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

by Alice Clark-Platts

  ‘That’s my sister, Antonia.’

  Martin scratched her wrist and thought for a moment. ‘Did you bring this photograph to the police station? Drop it in anonymously?’

  Sera smiled, meeting Martin’s eyes. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Do you know who did?’

  ‘No.’

  Martin leaned forward and pulled the photo back towards her, looked down at it. ‘Why do you think someone would want me to see this?’

  Sera said nothing. She took a sip of her juice, placing the glass back carefully on the table.

  ‘They look happy, don’t they? Tristan and Antonia. Do you know where they are? Where the photo was taken?’

  Sera narrowed her eyes and rubbed her lips together. ‘What is it you’re hoping to wheedle out of me, Inspector Martin?’

  ‘It’s not a question of wheedling anything, Mrs Snow. Murder is a very serious thing. The worst crime there is. So . . .’

  ‘Really?’ Sera interjected. ‘You think murder’s the worst crime?’

  Martin didn’t respond.

  ‘What about disloyalty? What about abuse? What about theft?’ Sera’s head moved from side to side, her fingers counting as she spoke. ‘What about violence? And betrayal?’ She stopped still, her hands in the air like stone birds caught in flight. ‘What about the destruction of someone’s soul?’ She almost laughed, her face flushing with drama.

  Martin waited for more but nothing came. ‘What is the worst crime then, Sera?’ she asked. ‘What do you think?’

  Sera pinched her mouth tight. She lowered her gaze to the table. Martin felt the minutes pass. Sera had retreated.

  ‘Well,’ Martin continued, deciding suddenly to push it anyway, to press down on the bruise. ‘To solve your husband’s murder, I’ll need to ask difficult questions, uncover things that perhaps you don’t want found out. That’s what murder is, Mrs Snow. It’s a stripping of a whitewash. It exposes those hidden things that have been festering away for years.’

  Sera took a breath and exhaled softly. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘I realize that.’ She pushed her glass towards the centre of the table and seemed to decide something. ‘The photograph was taken in Blackpool. It must have been just after we were married. Tristan had been building up the parish, going out into the community. People were starting to love him. They saw something in him.’ She gave a smile filled with secrets. ‘He gave them what they wanted.’

  ‘He had charisma?’

  ‘Yes, he did. But it was more than that. It was a . . . a light around him. He seemed . . . golden. Everyone wanted to be around him. The children. Everyone.’ Sera lifted her head and stared hard at Martin. ‘Even my sister.’ She turned to gaze out of the lobby windows and pushed some strands of hair off her forehead. Traffic noise filtered in and a group of young women – a hen do, Martin surmised – exploded the occasional laugh as they looked at something on a mobile phone. Sera appeared not to notice any of this. She was looking far away, back in time, Martin thought. She was in a dream.

  ‘Your husband and your sister . . .?’ Martin asked, trying to draw her back to the present.

  Sera nodded, resigned. She tapped methodically at the photo. ‘It had started before this. This was Tristan’s first big show. We filled the theatre. I knew it was going on, of course.’ She gave a sardonic laugh. ‘They made me take the bloody photo.’

  Martin studied Sera’s face. How appalling for this woman to have watched her own sister make a successful play for her husband. Appalling enough for murder? ‘So if this was just after you were married, this would have been . . .?’

  Sera shrugged. ‘About 1986, I suppose? Something like that.’

  ‘And what did you do about it? What did you feel about it?’

  Sera looked at Martin blankly.

  ‘If it was me,’ Martin explained, ‘I’d have been livid. Furious with them both. It’s such a betrayal . . .’

  Her words hung in the air until Sera gave a slow smile. ‘I didn’t murder my husband, Inspector Martin.’

  Martin put her chin on her hand. ‘Did you consider leaving him?’

  ‘Leave him?’ Sera tossed her head, her large aquamarine earrings rattling against her neck. ‘No, I never considered leaving him.’

  ‘Why not? Most women would . . .’

  A cloud passed across the older woman’s face. She pushed her glass of orange juice a couple of millimetres away from her towards the edge of the table. ‘You can’t leave Tristan,’ she whispered, almost to herself.

  ‘He wouldn’t have let you go, do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ Sera sighed and looked at Martin as if talking to a child. ‘If you can’t understand, then I’m afraid this case will be beyond you.’

  ‘I can understand a woman who’s hurt, who’s been betrayed. Who holds it in, year after year, until one day she snaps. Takes revenge on a man who has caused her nothing but agony. Is that it? Is that what I need to know?’

  Sera stood up, her eyes flashed once, turned black, before she settled herself into blandness once more. ‘No. It’s not. You need to know about families, Detective. And the loyalty women have to their men.’ She bent down to put her face close to Martin’s. ‘Watch,’ she whispered. As she moved away, her hand caught her glass on the edge of table and swept it off, on to the floor. Martin looked on bewildered as Sera walked out of the hotel lobby, leaving pieces of glass and amber droplets of juice scattered in her wake.

  14

  There were always yellow bulbs glowing above the proscenium arch at the Grand. Do you remember? I thought of them as sunlit orbs; the golden ball that the princess drops down the well before she meets the frog. The curtains remained red velvet throughout the years. All those years that he performed there.

  Tristan would often be late, waiting – up in his dressing room – preparing himself. He’d send me and Violet down in advance, to sit in the auditorium. We were his consorts. When we’d enter, a whisper would scuttle through the crowd, heads turning as we took our seats. The pride I felt then soaked through me. Often that made up for everything: the pride. Even the women with red lipstick and the trays of confectionery hanging down from them like window boxes would notice. When Tristan was ready to come on, they would leave the auditorium, walking silently backwards like a programme rewound in slow motion. I would give Violet fruit gums to try to help her stay awake as she leaned, eyes drowsy, against the prickly brushed material of her seat. In those days, she still had school in the morning.

  Did you love Blackpool like I always did? Walking along the front to the Grand Theatre, that sense of anticipation. The smell of the vinegar from the nearby fish and chip shops would sting your nostrils. In the summer, the air was warm, dusky; the red and white stripes of the beach vendors’ awnings turning pinkish in the fading light. The streets would be busy with people heading to dinner or to shows, or down to the seafront to watch the illuminations pierce the encroaching dark.

  Inside the theatre, when the crowd became so restless it seemed as though they might stampede, Tristan would finally appear. He would stand on his tiptoes, his arms outstretched. Behind him, our Lord glittered on the cross and the organ would play melodies as Tristan spoke – pop songs, other songs of the time. Remember how tall Tristan was? As he spoke, he reached upwards, towering over everyone seated before him, as if he were trying to knock the top of his head on the very clouds that darted below heaven.

  Everything he said, we believed. ‘People say we’re weird, don’t they?’ he told us. ‘I bet they do. Your neighbours and friends. Perhaps even members of your own family?’ He would wait, his fingers pressed together under his chin, swaying forward, as if he could hear our thoughts. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? They say we’re weirdos; Bible-bashers; geeks . . . losers. I know . . .’ He’d rock back on his heels, his face covered in empathy. Then he would shake his head, his black hair falling across his brow, his face crinkled in understanding. He would drop his voice to a whisper. ‘But I’m going to te
ll you a secret.’ The hush that came then – well, it was something. It felt historic – that this was a moment.

  I knew his speeches by heart. Still do. Tristan would lean further forward, his voice low but powerful. ‘We are the chosen ones. We are the chosen ones.’

  He would clap his hands, satisfaction on his face. ‘How about that? Eh?’ A laugh would burst from him. ‘So the joke’s on them, ladies and gentlemen! When they drop down into that abyss and their skin is flayed by the fires of hell, who will be laughing then? Who will be calling whom losers?’

  Even now, as I write his words, they buoy me, make me whole.

  ‘All of you! All of you here. And your children! Bring your children to this place. Train them up in the way they should go. It’s so important, ladies and gentlemen. To show your children the love that I am showing you. The love that I want to show your children. Bring them here. To us. To Deucalion.’

  When the speech was over, he would sink to his knees, a rag doll robbed of energy. His palms would be flat on the stage before him, his head bowed. We would all stand transfixed, where we had been cheering and clapping. We could see, we could tell, that this was a man who could heal, a man of God. The organ would be silent. We all held our gaze on the man crumpled low on the stage.

  My husband.

  Smoke would drift into amorphous ribbons, undulating across the stage, thinning into narrow lines, parallel across Tristan’s body. He would do this thing – where he would stare unseeing into the dark of the auditorium but every member of the audience felt his eyes on them alone. His palms would be outstretched, skin so white his hands looked swathed in magician’s gloves. Pink light would surround his body, a slippery hue that danced around the black core of his shape.

  Finally, when the smoke had evaporated, trails reducing to nothing, Tristan would become meticulous. Soft. The audience would shift forward on their seats, lips parted, tongues curled. It was as if a pause button had been pressed. We were statues.

  Lifeless.

  ‘Come to me. Come and feel my love.’ Tristan would beckon to us all in the dark. ‘Come, please. Come and feel my love.’

  Then all of us would walk up, on to the stage to receive Tristan’s blessing, his healing. I felt such love for him as his eyes remained closed through it all, his mouth moving rapidly, offering up the words he knew better than his own soul. His hands would reach and stroke and caress their outstretched limbs, their knotted, gnarly veins, their bunions, their crepey necks. Even the young ones came forward with their calluses, their jumpers with baby snot on the shoulders, their empty pockets.

  The filing past would end, and that was when the clapping would begin. It would rise, gentle like a wave until it crashed as a tsunami on to the stage; until nobody could hear themselves think.

  And that was when the next beautiful thing would happen. Do you remember? It was so spontaneous, and yet it happened every time he spoke. The people who had been healed by Tristan wanted to thank him; they wanted to love him. They would push their notes and their cheques and their credit cards – their thank-you cards – into the buckets dotted around. They knew they wanted to keep this miracle going. That through their generosity, Tristan could continue his mission.

  Our mission.

  After the show was even better. Violet and I would walk out of the theatre and round to the stage door. Most nights there would be people milling there, waiting to see Tristan and ask for his autograph. He loved that side of things, and I did, too. We would stroll through the throng as if we were aristocrats in a summer garden in Paris, everyone’s eyes on us.

  Inside, it was less glamorous than it appeared to an outsider. Isn’t that always the case? That was where Trevor, the antiquated doorman, sat with his three-bar electric heater on, the heater which was never turned off even in the midst of a blazing summer. Through the door and up into the maze of corridors in the bowels of the theatre.

  It didn’t take long to climb the three flights of stairs to Tristan’s dressing room on the top floor. Tristan would be sitting in his chair opposite the mirror, sweat pouring off his forehead, black curls stuck to his temples, reminiscent of a 1940s film star.

  I used to love to watch him.

  Sometimes – only sometimes – I would observe as a coldness passed through him, mercury in his veins. He would become like marble and it would bring tears to my eyes. Because I knew that coldness, I had witnessed it before. That ice would be his undoing, I dared myself to think when I watched him fail in this way.

  Then, something in me would pity him. But, remember, it was a pity to be flung over the cliff face and into the churning seas. For what is pity towards a being that has no heart? It is as meaningless as the smoky vapours that hovered in the air above the stage, long after our act had packed up and moved on to the next town.

  15

  ‘So it’s her, right? Crazy turquoise necklace lady?’ Jones asked, back in the incident room. ‘Snow’s wife?’ She looked at her boss intently. Martin stared out of the window.

  ‘Boss?’ Jones persisted. ‘It must be, right? She finds out about the affair between her husband and her sister and, boom, she snaps and puts a golf club in his head.’

  Martin spun her chair slowly to look at Jones. ‘Think about it. When was the photo taken? Of Tristan and Antonia?’

  ‘Um, 1986 I think you said.’

  ‘Hardly a boom and a snap is it – waiting thirty years to bump him off? And where’s the golf club?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘And what about Mackenzie? You told me what Fielding said – that he’d been seen prowling around early doors for some reason. And you and Tennant found a financial motive for him. He’s looking like the most likely suspect at the moment, despite this stuff about the affair with Antonia.’ Martin’s tone was dogged, unrelenting. ‘And we’ve got no forensics back from the boarding house yet? Nothing to substantiate this poisoning idea?’

  Jones shook her head. ‘The SOCOs took some cups and utensils for testing; the results haven’t come back yet.’

  Martin put her hands behind her head and stared off into space again.

  ‘He smelled of Deep Heat too, you know,’ Jones said absent-mindedly. ‘Said he’d injured his shoulder. By the way, I checked with the SOCOs and the mortuary. Tristan Snow didn’t have his cross on when his body was found. We didn’t find it in among his belongings either. So either he lost it himself, or . . .’

  ‘Someone’s taken it,’ Martin muttered, her eyes closed.

  ‘Are you all right, Boss?’ Jones asked tentatively, after a few minutes of silence.

  Martin snapped her eyes open. ‘Why’d you ask?’

  ‘I don’t know. You just seem um, a bit . . .’

  ‘Distracted, disconnected?’ Martin shot back.

  ‘No, uh . . .’ Jones said, her voice low. ‘Don’t worry about it. Sorry.’

  Martin glanced at her before rubbing a hand over her face. ‘No, I’m sorry, Jones. I’m just . . . things are a bit up in the air at the moment, that’s all. What with the case, and . . .’

  ‘I know, Boss.’ Jones leaned back and looked at her watch. She stood up and grabbed her jacket off the back of the chair. ‘Come on.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you for ages. We’re going to a party.’

  Martin looked at Jones as she drove out of the city in the early evening light. Their windows down, a soft breeze ruffled Jones’s ponytail as she tapped her fingers in time to some generic song on the radio. Martin liked Jones’s ponytail. It gave her an enthusiasm, a bounce, as she walked beside her through the cases they’d worked on together. Something in Martin envied Jones that bounce. She looked up at the sky reddening from the sunset and rued, yet again, the melancholy that seemed to seep from her in an all-consuming haze these days.

  Jones wasn’t talking as she drove and Martin was grateful. She flicked back through the messages on her phone. The one from Jim remained unanswered because she didn’t know what to
say. Sam had seemed about as bothered at her meeting her husband for dinner as if she’d said she was going to eat a Pot Noodle for lunch. If that were the case, why was she bothering with him? Why was she concerning herself with either of them? Jim, who’d barely spoken to her since he’d left their house a year ago. And Sam, who was probably going to get his conquest and move on like he’d done with countless others she’d heard about through the years she’d known him.

  And the point was, that she should be angry with them both. But she wasn’t. She just felt so desperately sad about it all.

  ‘Here we are,’ Jones announced, as they turned into a small estate. ‘The metropolis that is Low Fell.’ She pulled over and they got out, the slams of the car doors seeming to echo in the quiet streets. ‘No one plays out any more,’ Jones observed. ‘Estate used to be full of kids when I was a nipper. Now everyone’s too worried about paedos.’

  Jones walked up a pathway to a bright blue door. Martin could hear music playing from inside. It sounded like Roy Orbison. Jones opened the unlocked door and ushered Martin in ahead of her.

  ‘Helloooo?’

  ‘Ah, here you are!’ A blonde woman appeared through the kitchen door. ‘Get yourself inside. Come on. We’ve been waiting.’

  ‘Thanks, Mam. This is Detective Inspector Martin,’ Jones said, subtly pushing Martin towards the open door, through which the sounds of voices carried down the hall.

  ‘Erica,’ Martin countered, hearing the stiffness in her voice. Why was she here? She should be back at the station in the incident room, figuring out this delicate spider’s web that had twisted its way around the Snows. What had Sera meant by walking out of the hotel lobby so dramatically? She would stay here half an hour tops, and then head back and check out Tristan Snow’s YouTube channel herself. She would get Sera and Violet back in for a formal interview. She would . . .

  ‘Wine?’ Jones asked, pushing a plastic cup into her hand.

  ‘Ah, yeah. Okay.’ She sipped at it, the liquid sharp on her tongue. Her eyes focused on the room; people were bundled into the kitchen and spilling out into the garden. A barbecue smoked from outside, the smell of sausages and fried onions in the air.