by Sarah Hilary
‘I suppose that’s why he used photocopies,’ Noah was saying, ‘so that he could mock it up to look like a real news story. But it’s a lie. Cloverton’s confirmed it.’
‘Good. That’s – good.’ She nodded at the bruised side of his face. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes.’ He touched a hand to her elbow.
She kept the smile in place. ‘Sol’s here, yes?’
‘On the sofa.’
‘What exactly did Cloverton say?’
‘No deaths at the prison in six months. Stephen’s in his cell, they checked. We have a name for the owner of the Astra, but he’s not the man Sol saw. Elliot Pershall, a pensioner from Feltham. We’re trying to find out if his car was stolen, and if so when and where.’
‘Sounds as if you’re on top of things. Any word from DCS Ferguson?’
‘Not yet.’
They went through to where Sol was sitting on the edge of the sofa, his elbows on his knees, head hanging. He looked up when they came into the room.
‘I’m starving,’ he said. ‘Can we get some breakfast?’
At the station, Noah took Sol to where the e-fit expert was waiting. When he reached the incident room, Ron was pinning a photo of the Astra to the board, alongside an enlarged copy of Elliot Pershall’s driving licence.
‘Says his car was nicked while he was at a hospital appointment two days ago,’ Ron told them. ‘Poor sod spent forty minutes searching for where he’d parked it before he gave up and got the bus home. Memory’s going, he said. Not the first time he’s lost his car. Left the keys in it, too.’
‘Which hospital?’ Marnie asked.
‘Hillingdon. Uxbridge. Nowhere near any of our victims.’ Ron scratched the back of his head. ‘We’re drawing a bit of a blank. Sorry, boss.’
‘Is he on his own?’ Noah asked. ‘Mr Pershall.’
‘Widower, no kids. So, yeah. He was on his own. We’ve asked for CCTV footage from the hospital car park, should be with us soon.’
‘Any news on Lisa,’ Marnie asked, ‘or Carole?’
‘Nothing, boss.’
‘And nothing on Finn.’
‘Only that he’s definitely not been seen in ten weeks. Child Protection have sorted the paperwork and put out the alerts.’
‘All right. Let’s find whoever stole Mr Pershall’s car. And let’s find Ollie. Anything connecting him and Finn.’ She looked across at Noah. ‘You should be at home, resting.’
‘I’m fine. If I start feeling stupid, I’ll go. Let me help until then.’
Before Marnie could argue, Colin arrived.
‘Forensic report on the stuff from Lisa’s place.’ He handed Marnie a sheet of paper. ‘Fran’s team found two blood matches. No fingerprints. Not on the bat or the lighter. And not on the bin liner. Whoever used the bat, and whoever binned everything afterwards, wore gloves. But Fran got bloods from the bat.’
‘This should get us an arrest warrant.’ Marnie studied the report. ‘For Ollie.’
‘It’s Kyle’s blood?’ Noah’s head throbbed, blackly. He looked at Colin. ‘You said two matches.’
‘Kyle’s blood on the bat,’ Marnie said. ‘No question this is our murder weapon. But, yes. There’s another blood match. And Fran thinks it’s fresher than Kyle’s.’
‘That means—’
‘After Kyle was attacked, the bat was used again.’
‘Fran’s matched the blood already?’
‘She didn’t have to look very far,’ Colin said. ‘Same case file.’
Noah was watching Marnie. ‘Whose blood is it?’
She looked up. ‘Carole Linton.’
Her eyes burned in her face.
‘It’s Carole’s blood on the bat.’
45
Ice was melting, trickling to where Finn lay curled on his side where they’d buried him, in the snow. White on all sides but it wasn’t cold, not really. Not real snow. Just that the bath was white. The ice wasn’t real either, only water from the taps and he was glad because he was thirsty and when he pushed his tongue out he could taste taps, pipes, the bleach he’d used to clean where he was lying with his hands taped, feet free, mouth gummy from the glue.
‘Ollie?’ The name rattled round the bath like a pebble, his voice weird and washed out. His head was burning, but he was freezing cold. ‘Ollie?’
‘What?’ Like he was a long way away, in another room.
‘I feel shit.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is he coming?’ Brady, he meant.
‘Yeah.’ At least Ollie wasn’t angry.
Finn moved his fingers, pressing at the sides of the bath. It felt soft but it wasn’t, that was in his head, that was just his fingers being too numb to feel properly. ‘Is this really about my dad?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘I told you.’ Ollie sucked at something, maybe just air. ‘Because he gives a shit.’
‘Will he let us go? After Dad’s done what he wants, if he does what he wants. Will he?’
After a bit, Ollie said, ‘He’ll let you go.’
‘Why not you?’
‘I’ve done stuff.’
‘What stuff?’
‘Can’t you shut up?’
‘I’m cold. My feet are cold.’
The squeal of Ollie’s trainers on the floor, his shadow blocking the light. He wrapped a hand towel round Finn’s feet then covered the rest of him with a bath towel.
‘Thanks . . .’ His teeth chattered.
Ollie sat back down.
‘What stuff’ve you done?’ Finn asked after a bit, mostly to make sure Ollie was still there.
‘Nothing. Forget it.’
‘You can tell me. I won’t say anything.’ He put his hand on the side of the bath. ‘I’m going to tell them how you tried to help, you gave me these towels.’
‘Yeah?’ Ollie didn’t believe him. ‘You going to tell them about the duct tape too?’
‘What’d you mean when you said that thing about a cage?’ He spread his fingers on the white wall between them. ‘You said you were going to put me back in the cage and kick it, but there wasn’t any cage.’
‘Not for you.’
‘What?’
‘You want to know what’s funny?’ Ollie sounded worn out, like a little kid. ‘They all said I didn’t remember. My mum always told everyone, “Thank God he doesn’t remember,” like that made it okay. I had to tell her to stop saying it. She’d have told everyone, “Thank God he doesn’t remember,” when what kind of moron doesn’t remember being shut in a cage?’ He knocked at the side of the bath. ‘You’d remember, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
Ollie was talking about something that’d happened years ago, he had to be. He was too big to put in a cage now. This’d happened ages ago, when Ollie was little. Littler even than Finn.
‘You’d remember being made to eat your food like a dog, down on your hands and knees. Not even real food. Screwed-up tissues she’d used to clean her face with, and that curly pasta straight from the packet. Not even cooked. Dry pasta. She wouldn’t let you soften it with water or your spit, made you eat it while she watched, seeing the way it scraped the skin off the inside of your mouth, made your throat bleed. Only if you cried, she’d kick the cage and keep kicking it, for hours sometimes.’ A squeaking sound, like his feet couldn’t stop moving on the floor.
Finn wanted to ask who did it, and why. It made him ill to think of anyone treating Ollie that way – treating anyone that way. But he was afraid to speak in case Ollie got angry again. Shame could make you angry, Finn knew.
‘Sickest bit?’ Ollie said. ‘I missed it when I got back home. Being told what to do. All those therapists getting me to draw pictures of my feelings, not one of them was any use. I wanted rules. If no one gives you rules, you can’t make sense of shit. So yeah, I was glad. When she showed up. I was glad.’
He sucked at snot in his throat, snot or tears. ‘No one else was any use to me except Mr Singh and
I couldn’t keep seeing him, not with the Crasmere Boys calling him a towel-head and worse. I was going to get him hurt. She says that’s what happens near me, and she’s right.’
She? The woman who’d put him in a cage had come back? Finn couldn’t make sense of what Ollie was saying. Surely if there were therapists and his mum telling people he didn’t remember stuff then that meant they’d caught whoever did it. And if they’d caught her, they must’ve locked her away. But maybe she was out now, the way Finn’s dad would be one day. Maybe they’d let her out of prison and she’d gone looking for Ollie. Finn shivered under the bath towels.
‘Mr Singh was my friend.’ Ollie’s voice cracked. ‘But she warned me what’d happen if I tried to have friends. I’m fucked up inside. She knew. I was going to get him hurt. Only one way to get well, that’s what she said. That’s what she showed me.’ His heart was beating too hard.
Finn could hear it through the side of the bath and okay maybe it wasn’t Ollie’s heart, maybe Ollie was knocking his feet on the floor or his head on the wall, but it sounded like his heart and it sounded too hard, like he was going to have a heart attack. Finn had to get him to calm down.
‘Why’re you here?’ he whispered. ‘If this’s about my dad, about me. Why’re you here?’
Ollie didn’t answer.
‘What did you do? You said you did stuff—’
‘I killed someone, okay?’ Ollie thumped the bath.
Finn curling tighter under the towels. It wasn’t true. Ollie wasn’t a killer. He was a kid who’d been kept in a cage by someone who’d come back to fuck with his head. You didn’t fuck with Ollie, not unless you wanted trouble. Ollie was hard. ‘You didn’t—’
‘Yeah? You happy now? I killed someone. Smashed their head to shit. Broke their fingers, broke their fucking nose. Blood everywhere. You should’ve seen the blood, I was slipping in it, tasting it. I could see his brain inside his face and she made me— She had a lighter and she made me—’ He stopped, sucking at the air. It sounded like sobs, like Ollie was sobbing. ‘And it wasn’t true. Only one way to get well. It wasn’t true. Because it didn’t make me better, it just made me a killer.’
He’d really done it. Killed someone. Beaten them to death.
Finn couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, even with his eyes wide open. He couldn’t see.
‘So yeah.’ Ollie knocked his hand at the bath again but softly, like he’d spread his fingers, starfished on the walls between them. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
46
The steps to Carole’s flat were icy, ungritted. Noah’s ribs twinged with memory as he followed Marnie down. The front door had been unlocked by the landlord, a thickset man with a fistful of keys who did as he was told and stayed out of their way.
No change in temperature as they stepped inside, just a deadening in the air. No smell – the cold playing its part. Noah had been in worse places, but not recently. The flat was damp and it was dark, carpet decaying along with the window frames. Black everywhere from untreated mould. Pieces of furniture, cheap and scarred, peeling wallpaper. A square box of rot; stage-set for the world’s most depressing kitchen sink drama. ‘A studio,’ the landlord called it, meaning the bed pulled out from the sofa and the kitchen was a plug-in hot plate, the bathroom a cupboard fitted with a chemical toilet and a shower that dripped into a tiny sink. Nowhere to hide a dead body, barely room for a living one. Noah’s fingers pricked inside the crime scene gloves.
Marnie opened the minibar-sized fridge. A week-old pint of milk had separated into water and cheese. No storage space in the studio, just uncovered shelves where Carole kept clothes and make-up, a handful of books. Picture books, for kids. No television, no computer. A trio of plastic handbags hung from a peg by the door. Marnie opened each in turn, before taking down a black quilted bag and emptying its contents onto the shelf where Carole kept her hairspray.
Wallet. Car keys. Lipstick, hairbrush, painkillers. In the wallet, a creased ten-pound note and some loose change. Credit cards, bank card, driving licence. Paperwork from a job agency, loyalty cards for a couple of coffee chains. House keys.
Marnie put the two sets of keys side by side.
‘Her car’s outside,’ Noah said. ‘Frozen shut. It’s not been driven in days.’
Carole’s blood was on the baseball bat used to kill Kyle.
She’d left her car keys, house keys, wallet.
‘She’s gone,’ Noah said. ‘Isn’t she?’
Dead, he meant. Murdered, like Kyle. ‘Or else that’s what she wants us to think.’
‘We need Forensics in here.’ Marnie made the call, standing with her eyes on the windowless wall. Then she pocketed her phone. ‘Come on.’ She headed out of the flat.
The landlord was vaping; the red smell of raspberries stung Noah’s eyes.
‘Not a lot of room in there,’ Marnie said. ‘Did Ms Linton rent storage space from you?’
‘Round the back.’ He searched the fistful of keys. ‘I suppose you’ll want to see . . .’
He led them through the salvage yard, past the burnt-out cars to a big garage with a roll-up metal door that he dragged up and open. Cold air sucked at them from inside. The garage was piled with possessions. Crowded, but dry. Better living conditions than the flat.
‘This doesn’t all belong to Carole Linton,’ Marnie said. ‘Presumably.’
The landlord pointed to the far corner. Light ran in, finding the reflective surfaces of crates and plastic sheeting that divided the space into sections.
Marnie and Noah picked their way to the back where a grandfather clock was wrapped in a blanket, a noose of rope round its neck. A set of drawers with fancy handles, an ornate mirror. Furniture from a different life to the one lived in the studio, its edges protected by blanketing.
‘The attack on Carole,’ Marnie said. ‘We knew it was different to the other assaults. No marks on her face, and a knife not a blunt weapon. Her skirt set on fire . . . It stood out, right from the start.’ Her eyes flashed in the dim light. ‘Carole was different.’
‘Her crime was different too.’ Noah thought of the abandoned keys in the studio flat, and the blood on the baseball bat. ‘She was hiding information about the attack, we both thought that. Should we have been watching her? If we’d asked better questions, kept her under surveillance . . .’
‘We were busy. The attacks were escalating. Carole wasn’t the only victim.’
The letter C on the clippings, and carved into the shoulder of the inmate at Cloverton. Had they missed a trick? Had this been about Carole, right from the start?
‘Noah . . .’
Marnie reached a gloved hand for the blanket covering what looked like a trunk.
It wasn’t a trunk. It was a cage.
A black wire cage with a shallow plastic tray as its base.
Large enough for a big dog, or a small child.
‘This isn’t—’
‘Not the cage she kept Ollie in. The police seized that.’
Marnie’s voice was taut. ‘She went out and bought another one.’
She dropped the blanket back over the cage, crouching to uncover the smaller items stacked on the floor. Boxes, mostly. Photographs, all pre-dating the time when Carole took Ollie from the car park in Harrow. Books, newspapers. Buried underneath, a scrapbook with its blue pages swollen inside an orange cover.
Marnie opened it. On the first page, glued in place—
A child’s face looking out from the bars of a cage like the one behind them. Vacant eyes, a pink mouth slick with spit, small nose caked with mucus. Long black eyelashes, each one wet and separate. Damp curls sticking like feathers to his little head. Ollie Tomlinson, his black eyes ringed by purple, the irises all but lost to shock and fright.
Marnie turned the page to more photos. Ollie lying on his side in the cage, fingers pushed through the wire. Sitting up in nothing but a nappy, face pressed to the bars.
‘The police didn’t seize this?’ Noah felt a pulse of anger
at the thought of Carole looking through these pictures after she’d been released from prison, long after her punishment was over.
‘They didn’t know about it.’ Marnie turned another page. ‘No mention of a scrapbook in the police report, or the records from the trial.’ She stopped.
A single photograph on the blue sugar paper. Faded, old. Not Ollie.
This child had pale eyes and pinkish-blond hair.
The same age, three or four years old.
In a cage, alone.
‘She took more kids?’ Noah’s throat closed in protest. ‘That’s not Ollie.’
‘No, it’s not.’ Marnie turned the page to more photos of the same child.
Small fingers pushed through black bars.
Noah was afraid, as the pages turned, that he’d see the faces of more trapped children. But it was only Ollie, and this other child.
‘How did we not know about this?’ he demanded. ‘Carole was on trial. They searched her house, took everything. How did we not know?’
Marnie didn’t speak, studying the face of the nameless child. Impossible to tell if it was a boy or a girl. Not cherubic like Ollie. Those pale eyes—
Noah couldn’t look away. ‘Who is it? And what happened to them?’
‘I don’t know.’ Marnie straightened slowly, holding the scrapbook open in her hands. ‘But we need to find out.’ Her breath was white. ‘We’re looking at someone your age, or mine.’ She pointed at the photos. ‘These were taken twenty or thirty years ago. Look at the quality, the discolouration. Whoever this is? Carole took them years before she took Ollie.’
Pale eyes stared up from the scrapbook, colourless in the lock-up’s semi-light.
‘Whoever this is,’ Marnie said, ‘they’re not a child any longer.’
47
‘This is who our witness saw delivering the latest set of news clippings.’
