T.M.E. Walsh - Pretty Little Things - 2018’s most nail-biting serial killer thriller with an unbelievable twist

It’s bad when the girls go missing.

It’s worse when the girls are found.

Six months ago, Charlotte almost lost everything. Now, she’s determined to keep her daughter, Elle, safe. So when local girls close to Elle in age and appearance begin to go missing, it’s her worst nightmare.

Charlotte’s fears are confirmed when a frantic search becomes a shocking murder investigation. The girls’ bodies have been found – half-buried, and with traces of mud and wildflowers under their fingernails.

As Charlotte’s obsession with keeping her daughter close pushes her marriage to the brink, local DI Madeleine Wood embarks on a gruelling search for the killer. And, as they dig deeper into the lives of the people they call friends and neighbours, they uncover secrets more terrible than they ever imagined . . .

Pretty Little Things is the nail-bitingly terrifying new serial-killer thriller from T.M.E. Walsh – the perfect read for fans of Close to Home, Behind Her Eyes and The Child

Also by T.M.E. Walsh

The DCI Claire Winters series:

For All Our Sins

The Principle of Evil

Trial by Execution

Pretty Little Things

T.M.E. Walsh

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © T.M.E. Walsh 2018

T.M.E. Walsh 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 2018 ISBN: 978-0-00-823892-6

Tania (T.M.E.) WALSHbegan writing full time after becoming a casualty to the recession in late 2008 and pens dark and raw twisty thrillers.

She successfully self-published the first two novels in the DCI Claire Winters series before being picked up by HQ – a division of HarperCollins – in 2015.

Tania is currently working on a fourth book in the DCI Claire Winters series with plans for another standalone thriller to follow her latest novel, Pretty Little Things .

In 2011 Tania was the winner of the Wannabe a Writer Blurb competition sponsored by Writing Magazine and judged by Matt Bates, the Fiction buyer for WHSmith Travel.

Tania has previously produced digital artwork that was published on a DVD-ROM for ImagineFX magazine’s FXPosé section twice in the early and latter part of 2007, which has been published worldwide.

Tania lives in Hertfordshire with her husband and young daughter.

For the latest information on T.M.E. Walsh, you can follow her on Twitter @tmewalsh, or visit her website www.tmewalsh.comand Facebook page www.facebook.com/tmewalsh

For Team Walsh .

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Dedication

Prologue

Part 1

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

Part 2

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

Part Three

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Letter from the Author

Excerpt

Endpages

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

ANON

It’s the blood that gets to you first. It’s messy, gets everywhere. Under your nails, in each line, every crevice. It’s a bitch to clean. It’s practically impossible to remove. No matter how much you scrub, on hands and knees, sponge in hand, if you look hard enough, you’ll find a trace.

That’s why I’m careful about where I do it, where I make the final cut, where I end it all.

It’s in a cabin in the woods.

I know what you’re thinking – cliché? Am I right? OK, sure, I can see why you’d think that. Frankly, I don’t care what you think. I never set out to be original . This life chose me. I’m not a product of my environment.

I was born like this.

Now, isn’t that a scary thought?

So . . . the blood .

After the blood, comes the elation. That feeling of pure ecstasy, running through your veins – at least, that’s what it’s like for me. Each of us is different. Someone else like me might tell it differently. One thing we all have in common, though, is the knowledge that we can’t stop.

Doesn’t matter how many times I hear an innocent beg me to spare their life. It doesn’t matter how many times I hear them cry, or scream, or feel them lash out, trying in vain to fight me off.

No, it doesn’t matter.

The result is the same every time.

They are dead and I’m riding that euphoric wave I can’t ever find the words to describe accurately.

They are dead . . . or they are dying.

Like this bitch is right now, her body twitching under my weight. There’s no sound except for the gurgling as her blood gushes out, bright-red, arterial spray decorating the plastic sheeting I’ve pinned up around the walls and floor of the cabin.

Her name is Bryony Keats.

She’s just celebrated her seventeenth birthday. She didn’t listen to her mother about getting into cars with strangers.

*

How many? I’m not sure I can rightly say. It’s either three or four. Reason why I say it’s possibly four depends on how you look at it.

Number four had a fucking asthma attack midway through it all, which, frankly, spoilt the whole thing for me, it really did.