Their Little Secret

by Mark Billingham

  He guessed the red-tops would manage.

  If they caught Sarah and Conrad …

  Ahead of him, Tanner called out from the kitchen and he moved to join her. She nodded down to a pair of empty dog bowls on the floor. A third, larger, was dry but had clearly contained water. There was a scattering of small turds close to the back door.

  ‘I don’t think we missed them by much,’ she said.

  Thorne looked around. A pair of dirty mugs sat on the marble worktop, a copy of the previous day’s Evening Standard next to a fruit bowl on the polished pine table. ‘They knew we were coming.’

  Tanner nodded. ‘Just left enough food for one day. If the dog had been barking for much longer than that, the neighbours would have called the police.’

  They spent a few minutes going through the contents of kitchen cupboards and drawers, examining utility bills, shopping receipts, a wall calendar, before moving back out into the hallway and rifling through the pockets of the jackets and coats that were hanging up near the door. Then they turned on to the stairs. They would allow themselves half an hour or so, looking for obvious signs that Heather Turnbull had been kept in the house and anything that might prove useful in determining where the occupants might have gone. A hopeful once-over, before the SOCOs, who were changing and putting their equipment together outside, came in to begin the search for evidence that would not be visible to the naked eye.

  Brushes, gel lifters and tape for prints. Luminol for blood traces.

  Upstairs, Thorne and Tanner stood together in the doorway of the smallest bedroom and stared in at the posters of footballers and dinosaurs, the sets of Harry Potter and Horrible Histories on shelves above the single bed. The Danger Mouse duvet and a multicoloured rug with robots on.

  ‘You reckon this is what it’s all been about?’ Tanner asked. ‘The fantasy kid?’

  Thorne shook his head. ‘Not the murders, no.’

  ‘You sound very certain.’

  ‘I mean, what do I know, but—’

  ‘She’s clearly delusional.’

  ‘It’s different,’ Thorne said. ‘Wherever the whole having a child thing came from, something else was triggered when she got together with Conrad. For both of them. Some kind of … fire was started.’ He turned away and crossed the corridor to the master bedroom. ‘Christ alone knows.’

  A few moments later, he was staring down at the unmade bed Sarah and Conrad had shared. The place where, if Melita Perera was to be believed, a killing spree may well have been hatched.

  Fucked into existence, celebrated.

  Thorne looked at the tangled sheets, the pillows that still bore the shape of their heads pushed close together and, just for a moment, he thought he could actually smell it. Them.

  ‘Tom …?’

  He turned and saw that Tanner was holding something she’d picked up from one of the bedside tables. He stepped across to get a closer look and saw what it was, saw how the livid pink colouring of the stick of Margate rock had melted against its plastic wrapping. Thorne felt something twist in his stomach and watched as Tanner placed it carefully into an evidence bag.

  ‘Sick,’ she said. ‘But come on, we both know that juries really go for shit like this. Yeah, DNA and the rest of it is all well and good.’ She nodded, job done. ‘But this is what’s going to put them away.’

  SIXTY

  Having announced when he’d woken up that he was feeling much better, Conrad had gone out and, for the first time in a while, Sarah did not much care where. The nearest pub, quite probably, to get a few drinks inside him now that he could keep them down. To take stock, bless him. To take a breath. It was too early for him to go back to work, to get in the swing of hunting again, and she was as sure as she could be that he wouldn’t be driving all the way back into London to visit that woman. There certainly hadn’t been any more soppy text messages or desperate late-night calls, pleading for attention. All things considered, it didn’t much matter, but Sarah was fairly confident that, the sad little whore wouldn’t be awfully keen on seeing Conrad these days.

  Not now Sarah had put the fear of God into her.

  Into both of them.

  How would she have coped, Sarah wondered, watching Conrad puking and shitting and moaning like a baby. Would she still have wanted him as much if she’d had to deal with all that? Sarah seriously doubted it.

  The thought made her smile as she stared out of the hotel room window across the ornamental gardens. The wooden benches arranged around a lush lawn. There was a large pond that was home to a family of swans and a thick line of trees that masked the road, that made the place feel like it was in the middle of nowhere.

  Her smile evaporated quickly.

  Wasn’t that exactly where they were, in every sense?

  It was always going to be hard, she’d known that all along, but now they were actually here, now they’d got away, it was finally dawning on her just how much of a struggle it was likely to be.

  Sacrifice. That’s what she’d told herself; it had been her watchword, but now the scale of it was becoming apparent and she was still coming to terms with exactly what she’d done. Been forced to do.

  It terrified her, and it made her furious.

  Easy enough for Conrad, of course. He’d just had to pile all his crap into a bag and leg it, do much the same thing he’d done countless times before, but she’d had to leave everything behind, an entire life. The house she’d worked so hard for, the only thing she had to show for all those years putting up with that arsehole Peter. She leaned against the window, grim-faced, and wondered what would happen to it. Now that TV thing had gone out and there was every chance the police knew exactly who she was, she could hardly pop back in disguise and stick the place on the market, could she?

  Yeah, happy to accept a reasonable offer. All fixtures and fittings included. Just send me a cheque when it’s done …

  A million at least up in smoke and whose fault was that? Couldn’t keep it in his pants and now he was pissing it away in the pub, like he’d pissed away everything else.

  Maybe he would choke on a peanut, do everyone a favour.

  And all she had ever done was love him.

  Horror-struck, she suddenly wondered if her ex-husband might end up getting his filthy hands on the house again, him and his vacuous wife and their precious Joshy. That would be … intolerable. No, that could never happen. He had no claim on her property, on anything that was in her name.

  She stepped away from the window, took a few deep breaths. She needed to stop thinking about what had been abandoned and focus on everything that lay ahead. The things she had made these sacrifices for.

  She grabbed her jacket, opened the door and headed downstairs.

  She needed to get out.

  The receptionist was the same girl who had checked them in two nights before, a touch vacant, but smiley enough. She looked up from a magazine as Sarah was passing the desk and, apropos of nothing, said, ‘I saw your husband leaving earlier.’

  That made Sarah smile again.

  It’s not a proposal, my love.

  Conrad’s face …

  She walked out of the main entrance and round the side of the building towards the gardens at the back, enjoying the sound and the feel of her shoes crunching across the gravel. It had always felt like … success to her, that sound, like you’d really arrived somewhere. It was a little colder than it had been the last few days and she buttoned up her jacket as she walked down towards the pond she had been looking at from the room.

  She watched the swans for a while and began to feel better.

  She hadn’t walked away with a fortune, nowhere near, but it was enough to get by on, and with what Conrad had taken out of his account they could afford to hole up at this place for a while at least, to tick over. Eventually, there might even be enough to put a deposit down on something.

  Things would be OK.

  No, they would be better than OK, because she wouldn’t settle for anything else.
Because she never had and why the hell should she? She had been to this part of the country once or twice before and, though she would always be a city girl at heart, she reckoned she could get used to it. She knew there was a little village school not too far away, because she’d seen a sign, and maybe somewhere like that would actually be a better fit for Jamie. Certainly, it would make life easier for her, because there were bound to be far fewer Davids and Carolines buzzing around, unable to keep their perfectly straight noses out of other people’s business.

  She would make new friends, get a new dog, carve out a lovely new life for them both.

  I just got fed up living in London, you know? It’s so hectic, so tiring. I think this is a far nicer place for a child to grow up, don’t you?

  When she took another step closer to the water, a swan – pecking angrily at weeds near the bank – spread its wings and hissed at her. She hissed back, told it to fuck off.

  She only knew two things about swans, the same stuff she supposed had been trotted out to everyone at some point. The fact that however graceful they appeared, they were paddling furiously beneath the water, and that old chestnut about a swan being able to break your leg if you threatened it, though she had never quite believed that one.

  All the same, she was content to back off a little.

  Sarah thought about the effort it took to look effortless and the damage that even the most harmless-looking of creatures was capable of meting out when it was necessary. Suddenly, she found herself genuinely hoping that, wherever he was, Conrad had found a little time to relax and take his mind off things. She hoped, more than anything, that he was still thinking of her fondly.

  She was smiling again as she turned and walked back towards the hotel.

  SIXTY-ONE

  ‘It’s all a bit “After the Lord Mayor’s Show”, isn’t it?’ Tanner said.

  Thorne turned to look at her. ‘A bit what?’

  ‘It’s just … an expression.’ Tanner shrugged and took a slurp of coffee from the plastic travel mug she’d brought from home. She seemed a little uncomfortable suddenly at the fact that Thorne, and everyone else in the room, was staring at her. ‘A bit of a let-down, you know? Something humdrum or ordinary coming straight after something exciting, you know? This … us.’ She waved an arm, the gesture taking in their corner of the sparsely populated incident room, the empty desks, the half-dozen members of the team that were gathered, slumped in an untidy circle of chairs around her. Thorne himself.

  The morning after the raid on Michelle Littler’s home address.

  ‘Because there’s always someone who has to do the menial stuff, to clean up after the horses when the Lord Mayor’s procession has gone past.’ She raised her cup in a toast to the passing on of pointless knowledge. ‘It’s where the expression comes from.’

  ‘Yeah, well clearing up shit sounds about right,’ Chall said.

  Thorne had not stopped staring. ‘So, what was so exciting?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Nobody’s suggesting that sitting round here feeling like this is any fun, but I’m still a bit confused about exactly what you think the good bit was that came before.’

  It was clear from the look on Thorne’s face that he was spoiling for a fight with someone, anyone, but Tanner was not about to back down. ‘I’m talking about yesterday, obviously.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘It was a textbook operation,’ Tanner said. ‘Didn’t you think so?’ She looked around, but most of the officers close to her were studying their shoes.

  ‘Up until we went in there, maybe. But I was hoping for a bit more than a few empty drawers and a starving dog.’

  ‘We did everything right.’

  ‘We got nothing.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Tanner said. ‘You know it isn’t.’ She moved her chair a little closer to Thorne’s, and without being asked the other members of the team did the same. She said, ‘Let’s look at what we did get.’

  ‘Shouldn’t take long.’ Thorne looked at his watch. ‘Which is handy, you know, because Heather Turnbull is still missing.’

  Tanner ignored him. ‘We got enough physical evidence and forensics to tie Michelle-slash-Sarah and her boyfriend definitively to the Kevin Deane and Gemma Maxwell murders.’

  ‘We had forensics before.’

  ‘Enough evidence to put them both away.’

  ‘We already had enough,’ Thorne said. ‘Is there an echo in here?’

  Tanner pressed on. ‘Crucially, we didn’t find a single thing to suggest that Heather Turnbull had ever been in that house. They’re still running print and DNA tests, but there were no obvious traces of blood, no signs of a struggle, no indication at all that the house is a crime scene.’ She sat back, gave it a second or two. ‘How can that be nothing?’

  ‘Fine,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘Big pats on the back all round.’

  ‘And let’s not forget that there are still SOCOs working at the property, going over every inch of the place. Who knows what they might turn up?’

  ‘Like a forwarding address, you think?’ If Thorne saw the flash of genuine anger that passed across Tanner’s face, he chose to ignore it. ‘Now, let’s think about what we haven’t got … aside from them. Let’s look at where we’re at realistically, shall we?’

  ‘Nicola’s got a point, though,’ Chall said.

  Thorne waited.

  ‘Yeah, we want to catch them, obviously, but our priority is the threat to Heather Turnbull’s life, surely.’

  ‘Of course.’ While he could not help but admire Chall’s loyalty to his former boss, Thorne was still not inclined to look on the bright side. ‘But that threat exists until we catch them, don’t you reckon?’

  Chall said, ‘Sir,’ but could not look at him, could not look at Tanner.

  ‘Despite this treasure trove of evidence we’ve got, we haven’t got the first idea where our prime suspects are.’ Thorne raised his arms. ‘Not a clue. We can only presume they left in Conrad’s vehicle, but we have no leads at all on that. We know that Michelle emptied her bank account two nights ago, and they’re way too smart to use credit cards, so we have to assume that with the twelve grand she took out and whatever cash he’s tucked away, they’ve got enough money to be going on with. Simple truth is they could be anywhere. They could be abroad already.’

  ‘They could be,’ Tanner said. ‘But I very much doubt it. They’d have had to move pretty bloody quickly, and if they try to leave the country now, we’ll have them. The All Ports alert went out last night and I can’t see her having a fake passport, can you? Looked to me like they’d left in a hurry.’

  ‘We should have put the alert out earlier,’ Thorne said.

  Once again, there was a good deal of team shoe-staring going on.

  ‘In hindsight, possibly … but it was a bit hectic,’ Tanner said.

  ‘Even so—’

  ‘Putting that raid on the suspects’ address together in double quick time. Remember, that operation you were so keen to do the right way?’

  ‘So, maybe there should have been better delegation.’

  There was an audible hiss as somebody sucked their teeth.

  ‘Now,’ Tanner said, ‘we did get some decent photos of our female suspect from the house—’

  ‘For what they’re worth.’

  ‘… so obviously they’re being circulated to every force in the country.’

  ‘She’ll have changed her appearance again. Different hair, a wig, dark glasses, whatever, so—’

  Tanner smacked her hand down on the desk nearest to her. ‘For God’s sake, Tom!’ She shook her head. ‘You’re behaving like some know-it-all newbie who’s never had an operation go slightly pear-shaped, who’s never had an iffy result. No, we’ve not had that bit of luck we need, but we’re doing all the right things, so get over it. What we don’t need is a DI coming on like a stroppy teenager who’s acting up because he can’t get his own way,
and I’m telling you right now, not only is that bugger all use to a team of officers knocking their pipes out to get this case put to bed, but it’s certainly no use to that woman who’s been missing for three days.’

  Thorne opened his mouth and closed it again.

  Noticing suddenly where one or two of the team were looking, he turned to see Russell Brigstocke standing outside his office.

  The DCI beckoned him with a tilt of his head.

  Thorne stood and walked slowly across, like an errant schoolboy on his way to the headmaster’s office. Hard truths were all very well when you were the one in charge, but when it came to debriefing his boss on the previous day’s shit-show he would need to find some kind of positive spin on things. He would need to be a bit more like the woman who’d just bollocked him in front of half the squad room.

  When Brigstocke had closed his office door, he said, ‘That psychiatrist of yours … she reckoned our best bet would be some kind of falling-out, didn’t she?’

  Thorne dropped into a seat, mentally ran through a few lines. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right. But I think she meant a falling-out between the suspects as opposed to two of my detectives.’

  Thorne nodded. ‘Just a difference in attitude, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, for what it’s worth, it was bang on.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Thorne sat back. ‘I just thought they needed a bit of a reality check, that’s all.’

  Brigstocke looked at him. ‘I was talking about what Nicola said.’

  SIXTY-TWO

  The car that loomed in his rear-view was white suddenly, gleaming, so he shook his head, blinked and looked again, because a few seconds before it had been dirty-blue. He would swear it had. Getting closer to him one moment … right up his arse … then a hundred feet back the next.