Someone To Save you

by Paul Pilkington

  Louisa looked away, her face reddening. ‘I’m so sorry, Sam.’

  Sam moved towards her. ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘For lying to you – for not telling you what was going on. I should have told you. You weren’t meant to find out like this.’

  ‘Tell me now, Louisa. Tell me everything.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can.’

  Sam brought his fist down hard on the desk. Louisa jumped in her seat. ‘Damn it, Louisa, Anna is in danger, held by God knows who, and you still don’t know if you can tell me? For God’s sake, this isn’t a game you know.’

  Louisa winced. ‘Please, Sam, don’t shout. I’ll tell you everything I know, I promise, just sit down.’

  Sam sat, already feeling remorse for his loss of temper. He looked at Louisa. ‘I’m sorry. I just want Anna back.’

  ‘I know,’ she replied.

  ‘Then tell me what you know. What were you and Marcus talking about in the gardens? Was it something to do with Anna?’

  ‘No,’ Louisa replied.

  ‘Then what? It was about the drawing?’

  ‘Drawing?’

  ‘Richard Friedman’s drawing in Tate Modern. We were looking at it for clues when Marcus left. I think he saw something in it.’

  Louisa dabbed her eyes. ‘He didn’t mention anything.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘He called and asked to see me straight away; somewhere private, said it was really important. So we arranged to meet around the back of the hospital. He said he was in trouble but he was going to sort it out. I tried to get him to tell me what was wrong, but he wouldn’t. He said he just wanted to see me, in case things…didn’t…work…out.’

  Louisa clamped a hand to her mouth.

  ‘Did he say where he was going?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. He wouldn’t tell me.’

  Despite her keeping so much from him, Sam believed her this time. ‘And you’ve got no idea at all what trouble he might be in?’

  She closed her eyes.

  So there was something else. Sam’s hopes rose. ‘Louisa? Anything might be helpful.’

  Louisa nodded. ‘A few days ago I was with Marcus, in his flat, when two men came.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I heard Marcus talking with them at the door, and then they just walked in and started taking things. They took the TV and some money.’

  ‘From you?’

  Louisa nodded. ‘Fortunately I only had fifty pounds on me.’

  ‘And what did Marcus do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘He just stood there, watching them. I don’t think he had a choice. They just did what they wanted.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Marcus wouldn’t say at first, said I was much better off not knowing. But later that night he told me. They know him from prison.’

  ‘The men were in the same prison?’

  ‘Not those two, but the gang, the same gang were in his prison. Marcus said they ruled the place, even had contacts with the prison guards. They bullied people in there.’

  Sam remembered what Marcus had said to him about his time in jail, the punishments he had taken, and the playground hostility that pervaded. Maybe he’d been underplaying just how much he had suffered. ‘And now they’re harassing him on the outside?’

  ‘It started a few weeks after he was released. He got a call from one of the gang who offered him work – collecting money from people.’

  ‘A loan shark?’

  ‘I assume so. Marcus said no, and from that point on they’ve never left him alone.’

  Sam thought back to the skinhead he had passed on the stairs when approaching Marcus’s flat. And then there was the shot-out window. Marcus had said it was local youths, but now Sam wasn’t convinced.

  ‘But why are they so interested in Marcus? Did he associate with them in the prison?’

  Louisa shifted in her seat. ‘Marcus swore to me he wasn’t involved with them at all. He said he kept out of their way, was friendly to them when he had to be, but nothing more. He doesn’t know why they’re pursuing him. It’s been a nightmare for him.’

  ‘But he didn’t tell the police?’

  ‘He said it would just make things worse. He thought if he ignored them, they’d get bored and leave him alone.’

  Sam thought for a second, trying to piece things together. Could this all be connected to Anna, and to Cathy? ‘The trouble he says he’s in, is it related to the gang?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say, but I think it must be. I’m really worried about him, Sam. These aren’t the kind of people you mess with.’

  ‘We need to find out how all of this is connected with what’s been happening.’

  ‘Do you really think it is?’

  ‘It must be, Louisa. Marcus saw something in that drawing and it made him run. Whatever trouble he says he’s in is connected to the picture, it’s connected to Richard Friedman, and it’s connected to the person who has Anna. It has to be.’

  Louisa considered Sam’s theory. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I need to speak to Marcus.’

  Louisa took her cue and picked up the phone. ‘I’ll call him now.’ But the call rang through to his answer service. ‘Now what?’

  Sam didn’t know whether she would agree to what he was about to suggest, but it was worth a try. ‘Have you got a key to his flat?’

  Louisa nodded.

  ‘Maybe there will be something there…’

  ‘I can’t, Sam, I can’t just break in like that.’

  Her reaction was understandable, but Sam pressed home his request. After all, she owed him. ‘Please, Louisa, do this for me.’

  ‘I don’t know, Sam, it just feels wrong.’

  ‘I understand, but Anna is in danger and it sounds like Marcus is too. We might find something that we could take to the police, something that might help save them both.’ Louisa was thinking hard. ‘Please, Louisa, I wouldn’t ask if I thought there was any other way.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said finally. ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’

  41

  Louisa knocked on the door for the second time, but once again there was no indication that Marcus was in the flat. She cupped her hand against the wood.

  ‘Marcus, are you there? Marcus?’

  She turned to Sam, her face asking the question.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Sam said. ‘We’re doing it for the right reasons.’

  Louisa didn’t reply. Instead she pulled out the key from her pocket and unlocked the door. Sam followed her in, closing the door quietly behind them. Louisa flicked on the light and stood in the centre of the living space, her arms stretched out slightly by her side and her face registering great unease. ‘What are we looking for, Sam?’

  Sam scanned the room, and then headed for a set of drawers. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, already hunting through Marcus’s underwear. ‘Anything that can help us find Anna.’

  Louisa stood at his shoulder as Sam moved onto the next drawer. ‘I feel sick being here, Sam, really sick. I’m betraying his trust. We shouldn’t be doing this. It’s not right.’

  Sam moved on to the third and final drawer, not really hearing Louisa, such was his single-minded determination to find something, anything that could help. But this drawer was just stuffed full of socks. He turned and looked for the next place to search. There was a small wardrobe across the room, jammed between the fridge and the entrance to the bathroom. Inside was a complete mess. Bails of clothes collapsed on top of each other in multi-coloured piles. Sam reached in and scooped up an armful of jumpers and shirts, placing them on the floor. He did this again three more times, then searched the back of the unit, in case anything had been hidden behind the mess. But there was nothing.

  ‘At the hospital, Marcus asked me if I still believed in him,’ Louisa said, as Sam began putting the clothes back in. This time Sam was listening. ‘I said I did, and I meant it Sam. I believe in him. In his face, you could see how much it me
ans to him, just to have someone say that they believe. That’s all he ever wanted from you, Sam, just to be believed.’

  Sam turned, her comment wounding him. ‘You know it was never as easy as that. Don’t you think I wanted to believe he was innocent? I lost my sister and my best friend in one night. They both might as well have been dead. Do you really think I wanted that? I would have done anything to bring Cathy back. And I prayed that it wasn’t Marcus who did it. I wanted the police to find someone else to blame. I wanted them to find some other person who did it, so I could have my best friend back. But they didn’t, Louisa. No clues, no fingerprints, no fibres or bodily fluids from anyone else. If there had been something for me to believe in, I’d have grasped it in a shot.’

  Louisa flinched, as if she’d been slapped across the face. Tears began dripping on the balding carpet, as she swayed in the centre of the room with her head hung down. ‘I should have told you. I should have said something at the time.’

  Sam moved towards her. ‘Told me what?’

  Louisa flinched again as Sam went to touch her arm.

  ‘Louisa, told me what?’

  Louisa put a hand to her head. ‘Oh God, I wanted to say something, but I didn’t, and then it was too late. I was scared so I kept quiet.’

  ‘Louisa, you’re not making sense.’

  Louisa looked up. ‘I’ve done a terrible thing, Sam.’

  ‘What is it?’ She looked like she was going to be sick or faint. Sam guided her towards the sofa with a steadying hand. ‘Sit down, Louisa.’

  They both sat down. ‘I knew that there was something going on between them.’ She was taking breaths, struggling to get the words out. ‘I knew about it, but I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Knew about what?’

  ‘About Marcus and Cathy – the night before she was killed, we were out at the clubhouse, at the disco. Cathy and I were at the bar and that weird guy came talking to her.’

  ‘I remember.’

  Sam had watched the encounter from the other side of the dingy clubhouse, praying that the lad would leave his little sister alone. Marcus and Sam had run into him and his friend earlier that day, whilst playing pool in the bar. Cocky and threatening, he was not the kind of person Sam wanted anywhere near his sister, and he had never been so relieved when the guy, who seemed both drunk and stoned, walked away and left without his prize.

  ‘He was horrible, leaning right in to Cathy and suggesting that we went back to his tent. Said that Cathy had eyes like stars in the midnight sky – how lame is that for a chat up line? We didn’t know how to get rid of him, but then when he went to the toilet Marcus followed him in.’

  Sam had been standing next to Marcus. He remembered the point at which he’d gone to the toilets, as Marcus had given him his camera for safe-keeping. He’d joked about not using up the film while he was gone, taking pictures of the girls in the place. But not for a second had Sam suspected his bathroom stop had been for a reason other than the obvious. ‘He definitely followed him? It wasn’t just a co-incidence?’

  Louisa shook her head. ‘He told me about it a few weeks ago. He said he’d watched the guy with us, then decided to warn him off, tell him that Cathy and him were seeing each other and to back away.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘Marcus said the lad just smiled at him and walked right past.’

  ‘But he did leave you alone after that.’

  Cathy nodded. ‘We didn’t see him again. He never came back to us.’

  So Marcus had been the knight in shining armour. ‘But you said you knew about Cathy and Marcus back then. It wasn’t just from watching Marcus follow that guy into the toilets.’

  ‘I’d had my suspicions for a few weeks,’ Louisa explained. ‘One day Cathy said something, something about Marcus which gave me the first clue. I can’t remember what it was exactly, but it just made me think that something might be going on.’

  Sam thought back to the time. He’d never had any suspicions that Cathy and Marcus were an item. Neither Marcus nor Cathy had said a word. ‘Cathy didn’t confide in you?’

  ‘She couldn’t. Because she knew how much I liked him.’

  Sam swallowed his surprise. ‘You liked Marcus back then?’

  ‘Always,’ Louisa smiled sadly. ‘Cathy wouldn’t have known how to tell me.’

  Now it made sense. ‘So you just kept quiet.’

  Louisa nodded. ‘Part of me wanted to say something, to challenge her, but another part of me just wanted to pretend it was all in my imagination. If things came out in the open, then I’d have to face up to the facts – Marcus liked Louisa, not me.’

  ‘But you knew really.’

  ‘I knew. From that point on I watched for signs and saw the stolen glances between them. Times when Cathy would be out of contact coincided with times when I knew you weren’t with Marcus. And then that night, I knew for certain. I saw the way Marcus watched whilst that guy was talking to her. And then later, when Cathy was on the dance floor, dancing to Abba, I saw the smiles between them. That’s when I decided to get things out in the open.’

  ‘You said something?’

  Louisa nodded. ‘I was drunk and angry, and it just came out when we were getting ready for bed in the tent later that night. We kept quiet because we both didn’t want you to hear. Cathy said she was sorry, but I just didn’t want to hear it. I said our friendship was over. The next day we didn’t speak. Cathy tried to make peace, but I wouldn’t. The last thing I said to her was “Go to Hell”. I was awake when she left the tent to go and meet with Marcus, but I was too angry and hurt to say anything.’

  The revelations were stunning, and Sam couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. There had been so many secrets. ‘And you didn’t tell the police anything about this.’

  It was difficult not to make it sound like an accusation.

  ‘No,’ Louisa replied.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I don’t know why. Marcus said he wasn’t with her that night, so I just didn’t mention it. And then the police found all that evidence, and I started to think that Marcus had really killed her. I just pushed it all out of my mind and tried to get on with things. I’ve asked myself a thousand times why I didn’t say something, at the court case, but the police had all their evidence and maybe I thought it would confuse things, get me into trouble. And then, when I did start to question whether Marcus was innocent, it was too late.’

  Sam put a hand to his head. If only he’d known all this at the time. He would have believed his friend; he would have fought for him. And the details about Marcus and Cathy’s relationship might have been enough to clear him. Maybe then, the real killer wouldn’t still be out there. ‘Marcus doesn’t know any of this?’

  ‘No, no,’ Louisa said, panicked at the thought. ‘I can’t tell him, Sam. He’d never forgive me.’

  ‘But you’re hoping to build a future with him, built on lies,’ Sam said.

  ‘I know,’ she replied. ‘I’m trying to make amends, Sam, I really am.’

  ‘Then help me find out what’s going on, Louisa. This isn’t about not believing Marcus, or betraying him, this is about helping him, and Anna. Help me to help them.’

  Louisa nodded, sniffing back more tears. ‘I will.’

  Sam and Louisa continued searching the flat. Despite what he had told Louisa, Sam did feel a sense of betrayal as he hunted through Marcus’s private possessions – his underwear, clothes, mail, financial papers, bedding, toiletries. It was impossible not to think about the gross invasion that he’d instigated. He’d also lied to Louisa. This was about not believing Marcus. Not in relation to Cathy’s murder maybe, but certainly about Anna’s disappearance. And if the search yielded anything that could help get her back safe, it would all be worth it.

  Five minutes into the search Sam found the first item of significance.

  The box of tablets were right at the back of a drawer stuffed full of papers. Sam brought them up to the light.


  Alprazolam.

  Louisa moved towards him.

  ‘Did Marcus tell you he was taking these?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The same drugs that were planted in my locker.’

  ‘I know. You’re not saying…’

  ‘A co-incidence,’ Sam said. ‘Those tablets were from the hospital pharmacy stock. These have been prescribed to him.’

  Louisa held the box, studying it. ‘I know he’s been really down since he came out of prison. He told me he’s had anxiety attacks and hasn’t been sleeping. Especially since moving down here – he didn’t say he’d been to his GP about it.’

  Sam placed the tablets back in the drawer and pushed it shut, guilty that Marcus’s confidentiality had been breached.

  They continued searching, but were running out of places to look. Sam turned to the bed, one of those cheap all-springs and not much mattress affairs. Crouching down he looked underneath. But there was nothing. Then he lifted the mattress and saw the mobile phone.

  ‘Louisa.’

  Louisa emerged from the bathroom, shaking her head in disbelief as she saw the device.

  She took the phone. ‘No, it can’t be.’

  But Sam already knew. He’d seen the name etched on the phone’s back.

  It was Louisa’s stolen mobile.

  42

  At first Susan Blackmore hadn’t taken much notice of the girl sitting on the railings and looking in her direction. It had happened so many times before in such similar circumstances, especially during that first year. She would be out shopping, and then someone, a young girl matching her daughter’s build, or hair colour, would catch her attention. On more than one occasion she had been so convinced it had been her that she’d approached the individual, even touching them on the shoulder as they walked down the high street with friends.

  It had never been her.

  Now she managed to suppress her instincts. No longer did her heart leap at the sight of a girl matching her daughter’s description. In some ways she had moved on. At least that’s what her friends thought, and even celebrated in some macabre sense. But in truth she hadn’t moved on at all.