The Girls In The Woods

Don’t go into the woods. Because you’re in for a big surprise…

In an old album there is a beautiful Victorian photo that captures three young sisters, staring silently at one another. Only the trained eye can see the truth hiding in plain view. One of the sisters is already dead.

Annie Ashworth is currently off duty. With her baby bump growing fast, she is under strict instructions to stay away from police work and look after herself, especially as she has a history of leading danger right to her door. So when her police officer husband, Will, is called to the discovery of a skeleton buried out in the local woods, Annie tries to keep out of the investigation. But as another body is discovered and her own niece suddenly goes missing, staying away just isn’t an option.

As Annie is soon to discover, a picture really does tell a thousand stories. But which one leads to a killer?

Praise for HELEN PHIFER’s Annie Graham series

‘If you haven’t read any of the books in this series yet, you don’t know what you’re missing!’ – Splashes into Books

‘The Ghost House is the most exciting book I have read in a very long time, and would make an absolutely perfect Halloween read! Amazing début from Helen Phifer and I eagerly await more from her!’ – Judging Covers

‘It was an atmospheric, spooky read, ideal for the season.’ – I Heart Reading

‘The story constantly kept me on the edge of my seat. The Ghost House is a magnificent read and it's perfect for those who have a strong stomach and nerves of steel!’ – Librarian Lavender

‘I really found my heart thumping through some of the passages, and I blame Helen for sleepless nights when I was wondering what would happen next!’ – Amy (Amazon reviewer)

‘I was really impressed by this book. … I was amazed how the author got inside of the mind of the serial killer and really showed you his psychotic thought processes.’ – Elder Park Book Reviews

‘The twists and turns are fascinating.’ – A J Book Review Club

‘If you love paranormal and crime novels, then this series is the one for you! But not only that, Helen also manages to grip you from the start, with romance thrown in and a lot of suspense. The stories jump from past to present throughout which shows incredible storytelling as you do not get confused by this once, it really adds to the storyline.’ – Nikki xoxo (Amazon reviewer)

Also by Helen Phifer

The Ghost House

The Secrets of the Shadows

The Forgotten Cottage

The Lake House

The Girls in the Woods

Helen Phifer

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2016

Copyright © Helen Phifer 2016

Helen Phifer 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 2016 ISBN: 9781474047432

Version date: 2018-09-20

HELEN PHIFER

lives in a small town called Barrow-in-Furness with her husband and five children. She has lived in the same town since she was born. It gets some bad press but really is a lovely place to live, surrounded by coastline and not far from the Lake District, where she likes to spend at least one of her days off from work. She has always loved writing and reading and loves reading books that make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Unable to find enough scary stories to read, she decided to write her own.

You can contact or follow Helen on her blog at helenphiferblog.wordpress.com, her website at www.helenphifer.com and on Twitter, @helenphifer1.

Acknowledgements

This year has been an incredibly tough one for not just my family but so many others. I’m very touched and inspired by the amazing work of the wonderful, beautiful, inspirational ladies of the Lookin GOOD and Feelin GREAT charity group. These amazing ladies are all fighting or have fought cancer. In fact, they are not just fighting it but indeed kicking its arse and still managing to raise money for charity and give each other the support that anyone suffering from this dreadful illness so desperately needs. If there’s one thing this year has taught me it’s that you never know how strong you can be until you’re faced with no other alternative.

I’d also like to thank my lovely editor, Victoria, for putting up with me this year – it hasn’t been easy – and the rest of the team at HQ Digital.

Once again huge thanks to my friends Sam, Tracy, Tina, Caroline, Gail, Phil and Iain, for your support and making me laugh at times when we really should be tearing our hair out. Sam, I haven’t forgot about the mouse incident and it will appear somewhere along the line.

Thank you to the very funny Heath Tyson who wanted a bad man named after him. I just wanted to say that the real Heath Tyson is nothing at all like his evil counterpart.

I’m for ever indebted to my lovely blogging friends, The Write Romantics. You all keep me sane and understand how tough it is once you’ve made your dream come true. Thank you so much Jo Bartlett, Julie Heslington, Jackie Ladbury, Lynne Davidson, Helen Rolfe, Alex Weston, Deirdre Palmer, Sharon Booth & Rachael Thomas.

Last but not least I’d like to say to my family that I love you all very much. It’s been a hard year but the Phifers have proved how tough and strong we are. Without you none of this would be possible and I’m so proud of you all.

Love Helen xx

Dedication

For Gail O’Neil, Wendy Smith, Amanda Rawlinson, Diane Sullivan, Adele Dean, Gill Tyson & all of the other fabulous ladies in the Lookin GOOD and Feelin GREAT Charity Group.

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Praise

Book List

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Excerpt

Endpages

About the Publisher

Prologue

Summer 1895

The smell was always the big giveaway – no matter how many fresh flowers were placed around a room, the stench of decomposition would always seep through the cracks. Maybe not at first because the sweet scent from the roses or sweet peas, dependent upon the season, would infiltrate your nostrils with their heady fragrance, but after a few minutes you would realise that the underlying, more cloying scent wasn’t such a fragrant one after all. In fact you would more than likely wonder which flower it was that was giving off the almost too sweet, sickly smell. The black cloth covering the large ornamental mirror above the fireplace confirmed what you already knew. That this was a house of death. Upon further investigation as you looked around the room at the waiting subjects one would always stand out just that little bit more than the others; it was always the hands that would give them away. Those petite hands that had once been ivory coloured were now mottled purple and black. The rest of the body, underneath the layers of petticoats, pinafore dresses and thick tights, was probably turning the same colours – but the face you could disguise, if you worked your magic with the thick, heavy, cosmetic face powder.

The three girls were all dressed in identical long white nightgowns; the only flesh showing was their hands, necks and faces. He smiled at the two that were hovering to the side of their dead sister looking uncomfortable; he wouldn’t want to have to stand next to a dead person and smile for the camera even if it was his brother. The dead girl was on her own, standing tall in the middle of the room. He tilted his head to see if the heavy, black stand that was holding her decaying body upright could be seen but it was well hidden underneath her nightgown. Although her eyelids were closed someone had drawn open eyes on her lids so she looked as if she was still watching everyone. A life-sized, human doll that would probably be the cause of many years of nightmares for her siblings. Her mother was in the opposite corner being comforted by a much older woman. Both of them dressed all in black. He cleared his throat.

‘Should we begin?’

The girls stared at each other, both of them holding hands. It was the older woman who nodded her head. He set his tripod up and placed the heavy camera onto it; a couple of photographs and he would be done. There was a certain beauty about death that he found very attractive but he had never told anyone this; it wouldn’t be the right thing to do or say. His wife would be mortified at the thought of him enjoying photographing corpses; she hated that he did it for a living anyway, but if she knew he enjoyed it she would make him stop.

‘Mabel, Flora, go and stand either side of your sister.’

He felt a little sorry for the girls, who both looked as if they were about to burst into tears. They were looking at each other and still holding hands.

‘Now, please. If you continue to fuss about it the longer it will take – what on earth is wrong with you both?’

Mabel looked the oldest out of the three of them; she implored Flora with her eyes. He folded his arms across his chest and watched them. Mabel stepped forward pulling the younger girl, who let out a sob.

‘Please don’t make me touch her; she’s cold and she smells. I’m scared – I don’t want to stand next to her. Why do we have to do this?’

Her mother looked up from her crumpled handkerchief, surprised by her daughter’s outburst of insolence. She didn’t need to speak because the girl’s grandmother walked across and slapped Flora across the face.

‘Stop that at once, child – that is your sister, not some stranger from the street. It is the very last chance your parents have to get a photograph of you all together. Now you will stand next to your sister and smile for the camera before she is taken away and buried.’

The girl stopped speaking but her hand came up and began to rub at the red finger marks that had appeared on her pale, perfect skin. She let Mabel take hold of her shoulders and position her next to the dead girl, then Mabel took her position on the other side. Neither of them looked at their sister. He put his head underneath the cover to take the picture but it was no good. Those red marks on her cheek would stand out on the still when it was developed and it wasn’t as if he could arrange to come back and do this all over again; he only had this one chance to get it right. He lifted his head up and walked across the room, taking hold of Flora’s shoulders.

‘I’m sorry but the mark on your face is too prominent, I need you to turn and face your sister. I promise I’ll be quick and you won’t have to stay there for very long.’

He didn’t think he’d ever forget the look the young girl gave him then; obviously this was a huge ordeal for her. This must be her first brush with death and an experience that would no doubt stay with her for the rest of her life – but her parents had made it quite clear when they asked him to call around yesterday. They could only afford to pay for two stills so he couldn’t make any mistakes; these two pictures needed to be perfect. He gently turned her to face the dead girl and could feel her entire body shaking; he then went to Mabel and turned her in a similar position so they were both staring at their sister with what he hoped would be assumed was loving attention and not abject horror. He then went back to his camera and buried his bead back underneath the cloth. Holding up the flash he snapped first one, then another still.

‘That’s it. Thank you for your patience, girls. You can leave now.’

Flora scurried away from the girl that she had no doubt shared a bedroom with for the last twelve years; they had possibly even shared the same bed. How sad that two such close sisters should now be so torn apart by death. Still it wasn’t his place to say anything; his job was done here. He would pack his equipment away and go back to his house so he could develop the films. He would of course keep a copy for his own records; he was getting quite a collection in his brown leather book. People were dying of all sorts of diseases, and more and more families wanted their loved ones photographed before they were buried. When he’d taken up photography as a hobby he’d never envisaged that memento mori photography would prove to be such a lucrative business move. He packed up his stuff and carried it out to the waiting horse and carriage; he lived too far away to carry his equipment around town. The grandmother walked him out to the front door, leaving her sobbing daughter alone with her dead granddaughter. The other two girls had run from the room as fast as they could once they had been dismissed; it was indeed sad to watch such grief day in day out, but it was also providing his family with a way of life they could only ever have dreamed of.

‘How long will it be before you can bring the pictures?’

‘As soon as they are ready I will personally hand deliver them; it should only take two days but it depends how busy I am tomorrow.’

‘Thank you for your time, Mr Tyson. It is very much appreciated.’

He nodded his head then turned and ran down the last few steps and climbed into the waiting carriage. As it pulled away from the side he looked up to see the two girls watching him from the upstairs window. Flora’s face was damp, no doubt with the tears she had finally been able to shed, but Mabel looked as if she was weighing him up. Embarrassed they had been caught staring, Mabel stepped back, pulling her sister with her, and he looked straight ahead, pretending he hadn’t noticed either of them.

1995

‘Beautiful, really beautiful – that’s it, hold that position.’ The camera flashed several times. ‘Gorgeous, you look stunning. So demure yet so damn sexy. I love it.’ Heath Tyson walked towards her and pushed her head to the left, just a touch. ‘That’s it, don’t move, we’re almost done. You’re going to love these pictures; I swear you’ve never looked so good.’ He snapped a few more shots then let his camera drop around his neck and clapped his hands.

‘Bravo, bravo. You have been the best model I’ve ever had. Thank you so much for your patience.’

He walked away towards his dark room, eager to develop his films and add these very special photographs to his secret album. Left lying on the chaise longue, she didn’t move to get up and change out of the long, cool, linen nightgown he’d dressed her in. She would stay there until he came and lifted her onto the makeshift trolley he used to push her to and from the freezer in his garage. When he was happy with his photographs he would undress her and put her back inside the cold blackness of the large freezer he’d bought when the village butcher had been closing down. Slamming the metal door, he would lock her in until he had no further use for her or until her body started to decompose too much, whichever came first. Probably the decomposition because he didn’t think he would ever get tired of staring at her. There was something so beautiful about death that was never present in the living. Her hands had already begun to turn black despite the freezing temperatures. He wondered why it was they did that – in his collection of Victorian mourning photographs you could always tell the deceased family member by the discoloration of their hands.

It had fascinated him the first time he’d seen a photograph of three sisters, all no older than fifteen – he had been eight years old when he found that photograph album. Heath had been sent to bed but he could hear his father whispering on the phone; he knew he shouldn’t be listening in because he shouldn’t be out of bed, but he couldn’t sleep. He loved his granddad but today’s visit had been playing heavily on his mind; his normally fun-filled granddad had been lying in a bed in the front room of his terraced house in the busy town centre street. The smell had been pretty bad; he didn’t know what it was but as soon as he’d walked in he’d had to screw his nose up and try not to breathe through it. His mother, who refused to come into the house because she was ‘not going to be there when he croaked’, was back at home and for once he wished his father had left him at home with her. His older brother didn’t care; he had gone straight into the converted front room which was now a bedroom and stood by the frail old man who was asleep. Heath watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest underneath the covers; the rattling sound of the breaths he was struggling to take would stay with him for ever. They could hear their father in the kitchen banging around; he turned away for a split second and when he turned back his brother, who had just celebrated his eleventh birthday, was stroking the old man’s hair. Heath shuddered; this wasn’t the happy, funny man he remembered and he wanted it all to stop. Their dad came in, his tear-stained face a mask of grief.

‘Right you two, go in the kitchen and get yourselves something to eat. I need to sort your granddad out.’

His brother leant down and kissed the man’s forehead and Heath tried to force himself to move towards him to do the same but he couldn’t. His legs wouldn’t move. As his brother walked past he whispered in his ear ‘Scaredy cat’. His dad came over and placed his hands on his shoulders, then pushed Heath out of the room and shut the door behind him. Finally finding his feet, he went into the kitchen where his brother was sitting eating a packet of crisps.

‘He’s going to pop his clogs any minute.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I just do. You wait and see.’

Sometimes he hated how his brother was such a know-it-all. It made him feel stupid and like a big baby. He got himself a packet of crisps out of the cupboard and they both sat on the high stools near the breakfast bar waiting for their dad to come back in. After what seemed like forever he finally did; his eyes were red and he’d been crying. Heath had never seen his dad cry. He walked over and hugged them close to him.

‘Your granddad’s gone to heaven now; you can both go in and say goodbye.’

This time it was Heath who wanted to go in first – he desperately wanted to see what you looked like when you were dead – and it was his brother who lingered behind. He jumped off his stool and went to the room where the door was ajar. The first thing he noticed was how peaceful it was now that horrible sound his granddad had been making had stopped. He stepped inside. The sheets were no longer moving and he walked closer to look at the man on the bed. The second thing he noticed was how different he looked; his skin looked yellow but it was no longer scrunched up and wrinkled in pain. It was smooth, his mouth was open and his false teeth had slipped down. He’d expected his eyes to be closed but they were open slightly, staring straight ahead. Heath marvelled at how wonderful his granddad looked now he was dead – how much younger. It was amazing. Did everyone who died look like this? His foot kicked something soft and he looked down to see one of the pillows from the bed there. It puzzled him how it had got there; it wasn’t there before when they’d been in the room and his granddad hadn’t moved at all. His dad must have taken it from under the old man’s head but he didn’t understand why. He picked it up and felt a warm patch in the middle; placing it on the chair next to the bed he thought nothing of it. It wasn’t until some years later when he replayed that last scene in his head that he realised that the pillow was warm in the middle because that was where his granddad’s last breaths had gone. He had known all along that the grief his dad had shown had been filled with guilt – but he hadn’t known why until his dad’s own dying confession had confirmed the sneaking suspicion he’d always held. His dad had been the one to end his granddad’s life that morning all those years ago; he could have gone to prison but he’d decided it was worth the risk. The only regret that Heath had was that he’d had no means to photograph how wonderful his granddad looked, more wonderful than he ever did when he was alive. It was as if his true inner beauty had been revealed and it was something Heath never forgot; in fact he thought about it an awful lot. When most kids his age had been playing with action men or cap guns, he had spent all his time locked in his bedroom wondering how he could see more dead people.

There was a certain beauty in death which could not be achieved at any cost in life, even with the amount of plastic surgeons and cosmetic surgery available. When he was ten years old he knew that he wanted to be a photographer but he did have a backup plan. He would probably one day become a funeral director if his photography didn’t take off but his one passion in life was photography. What he really wanted to do was photograph the dead. He didn’t really want to have to deal with the grieving families; he just wanted to photograph their loved ones like his great, great grandfather had back in the Victorian days. It had been quite normal back then, but if you told anyone now that you liked photographing the dead they’d lock you up and throw away the key. There were some things you didn’t admit to and getting your rocks off over corpses was almost certainly one. He spent hours locked in his room studying the photos in the album they’d found when clearing their granddad’s house out. Luckily for him, he’d been on his own in the bedroom when he found the dusty album at the back of the wardrobe, wrapped in faded yellow newspapers. His brother had gone to the tip with his dad and a car boot full of their granddad’s belongings. At first he hadn’t realised just what it was he was looking at but he knew there was something strange about the pictures in the album. It had Memento Mori in gold letters engraved into the soft brown leather cover. He’d had no idea what that meant, but would try and find out. There was no one in the pictures that he knew and they looked as if they were very old. Not wanting his dad to throw it out on his next visit to the local tip, Heath ran downstairs and stuffed it into his backpack. It was his secret, and he wouldn’t tell anyone about it – not even his brother. Well, not unless he was going to help him somehow find dead people to take pictures of. That photograph album had started this obsession with death, be it in male or female form – although he much preferred females; they were so much more elegant and prettier than men. His warped obsession with death had now resulted in the dead girl in front of him.