by Sarah Hilary
‘I’d prefer—’
‘To see Stephen alone?’ Ferguson flicked her eyes to where Aidan was being escorted back to his cell, sketching a salute with her smile. ‘I’ll be in the car.’
Just like that. Marnie had thought it would be harder to shake her off. She’d been dreading the prospect of a three-way interview with her foster brother and her new boss. But Ferguson was choosing to make it easy, or at least less hard. Marnie was grateful, unable to imagine Stephen’s reaction to the woman. She’d tried to imagine it on the journey here but every time she put the three of them in a room together, the walls turned wet and red.
‘I’ll be in the car,’ Ferguson repeated, walking away.
Wet and red, and Stephen picking his words like bullets to bring her down and bury her.
‘Keep it as short as you can, DI Rome.’
Stephen was a woodcut in a white room. Marnie couldn’t look at him, not right away. Her mind swerved from where he was sitting under the low light, showing her instead—
A seaside postcard her father had found years ago. She’d thought it boring, clichéd, but Dad said, ‘It’s hiding something,’ and so she’d looked for the secret in the glossy card where the sky was pitched like a blue tent over the beach. ‘Hold it to the light,’ Dad said, and she did, and saw that it was covered in tiny pinpricks, like pores, thin sheets of coloured tissue between its front and back. Held to a strong light, the card became illuminated. Her father explained that these postcards were mostly in museums, but he’d found this one in a charity shop. ‘Hold it to the light, Marn,’ and she did, and the beach vanished into a black night lit by bulbs and fire. No more blue sky, just the pier lying its long lit skeleton out to sea.
‘Tell me,’ she said when she was able to speak. ‘Tell me what they did.’
‘They sat me on that yellow sofa.’ Stephen shut his eyes then blinked them open on her face. ‘The one with the stain on the arm. She sat in the armchair with the red cushion.’
‘They let her in the house? I don’t believe you. They wouldn’t have broken a rule like that.’
Or any rule. But he was accusing her parents of worse than rule-breaking. Bringing his torturer, his abuser, back into his life wasn’t simply misguided or actionable. It was unforgivable.
‘She said, “You have a lovely home.”’ Stephen moved his fingers on the table. ‘They fed her biscuits, those ginger ones your dad loved. Coffee and biscuits and a glass of squash for me, like I’m a little kid. Like I was ever a kid after what she did.’
Marnie could see it, that was the problem. Her parents offering biscuits to a stranger in their home, determined to be civilised. They were great believers in civility, its power to surmount all problems. But not those of a damaged child. They can’t have thought that. Can they?
‘I’d have gone for her,’ Stephen said, ‘if I hadn’t been so scared. I was fourteen, didn’t think I was scared of anything any more. But her—? Sitting on that sofa, eating biscuits? The three of them smiling at me, talking about a new chapter in my life? I was so scared I nearly puked.’
He’d never admitted to any emotion before, least of all fear. She felt it again, moving like a snake under her skin. His fear. What’d they done? And why? He’d been their responsibility. They’d known about his mother, they must have known. Maybe there were gaps in their knowledge, but they’d known enough not to risk reuniting a vulnerable child with his abusive parent.
At the station, her team had been imagining Carole and Ollie in touch again after all these years. Wreaking havoc, destroying lives. Because no good could come of a reunion of that kind. Only bad, and worse.
‘I’d have gone mad,’ Stephen said, ‘if it wasn’t for you.’
He reached out and she flinched back but he stopped short of touching, his arm at full stretch under the light. She could see every rope and tendon, the blue tracery of veins at his wrist, the red dip of shadow at the inside of his elbow where a curved welt sat like an insect bite.
A burn mark, in the shape of a horseshoe. He’d—
Branded his forearm with her bracelet.
She blinked to clear her vision, making herself see what mattered.
Kyle’s lips in the mortuary, bruised by blood. Finn with his hands tied, hearing the echo of his own heartbeat. Defensive wounds in her mother’s palms, and on her father’s body; all the ways in which they’d tried to save each other. Dark red handprints on the walls and floor. Alan and Louise Kettridge hospitalised, terrorised.
‘Do you know a man named Huell Bevan?’
Stephen blinked away the question. ‘I’d have gone mad—’
‘Tobias Midori. Do you know him?’
‘—without you.’
‘Finn Duffy, where is he?’
His face was empty of recognition, as if she took up all the space in his skull. His eyes were filled with watching her, watching the girl he thought she still was.
His stare was a mirror, flattering in its way, the lighting just right to take the lines from around her eyes and the edges of her mouth. But she needed to stop looking, stop searching there.
‘Your sanity,’ she said slowly, ‘was never in my safe-keeping. What you did, you did. If other people made mistakes then that’s allowed, that’s human. But you picked up the knife and you killed them. No one else did that. So . . . I’m stepping off this guilt trip.’ She stood, pulling on her coat.
He watched her do it. ‘If you’re pretending you need proof, it’s in the camera.’
She knotted her hair at the nape of her neck. Her hands were perfectly steady.
‘They took pictures,’ he said. ‘They’re in the camera.’
‘Goodbye, Stephen.’
‘Get the film developed, and you’ll see.’
She turned her head away, waiting for the guard to let her out of the room.
‘You’ll see,’ he called after her. ‘I’m telling the truth.’
49
Noah was looking at the face of the first child caged by Carole Linton. He’d taken pictures on his phone of the pages in the scrapbook, not wanting to forget this piece of the puzzle. There were no clues as to the identity of this child, caged by Carole twenty years before she took Ollie. Children changed so much. Ollie had been blond and angelic. Now he was dark with indigo eyes and the chiselled features of a Diesel runway model. He and Lisa hadn’t been seen in six days. The same six days that Carole had been missing.
In the Tomlinsons’ flat: a murder weapon with Kyle and Carole’s blood on it.
In Carole’s flat: her keys and wallet, left behind when she went. Or was taken. Or wanted them to believe that she was taken.
Four assaults in ten weeks. One death.
Huell Bevan connected to the scene, every time. Even the assault inside Cloverton.
Clippings sent to Rawling’s wife. To Mazi Yeboah. To Marnie. Huell was seen leaving the clippings for Marnie. Now he was gone. Didn’t show for his shift last night. Wasn’t home.
The breakin at Lancaster Road. The shoebox stolen to order – by Bevan?
Finn Duffy taken ten weeks ago, held prisoner. By Bevan?
Who was Huell Bevan, and why was he doing all this? Noah had found nothing to explain it. No broken home, or childhood trauma. He’d never been in trouble with the police. The assaults and the breakin, child-snatching and threats . . . all of this had required meticulous planning. Nothing spontaneous or accidental, except perhaps the killing of Kyle. What was it Marnie had said after the post-mortem? ‘He wants these victims to live. It would be easier to kill them.’
Bevan wasn’t on a killing spree. It was quieter than that. In some ways, it was worse.
Leaving victims on all sides, living in fear, watching the shadows.
Why? What’d happened to Huell to make this an obsession? A compulsion.
Noah looked again at the man’s face. Oblong, plain, small eyes, mouse-blond hair, bad teeth. He took out his phone and studied the face of the caged child, putting it alongside Bevan�
�s.
No similarity, not even the ghost of one. If the caged child was Huell then the photo had been taken thirty-one years ago. Noah had found nothing in the man’s history to suggest he’d been missing as a toddler. Should he dig deeper? Or was this a blind alley, no connection between Carole and Huell? Her blood on the baseball bat, yes, but that was found in Ollie’s flat, not Huell’s.
Noah’s head ached. He needed to stop scrabbling around in the psychology and join the rest of the team working to trace the stolen Astra and Bevan’s credit cards. They had two missing women to find. And Ollie, who was a suspect like Huell. They had Finn to find.
He reached for Finn’s photo, putting the others aside. A good-looking boy, staring straight into the camera. Brave, his friends said, but off to one side. Where was he? And was he staying brave? Was that possible? Noah hoped so. He shut his eyes, hearing the sound of the bat striking the railings above him. What was Ollie doing at Carole’s flat that day? She’d disappeared. Just like Ollie’s mum. And Ollie himself. He’d seen Noah outside the flat of the woman who’d humiliated him. He’d known where Carole lived, and now she was gone.
Noah put the phone into his pocket and walked through to the incident room where Ron and Debbie were working on the credit card traces. ‘Anything?’
‘He spends twenty quid in the Spar,’ Ron offered. ‘Twice a week, sometimes three times.’
‘Sixty pounds a week when he’s living alone?’ Bevan’s flat had yielded no clues as to his whereabouts, or motivation. A bachelor pad with a DVD collection biased in favour of romantic comedies and tear jerkers, with just a couple of soft porn choices camouflaged in Disney cases. ‘I don’t remember a lot of food in there.’
‘There wasn’t.’ Debbie looked up. ‘We think he’s shopping for Finn, and Ollie. That’s assuming the three of them are holed up somewhere.’
‘What about petrol? He isn’t running the Astra on air.’
‘He’s not used his credit card at any petrol station since he stole it. Pershall says he thinks the tank was about a quarter full when he parked at the Hillingdon.’
‘So he’s still in Greater London. Where’re the Spars he’s shopping at?’
‘Way ahead of you,’ Ron said, ‘but thanks.’ He held up a map. ‘Haringey.’
Noah studied it. ‘Lots of empty houses around here.’
‘Yep. And CCTV. We’re on it.’
‘Good job.’ He handed back the map, walking to where Colin was working. ‘Any news from the forensic search at Carole’s flat?’
‘No blood, but plenty of fingerprints. We’re waiting on matches. Ditto the other DNA.’
‘What about her car?’
‘Didn’t you say it was parked up outside?’ Colin frowned. ‘Hadn’t been driven in days?’
‘We should check it, even so. The keys were in the flat.’
‘Forensics finished up there two hours ago. I’ll put a call through, but it could take a while.’
‘Let’s you and I go there,’ Noah said. ‘We can check in with Ollie’s neighbour, Mr Singh. See if anything’s been happening at Jonas House in the last twenty-four hours.’
Same old cold, ice frozen into pea-sized pellets all over the car. Noah held his lighter to the lock on the driver’s side, peering through the windows at the empty seats, dust on the dashboard. An A-Z was shoved down the pocket on the passenger side, its pages curling. Just the usual mess seen inside a car that wasn’t used very often because fuel was expensive.
Colin stood on the pavement, a wool cap snug to his head, face turning the colour of the crime scene gloves they were both wearing. ‘The stuff they logged in the lock-up. Why didn’t Carole sell it? That grandfather clock was worth money. Why do people hang onto things? She’s living in what’s basically a squat, with thousands of pounds of furniture rotting in a lock-up.’
‘Sentimental value?’ Noah worked the lock with his hand, but the ice wouldn’t let go. He reverted to the lighter, sheltering its flame with the angle of his body. ‘Maybe it was worth more to her than money.’
‘Maybe it was camouflage,’ Colin said, ‘for the rest of what she’d hidden in there.’ The cage, he meant. And the scrapbook. ‘Anyone breaking into the lock-up would’ve been distracted by the antiques. Useful when you’re trying to hide another part of your past . . .’
The lock gave with a dull thunk.
‘We’re in.’ Noah nodded.
He reached across to pop the passenger door, and Colin joined him inside Carole’s car where an extra jolt of cold made them wince. Colin opened the glove compartment to a jumble of CDs, sweet wrappers, a plastic packet of tissues frozen into a brick. Noah ran his hands under the dash, finding the latch for the boot and pulling it, hearing ice protest at the rear of the car.
Nothing on the back seat but dust and scuff marks, the footwell full of leaves. Colin finished with the glove compartment and climbed out, leaving Noah to leaf through the A-Z for anything hidden in its pages.
‘Boot’s solid.’ Colin ducked his head at the window. ‘Can I borrow your lighter?’
Noah handed it across. Tucked inside the A-Z was an old passport-sized photo of Carole. Ten, maybe twelve years old. Not the face he knew from the evidence board. This Carole was younger, happier, holding the neutral expression demanded of passport applicants but with a smile just below the surface, as if a bubble of laughter was waiting to burst. This was the face Ollie had known, the face of the woman who took him from his mother’s car and put him in a cage.
Noah turned the photo over in his hand.
The car rocked on its wheels.
‘Oh, shit—’ Colin, breathless, like he’d been punched.
Noah slid sideways fast, out of the driver’s seat, into the road.
No one in a balaclava with a baseball bat. Just Colin standing with both hands raised. Staring into the open boot of Carole’s car. Noah moved to join him.
Folded into the boot—
A woman’s body.
Lying on her side, facing them, knees tucked to her chest, hands hidden between her thighs. Dressed in jeans and cowboy boots, a red plaid donkey jacket, plastic patches at the elbows. Blond hair grey at the roots in a frigid sheet across her face. No smell, no mess. The cold had done the job of a morgue drawer, preserving the body. She was tiny, not much bigger than a teenager.
‘Call it in.’ Noah reached a gloved hand and moved the frozen hair far enough to see her face.
Eyes iced shut, lashes stiff. Skin like bad bacon, yellow and pinkish-blue. Black where the blood had pooled in her jaw, resting against the carpeted well of the boot. No obvious cause of death. No blood outside the body, or none that he could see. She wasn’t gagged, her feet weren’t tied. Was she alive when she was shut in here?
‘She’s dead.’ Colin was speaking into his phone. ‘That’s as much as we know right now.’
Noah crouched low, to look into her face.
She’d been here some time. Folded like this, her chin tucked to her chest.
She was here when he’d knocked at the door of the studio flat, before the bat hit him for six. When he and Marnie were inside and the landlord was waiting with his fistful of keys, she was here. When they’d discovered the scrapbook in the lock-up. And the cage.
The whole time, she’d been here.
Tiny, frozen, her face turned towards the road.
Folded away inside the boot of her own car.
Carole Linton.
50
‘Carole Linton.’ Marnie pinned the photo to the board. ‘Forensics are fast-tracking the post-mortem, but we think she’s been dead at least six days. That ties with when Ollie went missing.’
‘He did the pair of them,’ Ron said. ‘Kyle, and Carole. Then he went into hiding, with or without his mum’s help. But where’s the connection to Huell Bevan?’
Marnie waited until the room was quiet. Carole’s killing had shaken them; she’d been so firmly fixed in their minds as a perpetrator, not a victim. ‘DC Tanner?’
/> ‘The sports club that banned Ollie,’ Debbie said, ‘runs first aid training courses. Paramedics teach the kids about sports injuries and so on. Bevan was a regular there around the same time Ollie was. The manager said he saw Ollie with Huell, more than once.’
‘Then which of them killed Carole?’ Ron wondered. ‘Or are they a double act? We thought Ollie didn’t have any friends, not grown ones anyway. Just his gang.’
‘I was sure Carole was involved in this, especially after that second cage turned up.’ Debbie shuddered. ‘I can’t believe she’s dead.’
‘We don’t know that she was murdered,’ Colin said. ‘From the look of her she might’ve got into the boot to hide.’ He took off his spectacles, blinking. ‘Just to hide.’
Carole was his first dead body; Marnie understood his resistance to the idea of her murder.
Noah understood it, too. ‘The car was locked and the keys were in her flat,’ he said gently. ‘Her blood was on the weapon found in Ollie’s flat. It’s possible she was made to get into the boot by someone who was planning to take her somewhere. Or perhaps they told her that was the plan. But they lied, or something happened to change their minds.’
‘She was alive when she went into the boot?’ Ron swiped at his mouth. ‘That’s cold. Not just literally, though if it wasn’t sub-zero she’d have started to smell days ago and we’d be nearer to knowing what happened . . . I mean that’s cold. Calculated. That’s not a kid. That’s someone who knows exactly what he’s doing.’
‘And why,’ Noah agreed. ‘But we still don’t have a motive for Huell. Not one that explains all this planning, the care he’s taking.’
‘Never mind a motive,’ Ron grumbled. ‘I’d settle for an address. We know he’s patronising the Spars in Haringey. Take your pick of empty houses round there. Narrowing it down’s taking too much bloody time.’
Colin returned his spectacles to his face. ‘CCTV still hasn’t spotted the Astra.’
‘His workmates were no use,’ Debbie added. ‘They just suggested we try his girlfriend, but none of them could give me a name. Huell isn’t into sharing.’
