Their Little Secret

by Mark Billingham

  He and Tanner exchanged a look. If Sarah was Suzman’s ex-wife, the information he was hopefully about to give them would be hugely important, even if the man did not know the woman he had once been married to anything like as well as he once did.

  Thorne thought: Michelle loves all sorts of things.

  Tanner opened her notebook. ‘Could you start by giving us some of your ex-wife’s basic details? Full name, address, date of birth …’

  ‘What’s this all about?’ Suzman sipped at his coffee, looked from Thorne to Tanner and back. ‘A missing woman, that’s what it said on the TV.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Tanner said.

  ‘So, is Michelle missing?’

  ‘We need those details, Mr Suzman.’

  He shrugged and reeled off the information Tanner had asked him for. ‘I should certainly know the address,’ he said. ‘I paid for the bloody place, signed everything over after the divorce.’

  Thorne was keen to talk about that, about the nature of their relationship and its break-up, but not until they had all the details they needed immediately. ‘Do you have phone numbers?’

  Suzman took out his phone, scrolled through the contacts and read the numbers out, landline and mobile. ‘They’re the last ones I’ve got for her, but this is going back a few years. It’s not like we call each other up for cosy chats.’

  Tanner looked down at what she’d written.

  Michelle Sarah Suzman (née Littler). Aged 42.

  An address in Enfield, home and mobile phone numbers.

  She tore out the page and asked Peter Suzman to excuse her for a few moments. He turned to watch her leave the room but did not seem overly curious as to why she was in such a hurry.

  ‘When was the last time you saw Michelle?’

  Suzman turned back to Thorne, thought about it. ‘Well, I’ve seen her more recently than she’s seen me.’

  Thorne waited.

  ‘After the divorce, when I was living with my new partner, Beth … we had a child fairly quickly and, well, Michelle wasn’t exactly thrilled about it. I’m talking years ago, but a couple of times I saw her outside the house. Sitting in her car on the other side of the road, just watching. Beth was a bit freaked out, but, like I say, it was only a couple of times.’

  ‘You never confronted her?’

  ‘No … I didn’t think that would be a good idea.’

  ‘What was Michelle upset about? You being with your new partner or the fact that the two of you had a child?’

  Suzman looked a little uncomfortable. ‘Well, yes … I think it was all about Josh. I mean, she was extremely pissed off when I got together with Beth, and I hold my hands up … I was unfaithful and I left her for a younger woman, so she’d every right to feel like that. To screw me for everything I’d got, or almost everything. But when she found out about Josh, it was on a completely different level. Her anger …’

  Thorne remembered something Helen had said. ‘Had she lost a child?’

  Suzman shook his head. ‘No, but she wanted one.’ A sour smile showed itself briefly. ‘She really wanted one. We were actually talking about having all the tests and so on, and I’ll admit that I wasn’t very keen, because actually I didn’t think we’d allowed enough time for nature to take its course. She was adamant though, got very worked up about the whole thing, but that was around the time I got together with Beth, so it didn’t happen anyway. I think what most upset her when Josh came along was that it proved it wasn’t me, you know?’

  ‘That couldn’t have kids …’

  ‘Right. That maybe it was her … not her fault, but you know what I mean.’

  It was clear to Thorne that Michelle Suzman’s need for a child had made her reaction to the divorce and the subsequent birth of her ex-husband’s son an extreme one. But that was a very long way from a teenager battered to death on a beach or a young woman murdered in her own hallway.

  He said, ‘Before you and Michelle separated, had she shown any kind of … mental instability?’

  Suzman stared at him. ‘Has Michelle done something?’

  Thorne stared back.

  ‘Things were a bit … tricky with her parents, I suppose. Her mum was already dead, but I know their relationship hadn’t always been easy. Her dad died – either just before we got divorced or just afterwards, I can’t remember now – and she was very … conflicted about that. She was a bit up and down sometimes, but grief can do that, can’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it can,’ Thorne said.

  ‘My ex had her moments, put it that way.’

  Thorne said, ‘I understand.’ He did not think it was the way Kevin Deane’s parents, or Andrew Ruston, would put it.

  He looked up as the door opened, exchanged a nod with Tanner and got to his feet.

  ‘Thanks so much for coming in,’ Tanner said, holding the door open.

  ‘Is that it?’ Suzman asked.

  ‘That’s it,’ Thorne said.

  ‘We’ll need you to come back in later today and make a formal statement.’

  They showed him to the main entrance, thanked him again. Suzman made a couple more attempts to find out why they wanted to know so much about his ex-wife but got no further than he had before. Thorne and Tanner followed him out, then cut right and moved quickly towards the car park.

  Tanner had been busy.

  ‘According to the electoral roll, Michelle Littler is still resident at that address. The DVLA have her as the owner of a white Nissan Qashqai and there’s an active account in that name at the Enfield branch of HSBC. There’s no social media presence to speak of … just a few Facebook posts back when she was still married, but nothing since. The landline was disconnected a year ago and that mobile number’s been out of service for quite a while, but we were assuming she uses disposable pay-as-you-go phones anyway, so—’

  ‘I think we’ve got plenty.’ Thorne keyed the remote and they climbed into his BMW. He swung the car round and pointed it towards the main road.

  ‘Dipak’s getting the team together,’ Tanner said. ‘They’ll be ready for a full briefing by the time we get back to the office.’

  Thorne nodded, putting his foot down as he moved into traffic. ‘If Heather Turnbull’s in that house, we’ll need to put a surveillance operation together as fast as we can. We’ll want Territorial Support units, medical back-up, the lot.’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Even if she’s not.’

  ‘I already talked to Russell and he’s on it.’

  ‘We need to do this the right way.’ Thorne glanced at Tanner who seemed supernaturally, annoyingly calm.

  ‘Is there any other way?’ she said.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Sarah closed the bathroom door behind her and, as soon as she had dropped to her knees in front of the toilet, she could see that Conrad had already been sick. He’d flushed of course, because like her he hated any kind of a mess, but there were still a few globules clinging to the porcelain, just beneath the rim. A lingering smell, too, which would probably have been enough to make her retch even if she hadn’t been feeling as nauseous as she already was.

  She steadied herself and heaved up her breakfast.

  She coughed and spat, then reached for toilet paper to wipe away the sticky strings.

  She flushed, then stood up to wash her hands and face.

  ‘You OK?’

  She grunted a ‘fine’ without shifting her eyes from her own reflection, the hair that she herself had cut brutally short the day before, that she would henna later on.

  She switched off the tap and reached for the towel.

  He shouted from the bedroom again. ‘Welcome to my world …’

  Suddenly, she was smiling back at herself like a teenager; lovesick, she thought, in every sense, because whatever else was happening, however much of a mess she was trying so hard to get them out of, his voice could still do that. Could fill her heart. It was very sweet that he was concerned about her, such a huge comfort, especially when he was s
till feeling so rough.

  His condition had certainly not helped, though; the misery of the day before.

  It was awful seeing him unwell, like a dull ache, yet weak as he was and despite the argument they’d had when he’d accused her of being controlling, he had still wanted her the previous night. Exhausted and good for little else, they had still wanted each other. After they had made love – somewhat more gently than usual – to celebrate the fact that they … she … had got everything done, she had held on tight to him until he was asleep and, for a while at least, it had almost been possible to forget that things had gone so terribly wrong.

  That he had let her down so badly.

  After a quick squirt of air-freshener, Sarah opened the door and stepped back into the bedroom.

  Conrad was lying on the bed. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yes, I said.’

  ‘Perfect bloody timing.’ He lowered the newspaper he’d been reading and rubbed his belly. ‘Last thing we need right now is you coming down with this.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Like you said, it’s probably just a twenty-four-hour thing.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ he said.

  ‘In sickness and in health, right?’

  He stared up at her, a fraction paler than he had been a moment before.

  She said, ‘Relax, my love, that’s not a proposal.’

  FIFTY-NINE

  ‘I said I wanted ham or chicken.’

  ‘All they had.’

  ‘No crisps?’

  The woman took a packet from her plastic bag and tossed it across. ‘It was just a shitty little petrol station.’ She opened a can of Diet Coke and took a sip. ‘But the good news is they had toilets.’

  ‘Your bladder’s a liability.’ The man used his teeth to tear at the wrapping around the suspiciously sweaty-looking cheese sandwich he had been handed. ‘You’re going to end up needing one of those plastic things old ladies use. The “She-Wee” or whatever it’s called.’

  The woman belched and gave him the finger.

  They had been sitting in the front seats of the dirty-white VW Polo for a little over an hour and a half. Eyes where they needed to be at all times, of course, minds on the job, but still with plenty of opportunity for casual chat; for gossip and the obligatory light piss-taking between colleagues who knew one another well. With Magic FM providing a low-level soundtrack, they had talked about friends and family holidays, traded jokes told by a comedian they both thought was funny and bitched about a co-worker they both disliked intensely.

  ‘Thinks he’s God’s gift.’

  ‘Yeah, if God’s started giving out bell-ends …’

  They ate in silence for a few minutes, humming along with the music or drumming fingers on the dash, while they sat and watched the house with the white Nissan Qashqai parked on the drive.

  ‘Anything while I was gone?’

  The man chewed, shook his head. ‘Place is empty, I’m telling you.’

  He had just put down what was left of his sandwich and was wiping his fingers on the legs of his jeans when the radio crackled into life.

  Thorne said, ‘How’s it looking?’

  ‘If you ask me, it’s a Donald Trump situation.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘The lights are on but there’s nobody home.’

  Thorne could hear a woman laughing, ignored it. ‘How sure are you?’

  ‘Well, there’s no curtains drawn, so we’ve got a decent view, and nobody’s come into the room at the front of the house or entered the upstairs front bedroom. No movement at all since we got here.’

  ‘Is the dog still going at it?’

  ‘Hasn’t stopped.’

  ‘Big one, you reckon?’

  ‘Couldn’t say one way or another.’

  ‘Come on, you’ve been listening to the bloody thing barking for an hour and a half.’ Thorne knew that the Dog Unit he’d put on standby as soon as he’d heard about the barking from inside the house would be able to handle almost any animal, but it was always a good idea to give officers as much information as possible in advance. ‘Is it a deep bark or is it … yappy?’

  There was muttering, as the surveillance officer conferred briefly with his partner. ‘OK, we don’t think it’s a Rottweiler or anything like that, but probably not one of those stupid little ones, either. Best we can do under the circumstances.’

  Something in the officer’s tone suggested that he thought the circumstances were less than ideal, but Thorne didn’t much care because they had been dictated by the urgency of the Heather Turnbull situation; the speed at which the operation had been put together in light of a potential threat to life.

  The kick-bollock-scramble.

  Given more time and resources, observation posts would have been established inside neighbouring properties front and rear, with cameras and perhaps even covert recording devices set up to provide the maximum coverage possible. As it was, the surveillance operation was a little more ‘old school’, with one team out front and a second, who, while unable to gain a direct view of the back of the property, were in position should anyone try to leave it that way.

  Thorne cut the transmission and turned to Nicola Tanner. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t really care what kind of dog it is.’

  ‘Should we go in?’

  ‘I’m kidding, by the way …’

  Thorne’s BMW was parked a couple of streets from the one in Enfield on which Michelle Littler’s property was located. They had been sitting there almost as long as the surveillance team, with two vans containing Territorial Support officers and a team of CSIs lined up behind them, each waiting for the signal. All operational vehicles were unmarked, anonymous. The last thing anyone needed at this stage of the game was for the targets to come bowling back from an outing to the shops, spot a phalanx of police vehicles and slip quietly away.

  ‘You think Heather’s in there?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘No movement inside, they said.’

  ‘The question still stands.’

  She looked at him.

  ‘You think there’s a body in there?’

  Tanner was already reaching for her seatbelt. ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

  Thorne picked up the radio and gave the Go command.

  He started the car, waited for the TSG vehicle to move past him, then put his foot down.

  More than anything, Thorne wanted to be first inside. With a warrant burning a hole in his pocket, he would have given anything to be the one wielding the ‘big key’ but, as per protocol, he could do nothing but stand back and watch as the metal ram was thrust at the front door and, while a dog continued to bark frantically inside, a scrum of TSG officers in helmets and body armour poured into the house.

  He could only hope that his surveillance team had got it wrong. That Michelle Littler and her partner in crime had just been rudely awakened and were now sitting up in bed, panic-ridden and struggling to cover themselves.

  As scared and helpless as Kevin Deane had been.

  Gemma Maxwell.

  Heather Turnbull …

  From his position, standing with Tanner at the end of the front path, he listened to the officers roaring less-than-polite announcements of their presence and then, a few seconds later, the individual voices shouting Clear as each room was entered and quickly surveyed.

  As ever, Thorne’s feelings were writ large on his face.

  ‘Clear’s good.’ Tanner stepped towards him. ‘It’s good.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Heather Turnbull isn’t in there.’

  ‘Neither are they.’

  ‘So, we go in there and see if we can find something that tells us where they’ve gone.’

  As TSG officers began to file out of the house one by one, two more from the Dog Unit entered with gauntlets and a noose-pole. Two minutes later, a medium-sized and distinctly un-threatening dog was led out on a lead. Thorne and Tanner watched as it trotted happily across t
he road to a small van.

  ‘When?’ Thorne asked. ‘When did they leave?’

  The TSG team leader gave Thorne the nod. Thorne opened the boot of his car and took two bodysuits from a cardboard box.

  ‘Best guess?’ Tanner said. ‘Probably when she saw herself on the TV.’

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have run it.’

  ‘If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t know who she is. We wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Found some other way then,’ Thorne said.

  While the TSG officers removed helmets, stab-vests and body-cams, Thorne and Tanner took their jackets off and slipped into blue plastic overalls, nitrile gloves and bootees. Looking around, Thorne could see that they had acquired an audience. Drawn by the noise and commotion, neighbours had quickly gathered and now stood gawking from the doorsteps of the houses opposite, swapping half-heard rumours and half-baked theories across low hedges and front lawns.

  Thorne wondered how many of them were already rehearsing for their tabloid interviews; those front-page expressions of shock and disbelief as they trotted out the predictable platitudes.

  They seemed like such a quiet couple.

  Always kept themselves to themselves.

  And perhaps most annoying of all, I knew there was something off about those two …

  Always quicker about such things, Tanner was ready before him, and as she walked towards the front door Thorne pulled up the hood of his bodysuit and hurried to catch her up. She stopped on the doorstep, waiting for him, and when he reached her she said, ‘There was no other way, Tom. So let’s just get in there and deal with what we’ve got. OK?’

  A few paces behind Tanner, Thorne walked along the tiled hallway, glancing into the neat and tastefully decorated living rooms on either side. Thick carpets and expensive-looking furnishings. A state-of-the-art home cinema system in one room and floor-to-ceiling bookcases in the other. Framed prints, tongue and groove, Farrow & Ball …

  Thorne briefly caught his own reflection in the large mirror above an ornate fireplace, a pale-blue ghost drifting through shot. He was still thinking about the onlookers gathering outside and found himself wondering how, when he and his team finally caught Sarah and Conrad, the tabloids would be able to spin this everyday slice of well-heeled suburbia into the requisite ‘house of horrors’.