Saving Grace, page 25
‘Ma’am, can I help?’ the officer nearby asks.
‘Look, there. You’re tall, you can reach it. Get a torch,’ she says.
His eyes flicker, showing he is nervous. He grunts as he steps up onto the chair. The weight of him makes the chair protest with a creak.
He reaches to his belt and pulls out a baton, uses it to poke the tile. He turns on his torch.
‘Ma’am, we got something here,’ he calls out.
Like flies to shit, the entire team gathers, making the walls of the small kitchen feel like they are going to close in. The tension in the room heightens as an old shoebox is lifted out from the ceiling.
The box is placed on the kitchen table. Lilith snaps on some gloves and is the one to lift the lid.
Inside, a blue earring, a bracelet, a pack of Softmints! A small notebook patterned with green butterflies; Lilith flicks open the pages, her expression not telling anything.
‘Can I get an ETA to Bristol? And dispatch to the Bristol Special Crime Unit.’
On her command, the action happens.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘This, I believe, is her ex-girlfriend’s address, it is written in the notebook. And since our suspect is nowhere to be found, I’m guessing she’s on her way over. We need to get there before it’s too late.’
CHAPTER SIXTY
AMELIE
The lights are on. You haven’t pulled across those expensive mechanical shutters yet; what are they for? To shut out the world or shut out me? It doesn’t matter because I see you. I have always seen you. You’re with me every single day. You move with ease around your habitat, like a ballerina, supple and elegant, dancing a story. Our story. You’ve cut your hair, I imagine the snip of the scissors slicing away parts of your golden strands, like a reptile shedding its skin, becoming anew. The choppy bob ages you, but in a good way. It’s added an exclamation mark to your sophisticated style, emphasising how you want the world to see you. But they don’t know you like I do. All smoke and mirrors. You hold a glass of red wine with those slender fingers, and you still have that habit of twirling the ends of your hair with your thumb. You are still there. Nobody can erase all of themselves, there are always splintered fragments left behind, built within us like the coding of our DNA. You said you felt sorry for me, but I know who I am. Do you?
You can change who you are on the outside, but you will never change who you are on the inside. Aristotle once said, ‘Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.’ Try to remember that, it’ll help.
You reach for a book. I can’t see what it is, but I know you have always preferred real books to e-readers. You always said we need to experience the written word, the smell of the paper, the weight of a story in your hands. I love the way you sniff a book before you dive in and read. I wait a couple of seconds and laugh; there you go, your nose pressed up to the pages like clockwork. The crisp white shirt you’re wearing hangs loosely around your slender frame, the memory of what’s beneath it takes my breath away. Your silky skin; it’s one of the things I loved most about you. You set the book down and jump up, reaching for the phone. Who is calling you this late? It must be someone important to you. I watch you throw your head back and laugh. I miss that sound. We had a lot of laughs, didn’t we? Now someone else is firing you up, making your insides light up. You take the phone to another room and slip from view. I let myself imagine I’m on the sofa, waiting while you make us both a drink. I can see us in the apartment, happy, content. It suits the couple we were supposed to be. Your job isn’t enough to pay for all of this, but that’s the way it’s always been for you. Money comes easily. You told me not to worry, that I was enough and money was just a thing. But if that was true then why do you need the leather sofa or the expensive Art Deco bullshit on your walls? Why is it so important that your coffee machine has ninety-nine settings? You love to pretend to be humble, and I think you want to be, but you just can’t let go of the good life. I get it. I longed for it too. But I deserved it far more than your pretentious, spoiled friend did. I’m glad she’s gone.
You stay on the phone a while. A hard lump that I cannot swallow forms in my throat like a piece of coal. I’ve been replaced. It’s painful to watch you for this long, but now that I’ve finally found you, I don’t want to let you go.
What would you do if you saw me?
Run?
Scream?
Hide? But you’re already doing that. We’ve been playing this game of hide-and-seek for a while now. I came close to finding you before, but you always changed tactics, my clever girl.
I have so many questions; how this all came to be, how two people so connected, so in love could have yanked it all away? Our love was like a mirror, such a beautiful reflection, but it came under strain. It remained intact until it cracked, and once a mirror is broken, the cracks will forever be visible, impossible to repair, but I could live with the damage if it meant I still had you. If you still wanted me.
My soul hurts.
You fall away from my view again. It’s like I’m watching you on the TV and it went to a commercial break. I eagerly await your return; you’re gone for ten minutes. Now the cold has snaked around my body and I feel the bite of the night air. When you come back you walk to the window, dressed in a white linen two-piece pyjama set. Your hair is pulled away from your face in a neat headband. You return to the sofa and sink into it, reaching for the book again and sinking down lower. The book covers your face and I can only see your long, slender legs. So many of our nights were spent with your legs draped across my lap, you enjoyed the way I stroked them so much you’d close your eyes and drift into a deep sleep. Hours later, I’d wake you and take you to bed in your dozy state, your voice drenched with sleep as you’d ask me to put a glass of water next to the bed. It was my duty to look after you. How could you forget that? How was it not enough? I reach out my hand, longing to touch you, but your eyes are fixed ahead. I don’t want this to end. I am still immersed in your beauty. I want to get inside your apartment. Get inside you.
Can you feel me?
I’m right here.
In my bag is a knife, a special blade; expensive, just like you. I go to the door; you have one of those fancy doorbells with a camera on it and a bright security light. I take a cloth from my pocket and drape it over the camera. I ring the bell and wait. It takes a few moments before I hear your footsteps, you open the door with the chain still on.
‘Can I help you?’
I always thought you’d know when I was close to you, the connection we once had has been bashed as well as my heart.
Can you feel me?
I’m right here.
You rest your gaze on my face, mapping it together and then it clicks, oh how it clicks.
You can feel me.
You know I’m here.
‘Amelie?’
‘My Grace.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘I never stopped looking.’
‘Please go.’
‘We belong together.’
‘Amelie, please leave. I won’t tell anybody you came here, but you need to leave me alone. Right now.’
Is she crying?
She doesn’t want you, the voice in my head says. But I won’t believe it. I refuse.
‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ I bang the side of my head with my fist.
You try to shut the door, but I put my foot against the jamb. I’m wearing hard-toed boots.
‘If you don’t open the door, I will kill your fucking parents.’ I pull out the butcher’s knife and hold it up in plain sight.
‘You’ll never find them, you psycho!’
‘Your mother lives at Barren Lodge, Theobald Road. Your father, 67 Shepherd Lane.’
Your hands are trembling. You try to unlatch the chain, but you’re all fingers and thumbs.
‘Hurry up.’ I’ve waited long enough for you.
Finally, you open the door and I step inside to the life of Alice, but now I am an unwelcome visitor, not the girl you used to spend hours kissing, holding, touching.
A moment of stillness, as if time itself cannot be measured. Then you take a step back from me, like I am the fuel and you are the flame. I reach out my hand, but you move like a bullet. Your body connects with the glass table behind you and a crystal vase falls, a million shards of sharp silver glitter around your bare feet.
You’re unsteady as you move away from the broken glass. You fall backwards as I try to reassure you that it’s just me. You know me. You love me.
‘Why do you have a fucking knife?’ You’re hysterical. Unhinged. And you say I’m the crazy one. Ha!
Your face looks ghastly in the dim light, eyes wide and animated. I think you’re over-dramatising it all.
‘You should know just how much I love you.’
You shake your head, as if you struggle to understand.
‘No… if you ever loved me you wouldn’t want to hurt me.’
‘I hit you once.’
‘Have you got amnesia? You hit me far more than once. Not just with your hands but with your mouth.’
‘I don’t want to hurt you. I want you to understand. Why can’t you just understand?’
I will not scream, I will not cry. You’ve taken enough from me.
‘I do understand, I do.’ Your voice softens, oh, how I have missed that velvet voice.
‘What is it you understand?’ It’s a test, of course, it would be easy to fall for your sudden change of heart, but I know you are trying to pacify me, protect yourself.
You don’t reply, fear thinning your skin.
‘I asked you a question, Grace. What is it you understand?’
‘I understand I hurt you. And… and I’m really sorry for that.’
‘But?’ Because there is always a but!
‘Love shouldn’t hurt. Love shouldn’t mean you can’t live a life without that person, it shouldn’t mean you have to be all of my life, but you wouldn’t allow me to…’
‘Allow you to what? Act like you’re single? Be with people who aren’t deserving of you? Or allow you to hide me like a dirty little secret. To be ashamed of me?’
The old emotions that near enough swallowed me whole now rise to the surface.
‘I wasn’t ashamed.’
‘Liar!’ The beast is out. I cannot bear your lies anymore.
‘I need to ask you a question.’ My heart is beating so fast, chest tight like a boa constrictor is coiling its thick body around me squeezing tighter and tighter. ‘If I had been a man, would you have hidden me?’
‘That is an impossible question to answer.’
‘No. It. Fucking. Isn’t.’ I stand over you, your knees tuck into your stomach, arms shield your face.
You sob.
How did it come to this?
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
JENNIFER MACK
The house is silent and still. The lights are off. There’s over twenty police officers on the scene now. They circle the perimeter of the property as I stand next to Lilith watching the scene unfold.
‘Can’t they just go in?’
‘We have to assess the entire situation. One wrong move and that’s it,’ Lilith says in a hushed voice.
‘Do you think she’s inside?’
‘My gut tells me she is.’
My heart is thudding so hard I feel like it might explode.
A loud crash alerts everybody to the fact the house is not empty.
‘Break the door down!’ Lilith screams.
Three officers are immediately at the door and smash it wide open. One of them flicks a switch. The white marbled hallway illuminates. Shattered glass covers the floor, crunches underfoot. The police fall in line and enter the grand kitchen, a spray of colourful flowers sit in the middle of the island. Another light is turned on.
Blood. So much blood. We’re too late. She got to her before we could. Bile rises to the back of my throat. Soon the street and the house is alive with red and blue flashing lights. Sirens cut through the midnight air, the symphony telling listeners something terrible has taken place. Face down, her top is covering half of her back, drops of blood thin and streaked, like that of an artist’s paintbrush.
Lilith lifts Grace’s top.
There is the familiar scroll written by the hands of the Devil herself.
My Grace.
A moan, a shift.
‘She’s alive,’ Lilith says. I grab hold of a kitchen towel to staunch the bleeding. Soon paramedics dive in and start to repair the carnage that has been inflicted on Grace’s body.
In the utility room a shadow lurks in the corner, huddled into a tight ball. Hooded eyes. Blood-soaked clothes and knife in hand.
The Grace Killer.
We meet for the first time. Her face is twisted and contorted, she makes a low grunting sound, malicious and wild, almost supernatural. She is a woman possessed. But by what? Love? Rage?
‘Nice to finally meet you, Jennifer Mack.’
My gaze is fixed on her. Being face to face with the killer invokes all kinds of feelings within me, fear being the dominant one. I have to be calm, so I try to respond but the words won’t form.
I am shoved aside with a jolt and my shoulder slams into the door-frame. Armed police grab hold of Amelie, she is like a piece of elastic, her body bending in total submission.
‘Her life has ended, but I will love her forever.’ Clipped and off-kilter, she sounds inhuman, so far gone. So, so far gone.
‘She didn’t die,’ I tell her. Suddenly Amelie’s face turns sour and the blood drains from her cheeks. Her smile falters and then I see it, the reality she will be forced to live with for the rest of her life. Regret. Suffering. Failure. Three little words. One powerful hit.
One Month Later
I’ve never been in love, but I know love shouldn’t change who you are. Evolve, yes, but don’t rewrite their story, the character you decide to play life out with. Acceptance is key, or so the romantics say. To love is to love the whole person. We are all flawed, not one person is perfect. When a human or animal is trapped, our natural instinct is to break free. Well, that’s true for most of us. Amelie Jones has been diagnosed by her medical team as having ASPD. In layman’s terms, it means she’s a sociopath. They typically engage in behaviours that harm others for the benefit of themselves without remorse. I guess you could say we all have a bit of a sociopath in us. People who are diagnosed with this can still function in everyday life, hold down a job, have a family (imagine that!).
There will always be the Hayleys who want all the attention no matter the cost.
There will always be the Petes in life who love to play games in order for personal gain and benefit.
We are a society of selfish fuckers. Always wanting more.
Amelie wanted one thing. Control. As I peel away the layers of her personality, I am not surprised to learn we are only one bad thing away from being just like each other. Life served her a ton of shit. But don’t believe for a second that the murders were a symptom of the abuse she suffered.
My flat is completely packed up. The removal men parked up in their vans. This is the end of my chapter in Cornwall and the new road to London awaits. I didn’t want to be a local journalist, I always thought I was too good for it. There is an ego in us all; but I am so glad I did work at the local paper. I have learned so much about who I am because of this journey, the mistakes I’ve made, the education I needed. So, the difference between Amelie and I is that she is a person who will always justify her mistakes and will never grow and never learn.
SAVING GRACE
JENNIFER MACK
Meet the Grace Killer. The 5’5”, slim, long-haired brunette may not be the depraved, pernicious monster you imagined. Yet, in the shadow of her 19-year-old innocent façade hides the sociopath responsible for the gruesome murders of Grace Matthews, 22, Grace Martin, 18, Grace Elizabeth Joseph, 19, and the attempted murder of Grace Phelps, 18.
Amelie Jones was born on 5th March 2000, to single mother Deborah Jones who died of throat cancer when Amelie was about to turn 17. Jones describes watching her mother die as ‘deeply satisfying’.
Jones claims she suffered sexual abuse from the age of 11 at the hands of her mother’s on/off boyfriend Derek Steed, ‘She knew what he was doing to me, and she did nothing to stop it,’ Jones said in a shocking confession. Steed was known as a heroin addict and died of an overdose in 2017 while holidaying in Spain. ‘Am I happy he died? Not at all… because I wasn’t the one to cause his death.’
Jones survived by working low-paid waitressing jobs. She grew up on the notorious Grahame Warner Estate, infamous for its reputation of gangland violence, drugs, and prostitution. Some might argue Jones’ abhorrent childhood paved the way to her committing these harrowing murders. Regardless of what the truth may be, when you talk to Amelie Jones you no doubt ask yourself, ‘Are some people born evil?’
Jones is being detained at HM Crossfield Prison in Hull, which holds Category A female criminals. HM Crossfield is dubbed as holding ‘the worst of the worst’ female offenders, including notable inmates such as Bernice King (Black Widow), who is serving a life sentence without parole for the butchering of three of her husbands to collect their life insurance, and Jan Hart, the nursery worker who was part of the 2011 Shrewsbury paedophile ring.
On 16th May 2019, I met with Amelie Jones at HM Crossfield, hoping to discover what drove her to commit the unspeakable acts and the particularly chilling encounter where she sat with her first victim, Grace Matthews, for several hours after she’d died. In 2016, Jones met the young girl she describes as the love of her life, Grace Anders, who was wealthy and privileged. The unlikely couple were worlds apart, but despite their differences the two became lovers. Grace, however, was not yet ready to reveal her homosexuality to the world, thus increasing the tension in their relationship. Over time, Jones grew jealous of the time Grace was spending with other people. Grace broke up with Jones following a bitter argument that resulted in a physical altercation. ‘It’s as if she disappeared off the face of the earth. I couldn’t call her, couldn’t see her. She was just gone.’ After several weeks of nursing a broken heart, the killings began. There were three, but Jones hints there may be more blood on her hands. Jones wrote letters to me, she wanted her words to be out for the world to see. The Cornwall Chronicle became both her sounding board and her downfall. When a letter was published 6 months ago, she’d included information which Jones had shared with Beryl Pattinson, a former boss at a café Jones worked at on Briar Bay. Beryl contacted both The Chronicle and the police when she connected the pieces together. She was certain Jones was behind the killings. In late November, the police obtained a warrant to search Amelie Jones’ flat on the Grahame Warner Estate, and found journal entries and drawings of the victims which showed how they’d been left to die, images and details which have not been released to the press. Jones was arrested and taken into custody. Upon her arrest, she assaulted two female officers and was placed in a segregated unit under round-the-clock surveillance. Because of Jones’ high profile, she is also segregated from other inmates. Her only contact is with prison officers, her legal team, and, today, me. I’ve followed the Grace killings from the start. The first murder took place on the beach I played on as a child. I have studied criminology, and have sought out answers as to what makes women kill.
