Blacklands by Belinda Bauer Read Free Book Online Page B

to look and touch (except for Uncle Billy, the loser Man City fan, thought Steven fleetingly). But until such an autograph was granted, the author of that request would have had scorn—and possibly physical violence—poured onto him on a daily basis.

    No, only if and when it ultimately yielded up the body of William Peters did anyone have to know about the letter.

    Then Steven would admit what he had done, in the certain knowledge that Nan and Mum would agree—and be thankful for the fact—that the end had justified the means.

    Steven’s initial thrill at receiving Arnold Avery’s letter was supplanted by disappointment when he read it. At first.

    After a few days, however, the two neatly written sentences contained therein had begun to take on a deeper meaning in his mind. The very fact that—apart from Avery’s prison number along the top of the page—there were only two sentences required that they be pored over and analyzed in a way that a six-page rant never would have been.

    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” After a couple of days, Steven decided that this was just not true. Could not be true! Contrary to Lewis’s assertion, Steven had done his very best to think like a murderer when writing the letter, and he had more knowledge of how murderers thought than most twelve-year-olds.

    After the bedroom incident where he had pissed his pants (which, mercifully, neither he nor Lewis ever referred to), Mum had told him about what happened to Uncle Billy.

    At first Steven had been numbed with horror but, with Lewis’s excited encouragement, he slowly learned to be fascinated. His mother had told him Avery’s name, but would say little else about him. Instead, over the next year or so, Steven had read about serial killers. He’d thought it best to do this in secret, hiding library books in his kit bag and reading under the sheets by torchlight.

    With many nervous moments spent hearing footsteps creak towards him outside the protective duvet cocoon, he learned more about murder than any boy his age should ever know.

    He learned of organized killers and disorganized killers; of thrill seekers and trophy takers; of those who stalked their prey and those who just pounced as the mood seized them. He read of crushed puppies and skinned cats; of bullies and bullied; of Peeping Toms and fire starters; of frenzied hacking and clinical dissection.

    Steven’s manic reading had two major effects. First, in a single year his school-tested reading age leaped from seven years to twelve. Secondly, he learned that despite the seemingly crazy nature of their work, serial killers like Arnold Avery were in fact quite methodical. This told him that if he was true to type, Avery was likely to remember those he had killed quite vividly.

    For a start, each of his victims had been chosen deliberately and, if Avery hadn’t known their names when he killed them, he sure took the trouble to find out afterwards.

    In the fifteen minutes of free internet time he could devote to his search on any one day at the school library, Steven had found only a couple of online archived reports of Avery’s trial, but from them he discovered that Avery had picked Yasmin Gregory’s name from the
Bracknell & District News
. Yasmin had presented a bouquet of ugly orange lilies to Princess Anne. There was a photo of her curtseying. The cutting had later been found in the house Avery shared with his widowed mother, along with newspaper reports of her family’s appeal for her safe return. The cuttings were discovered by police in a shoe box along with Yasmin’s yellow knickers with TUESDAY in glitter-writing across the front. The knickers had been laundered; the report said Avery was “disgusted by bodily fluids.”

    The report also said Yasmin had been kept alive for at least two days. Steven searched again and found a photo of Yasmin in a cornflower blue dress—a gap-toothed blond child with a lazy eye. The photo had been