Hailey's Story--She Was an Eleven-Year-Old Child. He Was Soham Murderer Ian Huntley. This is the Story of How She Survived (6 page)

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HE SKY WAS BABY BLUE WITH JUST A HINT OF WISPY CLOUD, THERE WAS A WARM BREEZE AND THE LAST RAYS OF THE SUMMER SUN WERE SHINING BRIGHTLY.
A perfect day for a trip into town, filled with excitement for a young girl: a mixture of McDonald's and window shopping.

I was wearing my brother's tracksuit bottoms, tied around the waist with a cord-type pull fastener, a
T-shirt
with a fleecy jumper on top of it and a tracksuit top over that, and Nike trainers.

As I walked up the drive to the caravan, a thrill surged within me at what lay ahead that day. I expected Katie to be waiting for me inside, and I was about to knock on the door when I spotted Huntley through
the caravan window, sitting alone at the table. As I stood there momentarily, waiting for Katie to come out, I caught the faintest aroma of freshly cut grass, carried on the gentle remnants of the breeze.

I was pulled out of my world of serenity by Huntley's soft voice drifting through the wafer-thin door. ‘Come in,' he called out, as he motioned with his arm from behind the picture-postcard window for me to enter.

As I went in he greeted me warmly, ‘Hi.'

‘Is Katie here?' I asked.

Huntley was no stranger to me; we had previously met and spoken. I had no idea of his past, and no one had told me to mind him. To me, he was Katie Webber's boyfriend. But, to fill out the picture, it was only because I had won my mum's trust about my flourishing friendship with Katie that I was allowed to call and see her in the caravan she shared with her boyfriend.

‘No, she's just nipped out to the shop,' Huntley casually replied to my question. ‘She'll only be ten or fifteen minutes or so.'

Having known Huntley for a few months, and because he was known to my mum and dad, I was completely at ease as I entered the chintzy caravan to wait for my friend. All the same, I tried to cover my awkward feeling of self-consciousness at finding Katie wasn't there by saying, ‘Oh, I was supposed to go to town with her today. I don't know what's happened there then. It must be confusion or crossed wires.'

What I can't fully work out, when I look back, is why didn't Katie return home directly from my place? Because, when she had called by earlier and I wasn't ready, she said we'd meet at the caravan. And how could Huntley be so certain that she would be back in such a short time as he said, since, as far as he knew, Katie had planned to be in town all afternoon with me. Surely she had told him that this was what we were doing, or had she just told him she was popping out for a short while? If so, why would she have told him a lie like this?

After a while the subject changed and Huntley rather cleverly made a comment that was his key to the door into a far deeper conversation. ‘Oh well, you're not allowed to leave the street on your own, are you?' he said.

Without giving a moment's heed to any ulterior motive behind his question, I replied, ‘No.'

‘Oh, well, why can't you leave the street on your own then?' he pressed me.

I had no reason to be cautious over his motive for asking these questions as I replied, ‘Because my mum says that I am not allowed to,' quickly adding, ‘I think I maybe got it wrong. I can only leave the street with an adult.'

Little did I realise from Huntley's calm demeanour what he had in store for me; nothing crossed my 11-year-old mind. The table, which could be folded down into a bed, had pornographic magazines fanned out on it; the pages were spread open, revealing naked models that Huntley had clearly been ogling.

During the course of this conversation that Huntley had initiated, he emphasised how careful my mum was about me. ‘Your mum's really strict; she doesn't let you out of the street, does she?'

‘Yeah, because I want to go and buy sweets,' I innocently replied.

Already Huntley was aware of how my mum kept a watchful eye on me. She strictly supervised my movements and I might as well have been tagged – that's how much I was monitored.

The malevolent mind of this man was now steering the conversation his way as he said soothingly, ‘Your mum's
really
strict, just like mine was. I was never allowed to do anything.'

We were still talking about my leaving the street when Huntley orchestrated a question that would turn the metaphorical key already in the door of innocence. He took his eyes off the girlie magazines, looked straight at me with his deep, fiery eyes and out of the blue asked, ‘What's the most daring thing you've done with a boy?'

That was the first time I felt uncomfortable and a bit out of place in his presence. In a way, looking back on it, he dared me to reveal my innermost thoughts. It was as if he was challenging all the boundaries with his invitation to reveal to him what little I could about my experiences with boys.

With wide-eyed innocence, I looked back at
Huntley's unlocking eyes and asked, ‘Well, what do you mean about
daring
?'

With his disarming manner, he prompted me with an example. ‘Have you kissed boys, sort of thing?'

Embarrassed and with an uncomfortable shrug of my shoulders, I replied, ‘No, no. But I've played kiss-chase around the school playground.'

This revelation, that I had kissed a boy, although just in a game, was something that I wouldn't have wanted even my mum to find out about.

Huntley was moving in on his victim: me. Huntley wasn't your ‘abduct and assault' paedophile. Exerting control, for him, was a gradual process and the start of that process was his pushing at the door of opportunity by saying to me, ‘I'll tell you what, Hailey, why don't we go for a walk? And we can climb some trees, because you've had a really boring life like me.'

Alarm bells started ringing in my head about how Mum would go mad if I disobeyed her, so I replied defensively, ‘Well, I'm not allowed out of the end of the street!'

Huntley deftly defused my reply with his charm. ‘Well, you said earlier that you were allowed out of the street with an adult.' And then he pushed further, ‘Aren't you?'

‘Yeah,' I replied.

The boundaries of safety and the protective custody of the street were being whittled away by Huntley's
accelerated grooming of me so as to get me out of the street and to some secluded spot where he could carry out his sick wishes. He was talking to me as if we were both 11 years old when he pulled me into his
make-believe
world by revealing, ‘My mum, when I was your age, she was really strict, she wouldn't let me do anything, and it's so unfair, isn't it?'

‘Well, yes,' I had to agree.

All through our conversation I was sitting across the table from him. He was still, from time to time, gazing intently at the magazines. He didn't make any effort to conceal this from me; he had this particular one right open in front of him.

It was a Saturday and, by the look of him, he had decided it was a rest day, as I recall him having stubble on his chin; he was dressed in a T-shirt that was tucked into his jeans and he wore flat scruffy work shoes.

I remember looking at his hair and thinking, God, you're not that much older than me. Although he had jet-black hair, there were sizeable grey streaks running through it. This gave me the impression that he was already turning grey. He had mucky hands. He didn't have aftershave on; he didn't use a body spray either.

When I went into the caravan that Saturday, there was dog hair everywhere and the musty smell of wet fur. Huntley had an Alsatian puppy called Sadie. It was the one Maxine Carr went on to keep after she was
released from her prison sentence for giving him his false alibi over the Soham murders.

Huntley then skilfully referred again to my life in the street, saying, ‘You've a bit of a boring life, haven't you? Your mum is really strict and so is your dad. They don't let you go out of the street.'

Then, cunningly, he threw a searching look at me as he probed further about what he had already touched on. ‘Have you ever climbed trees?'

Knowing how angry my mum would be if she caught me doing that, I warily replied, ‘No. I'm not allowed to climb trees.'

Returning to another of his themes, he said, ‘God, you've had a bit of a boring life, haven't you, kid?'

‘Well, yeah. Yeah,' I replied nonchalantly.

‘Yeah, and you wouldn't climb a tree, you say?' Huntley quizzed me. ‘It's not the kind of thing that you would do?'

‘No.'

‘Or not allowed to do, rather?'

‘No, because my mum always said, “You climb trees, you fall and break your neck.”'

‘Yes, you've had a really boring life, haven't you?' he said, pressing his earlier point.

‘Well, it's a bit unfair that I'm not allowed out of the street without an adult. All my friends are allowed out of the street. Even to go to the corner shop, I'd have to have an adult with me.'

It was true. I was only allowed out on my own in our street, where my mum could walk out of her front door, look left – ‘She's not down there' – look right – ‘Oh, she's down that end' – and then she could call me in.

So that was when Huntley beguilingly said, ‘Well,
I'm
an adult. Why don't you go out of the street with
me
and we'll go and climb some trees. Your mum knows me and so does your dad.'

When I look back on it now, it was in a really charming – how can I put it? – a smooth-talking, befriending sort of way that he then said, ‘We'll go out of the street, we'll go and climb some trees and, you know, it's all right because I'm an adult and you'll be fine.'

‘Oh, yeah,' I gushed, ‘Mum and Dad know you and my auntie Sue lives next door and my cousin Katie lives next door and Mum knows Jackie, Katie Webber's mum, and, oh yeah, OK then. OK.'

Using that as his cue, Huntley folding his magazine once and then again, before stuffing it down the side of his seat. Then, beaming a smile at me, he repeated reassuringly, ‘Your mum and dad know me.
I'm
an adult, it'll be fine.'

The trap was set for me when I thought for a lingering moment that what he was saying was right. And that's when the rebel in me accepted his offer with gusto. ‘All right then,' I answered.

Off we went, step by step, the safe confines of my
street disappearing into the distance. Huntley led the way in what, to him, was a walk of lustful
abandonment
. He must have been preoccupied with the wicked thoughts of what he wanted to do to me running around inside his head. Knowing what I now know about Huntley, this is probably what he had done to the Soham girls, Holly and Jessica, before murdering them.

I recall that, as we walked past the window of Katie's house, her mum Jackie wasn't there. She wasn't by the window, as she had been when I arrived. We walked out of the sanctuary of the street, ambled through this alleyway that I used to walk through every morning on the way to school and then we went across a road before trekking through the grounds of my school – Huntley always leading the way, with me keenly following close behind.

We were generally talking about school and where Katie had got to, and he was reassuring, saying, ‘I wonder where she could have got to? Don't worry, I'll tell her you were looking for her.'

Picturing trees in my mind, I replied cheerfully, ‘Oh, don't worry.'

We were as talkative as each other. You couldn't shut me up; I could have talked the head off a brush. This was going to be much better than a day in town. Climbing trees would make this a great Saturday. It was like going from felt to velvet.

We walked for over 30 minutes, at about three to four miles an hour, which means it must have been a mile and half to two miles from the caravan. I didn't know where we were going, and he never said where he was taking me. I just assumed we were going to climb trees.

Huntley had done a good job in not arousing any suspicion in me about what he had planned in his brooding mind. It was as if he was an old hand at this.

I blindly followed where Huntley led. We made our way through the school grounds, towards and then across the playing field. There was the main entrance, but we didn't walk that way, we walked right across the far side of the field, where there was an open walkway.

As we passed my school, the scheming Huntley lured me deeper into his trap, exploiting the false sense of security he had already created within me. After spotting some trees, he gawped at them, chuckled and said, ‘Oh, them bloody trees are no good.'

After all, what would a little girl of 11 think was wrong with a grown man of 23 wanting to climb trees?

Then, as we got across the other side of the field, where there were houses, we followed a series of winding roads. We ended up at the Grosvenor pub, in Cleethorpes, where people were gathered outside having a drink. There were wooden benches with people sitting on them, and many more drinkers standing about with beer glasses in their hands. I can remember thinking that I was thirsty, but I didn't say
anything to Huntley, as I didn't want to delay our
tree-climbing
expedition.

We passed through the mass of people milling about in the garden, round the side of the pub and to a fence at the far side of the car park. Huntley beckoned me through a gap in the fence and, behind it, in contrast to the other, bustling side, was a secluded orchard, like a secret garden. We two were the only ones there, although it seemed to be part of the pub's grounds.

The thickly wooded area that greeted us was not at all frightening or displeasing to the eye. Ferns sprouted from the shaded areas beneath the moss-covered trees, their leaves fanning out in a welcoming wave of green tasselled arms. Looking like a picture postcard, sporadic clumps of dense bracken fused together with dead wood and leaves, as brambles battled their way through to reach the light. Beneath the aged branches of the trees, where the wind had blown the bullion from them, lay a carpet of golden leaves, strewn across the untouched ground. As we walked, twigs broke beneath our feet, making cracking noises before being silenced by the spongy earth.