The Taken: DI Erica Martin Book 2 (Erica Martin Thriller)

by Alice Clark-Platts

  ‘Please, don’t get up,’ the policewoman said, flattening her hands, palms down. Violet knew that gesture. It was submissive, designed to be used on approach with wild animals. Don’t trust her, Violet thought.

  Sera sank back down on to the sofa, her eyes wide like those of a discarded doll. As she did so, her foot caught a mug of undrunk tea on the floor. Its contents spilled all over the garishly patterned carpet. Violet stood up with a sigh and left to get a cloth from the landlady in the kitchen.

  Eileen Quinn was standing pressed to the kitchen door, and got a mouthful of wood as Violet pushed it open to enter.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said without remorse, barging past the landlady to get to the sink.

  Eileen swung round to follow her with her eyes, rubbing her face ruefully. ‘I was just wondering . . .’

  ‘What?’ Violet asked. ‘What were you wondering?’

  ‘Well.’ Eileen shrugged. ‘What’s going on? The police . . . Will they want to talk to me? Your poor father,’ she shook her head in disbelief.

  Violet leaned back against the kitchen counter, a J-cloth in her hand. She narrowed her eyes, studying the woman before her. Eileen Quinn was swollen from her ankles to her lips. Probably her toes too, although Violet couldn’t see them, given as they were always encased in a pair of slippers. Gold hoops swung sturdily from Eileen’s earlobes, and a gold cross nestled in the dip in her throat.

  ‘My father is dead,’ Violet said at last, watching Eileen grow increasingly uncomfortable at her scrutiny.

  ‘Yes, dear. I know.’

  ‘So I can’t say I really give a fuck whether the police need to interview you or not,’ Violet said. ‘I’ve got more important things to worry about.’ She swept past Eileen, through the open kitchen door and back down the hall to the best room. She halted just by the doorway, leaning forward to catch the conversation. It seemed weirdly quiet. At once, the policewoman appeared in front of her in the corridor.

  ‘Ah, Violet,’ she said, reaching for the cloth with a smile. ‘Grateful if you and I could have a word.’

  3

  Martin gestured for Violet to come in and sit down next to her mother, noting Sera Snow’s immediate grasp of her daughter’s hand. Martin took the J-cloth and dropped it on the ground, tapping over the tea stain with her foot before sitting down herself on a hard-backed seat opposite them.

  ‘I was just saying to your mum that I’d like you to come down to the station with us,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to move your father soon, and it would be best if you weren’t here then. Would that be okay?’

  Sera glanced at Violet and she nodded.

  Martin inclined her head towards Sera. ‘We’d like you to make a formal identification of your husband once we’ve moved him.’

  Violet looked confused. ‘But I saw him. Upstairs. It’s him all right.’

  Martin paused, not wanting to reveal anything in front of Sera Snow about the position of the body, about the fact that he had been found lying face down. ‘I’m sorry, but it has to be done.’

  Violet shook her head. ‘Well, my mother can’t see him. She can’t take that. I’ll do it.’

  Martin looked at Sera, who caught her eye briefly before staring down at her twisting hands and shrugging almost imperceptibly. ‘If Violet wants to . . .’ her voice trailed away.

  Martin leaned back in her chair, puzzled by this capitulation by the mother. Something about Sera’s voice sounded familiar, although she couldn’t put her finger on it just then.

  ‘The SOCO van is here, Ma’am,’ Jones said, appearing at the door. ‘We should probably get going.’

  ‘There’ll be press,’ Sera said dully. ‘They’ll want to talk about it. My husband was revered, Inspector. We’ll have to say something.’ She looked defeated by the prospect.

  ‘You leave that with us, Mrs Snow,’ Martin said, standing up. ‘After you.’ She gestured to the doorway.

  ‘What about our stuff?’ Violet asked.

  ‘You’ll be able to come back later. But everything needs to be left as it was for the moment,’ Jones explained. She looked down at her notes. ‘Your sister is also staying here, Mrs Snow, so I believe?’

  ‘Aunt Antonia stayed out last night. I’m not sure where,’ Violet said.

  Martin looked quickly at Jones. Find out where.

  ‘Okay then, let’s go.’ Martin hung back to let mother and daughter leave the room first. Sera glanced up the stairs for a second, to where her husband lay, before she seemed to shudder and hesitate. ‘Come on, Mum,’ Violet said, hustling Sera out into the daylight, squinting after the gloom of the interior. ‘Here, take my hand down the steps.’

  Martin and Jones followed them out to the car waiting in the street. As they left, Martin looked back to the bay window of the room they had just left. A shadow flitted across it, marring for a moment the sunlight that poured on to the glass. Seeming to notice Martin’s stare, Eileen Quinn moved quickly away from the window as a train rumbled overhead on the viaduct, its noise reminiscent of passing thunder.

  Violet looked down at the waxy mask of her father, her fingers flexing a little as if to move to touch him, yet unable to bring herself to do so. The grooves in his face, running perpendicular to the hard line of his mouth, were static. No longer jiving and sparking, imbuing his face with a life that never seemed authentic – even when he was actually alive. It dawned on Violet that his hair was wrong; it was swept back from his head into a mane. It should flop irritatingly in front of his eyes. Those water-filled eyes. Water and fire. The fire that burned into her – and everyone else – day after day after day. Flicking the black curly hair back with a toss of his head, a smirk. That’s how she would remember him. Not like this. Flat on a bed covered in a starched white sheet.

  The policewoman was in the room – close but unobtrusive against the pale walls of the mortuary. Violet didn’t look at her as she forced herself to touch the sheet. She could feel where the material rose, the mound of her father so silent and still. She had watched him when he slept on a few occasions. Even in slumber, he had seemed so vital. But now he was stone. Where had he gone? she wondered. To the kingdom he’d eulogized for so long? That pretend paradise – a dreamland of the fulfilment of childish hopes. To those golden and pearly gates, to his Father? Violet shivered. She could feel his eyes bore into her, blister at her through his lids, appalled at her blasphemy. No, it was impossible. He was dead.

  ‘Violet?’ Martin’s voice punctured the silence.

  ‘His gold cross is missing,’ Violet said. ‘He always wore it around his neck.’

  ‘It may have been removed. I’ll check,’ Martin replied, a flash of alarm shooting through her, knowing as she spoke that nothing would have been taken from the body at this stage.

  Violet slowly turned away from the body to appraise Martin. ‘Well anyway,’ she said coolly. ‘This is Tristan Snow. My father.’

  4

  Afterwards, Martin drove Violet from the mortuary to Durham police station, where her mother was waiting for her in a bleak interview room off the main reception.

  ‘I’m afraid that I’ll need to interview you separately,’ Martin explained.

  ‘Procedure again?’ Violet’s question was curt.

  ‘We need to find out about your father,’ Martin answered levelly, the words of her mantra drumming in her head – to find out how they live is to find out how they die. She studied Violet, searching her face for chinks of light, for any kind of vulnerability, but the girl was as closed off as her mother. ‘Let me do my job in the best way I know how, and then you can go. I realize this is extremely upsetting for you.’

  Violet shook her head as if to say you know nothing about us.

  ‘May I pray?’ Sera spoke suddenly.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Martin asked.

  ‘I normally pray around this time of day,’ Sera went on. ‘If you could provide me with a space?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Martin recovered swiftly from the surprise. ‘We have
a prayer room here that you can use. Come, I’ll show you.’

  As they made their way towards the prayer room, Martin felt she towered above Sera Snow. The woman only came up to Martin’s shoulder, despite wearing pumps with an inch on the heel. She had dressed for the August weather in a mid-calf linen skirt with a short-sleeved blouse, and shivered in the controlled temperature of the police station. She wore various chains and necklaces, which jangled as she walked. For such a mouse as she appeared, much of the jewellery was garish – amber and turquoise, a large silver medallion. Her grey hair was tied loosely in a bun at the nape of her neck.

  Where were the tears? Martin wondered, as she led Sera down the corridor. Where were the signs of grief, of disbelief? Even of fear – if they thought a stranger had broken into the boarding house? Both Sera and her daughter seemed mute, although Violet had a simmering anger. Had they shut down in shock? Or was their reaction something more chilling; a considered response to a death that they themselves had had a hand in?

  ‘It’s here.’ Martin stopped in front of a door in a small alcove. ‘Take all the time you need.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Sera replied, putting her hand on Martin’s arm before entering the room. ‘He is always with me, you see.’

  Martin inwardly shuddered at the touch and, nodding, moved away from the door, recognizing that Sera wasn’t referring to her husband. The hand on her arm had been sanctimonious, patronizing; it had made Martin feel revulsion. And yet, simultaneously, a feeling of envy at the woman’s faith, at once so powerful but equally so futile, came over Martin, and she felt her knees almost buckle with the strength of it. Spying the sanctuary of a Ladies’ toilet a few doors down, she made her way there and braced herself at the sinks, looking at her reflection in the smeared mirror on the wall.

  Her hands gripped the edge of the basin, her knuckles curved to the sky. She had to focus. Get on with things. A homicide. She had to lead them all. She screwed up her face. Like the Pied bloody Piper.

  It had been nearly a year ago that her husband Jim had left. He’d packed up his bags and moved to Newcastle. Living on his own in one of the new apartments on the Quayside as if he were twenty years younger, as if he were back on the market. The anger she felt about it was disproportionate to the simultaneous feeling of release she had undergone. That he could leave so easily. Ask her for a divorce, as yet unsettled. Abandon the marriage, shake it off as if it had been little more than a dalliance. And despite everything she’d ever said about the pointlessness of the ceremony, the ridiculous tradition, she had actually married him. In a church. Not in some registry office or on some beach. She had loved him and so she had done it. They had stood in front of her family, who’d never thought anyone would take her, and promised themselves to each other until death.

  Not just until five years down the track when it all got too hard.

  Martin pushed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. And then there was Sam. They’d only just started seeing each other, feeling their way around the outlines of this fledgling relationship. They were a right pair: her with her impending divorce; Sam with his reputation for being . . . God knows what. And then the small fact that he was her boss.

  There had been a near miss. A late period, a few uncomfortable days touched with a glimmer of excitement before relief had come. Well, she’d laughed at Sam, she was used to blood in her job. He’d looked at her, appalled. Martin’s cheeks flushed again now, to think of it.

  He’d surprised her with a long weekend in Crete to forget about it, to move on. To make some decisions about what they were doing. But it all still seemed so unresolved.

  What were they doing?

  And all she could hear, over and over again, was that fucking cello. The music they’d played as she’d left the church on that October day in that white dress. It danced through her head, that music, the lower registers stabbing her in the gut, the shaft of the bow on the chords pulling on her, twisting her resolve into fairy dust, puffs of nothing, floating away into the air, leaving her with nothing but tears.

  Fucking Bach.

  Fuck.

  Detective Constable Phil Tennant sat at his computer, a venti cappuccino next to his elbow on the desk. He typed in the name Tristan Snow and sat back, letting the results emerge, taking a gulp of his coffee as he waited. Absorbed in what he was reading, he didn’t notice Jones sit down quietly on the chair next to him, spinning it around a little as she did so.

  ‘What have you got?’ Jones asked.

  Tennant turned his head towards her and leaned backwards, scratching his chin. ‘Tristan Snow. Reverend of the Deucalion Church in Blackpool. Tons about him on the web – has got his own website, you name it.’ He frowned. ‘I saw him once. On Richard and Judy or something. D’you remember?’ He pushed back to the desk and scrolled down the screen. ‘He was like their resident psychic. Used to talk to the dead, predict the future. Absolute codswallop,’ Tennant pursed his lips. ‘All very happy clappy. TV played down the religious aspect of course. But it says here blatantly’, he gestured towards the screen, ‘that he performs miracles.’

  ‘Miracles?’

  ‘Hmm. And exorcisms.’ Tennant looked at Jones, saying nothing more. ‘The church he ran, the Deucalion? It’s known for the work it does with kids. Abandoned kids, kids with problems. He got the MBE for it, services to charity.’

  ‘So . . . what’s he doing here?’

  ‘Came to Durham as part of his UK tour.’ Tennant tapped his knee with a biro and drank more coffee.

  ‘UK tour? Is he really that much of a celebrity nowadays?’ Jones remarked. ‘Wasn’t he famous, like, fifteen years ago? Who’s interested in him now? What does he even do?’

  Tennant shrugged. ‘All the rage, isn’t it? Nostalgia for the eighties and nineties. And he does hypnotherapy, miracles, self-help books. Like that McKenna chap. All give you an easy way out. Save you grafting and trying to make something out of your life yourself. Bloke’s got, like, a hundred thousand followers on Twitter, social media, whatever.’

  ‘If that’s the case, then why’s he staying in that shitty B&B?’ Jones observed.

  Tennant clicked on another part of the screen. ‘Fair point. He’s sold out the Gala Theatre for two nights, booked in for three. He’s been down south already. Heading up to Scotland next. He was doing that, anyway.’ Tennant sighed a little, the philosophy of murder threatening to encroach on his thoughts.

  Jones pushed her chair back. ‘Come on Tennant, the boss is with the family. Let’s show a little initiative. Head down to the theatre and see what’s what.’

  ‘Has she said anything to you?’ Tennant asked, as he locked the computer screen and grabbed his jacket. ‘About what’s going on with her and Butterworth?’

  ‘You must be joking,’ Jones answered. ‘None of our business, is it?’

  ‘There she is: Saint Jones,’ Tennant scoffed. ‘Fights crime and leaves mundane gossip to the rest of us.’

  ‘That’s a big word for you, Phil,’ Jones said. ‘Been practising it at home, have you?’

  Tennant shrugged. ‘Opens her up to some piss-taking, is all.’

  ‘From a pensioner like you?’ Jones said. ‘I’m sure she’s terrified.’

  ‘Aye. Call me romantic, Jones, I just like to know who fancies who . . .’

  Jones cuffed him round the shoulder as they left the incident room. ‘Everyone fancies you, Phil. Didn’t you know?’

  5

  While Sera was praying, Martin headed back to the interview room where Violet waited. This room was brighter than the ones downstairs situated next to the holding cells. There was even a window. Once, the walls had been painted cream, although now various stains and patches of dirt provided a dismal mural.

  ‘Apologies for the lack of air,’ Martin said. ‘A fan’s on its way. The air-con has broken in here, for some reason.’ She smiled ruefully, knowing that there would be no fan coming. The heat was intentional.

  Violet looked cool, however, unbot
hered by the temperature. She took a seat opposite Martin, who could feel sweat dripping down her back and longed to take off her jacket. She resisted the impulse and switched on the tape recorder.

  ‘You are absolutely entitled to a solicitor if you’d like, Violet. But I’m only taping this to help us both, so that we don’t forget what you’ve said. Nobody’s being arrested or charged with anything, at the moment.’ She smiled at the girl, at the moment left floating in the air.

  Violet, though, remained impassive.

  ‘You’re eighteen, is that correct?’ Martin asked, making notes as she talked, and the girl assented. She was striking, with bobbed dark hair cut to her chin, a pale complexion and rosebud cheeks. She reminded Martin of a china doll she had been given once as a child. A cold face, hard to the touch, but that could shatter at the slightest impact. She remembered treating that doll so gently and carefully that, in the end, it was useless as a plaything. As rigid as it had seemed, in actuality it had been as delicate as a moth’s wings.

  ‘Have you left school then? Finished your A levels? Results are out soon, aren’t they, I think?’

  ‘I didn’t do A levels.’

  Martin waited.

  ‘I need to look after my mum. In the church . . . she needs me. I’m going to carry on working for the church until . . .’

  ‘Until what?’ Martin prodded, after a beat.

  ‘Until, you know, things are settled.’

  Martin considered this. ‘Until the end of your father’s tour?’ she prompted. Make her my friend, she thought. Since she had been separated from Sera, Violet seemed to have dropped her veneer a little. Use it.

  ‘Yes, if you like,’ Violet said, blithely.

  What did that mean? Martin wondered. ‘Tell me about this morning,’ she asked gently, pulling Violet in. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Violet took a breath. ‘I woke up early. Too early. The room I’m in has these rubbish curtains. They don’t hide the light. Although actually, I was awake already . . .’ her voice trailed off.