my heavy-duty torch (top tip, always be prepared) catching her mid-flow, jeans and knickers around her ankles.

Not my greatest or proudest moment, I’ll admit. Necessary, though.

After an initial struggle with her jeans, I got her in the boot, wrists and ankles bound tight.

When we got to the cabin, I waited about four hours before I caved in and killed Bryony, cutting her throat from ear to ear.

It was right after she said she knew where she’d seen me before.

She’d sealed her own fate right at that moment, because just before that I’d been in two minds about whether to let her go or not.

She was a runaway, and I can relate to that and the reasons why she was doing it. We had found some common ground, but then she went and ruined it for herself.

I still don’t quite understand what she had been saying to me – places she said she’d seen me – but she was scared shitless. I doubt many people make much sense when they’ve reached the limits of trying to control such obvious fear.

I look down at her now, at the blood on the plastic sheet. I stare into her glassy green eyes.

With her last ounce of strength, Bryony’s frightful stare had found mine, and her eyelids flickered.

Had that been a silent fuck you?

Too late to ask her now, but I like to think that’s what she meant. Even at the end she had a bit of fight left in her.

I eye the ring in her fleshy lower lip. That’ll have to come out. It’s about the only thing she has that I have considered keeping.

After I’ve carefully removed the little piece of silver, I press my hand, encased in surgical gloves, against her peach of a cheek. She’s going cold already.

Oh, Bryony. You tragic thing, you.

The cabin in the woods – isn’t that a film? – is about twenty-odd miles away from civilisation of any real kind, unless you count the wildlife – who, incidentally, can be a massive help if I want to dispose of smaller body parts.

There have been four girls before Bryony. Later, I’ll have them all moved to a different place, a wasteland about forty miles from where I live.

Then it’s just a matter of time before they’re found. I don’t think it’ll be long.

Bryony’s a bit different though. When I move them, I don’t want to leave her with the rest. She fought back more. She was in a different league.

I pick up my spade and go outside the cabin. The air outside is heavy with damp, but it’s mild enough.

I go to the back of the cabin and out towards the undergrowth.

I step over the four raised mounds of earth near the line of trees and begin to dig. Nothing fancy, or too deep, just enough like when you sow a row of seeds.

All I can hear, now the blood in my ears has stopped pounding, is the spade slicing through the soil.

It takes no time at all and I go back to get Bryony.

When I’m done, and have scattered a layer of soil over her, I take a few steps back and lean my weight against the spade.

I look at the five mounds of earth, from the bottom where their feet are, right up until I reach their faces.

Five bodies buried up to their necks, five faces left uncovered, looking skyward. They remind me of marble statues or the effigies you see adorning the top of a sarcophagus.

They are less than perfect, obviously. I can’t stop decomposition.

This is my garden, they are my seeds. Pretty things might grow here, even after they’ve gone, and join the sea of reds and pinks that are here already.

I head back inside, leaving the spade outside for later.

I go to the mirror on the cabin wall and take a moment to study my face.

So, there it is. This is me. What I do.

It’s a primal instinct. Something tuned in, buried deep, part of my DNA, never to be erased.

People write books on it – the reasons why people kill. Reality is, they’ve only just scratched the surface. They don’t know how deep down the rabbit hole it goes.

They don’t know about me.

As I said, it’s a primal instinct.

And that’s what makes me so dangerous.

PART ONE

Ring-a-ring o’ roses,

A pocket full of posies,

A-tishoo! A-tishoo!

We all fall down.

…We all fall down.

We all fall.

We. All.

Fall.

CHAPTER 1

CHARLOTTE

The taste of acrid smoke, like ash in my mouth.

This is what I always feel in that first waking moment after a nightmare.

The ashes in my mouth. That and the heat from the fire.

Since the accident it’s all I can think about when I shut my eyes at night.

I remember . . . I remember opening my eyes, seeing twisted and bent metal keeping me prisoner in the wrecked shell that was my old Citroën Xsara.

I say was, because in the immediate aftermath, from where I was lying, it didn’t resemble anything like a car.

I remember the heat of the fire, seeing the flames licking ever closer. I remember looking at twisted metal, torn upholstery and flames drawing dangerously close to the exposed fuel pipe.

It’s like I was in a daze. I couldn’t think about what I had to do next. I was, I guess, frozen in that moment, unable to move.

Then I was dragged out of what remained of my car by the man who had been in the vehicle behind mine. Assessing the damage, he knew I had maybe a minute before the car’s petrol tank exploded.

He’d cleared us to a distance of about thirty feet before the inevitable happened.

In one deafening explosion, the car was completely engulfed in flames, and I breathed a sweet sigh of relief that I was not burning to death.

It was a miracle I was alive or that things didn’t turn out worse considering my injuries. I suffered concussion, cuts, bruises, fractured ribs and a punctured lung, but the worst was my face . . .

I’d survived a collision with an HGV that had misjudged a bend in the road while coming from the opposite direction. The driver, Paul Selby, caught my car, crushing the side, and the force had spun me around before I came off the road, going through a fence and down an embankment. The car had flipped, rolling several times before coming to a standstill. Wreckage was strewn across the road I’d previously been driving on, and I was now stationary in a field.

Paul Selby was arrested for dangerous driving, using a mobile at the wheel and causing injury by dangerous driving. He got bail, but the court date is coming up and I can’t deny the stress has been getting to me of late.

I have to keep it all in perspective, though – or so I keep being told.

It’s a crash no one should have survived.

But somehow I did.

Six months on and I had used the time to reassess my life. Life is precious. Life can be taken as quickly as it can be given.

My daughter, Elle, is currently telling me she wants a car for her seventeenth birthday, which is in almost two weeks’ time.

I keep seeing that HGV and my insides do a somersault.

‘I’ll need driving lessons too. I can’t have a car just sitting there on the drive,’ she’s telling me.

I want to scream at her not to drive.

Ever.

It’s too dangerous and I just want to protect her. She’s my only child and what if it had been her in that crash? What if something like what happened to me, happens to her?

I grip hold of the tea towel I have been using to dry the dishes, and try to pull myself together. I’m being irrational. That’s what my Iain would say if he could hear what’s going on inside my head right now.

Because I’ve gone pale, quiet, she is now peering over her iPad, staring at me. I need to stall.

‘I don’t know, Elle, cars are expensive and—’

‘Dad said I could have lessons,’ she interrupts, anticipating my predictable response.

So much for a united unit, sharing the roller-coaster ride that is living with a teenager.

‘Well, Dad hasn’t discussed anything with me.’

‘Mum, I’m nearly seventeen.’

‘I never had a car at seventeen,’ I say, turning my back to her, busying myself with the drying up.

‘I need my independence.’

I turn to look at her. I know I’m biased, but my daughter is a beauty. She’s got long brown hair that brings out the colour of her bright-blue eyes. Her features are almost perfect and I know her classmates are envious because Elle’s blossomed early.

She’s looking at me now, eyebrow cocked, while playing with her necklace.

I stare at the pendant. It’s a green-enamel four-leaf clover. Iain and I got it for her sixteenth birthday. I remember thinking it was expensive at the time, but compared to a car . . .

Elle lets go of the pendant and gets up from her chair. Standing there in her skinny jeans and slouchy Nirvana top – which she’s only wearing because she thinks it’s fashionable, not because she thinks Kurt Cobain was a lyrical genius – she looks like she could pass for an adult already.

When did my daughter become so grown up?

She looks at me, hope in her eyes.

I’m about to speak but I hear Iain coming down the stairs. He comes into the room dressed in his usual work uniform.

‘How are my favourite girls?’ He comes over to me and, as he shoves dirty clothes into the washing machine, gives me a squeeze and plants a kiss on my cheek.

I immediately look to our daughter.

Iain frowns. ‘Have I just interrupted something?’

‘Mum says I can’t have a car for my birthday.’

I raise my eyebrows at him and he winces as he heads towards the coffee machine. ‘Elle, I didn’t promise anything,’ he says as he grabs a mug.

Elle’s face scrunches up. ‘Yeah, you did.’

He looks at me. ‘I really didn’t.’

‘Don’t lie,’ Elle says.

‘I said we would consider it.’

He says this to me, because apparently I need convincing. I hold my hands up. ‘You shouldn’t say anything without discussing it with me first.’

He looks sheepish.

‘Typical,’ Elle says under her breath, but loud enough for me to hear it. She busies herself with her iPad.

Iain watches my face and mouths a sorry. I face the sink. He is beside me again.

‘I didn’t think,’ he says in my ear and slips his arms around my waist.

‘You don’t think,’ I say. ‘That’s the problem.’

He frowns, eases his grip around me. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing.’

He stares at me until I look at him. He gives a shake of his head. ‘Not in front of her . . .’ he says and goes to the television on the other worktop and flicks it on.

The silence is punctuated with the sound of a commercial and Iain sips his coffee as he flicks through the channels.

‘What’s happened now?’

I don’t bother to turn my head to see what he’s talking about

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