No Other Darkness: A Detective Inspector Marnie Rome Mystery

by Sarah Hilary

  Adam Fletcher was waiting at the corner of Blackthorn Road, in the old Levis and dark jumper he’d worn to the briefing. The other reporters were still checking in, getting the address details, playing catch-up, but Adam was one step ahead.

  ‘Detective Inspector Rome.’ He managed to make it sound obscene. ‘It’s been a while. Fancy a coffee?’

  ‘You’ll be lucky, around here.’

  ‘I guess I’m lucky, then. Tabitha’s Caff … It’s a three-minute walk.’

  They walked without speaking to the café and sat outside, so that Adam could smoke.

  She thought: The last time I did this, they were alive.

  He lit up in the same way, using a cheap disposable lighter with his hand cupped around the flame. Smoking the same brand: Marlboros in a red and white packet. A new warning from the Surgeon-General: ‘You smoke, you die.’

  She thought: The last time I did this, I didn’t even know Stephen Keele existed.

  Adam lifted the hand with the cigarette and rubbed its heel at his temple. Smoke scuffed the side of his head, greying his fair hair for a second. He was … what? Forty-four, forty-five now? He hadn’t changed, just acquired a few more hard lines to go with the ones she’d coveted half a lifetime ago. ‘So how much do you know about Clancy Brand?’

  The question surprised her. She’d expected … Not happy memories, that was for sure. But something, before he jumped straight into the reason he was back.

  ‘You know the Doyles are fostering him. How much more d’you know?’

  ‘How much more is there? He’s fourteen …’

  ‘Going on thirty,’ Adam said.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Not unless you tell me something in return.’ He showed his teeth in a smile. Rakish, offhand and easy in his skin, something Marnie had never been.

  ‘Such as what? You seemed to know as much as we did, at the briefing.’

  Tabitha, if it was Tabitha, brought their coffees. The metal table rocked when she set the cups down. When she’d gone back inside, Marnie said, ‘You knew about the bunkers.’

  Adam took the saucer from under his coffee cup and twitched ash into it. ‘Anyone can find out about the bunkers. They’re a matter of public record. Try finding out about a fourteen-year-old foster kid. That’ll tax your brain. Even yours, Detective Inspector.’

  ‘You knew about the bunkers before we did. How? And why?’

  ‘I’m a journalist. I follow stories.’ He thumbed a speck of tobacco from his tongue. ‘In this case, big fat gypsy stories.’

  ‘The travellers,’ Marnie deduced. ‘That’s how you know about them?’

  He flicked the speck of tobacco to the floor. ‘Ask me about Clancy Brand.’

  ‘No. I want to know about the travellers. I want whatever you have, on the bunkers and the dead boys.’

  ‘Zip is what I have. I knew there were bunkers, but I thought they’d been filled in. Don’t bother looking for the planning officer who signed the paperwork, by the way. It’s a dead end.’ He returned the cigarette to his mouth. ‘Literally dead. No suspicious circumstances to get excited about, either. Retired and dead of a heart attack within the year.’

  ‘You know this because …?’

  ‘I told you, I’m following a story.’

  ‘A story about travellers.’

  ‘It pays the bills,’ Adam said.

  ‘Where did the travellers go when they were moved on? Do you know that?’

  ‘Maybe, but you’re chasing ghosts. You want to look closer to home.’ He finished the cigarette and stubbed it in the saucer. ‘Clancy Brand’s an evil little shit.’ He said it carelessly, without any edge to his voice. This wasn’t personal.

  Marnie wondered whether anything was ever personal, for Adam.

  ‘Define evil,’ she invited, picking up her coffee.

  His eyes followed the line of her wrist, up inside her sleeve, then down, across her sternum to her navel. Lower than that. ‘That’s your job.’

  ‘My job is catching them. Someone else gets to do the defining.’

  His eyes stayed on her bare skin. She wondered what he’d make of the tattoos she’d acquired, after his time, but not long after; a palliative for her skin’s craving. She could imagine him coming out with some cute crap: ‘I can read you like a book … By Albert Camus, isn’t it?’ wrapping the words around the enquiry like a snake up a stick.

  They were alive and I didn’t know that Stephen Keele existed.

  Tears pricked deep inside, nowhere near her eyes.

  The cigarette in the saucer was still glowing. Adam pressed his knuckles to it, smothering the ghost of smoke. ‘You want to know about Clancy.’ It wasn’t a question.

  ‘I’ve got a double murder to investigate. Unless he’s connected to that …’

  ‘Maybe he is.’

  ‘The children died at least four years ago. When Clancy was ten.’

  ‘And? You’re not going to tell me that ten’s too young to kill.’ He held her gaze.

  ‘I’m not going to tell you anything. Because I think you’re winding me up.’ She put her eyes on him, coldly. ‘You’ve done your homework. Well done.’

  Adam knew. He knew Stephen Keele had killed her parents, five years ago. He knew how, maybe he even knew why … No. Not even Adam knew why. If he did, he wouldn’t sit here and taunt her loss under the pretext of chasing a story about murdered children. Some things she put past him. Not much. But that … Not even Adam would do that.

  She felt the pull of the past so keenly, she had to fight not to lean in its direction. ‘If you’re wasting police time,’ she said, summoning a smile, ‘that’s an offence.’

  His eyes gleamed responsively. He pushed back in his chair, shoving his legs to their full length so that she had to move her feet out of the way. ‘You know me,’ he said, running the words into one another. ‘Anything to cause offence.’

  Relieved that she wasn’t walking away. That he’d pushed her buttons and she hadn’t responded by throwing whatever punches she’d picked up on her way to becoming a DI.

  Plenty, she thought. I know plenty of punches. Push me and you’ll find out how many. They’ll be written all over your face.

  ‘So why are you really here?’ she asked, matching his careless tone.

  ‘Earning a living, just like you.’ He scrubbed a hand through his hair. ‘Well, not quite like you.’ A rueful grin. He was still good at this, tugging at her skin with his smile.

  Careful. Be very careful.

  ‘You’ve not been earning it around here recently. Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Abroad.’ He shrugged. ‘Foreign correspondent … When the gig expired, I came home.’

  To chase stories about travellers, and teenage boys?

  ‘Who told you about the bunkers?’

  ‘Legwork. The travellers got kicked off-site because of Merrick’s development, which, by the way, stinks. I’ve seen corners cut with more finesse on fucking Top Gear. I followed the paper trail to the planning office. Saw the blueprints for the development with all the little boxes, the bunkers.’

  ‘Filled in?’

  ‘According to the paperwork.’ He nodded, ‘I didn’t know it was a scam until I got the call to your press briefing.’ He crooked his mouth at her. ‘Wouldn’t have been out of bed if a mate hadn’t called to say it was kicking off on Blackthorn Road. The travellers used to call it the Beach, on account of the number of times the river came close enough to paddle in.’

  ‘So you were following the travellers. How did that lead you to Clancy?’

  ‘He’s living on Blackthorn Road, isn’t he?’

  ‘So are plenty of other people. Why pick on him?’

  ‘For starters? Little shit keyed my car. Couldn’t prove it was him, of course, on account of what a sly little shit he is. But I started to watch where he went, and trust me, he’s got stuff to hide. Rats don’t sneak around the way he does. When I heard about the bunker, I thought you’d found something of his.’
He turned his cup until the table tipped on its wonky leg. ‘One of his hiding places.’

  Marnie put her hand on her own cup, not wanting it to spill. ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘What?’ He reached for his cigarettes.

  ‘You said something of Clancy’s. What sort of thing?’

  ‘God knows. Drugs. Cash.’ He snapped the lighter, pushing smoke aside with his wrist. ‘Dead bodies … Oh, wait.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she told him.

  He raised his eyebrows at her.

  ‘Joke,’ she said. ‘Don’t joke about this. Those children died, in the dark, alone.’

  ‘We’re all alone in the dark, dying.’ He smoked at the sky, then brought his stare back down. ‘That wasn’t a joke. You should check the bunker again, make sure he wasn’t down there. He’s been sneaking around just about every other corner of that dump.’

  She waited a beat. ‘You really think Clancy had something to do with their deaths? When he was ten years old?’

  ‘Because kids never hurt other kids. Right. I’m telling you … you need to look at him.’

  ‘And you need to stop dodging and give me what you’ve got. Before I start thinking this whole thing is a wind-up.’

  ‘Why would I wind you up, Max?’

  Another joke, sixteen years old. Marnie Jane Rome, initials MJR, short for Majority, which got shortened again to Max, because why use four syllables when you could use one?

  ‘Gee, Adam, I don’t know. Because you’re starting to remember how much fun it was?’

  ‘It was fun,’ he agreed gravely. He looked at the fresh cigarette as if it irritated him, reaching to grind it out in the saucer. ‘I’m guessing you don’t have time to fuck about, which is too bad, but neither do I. Being a scumbag journalist with a story deadline.’

  ‘My hearts bleeds for you. I have a double murder to solve. If you’ve got information, give it up. Otherwise, stop pissing about and let me get on with my job.’

  He studied her with a gleam in his eyes that looked like pride. ‘Clancy Brand.’ It was the fourth time he’d said the boy’s full name. ‘Take a look inside his room. You’ve got access to the house, right? Take a look at how he’s living in there, how he’s hiding. When you’ve done that, if you’re still not interested? Fine …’ He stood, putting the knuckles of one hand on the table, making it rock. ‘But if you want to put what you’ve got together with what I’ve got? You know where to find me.’

  ‘Nice speech,’ she said flatly. ‘But no, I don’t know where to find you. I never did, remember?’ He’d always found her, never the other way around, not even when she needed him so badly it scared her. ‘How’s your daughter? Tia, wasn’t it? She’d be starting college now, I guess. You must be proud.’

  ‘She would, and I am.’ Adam flashed his teeth in a smile. ‘I’ll call the station.’

  He took his knuckles off the table, and walked away.

  Her phone rang before he was out of sight.

  Fran said, ‘I’ve got DNA for you.’

  Marnie got to her feet. ‘Whose?’

  ‘The boys. I thought we’d caught a break with the swabs from the ladder. We’ve got DNA there too, and on the underside of the manhole cover. But it’s a match for what we took from the bodies. No secondary DNA from anything down there.’

  No secondary DNA. That meant …

  ‘I’m running more tests,’ Fran said. ‘They’re brothers, like you thought.’

  ‘No secondary DNA means … familial DNA?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So …’

  ‘They knew their killer. They were killed by an aunt or uncle.’ Fran paused. ‘Or someone closer: their mum or dad.’

  20

  Lawton Down Prison, Durham

  ‘Good afternoon, Alison. How are you today?’

  ‘I think I’m doing well,’ I say.

  I do not say, ‘I can’t remember how many weeks it is since I saw them.’

  I daren’t ask Lyn what day it is. I bet she has a name for that, something worse than absent-mindedness or amnesia. A name for my inability to recall details that ought to be etched on my memory, and a way of wielding it that would put back my progress by weeks. Not that my progress exists anywhere other than on her pieces of paper, and the parole board’s pieces of paper, but this is my life we’re talking about. My freedom; if you can call the imminent release of a dangerous prisoner ‘freedom’. I’m not sure I can. I can call it many things – risky, arrogant and fucking irresponsible, for starters – but not freedom.

  Freedom isn’t for the likes of me and Esther.

  Oh they dangle it, of course they do. Just out of reach, in order to get us to take our incarceration seriously, join in with the endless rounds of psychologising, the games we play: Believing in our Rehabilitation; Engaging in the Recovery Process; Role-Playing the Victim, and the other exercises they dream up to justify the idea of a justice system.

  ‘Today,’ Lyn says, ‘I’d like to talk about your exit strategy, yes?’

  To every statement she appends this imperious ‘Yes?’ as if to imply that only the hard-of-hearing or the foolhardy could fail to see her point. Like a politician’s ‘Look’ at the front of whatever statement they’re trying to shove down the throats of the voting public: ‘Look at my empirical evidence, my emperor’s robes …’

  I’d like to talk about your exit strategy, yes?

  No, I want to say. Let’s not talk about exits. Let all doors be shut to me for ever. The way that manhole is shut over their little heads.

  I say, ‘Yes please.’

  Because, forgive me, I do want to get out.

  Note that I do not say I want to be free.

  I do not believe in my freedom. I do not believe it exists, but if it does? I know that I do not deserve it. I think the giving of it to the likes of me and Esther is risky, arrogant and fucking irresponsible, yes?

  Lyn’s hair is tightly permed and she’s skinny but muscular. Her skin is thin over her bones. You can see the veins everywhere on her body. She’s an X-ray. She tries to make her face look open, but it doesn’t work. It’s screwed as tight shut as the rest of her.

  She hates us. I truly believe that. She hates every single one of the women in here, because we’re weak. Because we fell, we slipped, and worse, we let ourselves down.

  Lyn would never let herself down. She’s far too wound up for that. She says, ‘You’ve started the process of the outside visits, yes?’ Her voice is like this: rat-a-tat-tat. She’s a one-woman watchtower, gunned, against the barbed wire.

  ‘Yes,’ I say meekly. ‘Yes.’

  The process of the outside visits – she means sitting in the hospital the other night, to see if anyone recognised Esther or, less likely, me.

  Alison Oliver, one-time maximum security prisoner, shortly to be on remand because the world isn’t full enough of crazy people, child killers, because there’s always room for one more, yes? How can this possibly go wrong?

  ‘I think,’ Lyn says, ‘that the next thing we need to talk about is your accommodation. You say that your mother …’

  I tune out. She doesn’t need me for this bit, her plans for my new place in society. She has a whole life mapped out for me. A bedroom in my mother’s place, complete with flowery curtains and a new bedspread, a Gideon bible in the drawer of the cabinet …

  ‘… mobile home, yes?’

  ‘What?’

  Lyn wrings a look of patience from her face. ‘Alison, we’re talking about your mother, Connie. She’s living in a mobile home now. You know this. You’ve had letters from her.’

  Oh yes, the letters. Esther sometimes reads a line or two to me. I don’t read them myself. I’m afraid I’ll read the word ‘forgiven’ – or, worse, that I won’t.

  My mother is a mystery to me. Two small boys died. She loved them. I know that for a fact. She loved them second-best of anyone in the world. If there’s anyone who should hate me more than I hate myself, who should be campaigning for m
e never to be released, it’s my mother. Instead, she’s offering me a hiding place.

  She’s told Lyn that she has a room in her mobile home for me. It’s one of the reasons they’ve put a date on my release, because I have somewhere to go when I get out of here.

  Esther doesn’t have that yet. But she will.

  If I’m getting out, there’s no way she will stay here.

  It’s unimaginable.

  If I’m getting out, she’s coming with me.

  That’s what scares me the worst.

  Esther’s coming too.

  21

  London

  No sign of Marnie on Blackthorn Road. Her car was parked at a short distance, under the trees. Noah was about to call her mobile when he saw her coming from the direction of the housing estate; she must’ve been checking on the house-to-house team.

  Noah had the building plans, showing boundaries and the route of the river. Seven neat boxes that looked like garden sheds but weren’t. Ian Merrick had told the truth.

  Seven bunkers, one per garden.

  Marnie’s head was down. She was checking her phone, the way Noah had just checked his. She was still checking when she reached his side.

  ‘Hey,’ Noah said in greeting. ‘Did you get lucky?’

  She looked up, her eyes guarded and dark. ‘What?’

  ‘House-to-house? I thought …’

  ‘No. I’ve not had the chance to check in.’

  She turned to look in the direction of the estate. ‘Any sign of the press yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Good. Tell the PCSO to let us know as soon as they get here. I have another house-to-house team coming to speak to the Doyles’ neighbours, so that they don’t get a nasty surprise when the reporters land.’

  ‘I’ve got the plans.’ Noah unfolded the sheet, showing her the evidence of the bunkers.

  Marnie studied it. ‘This hatching means – what? That they’re filled in?’

  Noah nodded. ‘According to the planning office. They said the official who signed the paperwork retired a couple of years ago, so it might be a dead end. Ron and I looked at the site selling the tinned peaches. Lots of customers call themselves preppers. Preppers are—’