Come and Find Me (DI Marnie Rome Book 5)

by Sarah Hilary

  At the door to her office she hesitated, watching Harry shake Noah’s hand.

  After he was gone, she walked to where Noah was working on the records from Darren’s interview. ‘We need to go back to Harpenden.’

  Noah looked up, still smiling with the relief Harry’s news had brought. ‘Vokey?’

  ‘Anita.’

  ‘Of course.’ His eyes clouded. ‘We’ll have to give her the news about Darren.’

  Marnie nodded, waiting a moment. Then she said, ‘Darren was jealous of Charlie. That’s what you thought, yes?’

  ‘That’s how it looked. But Darren’s difficult. Conflicted. The way he felt about Vokey, and the way he made Ted into his alibi?’ He shook his head. ‘Nothing’s straightforward there.’

  ‘Aidan was afraid of Ted. Not of Vokey, he was afraid of Ted.’ Marnie tidied her hair from her face. ‘But coming back to Darren and Charlie. If he was jealous of Charlie, resentful of their mother’s preference for his brother, why would Darren want to harm Vokey?’

  ‘I asked myself that. The motive’s shaky, for sure.’ Noah capped his pen, setting it down on the desk. ‘But the evidence is strong. The gun, the firearms residue. Anita’s own testimony about the cash and clothes Darren took from the house, the fact he was out all night.’

  ‘We don’t have a body.’

  ‘We’re searching the woods again, with cadaver dogs this time.’ Noah frowned up at her. ‘You don’t think we’ll find a body?’

  ‘I think we will. And I think the motive is revenge. But I don’t believe it was Darren.’

  He searched her face, recalibrating. She saw the moment he reached the same conclusion she’d reached, seeing the petal fall from Harry’s violet. ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Marnie touched his arm. ‘Stay here. Give your mum the good news about Sol. Let me take care of this.’

  The house in Harpenden was empty, as she’d feared it would be. Thunder had followed her from the city, lying low over the pantiled roofs of the terrace as a long spine of lightning lit the sky towards London. A team took the door down to get inside, but the house was empty.

  Marnie stood in the room with the piano, smelling the sweet rot of dropped petals. Dusk had sent shadows into every corner, blinding the artwork and blunting the sculptures, turning glass paperweights into black weapons. In the other sitting room, she looked at the pictures of Charlie and his brother, and Anita with her hair worn in a ponytail, carefree, before either boy was born.

  She climbed the stairs to the spare bedroom at the back with its pop-art wallpaper of big blue flowers with freckled faces. Jungle flowers. She opened the wardrobe doors, looking inside at jeans and jumpers, a young man’s clothes. This was Charlie’s room. They’d searched it but missed that fact, of a dead son and brother. A slim shelf, no wider than a picture frame, ran around the room at waist height where panelling had been fitted. The shelf was packed with a child’s treasure. Not cars like the ones Darren had collected, just the odds and ends that a child’s magpie eye had lighted on. Pebbles and seashells, nuts and bolts, polished stones and conkers that had long ago lost their shine. No trace of dust lay over any of it. Marnie shut her eyes and saw Anita touching each small treasure in turn, holding it in her hand the way she’d once held Charlie, each smooth pebble spotting her palm, leaving its cool heat in the heart of her hand.

  Downstairs, the house was chilly, its hallway littered by more dead petals from dying plants, the lilies in the blue vase hanging their heads.

  ‘She’s not here,’ Marnie told the team. ‘But I think I know where to find her.’

  Charlie’s mother was at the allotment, waiting. Seated on a painted crate by the fire pit, her skin blue with cold. She’d lit a fire that threw sparks and smoke, illuminating and obscuring her face by turns. The storm was dying out, dulled by the dusk. Marnie warned the others to stay back. The fire was shallow but this case had started with smoke and flames; she didn’t want it to end the same way. She watched Anita snap a slim twig and add it to the pit, her face wavering, coming into focus as the flames climbed before shrinking again in the smoke.

  ‘Let me do it,’ Marnie told the team quietly. ‘Let me go to her.’

  The fire coiled in the stone pit. The smell of the allotment was stronger than she’d remembered, thick with the scent of supplements in the soil and creosote on the fences and sheds. The storm’s flat coppery scent made no impression here.

  ‘Mrs Quayle. It’s DI Rome. Marnie.’

  Anita roped a strand of hair about her finger. She looked paper-thin, as if she might fold in the pit’s heat. Her eyes found Marnie’s face, her bleak stare like battery acid. It was hard to look at her, eyes and mouth like open wounds, raw and ugly. She wore a thin black cardigan over her linen dress, holding herself very upright, rubbing at her arms in the parody of an embrace.

  Marnie was near enough to catch her injured animal smell. ‘May I sit down?’

  Anita nodded and Marnie sat on the upturned box at her side, not speaking. She held her hands out to the fire, hoping to get warm. All the storm’s strange heat had gone out of the day.

  ‘You know, then.’ Anita’s voice was jagged, dying in her throat. She was flushed at the temples, her eyes damp and gritty. ‘You know.’

  ‘Can you tell me?’ Marnie asked.

  Charlie’s mother leaned towards the fire. ‘Vokey’s dead.’ A keening came from her, like wind pulled through a paper kite. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Let me take you to the station,’ Marnie said. ‘Please. We can do this later.’

  ‘You need a statement so I’ll make one now. I killed him. It wasn’t Darren, but it was for him. And Charlie. It was for Charlie.’ The fire threw sparks, its yellow flecking her olive eyes. ‘I could see what was happening with Darren. That man was poison. Everything he touched, everyone he got close to.’ She shivered. ‘I couldn’t lose another child to him.’

  Marnie held her breath against the storm’s slow throbbing overhead.

  ‘Darren won’t believe it, won’t believe I killed his hero.’ Anita stretched a hand towards the fire, her square wrist roped with veins, those bones like bracelets under the skin. ‘Don’t you think we talk so much about the shock of our children, the terrible or wonderful things they’re capable of, the people they grow into, so far apart from us? Yet we don’t talk about the strangers our parents can become, the surprising things we’re capable of, good and bad. We think we know all about our mothers because they were grown-ups before we were born, adult and unalterable. But the truth is everyone’s changing, all the time. Everyone is a stranger.’

  The allotment was peopled by shadows from the fire. Marnie felt its cold creeping at her feet, seeping into her ears. Behind them, the woods crouched and whispered with night birds.

  ‘I didn’t shoot him,’ Anita said. ‘I hit him with a shovel. It was hard and heavy, and it was easy. He died very easily. Digging the grave was the toughest part.’

  She delivered the speech in the same tone, sunken and empty. Murdering Michael Vokey might have been easy, but the weight of this would never leave her.

  ‘He was so easy to kill. It should have been harder. If it’s so wrong, it should be harder.’

  Marnie watched the shadows pressing at Anita’s chest. She didn’t want to believe it, not of this woman. Not murder. Her skin stiffened in protest. A grieving mother taking her revenge, trying to live with the loss of her son and failing, and falling. Felled by what she’d done. Why did it matter so much that this woman should have stayed standing?

  ‘He wasn’t what I expected. When those letters came from the prison. Darren brought home letters from Mr Elms, advice for the allotment, what to plant and so on. Such strange letters.’ Her brow furrowed in a quick frown. ‘It took me a long time to realise it wasn’t advice. It was warnings. Many, many warnings. “I lost a young sapling to rot. If you suspect such a thing, you must tackle it quickly.” He was warning me of Michael’s influence over Darren, and he was right to warn m
e. Look how Darren helped that man escape, brought him here!’ She gestured at the Anderson shelter. ‘That interview you told me about. Vile. Treacherous. Admiring the man who drove his brother to his death, how could he?’

  The tail of the storm struggled out across the sky, clouds tearing up the last of the light.

  ‘Charlie knew what Darren was. He told me there was something wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Or he didn’t want to, because Darren was his brother. That’s why he armed himself, he said. Because he was afraid of the friends Darren was making. But I’ve sometimes wondered whether it wasn’t Darren’s gun.’ She shut her eyes. ‘It would be like Charlie to take the blame, try and protect his little brother. He kept quiet for a long time about the friends Darren was making. He was afraid, and it was much worse when Darren went into the prison service. Hero-worshipping men like that—!’ She thrust a stick into the fire, stirring flames from its low beating.

  When she was calmer, she said, ‘Did you imagine I was setting him up? Telling you he was out all night, asking you to take him from the house. I was trying to keep him safe. I was afraid of what I’d do if he stayed. Now I know what I’m capable of. Now I know the worst about myself.’ She pressed the ends of her fingers to her forehead. ‘I was afraid of what I’d do to my own child.’ She dropped her hand and studied its fingers as if she expected to see not perspiration there but blood.

  The fire shrank at their feet, eating the twigs she’d fed it, spitting out their sap.

  ‘It was Darren who brought home the last letter. From Mr Elms.’ She blinked the exhaustion away. ‘Such a clever letter, as if he’d crawled inside my skull. All the words I’d been whispering to myself for months and months, all written down on the page. He made it so real suddenly. And so personal. The threat, and the thing I had to do to stop it. Stop him. I couldn’t go to the police after I’d read the letter. I should have done, but he made that impossible.’ She stared into the fire. ‘I don’t really understand how he did it, but he made murder seem like the easier option. The only option.’

  One last growl of thunder, ashy against the night sky. The storm’s signature.

  ‘He wasn’t what I’d expected. Michael Vokey. I don’t know what I was expecting, but he was so . . . Nothing. He didn’t understand why I was angry, as if he’d never seen grief before, or anger. He didn’t know how to react to me accusing him of killing Charlie. I wanted to hear him say he was sorry and to see him scared the way Charlie must have been scared.’ A hard sob caught in her throat. ‘But he wasn’t. I could see he’d never reach remorse. He didn’t even understand why I was upset. Charlie’s death meant nothing to him and never would. That’s why I did it. Because it was the only thing I could do. The only way I’d change the look on his face of not caring.

  ‘He said, “But you have another son, don’t you?”, as if the two were interchangeable when Darren’s as different as— Charlie was my dervish, my darling.’ A smile broke through, shining from her eyes. ‘Always racing, dancing, never still for a second. His arms wide open to the world, the whole of him wide open. I thought he’d conquer the world the way he was. He noticed everything, stars in the sky, ants in the grass. And he wanted to travel, explore everywhere, meet everyone. When he was tiny, I watched him all the time in case he climbed too high and fell, but he never did. Not until that man pushed him.’

  She smoothed her hands at her face. ‘I could either be Charlie’s mother – broken, driven out of my mind with grief – or I could be Darren’s, propping up his insecurity. I couldn’t be both. I tried, and I couldn’t. In the end, I chose Charlie and I know how that sounds, to have chosen my dead son over my living, but how else could I keep faith with my boy?’ She picked a round pebble from the ground, holding it in her hand. ‘Darren doesn’t need me. He just needs to grow up and for some reason, in whatever way, I’m preventing that. He’s always leant too much on me. At least this way Charlie knows I didn’t forget him, that I didn’t just let it pass. What was done to him, what that man stole. From Charlie, and from me. From the whole world.’

  A burst of laughter from back on the street. London’s nightlife, unending.

  Marnie wondered at the letter which had pushed this woman over the edge. Ted’s letter. All that rigid self-control, managing every aspect of life for her family with an absent father and two small boys to care for. Yet Ted had unpicked her with a page of words. For what, revenge? He could have killed Vokey himself, surely, if that was all he wanted. He could have taken the scissors just as Ruth imagined and dealt out whatever sentence he felt Vokey deserved. Instead he’d driven this woman to do it. Charlie’s mother, grieving for her son. As if it were somehow a gift, delivering Vokey into her hands, for her justice. There was a strange peace to Anita now, the kind of painful peace that comes at the end of a long and stony road.

  She added another twig to the fire. ‘He thought he could talk anyone into anything, that people were puppets to play with. He was proud of the way he made Charlie dance, kicking at the end of that rope.’ Her hand closed around the pebble. ‘I paid him in his own coin, that’s all. He thought we would hide him, that my son would help his brother’s killer. He thought he could take another of my children and make him dance.’ She hardened her voice. ‘If I could have put on Darren’s uniform and gone into that place, I’d have killed him myself. He ruins lives. There’s no other purpose to him. He brings nothing to the world, only takes from it.’

  She brought her gaze to rest on Marnie’s face, unblinking, the whites of her eyes exposed in a way which made her look vulnerable, and fearless. ‘I killed him because it was the right thing to do. The only human thing.’

  Marnie stayed on the allotment after the arrest team took Anita away. A full forensic unit was coming with floodlighting, tents, excavation equipment. She buried her hands in the pockets of her coat, feeling the trees shuddering at her back. Thinking of all the hidden people, here and elsewhere. All the reasons we run and hide, and search and find. A moth flew out of the woods, spiralling for a second before vanishing back into the branches.

  Her phone buzzed. ‘Noah, yes.’

  ‘I heard about the arrest. Anita confessed? There’s a body?’

  ‘She did. And yes.’ Michael Vokey was less than four feet from where Marnie was standing. Not in the woods. Here on the allotment, deep under the lilies and rotted manure. ‘There’s a body.’

  Tomorrow, she and Noah would take apart the temporary incident room and it would feel good to be clearing up together. Too often she found herself alone in her office at the end of a case, signing paperwork, her seniority setting her apart, out in the cold. She wanted to be with Noah, the pair of them in shirt sleeves unpinning the photocopies from the walls, taking it all down.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Noah asked.

  ‘I will be.’ She reached for a handful of earth, scooping it over the remains of the fire. ‘You?’

  ‘I’m going to my mum’s for supper.’ He sounded happier than he had in a long time. ‘Just the two of us. I wanted to check you didn’t need me at the station tonight, for Anita’s interview.’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Marnie said. ‘Go and eat.’

  Headlights swept at the street. The forensic team was here.

  ‘There’s more good news.’ Noah was smiling, she heard it in his voice. ‘Joe Coen’s wife had her baby. Jack Isaac Coen, nine pounds and an ounce. Whole family delighted and doing well.’

  ‘That’s tremendous news.’ His happiness was infectious. ‘I’ll send my best wishes. Now, go and have supper with your mum. You’ve earned it.’

  48

  Noah’s mum handed him the plate, piled high with sweet fried plantains. ‘Eat.’

  He did as he was told. She took a seat at the table, facing him. In her green dress, her party frock. She’d set the table with the best china, as if Noah were an honoured guest rather than family. He didn’t mind, it was enough to be here, forgiven. Dad was working late but that might’ve been deliberate, to g
ive Noah time alone with Mum. He filled their glasses. ‘This is delicious.’

  She nodded, not quite a smile. After a short while, she started to talk about Sol. ‘I expected you to take care of him, the way you always did. You were the strong one, the one I counted on, my brave boy. Sol’s my baby. I love him, my goodness, but he’s made of – nothing. I know that. He’s scared, so much of the time he’s scared. I look at him and I see a boy. I look at you? I see a man. If I was angry it’s because I expected you to take care of your little brother, put him first, always. But I know that’s unfair. You’ve a job to do.’

  ‘Not just that,’ Noah said. ‘I was taking care of him. I honestly thought this was the best way.’

  ‘He’s hurting in there.’ She sprinkled a little salt over her plate. ‘I’ve never seen him so afraid. It made me lash out. You know what mothers are, we can be tigers when our kids are cornered.’

  ‘I was afraid for him too.’ Noah blinked heat from his eyes. ‘I knew he was trying to do the right thing, getting out of the gang. But it was driving him into a corner, just as you said. He didn’t know which direction to take. He wouldn’t stay with me and Dan, wouldn’t come back here.’

  ‘At least now we know where he is.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Noah reached for her hand. ‘Truly.’

  She smiled at him. ‘I know.’ She patted his hand. ‘I do know.’

  Ed was stretched on the sofa reading when Marnie got home. She hung her coat on the cluttered peg by the door and stood watching him, seeing the familiar furrow at the bridge of his nose as he concentrated on his book, a novel about dystopian America with a red moon on the cover, its spine cracked with re-reading. All about him, stacked in towers, were more books, and music, and films. Ed never threw anything out. Most of his childhood was here, buried at the bottom of one tower or another, sometimes shuffled to the top. Insulation. And comfort, security. No smashed china, no strangers. All of Ed’s photos were happy ones.

  ‘Hey.’ He looked up with a smile, swinging his legs clear of the sofa, making space for her. ‘Have you eaten? There’s pasta in the fridge, or I can make something hot.’