by Tania Carver
‘You can. Go on.’
‘It worked. For a while, anyway. And we had Callum, my son. And he was supposed to bring us back together, make us stronger again. Change everything.’
‘And then she came along.’
He nodded.
‘And she was… let me guess. The kind of woman you’d always wanted but didn’t realise until you met her? Not to mention the best fuck you’d ever had, of course.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, I… yeah.’ Amazement in his voice at having his thoughts so neatly summed up.
Prosser nodded. ‘She’s good at that. Her unique talent, you might say.’
His visitor stared at him. Really looking at him, as if actually seeing him for the first time. ‘What’s your story, then?’
Prosser pointed to his ruined face. ‘This. Her. All you need to know, really.’
He nodded once more.
The two men occupied the room in silence. Eventually, Prosser broke it.
‘And then she wanted you for something. And to make sure you did it, she took your wife and son.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And said that you’d only see them alive when you’d done what she wanted.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And that was… what? Covering for her? Killing for her?’
He nodded, head downcast. ‘And the rest.’
‘And you think that after today she’ll let you have them back again.’
‘Maybe not after today, maybe she still wants me to do something more for her. But I hope not. I just want… want them back again.’
‘Sure, she’ll let you see them again. She might even let you have them again. But they’ll both be dead.’
He looked up sharply, as if he’d been stabbed. ‘What? What the fuck are you on about?’
‘They’re dead already. Or most probably dead.’
‘No…’ He began pacing the room, hands to his head. ‘No… don’t say that… no…’
‘Sorry to disappoint you, but they’re already dead.’
‘No… no…’
‘Yeah. They are.’ Prosser sat back. ‘So really, you’ve done all this for nothing, haven’t you? Should have gone to police after all.’
He crossed the floor, stood towering over Prosser. ‘I can’t believe that… I can’t… can’t…’
His anger peaked. He reached down, grabbed Prosser by the throat, picked him bodily off the seat. Squeezed his hands hard around his neck.
‘Go on…’ said Prosser, through gasped breaths, ‘go on. I’m ready. It’s… it’s what you came here to do…’
And then he was in tears. Rage giving way to something else, huge, flowing streams cascading down his face.
‘I’m sorry… I’m so, so sorry…’ Not talking to Prosser now, he was sure of that.
Prosser stared at him, tried to hold eye contact.
‘Sorry… I… oh God… sorry…’
Prosser’s eyes closed. Behind them it seemed like stars were forming and galaxies were bursting. He felt beyond pain, beyond stress. He began to feel at peace.
‘Sorry…’
His words gave way to uncontrollable sobs as he dropped the lifeless body to the floor. As it fell, he collapsed beside it, like a puppet with its strings cut. Sobbing his heart out.
That’s when DCI Franks and Marina Esposito ran into the room.
Seconds too late.
Epiphanies
It started with a boy in a cage of bones. It ended with Phil Brennan finding out just exactly who he was and where he came from.
She devoured the story of Phil Brennan’s next high-profile case, even rekindling her affair with Malcolm the librarian to discover as much information about it as possible.
And what a wealth of information there was. Just by investigating the boy and determining both who he was and why he was actually in the cellar of an abandoned house, locked up inside a cage constructed of bones, led Phil Brennan to come face to face with his own past. Family secrets long since buried resurfaced and he was left to face a painful, shocking truth.
Phil Brennan, as she had discovered, had been brought up by a local couple, Don and Eileen Brennan. They had fostered many children over the years but Phil had been different. They had taken to him for some reason, eventually adopting him as their own and giving him their surname. And he had responded in kind to their gesture by following his adoptive father in his career as a police detective. Don Brennan was now dead but Eileen Brennan was still alive. Eventually she would make the move to Birmingham along with Phil, Marina and their daughter. But that was in the future.
Phil Brennan’s biological parents, she discovered, had been members of a cult that was based on an estate out in the countryside bordering Essex with Suffolk. The Garden, it was called. They had become disenchanted with that way of life and wanted to leave, citing tales of hideous abuse. To this end, they managed to contact the local police who were already running an ongoing investigation into the cult, building a case against the leaders. Phil’s parents, having risen to what was regarded as a privileged position within the commune, would be star witnesses against them, just the sort of believable couple who would enable them to make a successful prosecution and get the cult closed down.
Unfortunately, the potentially damning information they possessed made them too valuable to leave. But leave they did. Again with the help of the police. The leaders of the cult, sensing that the tide had turned against them, did everything in their power to track them down and silence them.
The family were in hiding, sent to a safe house only few people knew the location of. But the reach of some of the people behind the cult was long. Their location was given out and they were tracked down.
She remembered where she was when she read the next part. She would never forget. In Malcolm’s house at his computer. He was hovering in the background, making tea or something, giving her one of those expensive biscuits he imagined she enjoyed. But when she read the next part it was like she left her own being, the planet, even, completely.
She experienced the most enormous epiphany ever.
She didn’t believe in God, an afterlife or have a spiritual bone in her body. But after this she began to. There was no way this was coincidence. No way at all. This was the universe – or whatever – telling her what she had to do. Guiding her, showing her what to do with the rest of her life. It was the most powerful thing she had ever felt. Nothing – not even the thrill she got from holding power over those men – came close.
Because Phil Brennan’s family were hunted down. His mother and father were murdered.
But their son and daughter were left alive.
And daughter.
That was the part she couldn’t believe. As soon as she read that she imagined herself on her back, the cold seeping through her warm coat. Smiling.
Make a snow angel, he said. And showed her how.
A snow angel.
Yes.
This was it. She knew it. This was the defining moment of her life. Her whole existence had been building towards this moment. Every single thing she had done, or had done to her, or endured or even enjoyed had led up this. Here, now. In this place, reading this article.
Her childhood of not knowing who she was – really was – or where she was from. Moving from foster home to foster home, to adoption agency after adoption agency. To the children’s home. From meeting Fiona to killing Sean to honing her craft on all those victims. To this. Here. Now.
Fiona coming back into her life was just the catalyst. Even if she was dead. No, that was better. She had to be dead. If she had been alive, she might never have got to know about Phil Brennan.
She smiled again.
And how had she got to know about Phil Brennan? Because he was Sean’s doppelganger. And that was why she had such an affinity with Sean. Because, even though she didn’t know it at the time, Sean was the spitting image of her long-lost brother. And that was why Sean had had to die.
It all made the most
perfect, crystalline sense.
Malcolm just stared at her, not knowing what was happening to her, what he could do about it. She didn’t care, didn’t even notice him. Because from now on, she would only have eyes for Phil Brennan.
She read through it again, just to check she hadn’t made a mistake.
She hadn’t.
She left Malcolm’s house. Walked away barely seeing the world around her. Back to where she was living.
This, she knew, was the defining moment of her life.
And she knew what she had to do next. Be reunited with her brother. Her long-lost brother.
She loved saying those words, kept rolling them around her tongue, all the way home.
Reunited. Yes. But properly reunited. Not just a letter telling him who she was and who he was in relation to her. He might just dismiss her as some sort of nutter. And she couldn’t just turn up on his doorstep either. That approach wouldn’t work. Because what would he do then? What would happen to her? He might just thank her and never see her again. And she couldn’t take that. Not rejection. Not after everything she had been through to reach this point. No.
Another, more horrific, thought struck her. What if she did get to meet him and tell him whom she was and he didn’t want to know her? What then? That was rejection on an even grander scale. A massive scale. A doomsday scenario. And what would she do then?
No.
She would have to take her time with this. It needed careful handling. Delicate. Insightful. She would have to make him want to meet her. She would have to make him want to be with her. Forever. And ever.
It wouldn’t be easy, she knew that. But nothing worth doing ever was. Life had taught her that. It might take years. Such careful plotting and planning. Years. But it would be worth it in the end. Because she would have him.
She smiled. Oh yes. She would have him.
Forever.
48
Malcolm Turvey sat in his usual place in his usual tea room on Sir Isaac’s Walk. In a corner seat almost hidden by exposed beams and brickwork, he had his bag at his side, his files and papers spread out on the table, fighting for position with his teapot, cup and saucer.
Anni entered the café, saw him straight away. She had received a call from him earlier that morning, a sense of urgency in his voice, almost begging her to meet him, and as soon as possible. She had been ready to humour him, fob him off with excuses. He just wants to feel part of the investigation, she had thought, important and involved. But there was something about his tone that she hadn’t heard before. And that told her she had to meet him.
He looked up as soon as she entered. Beckoned her over. No smile this time, no wide-eyed excitement. Just a serious, almost sombre, tone that she didn’t recognise.
‘I’ve remembered something,’ he said before she had taken her seat.
‘What?’
‘Or rather someone,’ he continued, then looked away, as if it was going to cost him something to go on. ‘And I think it might be important. Very important.’
‘All right, then. Tell me.’
He poured another cup of tea, just to have something to do with his hands, it looked like. ‘When I say I’ve remembered something,’ he said, ‘what I mean is I knew this all the time. I just didn’t know how important it was. Or could be.’
Anni waited. Tea ritual completed, he went on.
‘There was a woman.’ He couldn’t made eye contact with her, looked at the table as he spoke. ‘She used to come into the library. She was a regular in the end. And interested in crime. Local crime.’
‘When was this?’
He looked up. ‘Well, that’s the interesting thing. The more I thought about her, the more I thought she might be important. So I checked my records since I last saw you.’
‘And?’
‘From what I can gather from them, and from what I can remember, it looks like she came in just after Fiona Welch’s death. In fact, I think that was the first case she was interested in.’
He had Anni’s full attention now. ‘So what did you do?’
‘Supplied her with everything we had. Newspapers, internet access, the lot. It was… I was just happy to be sharing this’ – he pointed to his bag, his files – ‘my passion, with someone else. A fellow enthusiast. And…’ His eyes dropped once more.
‘You… what? Developed a crush on her?’
‘More than that.’ Malcolm’s face reddened.
‘What, you…’ Anni smiled.
Malcolm nodded.
‘You sly old dog.’
Malcolm reddened even more. It seemed as if he didn’t know whether to smile or look embarrassed. He managed to do both.
‘Anyway,’ he said, waving his hand dismissively, ‘it didn’t really last long.’
‘What happened?’
He shrugged. ‘She just… disappeared one day. Like she’d arrived, suddenly as that.’
‘And that was the end of it?’
‘Not quite. I’ll get to that.’ Another embarrassed look, almost ashamed, then he continued. Sadness in his voice. ‘She got what she wanted, I suppose. My files.’
‘Which ones was she interested in, in particular?’ Anni could guess the answer before he said it.
‘Fiona Welch, at first. Then Phil Brennan.’
Anni nodded. Exactly as she had expected. She had that old cop buzz back again. This was important. This could even be a breakthrough. ‘So what was her name?’
‘Diana.’
‘Not a real name, presumably.’
‘No. Diana Monroe. The name was false. I checked it out.’
‘Then what?’
‘Like I said, she disappeared. Once she had everything she wanted. But then there was that case a few months later. Well, of course you remember it, you worked on it. The boy in the cellar. In the cage made out of bones.’
‘Oh yes, I remember. I’m not likely to forget.’
He nodded. ‘She popped up again then. Still calling herself Diana. All smiles, like she’d just popped out to the shops for a pint of milk, or something. Well, I tried to have nothing to do with her. Keep her at arm’s length.’ He sighed. ‘That didn’t last long.’
‘You started seeing her again?’
Another nod. ‘She seemed to know which buttons to push. And there was a… I don’t know, I can’t describe it. A wildness to her? She wanted to…’ He sighed, cast his eyes down once more. ‘I can’t say it.’
‘You may as well tell me, Malcolm. You’ve come this far talking about her.’
He shook his head. ‘She wanted to… have sex. At… at murder sites.’ He couldn’t look at Anni as he spoke.
Anni nodded. ‘And you went along with her?’
Another nod. ‘Like I said, she had a wild streak. She made you feel… transgressive? You know what I mean.’
‘So getting back to the cage of bones case, what did she want to know about that in particular?’
‘Phil, again. Not so much the case but him. His background, his family. All of that.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘God knows. She was obsessed with him. Totally obsessed with him. I mean, when we… had sex, you know, at the places… she would… it sounds stupid to say it. But it would be like she was doing some sort of ritual. Like she was trying to contact dead spirits or something. Or using Phil’s name. Saying it out loud when she was, you know.’ He sighed. ‘That was why I broke it off this time. I couldn’t stand how she was making me feel, what I was becoming with her. I mean, doing that was one thing, but the way she got during it? It was scary. And shouting out another bloke’s name. That wasn’t nice. Not nice at all.’
‘So how did you get rid of her?’
‘I just… pretended to be seeing someone else.’
‘And that worked?’
He nodded. ‘And I never saw her again.’ A troubled frown creased his face. ‘Well, until recently.’
Anni leaned forward once more. ‘Recently?’
‘That nig
ht. On the walk. By the riverside when I found the body hanging there in the old Dock Transit building. She was there. Or at least I think she was.’
‘Didn’t you recognise her?’
‘Not really. Not at first. In fact, it’s only because of everything that’s happened since then that I started to think about it. And then she just popped up in my mind. And all of the memories came tumbling out.’
‘So what was she doing? What made you remember her?’
‘Well, you have to take into account the fact that this walk had been her idea, really. She’d suggested it to me. Do a murder walk, she said. That should drum up a bit of trade. And when I was made redundant by the library services, that’s what I did. I wouldn’t have done it without her putting the idea into my head in the first place.’
‘Right.’
‘I suppose…’ Another shrug. ‘Maybe I wanted her to see that I’d done it, come back to me. I know it sounds pathetic, especially after everything that I’ve told you about, but… I did like her. A lot.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Pathetic, really.’
‘No, it isn’t, Malcolm. Anyway, back to the story. You said you saw her?’
He nodded. ‘Or thought I did. Even if she looked different. More… I don’t know, confident. She wasn’t wearing glasses any more. Hair a different colour. She seemed taller, somehow.’
‘From what I’ve heard, she’s a great actress.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So what made her stand out? Why did you notice her?’
‘Well… for one thing she seemed to be looking the other way. When everyone was looking at the body, she was looking at the crowd, seeing how they were reacting. And another thing.’
‘What?’
‘She was smiling.’
Anni sat back, shook her head. ‘So that was that? We’ve got no way of finding her?’
Malcolm almost smiled. ‘Oh, I didn’t say that…’
49
‘No. Definitely not. No.’ DCI Gary Franks was not a man used to having his authority questioned. Especially not by a woman.
Marina held her ground, glared at him. All those old wounds were opening up between them. Reminders of skirmishes past. Matthews, watching, sensed that neither would give in.
