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  CHRIS WHITAKER

  ‘Chris Whitaker is leading the pack of hungry young crime writers by a long mile . . . you’ll ache when it’s over. A very real, very rare talent’

  SARAH HILARY

  ‘A novel you swallow whole because you can’t help yourself, and then go back a second time to savour what you missed. Wonderful’

  M. R. CAREY

  ‘This book blew me away. Extraordinarily good. Gripping and heartbreaking’

  DEBORAH O’CONNOR

  ‘A remarkable book that made me blub’

  MIKE THOMAS

  ‘Phenomenal’

  JO SPAIN

  ‘Stunning’

  MICHELLE DAVIES

  ‘Awesome book. Superbly written. A real work of art and a league above so much of the crime fiction out there’

  NEIL WHITE

  ‘This is really something else . . . an ambitious novel that is part parable, part morality tale, part crime novel and which will stay with the reader for a long time’

  G. J. MINETT

  ‘All The Wicked Girls is impossibly good . . . This is a crime story with a difference, a beautifully plotted, genuinely absorbing set of character studies . . . Pure magic on the page’

  LIZ LOVES BOOKS

  ‘An absolute delight . . . Highly original’

  GUARDIAN

  ‘Perpetually fascinating’

  HEAT

  ‘A gripping debut’

  MAIL ON SUNDAY

  ‘Brilliantly comic and tragic’

  SUN

  ‘Unforgettable’

  LITERARY REVIEW

  ‘Completely blew me away’

  LISA HALL, bestselling author of Between You and Me

  ‘My pick for crime novel of the year’

  EMMA FLINT, bestselling author of Little Deaths

  ‘Chris Whitaker builds an entire town in the reader’s head and masterfully inhabits it with comic, poignant, gripping life’

  DAVID WHITEHOUSE, bestselling author of Mobile Library

  ‘The best thing I’ve read in a while’

  THE LITERARY SHED

  ‘A beautifully written story of love, friendship, beliefs, fear, passion and I’m not embarrassed to say I cried at the end . . . each page is a literal work of art’

  COMPULSIVE READERS

  ‘Comes to a dramatic and totally unexpected conclusion’

  IT TAKES A WOMAN

  ‘You seriously have to read this book’

  LIPSTICK & LACE

  ‘This was a fun and cleverly written book, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good mystery with a hint of humour!’

  EMMA’S BOOKERY

  ‘The characters are skilfully written, so easy to get lost in their lives’

  LINDA STRONG REVIEWS

  ‘I couldn’t let go, I read it from cover to cover because there was no way I could leave it without knowing . . . This is an exceptional piece of work’

  EMMA, GoodReads Reviewer

  ‘Set in a small-town America and filled with some of the most exciting characters I have seen in fiction for ages’

  READING ROOM WITH A VIEW

  ‘I thoroughly enjoyed reading this; there are so many delightfully comic touches along the way, but all supported by a deeper sentiment and characters you can’t help but feel for’

  BURIED UNDER BOOKS

  Contents

  Grace, Alabama: 1995

  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

  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

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Extract from Tall Oaks

  Copyright

  For Charlie and George, my boys.

  And for Ayisha Malik (because I honour my bets).

  Grace, Alabama

  1995

  1

  Summer

  There ain’t no meaning.

  That’s where the fear lay all along. That’s what they didn’t get, all those people yellin’ and screamin’ on the television, those preening pastors crossing the air, those parents locking down their teens like they could keep grip on their wanderin’ souls.

  And when it was over they couldn’t take it—that discovery. They went on mourning, they spoke of before like before was real or something. The death of ideals.

  I get it though—the need for good and evil—but that endless stretch of gray between, that’s where you’ll find me and Raine, and maybe Pastor Bobby too.

  Raine’s my sister. I got a photo of us on my nightstand, in a sparkly frame shaped like a heart; gaudy as hell but my daddy bought it for me. We’re young in that shot, arms linked, bubble-gum smiles and eyes squint ’cause we never did keep our sunhats on. We were camping up by the Red River, the part where the bank runs low and the water breaks for brown rocks so slick we weren’t never allowed to wade out. That’s the best spot for fishin’. Daddy reckons he’s pulled out striped bass just as big as the kind Uncle Tommy caught when he fished the Coosa.

  That’s also the very same spot where Chief Black found a penis in the fall of 1985, back when the whole country was hot with talk of the McMartin preschool case and the couple hundred kids they reckoned was ritually abused there.

  It’s far and away the most excitin’ thing that’s ever happened in the town of Grace so we all know the story by heart.

  *

  The penis belonged to Richie Reams. Richie was a high school football stud—big arms and light eyes and fingers that smelled of pussy most days. He lived with his momma in a single-wide over in the scratch-ass town of Haskell, though she spent her nights with a hard-drinkin’ trucker she met at the bar she tended.

  Coach said Richie was destined for greatness if he could stay outta trouble, but that weren’t Richie’s way. Too much of a weakness for girls. Supply was dwindling though, especially being as Richie had a leanin’ toward blond-haired, blue-eyed innocents. There weren’t many of those left in Haskell. ’Course they still had the hair and the eyes, but Richie had fucked the innocence right outta them. That’s why he’d ventured into Grace. Virgin huntin’.

  He set his sights on Mandy Deamer. She went to Westview, same high school I do. I’ve seen her photo: Farrah hair and dimpled smile, the kinda pure that turned Richie’s insides out.

  He made sure to bump into Mandy outside Mae’s Diner on the first day of summer break. Might’ve made his move straight off but she kept a bull of a girl as her sidekick: Franny Vestal. Franny was the cruel kinda bi
g; six two and wide, and dressed head to toe in black most days. She had her eyes set hard on Richie from the get-go, like she could see through the smoke in his mind. He’d tried to soften her with a couple throwaways—nice eyes, tall like a model, had a friend for her—the kinda lines Richie thought a fat girl should’ve swallowed whole. Not Franny. Richie told Black he’d reckoned she was a dyke.

  Mandy caved two weeks later. Realized her mistake after Richie’s gold promises died hard in the blessed light of day. He was safely back in Haskell by the time she found out she was carryin’ his baby.

  Four months into the pregnancy Mandy took her own life. The shame got to her; hot stares and cold whispers and holy judgment.

  Her brother Harvey found her hangin’ from the long beam in the barn behind their place. Messed him up bad enough for the Deamers to pull their kids from Westview and school them at home from then on.

  Franny came for Richie in the dead of night. Black later told the Briar County News she’d held chloroform over his mouth, so he didn’t wake when she stripped him naked, though he did when his cock came off.

  She left him bleedin’ and screamin’ but called 911 ’cause she weren’t no murderer, she was just righting a wrong. She tossed his dick into the Red on her way home. A few hours later it washed up on the bank.

  Lottie Stimson’s dog found it, picked it up in his slobberin’ mouth. Lottie wrestled it from him, screamed, then fetched Black, and Mitch Wild, who was Black’s partner back then.

  They sent Lottie on her way, she was cryin’ bad. Black told her he’d stop by her place to take a statement, also told her to keep her mouth shut till then. ’Course she’d been straight on the telephone; said she’d heard noises in Hell’s Gate, probably the killer gettin’ a good look at her. She dressed it up nice enough for my momma to head straight over with a bottle of Barton.

  Lottie also called her husband, Jasper, home from the logs; gave him an excuse to sit out front with his shotgun, his retarded brothers and more than a couple beers too. Itchy fingers. Now Jasper was known ’cause he’d just served a five bid in Fountain Correctional Facility for beatin’ a cop, so Black made a mental note to call ahead before he walked up their track. Though he forgot to pass that note on to his partner.

  Mitch Wild was shot dead when he stopped by the Stimson place after dark that evenin’.

  Franny handed herself in once she’d cooled. Talk was the cops found all kinds of dark at her house: wicker pentagrams hanging from the trees in her yard, sketches of Babylon and evil eyes, and that LaVeyan book on her nightstand. Black said it was bullshit but that didn’t stop it from burnin’, and the kids at school reckoned the flames fired blue and the smoke twisted into the face of Mandy as it rose.

  I’ve heard that tale maybe fifty times, each a little different, but at the end I ain’t in no doubt who the devil in that story is, and it ain’t Franny.

  Mandy is buried in a pretty spot in the cemetery beside St. Luke’s. She was my age when she died. Fifteen. That’s a long way short of a decent life.

  I’d stop by her grave when I went to church and Momma would always say to me, “Keep clear of boys, Summer. They ain’t got nothin’ to give you but trouble.”

  Raine sometimes complains that nothin’ exciting is ever gonna happen in Grace again.

  Daddy told her careful what you wish for.

  2

  A Cautionary Tale

  Summer Ryan went missing in the night hours of May 26. Her daddy called his boys before the cops ’cause he reckoned they’d move quicker. And also ’cause Joe Ryan had spent the better years of his life keeping far from law enforcement.

  The group fanned out and moved slow. Flashlights cut stuttered lines beneath ink sky and moonlight fell blue between longleaf pines that rose tall in the distance.

  Most had kids of their own so knew that cold fear that was rolling over Joe and Ava. Having a daughter loose all night, fifteen, smart or not, their part of the world rarely saw mistakes go unpunished, prizes unclaimed.

  Tommy Ryan led them, the missing girl’s uncle, and he carried a gun and a bow and was handy enough with both.

  They walked the flat fields behind the girl’s house ’cause that’s the way she might’ve gone. There were rumblings she’d packed a bag before she ran, which meant they were probably wasting their time; that she was probably holed up with a friend or a boy or was laying low till whatever caused her to flee worked itself out. Still, the land weren’t safe and hadn’t been for a long time. Not since the first girl was taken.

  That nightmare had stretched for over a year then stopped sudden. Five girls: all from Briar County, all young, and all church girls. They reckoned it was over ’cause thinking anything but meant they’d go on holding their breath, and they were tired of that terror that saw them wake at all hours and creep down their hallways to check on their own.

  They were ten in number. They’d run with Joe back when he was young and did bad things. They’d straightened out when Joe went down ’cause eight years was sobering. They lived in Grace and the close surround, their wives talked, their kids hung out. Most weekends they drank beer together, ate barbecue, watched football, and joked and laughed.

  When the sun rose, those with jobs would break for work of different kinds—a couple in construction, a couple hauled freight, one fixed air-conditioning units—then they’d come right back. They’d listen out for the telephone. They’d get tight on their own kids; tell them to be home before dark, to stick to the streets and not even glance at Hell’s Gate National Forest.

  If they caught the guy—newspapers called him the Bird—they’d kill him before calling the cops. It weren’t said but they knew that’s what they’d do.

  *

  The Grace heat got up early. By eight, the streets baked and kids stood by sprinklers, screaming on each pass.

  Noah Wild wore his father’s badge on a length of twine he looped twice over his head. He’d polished it till sunlight bounced from the eagle’s wings.

  Stores crept to life; A-frames were hauled to the street by slow-moving keepers, most a decade past retirement but clinging to purpose with iron grips.

  He stopped outside the Whiskey Barrel. Purv was hosing the sidewalk, his worn sneakers deep in a puddle as the spray pooled.

  Purv saw him and grinned, then reached out and thumbed the badge. “You look mean, like a real cop.”

  Noah wanted to return the compliment but Purv wore an apron that fell low, the shirt beneath drowning him. Purv was a funny kinda small given his father stood a tough six three. He flicked his hair up to give him inches but weren’t fooling nobody, especially when the wind blew. He had one eyebrow, thumb thick and running the width of both eyes. They’d once tried to split it, with some duct tape and a whole lot of cussin’.

  “I still reckon it’s missin’ somethin’. The badge alone ain’t enough,” Noah said.

  Purv studied him careful. “How about a toothpick? Just let it hang, like Cobretti. I’ll pick some up.”

  “I’ll need a gun belt too.”

  “You reckon you’ll get a gun on your first day?”

  “Yeah . . . probably low caliber though, just till I show Black I know how to handle a Koch.”

  Purv looked away, bit his lip hard.

  Noah sighed. “K-o-c-h.”

  “I saw your grandmother pass by just now,” Purv said. “She was wearin’ a housecoat and rollers, talking to herself. I tried calling out but she looked at me like she ain’t never seen me before.”

  “Thanks for tryin’.”

  Purv nodded then yawned.

  “Rough night?” Noah said.

  “Someone stole my father’s truck. He weren’t happy, had to walk it back from Merle’s place.”

  “Shit,” Noah said, ’cause he knew what that would’ve meant for Purv.

  Purv’s father was a bully, not the misunderstood kind that cowered beneath, just the misshapen kind that’d be stone through if you sliced him in half. If Purv knew a beati
ng was due, Noah would crouch at the end of his yard and wait for the signal that he was still living before he headed home. One flip of the lights, on and off.

  Noah reached a hand out and gripped Purv’s shoulder tight. “We’re brave.”

  “We’re fierce.”

  “Catch you later,” Noah said.

  “Good luck.”

  Purv went back to hosing.

  Noah headed for the center of the square, for the stretch of Bermuda grass watered day and night during the hot months.

  He found a bench and reached for his sunglasses, a birthday gift from Purv a year back, expertly lifted from the drugstore in Brookdale, along with two packs of Marlboros. Smoking and stealing were just about Purv’s favorite pastimes.

  They’d been friends since Noah could remember. They spent summers in the Kinleys’ fields, racing down lines of corn and firing stick guns at the shiny twin-engines that buzzed low, then stopping by the Red to try and glimpse the senior girls in their bathing suits. They spent winters trampling through white woods, trying to follow buck tracks but making so much noise they never caught sight of one.

  Noah watched a couple old guys amble into Mae’s Diner and take a seat by the misted glass. Noah liked Grace before it got up. He’d once worked a paper route, rising at dawn and pedaling his rusting bicycle down the pretty streets with the tall houses and the watercolor yards. Each Christmas he walked that same route with Purv, and they stared in warm windows at distant scenes.

  He sat back, breathed deep, and thought of summer break rolled out ahead. He was about to enter junior year; his grades were shit but that was all right, he’d worked out long ago that school weren’t for him. Purv was faring worse, but then it weren’t no secret that God took with both hands when he created Purvis Bowdoin.

  They didn’t complain ’cause they were brave and they were fierce and they never forgot that.

  *