Their Little Secret

by Mark Billingham

‘Want some company?’ Thorne saw the question on her face. ‘Russell won’t mind – well, certainly not if we forget to tell him, and the Margate thing’s going nowhere, so …’

  ‘I should really take Dipak,’ she said. ‘He’s on this already.’

  ‘I’m sure you can find him something useful to do—’ He stopped when he saw that Tanner was eyeing the paperwork that was still taking up most of the space on his desktop. ‘Yeah, talking of which, I don’t suppose you’ve got half an hour to spare, have you?’

  It wasn’t as if she spat it at him, it was spoken rather more matter-of-factly than that, but still, it was a word Thorne couldn’t remember hearing Tanner use before. He watched her turn and march out towards the incident room.

  He put his head round the door and shouted after her.

  ‘I was joking …’

  THIRTY-ONE

  More than once driving over there, Conrad thought how easy it would be just to turn round and head back to Sarah’s, to pretend his life before her had never happened. The way things were now, the man she’d made of him, it might just as well not have happened, after all.

  Wouldn’t it be easier, just to forget certain people from his past, to sever contact completely?

  Easier for him, no question about that.

  He couldn’t, though, because the woman he was on his way to see wouldn’t allow it. The texts had made that pretty obvious, but then, she’d always been needy. He could have changed his phone of course, let her send her increasingly fraught messages into the ether and kept his head down, but the fact that he hadn’t done so told him something. He’d been needy too once upon a time and she’d been there, and he could never deny that he owed her something; that he owed her plenty. She’d been important to him then and there was no way she was going to be fobbed off with a phone call or ghosted like one of his marks.

  He needed to deal with the problem face to face.

  He needed to deal with her.

  It was hard to read her expression when she opened the door, as though she hadn’t been altogether sure what she would feel when she saw him. How she was going to react. It might have been the fury she’d been saving up, or a perverse delight in spite of herself, but in that moment they cancelled one another out, leaving only a blank.

  As if he wasn’t there at all.

  She said, ‘Hello stranger,’ and turned to walk back inside.

  Conrad stepped in quickly and shut the door behind him. He said, ‘Sorry,’ because he was. For the weeks of silence, of absence, for what he’d come here to do and how she was going to feel afterwards.

  She told him sorry was a start, but that he still had a long way to go.

  She told him to sit down …

  Half an hour later, fighting the urge to lash out at the first thing within range, inanimate or otherwise, Conrad climbed back into his car, slammed the door and sat staring at the building he had just left. Wondering what the woman inside was thinking. He was hot, so he turned the cold air on, but it just made him feel clammy as the sweat began to dry on his neck and chest.

  He thought about what had just happened, going over the conversation as best he could remember it, in the hope that, just perhaps, things might not have gone quite as badly as he felt they had.

  Inside her flat, he had done as he was told and sat down next to her.

  He hadn’t taken his jacket off.

  He’d been hoping it wouldn’t take very long.

  She’d begun ranting almost immediately, berating him for daring to think that he could just cut her off. As if nothing had happened between them, as if she’d just imagined it. She had shaken her head and sniggered at the idiocy of such an idea. Asked him if he seriously believed she was the same as those desperate women he seduced, then took for all they had.

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ he’d said. ‘You’re being stupid.’

  She’d shrugged and told him that being stupid was something she was getting used to. That she had been profoundly stupid for expecting a call or a message from him, stupid for thinking he might be in hospital or under arrest or dead.

  ‘I understand why you’re upset.’ He’d looked around the room he’d been in so often before; that he could never return to again. ‘That’s why I thought it would be better to do this in person.’

  She told him how very thoughtful he was.

  ‘Look, there’s no need—’

  He’d stopped when she leaned quickly towards him. Asked exactly what he wanted to do in person.

  ‘I can’t see you any more.’

  ‘Can’t?’

  He’d guessed this was going to be difficult, because he knew her. He already had a feeling that she knew what was coming, had known very well before he got there, but she clearly had no intention of helping things along. She wanted to see him suffer on the hook a while before he was allowed to wriggle off it.

  He thought it was probably what he deserved.

  ‘I don’t want to see you any more.’

  She’d looked at him for a few seconds, studied him. Her face had stayed immobile, but her fingers gathered up the material of her skirt and balled it into her fists. She was waiting for him to say it, daring him.

  ‘There’s somebody else.’ He’d almost winced, as though he were the one on the receiving end of it. ‘Look, I’m not saying this to hurt you …’

  She blinked and sat back. She looked crushed, as if the sarcasm and bitterness had been no more than bravado. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘I’m just trying to be honest.’

  After half a minute or so, she had begun talking quietly, as if there was nobody listening. She said that, if she was being honest, she wasn’t enormously surprised. She’d always expected something like this to happen, because men like him were so hugely, sadly predictable. It had only been a matter of time, she said. It was always on the cards.

  ‘I didn’t go looking for it,’ he said.

  She’d smiled, thin and sour, told him that made it all right then.

  ‘At the start I thought she was going to be like the others.’

  She’d nodded, like she was impressed; happy for him. Happy that this other woman was not simply one of the herd. That he hadn’t got her to open her legs just so she’d open her purse later on. That this one was different.

  He’d said nothing.

  She’d told him that the funny thing, the really funny thing, was … she’d thought she was different. Surely he remembered telling her that.

  ‘She’s … special,’ Conrad said. ‘She’s a remarkable woman and I know that can’t be nice to hear, but I thought you deserved to be told the truth and not just left hanging on or whatever.’ He stood up and took a few steps towards the door. ‘So, that’s it … I’m sorry. What else can I say?’

  She had waved his concern away. Nodded and assured him that he had no need to worry. That they could talk about it some more next time.

  He’d turned back to her. ‘What?’

  That was when she’d told him that it wasn’t the way these things worked. She spoke softly, as though to a child who through no fault of their own had failed to grasp a very simple rule. That it wasn’t the way she worked.

  ‘Look, I told you, it’s finished.’

  She knew exactly what he’d told her, she said. She was not hard of hearing or understanding. But that only meant things were finished according to him.

  ‘I’m with someone else, now,’ Conrad said.

  She smiled and reminded him gently how long they had known one another, how he should know very well by now that she always had a say.

  He had hoped things might pan out a little better than this, but he had suspected that would be asking a lot. It had been a comforting fantasy, that was all. Whatever he and this woman had once meant to one another, he had always been … wary of her.

  ‘What are you … going to do?’ he asked.

  She had sat back in her chair then, done with him for the time being. She told him that she would need to think about
it, to mull things over for a while.

  It was a lot to take in, after all.

  Now Conrad had plenty to take in, too. An all-consuming new relationship and an old one that refused to die, thanks to a woman who was stubbornly refusing to let it. He had no idea what her next move would be, or his for that matter, but he knew where he needed to go.

  He started the car, pulled out hard into traffic and put his foot down, desperate to get back to Sarah. To somewhere which, despite everything, felt suddenly like a place of safety.

  THIRTY-TWO

  ‘Claw-hammer,’ Hendricks said, when they were done. ‘So much easier to be sure when they’ve used the actual claw bit.’

  The pathologist used two fingers to illustrate, but Tanner didn’t need any help. She was not squeamish, never one of those who stood off to one side and waited for the headlines. She had watched it all, from Hendricks’s first incision to the moment, two hours later, when an assistant had come in to replace the organs and stitch the body back together.

  She had seen the wounds to Gemma Maxwell’s skull.

  ‘Thanks, Phil.’

  ‘Oh, and she was pregnant.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Only just. She might not even have known herself.’ Hendricks kicked open the door. ‘Full report by the end of the day, bit of luck.’

  They dropped scrub-suits, gowns, masks, boots and gloves into the clinical-waste bins in the dress-out room. In silence, they slipped their own jackets and shoes back on. Each took a healthy squirt from the hand-sanitizer before they stepped out into the corridor and began walking towards Hendricks’s office in the basement of Hornsey Mortuary.

  A perfectly grim and perfectly ordinary start to the day.

  ‘Be very nice if you got a result on this one,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘Always nice.’

  ‘Yeah, course.

  ‘I know what you mean, though.’

  ‘A fucking claw-hammer …’

  ‘Let’s hope what you found under her fingernails does us a favour.’ Tanner looked at her watch. The sample had already been dispatched and she was hopeful of a result within a few hours.

  Hendricks nodded. ‘Scratched him when she saw what was coming. Must have done, because she certainly wouldn’t have been able to do a fat lot after he’d started. First blow was enough to kill her.’

  Once again, Tanner had seen the evidence.

  The cracks and fissures, the ragged holes in the pale skull.

  The first of many blows.

  When they reached the office, Hendricks sat down and said, ‘Tom not on this one, then?’

  ‘He’s trying to muscle his way in.’ Tanner lingered in the doorway. There was no reason she needed to be there, but she had some time to kill before she was due at the school. Some of Hendricks’s lewder pronouncements could still annoy her, but she had been starting to enjoy his company a lot more recently. ‘I think he’s bored.’

  ‘You know he saw Helen the other night?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything to me.’

  ‘Me, neither.’ Hendricks moved files across his desk to give himself access to his keyboard. He typed a word or two, then slid his chair across to check something on the Arsenal Legends calendar pinned to a corkboard. ‘Helen told me.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I always forget you two are matey,’ Tanner said.

  ‘Come on, Helen’s way nicer than he is.’ He grinned. ‘If ever a woman was going to turn me … well, apart from your good self, obviously …’

  ‘So, how did it go?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think anything got sorted out, but it sounds like it was friendly enough. Cleared the air a bit, I think.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yeah. She told him he’d been a bit distant or something.’ Hendricks glanced up. ‘Keeping stuff from her.’

  They didn’t look at each other at all after that; didn’t say anything else about it, because they didn’t need to.

  Tanner took a step out into the corridor. ‘So, end of the day then, the report?’

  ‘Fingers crossed.’ Hendricks was already typing again. ‘Mind you, you’ll be lucky if you get your reports inside a month, the rate people keep killing each other round here. Pulling out knives at the drop of a designer baseball cap. Forget “worse than New York”, mate, it’s getting like South Africa or Columbia, whatever.’

  Tanner had already gone.

  Rachel Peake, the headmistress of Brooklands Hill, was somewhat younger than Thorne had expected. Perhaps it was simply the word itself that conjured fearsome images involving tweed and severity, or it might simply have been that teachers looked a lot more youthful the older you got, like coppers. Like everyone.

  ‘We’re obviously all stunned,’ she said. ‘Just … numb, really.’

  ‘Of course,’ Tanner said.

  As she and Thorne sat down, the headmistress took her own seat behind a glass and blond-wood desk and stared at them. Though she was dressed like a no-nonsense businesswoman, Thorne could sense a warmth and fragility in the woman, though it was impossible to know how much of that was down to the current situation. He looked around. If there was any tweed hidden away in her large, comfortable office, he certainly couldn’t spot it.

  ‘Just thinking about what we should do. You know, what we should tell the children. I need to talk to the governors, but I think we should probably shut the school for a couple of days.’

  ‘It might be an idea,’ Tanner said.

  Thorne remembered the memorial service that had been held at Susan’s school after her death, an event he’d attended as Tanner’s ‘beard’. The packed assembly hall. A Pete Seeger song and tributes from weeping children.

  ‘I’ve started trying to write a letter to send out to parents, but … what do you say?’

  ‘It’s not easy.’ Thorne immediately began to wonder what he would say in similar circumstances. The pat phrases. The sad loss of a much-loved teacher … taken from us in tragic circumstances. He would probably leave out the pregnancy and the part about the claw-hammer.

  There was a knock at the door and the headmistress’s secretary stepped in with tea things which she set down on the desk. She was rather more what Thorne had been expecting. The curt manner and air of self-importance he had thought was unique to GPs’ receptionists. He watched the woman noisily wrangle cups and saucers, wondering what qualifications were specified on the application form for her job.

  Good computer skills.

  Administrative experience preferred.

  Face like a smacked arse.

  The Head nodded towards the door when the secretary had closed it quietly behind her. ‘Janet hasn’t stopped crying since she found out.’

  Thorne shifted slightly in his seat, thinking that grief could take many forms. Thinking that he might usefully add ‘insensitive arsehole’ to his own job description.

  While Peake poured milk and handed cups across, there was another knock on the door. ‘I asked a couple of Gemma’s colleagues to join us,’ she said quickly. ‘They knew her a little better than I did. I mean, obviously I knew her, but … I thought it might be useful.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m sure it will be,’ Tanner said.

  ‘I should tell you that they don’t know about Gemma yet. I wanted to let members of staff know individually, but …’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ Thorne said. What do you say? Easier to leave it to people who had become used to saying it.

  The two teachers who came in looked even younger than the headmistress and if Thorne hadn’t known that they had yet to hear the news, their expressions would have made it obvious enough. Curious, but more than a little apprehensive. Clearly, being summoned to the Head’s office, even one as welcoming as this, was only marginally less scary for staff than it was for pupils.

  Rachel made the introductions. Karl Sturridge was mixed-race and stocky with his hair in cornrows, and when Tanner calmly explained why she and Thorne were at the school his eyes widened, then began to blink
fast behind designer glasses. Alice Thomason was a few inches taller than her workmate, mouseyhaired and skinny in soft, woollen dungarees worn over a bright yellow top. She said, ‘Jesus,’ then ‘Fuck,’ and looked across at her boss, embarrassed.

  The Head told the teacher not to worry, that she had said much the same when she had been told, then suggested that they all move across to a rather more informal seating area on the other side of the office.

  ‘Who the hell would want to hurt Gemma?’ Alice settled on to a low red sofa. She looked to Thorne and Tanner, to Karl. ‘Oh God, poor Andy.’

  Thorne glanced at Tanner. The boyfriend.

  ‘I should call him.’ Karl looked at Thorne. ‘We used to play five-a-side together.’

  ‘Maybe you should give it a day or two,’ Tanner said.

  ‘Oh, yeah, course …’

  ‘Was everything OK between Gemma and Andy?’ Thorne asked.

  Alice stared at him and her mouth opened slowly.

  Tanner stared at Thorne, too, then quickly sat forward. ‘I know this is a huge shock and you’re still struggling to take it in, and it’s a natural reaction to say what you just said. To ask who could possibly do something like this to a friend of yours, why anyone might want to hurt her, but it’s our job to ask you exactly that.’ She looked at them both. ‘So, you’d really be helping us if you could think very carefully about that, OK?’

  Karl and Alice nodded, like children in one of their classes.

  ‘What about a jealous ex?’ Thorne asked. ‘Anyone you can think of from her past?’

  ‘She used to go out with a guy called Rob,’ Alice said. ‘But they’re still good mates and he lives in France now, I think.’

  ‘Any family problems? Siblings …?’

  ‘Just a sister,’ Karl said. ‘An … elder sister?’ He looked at Alice.

  She nodded. ‘They’re really close.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Rachel said. ‘Gemma talked about her sister a lot.’

  ‘Did she ever say anything about anyone scaring her?’ Tanner had her notebook open but had yet to write anything. ‘Threatening her?’

  ‘Not to me,’ Karl said.

  ‘Had she noticed anyone hanging around outside her house?’ Thorne asked. ‘Outside the school?’