by Sarah Hilary
‘How close are you to making an arrest? Or can’t you tell me?’
‘Not so close that I’m asking you to choose between your brother and your job.’ Harry sat back, looking apologetic. ‘You asked me to find out who might’ve sent those threatening texts. I’ve no evidence worthy of the CPS, but I’ve enough to know that we could use Sol’s help in nailing a gang who’re bringing illegal weapons into London and selling to the highest bidder. I don’t know what he was doing for them, but I’m assuming it was important enough to make them edgy about his exit strategy. Unless it’s a control thing, wanting to keep the rank and file in line. But if he’s someone they count on to charm palms . . . I don’t mean the deals, just smoothing things along. These people like a good party, and from what I’ve heard Sol’s a one-man charm offensive.’
True. Dad always said Sol’s smile could skin a cat while convincing the cat it was being stroked.
Noah looked past Harry to the front of the café. His eyes ached in their sockets. Kim was polishing glasses at the bar. How was Marnie getting on at the hospital? Better than this, he hoped.
‘I’ll talk to him.’ He met Harry’s gaze. ‘See if I can persuade him to talk to you. But honestly? Your best bet is finding evidence to arrest him.’
The words stuck in his teeth. He wanted to take them back. This was his brother. He saw the look on his mum’s face, and his dad’s. Your brother.
‘If there was an easy way to get him out,’ he said, ‘I’d have managed it myself by now.’
Sol bounced like rubber from wherever life kicked him. Five, six smartphones but there’d be a seventh and eighth. Sitting on Marnie’s sofa looking burnt-out. Then tucking into a bacon sandwich at the station, grinning at Debbie Tanner. Nothing stopped Sol for long.
‘This’s on me.’ Harry took a fiver from his wallet. ‘How’s DI Rome? You must’ve been celebrating late last night.’
‘Not as late as you’d think. One in the morgue, two in the hospital.’
‘I saw DCS Ferguson on the news. She looked very . . . glossy.’
‘Well, she likes to keep herself camera-ready.’
Harry shot him a look of sympathy. ‘The rest of you are sweeping up, I take it. Give DI Rome my best. Tell her I was sorry to hear about Ollie. Zoe’s cut up, too.’
‘She would be,’ Noah agreed. ‘She liked him.’ He checked his pockets for his phone. ‘I hope she’s not blaming herself for what went down with Bevan . . .’
He kept it light, inconsequential, not wanting to spook the other man.
They stood. Harry put the cash on the table, saying, ‘I think she probably is. You’re right, she liked Ollie. She likes all the kids.’
‘They like her. Tobias and the others. They trust her.’
Harry nodded, following Noah out of the café. ‘She amazes me. You know Tobias’s cousin was one of the gang that attacked her?’
‘No, I didn’t. His cousin?’
‘I didn’t know either, not at the time of the interview, but yes. Iziah Midori. He’s on remand.’ Harry turned up the collar on his coat, eyeing the black ice on the pavement. ‘Looks like the weather’s finally caught up with the people round here . . .’
‘Cold as ice?’
‘And twice as hard.’
Children’s Services was a woman with a helmet of grey hair and a smile made gruesome by capped teeth. ‘Heather Yardley. And you are?’
‘Detective Inspector Rome. How’s Finn?’
‘Not doing too badly all things considered. A disturbed night, but the doctor’s pleased with the way he’s responding to fluids. His temperature’s down and he’s more lucid.’ A portcullis smile. ‘Which isn’t to say he’s ready for questions of the kind I expect you’d like to ask him.’
‘My questions can wait,’ Marnie said. ‘What happened to disturb him in the night?’
‘Terrors, from the sound of it. Shouting about someone in his room, working himself up into a state. They calmed him down, eventually.’
‘Was someone in his room?’
‘Oh no. I shouldn’t think so. But after what he’s been through it’d be stranger if he wasn’t seeing things, don’t you think?’ She persisted with the smile. ‘When they go quiet, that’s when I worry. Always better to get these things out if you can.’
They stood back to allow an orderly to wheel an empty trolley up the corridor. The trolley had a dented pillow and twisted blanket, its stained paper sheets destined for the incinerator.
‘What’s the situation with Finn’s family?’ Marnie asked. ‘Has his mother been to see him?’
‘We’re keeping her away while we work out whether or not to move forward with charges of neglect. It’s . . . complicated. She’s in counselling for anxiety, swears blind her brother-in-law was looking after the boy and that she trusted him to do a good job. Dad’s in prison. So with Mum out of the picture too, we’ll need a foster home for when all this is over.’
‘There isn’t anyone else? No grandparents?’
‘Over in Ireland, but that’s not terribly helpful. None on Mum’s side. Of course I expect you’ll be charging him with GBH or whatever. In which case, accommodation won’t be an issue for a little while, will it?’
If Finn was in a secure unit, she meant.
‘I’ve sorted out tougher ones than this,’ Heather soothed, ‘don’t you worry. The important thing is to get Finian fighting fit.’
It was Finn, not Finian. Marnie wanted to see him. She could feel his hard head against her shoulder, black hair roughing her cheek, the heat of fever from his skin. That blurred handful of words, ‘He did it for her,’ fingers twitching with distress at what he’d seen. Ollie’s hoodie swamping him, smelling of cigarettes—
‘DI Rome?’
She turned her head to find herself looking into Zoe Marshall’s green eyes.
‘Have you seen him?’ Zoe asked anxiously. ‘Finn? Is he okay?’ She was wearing her parka and the red mittens with the matching hat pulled over her curls. Her nose was pink with cold.
‘I’m hoping to see him.’ Marnie made herself smile. ‘Have you been waiting for news?’
Night terrors. Finn thinking someone was in his room.
‘I’ve just got here.’ Zoe pulled off a mitten and rubbed at her nose. ‘I tried to get hold of Lisa last night to tell her how sorry I was about Ollie.’ Her face was fierce with expression, nothing like the caged child’s. ‘I don’t suppose you have a number for her?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice dipped with empathy. ‘I know this was the last outcome you wanted. Ollie was— I know how you must be feeling.’ She pulled off her hat. Chestnut curls sprang into a halo, snaked with static. She tucked her hands into her armpits. ‘At least Finn’s safe.’
‘Did you know him?’ Marnie used her lightest voice. ‘He was friends with Ollie, of course.’
‘I’ve been trying to figure that out. I must’ve seen him with Ollie because they were mates, but Finn wasn’t on the Crasmere Boys’ radar or I’d have heard about it. On the periphery, perhaps. Poor kid. But he’s okay?’
‘As you say, he’s safe now.’ Marnie looked away, up the corridor. ‘We just need to keep him that way . . .’
It was easier to watch Zoe from the edge of her eye. Some people only came into focus when you stopped looking directly at them. Was she right about Zoe? Or wrong, as she’d been about DCS Ferguson? She’d let Ferguson take this case from under her like a magician’s stunt with a tablecloth, all the plates and glasses still standing, save one. Ollie.
Marnie had smelt his sweat on the hoodie he’d given to Finn. He’d given Finn the knife, too. And now, because of what he’d done with that knife, Finn might be going to a secure unit. From where, unless fate was uncharacteristically kind, he’d emerge as brittle and broken as Ollie, the knife passed like a baton between the two of them. If only Finn had refused to use it. But he’d been scared and angry, pumped full of fever and adrenalin, after what he’d been
through in that house – the game being played between Bevan and Aidan and whoever was behind the scenes, pulling the strings to make the lot of them dance, Marnie included.
‘I hate hospitals,’ Zoe said, ‘don’t you?’
Marnie kept her eyes on the corridor, studying the woman who stood a foot away from her as alert as a meerkat. Had she really just arrived, or had she gone out into the cold long enough to make that alibi believable? Her nose was the same colour as the caged child’s hair, strawberry blond. A colour that often turned to chestnut.
Marnie needed to get her hands on a photo of Zoe as a child, even a school photo might be enough. But if she was the mastermind behind this twisted game, she’d chosen to leave the scrapbook in the lock-up. She’d wanted them to see the photograph of the child who wasn’t Ollie.
Marnie’s phone was ringing—
‘DI Rome.’
‘It’s Himmat Singh.’
Lisa and Ollie’s neighbour.
His voice was soft and urgent. ‘Can you come?’
57
Himmat wasn’t alone in his flat. A blonde woman, so washed out she was nearly a negative, sat on his sofa with the cat at her feet. Bleached jeans and brown boots, a cheap black fleece zipped to her neck. Her face was cracked across by pain.
‘Lisa.’ Marnie held out a hand. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Ollie’s mother smelt of glue and rubber. ‘I’ve been working. Away.’ Her voice was raw, as if she hadn’t used it in a long time. ‘Shifts, all the ones I could get. In a carpet factory.’
Himmat brought a big cup of sweet-smelling tea and put it into her hands. He’d explained how Lisa had seen the news and come home in the early hours. He’d found her standing like a ghost on his doorstep, brought her in and made her warm, tried to get her to eat and sleep but she wouldn’t. It had taken him all this time to persuade her to speak with the police.
The cat followed Himmat to the chair on the other side of the room. Noah was next to him.
‘You’ll want to see Ollie.’ Marnie sat beside Lisa on the sofa. ‘I can take you to see him.’
‘Can you make me do that?’ She looked terrorised. ‘I don’t want to. I can’t.’
Marnie waited, not speaking.
‘I had to leave.’ Lisa gripped the cup hard in her hands. ‘I just couldn’t stand it. I knew where it was headed, could see where it was headed. He was going to get killed, or he was going to kill someone. I didn’t want to be around to watch. It’s not . . . I’m not a bad mother. They’ll say that, like they did before, but I’m not. I’m not any kind of mother. It’s used me up, all this, there’s nothing left.’ She looked at her hands and then at her knees, as if she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. ‘I’d had enough, that’s what they’ll say. I’d had enough so I left, but it wasn’t like that. There wasn’t enough of me, that’s the honest truth. No one ever tells the truth about being a mum. They say it’s tough, that you have to take charge or you have to keep giving, as if it’s about tactics, strategy, when it’s not. It’s about you, and them. If they won’t meet you halfway, if you can’t reach them? It’s not about trying. Rules don’t help, nothing does. You can cry your eyes out. Beg, be strict, set rules. None of it matters. All of it just— Makes you less.’
She pressed the cup to her lips but didn’t drink. ‘They’ll say I was careless, that I let him slip through my fingers again, but I didn’t. What they never tell you – the secret everyone keeps – is that being a parent sometimes means you have to care less. Sometimes . . . That’s the only way you’ll survive.’
She shut her eyes, calmer now she’d said her piece.
Himmat stroked the head of the cat softly.
Marnie thought of the boy in the morgue with a hole drilled in his chest. ‘I have to ask you some questions. About Ollie.’
‘I know.’ Sipping her tea.
‘You say that you could see where this was headed. That Ollie would be killed, or kill someone. What made you think that?’
‘His mates. The gang. He wouldn’t stop running. And hating.’ Her voice didn’t change. ‘He hated everyone. Strangers, people off the telly, even his friends.’ She looked across at Himmat. ‘Anyone who tried to help him, anyone who got in his way. Me. He hated me.’
Marnie wanted to tell her how her son had helped Finn. How he’d given his hoodie to keep Finn warm, fought for him in those last desperate seconds. But a different version of events was already leaking to the press: Ollie had wanted his knife found on Finn in order to mitigate the charges against himself; he’d thought it all through. Her son had been a dangerous killer brought down by a conscientious firearms officer, that was the official version of Ollie.
‘He hated me,’ Lisa repeated. ‘But I could live with that. It’s when he started on about her— That was when I knew it was over.’
‘Her?’
‘Carole.’ No new emotion in her voice. ‘He wanted to know all about her. What she’d done and why I’d never talked to him about it. As if I should’ve been doing that all these years – making her part of our lives.’
‘When did he start asking questions about Carole?’
‘Three months ago. Half-term. I knew something had happened. Someone at school who’d heard the story. It crops up whenever another child goes missing, it’s her face in the papers. And his. Not when it’s murder, not then. But if it’s cruelty, or slavery . . . They’re not supposed to use Ollie’s picture, but sometimes they do. I thought that’s what’d happened. He wouldn’t say how he’d heard. Just that he wanted the full story, from me.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I told him to go and look it up.’ A dry sound, not quite a sob. ‘I didn’t want to talk about it any more. The first time he asked, I told him I blamed myself even though the police said I shouldn’t. Mostly I talked about how happy I’d been when he was found, how close I kept him afterwards. We were always together. And happy. Even after his dad left. We had fun, went on holidays together. I kept photo albums; he knows it’s true. But he said it was all lies, that he was never happy, always felt wrong inside, like a piece was missing. That’s not true, I was there. I saw him grow up and he was happy, he was my happy boy . . .’
She stopped to drink tea, looking parched.
‘Every day he came back with a worse question. Did she abuse him? Did she have a boyfriend and did he abuse him? Did they take turns to— No. I told him nothing like that happened. The police had all the evidence from the doctors, and the house. From the cage.’ Her teeth locked on the word. ‘But he didn’t want to hear that. It was as if someone was whipping him into a fury. To start with I could calm him down, but it got so I couldn’t. No matter what I said, he believed worse. As if it wasn’t bad enough. Or as if he needed more reasons to hate her.’
Three months ago, half-term. That’s when Zoe said she’d seen Bevan with Ollie at the sports centre. Was Bevan the one whipping Ollie into a fury? If so, was he acting on Zoe’s instructions?
‘He didn’t tell you why he was suddenly so interested in Carole?’
‘Interested? He wasn’t interested. He was obsessed. He even called her Mum. Just once, but it was enough. As if she explained what was happening with him, all the rage and rule-breaking. He needed a reason, and she made sense. She explained what he didn’t understand about himself. And she excused it, the way only a mum can. “She’d understand,” that’s what he kept saying to me.’
Lisa’s face creased with fresh pain. ‘I told everyone that he didn’t remember what happened all those years ago. The car, the cage. I thanked God he didn’t remember. But I was so stupid. Of course he remembered. It was in his head, a part of him. It was him. And when she came back . . . No one should have to face that, especially not a child. No one should have to face their torturer coming back into their lives.’
The way Stephen had, or said he had. Could Marnie believe it? That her parents had done something so reckless, so abhorrent? Ollie had been a good kid, once. Before Carole ca
me back into his life. Had it been the same with Stephen?
‘I’d have done anything to keep her away from him,’ Lisa was saying, ‘anything. What parent wouldn’t?’
Who were they, really? Marnie’s parents. She’d fought with them when she was Stephen’s age, and not just because she was spiky. Sometimes they’d started the fights. Stephen held all the answers, that’s what she’d told herself, but she’d known they weren’t easy people to live with. And if they’d taken an eight-year-old boy from his abusive mother only to threaten six years later to bring her back into his life—
‘Ollie became obsessed with Carole,’ she said. ‘Did he want to find her? Get in touch?’
Lisa shut her eyes. ‘Of course he did.’
‘How was he going to make that happen, did he say?’
‘A project he’d heard about, to do with forgiveness.’ Her laugh sounded like a cough. ‘He said that was his way in, that he wanted to forgive her. I tried to make a joke, asked when he was ever going to forgive me, but it wasn’t funny. Nothing was ever funny back then. It’s stupid, but that got to me more than anything. That we couldn’t laugh to make it better, or just to try and stay sane. Nothing was allowed to be funny.’ Her face changed, grief shouldering its way back in. ‘When he was tiny he’d spend hours making me laugh. Pulling faces or mucking about, putting on my hats, doing funny walks. He was my funny little man. I missed my funny little man.’
Marnie waited a moment before asking, ‘When were you last in your flat?’
‘Next door?’ Lisa dragged a hand through her lank hair. ‘Days ago. A week, maybe? I’ve been sleeping in the factory. Why?’
‘There was a bin bag in the kitchen, next to the pedal bin. Did you leave it there?’
‘A bin bag? Full, you mean? Was I . . . putting the bins out?’ She looked towards Himmat.
‘Wrong day of the week,’ he said softly. ‘Collection is Thursday.’
‘Oh God . . .’ Lisa’s eyes returned to Marnie. ‘You found something. What did you find?’
‘You don’t remember leaving anything inside a bin liner in your kitchen?’
