‘Do you have any leads on their whereabouts?’ asked Melanie.
‘No. And that’s what we should be having meetings about. They’ve killed four people, that we know of, and I think we only found out who they were because they wanted us to. And that’s something very dangerous for us to deal with.’
They came to the ground floor and the lift doors opened. They walked out into the street, and it looked like it was threatening to rain. Marsh still looked furious.
‘I want you to supervise Erika on this case, Melanie. It seems, as usual, she needs reining in. And in future, Erika will not attend meetings with senior management.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Marsh stalked off to his car, waiting by the kerb, and got in without inviting them to join him back to the station.
As it drove away, Erika turned to Melanie. ‘Okay, I hear what everyone is saying. And I will work with you on this case. We’ve always got along, and I respect you.’
‘It’s okay, Erika. Between you and me I quite enjoyed seeing you have a go at them about the budget cuts. Although you need to be careful with these Cabinet Office types. They are woefully cut off from the real world.’
‘Thank you,’ said Erika.
‘And Marsh really squirmed when Camilla gave him a bollocking.’
‘I think Marsh misses the old assistant commissioner. He knew how to flatter and manipulate Oakley.’
‘Okay, so what is your next move, Erika?’
‘I want to work forensics, dig more into the background of Max and Nina. We need to find them.’
‘They have to have someone who is working with them or sheltering them,’ said Melanie.
‘We’ve put a hold on Nina Hargreaves’s passport; Max Kirkham doesn’t even own one. All airports, ports, and train stations are on high alert, and we’ve got all the nationwide crime agencies on board with their photos.’
‘Why didn’t you say all of this back there in the meeting?’ said Melanie. ‘That’s the officer I know who has her head screwed on.’
Erika shrugged. ‘I know, I’m stupid. But I’m sick and tired of dealing with top brass who have no clue how policing works.’
‘I hear you. Now, I don’t know where Marsh has stormed off to, he needs to be back here in an hour.’
‘Why?’
‘The two of you are going to make a formal statement to the press,’ said Melanie.
Chapter Fifty-Six
It was early evening, and Nina and Max were in front of the mirror in the cramped bathroom of Mariette’s flat. Max was perched on a stool, and Nina had just finished shaving his head with clippers.
‘Jeez, my head feels cold,’ he said, rubbing his hand over the short stubble and leaning in to the mirror.
‘You look good. You’ve got a nice shaped head.’
‘And you, my darling, give very nice head,’ he said. He stood, unzipped his flies and started to push her down.
‘Max! No. No, I keep hearing your mother walking past the door. And there’s no lock.’
‘It would probably give her a thrill,’ he said, stripping off his clothes and jumping into the tiny shower cubicle.
Nina started to pick up Max’s long locks of blond hair and, checking if he was watching, she slipped one into her pocket. She looked around at the grubby bathroom with the avocado suite and the Spanish señorita knitted toilet roll holders. She found Mariette, and her flat, grubby, and a little creepy. When they first arrived, Mariette had made her some tea and toast and pulled out all the old photo albums. Nina had assumed this was to show her some baby pictures of Max, but every one of the ten photo albums contained pictures of Mariette as a majorette in marching bands and competitions.
‘Help yourself to what you want in the flat, love,’ she’d said, touching Nina’s knee lightly. ‘But if I see you touching that hat or that baton, I’ll break your fucking legs.’
Nina had waited for Mariette to laugh or say it was a joke, but she hadn’t. She’d followed Mariette’s gaze to the hooks above the sofa where the hat and baton were displayed, and she’d promised not to touch them.
‘Good girl, I think we have an understanding,’ she said.
Nina looked at her reflection in the mirror. She’d already cut her shoulder-length hair extremely short, and with the aid of a home hair bleaching kit, she was now transformed. She tilted her head and liked what she saw. It was astonishing how different she looked. Max finished in the shower and he opened the door, reaching out for a towel. She handed him one and he stepped out onto the carpet.
‘So, what do you think of my plan?’ he said, watching her in the mirror.
Nina chewed her lip and looked at herself in the mirror. ‘Let’s do it. But promise me one thing, they don’t get hurt.’
‘I promise you; no one will get hurt,’ said Max. He opened the towel and pulled her against his growing hardness. This time Nina couldn’t resist and she sank down and took him in her mouth.
The plan had started to form early that evening, when two police officers had appeared outside Scotland Yard to make a formal statement about the Daniel de Souza murder case, and that they were officially linking it to the murders of Thomas Hoffman and Charlene Selby.
Max had googled the officers, and read with interest everything about Detective Chief Inspector Erika Foster, how she had lost her husband during a drug raid, and there was a profile about her written in the Daily Mail a few years previously, when she had caught the serial killer, Simone Matthews. It painted a picture of a lonely, driven woman. No children, few friends. And Max decided their plan wouldn’t work on her. She had no one who would miss her.
When he googled Commander Paul Marsh, something very interesting came up in the search results. It was a small piece in a south London local newspaper, dated 2015, and it told how Commander Marsh had taken part in the Hilly Fields Fun Run, in aid of Comic Relief. He’d run six miles dressed as Lady Gaga, helping to raise £10,000 for charity. The article showed Paul Marsh with his wife Marcie, who had made the costume for him, but it was the picture at the bottom of the article which really lit a fire in Max’s mind.
Marsh was pictured at the finish line with his wife, Marcie, and their two small daughters. He’d pored over the picture. They were identical twins called Mia and Sophie. Cute as buttons, the pair of them.
‘I bet they would be worth a lot if they were to go missing,’ Max had said.
‘What do mean?’ asked Nina.
‘If you abduct just any old kid, the police always say that they don’t get into paying ransoms. The police won’t pay a ransom in a kidnap situation, but abduct the kid or kids of a senior police officer, and I bet it’s a whole different ball game.’
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The next morning, Nina and Max started to put their plan into action. Commander Paul Marsh wasn’t on Facebook, but Marcie was, and even though her account was locked right down, it still showed the things that she had ‘liked’. One of these was The Acorns Nursery, in Hilly Fields, south London. They did a name search online and found Paul and Marcie’s address. They lived on Hilly Fields Road, which was less than a mile from The Acorns Nursery.
Another online search revealed that The Acorns Nursery was looking for a part-time childminder. Max knew the advantages of having a nice white girl with a middle-class voice to put people at ease, so he got Nina to phone up and ask some general questions about the job. He crouched beside her and listened in to the conversation. Nina spent the first few minutes chatting to the secretary at the nursery about her past ‘experience’, and when she had established a rapport, she started to fish for more information.
‘A friend of mine’s kids actually come to the nursery,’ said Nina. ‘I didn’t want to mention her right away, and put you on the spot. It’s Marcie Marsh? She says her twins love it there.’
The secretary gave a slight pause on the end of the phone, and Nina waited to see if she’d guessed correctly.
‘Oh yes, they’re so cute,’ said the secre
tary. ‘Sophie and Mia. And they really are identical, you probably know, Marcie dresses them in the same clothes so we often have trouble telling them apart!’
Max was listening in beside Nina and he put his thumbs up.
‘Yes, whenever we go shopping and she sees a little girl’s outfit, the first thing Marcie asks is if they have two in stock!’
‘Too much,’ mouthed Max. Nina nodded.
‘Okay, well, I’d love to apply for the job. What days are you hiring for?’
‘It’s Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.’
‘That’s great,’ said Nina. She paused and decided to go for it. ‘That would mean I get to see the girls too.’
‘Yes, well they’re here every day except Thursday. Marcie has them in just the four days a week. She likes to spend Thursday with them.’
‘Yeah, yeah she does… Okay. Super. Look, I’ve downloaded an application from your website, so I’ll fill it in and get it back to you?’
‘What’s your name again?’ asked the secretary.
‘It’s Kelly. Kelly-Louise Treadwell,’ said Nina.
‘OK, Kelly, I’ll look out for it. Good luck!’
Nina replaced the receiver. They were quiet for a moment. They’d taken the phone upstairs to the landing, and they were sitting on the carpet outside the bathroom.
‘You, are a fucking genius,’ said Max.
‘I don’t know about this,’ said Nina, feeling sick. She was shocked how easy it had been to find out the information. ‘Even if we did do it, how the hell are we going to walk up to that nursery and get those twins to come with us? And Marcie will be there.’
‘No, she won’t,’ said Max. ‘I’ll make sure of it.’
‘You said no one would get hurt?’
‘No one will. But she’s our biggest problem, Marcie. We’ll find a way of you pretending to be the new nanny, and you can pick up the kids. We just need to keep being inventive with this. We’ll need to get hold of Marcie’s mobile phone, and you’ll have to find a way to imitate her voice. Good old-fashioned espionage.’
He smiled and leaned in to kiss her, but she pulled back.
‘You have to promise me that we just kidnap them. We don’t lay a finger on them. I’m serious, Max.’
‘’Course, Neen. This is two little kids. I’d never hurt kids. We’ll take them for 48 hours, tops. They’ll be safe and warm. And how old are they? They won’t remember this in years to come. We’ll take some board games, and sweets.’
Nina stared into Max’s eyes, which seemed so earnest. He took her hand.
‘This is our ticket to a new start. A new life together. Once we have the money, we’re gone. I’m done with breaking the law, and living on my wits. I want a fresh start, away from this fucking shithole of a country, with its class system, everything being rigged in favour of the rich. Don’t you want to go away and make a new life together?’
Nina gripped his hands and nodded. ‘Yeah. But promise me again, no one gets hurt.’
‘You have my word. I promise.’
‘Do you really think it will work?’
‘Yes. We have absolutely fuck all to lose, Neen, and that puts us in a very strong position. It makes us dangerous.’
Mariette came clattering out of the living room downstairs, dragging the hoover behind her.
‘Are you two finished on the blower? Can I do the carpet?’ she said, peering up at them.
‘Bloody hell, yes,’ said Max.
As she brushed past the front door, the edge of the hoover pipe caught on the curtain across the front door, and pulled it open. Light streamed in from the corridor outside.
‘Watch that fucking door!’ Max shouted, pulling Nina further back along the landing.
‘No one can see you up there!’ said Mariette, chucking down the hoover and making a show of pulling the curtain back. ‘No one gives two shits about you.’
She dragged the hoover up the stairs and stopped at the top, catching her breath. Max leapt up and slapped her around the face with the back of his hand. She fell forward onto the landing.
‘I’m giving you ten grand, okay? You keep the curtains and your mouth shut!’ He kicked her in the stomach and she cried out in pain, then he went to the bathroom, slamming the door.
Mariette groaned and rolled over on her back, holding her stomach. Nina went to her, and helped her up.
‘Thanks, love,’ she said, leaning on the bannister. ‘I don’t know what you two are up to, but none of this is gonna end well. Things never turn out how you want it to.’
Nina didn’t respond. She closed her mind, and tried to concentrate on the end result.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Very early on Friday morning, Nina and Max drove out to take a look at Marsh’s house in Hilly Fields Road.
Mariette kept an old white van in her lock-up, and she still had the old magnetic sign used by the plumber she’d bought it off. Max knew that for the plan to work, they had to keep the first part very simple, so they’d stuck the sign back on the side of the van, and he and Nina had dressed in overalls. It was a crude attempt at them posing as a plumber and his apprentice, but Max had realised long ago that if you acted the part, and didn’t attempt to hide, it was astonishing what you could get away with.
They turned into Marsh’s street just after seven thirty. The sun was coming up, and the first weary-looking commuters were leaving their houses to go to work. They parked a few hundred yards from Marsh’s house, and sat in the van with a flask of tea, pretending to do some paperwork. Shortly after 8 a.m. Marsh emerged from his front door, got into his car parked by the kerb and drove right past them. Nina lowered her head and grabbed at the flask on the floor, but Max stared right at Marsh as he passed.
‘Jeez. He calls himself a police commander?’ said Max. ‘He didn’t even see me, didn’t even look at us, Neen. He was probably more concerned with where he was going to get his first cup of coffee.’
‘You need to be careful, Max,’ said Nina, her hands shaking.
‘Darling. We now look completely different to our photos. And this is a posh area. We’re two low-life plumbers. People won’t give us a second glance.’
On cue, a woman came out of the front door next to the driver’s window. She was dumpy, and looked fed up, wearing the uniform black of the average London office worker. She locked her door and walked past the van, not even noticing them.
‘See?’ said Max.
Nina poured herself some more tea, but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
At a quarter to nine, Marcie emerged from the front door with Mia and Sophie. Nina was shocked at how sweet the little girls looked, all dressed up in identical pink dresses, thick white tights and dark blue coats. The two little girls were chatting away as Marcie lifted them up into the back of the car and strapped them into their seats. Nina noted how beautiful Marcie was, with her long dark hair and gorgeous figure. When the twins were safely buckled in, Marcie climbed into the front and drove off.
‘Here we go,’ said Max, starting the engine. They followed after her, keeping a distance of two cars as Marcie dropped the twins off at the nursery, which was housed in a large converted end-terrace house.
‘It’s very close by, the nursery,’ said Nina.
‘Yeah, and the fucking lazy bitch still drives them,’ said Max.
A few minutes later Marcie emerged from the front door of the nursery and got back in her car. She was fiddling with her mobile phone as she drove, and she passed them without a glance.
‘Another one in her own world,’ said Max.
They set off again in pursuit, following as she drove towards Forest Hill Station, where she bought a takeaway coffee, and some bread from the bakery. Then she drove home.
They followed her until the turn-off back to her house, and then Nina and Max turned in the opposite direction, towards New Cross.
‘Okay. So we have the weekend to make our last preparations; we rehearse and run through everything, and then Monday morn
ing, we do it,’ said Max.
Nina looked out of the windscreen and was quiet. This felt real. Seeing the two little girls. Seeing how much they loved their mother.
‘I clean out the back of the van, and we’ll put blankets in the back,’ said Max, seeing her face. ‘And you can ride with them, and give them sweets and stuff.’
‘Okay, yeah.’
‘This is about the money, not about hurting anyone.’
‘I know.’
‘We just have to hope that the bitch doesn’t have any posh pals coming over for coffee on Monday morning.’
‘People tend to come for coffee later in the morning. Elevenses and all that.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that. We didn’t get elevenses in the children’s home,’ said Max pointedly.
They drove the rest of the way back to the Pinkhurst Estate in silence. When they arrived back at the lock-up, Max parked the car inside and when the door was shut, he changed the number plates on the van.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
It was very late, after a long and frustrating weekend. Erika sat with Isaac Strong in her tiny living room, and between them they had just demolished a huge curry. Isaac had seen how tired and hungry Erika had looked on the news report a few days earlier. He’d called her on Friday and Saturday evening, saying she should take a couple of hours to eat properly and have some downtime, but she’d told him she had to work. On Sunday, she finally agreed to dinner.
‘Now you have some colour in your cheeks,’ said Isaac, snapping a poppadum in half and dipping it into a little pot of mango chutney.
‘That was really good, thank you. That’s what I miss when I go back home,’ said Erika, taking a long pull on her beer. ‘Indian food.’
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