by Louise Voss
OTHER TITLES BY LOUISE VOSS AND MARK EDWARDS
Killing Cupid
Catch Your Death
All Fall Down
Forward Slash
From the Cradle
OTHER TITLES BY MARK EDWARDS
The Magpies
What You Wish For
Because She Loves Me
Follow You Home
OTHER TITLES BY LOUISE VOSS
To Be Someone
Are You My Mother?
Lifesaver
Games People Play
The Venus Trap
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Louise Voss & Mark Edwards
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 978-1503947474
ISBN-10: 1503947475
Cover design by bürosüdo Munich, www.buerosued.de
This one is for Louise’s fiancé, Nick Laughland, and for Mark’s wife, Sara Edwards.
Contents
Prologue
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
PART TWO
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Epilogue
Letter from the Authors
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Download a Free Short Story by Voss & Edwards
Prologue
Rose looked up at the hotel, wishing she’d been allowed to save the image on her phone, that it wasn’t against the rules. This was definitely the place – although, as with everything in her life, she retained a niggle of doubt. She was surprised that he would stay in a Travel Inn. That was the kind of lame place her dad stayed in when he went away on business. But she guessed that was the point. He was being clever. He had arranged the rendezvous – the word sending a little frisson of excitement through her insides – here because it was exactly the kind of crap-hole where nobody would expect him to hang out.
She was wearing her new pants – pink with the word ‘LUCKY’ stamped across the front. She’d flushed the same shade of pink as the knickers when she’d put them on the counter in Primark, though the woman who served her didn’t even smile as she stuffed them in the paper bag. If only that woman knew who Rose was meeting, she would be sick with jealousy, and she would see – like everyone would see, soon enough, when the whole world found out about their love – that she, Rose Emily Sharp, was special.
Not different, as Dad said, thinking it was a compliment. Not weird, like the girls at school sneered.
Special.
The first photo had been of this hotel, taken from this very spot, with the caption ‘11 p.m.’. She stood and fiddled with her phone, drizzle spotting its shiny surface. There was hardly anyone about, probably because of the weather, and the streetlamps struggled to cut through the gloom. A couple of young blokes in hoodies strolled past. Her whole body clenched, but they ignored her, not even bothering to give her the once-over. Not that she cared, anymore, if boys noticed her.
It was 10.59, and as the time on her phone rolled over to eleven o’clock, she received another photo, dead on time. She stared at it, her heart pounding, knowing that she only had ten seconds before it would disappear. The picture showed a pair of grey doors, with one of those big wheelie bins in front. She looked up at the hotel, confused for a moment, then got it.
He wanted her to go round to the back entrance. Of course. This was a secret rendezvous. He didn’t want anyone at the front desk to see her or, worse, try to stop her. He wanted to make sure that nothing stood in their way.
She smiled. He was so thoughtful, even more so than she’d gathered from his interviews and tweets.
Rose waited for the green man and crossed the road on shaky legs. She felt as she had that time when she’d been sent to see the head teacher after screaming at that slut Bethany Douglas in class, who had spread a rumour that Rose had wet the bed on the school trip. Bethany also said that OnTarget were a band for tweenies and toddlers, and had made up her own lyrics to their biggest hit, ‘Forever Together’, replacing ‘together’ with ‘bed-wetter’. The head teacher, Mrs Morpurgo, had sighed and said, ‘What are we going to do with you, eh, Rose?’
Rose ground her teeth together at the memory. Mrs Morpurgo would regret it when Rose was famous and spent some of her millions on buying the school and firing the head teacher. She hadn’t yet worked out what she would do to Bethany, but it would involve public humiliation and Bethany sobbing an apology that Rose would gracefully accept.
It was dark behind the hotel, the rain coming down more heavily now, and Rose swore to herself. She’d spent ages doing her hair. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she thought she saw a figure move in the trees around the edge of the staff car park, but when she looked again there was nobody there.
She felt sick. Sick with nerves and adrenalin, and from the cheeseburger she’d consumed earlier because her tummy had a tendency to rumble embarrassingly when she was hungry. But she was regretting it now, as the burger was repeating unpleasantly on her. She wasn’t supposed to be out this late. Mum thought she was in her room. Rose had left the TV on and hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door. But what if Mum came up to bring her a cup of tea, as she sometimes did, got worried when Rose didn’t respond and crept inside? Rose just had to hope that tonight was one of the five nights out of seven, since the divorce, when Mum glugged a bottle of wine and passed out on the sofa with
her ancient Whitney Houston CDs playing.
The photo on her phone had long since disappeared, and she was under strict instructions not to take screenshots, but there it was – the back entrance.
She grasped the handle with a sweaty hand (oh God, what was she going to do about that? He’d be disgusted!) and pulled it open, slipping inside. She could hear clattering and somebody whistling in a kitchen, then heavy footsteps coming towards her, so she ducked around a corner and hid in a corridor.
A man came out of the kitchen and went through the double doors. She heard the spark of a lighter and caught the faint whiff of cigarette smoke. The man coughed and Rose’s heart pounded. She felt paralysed with nerves and had a moment of sickening clarity. This was crazy, what was she doing here, did she really think that he would be interested in her? It was probably Bethany, or one of the other girls, the girls she spent so long chatting to online, pranking her. She should go now, walk out the front door of the hotel and go home to her bed, give Mum a kiss, forget all this nonsense. She was meant to be revising and, as Dad reminded her so often, the chances that she was going to be famous or married to a pop star were about as strong as the chances of him winning Britain’s Got Talent with a PowerPoint presentation about accountancy.
But the desire for this to be real, for it all to be true, was too strong. He had contacted her after reading her tweets and checking her Tumblr. He really did want to meet her. She pushed down the doubts, mentally deleting them, consigning them to history like the Snapchat photos. This was her chance. She had to believe if she wanted to achieve. That’s what the kitten poster on her wall said: Believe to achieve.
She believed.
Her phone flashed again and her heart thudded. This time the picture was of a door. A hotel door. The number was 365.
She smiled at the reference.
This was really going to happen. But when she emerged from the corridor and got into the lift, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Oh shit, she looked like a drowned rat! Her hair was sticking to her forehead and mascara was running down her cheeks. She was sweating too and probably stank, her Friendship perfume washed away by the rain. She needed to find a bathroom, to clean herself up.
But as she thought this, her phone flashed again.
It was a picture of him, that shy smile on his face. The caption read, ‘I CAN’T WAIT ANY LONGER.’
She caught her breath. It would be OK. He would like her exactly as she was. That was the kind of person he was. She read an interview once – actually, she’d read it a hundred times – in which he said that he liked girls to be natural. And he’d also said, in a Q&A with an American website, that his favourite smell was fresh rain.
The lift door pinged open. The corridor was empty. As she walked down towards room 365, she felt light, like she was full of helium, and as she knocked on the hotel door she experienced a great sensation of warmth, of peace, a feeling that she could describe only as coming home. Like this was where she was meant to be. It was her destiny.
The door was pulled open and she stepped into the room. She could smell air freshener, the same one her mum used at home, but she couldn’t see anyone in the room. Just a bed, with – what was that lying on the sheets? Something metal, glinting in the harsh light.
He was, she realised, standing behind her, but before she could turn she felt a sudden, sharp pain in her head, and then she was being dragged, with blood in her eyes, across the room. All she could hear was breathing, and all she could think about was Mum, her lovely mum, knocking on her door at home with a steaming mug of tea.
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Day 1 – Patrick
DI Patrick Lennon was in a foul mood as he drove around the one-way system of Kingston-upon-Thames’s town centre with the unmarked pool car’s blues and twos on. He was trying hard not to let it show, out of respect for his passenger, his colleague DS Carmella Masiello, but she knew him all too well.
‘Come on, Pat, spit it out. You look like a bulldog chewing a wasp.’ She chuckled. ‘Don’t you love that expression? I think it’s my favourite, with “a face like a slapped backside” coming a close second.’
He didn’t smile, although her deep voice and soft Irish accent usually helped lift his spirits when he was in a funk. They’d been working together for three years now and increasingly he thought that he couldn’t imagine anyone else as his partner. The traumatic events of their last case had served only to strengthen their bond.
‘Are you thinking about the girl?’ she prompted, then paused, her chatter halted by the grim awareness of what awaited them in the hotel at the end of their car journey.
There was a long silence that Patrick finally broke, his voice barely audible above the wail of the siren.
‘No. I probably should be, but I’m not.’
‘What is it, then?’
Patrick took a corner too sharply and a corkscrew of auburn hair fell loose from Carmella’s long ponytail. She blew a sharp puff of air from her mouth to get it off her face, then tucked it reflexively behind her ear. It was that habitual gesture that finally made Patrick crack a small smile.
‘Sorry, Carmella, ignore me. I’ve just had it up to here with living with my mum and dad. It was a necessary evil when Gill was . . . not around . . . but now she’s out, it just seems crazy that me and Bonnie are still cooped up in my old tiny bedroom, while Gill has our whole house to herself! I can’t moan about it at home because my mother already thinks Gill is the Antichrist. And she’s been so helpful – Mum, I mean. I couldn’t have managed without her and Dad, but they’re clearly knackered as well. It’s been eighteen months! Imagine, living with your parents at my age for eighteen months! Sharing a bedroom with a toddler! My street cred is in tatters, and let’s not even mention my sodding sex life . . .’
He was joking – sort of – but somehow couldn’t raise another smile. Carmella was his friend as well as his partner, but he suddenly wished she hadn’t wormed it out of him. The words had gushed out involuntarily, but now, far from being cathartic, it felt emasculating. He accelerated around a line of stationary cars and zoomed past a red light, on the wrong side of the road, as if the speed could shake off some of his frustration. Frustration, and humiliation, that everyone at the station by now knew his situation. DI Winkler, the perennial thorn in his side, had asked if ‘his mummy tucks him in at night’ just the other day, and it had been all Patrick could do not to sock him one.
He shifted gear up to fifth and took off down the long straight road.
‘Slow down, boss,’ Carmella said. ‘The girl’s still going to be dead when we get there. So, tell me to mind my own business, but when do you think you’ll be able to go home? Doesn’t seem right, somehow, when you’re not the one who can’t be trusted with Bonnie . . .’
Patrick shot a sidelong glance at her – his instinct to tell her, yes, mind your own business – but he knew she was only concerned. And the truth was, he’d bottled it all up for so long that it would be a relief to talk about it. Doing so while driving at seventy in a 40 mph zone seemed as good a time as any.
‘It’s been six months since Gill was released. She seems absolutely fine, and Bonnie sees her most days – unsupervised now. But her doctor recommended that she shouldn’t feel she has total responsibility for Bonnie until she’s completely ready, and I don’t want to push her in case . . . you know . . .’
He still couldn’t say the words out loud: in case my wife tries to kill our child again. He didn’t think it could ever happen again – Gill had suffered a huge mental breakdown – but, on the other hand, he’d never had any indication that it could happen in the first place, and the risks just seemed too great. Sleeping in his single bedroom at his folks’ house with Bonnie in a toddler bed next to him – which meant actually in bed with him at some point every night – had been a small price to pay for the knowledge that she was safe. But he still
had to go out to work every day, so his mum and dad had taken over the childcare. There had been no other options – at least, not affordable ones.
‘Does she want you both to come home?’
Patrick saw the distinctive red and white lettering of the hotel’s sign in the distance and slowed down, killing the blues and twos. He turned and gave Carmella a rueful smile.
‘She does, but she’s scared. I’m not sure she trusts herself around Bonnie anymore, however well she feels now.’
Carmella opened her mouth to ask another question and Patrick would have put money on what it was: What about you and her? But thankfully she chose not to ask.
Because that was one question Patrick really couldn’t answer.
He pulled into the hotel’s car park and parked in a space next to the three squad cars and one police van already present.
‘Right.’ They got out and strode purposefully towards the hotel entrance. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’
Chapter 2
Day 1 – Patrick
Crime tape was strung across the third-floor corridor, the rooms in this stretch vacated, the guests moved to other rooms. In the lobby, Patrick had spoken briefly to the manager, a woman with a Brummie accent who looked like she’d applied her eyebrows with a child’s black crayon, and told her that they would need a list of all the guests, including anyone who had checked out. He had expected the usual tedious complaint about privacy and the bloody Data Protection Act, but the manager, whose name was Heidi Shillingham, had said, ‘Yes, of course. Anything we – anything I – can do to help.’
She smiled obsequiously and, in the lift, Carmella had winked at Patrick and said, ‘She wants you.’
Patrick ducked under the yellow tape just as DS Gareth Batey emerged from the room, his face white with a hint of green. His jaw clenched and he swallowed, like he was trying to stop himself from throwing up. A bad sign. Gareth was a valuable member of MIT9, a young detective who was definitely going places – though with every day, with every grim case, the sheen of his enthusiasm and earnestness was rubbed off a little more. One day he’ll be as hard-bitten and resigned as the rest of us, Patrick thought. Poor sod.
