Keep It in the Family

by John Marrs

‘It’s your dad’s writing on the skirting board,’

‘It was your dad who wrote the message in the house warning us what was hidden in the attic.’ ‘When?’ ‘When he was a boy.’

‘I want you to leave Finn.’ I place my hand gently on her forearm. ‘I’m sorry to say it, but you bring nothing but unhappiness here. You are like a cancer in our family, Mia, eating away at us. Finn would be much happier if he had the chance to start afresh. I want nothing but the best for him, and the best does not involve you. So I’m begging you to take the money, move away and start again.’

‘Just like that. We are perfectly capable of muddling on without you. We did it before you arrived and we can do it again. And when he’s older, Sonny will understand.’ ‘Understand what?’ ‘Understand why his mum left him with his dad.’ ‘What did you say?’ ‘You don’t expect us to let you take him with you, do you? Part of the condition of you moving away is that you leave my grandson behind.’

I’m relatively calm, all things considered. Those ‘things’ being that my husband is a lying, cheating bastard who has fathered a baby with his ex-girlfriend and continued their affair throughout our marriage. That my father-in-law is hiding what he knows about the house where the bodies of seven children and two decapitated adults were found. And let’s not forget my snake of a mother-in-law who has tried to buy me out of my marriage and parenthood.

‘How did you pick them?’ I continue, but he says nothing. ‘How did you kill them? Did they suffer? Were they in pain? Is that why you did it? Did you abuse them first?’ ‘Shut up!’ he yells. ‘Of course I didn’t! I’d never do that to a child.’ ‘But you’d kill one.’ ‘I didn’t have parents who cared about me like you did, Mia.’ ‘A lot of people don’t. But they don’t go on to do what you’ve done.’

‘Parents don’t always deserve their children.’ I let out a huff. ‘That’s not your decision to make.’ ‘If someone had noticed I shouldn’t have been left with mine, my whole life could have been very different. We wouldn’t be where we find ourselves today.’

‘One person’s death can mean another person’s rebirth,’ he continues. ‘This is the only way that Finn and Debbie can start again. Debbie has been everything to me. She has saved me, and now I must do the same for her. Please tell them that I am sorry for what I’ve done.’

Dave takes my phone and slides it across the floor to me. It stops at my legs. ‘Call for help,’ he says. ‘It’ll take the nearest station about fifteen minutes to get people here.’ Then I watch helplessly as he takes the knife, holds it up to his neck and closes his eyes. ‘No,’ I gasp, both transfixed and dumbstruck. After three deep breaths, he howls as he uses both hands to push the blade into his skin and, in one swift movement, slits his own throat.

I turn around and make my way back to her, picking up a plank of wood from a broken pallet discarded on a verge. As I reach her, I raise it above me and wait for a moment, giving her one last chance to change her mind and tell me that she will keep my secret and that we really are friends. Instead, she screams. Then I apologise and, before she can shield herself, I hit her, once, twice and then a third time until something cracks. I have killed her. And in doing so, I have saved us both. Me, from exposure so that I can go on and be anyone I want to be, and her from the guilt of surviving while Abigail died. She will never feel physical pain or mental anguish again, she will never fear the known or the unknown. I have freed her from herself. I have saved her.

‘She’s not my friend any more,’ I say. ‘If we don’t go now, you’ll be arrested. The car – is it stolen?’ He nods. ‘So they’ll charge you for that as well as murder. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in prison?’ He shakes his head. ‘Then we need to get out of here. What’s your name?’ ‘Dave,’ he says. ‘I’m Debbie,’ I offer. Then I grab his arm and pull him away from Precious. Now, it’s him and me running together. To where, I don’t know yet. But with Dave, I already feel safe.

It was Debbie this whole time???? WHAT??!!

David Hunter, 55, who admitted causing the deaths of at least forty children over four decades, was cremated yesterday, a police spokesman confirmed. His family are not thought to have attended.

While it was widely reported that Hunter believed he was suffering from terminal cancer, an autopsy revealed his condition to be a treatable stomach ulcer.

The last time Debbie and I came face to face was at the police station two days after he killed himself in front of me. For a woman with her disabilities, she was surprisingly agile as she kicked and beat me with her walking stick until officers dragged her away and into a cell. ‘You killed him!’ she yelled. ‘You killed him! Murdering bitch!’

Why did he kill himself when he could so easily have killed Mia? It’s a question I can’t stop asking myself. She was restrained in a warehouse only he and I knew existed. Her body was unlikely to have ever been found. He could have got away with it. So why did he sacrifice his life for hers? What was he thinking? Did he die to protect me like he always said he would, or was this his way of forcing my hand to stop? My final kill was that boy in the field two years ago, but because my activities were no longer discussed, Dave wasn’t to know that. In trying to save Mia and protect me, he has destroyed everything.

My darrling Debbie. I am so sorrey. I never meant to hurt any one. But now Im left with no choice. Iv spent my life looking after you so let me do this 1 last thingg too protect you and my Finns. Pleese forgive me. D x

Mia blundered from one misperception to another. She poked through a box of old water-damaged schoolbooks, the top two belonging to Dave but the rest were mine that my grandfather had brought back from my parents’ house. Mia, not knowing a flood had erased the names on my books, had assumed them all to be Dave’s. Then, putting two and two together from that error, she convinced herself that his handwriting matched what had been etched into the skirting board, when it was mine. While I wasn’t dyslexic like Dave, Dad’s homeschooling concentrated more on the arts than basics like handwriting.

My only regret – aside from causing the events that led to George’s disappearance – is shaking Mia’s ladder to distract her from urging Finn to open those suitcases. Their discovery was just as much of a surprise to me as it was to everyone else, and I panicked.

If Mia and Finn hadn’t been there, I could have warned Dave and we could have moved them elsewhere. But there they were, and I panicked. Shaking the ladder was only supposed to scare Mia into climbing down, but instead she lost her balance and fell.

There is one victim we all seem to forget in this terrible story – Debbie Hunter. When the man she loved for more than forty years took his own life, he abandoned her to the condemnation of the world’s press and social media. It is unlikely she or their son Finn will ever escape his legacy. But the real shame is that this woman – this tragic character – who lived under the same roof as him, didn’t see what he was capable of.

It was her all along...dont feel sorry for her!!!

The last time she was out in public, I had to rescue her from Tesco after a group of people started hurling fruit at her in an aisle, yelling ‘child killer’. She has also faced harassment at the bank and in her car waiting at traffic lights. Even though I begged her not to go, she insisted on attending Dad’s public inquest, where a furious crowd made up of relatives of the dead children screamed at her on the steps. Even most of her post is hate mail.

‘Believe me, it’s taken a lot of therapy to get there. When I thought he was going to kill me, all I could think of was never seeing my son again. And I promised myself that, if by some miracle I survived, then I’d be a better mum. There’s only one thing I have to thank Dave for, and that’s for making me take ownership of my postnatal depression. But I admit the PTSD diagnosis took me by surprise. However, I guess it makes sense after the last twelve months.’

‘There’s something about his confession that doesn’t add up and it’s bothering me.’ ‘Which part?’ ‘Well, all of it actually. If what you say he told you is accurate – and I’m not doubting you at all – there isn’t a moment where he actually admits to what he’s done.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I reply. ‘You found his DNA all over that warehouse.’ ‘But not on the suitcases, clothes or the bags they were in. They’d all been wiped clean; even the more recent victims had no fingerprints, fibres or DNA on them. According to your statement, Hunter said, “I need you to know that I am sorry for everything that’s happened. This is not how it was supposed to be. I’ve done many things I’m not proud of.” Is that correct?’ ‘Uh-huh.’ ‘But he never said specifically what he was sorry for?’

For decades he got away with it. There were no eyewitnesses, no descriptions of him, no car registration plates reported, he wasn’t captured once on CCTV even though every one of those kids was abducted in plain sight. He covered his tracks so well. So why did he wipe clean the bodies, the suitcases and the clothes but not the warehouse? It troubles me that maybe his confession wasn’t a confession at all.’ ‘Then what was it?’ ‘A distraction. Could he have been trying to divert us from what really happened?’

There was no judgement when I confessed to him what my parents made me do or about the role I played in George’s disappearance. And it was Dave who encouraged me to locate my grandparents. The following morning, I arrived on their doorstep, expecting them to turn me away or accuse me of having a wild imagination when I described my life with their son, my father. But they doubted nothing and I am forever grateful for that.

It was something he never stopped doing, even years later when he discovered I shared more with my parents than just DNA. He hated that I killed; he tried reasoning with me, begging me to stop, fearing I would be caught and that he would be left alone again. And for a time, I really did try to adapt to his will. But eventually my need to protect the vulnerable became bigger than the both of us.

I waited until after my grandfather died years later and there was a brief clearing in the fog of my grandmother’s dementia to ask why she thought they never came for me. ‘They didn’t have the chance to,’ she said, before revealing that my grandfather and a group of close friends had ensured my parents could never hurt another child again. Then he paid a crematorium attendant to open up after hours and dispose of their bodies. ‘But Dad was your son,’ I said. ‘Which is why we were duty bound. We brought him into this world so it was our responsibility to take him out of it.’

I learned more in my time with my grandparents about the need for a moral compass than I ever did from Mum and Dad. They demonstrated that even good people like them – like me – can kill out of necessity.

But I didn’t realise the phone continued to record, and now, for the first time, I see what the lens continued to capture from its new position. Below us, a split second before I fall down the ladder, is Debbie. And she looks as if she is shaking it. No, I correct myself, she doesn’t just look like she is shaking it, she actually is. I replay it several times to make sure my eyes aren’t deceiving me, but they’re not. She is the reason I fell.

‘There’s something else your dad said that doesn’t make sense. He told me: “I let Debbie keep the baby she always wanted.”’ I leave this hanging, waiting for him to catch up with me. ‘And?’ he asks. ‘Don’t you think it’s a strange thing to say? What do you think that means?’

‘What if he meant that you weren’t biologically his or Debbie’s, and you came into their lives another way?’

‘A comparison of the DNA profiles of Finn Hunter and David Hunter does not support the hypothesis that David Hunter is the biological father of Finn Hunter. Based on testing results obtained from analysis of the DNA loci listed in the technical data, the probability of paternity is zero per cent. This testing is based on information provided by the client.’

‘Mark says it might be enough evidence for them to carry out a controlled test to compare your DNA with the family of a boy who disappeared back in 1990,’

Now she shows me a newspaper story about the siblings’ disappearance. William Brown had dark hair and dark eyes like me, features I don’t share with either of my parents. I make a note of the article’s date and count back – this boy and I were both a month old when he vanished.

‘So you think Dad came home from work one day with a kid and said, “Look what I’ve found, he’s ours now”? And Mum didn’t bat an eyelid? That’s ridiculous.’ ‘I don’t know what happened. But if you are William Brown, then Debbie was complicit in a crime. And if that’s the case, it’s also feasible that she could know more about Dave’s killings than she’s letting on.’

Mia can’t be allowed to keep ruining people’s lives without punishment. She needs to pay for everything she has done – and will continue to do, if not stopped.

However, at least I know for certain he isn’t that stolen baby, William Brown. I spoke again with Mark to tell him about Finn’s DNA test results, and he pulled up Finn’s birth certificate. William was born two days before Finn in a different hospital 100 miles away. So the mystery of Finn’s biological parents remains – along with why Dave and Debbie’s names are printed on his birth certificate when they aren’t related.

‘None of the forty kids disappeared in that time. And look at the signature on this one. It reads “D.R. Hunter”.’ ‘What about it?’ ‘Dad doesn’t have a middle name. But Mum does. It’s Ruth. Deborah Ruth Hunter. She has slipped up; she used her own initials instead of his. These diaries are in Dad’s name but filled in by her. It wasn’t Dad travelling from county to county, it was her. She did his accounts, didn’t she? She managed his diaries. These diaries.’ I clasp my hand to my mouth. ‘You think it was Debbie and not Dave who . . . who . . .’ I can’t even finish what I’m trying to say, but he knows what I’m asking.

Could you wake Sonny for me, please?’ ‘Sonny?’ she asks, puzzled. ‘He’s not here.’ ‘He was upstairs napping. Has Dad taken him out?’ ‘No, Debbie came an hour ago while you were asleep. Said she was picking up Sonny for Finn.’ My posture stiffens and my muscles tense as I scowl at Finn. ‘I told you I don’t want her anywhere near him. Why did you send her here?’ His face pales. ‘I didn’t,’ he replies.

‘I want my son,’ I say firmly. ‘Why, what do you think I’m going to do to him?’ ‘We know, Debbie,’ I say. ‘We know what you’ve done to children just like him.’ ‘What’s she talking about?’ she asks Finn. I watch as he opens his mouth, but suddenly, it’s all too much for him. Her lies have sapped every bit of strength from this man. He doesn’t know where to start, so I fill in the blanks. ‘We know it was you who abducted those children, not Dave. We’ve found your diaries.’ ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ ‘No more lies, Debbie. You’re the one who’s been killing for all these years. You slipped up, you put your own initials in one of the diary entries.’

‘We’ve done a DNA test and he’s not related to you or Dave.’ The colour drains from her face. She looks to Finn again and his stony expression tells her that he knows everything. Finally, Finn speaks. ‘Who am I?’ Now Debbie is lost for words. ‘It . . . it . . . it just happened. All of it . . . everything. It just happened.’ ‘It never “just happens”,’ he says. ‘Everything in those diaries is planned and listed, the address and date of every town where a child disappeared. It was all premeditated. You were too careful to allow something to “just happen”. You did your research. So who am I?’

‘Who am I?’ Finn repeats. ‘You . . . you are . . . your name is . . . was . . . William Brown.’ His brows knit and he and Mia look to one another. If I’m not mistaken, they recognise the name. ‘That’s not possible,’ he says, turning back to me. ‘I was born before him.’ ‘Your birth certificate isn’t yours,’ I reply. ‘Then whose is it?’

‘Finn Hunter was my biological child. He died a month before I found you.’ If I close my eyes tightly, I can still feel my baby son’s slowly cooling body in my arms before Dave took him away from me. ‘I’d suffered many miscarriages before he was born, each of which almost broke me. With each came an enormous emotional impact as powerful as grief. And then a miracle happened. We managed to go full-term with a wonderful, beautiful little boy,’ I continue. ‘We immediately fell in love with each and every tiny bone in his body until he was snatched away from us three days later. Cot death, we assumed, as there could be no other explanation for it. But we never reported it or told another living soul. Neither of us trusted the authorities. I was convinced they were going to blame me for doing something wrong, and then somehow find out about the suitcases in the warehouse. Your dad had only just registered Finn’s birth, but neither of us could bring ourselves to register his death.’

‘You caught my attention from your pram,’ I direct to Finn. ‘You had these rich, dark eyes, and a mop of thick dark-brown hair. Then your gaze locked on to mine and something inside my head clicked into place. You and I belonged together.’ ‘But I wasn’t yours to take,’ Finn says quietly.

‘Dave’s text message to Debbie that was read out at the inquest,’ Mia says to him. ‘He wrote something like, “let me do this one last thing to protect you and my Finns”. “My Finns”, plural, not “my Finn”. I assumed it was a mistake, but I think he meant he wanted to protect you and the child they lost.’

‘But you didn’t give birth to me, did you? Somebody else did. And you took me from her and killed my sister.’ ‘You’ve manipulated him his whole life,’ Mia adds. ‘But this is where it ends.’ ‘No,’ I spit. ‘It ends when I say it ends.’ I already know before the second act of our story plays out that this is it for us. I can taste the poison on my tongue as I point to Mia. ‘You think I’m the manipulator here? Well take a look in the mirror. I’ve watched the both of you, messing about behind Emma’s back, putting your own needs above Sonny’s. He doesn’t deserve a mother like you, Mia, and while it pains me to say it, you don’t deserve him either, Finn.’ He shakes his head. ‘He doesn’t deserve any of us,’ he replies.

‘You know, there’s one question you haven’t asked me, Mia.’ ‘What’s that?’ she says. ‘How long ago my last kill was.’ ‘And?’ ‘And what?’ I reply. ‘Ask me.’ She sighs. ‘How long ago was your last kill?’ Suddenly, everything inside me calms. The anger, the frustration, the shock, the upset, the longing and the spite – they all disappear within the time it takes to slowly turn Sonny’s pushchair around to face them.

No shot she killed Sonny?????

‘He’s gone,’ Mum says matter-of-factly. ‘Gone where?’ I ask. ‘I’ve saved him.’ ‘From what?’ I continue. ‘From her,’ she says. ‘From you.’ ‘You’re not making any sense. Where’s my son?’ ‘I’m sorry, Finn, it’s too late.’ ‘What is she saying?’ shouts Mia, her fingers no longer wrapped around mine and clutching my arm instead. ‘You know what I’m saying,’ Mum says to Mia. ‘By turning Finn against me, you have taken away something so precious. So I have done the same to you.’

‘If you love me then tell me where he is.’ ‘I’m sorry, Finn,’ she says, her voice rattling as I throttle her. ‘But it’s too late.’ She turns her head and looks a few feet away to where she buried Dad’s ashes. It’s only then that I see it. A neatly folded set of baby clothes inside a shrink-wrapped bag placed upon the ground.