by Knight, Ali
He was mesmerising when he spoke, Darren had to admit. His voice was low and deep and he had a magnetism that made everything he said seem somehow sensible. ‘You say you know a lot about the regime at Roehampton, what things precisely? I want to know more about her,’ he said.
‘So do I. I’ve applied for court orders to see what she blathers to her psychiatrist, that your taxes and mine are paying for. I’ll win that in the end, I have no doubt.’
Darren seized on this. ‘So everything she says to her therapist is recorded?’
Orin snorted. ‘Every little thing! But she doesn’t need to talk to her psychiatrist, she needs to talk to me. Sodium thiopental. Ring any bells? It’s the truth drug. That’s how we’re going to find them, Darren. One day I’m going to stand over her as it’s pumped into her veins by legal decree and she is going to tell me where my daughter is. Where your sister is. Stand with me, and we’re one step nearer.’
Orin was certainly compelling and hard to ignore. What he was saying made a sort of twisted sense to Darren. He glanced at the photos on the wall again and found an uncomfortable recognition dawning. ‘Are those electric chairs?’
‘Sure are. I’ll campaign till the day I die to see her sit in one and fry – once she’s given up her secrets.’
‘So you don’t think she’s mad.’
Orin’s answer surprised Darren. ‘Of course she is! She’s insane, no question. Disturbances of the brain, chemical imbalances, are common, I believe. But just because you’re mad doesn’t mean you can’t be smart. Doesn’t mean you can’t lie and cheat and do your best to try and evade true justice.’ Orin reached down for a plastic bag behind the desk and pulled out a shirt still in its wrapper. He opened it and shook it out, began to unbutton the one he was wearing. ‘CNN are coming in ten,’ he added by way of explanation.
The tiny gold cross round Orin’s thick neck made his hairy chest, flecked with grey hairs, look enormous. Darren looked away. When he looked back, Orin was still staring at him.
‘I heard she sees a befriender?’
A look of disgust crossed Orin’s face. ‘You want to become a befriender, young gun? Spend your time giving a prisoner such as a rapist or a murderer the pleasure of your company, of your humanity?’ He buttoned his cuffs. ‘They are a security breach of the first order. Remember, that monster Duvall is a burrower. Killers like her, they have a perverse power that people underestimate. She can burrow into your psyche, make wrong seem right. Before you know it, you’re sleeping with the enemy.’
His eyes hadn’t left Darren’s face. ‘Heard about that prison guard a few years back?’ Darren swallowed. ‘The man was having an affair with her, professed to love her. That’s what I’m talking about. John Sears, her befriender, is an apologist for violence and pain.’
Orin began buttoning up his new shirt, poking the collar skywards as he reached for a tie from the drawer. ‘You have got it bad! These heinous crimes reverberate down the generations. Do you have survivor’s guilt, Darren? It’s a common psychological condition among those close to people who were taken or killed; the why not me, the why did I survive pain. It can turn a man’s head, make them obsessed.’
Darren sat still, rubbing his hand down his trousers. What Orin was saying was true; real.
Orin pulled his collar back down and ran a hand down the front of his shirt, watching him. There was silence in the room, the faint thrum of barges on the river. ‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was soft now and full of sympathy. ‘The pain you feel at your loss is something I understand. I wish it wasn’t so.’
Darren swallowed. ‘Mr Bukowski, I want to know why she buried Molly there, where she may have left the others. I want to find my sister. For my mother’s sake, I really need to find her.’ And then he was in a rush, years of doing nothing transformed into a desperate urgency as he pulled out the map of where Molly was buried. He stood up and laid it on Orin’s desk and began to explain the things that appeared on it, but Orin interrupted him.
‘Wait here.’ He stood up and left the office for a few moments before returning with a much larger scale map than Darren’s, mounted on card. He laid it on the desk and began pointing with a stubby finger. ‘This is her house where she grew up.’ His finger hovered over the green expanses and rolling hills of the Downs. ‘This is Brighton, where she killed them.’ His finger moved south to the blue of the English Channel. ‘This is where she buried her. She didn’t go far, did she?’ His finger moved to a small building near Molly’s burial site. ‘She rode at this stables when she was a teenager. Her sister owned a horse called Peanut.’ He tapped the map again. ‘Right here.’
Darren leaned in, drinking in this new information. ‘So she knew the spot well?’
‘The police searched the stables at the time, but they found nothing.’ Orin sat down in his chair and steepled his fingers. ‘Do you know that only ten per cent of murder victims are buried? You know why that is? Because it’s difficult. Getting deep enough so that the body isn’t uncovered by animals or discovered is harder still. But that’s not the hardest part. Do you know how difficult it is to carry a dead body by yourself, to dig a hole, all alone in the dark, to get the body in a car boot or a van …’ He tailed off.
‘But there was no trace of any of the girls in the boot of Duvall’s car—’
‘In that Renault Clio, no.’
‘Are you saying that you think there was somebody else who helped her?’
‘I don’t know, young gun, I don’t know.’ Orin smiled and even his very white and even teeth couldn’t hide the sadness in it. ‘Come with me.’ He pushed back his chair and led Darren out of his office and across the lobby to a windowless room filled with filing cabinets, a humming computer and a map table. There was low-level lighting and a couple of chairs. ‘I call this the nerve centre. I have researchers who come and sift through the evidence I’ve collected. I have all this, but nothing would beat hearing from Duvall herself. Somewhere in the tangled mess of her insanity lies the truth about where our loved ones are.’ He banged his hand in frustration on the table. ‘If I could just talk to her!’
She talks to me, Darren thought, she talks to me.
‘This is all yours, if you join my campaign, become a signed-up member of The Missing.’ Orin shut the door, barring the prizes from sight. ‘Come and stand next to me at events, lobby MPs for what we want. We stand together as the bereaved fighting for the rights of the missing.’
Darren liked the idea, but considering what he was doing at Roehampton, it was impossible. And there was another problem. ‘My parents wouldn’t like it.’
‘I forgive them, but you’re an adult now. Make your own decision.’
‘With respect, none of the other families are with you.’
Orin stuck a fat finger into the gap between collar and neck and ran it round. ‘Grief doesn’t curtail ambition, Darren. A group thrown together only because their loved ones were murdered will always have its differences. But you’re a new generation, a fresh start.’
Darren nodded, thinking about Olivia in that small room after she had murdered Linda. ‘Does the name Rollo mean anything to you?’
‘Rollo?’ Orin shook his head. ‘No. We’re holding a televised rally in Hyde Park on Thursday – come and stand next to me on the podium. Every scrap of information, every file I have, is all yours after that.’
Darren looked with regret back at the room full of files. ‘I have to have a think about it.’
‘Don’t think too long. No good ever came of it.’ Orin walked back into his office, Darren following. ‘I’ve never hidden my private wealth. I can dedicate it to getting justice, others aren’t so lucky.’ He gave Darren the bone-crushing handshake again. ‘Thursday. Think about it.’
Darren nodded and began to walk out of the lobby. ‘I will.’
‘God be with you,’ Orin called as he left the room.
33
Orin waited for the sound of the lift to tell him that Darren had left the building.
He checked his watch, took another look at the view, made sure his office door was shut and opened the locked drawer in his huge desk. He took out the washbag and walked into the en suite bathroom. He had searched all over the capital for the right building, he hadn’t cared if there was a view, an iconic London location, or something TV-presentable. He had needed only a bathroom with a window that opened, wide, and that no one could see from surrounding offices.
He locked the door and took out the crack pipe, spent a few minutes getting prepared. He plugged in the blow heater that he kept under the sink and that would help push the fumes out of the window.
Everything he’d said to Darren was true. Grief twisted people into shapes they wouldn’t recognise, made them do things they could never have imagined. The discovery of Molly’s remains had thrown him off course, had forced him to travel down the dark alleys of horror all over again. He was drowning and the pipe helped him float in the froth at the top for a little while.
He had contacts in the Sussex police, of course he did, he was Orin Bukowski, whose daughter had been central to the biggest missing persons hunt of recent years. What he had been tipped off about just this morning, in confidence, because confirmation was still needed, would make the most hardened man quake.
He took a big lungful and waited for the hit. Public life was a gruelling performance, mental jousting and entertainment rolled into one. He would give the TV networks a show in ten minutes that would keep his daughter front and centre. That was his life’s work: to keep her name alive. She no longer was, but her name would live on for ever. His money and his hard work and his determination and his outrage would make it so.
Darren had fallen unexpectedly into his lap. He was a relative. Relatives were table stakes in the political influence game, and he had no others. His forthright methods had scared all the other families away a long time ago. There was a terrible passivity to the Brits that he hated. Put up and shut up was their credo; he could do that in the grave.
He needed Darren, even though the bombed-out hippy image would be tough to PR. What he couldn’t work out was what Darren needed from him.
He cleaned the pipe, put the heater away, left the window open and came back into his office. He felt invincible, chemicals racing through his brain and his heart, synapses crackling. He opened his door and called to his secretary. ‘Can you copy the contents of the summary file and send it to Darren Evans. His parents’ details are in their file.’
34
Nathan was on duty as Darren queued to get through the security checkpoint to enter Roehampton, and for that Darren gave a silent prayer. He believed he was getting somewhere; he potentially had a powerful new ally in Orin Bukowski, someone who shared his obsession with uncovering the truth. What he discovered in here, allied with what Orin had in his office, could be the break he was so desperate for.
He was sweating with fear. He had gone far beyond what he thought he was capable of just a few weeks ago; his audacious rule-breaking now tipping into outright criminality. Helen’s key was deep in the matted twists and locks of his hair near the back of his neck. It had survived a cycle ride from Streatham across south London, and he thought it was secure enough to get him through the metal detectors. He knew only too well that if he were found with anything suspicious he would be arrested.
He passed through the metal detector and beeped. Nathan smiled and beckoned him over. Darren began to panic; he didn’t want Nathan to have to find him out. He wanted to run, turn tail and sprint away, but Nathan’s gym-pumped arms were already at his shoulder. Yassir the cleaner was behind him in the queue and he called out to Nathan: ‘You, you Bradley Cooper?’
Nathan grinned and Darren laughed. It was a little bit of luck and it made Darren sure that he would be OK. He held his breath as Nathan felt behind his neck and down his back. ‘On you go. You have a good day now.’
‘You too, Bradley,’ Darren said and passed inside.
He was put on office cleaning duty and he realised this must be tied to his promotion to a Level Two cleaner. He wasn’t going to complain. He pushed the cleaning trolley into security control and watched the monitors to try to calm himself down. He said hello to Sonny and Corey and began to hoover the corridor, inching towards Helen’s office. He noticed with relief that only a couple of the offices were occupied today; Helen’s was empty. He needed to act fast. He opened Helen’s office door and turned on the light. There was no bag by the desk, or jacket on the hook so she could be away for the day – or just about to arrive. He kept the door partly open and picked up the dustcloth.
He took a deep breath, moved into the room, walked to the large grey cabinet and pulled the key from his hair, inserted it in the lock and turned.
It opened easily, but it screeched on its rails to an alarming degree. He ran back to the door and looked out, but the corridor was empty. A moment later he was back with the files, working at a frenzied pace. The first drawer contained files labelled A-C. He pulled open the middle drawer. D contained five files, none of them Olivia’s. He found O. It wasn’t there either.
He forced himself to listen for noise in the corridor, then opened the bottom drawer. There were a selection of unlabelled files, but none of them were hers.
He shut the cabinet and locked it. He put the key back in his hair. He wanted to scream with frustration.
He cleaned the rest of the room, then did two more offices. He put the ‘cleaning in progress’ sign up outside the women’s toilets and began to push the trolley through the swing door. He saw Helen walking towards him from the end of the corridor. She looked serious and didn’t acknowledge him.
He turned away, full of resentment about the key, as if the missing file was her fault. She didn’t move along.
‘Can you come in here for a moment please?’ She opened the door to the women’s toilets and disappeared inside.
Darren looked up and down the corridor, a dull panic beginning to throb in his jaw. Had he been found out, was she about to confront him? He wondered wildly for a moment whether the filing cabinet had been alarmed and he was about to be unmasked, whether he could run for the exit, but knew it was hopeless. He followed her in like a man approaching the gallows.
She was leaning against the sinks it was his job to wipe. ‘Shall we go for that drink after all?’
‘Eh?’
She made a little movement of her head that made her hair fall over an eye. ‘Don’t be embarrassed, Darren, you made your feelings clear a few days ago.’ She smiled, but there was a tension cutting through the edges.
Darren grinned broadly with relief. He wasn’t about to be caught at all. He let out a large breath of air, freed to fight another day. But now he was caught in another net. He needed to let her down gently, not antagonise her. She would be a formidable enemy to make. He looked around, hoping the right words would magically be conjured from white floor tiles and strip lighting. He saw her red briefcase by her feet, the edge of a brown file like the ones in the cabinet in her office just visible inside.
Maybe Olivia’s file was in there, or at her house. ‘Er, yeah. OK.’
She gave a small laugh. ‘Guys your age are so articulate.’
‘Say what?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Her voice was light and playful. ‘So where would you like to go?’ Darren’s mind was a complete blank. Where did you take a woman old enough to be your mother? She smiled again, humouring him. ‘We could meet in Barnes, there’s a pub near the river. We’re unlikely to bump into anyone we know there. How does tonight sound?’ He nodded. ‘I’ll meet you in the Prince Albert, 8.30 p.m.,’ she went on.
There was silence, Darren just staring at her because he didn’t know what to say.
She moved past him to the door. ‘Don’t be late. I find that annoying.’ And then she was gone.
35
The pub in Barnes was big and done up in a style that tried to suggest quirky country house but in fact made it look like every boozer in the Home Counties. It
was very, very expensive. Darren had travelled there on the bus after wolfing down a leftover meal of cold chicken and oven chips, but Helen insisted on taking a table and having a steak that cost £18, so he drank and watched her eat and drink. She drank a lot – and talked even more – but seemed to stay sober all night. He could see where the line of her wedding ring had left a pale imprint on her finger.
It was a lot of fun talking to her. She was so refreshing after the usual girls he took out – not that there were very many of them – and she asked lots of questions about his course and what he wanted to do with his life. Normally the girls he dated talked about themselves all the time. She insisted on paying and he didn’t stop her. ‘Let me spend my money my way,’ she said, brandishing a black credit card.
They came out of the pub and he wondered what was going to happen now. She hailed a black cab. ‘Come back to mine, I want to show you my etchings. I’m being serious, I really do have etchings.’
Darren was up for anything and as the taxi coasted to a stop he gallantly pulled the door open for her. ‘Hey, this door opens backwards.’
She stopped for a second and smiled. ‘Darren, is this your first time in a black cab?’
He shrugged, feeling a little ashamed. ‘You know what they used to say, no taxis ever went south of the river.’ She watched indulgently as he spent the next few minutes playing with all the buttons inside the cab.
Helen lived in a block of flats so modern there was suede lining the walls by the lift. ‘You can run your hands over it, it feels nice,’ she said. He did, and his fingers left a tracery of lines in the surface, as if a ghost had passed this way. When she unlocked the door to her flat he saw that the living area had floor-to-ceiling windows and a view of the river.
‘Wow, this is cool.’ He jumped across the back of a corner sofa and landed on the cushions.
