Their Little Secret

by Mark Billingham

  Tanner was still struggling to formulate a response when her phone rang.

  ‘Saved by the bell,’ Grace said, reddening.

  Tanner clocked the incoming number and said, ‘I need to take this.’ She stood up and carried the phone to a chair in the corner. She answered, then listened.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Hendricks said. ‘We are so still playing this game.’

  Tanner ended the call, then immediately began dialling. She said, ‘I need to speak to Tom.’

  SEVENTY

  A few weeks earlier, Thorne had finally got round to ringing his Auntie Eileen. She’d sounded thrilled to hear from him – when she’d finally worked out who was calling – which only made him feel guiltier for not having spoken to the old lady for so long.

  ‘It’s been ages, son.’

  ‘I know. Sorry. Work.’

  ‘It’s a bugger, isn’t it …?’

  He’d driven over to Watford the next afternoon to have tea with her, and after a couple of hours’ chat about family members he couldn’t remember or didn’t know existed, he’d clambered up into his aunt’s loft and dug his mother’s paintings out of several damp cardboard boxes.

  Cleaned half a dozen of them up and had them framed.

  Now, Thorne stood in his hallway staring at them, music drifting from the next room as he ate cereal from a bowl and wondered why his mother had been quite so fond of ships. Liners, yachts, old-fashioned clippers. Living in north London, it wasn’t as if she saw them every day, and aside from the odd holiday to the seaside …

  Or maybe that had been the point.

  Something she enjoyed, or at least, enjoyed imagining.

  She’d probably just copied them from pictures in a magazine, but it didn’t much matter. She’d grabbed half an hour whenever she had the chance, taken her watercolours out of the cupboard and forgotten about everything else. Now he had the pictures in front of him, Thorne could certainly remember that; the look on her face while she’d been doing it. A glance down at him every few minutes as he worked at his paint-by-numbers kit, gnawing on the end of the paintbrush, same as she did, while he tried his hardest not to go over the edges. She’d done a couple of landscapes, too – misty mountains in the far distance, a sun-dappled lake – some dogs and birds and even a portrait of his father, despite the young Jim Thorne not looking terribly pleased about sitting still while she’d done it.

  An expression that said he had a million things to do, though he’d have been hard pressed to name more than two or three of them.

  Christ’s sake, Maureen, how long’s this going to take?

  Thorne had hung the paintings in a line along one wall, stretching from front door to kitchen. He had no idea if they were any good or not, what anyone who really knew about such things might think, but either way, he enjoyed seeing them on his way out of the door every day, and again, each time he walked back through it. They brightened the place up, aside from anything else. But that was not to say that the pleasure he took in looking at his mum’s pictures was not … tempered, somewhat, by associations he could not shake.

  However much he wanted to.

  It had been just over two months since he and Tanner had walked through the door of that flat off the Holloway Road. Two months, during which rage, mental illness, money or plain stupidity had propelled far too many more murders his way; cases that had been wound up quickly and others less straightforward, which were threatening to stick around a while. Two months since a man called Conrad Simpkin had died in hospital without regaining consciousness, while the woman with whom he had been involved had vanished without trace.

  Two months, and still …

  He could not look at those paintings without thinking about Ella Fulton.

  It continued to shame him, those ridiculous things he’d thought, drinking tea in her flat, talking about art and murder. Had she known what she was doing, been well aware of the impression she was giving him? Had it all been part of her game, of whatever strange relationship she and Conrad Simpkin had left? Thorne guessed that it was and yet, regardless of how much that stung and despite the fact that she had knowingly helped and protected a wanted murderer, he did not believe that she deserved to die the way she had.

  The fact that she had chosen it did not change anything.

  Thorne had forced himself to watch, unblinking, as the line was carefully cut and the body lowered slowly to the floor.

  No rickety stepladder needed on this occasion.

  He nodded along to the Sturgill Simpson track and reminded himself that no more had Kevin Deane or Gemma Maxwell deserved what had been meted out to them, and that their friends and families did not deserve to live with it either. Mary Fulton did not choose to spend those years she had left hollowed out by her loss, defined by it.

  He pushed a spoonful of cereal into his mouth, turned and walked into the kitchen. It had not been a long day and he wasn’t feeling particularly tired, but a few minutes later, rinsing the bowl and spoon under the tap, he decided that turning in early might well be a decent idea. He’d taken some of the holiday he was due and had arranged to pick Alfie up from Helen’s first thing the following morning. They would be spending the entire day together, and of the two of them, Thorne reckoned he was the one who was probably looking forward to it the most.

  Definitely, the most.

  Alfie did not need a day off from anything or have a head full of stuff he could do with forgetting for a while, and Thorne was not the one being forcibly separated from his iPad.

  Thorne laid the bowl and spoon on the draining board, then walked into the living room to turn the music off. He took off his shoes and unbuttoned his shirt while he was waiting for the song to finish. He had just begun to question the wisdom of taking a five-year-old to an indoor trampoline centre when his phone began to ring.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  Thorne dozed fitfully for most of the hour or so it took to get to Birmingham International. When, a few minutes before his arrival, a train hurtled past in the opposite direction, he woke with a start to see the woman sitting opposite staring at him. He nodded, embarrassed. He was fairly sure that he’d made a noise of some sort as he’d been jolted awake, and as soon as the woman looked away he fingered his collar to check that he hadn’t been drooling in his sleep.

  He sighed and wiped his chin.

  After a quick visit to the Gents, he quickly composed another text to Helen, apologising again. When he’d called late the night before to explain, she had promised to tell Alfie that Uncle Tom was not feeling very well, that the two of them would have even more fun together the following week. The indoor water-park, maybe. Helen had not tried to hide her disappointment, her own plans for the day scuppered by the change in his, but she’d said she hoped everything panned out for him and told him that, of course, she understood.

  She was Job, so how could she not?

  Thorne sent the text. Time and … distance were obviously making things easier. Job or not, he knew things would not have gone quite so smoothly had the two of them still been together.

  As the train slowed, he stood and reached up for his case, and for the plastic bag containing the sweets he’d picked up at Euston. A drawing pad and a set of coloured pencils, a couple of comics he knew Alfie liked. He’d drop them round when he got back to London.

  Thorne had fifteen minutes before his connection and a three-hour journey still ahead of him, so he picked up coffee and a sandwich from a kiosk on the main concourse. He skimmed through a Metro someone had left lying on a bench. He checked the board to be sure his train was on time, then called Tanner as he wandered towards the platform.

  ‘I’m in Birmingham,’ he said.

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Well, the outskirts.’

  ‘It’s a shame you won’t have time to enjoy it,’ Tanner said.

  ‘I know, I’m gutted.’

  ‘So, the train gets in just after half-three and the local boys are going to be waiting outside the station at the oth
er end.’

  ‘I know.’ Thorne tried to keep the exasperation from his voice.

  ‘Just making sure you do. That’s why I sent—’

  ‘I’ve got it.’ The travel itinerary, which Tanner had emailed to him first thing that morning, was carefully folded in his pocket. ‘If I’d had time, I would have had it laminated in your honour.’

  Tanner laughed. Thorne stepped aside to avoid a woman running towards him with a pushchair, while Tanner said something that was inaudible beneath a distorted station announcement.

  ‘Sorry, I lost you.’ Thorne stopped to check the sign on the platform, to be sure he was in the right place for the Aberystwyth train.

  ‘How do you think it’s going to go?’

  ‘No idea,’ Thorne said. ‘The intel sounds solid.’

  ‘Be good to put this to bed, won’t it? Open a big bottle of fizz when you get back?’

  Thorne said that it would.

  ‘I used to go up there on holiday when I was a kid,’ Tanner said. ‘Did I tell you that?’

  ‘No.’ Thorne arrived at an open door, then stood aside to let a family board ahead of him. ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘It’s nice. There’s a castle … and a fort. Well, actually, it poured with rain most of the time, but still.’

  ‘Well, I’m bound to have plenty of free time, so why don’t I bring you something back as a little reminder?’ Thorne stepped on to the train and looked right and left. Both carriages were crowded. ‘What about some Welsh cakes? Or a nice tea towel?’

  ‘Anything except a stick of rock,’ Tanner said.

  She was standing outside the school gates, talking animatedly to three other women. Her hair was red, longer than in the last picture Thorne had seen, but she wasn’t difficult to spot. She turned slightly as he approached, and he could see the bump.

  Her hand, rubbing it.

  She glanced at him when he was a little closer, but clearly thought nothing of it, saw no reason for concern. Another parent ambling towards the school and not looking awfully thrilled about it, a stay-at-home dad. She turned back to her conversation, laughed loudly at something one of the other women said.

  ‘Hello, Michelle.’

  The shock when she turned and saw the warrant card was no more than fleeting and quickly disguised, but watching her face change, even for an instant, was something Thorne had been looking forward to for a long time. He had imagined this moment in even greater detail since the call had come through the night before, when it had begun to sound as though it might really be imminent.

  Would she scream and fly at him? Would she try to run?

  As it was, she simply took half a step away from her friends and cocked her head, as though a little confused. As if this police officer might merely have come to warn her there were thieves operating in the area or to tell her that she’d dropped her purse.

  The other women were already whispering, watching her or looking at Thorne. One of them said, ‘Everything all right, Sarah?’

  Thorne did not take his eyes off her.

  ‘We need to have a chat,’ he said.

  ‘OK.’ She sounded cheery, unconcerned.

  He backed away slightly, inviting her to come towards him.

  She peered past Thorne as she began to walk, then turned to look back the other way. She gave a small nod as she clocked the marked cars that had begun approaching slowly from either end of the road.

  HEDDLU. POLICE.

  Thorne raised a hand and she stopped. He said, ‘Do you want to do this here, or in the car?’

  ‘Well …’ She cradled her bump again. ‘I think I should probably be sitting down, don’t you?’

  Thorne turned and led her back towards the nearest of the cars. She walked slowly, raising her face skywards or gazing around as if determined to enjoy the good weather, the neatly kept front gardens and the yellowing catkins hanging from the beech trees that lined the road.

  She said, ‘I’d been hoping it might take a little longer.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Thorne said. It had all been quite straightforward in the end. ‘We always knew you wouldn’t take any chances with the baby and that wherever you ended up you’d go for all the scans and blood tests. We just had to make sure there wasn’t a single doctor or antenatal department in the country that didn’t know who you were. Matter of time.’

  The uniformed driver stepped out and opened the car doors as they approached.

  As soon as Thorne had climbed into the back seat, he turned to face her and said, ‘Michelle Littler, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Kevin Deane and Gemma Maxwell and the abduction of Heather Turnbull. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Thorne nodded to the driver and the car moved away.

  Their first port of call would be the station in Aberystwyth, fifteen minutes’ drive away. Michelle Littler would be checked to make sure she was in good health physically, then offered something to eat and drink before a brief formal interview, at which, should she so wish, a solicitor would be present. Then they would be driven to the station, from where Thorne would escort his prisoner, in handcuffs, back to London.

  It was all spelled out in Tanner’s itinerary.

  There were some questions the woman would of course be asked once they’d got to Aberystwyth station, and a great many more when they had her back in London, but that was hours away. Twelve, possibly, if she insisted on a night’s sleep after they got there. Thorne knew that the possibility of a threat-to-life gave him the authority for an ‘urgent interview’ to be conducted there and then. It was good to know, but even without it, he would not have been able to keep his mouth shut.

  There were answers he was not willing to wait for.

  ‘What happened to Heather?’

  Michelle Littler blinked slowly but said nothing.

  ‘Is she alive, can you at least tell me that much?’

  ‘Well, she was, the last time I saw her.’

  She turned to look out of the window, the traffic building up as they approached the town centre. A young boy waved at the police car from the doorway of a shop and she raised a hand to wave back. She said, ‘How did things turn out for poor old Conrad, by the way?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve no idea how painful that all was. For both of us.’

  ‘I think you know very well how it turned out,’ Thorne said. ‘Exactly the way you wanted, I presume.’

  ‘It was the last thing I wanted,’ she said. ‘If you can’t understand that, you can’t understand anything.’

  The car turned off the main road, slowed and drew up outside the station gates. The driver sounded his horn and, after a few moments, they began to swing open.

  ‘Just out of interest, where the hell did you get Death Cap mushrooms in March?’

  Now, she turned back to look at him, as though the answer were blindingly obvious. ‘I had some left over.’

  Thorne stared at her.

  ‘Dried, in a cupboard in the garage.’ Once again her hands moved across her belly, rubbed in small circles. ‘Because here’s the thing … if you’re old, and rotting away in one of those terrible places where everyone’s old and nobody really gives a toss, who’s going to bat an eyelid when your liver suddenly gives out?’ She laughed and held up her palms as if expecting an answer. ‘There’s hardly going to be an urgent post-mortem, is there? Not when you’re halfway to the grave anyway and you’ve been a drinker all your life. Pouring the family’s money down your throat and shouting the odds and torturing the people you’re supposed to love. Nobody’s even going to notice … not really, let alone care very much … and your next of kin certainly isn’t going to cause a fuss, even if they’ve been the only one who ever bothered coming to see you. Muggins here, who sat there knowing she’d have to wash the stink off
her clothes afterwards … talking to you when you could barely get a word out. Who brushed your hair and wiped away the dribble. Who brought you food in, so you wouldn’t have to eat the slop they dished out …’

  The car moved slowly through the gates into the car park, then stopped.

  ‘I’m not exaggerating,’ she said. ‘The food in that place really was atrocious. And my dad loved mushroom soup.’

  When Thorne opened the door for her, Littler held a hand out towards him for help. Thorne took it and squeezed. He pulled her – somewhat less gently than he might have done – from the car, and nodded towards her stomach.

  He said, ‘Shame really, about your baby.’

  She straightened up and looked at him, cold.

  ‘I mean, it’s not like you’re ever going to see much of it.’ He put a hand in the small of the woman’s back and ushered her firmly towards the station doors. ‘Still, look on the bright side. By the time you get out, you’ll probably be a grandmother.’

  SEVENTY-TWO

  Later on, Thorne would tell Phil Hendricks that meeting in the Grafton Arms had been Melita Perera’s idea. That he’d called the psychiatrist just because he thought she might be interested to know that both suspects in the case they had been discussing were now accounted for. One dead and the other on remand awaiting trial. It had been a professional courtesy, no more than that … though yes, he had been happy enough when Dr Perera suggested meeting up … and no, he could not deny that it was a pleasant surprise to discover she was every bit as comfortable talking over a pint in a north London pub as she was in a swanky Holborn bar.

  ‘Turns out she lives in Crouch End,’ he would say to Hendricks. ‘So it was convenient, that’s all. On her way home, near as damn it.’