Tastes Like Fear (D.I. Marnie Rome 3)

by Sarah Hilary

  ‘Just one.’ Debbie handed Marnie a print-off. ‘Eric James Mackay. Fifteen years old, missing from care since 2012. Criminal record, so don’t be taken in by the sweet face.’ The photo showed a dark-haired boy with high cheekbones and a shy smile; one of those almost-familiar faces that so many missing children seemed to share. ‘This was taken when he was twelve.’

  ‘What were the charges?’

  ‘Kick and run. Malicious damage. Nothing major, but he could’ve been in worse trouble since.’

  ‘No recent sightings,’ Noah said. ‘Not much to go on, and the photo’s out of date if he’s fifteen now. Joel called him a psycho. You can bet he doesn’t look like that any longer.’

  Marnie studied the photograph, wondering what Eric Mackay looked like now. Had he, like Stephen, shed his angelic disguise, become a shaven-headed thug?

  ‘Send a copy of this to my phone.’ She handed the photograph back to Debbie. ‘And to DS Jake’s. We should show it to Joel and the others, see if they can identify him as the boy they knew. Christie is using this subway to collect kids. May and Ashleigh, now Loz. We should trace anyone who used it as a place to hang out, anyone who might know Christie and where she’s taking these children. Our priority is finding Loz. Commander Welland is pulling in help with house-to-house and CCTV checks. We’re on this until we find her. DS Jake?’

  Noah followed Marnie into her office. She sat behind the desk, connecting her phone to its charger. He took the seat opposite, waiting to hear what she was thinking.

  ‘We need to be careful with Grace,’ she said. ‘Kenickie’s double-parked outside her hospital room wanting to make an arrest. DS Carling’s somewhat sympathetic to his cause.’

  ‘Ron’s upset about Emma,’ Noah said. ‘He can’t believe he misread her so badly.’

  ‘It’ll be worse when he sees the statement I took from Jodie Izard. She makes Grace sound like the sort of girl who’d get a kick out of causing a traffic accident, even a fatal one.’ Marnie pushed her hair from her face, and reached for her phone when it rang. ‘DI Rome.’ Her face tensed as she listened. ‘You realise this is a murder investigation? Good. Do that.’ She got to her feet, motioning for Noah to do the same. To the caller, she said, ‘I’ll see you at the station.’

  She hung up and reached for her coat. ‘That was Adam Fletcher.’

  ‘The journalist?’ Noah remembered Fletcher from their investigation six months ago. His name had been on the media party list from Battersea. ‘What’s he got?’

  Marnie was at the door. ‘Jamie Ledger.’ She pocketed her phone. ‘Or so he says.’

  Adam Fletcher looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week, blue circles under his eyes, blue stubble on his chin. In chinos and a white T-shirt, boat shoes on his bare feet. Not enough clothes for the weather; he shivered as he jerked his head at Noah, before focusing on Marnie.

  ‘You’re looking for Ledger,’ he said, ‘but he’s not your killer.’

  ‘Where is he? You said you had a good idea.’

  ‘He took me to this place in Mitcham six weeks ago.’ Fletcher gave Noah the address. ‘Used to be a family planning clinic about a hundred years ago, bought by an American who’s waiting for permission to convert it into a glass box. Right now it’s boarded up, aluminium sheeting, the works. But Ledger knew a way in. Had a camping stove, bottled water, a sleeping bag. Said he wasn’t living there, just a place he could crash, off radar.’

  ‘And you were interested why?’ Marnie asked.

  ‘For the irony.’ Adam shrugged his shoulders. ‘Family planning clinic bought by a Texan developer with links to pro-life campaigners? I know an editor who’d love that story.’

  ‘You met Ledger at the Battersea media party, is that right?’

  Adam nodded. ‘Said he had a story about the developers taking backhanders. I wasn’t convinced he had anything worth paying for, not at Battersea, but he said he knew other places with dodgy developers on board. So I gave him fifty quid and he took me to Mitcham.’

  ‘When were you last in touch with him?’

  ‘Two, three weeks ago?’ Adam shook his head. ‘Long before you started finding bodies.’

  ‘You said he’s not the killer.’ Noah was searching his phone for details of the derelict clinic in Mitcham. He glanced up, wanting to see the man’s response. ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘I’ve met killers,’ Adam said inflexibly. ‘He’s not crazy enough.’

  ‘He’s breaking the law,’ Marnie said. ‘Trespassing. Squatting. And he’s been missing since we started a double murder investigation.’

  ‘Whoever put May Beswick up there wants to be seen. Ledger doesn’t want that.’

  ‘He had access to the penthouse,’ Noah said. ‘He was working there the night May died.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet you’re kicking yourselves that you didn’t arrest him when you had the chance.’ Adam shoved his hands into his pockets, goose bumps on his arms. ‘Look, am I making a statement or what? Only I’m freezing my bollocks off out here.’

  ‘You’re making a statement,’ Marnie said shortly. ‘What number do you have for Ledger?’

  Adam thumbed through his phone, showed Noah the screen. ‘He’s not answering.’

  Noah put the number into his phone and dialled it.

  ‘You’ve been calling him,’ Marnie said.

  ‘Since you found May. Knew he wasn’t the killer. Wanted to see if he had anything, though.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘God knows. Like I said, he isn’t answering. Didn’t think it was a big deal until I saw his mugshot in the paper this morning.’

  ‘It was on the TV news last night.’

  ‘Didn’t catch it. Are we done?’

  Marnie looked at Noah, who shook his head. Ledger’s number had rung several times before it went to a generic voicemail. ‘Anything else we should know about this place in Mitcham?’ he asked Adam. ‘Such as how to get inside, and whether he has weapons of any kind in there.’

  ‘No weapons that I could see. We used a fire escape at the back of the place next door. Two floors up, you can cross into the clinic. It’s a bit dodgy, but at least you won’t be doing it after dark.’

  ‘That’s how you got the bruises,’ Marnie said. ‘On your hands and feet.’

  ‘He warned me to wear gloves.’ Adam crooked his mouth. ‘I thought he was worried about fingerprints, but he meant climbing. You’ll want good shoes, too.’

  Like Dan’s Red Chili climbing shoes from his days with the place-hackers. Ledger wasn’t a place-hacker. Just someone who liked, or needed, to go off radar. Riff had said security guards sometimes took bribes to turn a blind eye. Had Ledger done that? Or something worse?

  ‘Forget the shoes,’ Adam said. ‘You’ll be going through the front door, I guess.’

  Marnie nodded. ‘They’ll take a full statement inside.’

  She watched him go into the station. When he was out of earshot, she said, ‘The girls weren’t held in a derelict building.’

  ‘We didn’t think so,’ Noah agreed. ‘And Mitcham’s outside the radius we drew for places where Ledger was working, but it’s not far out. We should get it checked. He could have moved once he realised we were on to him.’

  ‘All right, let’s organise it.’ Marnie nodded. ‘I’ll check in with the hospital and see how Grace is doing. Keep in touch.’

  47

  Aimee

  I was dreaming, which was never good, but this was worse because it was about May.

  She was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, on the white tiles with the light making her hair shine. Smiling at me the way she always did, because she always knew. The only one I couldn’t hide from. None of the others saw me. Not Ashleigh, or Grace. They only saw Harm’s good girl, his sick girl.

  May was standing on the white tiles with her bare feet like mine only smaller, pinker. Her hair was loose and the light was making her nightdress see-through. I could see her stomach and her breasts, everything. She was be
autiful. I wanted to touch her.

  I knew what Ashleigh would say, her and the others.

  They’d call me a lezzer, a freak. But May knew. She saw me.

  Under the clothes he made us wear, the skirts and tights. Under his uniform. Like dolls, but I was a Russian doll, hiding inside another that was hiding inside another that was …

  I held out my hand to May and she took it, pulling it to the front of her nightdress.

  Cool cotton under my hand, hot skin under that.

  I was touching her.

  She was saying my name, asking me to tell her what I was hiding, who was inside.

  I shouldn’t have done it, I know.

  I shouldn’t have done any of it.

  But I did.

  48

  The derelict clinic in Mitcham was brown inside, sticky floors, walls stained by smoke. On the second floor the roof let in the rain, broken tiles and plaster littering the floor.

  Camping stove, sleeping bag, bottled water. Just as Adam Fletcher had said.

  Pigeon droppings rotted the floor, an acid taste on Noah’s tongue. He stood at the side of Ledger’s makeshift bed, trying to measure this half-life. Not even half a life; less than that.

  Ledger had been in Afghanistan, returning shell-shocked, struggling to adjust to civilian life. Perhaps this was preferable to living in a house, faking a degree of normality. Preferable to the mould at Paradise House. He’d been alone here. The neatness of the stove, the sleeping bag – he’d been on his own. Off radar. The aluminium windows sucked up the sound of traffic and people and planes, as if six radios were playing simultaneously at a distance. Life’s soundtrack happening outside, elsewhere. How often had Ledger woken on this floor, shouting from nightmares? Maybe it was better to have them here, away from people.

  Noah turned a slow circle under the sagging ceiling.

  Light through the brickwork picked out the dimpled plastic of the water bottles, the metal zip of the sleeping bag. Otherwise, it was dark despite the sunshine outside. Cold, too. Beneath the rotting plaster and pigeons he could smell tobacco. He crouched on his heels, moving a gloved hand under the edge of the sleeping bag, keeping the beam of his torch on the same spot.

  Tucked underneath the nylon bag – a battered yellow and green tin.

  Noah opened it, shining the torch inside.

  Shredded tobacco and cigarette papers.

  In the pinched red shred of the tobacco, he could see the precise shape of Ledger’s thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Nothing in Mitcham,’ Noah told Marnie when he was back in the fresh air. ‘He was here, on his own, but not in a while. There’s a good layer of dust on the stove, and the sleeping bag’s growing mould. It’s a dump, beats Paradise House even. I wouldn’t want my worst enemy living like this.’

  He looked up at the building, its boarded windows scrawled by graffiti. ‘How’s Grace?’

  ‘The doctor’s with her. Fluids helped to calm her down, but I’m not sure we’ll get much sense out of her in the next few hours.’

  Noah heard the frustration in her voice. ‘No sightings of Loz and Christie?’

  ‘None. Colin’s looked at every route away from the subway on foot or by car. If she was in a car, I think we’d have something by now. The CCTV on the roads is good. Much patchier if they were on foot. I’m thinking Christie knew which route to take to avoid the cameras.’

  ‘Makes sense. She’s been taking kids for months now.’

  Noah started walking in the direction of the tramlink. ‘I’m headed back to the station, unless you want me somewhere else.’

  ‘I’ll see you there.’

  ‘It’s me,’ Marnie said.

  ‘Hey.’ Ed was at work, office white noise in the background. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Loz Beswick’s missing. We think she’s with the killer.’

  ‘Shit. How …?’

  Marnie touched her hand to the ignition key, but didn’t start the car. She was waiting for news from the doctor who was with Grace. The car was quiet, and it was private. ‘Loz knew where May went when she wasn’t at home. It was all in her sketchpad, hidden in Loz’s room. A pedestrian subway in Stockwell. Loz was there this morning; now she’s gone. A young woman took her. Three kids saw Loz leave with her. They didn’t think it was anything to be worried about.’

  Joel and Corin and Daisy, sucking on her gingerbread latte, knowing a killer was at large but unable to link that fact to their lives, or to Loz’s life. Believing themselves immune.

  ‘We found the girl from the Traffic accident,’ she continued. ‘Grace Bradley. She’s in hospital but she’ll be okay, at least I hope so. She knows where this woman takes the girls but she can’t help us, not yet. A trauma specialist is with her, but it’s taking too long. We need to find Loz quickly. He’s killed two girls already.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘I don’t think the woman taking them is the killer. But I may be wrong.’ Marnie shut her eyes for a second against the craze of light coming from the hospital’s windows. ‘I went to Sommerville this morning.’ Dancing to Stephen’s tune, and she’d broken her promise to take Ed with her the next time she went there. ‘It was connected to the case; one of the girls said she recognised Grace from the news last night.’ She reached her free hand to the steering wheel, picking at a patch of fraying plastic. ‘I saw Stephen. Not to speak to, but he was there. He’s … changed.’

  ‘How?’ Ed asked.

  ‘He’s working out. Getting strong. Maybe he’s scared about the move to adult prison.’

  ‘Did he look scared?’

  Smiling at her through the fireproofed glass, buzz cut showing the bones of his head. ‘No.’

  ‘But you’re okay,’ Ed said.

  ‘I should have spent more time with Loz. Asked better questions, helped her to trust me. She knew where May was going but she didn’t tell us. Any of us. She’s cut off from her parents and I knew that, but I thought she’d talk to me or Noah if she had any sort of evidence. She didn’t trust us to find May’s killer. She went looking for him, on her own. Ed, she’s thirteen.’

  ‘It wasn’t because she didn’t trust you. At that age? It’s just really hard to talk.’

  Marnie knew he was right, but she also knew that Loz would have talked to Ed. Everyone talked to Ed. It was his superpower.

  ‘This sketchpad we found in Loz’s room. Life studies, X-rated. I think Loz knew it was there, maybe she even hid it herself.’ Remembering the wire under her fingers, furred by paper torn from the pad. Had Loz torn pages out before she’d let her parents see it? If so, why? And which pages? ‘She was protecting May, and she was scared. Ashamed, too. The whole house is ashamed …’ She dropped her hand from the steering wheel. ‘I’m not making much sense, sorry. I’m tired.’

  ‘Where are you?’ Ed asked.

  ‘St Thomas’s, waiting to speak with Grace’s doctor. I’m all right. Better for being able to talk to you. Just wishing I’d done a decent job of talking to Loz when I had the chance. That shouldn’t have been impossible. I saw how it was for her in that house. I saw how lonely she was. And she asked me about the Forgiveness Project, about Stephen. I should’ve been able to make a connection – get her to talk, or to trust me.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up,’ Ed warned. ‘You need to stay on top of this.’

  ‘I know.’ She straightened and checked the mirror, wiping the self-loathing from her face. ‘The doctor should be finished with Grace soon. Then I have to try and find a way to get her to talk to me.’

  ‘Can I help?’ Ed offered.

  Victim Support.

  It was his job. His superpower. And Grace was afraid of Marnie, didn’t want to talk to the police.

  ‘I can be there in half an hour,’ Ed said. ‘If you need me.’

  She closed her eyes in relief. ‘Please.’

  49

  Christie sorted the dirty clothes into piles. Counted the water barrels in the kitchen. Checked the food levels and corrected the chart to s
how what was running low. They needed more fish, more grains, more powdered milk. She sorted the rubbish into black bags to put with the bins on the next street, where the houses were full of people. Counted batteries, and gas canisters for the stove. Her period was due, so she made a note to buy pads. Aimee was a late developer; she’d only had two periods in ten months but she wasn’t well, didn’t eat properly. Christie hadn’t told Harm about the bright red blood she’d seen in Aimee’s pads, too bright to be normal. Maybe Aimee really was sick and not just pretending, to keep Harm happy.

  A sound from the stairs, the mezzanine floor.

  Christie stood and listened, tensing until her neck cramped.

  Laura, exploring. Nosy. Dangerous. What would Harm make of her? Christie sucked a finger into her mouth, trying to put a name to the shaking under her skin. Not fear, or not just that. She’d done what he’d asked, brought him his new girl. Old girl. Ancient.

  What’d she done?

  She put down the shopping list and walked to the barrel, holding a glass under its tap until the glass was full and the barrel belched. She carried the glass from the kitchen, moving slowly so she could listen for Laura. She knew every creak in this place and every groan, heard the emptiness of Laura’s room as she stood with the glass in her fist. Upstairs …

  Laura had gone upstairs.

  Christie stood listening with her chest and the ends of her fingers, wet on the glass. A bubble burst in the water, its pressure pricking her thumb. If she looked down, she’d see her face lying in the glass, mouth squirming into a smile.

  Laura was walking across the floor of Aimee’s room, towards the bed.

  Another two steps and she’d be there, right at the side of the bed where Aimee was sleeping, or pretending to sleep. Christie knew all her tricks. She knew.

  Another step, one more.

  Why had she stopped? Because she was scared?

  Christie lifted the glass to her lips.

  The water tasted blue and dead.

  She stood and listened to the silence spreading and spreading overhead.