The Tall Man Read online

  The Tall Man: A page-turning thriller for the summer

  Phoebe Locke

  Headline (2018)

  * * *

  Copyright © 2018 Phoebe Locke

  The right of Phoebe Locke to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an EBook in 2018 by WILDFIRE, an imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978 1 4722 4923 4

  Cover design by Patrick Insole.

  Images © rootstock/Shutterstock (trees) and Daxiao Productions/Shutterstock (figure)

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DZ

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Praise for The Tall Man

  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

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Praise for The Tall Man

  ‘If you read just one psychological suspense novel this year, make it Phoebe Locke’s The Tall Man . . . a brilliant summer thriller’ – Culturefly

  ‘A must-read summer chiller’ – Daily Express

  ‘A gripping blend of dark psychological suspense and spine-tingling chills’ – iNews

  ‘Outstanding. A chilling, relentless and needle-sharp thriller that will stay with you long after you reach the final page’ – Cara Hunter, author of R&J bestseller Close to Home

  ‘From the second I opened this book, I wanted to know the truth about the Tall Man . . . I couldn’t put the book down until I knew. An unsettling, original page-turner you’ll still be thinking about long after you reach the end’ – Amy Engel, author of The Roanoke Girls

  ‘Do not use this book as a cure for insomnia. It turns shadows into threats. A brilliantly creepy, twisty story’ – Julia Crouch, author of Her Husband’s Lover

  ‘Brilliant, chilling and compelling. I can’t stop thinking about it!’ – Karen Hamilton, author of The Perfect Girlfriend

  ‘Mesmerizing and terrifying – The Tall Man more than lives up to the hype’ – Chris Whitaker, author of Tall Oaks

  For Mum, Dad and Dan,

  with love

  From ‘Making the Movie: The Difficult Journey to the Truth’ by Federica Sosa, published in Variety magazine, July 2019

  When I first embarked upon this project, I was cautious. Although my previous documentary had been the subject of much critical acclaim, I needed to find another story which would grab me – consume me – as that one had.

  The Banner family’s story first came to my attention during an extended stay in London. The case was much in the news at the time; in fact, as the impending trial drew closer, it was unavoidable. The headlines chilled me: a senseless murder; a family haunted by one member’s demons; an urban legend which had sunk its claws into an innocent child and turned her life upside down. I knew immediately that this was a story I wanted to tell.

  Never, at that tentative sketching stage of potential, did I foresee the difficulties that my team and I would encounter. For every knot we untied in this tragic story, there was another one waiting; another secret looped up and feeding on the very fabric of this family. We compiled pages and pages of interviews; we began to look at events from all points of view, trying to find our way in. And looming over it all, always, was this playground tale, this dark figure of the Tall Man.

  Many of the difficulties involved access. Not everyone concerned in the tale was alive to share their part. Often we had to rely on material left behind; on second-hand accounts. While these can be more enlightening than an interview, it was so incredibly frustrating, as a film-maker, not to be able to pick up on a certain point – a thought or a choice of word or an act itself – and ask Why? To ask, Was this real to you?

  Much of what is in the film is now public knowledge, thanks to the trial and to the constant media attention. People became obsessed with the ghosts and the darkest deeds of the Banner family. With the Tall Man and the grip he held over them. I set out to cover the trial, to get behind the headlines and the ghouls and to uncover the cold truth about a murder. But to hear it told by the people involved shed a different light on those events. This story is not one of tabloid gore and shock; it is one of grief and guilt and the terrible secrets which nestled for years at the heart of not one but two families. It is about the legacy of a dreadful legend, a story that begins and ends in the darkest woods.

  It has haunted me ever since.

  It began near the end of summer, when the days were long and hot and school seemed a distant, baseless thing to fear. Sadie and Helen were walking their bikes beside the river, looking for a place to sit down and eat their sweets – Toffos for Sadie, Opal Fruits for Helen, everything exactly as it always was. Sadie had hit a root as they cycled through the woods and her palm was scraped raw where she had struck out at a tree, trying to stop herself from falling. She examined the graze again, the tiny flecks of bark embedded in the skin.

  ‘Hey, there’s Marie,’ Helen said, the side of her mouth full of chewed sweet.

  Helen’s older sister was sitting on one of the peeling benches that lined the river bank, two friends beside her. Sadie stopped looking at her hand.

  Marie had recently turned twelve, and she had also begun to wear a training bra. Sadie had seen it herself, pegged on the washing line at Helen’s house alongside all the regular washing, with its small soft cups and its thin satin straps. She looked at Marie, sitting on the bench and kicking up dust with her trainers, and wondered, with a sudden rush of heat, if she was wearing it then.

  Marie, glancing up, noticed the two of them standing there. A smile tightened the corners of her mouth before spreading slowly. She nudged her friends and then waved them over. The wheels of their bikes clicking and the taste of toffee turning sour in Sadie’s mouth.

  ‘Hey, girls,’ said one of the friends, a dark-haired girl with freckles splashed across her narrow nose. ‘Want to play a game?�
�

  ‘It’s not a game, Justine.’ Up close, Sadie recognised the girl on the other side of Marie as Ellie Travis, the elder sister of a boy in her class. She had pale blond hair, a hank of which was caught between her face and the arm of her glasses. ‘I told you what my brother said.’

  ‘Don’t listen to anything James says,’ Helen said cheerfully, her shyness now beginning to fade. ‘He talks absolute rubbish.’

  ‘She’s not talking about James.’ Marie rolled her eyes. ‘She’s talking about Thomas. He’s the oldest, and it was his job to tell Ellie about the Tall Man. And because I’m the oldest, now it’s my job to tell you.’

  Sadie watched the way Justine’s eyes narrowed at this, her mouth twitching into a smile. She took a lolly from her pocket and unwrapped it, her gaze drifting from Sadie’s shorts up to her T-shirt and then to her face. When their eyes met, Justine did not look away.

  ‘Who’s the Tall Man?’ Sadie asked.

  ‘He lives in the woods,’ Marie said, leaning forward to take the packet of Opal Fruits from Helen’s hand.

  ‘He sees everything,’ Ellie added, pushing her glasses back up her nose.

  ‘He’s a murderer.’ Justine leaned back with a grin. ‘He comes in the night and he takes you away.’

  ‘He took a girl from my street five years ago,’ Ellie said, her hands working anxiously at the hem of her shirt. ‘That’s what I heard.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Helen said, her arm sliding through Sadie’s. ‘Stop trying to scare us.’

  ‘It is true.’ Marie flicked a balled-up sweet wrapper at her sister. ‘But don’t worry. Now you know about him, you’ll be safe.’

  ‘Not just safe,’ Justine said, cracking the lolly with her small, white teeth. ‘He can make you special, too, if you ask him.’ She got up from the bench, making a show of consulting her watch – a purple and yellow patterned Pop Swatch that Sadie had been eyeing through the window of the jewellers in town for weeks. ‘I’ve gotta go. Stay tuned for more tales of the Tall Man, kiddos. I think he’s going to like you.’

  Marie stifled a snort of laughter, but Sadie noticed that Ellie kept her eyes on the ground, fingers still seeking out the loose edge of her top.

  ‘Does he really kill girls?’ Helen asked, her eyes wide, and at that Ellie got up from the bench.

  ‘I don’t like this any more,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to play.’

  Justine shrugged. ‘So go home. We don’t need you now anyway.’ And she smiled at Sadie and Helen, ignoring the look Marie shot her. Only Sadie looked at Ellie as Ellie shuffled away.

  ‘In answer to your question, Helen,’ Justine said, picking up her bike from the ground and swinging a long leg over it, her denim shorts frayed at the edges, the pocket torn. ‘Yes. He does. He killed his own daughter.’ She pushed lazily at a pedal, moving away from them down the riverbank. ‘She didn’t do what he wanted,’ she called over her shoulder, and then she was gone.

  1

  1999

  It felt wrong almost immediately. They walked towards the sound of the music, the grass scratching at their calves, and he wanted to turn back.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, slipping her hand into his.

  Miles glanced at her. She’d dressed differently that morning; a daisy-print sundress with a white cardigan pulled over, not the dungarees or baggy jeans, the thin-strapped vest tops she usually preferred. He appreciated the effort.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m OK.’

  He still felt sick. Sympathetic, perhaps – he’d heard that was a thing. Sadie kept reading things out to him in bed at night, a constant stream of Did you know and Wow, this is weird and Listen to this, and it was all conflicting and bizarre and witchy, comparing the baby to fruit and saying how playing it music in the womb would make it smart.

  He thought of the sneer on his mother’s face when, an hour ago, he had mentioned this in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. How she had reached out to refill Sadie’s teacup and then his. Yes, I’m sure classical music will ensure the poor sod grows up with half a chance. The way his father’s hand had clamped down over hers on the arm of the chair. Frances, love. And the way his mother had sighed, blinking firmly once and then twice, before offering them the plate of biscuits. I’m sorry, Miles. You’re both just so young.

  ‘They’ll come round,’ Sadie said, squeezing his hand and then letting go, shading her eyes as she looked at the festival in the distance. There was a stage set up in the centre of the field, stalls lined up on either side. Clouds of smoke rose, the scent of burning meat drifting towards them as they left the makeshift car park and headed up the hill.

  He loved her for saying it. And they would come round, he was sure of it. How could they not? Their only son was going to have a child, their first grandchild – and yes, perhaps, he and Sadie were too young, with only the first year of university under their belts, but everything happened for a reason, didn’t it? Sometimes things were meant to be.

  Sadie slipped her cardigan off and tied it round her waist. ‘At least it’s done now,’ she said, putting her arm round him. ‘We can enjoy the afternoon, anyway.’

  With Sadie, it was meant to be. This much he already knew.

  He wondered what his parents were doing at that moment, though he was fairly sure he could guess. His father would have removed the good gin from the cupboard, brought down the thick crystal glasses which were his mother’s favourite. They would be drinking in silence on the patio, and then, later, his mother would pace back and forth across the kitchen, preparing dinner and airing her views. Then, perhaps, she would call Miles.

  ‘I guess we need to tell your parents next,’ he said. He felt her stiffen beside him.

  ‘I think I’d better do that bit,’ she said, turning away. ‘I don’t think they’ll be very pleased.’

  ‘Not like mine, you mean?’ He leaned down to kiss her bare shoulder but the joke fell flat even as it left his mouth, the memory of his parents’ horrified faces resurfacing.

  He’d known that it would be difficult. He remembered the moment Sadie had told him she was pregnant, him sitting on the edge of her narrow bed in halls. He’d been out the night before, a bar crawl with the rest of Sociology Soc, and he’d been scrubbing at the faint stamp of a club on his hand with his thumb. Sadie had stayed in for the previous two nights, saying she had a stomach bug. The stomach bug had turned out to be something else entirely. A something which was now curving her flat belly out in the slightest of slopes, a something which next week they would apparently see in black and white on a hospital screen.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, stopping him at the edge of the festival. Her eyes fixed on his. ‘We’ll be OK,’ she said, her hands travelling down his sides now, tracing over his ribs. Her touch making the hairs on his arms stand up, his mouth dry.

  ‘I know,’ he said, dipping his head to kiss her. Her teeth sinking into his lip as she smiled.

  He followed her towards the crowd, the hem of her dress rippling in the breeze. He was scared, of course he was. He was finding it difficult to imagine that in a year’s time, there would be three of them in the car, three of them wherever they ended up. It was much easier, for now, for him to focus on his studies – that was something he was at least in control of. Something practical and important that he could do for their future, for Sadie, for the baby. It gave him a funny, hot feeling in his chest.

  They passed the first stalls at the edge of the festival: jams and cakes and cheese from local businesses, wooden ornaments and candles in glass jars. Someone on Sadie’s course had told her about the festival; Miles had dutifully passed on the hot tip to his flatmate James and several people from his course. He cringed looking at these middle-class, middle-aged offerings and hoped that they had not come.

  ‘The band that’s on after this is meant to be really good,’ Sadie said, leading him past the stalls without a glance, and suddenly everything was OK again.

  He knew it was a cliché to say – he’d tried once,
drunkenly, around a pub table with his flatmates and had been roundly jeered at – but he’d never felt the way he did about Sadie before. She was beautiful, yes. That much was obvious to anyone. And funny, too, though perhaps not everyone got to see that side of her. Her spikiness put some people off – he’d heard Lila, James’s latest girlfriend, refer to her as ‘a cold fish’ (he was possibly being generous; Lila had been whispering and the word was just as likely to have been bitch). But Miles had been intrigued by the defences Sadie put up whenever she first met someone. It had only made him more determined to get past them.

  He reached over and smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear, the wind attempting to tug it free again. ‘You were great back there,’ he said. ‘With my mum and dad, I mean. Thank you.’

  She turned her head to look at him, her mouth turned up in the small, secret smile he loved best. ‘It’s me and you now,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it?’

  And he knew that it was.

  They reached the stage area and Miles stopped and craned up on his toes, looking for James and the others in the crowd. ‘Come on,’ Sadie said, pulling him through a group of teenagers and working her way up the edge of the field. ‘Let’s get closer to the speakers, I bet that’s where they’ll be.’

  His friends had begun to treat Sadie as if she were made of glass or something highly explosive, falling over themselves to offer her a chair or a better view of the screen. They’d been ready to commiserate when he told them the news two weeks previously – had patted him on the back, nodded solemnly as he spoke. I’m excited, he’d added, and that made them recalibrate, buy shots. Now all they asked was when the scan was, how Sadie was feeling, whether they planned to find out the sex when they could. He saved up the rest of it to think about alone in his single bed, on the nights when Sadie retreated to her own room – her room that, he was all too aware, she’d have to give up as soon as she decided to tell the university she was dropping out. How would they live; how would he study and provide for them? He thought often of the fact that he had never even held a child – had no brothers or sisters, was the youngest of his cousins. How did you do it? He’d heard something about supporting the head, that was supposed to be important. And there was talk of burping them, a term he found baffling. He would have to buy a book on babies to read in private. Several, probably.