wouldn't tell Pearce where she was living, but if Derek Pearce was anything, he was a good detective. He searched probable neighborhoods and spotted a vase in a window, a vase she loved. When he found her she was sick in bed with the flu, and had no one to take care of her.
"Why not let me come round and look after you till you're better?" he suggested.
"Maybe," she said.
"And when you're well you might come back home . . . for a visit. To say hello to the dog."
"Maybe," she said.
She got some looking after, all right. When he was through scrubbing, that cottage was clean enough to impress Joan Crawford. But his former spouse didn't go back home to say hello to the dog. She went to live in Hong Kong with another man, who was a former colleague of Derek Pearce. The torch still flickered.
Kath and Eddie Eastwood had been trying for weeks to get the coroner to release Lynda's body for burial. They were repeatedly told, "We must maintain control of the remains until all forensic work is completed."
Eddie said it just went to show how the authorities treat poor people, but Kath said stoically, "I suppose they know best."
Perhaps, but in the length of time Kath was denied her daughter's body, they could have taken apart the two-hundred-piece skeleton of Lynda Mann bone by bone. They could have dissected every organ, grouped and subgrouped five quarts of blood drop by drop. The hair could have been catalogued strand for strand, and clothing fibers subjected to more scrutiny than the Shroud of Turin. Whatever they needed or thought they needed, the coroner's people maintained custody of the body of Lynda Mann for more than ten weeks.
Finally, on the 2nd of February, Kath was allowed to bury her daughter in the cemetery by All Saints Church--a few minutes from where she'd lived, a few steps from where she'd died. More than a hundred people, including Supt. Ian Coutts, attended the funeral. Several other detectives observed, and made a video of the mourners, looking for what, they weren't certain.
"We got the best stone we could afford," Kath Eastwood said. "We expected it to cost two or three hundred pounds, but it cost nearly eight hundred."
Eddie said, "It were over one thousand quid all together, the funeral. I called Social Security for help and they says they can only spend twenty! `She wasn't stillborn!' I told them. You can't bury a fetus for twenty quid!"
"We go to the grave regular," he said. "It seems daft to talk to a grave, but people do. It helps."
"It's somewhere to go," Kath Eastwood said. "It brings solace to my mum. She likes to visit Lynda's grave."
The carved inscription on the heart-shaped stone read:
LYNDA ROSE MARIE MANN
Taken 21st November 1983
Aged 15 years
We didn't have time to say goodbye , but you're only a thought away.
Kath kept all of Lynda's clothes. Some people told her to get rid of them, but she couldn't. Eventually Eddie put them up in the attic.
"I kept having a dream," Kath said. "I dreamed of Lynda fighting. Of being dragged down."
She wished she could dream of other things, perhaps a dream of Lynda bringing a cup of coffee to her bedside on Christmas morning. That was the kind of memory she wanted to relive in dreams, but the recurring dream was always the same. Of Lynda being dragged down by a looming shadow without a face.
Chapter 8.
Visions
By mid-February the murder squad had distributed a thousand posters of an artist's impression of the spiky-haired youth, and had put together a twenty-minute video about the murder which they showed at local schools and shopping centers, and even at a disco where youths gathered who might've known Lynda. The video described several of the promising leads and witnesses they had yet to locate, primarily the spiky-haired youth.
By late February they had a brand-new one: "the somber girl." This lead was phoned in to the incident room by a witness who'd spotted a young couple strolling by Copt Oak Road on the night of the murder. It
"Why not let me come round and look after you till you're better?" he suggested.
"Maybe," she said.
"And when you're well you might come back home . . . for a visit. To say hello to the dog."
"Maybe," she said.
She got some looking after, all right. When he was through scrubbing, that cottage was clean enough to impress Joan Crawford. But his former spouse didn't go back home to say hello to the dog. She went to live in Hong Kong with another man, who was a former colleague of Derek Pearce. The torch still flickered.
Kath and Eddie Eastwood had been trying for weeks to get the coroner to release Lynda's body for burial. They were repeatedly told, "We must maintain control of the remains until all forensic work is completed."
Eddie said it just went to show how the authorities treat poor people, but Kath said stoically, "I suppose they know best."
Perhaps, but in the length of time Kath was denied her daughter's body, they could have taken apart the two-hundred-piece skeleton of Lynda Mann bone by bone. They could have dissected every organ, grouped and subgrouped five quarts of blood drop by drop. The hair could have been catalogued strand for strand, and clothing fibers subjected to more scrutiny than the Shroud of Turin. Whatever they needed or thought they needed, the coroner's people maintained custody of the body of Lynda Mann for more than ten weeks.
Finally, on the 2nd of February, Kath was allowed to bury her daughter in the cemetery by All Saints Church--a few minutes from where she'd lived, a few steps from where she'd died. More than a hundred people, including Supt. Ian Coutts, attended the funeral. Several other detectives observed, and made a video of the mourners, looking for what, they weren't certain.
"We got the best stone we could afford," Kath Eastwood said. "We expected it to cost two or three hundred pounds, but it cost nearly eight hundred."
Eddie said, "It were over one thousand quid all together, the funeral. I called Social Security for help and they says they can only spend twenty! `She wasn't stillborn!' I told them. You can't bury a fetus for twenty quid!"
"We go to the grave regular," he said. "It seems daft to talk to a grave, but people do. It helps."
"It's somewhere to go," Kath Eastwood said. "It brings solace to my mum. She likes to visit Lynda's grave."
The carved inscription on the heart-shaped stone read:
LYNDA ROSE MARIE MANN
Taken 21st November 1983
Aged 15 years
We didn't have time to say goodbye , but you're only a thought away.
Kath kept all of Lynda's clothes. Some people told her to get rid of them, but she couldn't. Eventually Eddie put them up in the attic.
"I kept having a dream," Kath said. "I dreamed of Lynda fighting. Of being dragged down."
She wished she could dream of other things, perhaps a dream of Lynda bringing a cup of coffee to her bedside on Christmas morning. That was the kind of memory she wanted to relive in dreams, but the recurring dream was always the same. Of Lynda being dragged down by a looming shadow without a face.
Chapter 8.
Visions
By mid-February the murder squad had distributed a thousand posters of an artist's impression of the spiky-haired youth, and had put together a twenty-minute video about the murder which they showed at local schools and shopping centers, and even at a disco where youths gathered who might've known Lynda. The video described several of the promising leads and witnesses they had yet to locate, primarily the spiky-haired youth.
By late February they had a brand-new one: "the somber girl." This lead was phoned in to the incident room by a witness who'd spotted a young couple strolling by Copt Oak Road on the night of the murder. It
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