No Other Darkness: A Detective Inspector Marnie Rome Mystery

by Sarah Hilary

  Noah understood Ron’s frustration. The dead boys didn’t match anyone in the national missing persons’ database. It should have been impossible, but it wasn’t. There were all sorts of explanations, from illegal immigration to child trafficking. Officially, there were no circumstances under which children were allowed to vanish unreported or unnoticed. But it happened, more often than the public, or even the press, knew.

  Marnie waited until the room was quiet. ‘DS Jake and I are going to ask Ian Merrick how much he knew about the bunker. House-to-house are getting started this morning. We’re hoping someone on the housing estate will remember Beech Rise before the houses went up. I’m going to handle house-to-house on Blackthorn Road, because I know some of the residents there: Carol and Nigel Fincher at number 10 and Douglas Cole at number 8.’

  She held up a hand. ‘Don’t get excited. It’s not a lead, at least I don’t think so. Eighteen months ago, Mr and Mrs Fincher reported their daughter Lizzie missing. She was five at the time. According to Mr Fincher, his wife had taken the child to a hotel and was hiding her there. According to Mrs Fincher, he’d murdered Lizzie and disposed of her body.’

  ‘Murder,’ Debbie echoed. She was making notes.

  ‘Domestic,’ Ron folded his arms, ‘with knobs on.’ He was reading Marnie’s face; knew her tells. Like Noah, he’d not been in her team eighteen months ago.

  Marnie nodded. ‘DS Carling gets the big clock. It was a domestic. Lizzie was alive and well. She’d been left with a friend of her mother’s. Doug Cole.’

  ‘At number 8?’ Debbie checked her notes.

  ‘At number 8. On the day we were looking for Lizzie, Mr Cole was travelling around the Underground with her. He said it was her favourite game and of course he had no reception on his phone to answer the calls we made during house-to-house.’

  ‘So it was the mum,’ Ron said, ‘winding Fincher up.’

  Marnie shook her head. ‘She always denied that. She said Lizzie was friends with Cole and that she told him a fib about her mum wanting him to look after her for the day. Cole insisted it’d been agreed with Mrs Fincher.’

  ‘He was shagging the mother, right?’

  ‘Both of them denied that, Cole in the strongest terms. Mrs Fincher seemed to find the idea ridiculous. She described her friend Doug as “sexless and safe”.’

  ‘Meaning what?’ Ron looked sharp. ‘That he’s a perv?’

  ‘She didn’t elaborate, but there was no evidence that Mr Cole had abducted Lizzie. The little girl was happy in his company. There was certainly no evidence he’d harmed her.’

  ‘He could’ve been saving that for another time …’ Ron picked up a marker pen. ‘I’m putting him on the board.’

  He wrote ‘Doug Cole’ on the whiteboard and underlined it.

  Debbie said, ‘Did we charge the Finchers with wasting police time?’

  ‘No. The press got involved. It was considered tactically inappropriate to charge them.’

  ‘Tactically inappropriate,’ Ron echoed. ‘You mean Welland handed you the shitty end of the stick to keep the press quiet?’

  Marnie shut him up with a look. ‘These boys died at least four years ago. Doug Cole wasn’t living in Blackthorn Road then. Neither were the Finchers.’

  ‘So we find out where he was living. Unless it’s suddenly tactically inappropriate to call bullshit on coincidences.’ Ron capped the marker pen in his fist. ‘Missing kids, abducted kids, it goes on the board.’

  ‘All right,’ Marnie said patiently. ‘You look into that. You’ve checked the sex offenders’ register from five years ago?’

  ‘Yeah. They’re competing with Misper for the Shit-All Information gong.’

  ‘Fran didn’t think they were abused … All right. Let’s get on. DS Jake and I’ll do the house-to-house on Blackthorn Road after we’ve been to see Ian Merrick. DC Tanner, I want you to check in on the Doyles, see how they’re settling into the house you found.’

  Ron said, ‘I’ll put a steel toecap up Misper as soon as they’re answering the phones. Those kids must’ve been reported missing.’

  ‘Unless it was the parents,’ Debbie said. She pulled a face. ‘Sorry, that’s a horrid thought, but the parents could have covered it up, not reported it …’

  Noah shook his head. ‘They were school age. The school would’ve reported any long-term absence.’ They hadn’t let Sol bunk off longer than two days before they got on the phone, issuing absence agreements and, when that didn’t work, threatening exclusion. Not much of a threat, under the circumstances.

  ‘They could’ve been home-schooled,’ Ron put in. ‘There’s a couple of kids like that at my boys’ school … Mind you, they get more red tape than the rest of us, as far as I can tell.’

  ‘Or maybe they were immigrants?’ Debbie suggested.

  ‘Fran will be able to tell us more after the full PM,’ Marnie said. ‘Later today, with luck.’

  ‘Or foster kids. They fall through the cracks, don’t they?’

  Debbie was right; they saw it all the time. Clancy Brand was lucky to be living with the Doyles. Too many kids his age didn’t know what a stable family life looked like.

  ‘Not little kids,’ Ron objected. ‘Not as young as our boys.’

  They all looked back at the whiteboard.

  Boy 1 and Boy 2. No names yet. No faces.

  Doug Cole’s was the only name on the board.

  ‘All right.’ Marnie nodded. ‘Let’s work those angles. Foster kids, school records. And keep at Missing Persons. I want to know they’ve done every search possible before they tell us for certain that they have nothing. DS Jake? Let’s see what Ian Merrick’s got for us.’

  ‘Shonky bloody builder …’ Carling uncapped the pen. ‘He is so going on the board.’

  • • •

  As they walked to the station car park, Noah asked Marnie what theories she had about the bunker on Blackthorn Road.

  ‘Plenty, but that’s all they are. Theories. It could be industrial, 1930s, or later. Cold War, maybe. I want to know who knew it was there, and who had access to it before the Doyles bought the house.’ She unlocked the car and they climbed in. ‘Someone knew it wasn’t airtight. They knew they could put two kids down there, with books and toys and a bucket, and they wouldn’t die. Not until whoever did it was good and ready.’

  She started the ignition but didn’t pull out, letting the engine idle for a minute.

  ‘I was thinking,’ Noah said, ‘if it was fields, before they built the houses …’

  ‘Big fields,’ she agreed, ‘lots of acres.’

  ‘So who builds one bunker in the middle of a big field? That size, I mean. It wasn’t large.’

  Marnie cut the engine. She turned in the seat to look at him. ‘You think … there’s more? More bunkers?’

  ‘Maybe. It would make more sense than one. Wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Lots of bunkers. And the developer missed them all?’

  ‘He missed the one in the Doyles’ garden,’ Noah pointed out. ‘Or he knew about it and kept quiet, reckoned it was in the garden so it wouldn’t disturb the foundations of the house. A row of bunkers would play hell with his planning permission.’

  ‘A row of bunkers,’ Marnie repeated. ‘One per garden?’

  Noah turned away while he fastened his seat belt. ‘We should check. The neighbours are going to start asking questions once the story breaks. How long before one of them decides to go digging in his garden, just to make sure?’ He looked back at her.

  Marnie cursed softly, her eyes a hot blue.

  ‘We could issue a statement,’ Noah suggested, ‘let them know we’re organising an extended search …’

  ‘For what, more bodies? You think there’s a chance we’ll find that?’

  ‘No. No, I hadn’t thought of it like that.’ He thought of it now, and his skin grained with goose bumps. ‘I just thought one bunker in a field was … odd.’

  ‘All right, let’s look. Put in a request for a GPR
team and let the neighbours know we’re expanding the search. If it stops some of them digging around and getting a shock like the one that floored Terry, it’ll be worth it.’

  GPR: ground-penetrating radar.

  Noah searched his phone for the number.

  Marnie restarted the engine. ‘Let’s see whether Ian Merrick deserves that space on Ron’s whiteboard.’

  15

  Merrick Homes had set up base on the Isle of Dogs, an almost-island in London’s East End.

  A temporary base, Noah guessed, going where the scent of money was strongest. The Isle of Dogs had been a real island, bounded on three sides by the Thames, before part of the river was filled to create a dock. Even now, three of the four ways to reach it were by water.

  Marnie and Noah took the fourth way, approaching the temporary offices by car, across a potholed site where a mobile office sat in the shadow of a half-built high-rise.

  Polythene wrapped the steel shell of Merrick Homes’ latest development. Bad weather had ratted at the polythene; unless it was real rats, up from the Thames in search of food or shelter. The polythene was filthy, months old. Investors losing their nerve? This part of London was a rash of glass and steel. It was hard to imagine room in the market for another office development. Everywhere was puddled by shadows from the building work.

  They followed a route of greasy duckboards and gravelled ditches to where a mobile office was set up on concrete slabs. The office had chicken-wired windows and a conspicuous burglar alarm. Soot had put black stripes up its sides. A string of oversized fairy lights dangled off one end like a stripper’s feather boa.

  Inside, they were back-slapped by the smell of egg sandwiches and armpits.

  Ian Merrick was a balding middleweight wearing a high-vis jacket with the look of someone who wished he was less visible. He grimaced when Marnie produced her ID. ‘If this’s about health and safety …’

  ‘God forbid,’ she said. ‘It’s about a double murder.’

  Merrick’s jaw dropped. Yellow egg yolk was trapped between his teeth. He put his hand over his bald spot, self-consciously, as if he missed his hard hat.

  Noah looked around the office, seeing the inevitable girlie calendar: a strawberry blonde spilling her chest across the bonnet of a Porsche. The windows were filthy. One side had a bird’s-eye view of the chemical toilet. A pair of filing cabinets took up too much space. Shoved between the cabinets was a red nylon sleeping bag. Did Merrick camp here sometimes? Or was the sleeping bag for the on-site security crew?

  Merrick flicked a glance at the girlie calendar and wetted his lips in embarrassment, shuffling papers noisily. ‘I don’t understand. The site is secure. Are you saying you’ve found something?’ He looked sick. ‘Bodies? Here?’

  Marnie didn’t put him out of his misery, not right away. ‘You’d know, wouldn’t you, if dead bodies had been found on your site? Or isn’t the site secure?’

  ‘Of course it’s secure, but you said—’

  ‘It doesn’t look very secure. There was no one to stop us walking right in.’

  ‘We’ve had trouble with kids breaking in. We’re fitting new locks today. You said … murder?’

  ‘I said double murder.’ Dry ice in her voice and in her eyes, making them smoky blue. She was being Detective Inspector Rome. ‘How is your on-site health and safety?’

  Merrick covered his bald spot again. Noah nearly handed him one of the hard hats. DI Rome had this effect on men. Not all men, but plenty.

  ‘Good,’ Merrick said, not quite stammering. ‘All the paperwork … the paperwork’s up to date.’ He took his hand from his head and gestured at the filing cabinets before flopping the hand down to his side. ‘Everything’s up to date.’

  ‘How long have you been based here?’

  ‘Nine, ten months …’ He tried for a smile, missed and managed a grimace. ‘Since November … You probably saw the fairy lights? We dressed the crane for Christmas, but it encouraged trespassers, kids coming to take pictures, so now we keep it low-key.’

  ‘You specialise in new homes, is that right?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say specialise, no one can afford to do that in this game, but yes. Some of our best places have been brown-belt developments.’

  ‘Beech Rise,’ Marnie said. ‘That was one of yours, wasn’t it?’

  Merrick nodded. ‘Houses, in Snaresbrook. But this isn’t about that? We finished there years ago, without accident, one of the cleanest jobs I’ve worked on.’ He was either an excellent liar or he had no guilty conscience where Beech Rise was concerned.

  ‘Cleanest. Meaning what? That no one was hurt during the construction?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Merrick sat a little straighter behind his desk, as if he was sure of his ground now. ‘If you need the paperwork …’

  ‘I need the paperwork. Do you have it here?’

  ‘Not here, but I can get it for you, of course. It was a clean project. The only sticking point was moving the gypsies out.’

  ‘Gypsies. You mean travellers?’

  Merrick nodded again. ‘They’d turned the place into a mud pit. The locals were scared to go there. Everyone was happy when we bought the land and started building.’

  ‘Everyone except the travellers, presumably,’ Noah said. ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘God knows. They’re ruining someone else’s field now.’ Merrick looked from Noah to Marnie. ‘Can you tell me what this is about, please?’

  Marnie turned her face in profile, as if she was tired of looking at him. ‘Planning permissions, you have those?’

  ‘For Beech Rise? Yes, of course.’

  ‘You had all the necessary permissions? All the building consents.’

  Merrick nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘So you knew about the bunker.’

  From out on the Thames: the blast of a boat’s tannoy.

  Merrick covered his head again. ‘Bunker?’

  ‘In the garden you put down at the end of the terrace. Number 14 Blackthorn Road. The show house you rushed to finish, cutting corners in the process.’

  ‘A bunker?’ Merrick echoed again.

  Marnie turned her head back to look at him. Noah saw how hard she was holding to her patience, and how little of that patience she had left. ‘In the garden. A bunker, under three feet of what you passed off as soil. Are you saying you knew nothing about it? Because I don’t know much about planning permissions, although of course I know plenty of people who do, but I’m thinking you can’t possibly have been allowed to erect houses over ground that wasn’t solid. Over a concrete pit, twelve feet down.’

  ‘Oh,’ Merrick said finally, ‘the bunkers.’

  Bunkers plural?

  A blunt pain in Noah’s chest. He hated that he’d been right.

  Marnie said, ‘You knew, then.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Merrick looked confused. ‘We knew there’d been bunkers there, once. But it was a long time ago.’

  ‘How many bunkers?’

  ‘Six or seven, I’m not sure. Cold War, they said.’ He shook his head. ‘But the ground was solid. The local authority had filled them in, long before we started building.’

  ‘How long before?’

  ‘Years! In the mid eighties, I think. I have the paperwork to prove it.’

  ‘Really,’ Marnie said. ‘Because I have the corpses to prove it never happened. The bunker at number 14 was never filled in. Mr Doyle, who bought that house shortly after you finished it, yesterday found a manhole cover under his vegetable patch, and since there was nothing on the survey you provided to explain what he’d found, he lifted it and looked inside. His garden is now a crime scene.’

  Merrick shook his head, looking sick. ‘What … what was down there?’

  ‘Two bodies,’ Marnie said. ‘Two little bodies.’

  ‘Kids?’ Merrick abandoned his bald head and spread both hands on the surface of his desk. If he was faking it, he was a good actor. ‘Oh God … No, no, no.’

  Marn
ie said immovably, ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how …? Who …?’

  ‘Ask me when. I can answer that, in broad terms.’

  Merrick’s eyes were swimming with shock. ‘When?’

  ‘Four, maybe five years ago, long after you say the bunkers were filled in.’

  ‘I have the paperwork,’ Merrick insisted. He looked at the filing cabinets, as if by producing the planning permission he could undo the fact of the dead children.

  ‘Good for you. I have the bodies. Who told you the bunkers were filled in?’

  ‘The local authority planning people when they sold me the land! I’d never have bought it otherwise.’

  ‘You’ve never cut corners, on any of your building projects?’

  ‘Of course not …’ He pushed at papers on his desk, colouring, but it could’ve been indignation rather than guilt.

  ‘You cut them at number 14. You failed to connect ventilation pipes in the kitchen and bathroom.’

  ‘That’s … It’s allowed, in a show house. The gas supply wasn’t switched on, it was the summer. We finished it before we sold it. Of course we did.’

  ‘Tell us about the travellers,’ Noah said. ‘Who were they?’

  Merrick moved his eyes away from Marnie, in relief. ‘Women mostly, a bit of a commune everyone said. The council moved them on.’

  ‘Did you see any of them, to talk to?’

  Merrick looked confused, as if he’d been asked whether he’d ever had a conversation with a zoo animal, or a cardboard box.

  ‘They can’t have been happy,’ Noah said. ‘Did you speak with any of them?’

  ‘No. No, that was all dealt with by the council, and the police.’

  ‘The police were involved?’

  ‘I should think so. They usually are, aren’t they? These people never move without a fight. And there’d been trouble, the usual thing. Burglaries in the area, car theft.’ He appealed to Marnie with his hands spread. ‘You know what they’re like.’

  ‘Do you think the travellers knew about the bunkers?’ Noah asked.