Free Kennedy 01 - Into the Shadows by Shirley Wells

put through your letterbox
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Clean as a whistle.’
    Jill wasn’t surprised.

Chapter Nine
    He liked the card, found it appropriate. On the front, From Your Valentine was written amid a mass of tiny, glittering hearts.
    Inside, it read: One day you’ll be mine. It appealed to him.
    Later, he would put it through her letterbox.
    He enjoyed being in her garden, so close to her, and often spent an evening watching her move around. She rarely pulled the curtains across until late. Even then, he liked to see lights go on and off in the various rooms.
    Better still, he liked to go inside the cottage. That was best. He liked to walk around the rooms and look at her things. She was neat and tidy, and he approved of that. He had to have order in his life and he guessed she did, too.
    Still, it was OK watching from the outside. Funny how he was at home in the dark. He supposed that was one thing he could thank his mother for. Probably the only thing.
    He hadn’t liked the darkness as a child. Those hours spent locked in the cupboard had filled him with horror. He’d begged and pleaded for a torch but she’d only laughed at him.
    ‘Great baby,’ she’d scoffed. ‘Not scared of the dark, are you?’
    He’d shaken his head, not daring to admit that it terrified him.
    He and his mum had shared a bedroom, and he’d hated that, too. It always smelted funny - a mixture of perfume and something else that he hadn’t been able to identify for years. He hadn’t known it was the smell of sex. All he had known was that he was banished to the cupboard frequently and, although he didn’t have many toys, those he did have had to be out of sight before he went to the cupboard.
    That smelted funny, too. Dusty and unused. He did nothing in there; there was nothing to do.
    It was when the men came that he was sent to the cupboard.
    Or sometimes, she sent him there when she was angry with him.
    She’d never been much of a cook, but for some reason she had enjoyed making biscuits. As she only possessed one cutter, the biscuits were heart-shaped. Once, he helped himself to a biscuit, still warm from the oven, and she was so enraged because he hadn’t asked that she sent him to the cupboard. From then on, he was sent to the cupboard whenever she made biscuits.
    ‘You’re a thief. You can’t be trusted,’ she’d said, and no protests from him would change her mind.
    “I won’t touch them,’ he’d cried, tears rolling down his cheeks.
    ‘You won’t,’ she’d agreed, laughing at her own little joke as she’d dragged him by the arm to the cupboard.
    These days, he liked the dark. It didn’t take long for his eyes to adjust and then he was fine.
    No, he was better than fine. Standing here, at the bottom of her garden, behind the lilac tree after which the cottage had perhaps been named, he saw all sorts of things. Last night he’d seen a sleek, bushy-tailed fox. The fox hadn’t seen him. He was as wily as a fox …
    Her bedroom light dimmed and he guessed she was sitting up in bed with the lamp on. What would she be reading?
    He’d watched that policeman, Detective Chief Inspector Trentham, come and go. Some detective he was. Some psychologist she was, come to that. There he was watching them both and they were no nearer the truth than they ever had been.
    Still, credit where credit was due. That profile she’d come up with had been close. They’d published it during her glory days when Rodney Hill had been arrested.
    Rodney Hill - the very thought of the man filled him with rage. Hill had been a nothing, a nobody. All he’d done was have sex with a whore. Any idiot could do that. During those long hours spent in the cupboard, he’d peeped through the crack and seen hundreds of men arrive, all of them on the verge of wetting themselves in their excitement. They were nothing. Worthless pieces of nothing.
    At first, he hadn’t known what the men came for. It was Micky Muldoon who told him.
    ‘They have sex with