by Sarah Hilary
She nodded at Harry. ‘Let’s find a room.’
Harry put a hand around Zoe’s upper arm, steering her towards the lift. Its glass doors gave back their faces. Of the four of them, only Zoe looked calm. She’d surrendered her phone, emptied her pockets, emptied her eyes too. Next to Harry, she was very small. For the first time she looked like the child in Carole’s scrapbook.
On the ninth floor, the restaurant manager was persuaded to give up his office again. He eyed Zoe with sympathy, because of her size and her face. It would be the same in a courtroom. Even DCS Ferguson, who was surely the poster girl for pugnacity, had questioned Marnie’s case against Zoe, only allowing her to pursue it because Ollie had died.
‘I messed up,’ she’d shrugged. ‘Now it’s your turn.’
The office at least was secure. Wide, its windows looking out towards the water. Two doors, the second one alarmed – emergency access only, to the roof.
Harry walked Zoe towards a chair, instructing her to sit. If she saw the CCTV monitor and registered its role in her arrest, she didn’t acknowledge it. Harry stayed by the side of her chair.
‘I’ll call the station,’ Marnie told him. ‘And Noah.’
She wanted Finn to know that he wouldn’t be getting any more midnight visits from Zoe.
In the corridor, the AST officer was placating the manager who needed to know that no sirens would be wailing outside his establishment, putting his guests off their expensive meals.
Marnie rang Noah, giving him her news. ‘How’s Finn?’
‘We’re playing cards, for gum. He’s clearing me out.’
‘Tell him I’ll visit later . . .’
Laughter from the restaurant above them, the chink of glasses, oblivious. Marnie had a flash of Ollie’s body on the ground, the red ruin of his chest. She had to shut her eyes for a second.
A slam of sound from inside the office made her turn.
The door was shut, but—
Her scalp was too tight, clenched with foreboding.
Two steps took her back to the door.
Inside the office—
Zoe was gone, her chair upturned on the floor. So much for the alarmed exit; she’d pushed the bar on the door and it had let her through without making a sound.
Harry was standing with one arm outstretched, palm pressed to the wall. ‘Sorry,’ the word slipped out of him thinly.
Sorry—?
He’d let her get away. He wasn’t even in pursuit. He was— Bleeding.
She smelt it before she saw it, a hot, ripe tang. Then Harry’s pupils expanding, pushing the blue from his eyes. One hand over the wound, blood pressing blackly through the clench of his fingers.
Zoe had stabbed him, in the stomach.
‘We need an ambulance!’ Marnie shouted for the AST, reaching for Harry’s elbow. ‘Now!’
He gripped her wrist hard. ‘I’m okay. Just—’
The slap of feet on the stairs, going up, not down.
Zoe, getting away.
Harry’s legs folded and he sat. They’d searched her, but she’d been hiding a knife. The wound was deep, dangerous, blood pumping through his fingers. ‘Go,’ he said.
Marnie crouched, keeping her hand on his arm, shouting again for the AST. A shudder gripped the whole of Harry’s body. ‘Go,’ he repeated. ‘Don’t let her—’
The office door banged open.
‘Stay with him,’ Marnie snapped at the officer, ‘call it in. Get an ambulance. And get me back-up.’ She hesitated, eyes snagging on his blood-soaked shirt.
Harry shook his head. ‘Marnie . . .’
It was the first time he’d used her name.
‘Don’t die,’ she told him.
An order. A plea.
She straightened, stepping back as the AST took over.
Three paces to cross the room, shoving with her fist at the fire door.
Going after Zoe, up the stairs.
63
Up the stairs, not stopping, breath burning in her lungs. Keep going. How many flights to the roof? Ten, twelve? Zoe was moving so fast it was hard to assess.
Keep going.
Another voice, in the back of her head: ‘Let her go. Let it go.’
All that rage, violence, moving away from her, leaving her behind. If she caught up with it, what would she do? Put it back inside, where she’d been keeping it all these years. A swarm of red—
Too much blood beating in her body, fingers tacky where they’d touched Harry.
He might die. He might be dying right now. Zoe might’ve killed him.
Keep going. Keep—
The door to the roof opened with a slam when she shoved it.
Wind hit her so fiercely she almost fell.
Buffeting, full of ice, spiteful.
Nineteen floors up, over the river. Two floors above the restaurant. Steam from its kitchens punched out through roof vents, the red smell of meat frying in onions before the wind snatched it away. Layers of noise – from the water and roads, boats and cars, and the strange, tight sound of ice taking the city back into its fist for the night.
Where is she—?
There, by the smoke shaft’s extractor fan. Biker boots planted on the shallow gravel. Chestnut curls snaking round her small face. She could have run down the stairs, taken her chances with the AST officer in the lobby, gone to ground. Instead she’d climbed up here, waiting to be followed.
Marnie called out, ‘Come back inside the building,’ but the wind took her words away.
Zoe lifted a hand and freed a strand of hair from her mouth, tucking it behind her ear, staying in the shelter of the smoke shaft. Looking small and quiet, but she wasn’t—
She’d walked her violence into the world, letting it off the leash, again and again. Whatever abuse, whatever suffering had shaped her early years, the pain of it had turned her inside out; she was all spikes and blood-red rage. Marnie had no doubt she’d wielded the weapon that killed Kyle Stratton, before planting it in Ollie’s flat, and swinging a second bat at Noah’s head. But Zoe didn’t need a weapon to be dangerous. With her tight fists and hard head, she shone with violence.
The wind dropped a fraction and Marnie called out, ‘Talk to me.’ Her phone buzzed in her pocket but she ignored it, keeping her eyes on Zoe. Harry might be dying or dead, but right now she had to give this woman all of her attention. ‘Tell me what this was about.’
Attention, and gratitude. That’s what she wanted. It was why she’d come up here, waiting for Marnie to join her. ‘Tell me. I need to know.’
‘You already know,’ Zoe called back. ‘But come here. We’ll talk, if it’s what you want.’
‘Inside. It’s too cold out here.’
And too high up. Too many ways for it to end badly.
Zoe moved backwards and sat, cross-legged on the gravel, propped against the metal ducting around the smoke shaft. ‘I remember the cage,’ she called out.
The wind took the rest of her speech, tattering it into stray words.
Attention, and gratitude. Under Marnie’s feet, the building rocked to the restaurant’s rhythm. Happy Londoners, enjoying their downtime. She should wait for back-up. She should go inside the building and close the door between her and Zoe. Wait for it to be over. It wouldn’t take long, she knew that.
Instead, she walked across to where the woman was sitting, stopping four feet away. Out of reach, just.
‘Go on. You remember the cage.’
‘The smell of it, the tray sticking to my skin. Powdered milk and puddles, the ones I jumped in when she took me out. Feet first, making a mess of us. Sometimes she didn’t mind. Sometimes she did.’ She recited the words as if she was reading from a statement she’d prepared. ‘Always, though, when we were home, I went back into the cage. I never minded, it was my safe place. Like a playpen, just a lot smaller than the ones they sell in most shops to most mothers. She wasn’t most mothers. She was mine. She’d feed me through the bars like a bird, “You’re my little bird,” c
rumbs of cake. She baked a cake every week, and fed it to me like that.’ Pinching her thumb and finger together. ‘Carrot cake was my favourite. It made a mess coming through the bars, but I’d lick them clean. She liked the cage to be clean.’
Carole’s child, driven to this by her mother’s cruelty. And empty—
So empty inside, just like Stephen. The pair of them seeing something in Marnie which filled that void. She wished it didn’t, but it was what’d brought them here. To this.
‘You never told anyone.’
‘It was none of their business.’ Zoe’s face blanked. ‘She was my mother.’
‘And now she’s dead. Who killed her?’ The wind moved around them, between them, so cold Marnie was almost afraid to breathe. ‘Who killed Carole?’
‘I knew Ollie.’ Zoe pushed her curls from her face. ‘When he was with us. Not for long, she didn’t keep him for long. But I knew him.’
‘You were fourteen. Old enough to have gone to the police and said what was happening—’
‘Ollie was okay. He didn’t mind being in the cage. At that age you get used to things. Kids are sponges, that’s what she said. You can teach a child to do anything. Men, too. Look at Huell.’
It was no use as a confession, no use as an interview. But they were running out of time, Marnie knew that. Zoe wasn’t going to sit here much longer, not like this. There was another reason she’d come up here, to the roof. ‘What did you teach Huell?’
‘To sit up and beg, make me happy. It’s what men want. Instructions.’ Her eyes moved around the roof, as if the question bored her. She’d shed all semblance of her earlier pretence, as if it was a dirty dress, stepping sideways into this new role. Unapologetic, unrepentant.
Emptying herself out, because it was over. She knew it was over.
‘When did you see Carole again? You weren’t living with her in London, or in Harrow. The police and Children’s Services had no record of her having a daughter.’
‘I was with my dad.’ Zoe shrugged. ‘I visited her when I felt like it. I was fourteen, no one stopped me. She didn’t.’
‘What you did to Finn . . . After everything you went through, after the cage. It can’t have been easy to target a child. To hurt Finn the way you were hurt—’
‘I knew it would work,’ she said simply. ‘And he wasn’t in a cage. He had a house. He was on the streets when we found him. He had a whole house.’
‘He was a prisoner. You scared him, and hurt him. You risked his life. For what?’
‘We should talk about Stephen. That’s why you’re really here, isn’t it?’ Zoe leaned towards her. ‘Forgiveness, reconciliation, all that stuff they preach at you. It’s a lie. Revenge is a dirty word, but it’s recovery. You won’t get better without it. You won’t ever be free from the pain and the fear. Up here.’ She pressed her fingers to the side of her head. ‘You won’t ever stop being a victim until you’ve found a proper place for pain like that.’
‘Is that what you told Ollie? When you talked him into helping you kill Kyle?’
Zoe kept her fingers pressed to her head.
‘You told him that he could stop being a victim by making someone else into one . . . But Ollie is dead, and Mazi loved Kyle. Did you know that? Of course you didn’t. Because you’re not interested in anyone’s feelings but your own. Anyone’s pain but your own.’
‘I’m interested in yours,’ Zoe said. ‘Because you lie about it so much. All the time, to everyone, including yourself.’
‘It’s called projection, this particular symptom. Not that I’m trying to narrow it down. But go on. You’re interested in my pain. That’s why you wanted Aidan Duffy to hurt Stephen Keele.’
Attention, and gratitude.
‘You hate him,’ Zoe said. ‘Stephen. You must hate him, want him dead. All the rest of it’s just dancing. Pretending for the cameras and psychologists and whoever else is getting in the way of you doing what you really want to do.’ She was using the sing-song voice she’d used to comfort Tobias during the boy’s interview. ‘I was showing you how much better it feels.’
‘Revenge.’
‘Yes.’
‘But it wouldn’t be revenge, would it, if you’d been the cause of it. It would have nothing to do with me. Just as this,’ measuring the distance between their bodies with a movement of her hand, ‘is nothing to do with me. It’s about you.’
‘Us,’ Zoe corrected. Her lips thinned with anger. ‘None of them understood what I’d done. Mazi, Valerie Rawling . . . What I’d done for them. You— You understand.’
‘I understand you want an ally,’ Marnie said. ‘Someone to validate your rage, who appreciates all this damage you’ve done. You wanted someone else who couldn’t move on, who had to wallow in vengeance in order to get clean. But you don’t look very clean, Zoe. You don’t look happy or at peace, or pain-free. The opposite, in fact. So what’s it all been for, really? Not for me. Not for anyone except you.’
Zoe heard her out, sitting with her shoulders rounded, her small face blank. Then she said, ‘Do you have bad dreams? About Stephen, about being trapped with Stephen. I know you do. We all do. Everyone who’s living like us, with the past on our backs. I’ve seen it again and again. In gangs, in their mums and dads. Even little kids . . . Well, I don’t have dreams, not any more. Because I put it down. All that pain, that weight? That past. I put it down.’
She didn’t look like a victim. That much was true.
From below them came the bray of a boat party, amplified by the water.
‘The knife attack,’ Marnie said. ‘Four years ago. Tell me about that.’
‘That was nothing.’ She laughed. ‘Kids. I didn’t care about that. I cared about Carole, and Ollie. And you. I saw you on the Garrett Estate last year, when you found that girl’s body. I knew Abi Gull and her friends, all the gangs there. I saw you with Abi. That’s when I knew.’
‘When you knew what?’
‘How hard you’re trying to hold it together. How it’s breaking you into pieces.’
Marnie let that go. ‘And Huell? What did you see in him?’
‘He’s meant to help people with their pain. That’s his job. He was helping me with mine.’
‘Who killed Carole?’ Marnie asked again.
‘Who do you think?’
‘I think it was you. You went to her flat and warned her that Ollie was coming back to finish what Huell had started. You said you’d take her somewhere safe and then you panicked her into climbing into the boot of her own car, telling her to keep quiet, saying she’d be safe. You hit her, because you wanted her blood on the bat and because you didn’t want her calling for help. You locked her in the boot of her car. Then you took her handbag and car keys back to her flat and you left them, just like you left the evidence in Ollie’s flat for us to find.’
‘For you to find,’ Zoe corrected. ‘It was all for you.’
The wail of a siren somewhere, but not close.
Not coming their way.
‘And DS Jake. When you beat him with the baseball bat. Who was that for?’
‘That was for me.’ Smiling. ‘And Carole. I didn’t want him in her flat. It was too soon.’
There was no reaching her, no prospect for remorse or redemption. She was armour-plated, unrepentant.
‘All this . . . frenzy.’ Marnie spread her hands, cold curling around her fingers. ‘Three people dead, another three scarred for life. Because you couldn’t deal with your own anger.’
‘That’s how I dealt with it. It’s how you should deal with yours.’
‘So I can be facing a long prison sentence, like you?’
‘So you can be free.’
Sirens wailed, closer now.
Zoe slid upright, using the stack for support.
Marnie stayed at a safe distance, but she said, ‘Don’t. Don’t do this.’
She’d known what Zoe meant to do as soon as she’d stepped onto the roof to be thumped by the wind. This wasn’t a convenient confes
sion, or an interview. She was here as Zoe’s witness.
‘Don’t do this. Ollie is dead. You need to live with that, with what you did.’
‘The way you’re living? No thanks.’
Zoe turned her face away then looked back, her eyes lit by the sudden sweep of a police helicopter’s beam. ‘But I’ll let you do it. Take your revenge. For Ollie, for whatever you want.’
She started walking backwards, towards the shallow barrier at the lip of the roof.
Marnie moved with her, keeping the same distance between them as tautly as if they were tied.
‘What do you think? Are we high enough for the water to break my back?’ Zoe stopped, right on the edge. ‘Push me. I’ll let you do that. It’s what you need.’
‘What I need is for you to stop pretending that this isn’t real. That pain isn’t real. That fear isn’t real. And anger, and regret. Remorse—’
‘The judge will like me.’ Zoe cut her off. ‘And the jury. They’ll see the scars, and the good work I did with kids like Finn. You want justice for him, don’t you? I won’t get a serious sentence. I’ll be out in eight years, and I’ll have learnt new tricks in prison. Just like Stephen. What are you going to do when he’s out? Are you going to tell him to stop pretending? Lecture him about remorse?’
The helicopter’s blades whipped her hair about her face.
She had to shout to be heard: ‘I’m giving it to you. Take it. Revenge.’
Marnie reached her hand to make it stop.
Not revenge.
Rescue.
She reached her hand to rescue Zoe.
‘No.’ Cold green eyes fixed on her for a second. ‘Not that. You don’t get to save me.’
A step back, and the city swallowed her whole.
64
For a ten-year-old with a recent history of trauma, Finn Duffy played a mean game of cards.
‘Twenty-one.’ He fanned his hand face-up on the bed: two kings and an ace.
‘You’re scary, you know that?’ Noah slid another strip of gum across the table. ‘Just as well we’re not playing for cash. You’d be bankrupting me.’
