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

by Sarah Hilary

  ‘Who’s Gracie?’

  ‘She lived here too. She was the first to go. The day before May … before May went.’

  ‘You mean Gracie’s dead as well?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He frowned. ‘Maybe. If Ashleigh’s dead.’

  He didn’t believe it. Or he didn’t care.

  ‘Does Grace have red hair?’ Loz asked.

  Eric nodded. He was so skinny and pretty. She had to remind herself how strong he’d been when he grabbed her.

  ‘And she writes on herself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s not dead. At least I don’t think so. She caused a car crash, the night before May was found. The police are looking for her.’

  ‘Do they know you’re here?’

  Should she lie? Tell him she had backup, that the place was surrounded? That was what they’d do on a TV show, or in a book.

  ‘Maybe. I’m not sure. They’ll be looking for me.’ She glanced at the window, her eyes stinging suddenly. ‘Mum and Dad’ll be freaking out.’

  ‘Why did you come?’ he demanded. ‘You thought I’d killed her, that’s what you said. Why did you come here if you thought that?’

  ‘I wanted to know for sure. No one would tell me anything. All I had was this.’ She took the page from her pocket, torn from May’s sketchpad, carefully so DI Rome and DS Jake wouldn’t notice it was missing. Christie’s face, like a bad photo, but it was her. May didn’t draw faces like bad photos, not unless there was something wrong with the person she was drawing. On the same page, her sketch of the subway, grass growing around the entrance, graffiti on its walls. Loz had torn the page at random, knowing the police would take the sketchpad, but needing this evidence of where May had gone. ‘She drew you, too.’ She’d left Aimee’s face in the sketchpad, for DI Rome, along with all the other sketches of the subway.

  Eric stared at the picture of Christie as if he hated her. ‘It’s not safe here.’

  ‘It’s not safe anywhere. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Why you haven’t tried to leave.’

  ‘I was in trouble with the police. I thought I’d be arrested. May said it wouldn’t happen. She said she’d keep me safe, but it wasn’t for her to do that.’ He rubbed weakly at his eyes. ‘I should’ve been the one looking after her, not the other way round.’

  ‘Because you’re a boy and she’s a girl? That’s stupid.’

  ‘I wasn’t good enough for her. She deserved someone better.’

  ‘She chose you, didn’t she? Over us.’ Her nose burned with held-in tears. ‘Over me.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘She talked about you all the time. How brave you were. She wished she was more like you, that’s what she said. She made me want to meet you. She loved you.’

  ‘Stop it.’ Her legs felt funny, rubbery. ‘Stop saying shit to make me feel better. Stop lying.’

  ‘I’m not lying.’ He came towards her, holding out his hand. ‘She told me you’d make the best auntie in the world because you were so brave. Nothing scared you, not really, not for long. If the world gave you shit, you gave it straight back. That’s what she said.’

  Loz shook her head. Her throat was so swollen and salty she couldn’t speak.

  ‘She was brave too.’ Eric took her hand and held it. His fingers were cold. ‘She stood up to Harm. Not like Grace did, by shouting or fighting. Quietly. She kept me sane. I’d have gone mad without her. I was going mad … She’s the bravest person I ever met.’

  Loz blinked. Her shoulders wouldn’t stop shaking.

  ‘She’d have fought for us.’ Eric put his arms around her. ‘If I’d let her. And she loved you. She loved you.’

  ‘Then why did she leave me?’ Loz sobbed. ‘Alone with them? If she loved me, why did she leave me on my own?’

  ‘She was coming back.’ He was crying too. ‘She was. We were going to live together. You and me and her. And the baby. We were going to be together.’

  He was making the side of her neck wet.

  Loz pulled away. ‘I’m going.’ She rubbed her face dry, wiping snot from her hands on to her jumper. ‘Are you coming with me?’

  He stared at her. ‘You can’t just … leave.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She won’t let you.’

  ‘Christie? She let me keep my phone.’

  ‘She won’t just let you go. Especially not now.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You know about Harm, this place.’ He half shut his eyes. ‘Dead girls, you said. Murders.’

  ‘So? You’re not going to tell her. You’re too scared.’

  ‘I don’t have to tell her,’ Eric said. ‘She already knows.’

  ‘What?’ Her head throbbed with confusion. ‘How?’

  ‘She’s been out there the whole time. Listening.’

  Loz looked at the closed door, feeling sick. ‘She …’

  ‘Listens. It’s what she does.’ He stared at the door like he loathed it. ‘It’s who she is.’

  The handle of the door held the light.

  A brass handle, dark brown with a lick of white running through it. No lock. A heavy door, the kind that shut itself with a chain even when you tried to leave it open.

  Loz thought of all the rooms she had to get through to get out of here. Then the stairs, flight after flight of stairs before she was safe in the street.

  ‘We need to go. Now, while it’s just her. Before Harm gets back.’

  ‘Too late.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can’t you feel him?’ Eric hadn’t stopped staring at the door, hating it with his whole face, his body tight as a fist. ‘He’s back. He got back while we were talking.’

  His eyes burned at the door. ‘He’s here.’

  54

  ‘Grace remembers stairs leading up to the rooms where they were being kept. At least a dozen flights of stairs. Inside the building.’ DC Terence Waywell pinned five photos to the board. Blocks of flats and offices, each with an address. ‘They didn’t use the main entrance, she says. There was a second entrance around the back. Like a social housing concession inside a private development.’

  ‘Poor doors,’ Debbie said. ‘Isn’t that what they call them?’

  Terence nodded. ‘That’s the sort of thing we’re after. Me and Col have narrowed it down to these five, based on what Grace can remember. Best thing would be to walk the route with her, working backwards from the crash site, but the hospital’s saying she isn’t fit for that yet. So this’s what we’ve got to work with.’

  ‘Don’t any of these places have proper security?’ Ron complained.

  ‘Let’s find out,’ Noah said. ‘Call the site managers, or whoever’s in charge of each place. We’re looking at a relatively small area. We don’t want to alert the killer by sending in teams to neighbouring sites. Let’s try and narrow it down as quickly as we can.’

  ‘The boss is still with Welland. Guess that means she’s having to beg for back-up. You’d think two dead girls would’ve got us SWAT teams coming out of our arses.’

  ‘We’ll only need one SWAT team,’ Noah said. ‘If we do the next bit right.’

  ‘This witness statement about Grace Bradley.’ Welland looked tired, the skin of his face too tight around the eyes. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘You think she can’t be trusted?’ Marnie asked.

  ‘No. I don’t like the source of the statement.’ He touched a hand to the paperwork. ‘You went to Sommerville for this. Why didn’t you send DC Tanner, or Waywell?’

  ‘It was quicker for me to go. They know me there. I was able to get what we needed and get back here, fast.’

  ‘With a young girl missing?’

  ‘We didn’t know at the time that Loz was missing. We didn’t know Grace was in Emma’s cupboard. We needed a witness statement from Jodie Izard and it made sense for me to get it.’

  Welland hooded his eyes from her. ‘Did you see Stephen Keele when you were there?’

 
; ‘Not to speak to,’ she said truthfully.

  ‘But you saw him.’ His expression was unforgiving, censure a distant outpost. It stung her, the way it always did. She wanted Welland’s approval, and not just because he was her boss.

  ‘Yes, he was there. Look, Eric Mackay’s in the place where the girls are being kept. Christie, Eric and this man Harm. I need a hostage negotiator. I’d like Toby Graves if he’s available.’

  ‘Noted. Who do we think is the more dangerous of the three? The survivalist, Harm? Christie Faulk, who’s luring the girls away? Or this boy who’s pretending to be something he’s not?’

  ‘I don’t know. We have to assume all three are dangerous.’

  ‘But only one of them,’ Welland pressed the taut skin above his left eye, ‘is a killer.’

  ‘Probably, yes.’

  ‘A lot of role-playing going on. A lot of smoke and mirrors. I don’t like it.’

  He could have been talking about Stephen, about the roles Stephen was playing. Foster-brother, senseless killer, police informant. ‘None of us likes it,’ Marnie said.

  ‘The press have latched on to the Beswicks. A second daughter missing. It’s making them look unlucky, or dodgy. Are you sure we shouldn’t be looking in that direction?’

  ‘I’m not ruling anything out. But their house is clean, no clues there. We need to find the place Grace ran from. We’re getting close, thanks to DC Waywell and Colin Pitcher.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. This is enough of an unholy mess. Would you believe I had the Mayor of London rattling my cage about foreign investment at Battersea? Corpses aren’t good for business, I’m told. Especially not young, pretty ones.’

  ‘Toby Graves,’ Marnie said. ‘And a SWAT team on standby. That’s what I need. I want to go in as soon as we have a location.’

  DC Waywell unpinned one of the photos from the board. ‘This one’s out. Stairs aren’t finished, according to the developers.’

  ‘The list’s coming down, that’s good. Keep at it.’

  Noah tried to see the evidence afresh, searching for a clue they’d missed, something to lead them to Loz. Her face looked back at him, big-eyed, accusatory. She hadn’t liked having her photo taken. Had she let her sister sketch her? She’d known about May’s sketches of the subway, where to search for her sister’s killer. Why hadn’t she given that lead to the police? Because she didn’t trust them to find the murderer, or because she was keeping her sister’s secrets?

  All teenagers kept secrets, that was part of growing up. Noah looked at the other girls on the board, their faces caught by the camera, slick with smiles but with the same accusation in their eyes. Who had looked out for them? No one. Grace’s photo was pinned below Logan Marsh’s, next to May’s post-mortem results. Pregnant; hypernatremic. Grace, falling from the cupboard at his feet, twitching. Both girls had been taught how to salt fish, how to survive. Taught by a killer. Trained …

  Noah’s hand moved to the photo of Jamie Ledger, hesitating there.

  Ron was talking on the phone in a low voice, ‘If I can, mate. We’re working all hours here. I’ve got to get on. Yeah, will do.’ He hung up, catching Noah’s eye. ‘Memorial service next week for Logan Marsh; his mum’s organising it. Kenickie wanted to know if we’d be going.’

  ‘How is Logan’s mum?’

  ‘Bearing up. Kenickie says the dad’s staying out of the picture. Guilt, he reckons. Logan’s mates are helping out. They’ve put up a Facebook page about his volunteer work, stuff he did for charity. He was a bit of a local hero. I know we’ve got other things to think about, but I’m going to try and make it to the service. He was just a kid, like the others.’ Ron pinched his nose hard with his fingers. ‘Think we’ll find her in time? Loz Beswick.’

  ‘Not like this,’ Noah said. ‘Let’s eliminate more of these sites.’

  Ron nodded and picked up the phone.

  Noah went to his desk, pulling up the profile he’d been working on, for the killer.

  White male, mid forties, loner. It read like a textbook entry. Psycho 101. That felt wrong, for starters. The profile matched Jamie Ledger, but Grace insisted he wasn’t the man who’d given her a home. Harm, with his rules, obsessed with sickness, survival. Three teenage girls and Eric Mackay, pretending to be a fourth. Was it Eric who’d got May pregnant?

  Noah’s phone buzzed and he took the call. ‘DS Jake.’

  ‘It’s Riff. Dan’s mate? You got a minute? Only I think I might know how your killer got that girl’s body into Battersea.’

  ‘How?’ Noah reached for a pen and paper.

  ‘Tunnels. Really big fucking tunnels right under the river. Used for siphoning off steam to heat the council estates over in Pimlico, right up until the early eighties. Didn’t mention them before because we all thought they’d been sealed off at ground level, but I checked with a couple of contacts, who seem to think there’s access to the boiler room. You said the penthouse was above the boiler room? I thought you’d want to know.’

  ‘Access to the boiler room, from underground? From these tunnels?’

  ‘Yeah, who knew?’ Riff sounded nostalgic for his old life. ‘This’s what I meant when I talked about vanishing points – fucking miles of tunnels, and who knew?’

  ‘Who did know? Can you give me the names of your friends?’

  ‘Contacts,’ Riff corrected. ‘Sorry, no. I could give you their online aliases, but I’m not sure how much use those’d be. You should check on site, though. Not much point in them lying about this, and like I said, the tunnels are a matter of public record. Public record says they’re sealed off, but since they say that about every place in London that’s been rinsed …’

  ‘I’ll look into it, thanks.’

  ‘Sure.’ Riff rang off.

  ‘Something?’ Ron asked.

  ‘A way into Battersea Power Station we didn’t know about, assuming the source is reliable. I’ll call the site manager, Aaron Buxton, but this may need a visit back out there.’

  ‘We don’t have time, unless it’s going to help us find Loz and these loonies.’

  ‘Maybe it is.’ Noah pointed at the map on the board. ‘We’re talking tunnels. If the killer used them to get into the power station, he or she could be using them right now. It could be why Christie and Loz didn’t show up on any of the CCTV footage from Stockwell.’

  ‘Underground … Shit. You’ve just doubled our hunting ground.’

  Noah nodded. ‘We need to check it out.’

  55

  Christie

  ‘Harm is home.’ Christie ignored the thing on the bed. ‘He wants to meet you.’

  Loz was shaking all over, her face a mess, smeared with tears. Whiter than the bed. Laura, she’d said her name was. She’d lied.

  ‘Don’t be scared.’ Christie could smell her. ‘He doesn’t like you to be scared.’

  To Eric, she said, ‘You’d better stay there.’

  Disgust on her tongue like a pellet of gum with all the flavour chewed out of it. She wanted to strip the bed. Set fire to it. Bleach out the stains, the lies. Drag that thing by its fringe and throw it at the floor, at the walls. But she couldn’t. Harm would want to do it. Harm would have to see what he’d shut up in here, what he’d been looking after. He wouldn’t believe it from Christie, or anyone else. He’d have to see it with his own eyes, and then … he’d want to deal with it.

  She waited at the door for Loz. ‘He’s in the kitchen.’

  She pointed for the girl to go ahead of her, down the stairs.

  Eric didn’t move, half hidden under the covers of the bed.

  A patch of sun sat on the carpet at the side of the bed where Christie was supposed to kneel, worrying and praying, where she would never now kneel. Her tongue tasted grey.

  ‘He’s waiting,’ she told Loz. ‘In the kitchen.’

  Harm was heating rice, his neck bent over the stove, nursing the thin flame with the curl of his palm. Candlelight licked at his back from the table laid with cutlery, plat
es. A spicy smell from the stove, red and green. For a second it was the same, just for a second.

  ‘This is Loz.’ Christie stood out of the light, letting Harm see the new girl. Using her real name, not the lie she’d told Christie.

  Harm was busy with the flame under the food, but he smiled across his shoulder. ‘Hello, Loz. Welcome to the family.’

  Christie leaned into the smile, jealous of the girl standing at her side, shaking so hard she might fall down, stinking of fear.

  The shadow of Harm’s hand fell across the table, among the forks and knives. ‘I hope you like curry.’ The stove puttered, purring when he coaxed it, stirring at the rice in the billy can.

  Loz said, ‘Yes.’ Her voice was dried up, rattling in her throat like a coin in a tin. She was keeping her eyes away from the weapons on the table.

  Try it, go on.

  Christie thought of the boy upstairs that Harm had protected. Shelter, warmth, food, love – all for that. Aimee. The locks, the lights. Barrels of water, batteries. The thirsty ache in her gut making her feet dance at night, tremors in her thighs and fingers until she wanted to crawl under Harm just to keep still, just to be kept quiet and still by the weight of him.

  She’d helped him, after May. When he came home from the power station, bent and weeping under the weight of what he’d done, she’d made a promise that he’d never be alone like that again. She’d taken care of Ashleigh. Got rid of his leavings, the way she’d once cleared the corpse of a mouse from the kitchen floor before her mother could curse the cat for doing what it was normal for a cat to do. It was normal for Harm, too. Christie understood. Death wasn’t the worst thing, wasn’t even close to the worst thing. He’d said nothing after Ashleigh, not thank you, not anything. He’d gone looking for Grace, as if he wanted her back. Christie didn’t look for thanks. She’d do it again, whatever he asked, whatever he needed. She owed him and she understood; he could keep his hands off them until he couldn’t. She was here to help when he couldn’t, but it made her sick to think how much of it was done for Aimee, who didn’t even exist.

  ‘Bring us water, would you?’ Harm nodded at her.