The Lost Girl (Brennan and Esposito)

by Tania Carver

  But sitting in the bar, looking at her friend and seeing how much hurt her actions had caused to herself, she knew that nothing she could say would make any difference. If she berated her, Anni would accept it. If she forgave her, Anni would accept that, but, Marina knew, not feel deserving of it.

  So instead she thought of Imani’s father at the funeral, remembered what grief had done to him. The real cost of it.

  ‘What?’ asked Anni.

  Marina tried to smile. ‘Drink, up, my round. Just got to nip to the ladies on the way.’

  She went downstairs, locked herself in a cubicle. Once inside and sure there was no one around, she let out all the rage, fear, anger and grief that had built up inside her. Let it consume her until there was nothing left, or she felt there was nothing left. Until she felt ready to move on.

  Then let herself out, checked her make-up concealed as much as it could, went to the bar and ordered more drinks.

  69

  ‘I know it’s a bit of a hike, and you’re probably puffed out, but it’s worth it, believe me.’

  Malcolm’s tour was back on. And business couldn’t have been better.

  Numbers had doubled, trebled, even on weekends. And he had been on hand to happily accommodate everyone’s needs, rewriting the script to bring it right up to date. Of course, being elevated to status of local celebrity with a direct involvement in the latest crime didn’t hurt. Didn’t hurt at all.

  ‘Here we are. Meander Mews, the latest Colchester crime scene.’

  The crowd had gathered round him. What a difference a few weeks had made. He still couldn’t believe it. They no longer talked during his speeches, or giggled, texted, whatever. No. They now hung on to his every word. Took the whole thing in. Oohed when he wanted them to, aahed when he wanted them to. Just like he had imagined it would be.

  ‘It was here,’ he said, pointing up to the anonymous little house, ‘that the witch, as we call her, killed two people. The wife and son of the police detective in charge of the case. To make him cooperate. To make him do her bidding, ladies and gentlemen, yes. The witch had power over him. Real power.’

  They had read it all in the papers, of course. Seen it on the news and the internet. But they still wanted to come, look at the places for themselves, touch them, even. See if they could feel some of the evil seep through the house’s walls, experience it for themselves. Some did. They told him.

  ‘I could feel this, like, presence when we were there,’ a woman had said afterwards. ‘Like an evil presence… didn’t you?’

  Of course he had. Anything to oblige. And she hadn’t been the only one.

  Self-hypnosis, he thought. What a wonderful thing.

  ‘So yes, ladies and gentlemen it was right here. The witch took the woman and child and killed them. How, you may ask?’ His eyes roved the crowd as he spoke. It got a good response when he did that. Upped the drama a level. ‘Poison. She told him he could see them again when he had done her bidding. But he never did. All those people he killed on her behalf for the sake of these two. And they were already dead. Shocking. Shocking.’

  He waited while that little nugget sank in.

  ‘And how do I know all this?’ He smiled. This was the bit he’d been waiting for. This bit had actually got him laid a couple of times. Oh yes. ‘I found the bodies. Yes, me.’

  Another dramatic pause while they took that in, then he continued.

  ‘Yes, I found the bodies. And I’m sure you have plenty of questions about that, so let me speak first and then if I still haven’t answered them, fire away.’

  And he did speak, giving a version of what happened that night that bore no resemblance to the truth. There was no mention of the tears. Of the vomit in the gutter. Of the sleepless nights that had followed. Of the questioning of everything he had ever done, everything he was. None of that. There was just the heroic companion, the stoic friend who volunteered to stay and greet the police while his companion went to stop another murder.

  ‘Any questions?’

  Plenty of hands shot up. And he took his time answering, embroidering each fact as he went, tailor-making them for the questioner. Bespoke answers. They should pay extra for this, he thought.

  He also had his eye on a woman. She was standing off to the side. Not as attractive as the one from last week, but not bad. She’d do. Wasn’t like he was going to turn her away, was it? Oh yes. He knew that look. Could spot it now.

  This was who Malcolm was now.

  And he couldn’t have been happier.

  70

  Marina sat by the side of the bed. Waiting.

  Time was measured by the machines’ regular beats and pauses. Hooked up and wired into Phil, keeping him alive, giving her hope.

  Hope. The cruellest of emotions.

  He had woken up once, while initially recovering from surgery, before falling back into unconsciousness. During that short period of time he had grabbed the sides of the bed, shouted that he couldn’t move. Marina had been sleeping in her chair, the same one she was in now, just waiting for such a moment. Hoping for one. She ran forward, took his hand in hers.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, Phil. You’re OK. You’re OK…’

  She grabbed him, tried to calm him, comfort him. Looking round all the while for someone or something that wasn’t there. She pressed a button by the bed.

  He stared at her. ‘Is it you? Really you?’

  ‘Yes, Phil, it’s me. Really me.’ She tried to smile. Tried to let relief win out over all those other emotions.

  He kept staring at her, his anxiety gradually subsiding but never fully disappearing.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Just lie back. Don’t try to move. You’ll hurt yourself.’

  He did so, still staring at her. Not totally trusting her but taking her word that she was telling him the right thing to do, telling him the truth. Unable to move for the dressings, wires and tubes attached to him. But in his mind it seemed there were different things keeping him incarcerated.

  ‘You’re in hospital,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘You’ve been out for a couple of…’

  Her head dropped, she started to cry.

  ‘Oh God, Phil… oh God…’

  His eyes closed once more.

  She held on to his hand like she was drowning.

  The bullet had penetrated his left lung which had collapsed and flooded with blood. Luckily the police officers were trained in triage and had held him together until the ambulance turned up. A second piece of luck was that the bullet hadn’t directly hit his heart. It was touch and go whether he would make it or not and he spent over seven hours in surgery. The drugs in his system didn’t help his body to fight back and although the surgeons had done their best, he had lapsed into a coma. Marina had looked at the prone, unresponsive body of her husband and tried to pretend that was a good sign, a necessary step for his body to heal itself. She had to tell herself that.

  She had spoken to the consultant, had that dreaded but necessary conversation about Phil’s chances of recovery. Fearful to hear any answer.

  ‘Hypothetically, there’s no reason why he won’t come round,’ the consultant had replied. ‘He’s sustained a serious injury but we seem to have caught him in time. No cardiac arrest, no brain injury so hopefully there’s every chance he’ll make a good recovery. Fingers crossed.’

  Hopefully, she thought.

  ‘What about a full recovery? Mentally, I mean?’

  The consultant shrugged. His plastered-on smile faded somewhat. ‘Well, he’s been through a significant trauma. It just depends on his resilience, now. How well he wants to get better.’

  Marina nodded. Looked again at the unconscious figure in the bed before her.

  Sat down beside him once more. Waiting.

  And here she was now, keeping her vigil by his bedside, wanting to be there when he woke up. When he woke up, she emphasised to herself once more. Not if. She had already been here once with a previous partner, keep
ing vigil at his bedside while the consultants asked if she wanted to give their consent to turn off the machines keeping him alive. She wasn’t ready to go through that with her husband. Not now. Not ever.

  Josephina was safe back in Birmingham. She hadn’t wanted their daughter to see her father in this state. Part of her feared it might be the last time she saw him and she didn’t want her to remember him this way.

  No, she told herself. Don’t think like that. Ever. He’s coming back. She was sure of it.

  It would be difficult, she knew that. What had been done to him was unspeakable. Most people would have snapped under the strain. But she took hope from a couple of things. The first was that he had woken up already. The second? Snow angels. He had remembered, or rather not remembered, snow angels.

  Phil, no matter what he had been through, how tough and unbearable his ordeal, had kept that small part of himself intact. He must have done. He had realised he wasn’t with his long-lost sister and wasn’t going to take a suicide pill alongside her. And he had recognised Marina. How else would that recognition have stopped him from taking that capsule?

  At least that was what she told herself. Had to tell herself. Because that was the spark that kept her believing, that convinced her that her husband was coming back.

  She talked to him during the hours she sat there. Made up his answers, answered them in turn. Kept a conversation going. The one she hoped to be having soon.

  ‘D’you sometimes get tired of all the death, all the heartache?’ she said to him after returning to his bedside from Imani’s funeral.

  Course I do, came his voice in her head. But it comes with the job. It’s what we do.

  ‘Really?’ she had said. ‘But what did we achieve? Really achieve?’

  No answer.

  ‘I mean, we’ve been through hell, we’ve put our daughter through hell, and for what? What have we actually achieved? We’ve got a damned good officer killed. We’ve got you in a coma.’

  She knew what his answer would have been. He would tell her they had got a psychopath off the streets, one who had killed countless people.

  ‘Yes, but she’d done most of that before we stopped her. So the question is, did we do any good this time? Really do any good?’

  She didn’t know what his reply would have been. Not any more.

  So she sat there. Kept her vigil. Waited for that spark of hope to fan itself into a flame. Waited for her husband to come back to her.

  The days were blurring into an unremarkable mass. Hope had become as routine as everything else. She had just been to the coffee machine in the hall. Stockholm syndrome, she thought. I’m getting to like the taste of this stuff. She sat back in her bedside chair, the novel she had been trying to interest herself in splayed like a grounded flying bird on the bedside cabinet next to her.

  She looked at Phil. No change. Picked up the novel. Tried to interest herself in it.

  She didn’t notice him move at first.

  She sighed, took the novel away from her eyes. Thought of checking her phone.

  That was when she saw it.

  Just a finger, twitching. Then another finger moving with the first one.

  She stared, unable to move, not daring to breathe.

  Then a third finger. Then the whole hand.

  She looked round, wanted to shout, wanted someone else to bear witness, to share this with her. She pressed the button to summon a nurse.

  His whole hand was moving now.

  ‘Phil…’

  She held his hand, clutched it hard to her. As she did so, his left eyelid flickered open.

  ‘Oh God, Phil…’

  She felt tears starting to form in the corners of her eyes. Felt something real and tangible rise within herself.

  Hope.

  ‘If you haven’t discovered this talented newcomer yet, hurry. She’s on her way to the top’ Richard Montanari

  A sickening killer is on the loose – a killer like no other. This murderer targets heavily pregnant women, drugging them and brutally removing their unborn babies.

  When DI Phil Brennan is called to the latest murder scene, he knows that he has entered the world of the most depraved killer he has ever encountered. After a loveless, abused childhood, Phil knows evil well, but nothing in his life has prepared him for this.

  And when criminal profiler Marina Esposito is brought in to help solve the case, she delivers a bombshell: she believes there is a woman involved in the killing – a woman desperate for children…

  *

  ‘With a plotline that snares from the off, and a comprehensive cast of characters, Carver’s debut novel sets the crime thriller bar high. A hard act to follow’ Irish Examiner

  ‘Keep the lights on for this one. Carver has delivered another utterly terrifying, yet believable chiller’ Mirror

  Into the house. Down the stairs. Through the dripping dark of the cellar. Someone is there. Someone that shouldn’t be there.

  As a building awaits demolition, a horrifying discovery is made inside the basement: a cage made of human bones – with a terrified, feral child lurking within. Unbeknownst to DI Phil Brennan and psychologist Marina Esposito, they have disturbed a killer who has been operating undetected for thirty years. A killer who wants that boy back.

  But the cage of bones is also a box of secrets – secrets linking Brennan to the madman in their midst. With the death toll rising and the city reeling in terror, Brennan and Marina race to expose a predator more soullessly evil than any they’ve ever faced – one who is hiding in plain sight.

  *

  ‘For thriller fans, Cage of Bones is a must, but be warned, it ain’t pretty’ Irish Sunday Independent