by Sarah Hilary
His brother made a sound between laughing and sobbing.
‘Sol—?’
‘Not me, bro. This’s her shit. It’s hers.’
‘What? You’re not making any sense. Calm down and tell me what’s going on.’
He heard Sol set his teeth. ‘Outside her place, yeah? Right now. Not one of my boys, not any bad boy. This’s hers. She’s got a stalker, your boss. He’s out there like he’s front row seating, eating fucking Doritos.’
Noah ran it back: ‘Someone’s parked up outside DI Rome’s flat, eating Doritos. Why’re you freaking out? You’ve got weirder habits than that.’
‘Because he’s watching. You think I don’t know what that looks like? He’s staking the fuck out of your boss’s flat, and shit—’ Sol broke off.
Noah turned full circle, catching the look of worry on Dan’s face, waiting for his brother to say something more.
‘Sol?’
‘He’s outta the car,’ whispering, ‘shit, he’s coming up the steps.’
The rattle of metal on metal.
Noah’s neck clenched, the phone greasy in his grip. ‘Sol, talk to me. What’s going on?’
‘He’s— Fuck, he’s put something through the door.’
‘Through the letterbox? What is it?’
‘Hold up . . .’ Sol was breathing fast.
For a long minute all Noah could hear was Sol breathing through his mouth, short breaths, too much adrenalin. Then he said, ‘Okay . . . It’s just a letter for her. Marnie Jane Rome.’
The sound of the envelope being turned over in his hand. ‘Not much in here, maybe just a fan letter. He’s got shit handwriting . . . C for creep, yeah.’
Noah propped a hand to the wall. ‘There’s a C on the envelope?’
‘On the back, yeah. Right where he’s sealed it. And some crap on it, like food or shit . . .’
‘Wax. Is it white wax?’
‘I guess. Yeah . . .’
‘Is he still there?’
‘Went back down the steps after shoving this through.’
‘Is he in his car? Sol. Go and look. Now.’
He counted seven seconds before Sol said, ‘He’s there, but he’s got the engine running. Yeah, he’s fucking off.’
‘Take a picture,’ Noah snapped. ‘Take it now, before he goes.’
‘No camera, man. This phone’s a piece of shit. No offence to your boss, but she’s—’
‘What’s the registration?’ Noah gestured to Dan who was ahead of him, already holding out a pen and pad. ‘I need the make of the car, the registration, anything else you can give me.’
‘He’s fucking off. Hang on.’
‘Don’t— Sol, stay in the house. Don’t let him see you.’
Silence. The sound of his brother breathing and under that, very faint—
The spit of tyres on a gritted road.
‘Sol?’
‘Yeah, man. I got it.’ Sol gave him a registration number. ‘Shitty silver Astra, sticker in the back for Battersea Dogs Home.’
‘Did he see you?’
‘No. I can describe him, though. You want that?’
‘Save it for the station,’ Noah said. ‘I’ll send someone round, but Sol?’
‘Yeah?’
‘This time, you stay put. You’re a witness. We’ll give you protection if you need it but you stay put. I get to the flat and find you gone? There’ll be a warrant out for you. I’ll issue it myself.’
42
Tobias Midori was nine, but looked younger. All eyes and outsized trainers that snagged on the interview room’s rubber floor. Dressed in school uniform, a white polo shirt under a bottle-green blazer, black trousers too long for his thin legs. Licking his lips where a crust of milk and oatmeal had dried, the good breakfast his mother had insisted he eat before coming here to be interviewed by Harry Kennedy and Zoe Marshall. Zoe wore a dark green sweatshirt and black jeans; the clothes made her look like an older student from the same school. Tobias trusted her, Marnie saw that straightaway. He trusted Zoe, but not Harry and not Marnie.
Harry ran through the introductions, keeping it gentle, not scaring the boy despite the gravity of the charges. Marnie tried to place this frightened child next to the wreckage in Lancaster Road, the blood and broken glass. She’d seen Mrs Midori outside, waiting in her best coat, her face collapsed by sorrow and shame. A respectable woman, trying to hold her head up.
‘We know you took a shoebox from the house.’ Harry had removed his jacket, sitting in shirt sleeves. ‘We don’t know why. Can you tell us?’
Tobias shifted in the chair, shoulders twitching. His eyes were all over the room.
Zoe said, ‘It’s okay. We know this wasn’t your idea. Sometimes stuff happens and you get caught up in it. You don’t mean to but it catches you and it’s really hard to step off.’ Her voice had a rhythm, calming. She’d angled her body towards the boy.
After a beat, Tobias stopped fidgeting and sat still.
Zoe glanced at Harry, who nodded for her to continue. ‘This’s a chance to give your side. You’re the only one who can do that. Harry – DS Kennedy – needs to know what happened so he can make sense of it and clear everything up.’
Tobias was rocking to the rhythm of her voice.
‘I didn’t hurt them.’ His voice was thin, like the rest of him. ‘That wasn’t me.’ He shot a scared look at Zoe then across the table at Marnie. ‘I just got the box.’
‘Where did you find it?’ Harry asked.
Tobias licked at the crusted corner of his mouth. ‘Tanker cupboard.’
‘Tanker cupboard?’
‘Where the water’s kept.’
‘The water tank,’ Harry said. ‘Where was that?’
Tobias raised a hand above his head. ‘Up the steps.’ His eyes flickered to Marnie then away. ‘In the attic.’ He brought his hand down, making it flat. Fingers closed, thumb tucked in. He propped the hand sideways, his little finger on the table. ‘Behind the tank, pushed in. Tight.’
His hand was narrow, like a knife. Smaller than Marnie’s hand, smaller than Stephen’s now. But not then. He’d been a skinny child, like Tobias. Behind the water tank in the attic, that’s where he’d stashed the shoebox. Pushing it tight, hiding it where it would take a child’s hand to reach it. Marnie had pulled that house apart, but she’d not thought to put her hand behind the water tank.
‘That’s a good hiding place,’ Harry said. ‘How’d you know the box was there? I’m guessing someone told you.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t know names.’ Tobias wet his lips. His eyes flickered left, then right. ‘I’m not giving you names.’
‘Because you’re scared what’ll happen?’ Harry nodded. ‘I saw the house, and the people who live there . . . That was very nasty. I’d be scared of whoever did that.’
The boy’s narrow chin came up. ‘I ain’t scared of shit.’
‘All right.’ Harry looked surprised, and impressed. ‘Good for you. So who was it? Who told you where to find the box? Who told you to take it out of the house?’
Silence.
Harry nodded again. ‘I get it. It’s scary—’
‘It was a letter, yeah?’ Tobias kicked at the leg of the table. ‘I don’t know who sent it. Just a letter and some shit about Crasmere, ’bout my boys. No one takes shit like that. You take it, they take you. I got it because they needed me to get it. And yeah it’s cos I’m small, but that’s why they need me.’ He made his hand into a knife again, pointing it at Harry, at Marnie.
‘I’m their key.’ Tilting his chin. ‘I open all the doors.’
Marnie had turned her phone off during the interview. She switched it back on as Harry walked Tobias to where his mother was waiting. Zoe zippered her coat, taking the red mittens from her pockets. ‘Sorry. I wish I could’ve been more use.’
‘He talked,’ Marnie said. ‘I doubt he’d have done that without your support.’
‘He’s a good kid.’ Zoe freed her hair from the coat’s colla
r. ‘I know it’s my job to say that but it’s true. One of those you wish you could take out of London someplace he could grow up without a gang breathing down his neck. Kids are sponges; they soak up so much.’ She rubbed the heel of her hand at her nose. ‘I’ve got a nephew his age in Kent. Small towns are boring, but safe.’
‘I’m sorry, I need to make a call.’ Marnie was reading a text from Noah. ‘Thanks for your help.’
‘Any time.’ Zoe held out her right hand, keeping the mittens in her left.
Marnie shook her hand, turning away as the call connected. ‘Noah? What’s happened?’
Harry was coming up the stairwell as Marnie headed down.
‘We should talk,’ he said, ‘about what happens next.’
‘Later.’ She nodded. ‘We have a lead on our killer. I have to go.’
He stepped out of her way. ‘Anything I can do?’
‘I’ll let you know. Thanks.’
‘Are you safe to drive?’
The question was asked so bluntly, she stopped and turned to face him.
‘Are you?’ He was standing two steps above her, a frown in his eyes. ‘Only you look like someone hit you with a hard object.’
‘There’s a witness waiting. In my flat.’
‘In your flat— What happened?’
‘I’m safe to drive. That was your question, wasn’t it?’
‘I can give you a lift.’ He rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘Seriously. The offer’s there.’
‘Thanks, but I’ve got this.’ She started back down the stairs. ‘I’ll call you, about Tobias.’
In the car, she checked her reflection to see what had spooked him. Her face was pale, but she was always pale. It irked her that he’d seen beneath her mask. On the other hand, ‘Like someone hit you with a hard object,’ summed up the situation neatly.
She started the engine. Set her phone to hands-free. Rang Noah.
‘Sol’s here,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a description. He was wearing gloves, or I’d get Forensics to dust the door. Colin’s running a check on the registration. Do you want me to open the letter?’
It was going to take Marnie forty minutes to reach the flat. At least forty minutes. Even if they moved Sol to the station – they’d lose time if they waited for her to be the one to open the letter.
‘Do it,’ she told Noah.
Traffic had brought her to a standstill. She blinked at the brake lights of the car in front, flexing her hands at the wheel. Each of her fingers was gripped by cold.
The careful sound of the envelope being opened by Noah—
‘Okay . . . It’s clippings again. Two of them, but these are photocopies.’
He spoke very clearly, without emotion. She was grateful for that.
‘The first one’s from six years ago. Lancaster Road. Exactly what you’d expect.’
‘And the second?’
‘There’s no date—’ Noah stopped.
In his silence, she heard a world of doubt and worry.
‘Tell me.’
‘It says an inmate at Cloverton was found hanged in his cell. The third death in six months . . . As with all deaths in custody,’ he was quoting from the clipping, ‘there will be an investigation by the independent Prisons and Probation Ombudsman. A spokesman for the coroner’s service said a post-mortem examination had yet to be carried out on the twenty-year-old male.’
Warning posters in the waiting room, those mismatched green carpet squares, the shrill of an alarm making him flinch— His fear. His fear like a snake under her skin.
Marnie’s eyes felt glued open, fixed on the breathy exhaust of the car in front. ‘That’s it?’
‘The inmate was moved to Cloverton from a juvenile detention centre in the South-West five months ago.’ Noah stopped. ‘That’s it.’
‘No name?’
‘No name, no photograph.’ His voice tightened. ‘I’ll contact Cloverton. Shall I?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll call you straight back.’ He rang off.
Dead ahead, the car’s brake lights died.
Blare of a horn behind her—
The traffic was moving. She released the handbrake, raising her left hand in an apology.
A rushing noise in her head—
The heater. She reached to switch it off and the cuff of her coat snagged on the gears. She struggled, dragging it free. Another blare from behind. When she looked in the mirror— Her eyes were wild.
She signalled left, looking for a space to park up, seeing—
A static row of frozen cars, each roof glittering, every space taken.
43
Sol was on the sofa with his eyes shut, shaving foam drying behind his left ear. He’d slept where he was sitting, the shape of his head in the cushions, a neat pile of bedding unused at the side of the sofa. He’d showered and shaved but he looked whip-thin, burnt-out.
Noah turned to watch the street through the shutters, his phone in his hand. He was waiting for Cloverton to return his call. The photocopied clippings were inside an evidence bag, back to back so that he could read each one without opening the bag.
‘Greg and Lisa Rome, Lancaster Road . . . Fourteen-year-old in custody.’
‘Post-mortem . . . yet to be carried out on the twenty-year-old male.’
Noah’s head ached, nothing to do with yesterday’s concussion; he was angry for Marnie. Whoever was playing this sick game had made him part of it, reading out the clippings, hearing the hurt in her voice. He’d checked the internet, failing to find any recent news reports that matched the second clipping, but he needed confirmation. He couldn’t call back with half a reassurance. A car crawled past outside, its driver not trusting the council to have salted these streets. Fewer and fewer residential roads were being treated, because supplies of salt were rationed now.
He gripped his phone hard, willing it to ring. Whatever had happened at Cloverton, Marnie needed to know. Waiting was almost worse than the pictures in his head – in her head – of Stephen hanging in his cell. She was waiting for Noah’s call, imagining a post-mortem, enquiry, funeral. Her brother. Her parents’ killer.
Noah started texting an explanation for the delay, wanting her to know that he was waiting for the prison to call him back.
From the sofa, Sol said, ‘This’s fuckery . . .’
‘Yes,’ Noah agreed shortly, ‘it is.’
His phone rang: Colin Pitcher. ‘The Astra’s registered to Elliot Pershall. Seventy-three years old, address in Feltham.’
‘He’s not the driver.’ Noah glanced at the description Sol had given. ‘We’re looking for a man in his thirties.’
‘No report of the car being stolen. But I’ll put a call through.’
‘Can you text the DVLA details? I’m waiting for a call back, need to keep this line clear.’
‘Will do.’ Colin rang off.
Noah studied the text when it came. Elliot Pershall looked every one of his seventy-three years, with fleshy ear lobes and a fleshy nose. ‘Is this anything like the man you saw?’ He walked to where Sol was sitting.
His brother squinted at the driving licence. ‘No way. This’s old . . .’
‘I know it’s not the man you saw, but could they be related? Can you see any similarity?’
‘Like this’s his dad? Nah. Maybe.’
‘Nah, or maybe?’ He didn’t have time for Sol’s games. ‘Which is it?’
Sol looked up at him then back at the photo. ‘Maybe, but I don’t think so.’
‘Give me your phone.’ Noah held out his hand.
‘I don’t—’
‘DI Rome gave you a phone. I need to borrow it.’
Sol dug it from his pocket, handing it over with a look of surrender. ‘Chill . . .’
Noah dialled the station. ‘Find out if Elliot Pershall has a son. If so, he may be a suspect. If it turns out the car’s stolen, we need to know when and from where. Run it through the systems for everything you can get. I’m waiting for the boss, we
’ll be back within the hour. Someone needs to organise an e-fit from an eyewitness. If DCS Ferguson wants an update, get her to call me. But the Astra goes on the board.’
His phone was ringing.
Cloverton, calling back.
‘I have to go.’
44
Marnie locked the car and stood at its side. She’d cursed the slow journey getting here, but now it was too soon. She wasn’t ready to be inside, hearing what Noah had to tell her.
Everything hurt, from her throat to her feet. She checked her pockets, one after the other, as if she could locate the precise source of the pain. At least she knew Ed was safe. She’d texted when she was stuck in traffic, and he’d texted back. She hated not knowing how long their vigilante had been watching her, how much he knew of her private life. He’d thought that she was living here, at the flat where Sol had spent the night. Which meant his information was out of date, by months. Her phone was ringing. She looked at it— Noah, calling to say whether or not it was true.
Whether Stephen was dead. Murdered.
She pushed the phone back into her pocket, wanting to do this face to face. It’d been hard enough on Noah having to tell her about the clippings. This time she could at least meet his eyes, let him know how sorry she was that he was caught in the middle of this mess.
He opened the front door as she climbed the short flight of steps to the flat.
She stopped him before he could speak. ‘Let me get inside.’
He stepped back into the narrow hall, closing the door behind her. She could smell shower gel, and dust from the radiators. The flat felt empty, but it wasn’t. Sol was here, and Noah.
‘All right.’ She turned to face him, armed with a smile. ‘Tell me.’
‘He’s alive. It was a lie.’
Nothing. Not relief, or disappointment.
Just the same pain, everywhere.
It was a lie.
If he’d said, ‘It’s true. Stephen’s dead,’ would it have been different? A different pain, surely. Or none at all. Could he have done that? Their vigilante, her vigilante. Excised her pain by punishing its perpetrator? No. She thought of Mazi’s tears. Whoever was doing this wasn’t interested in the excision of pain, only in its escalation.
