The Tall Man

by Phoebe Locke

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Supernatural suspense; Suspense

Synopsis

You don't find him...he finds you.

The Tall Man is an addictive and unforgettable blend of psychological suspense and spine-tingling chills that will be perfect for fans of Stephen King, Ruth Ware and Sarah Pinborough's Behind Her Eyes. If you love Stranger Things, prepare to be haunted by The Tall Man.

A senseless murder.
A terrifying legend.
A family haunted.

1990: In the darkest woods, three girls devote themselves to a sinister figure.

2000: A young mother disappears, leaving behind her husband and baby daughter.

2018: A teenage girl is charged with murder, and her trial will shock the world.

Three chilling events, connected by the shadow he casts. He is the Tall Man. He can make you special....

Release date: June 7, 2018

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 352

Sample

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.

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.

There was no sign of James or anyone he recognised, though Miles wasn’t especially disappointed. After the awkward and uncomfortable morning at his parents’, the feeling of being alone with Sadie – of being a team of two against it all – was warm and protective, a bubble he wanted to stay in for the rest of the day.

‘I’ll get us some drinks,’ he said. ‘Want to come?’

‘I’ll wait here.’ Sadie looked around her. It was a good spot, right at the edge of the crowd with a clear view of the stage. There was a stretch of grass beside them, cables running down towards a generator, and then a copse of trees bordered the field. ‘I’ll keep an eye out for the others too,’ she added.

Miles made his way to the closest refreshments stall and bought himself a pint and Sadie a Coke. He wandered back towards her, briefly considering a hot dog, and then saw a glimpse of a familiar T-shirt ahead. Neon green, the sleeves slightly too short – he looked at the back of the person’s head, saw dark curly hair, and knew that it was James in his favourite (and ancient) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt. Miles slipped into the crowd towards him, trying to keep both drinks from spilling as he shouldered his way through. The next band were starting, people edging forwards, and Miles lost sight of James once and then twice, finally surfacing into a gap a row or two behind him.

But then the person in the green T-shirt turned and it wasn’t James at all – a man twenty years his senior, grey peppering his beard and the shirt itself plain apart from a small Adidas logo on the breast. Embarrassed, Miles turned away.

Scanning the crowd, he was surprised at the distance he had put between himself and Sadie; it took him a moment or two to locate her. She was still on the edge of the field but she had moved into the line of trees. He could see her head tilting the way it did when she was listening to someone – a friend, he assumed, presumably whoever it was that had recommended the festival to her in the first place. He took a step or two closer but couldn’t see who was there in front of her, the shadows swallowing them and the crowd jostling Miles back towards the stage.

Sadie was saying something to whoever it was but, with a sudden pang of dread, he saw fear on her face. Saw her backing away from that patch of shadow, a hand clamped protectively over her stomach. Her face had drained of colour, her eyes wide like a child’s.

Miles pushed through the crowd, his pint sloshing furiously in its plastic glass. The sun dazzled him as it came out from behind a wisp of cloud and someone’s elbow caught him in the ribs as he shoved his way past, the band’s opening chords shrieking through the speakers. He saw a flash of Sadie again, that slack-jawed fear still on her face as she stumbled back, and then the singer stepped up to the microphone and the audience surged forward and she was lost to him.

He pushed past a group of girls, tripping over a bag, and then, finally, he was out of the crush, the edge of the field ahead. He turned to his left and saw Sadie there, her back still to him, her attention on the trees in front of her. As he closed the short distance between them, he registered that she was alone again. He reached out, his hand clasping her shoulder, and she turned sharply, her face softening when she registered that it was him – though the fear (it was terror, a voice in his head corrected him; ugly, uncontrolled terror) in her eyes remained, her hand still pressed tightly to the place where their child was growing.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked. ‘What just happened?’

She turned away, though not, he noticed, before casting another look behind her into the shadowy recesses of the trees. ‘Oh, nothing. Drunk guy, you know what it’s like. Come on. Let’s go in a bit closer.’ He opened his mouth to say something else but she was already moving, the now half-empty Coke taken from his hand.

It was not as if this hadn’t happened before. Sadie was beautiful, Miles reminded himself as he followed her back towards the safety of the stage; men often stopped her in crowds and bars. So why, he wondered, was his heart still pounding in his chest? He looked back at the trees again, now dappled warm and gold by the sunlight. He could see through them into the fields beyond. No one.

He glanced at Sadie. Her eyes were locked on the band, her head nodding slightly to the beat. She took a sip of her drink, her other arm still folded across her middle.

It was the way she had looked, he realised. She had been afraid, he had seen the terror pass across her face. The nakedness of it was perhaps what had frightened him so deeply, and yet it was more than that; it was something else that he had seen there too. It came to him as the band began their second song and he saw Sadie glance again at the trees: recognition. Familiarity. Sadie had been terrified, yes, but it was not as new to her as it was to Miles.

The crew meets Amber Banner for the first time in her hotel room in West LA. She’s dressed in a plush robe, her hair (mostly her hair) piled up in a knot on top of her head. The covers lie tangled at the end of the bed, the sheet exposed, one pillow drooping slowly towards the dusky carpet. A room service tray sits in the middle, a stack of pancakes sponging up their sugar dusting as a plate of melon weeps pinkly. In the corner, two abandoned plates – the syrup on them hardened, the cutlery akimbo – give off a fetid, warm smell.

She sinks on to the edge of the mattress and sighs. She watches them file in, edging round the puddles of dropped dresses, the obscene crotch-up curls of tangled tights and pants. The small table is heaped with gift bags and baskets and flowers, cards scattered on the carpet below, the fruit browning. She smiles.

The smile makes Greta feel like she is a child at the zoo, approaching the tiger’s enclosure.

‘Amber, I’m Greta. We spoke on the phone all those times.’

Amber considers her, head cocked slightly to one side. Her fingers fiddle with the cord of her dressing gown.

‘You’re young,’ she says, finally. Her eyes caffeine-twitch back and forth across the two guys, the fluffy mic and the flopped-out reflectors. She waves a hand and Greta pulls up the marshmallow pink stool from the desk and sits down awkwardly, a sheaf of papers pulled out from under her arm and smoothed across her thigh.

‘We were hoping to film you getting ready,’ Greta says. ‘I know you have a busy morning.’ The car is probably waiting outside, the driver checking his phone while the studios Amber will soon be visiting start to whirr into life; lights angled towards stages, armchairs pushed into place, an eager audience cattled into a line outside as the sunlight spreads across the pavement. Breakfast TV: Greta’s worst nightmare. She interned on a daily magazine show in London, back in the day, and managed to earn herself a paid running job after a month. She remembers calling her parents, at home in Michigan, to tell them – twenty-two, six months out of uni and a step closer to the career she’d said she’d have when she left them. She knew they’d never taken it personally that she’d swapped Dearborn for England at the first opportunity, but how good it had felt to tell them: yes, it was worth it. It’s all going to plan. And if she skipped a few details about what the job actually entailed (an endless cycle of moving furniture, moving guests, getting yelled at, getting it wrong) then that was OK too. Because it had all gone to plan, eventually – and here she is, nine years and many jobs later, with Amber Banner staring back at her to prove it.

Her phone buzzes in her bag and she fumbles for it among the loose memory sticks, parking stubs, balled-up napkins and sticky suncream tubes. Amber watches her the whole time with a catlike disinterest.

Greta checks the message: Federica. How is she? Apologise for me. Can’t catch a fucking flight.

It’s 2 p.m. in London; Greta can picture Federica pouring two more coffees, her hand tangling in the hair at the base of her girlfriend’s neck as she puts a cup down beside her laptop. Federica trailing out on to the balcony, anxious about the first week of the shoot – though not anxious enough to actually attempt to catch any of the many flights leaving London’s airports over the next couple of days. Instead there will be these excuses, and it will be Greta who has to make sure things start smoothly, build all of the rapport. Greta who will have to try and chip away at the ‘ice princess’ façade that Amber Banner has adopted in the British media – the chilly calmness that has horrified so many – and find some hidden depth, some unknown truth on which to build their film.

Amber sits serenely as Tom leans in to check the light levels, his freckled hand hovering beside her cheek. Her eyes are clotted with last night’s mascara but her skin is clean and smooth, barring some faint scarring on her left cheek. In the early morning hotel room light, her face angled away, she looks editorial-perfect. Greta remembers the photo of Amber that’s tacked up over Federica’s desk back in London. Printed out from a newspaper on to A3 paper, the image that has been shown on channel after channel, front page after front page over the last couple of months – Amber on the steps of the courthouse, her hair swept back into a demure ponytail, a crisp, collarless white shirt buttoned up below her elegant neck. The pop of flashes blurring the edges of the frame, hands thrusting microphones towards her. And that tight-lipped smile curling her mouth, her gaze at the camera defiant and unwavering. The ending of a story that has been splashed across the tabloids’ pages – and the beginning of another.

‘I have to be at the NBC studios in half an hour,’ Amber says, yawning so widely that Greta can see the syrup-fur on the back of her tongue, the fleshy red sides of her throat. ‘Yeah, it’s OK if you film. I don’t care about that stuff – you can film me whenever.’

Greta can feel Luca and Tom setting up behind her, Julia, their new production assistant, notable in her absence. Julia was another promise made and abandoned by Federica – another call she forgot to make, and by the time Greta got round to doing it herself, Julia had accepted another job and their flights to LA were booked for the following day. She, Tom and Luca will have to muddle through as a team of three; will have to spend the next five days permanently damp with sweat as they lug their equipment from location to location and try to keep up with Federica’s endlessly morphing vision for the film.

She tries to get out of the way as Luca attempts to find a position for the boom which won’t cast a shadow into shot. ‘So, Amber,’ she says, trying to free the edge of her flip-flop from the loop of bra-strap it’s managed to catch on as she picks her way across the carpet. ‘Are you still OK with the schedule we spoke about? OK to cover all those areas with us? I know it’s not easy to talk about everything that happened.’

She can’t help asking this, though Federic. . .