by Sarah Hilary
‘What do you think he felt,’ Noah asked, ‘when he heard you were being released?’
‘Scared,’ she said, ‘to death.’
Silence in the room, just for a second.
‘Tell us about Ian Merrick,’ Marnie said, ‘and the bunkers.’
It took a moment for Alison to answer, as if she was struggling to remember who Merrick was or why he mattered. ‘He knows all the safe places,’ she said finally.
‘Did he know about Fred and Archie? About the safe place you put them?’
‘I didn’t think anyone knew.’ Her mouth thinned. ‘Not even me, not properly. Not then.’
‘But Merrick knew about the bunkers. He knew they weren’t filled in. He built family homes on ground that wasn’t safe.’
Alison glanced at Noah in surprise. ‘It was safe. Those bunkers were solidly built, better than the houses some people might say. People wanted them.’
‘People wanted the bunkers.’
‘They were safe,’ Alison insisted. ‘Hidden. How many places are like that? Don’t tell me you’ve never wanted a place you could go, away from everyone else. Quiet. Safe. Everyone wants to feel secure, and Ian knew all the best places. He helped to build shelters, special rooms … Everyone’s scared of something nowadays. Ian understood that.’
‘Your mother didn’t like him. She thought it was unhealthy for you, working with him.’
‘She was right. Look what happened. I found a bunker and I buried my children alive.’
A phone was ringing, somewhere in the station. Noah held his breath, praying for news of the children and Ed, but no one came to interrupt the interview.
‘Did Merrick know you’d been inside the bunkers on Beech Rise?’ Marnie asked.
‘No.’
‘But he knew you were aware of the existence of bunkers on that site.’
‘Of course he knew. He told me about them. He knew all the best places, and the people who wanted them. Supply and demand. He could’ve sold that land six times over if he’d held out for the right people.’
‘Why didn’t he?’
‘Sometimes you do a straight deal to stop people looking too hard at the crooked ones.’
‘He said that to you?’
‘He didn’t need to. I was a grown-up. I knew how the world worked.’
‘You weren’t well,’ Noah said. ‘That was why Connie didn’t want you working there.’
‘I was a grown-up,’ Alison repeated. She looked wiped out with the questioning. ‘Worse things happen in other places. He was just making money. We’re supposed to make money, aren’t we? Ian was good at his job.’
‘Which people would have paid over the odds for the bunkers on Beech Rise?’ Marnie asked. ‘You said he could have sold the land six times over. To whom?’
‘They call themselves preppers. They want safe places, underground. They’ll help you make the place nice, lay in provisions, tinned food, water …’ Alison’s voice faded.
‘Tinned food. Sweetcorn and … peaches. Provisions like that?’
Alison nodded. Her eyes had gone far away.
‘We found tins of peaches, with the boys. And somewhere else. Was that you? When you came back?’ Silence. ‘Alison?’
The woman retrieved her focus with difficulty. ‘What …?’
‘Did you leave a tin of peaches on the pavement outside the house in Blackthorn Road?’
Bewilderment. ‘No. Why would I?’
‘I don’t know, but I don’t see who else would have known to do that. Leave a tin of peaches where Fred and Archie died. Unless it was Matt. And if it was Matt, that scares me. It makes me wonder what’s going on inside his head. And it makes me scared for the children, Carmen and little Tommy. So I need to know. Was it you who left the peaches?’
‘It wasn’t me. How could it be? That’s … horrible, hateful. How could anyone do a thing like that? How could I …?’ She went away again, behind the glass wall in her eyes.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ Marnie made her voice hard, unforgiving. ‘You left the peaches because they needed to eat and peaches were their favourite food. You had to leave something. Other people left soft toys and candles. You left peaches.’
Shock tactics. Marnie was trying to make her connect to what was happening.
Alison blinked slowly, as if the lids of her eyes were heavy. ‘It wasn’t me. I know you need this to make sense, but it doesn’t. It will never make sense. I killed my babies, Louisa, and my boys. I put them in a bunker and left them to die. I did that. But I did not leave a tin of peaches five years later.’
‘So it was Matt. You said it was a horrible, hateful thing to do. This is what we’re dealing with. A man who would do a thing like that, whose children are missing. Together with a victim care officer and a teenage boy who’s the same age Archie would’ve been had he lived.’ Marnie held the woman rigid with her stare. ‘You need to put away your pain and your punishment, or whatever you imagine this is, and help us find him.’
Alison said, ‘Thank God for Matt. Thank God for him. He knows what I am. He knows what I did and he will never lie about it, never pretend it was less terrible than it was. He’ll never forgive me. I need that. I need to remind myself what a monster I am.’
She looked at Marnie and Noah with appalling pity in her eyes.
‘Who asks for help from a monster?’
18
Tim Welland was waiting in Marnie’s office. ‘I spoke with Belloc’s boss. He says it’s not the first time Ed’s been in a hostage situation.’
Marnie shut the door, coming across to her desk, where Welland was propped.
‘We don’t know for sure that this is a hostage situation, sir. There’s been no contact. If Matt Reid had demands, wouldn’t he have made them by now?’
‘So where’re his kids? Where’s Clancy Brand?’
‘We’re looking for them. Two teams. We’ll find them.’
‘I should stand you down.’ Welland studied her. ‘Personal connection to the … hostage.’
Victim. He’d been about to call Ed the victim.
Marnie said, ‘I’m looking for the children. You’re in charge of the team looking for Belloc and Reid. I’d like to be allowed to do my job.’
‘No one’s questioning your professionalism, detective. They’d have to come through me if they did.’ Welland lightened the growl. ‘Belloc’s boss wants to know why he was alone with Reid, or Doyle, whatever he’s calling himself now.’
‘That was my call,’ Marnie said directly. ‘Ed phoned to say he was worried about Terry. I was on my way over there, but I got distracted, asking questions about Clancy.’
‘Was there any reason to suspect Doyle of being a danger to himself or others?’
Welland was covering their backs, Marnie’s and his. Maybe he was trying to salve her conscience, too.
‘Ed was concerned. I asked if he wanted backup, but he said no. He was worried it might make things worse. He wouldn’t have said that if he thought Terry was dangerous.’
It was the thread she was holding on to, the fact that Ed was a great judge of people and situations. His voice had been full of worry, but he’d been certain he didn’t need backup.
Welland nodded. ‘So what now?’
‘We’ve got CCTV to check from Merrick’s sites. We’re going to start with the places Terry worked as a gardener. DS Jake and DC Tanner are taking a look inside number 14, in case he left any clues there. And I’m going to interview Beth.’
‘I thought she didn’t know anything about her husband’s past, about Matt and Esther?’
‘That’s what she says. She’s pregnant, so we need to tread softly.’
‘And quickly,’ Welland said. ‘It’s been eight hours since those kids went missing.’
Ed had been gone less than three.
Marnie had two clocks in her head, counting down.
‘His boss said Belloc was a natural, last time around. Defused the situation. Kept his head.’ Welland p
ut his paw on her shoulder. ‘Don’t lose faith, detective.’
Marnie shook her head. ‘Of course not, sir.’
19
The housing estate was a pit of shadows, high-rises blocking out the sun, litter blowing from one corner to the next, never escaping. Noah handed the photos of Terry Doyle to the officer in charge of house-to-house. He didn’t envy the team their task, imagining the accusations, the fear on people’s faces: ‘You just found two dead kids and now you’ve lost three more?’
Debbie didn’t speak as they walked to Blackthorn Road, but when they reached number 14 she said, ‘How could Beth be married to him and not know? He lost his whole family. How could she not know about a thing like that? And all the time he’s searching … looking for his boys, for Fred and Archie. How did he keep it a secret?’
‘We don’t always know the truth about other people, even the ones we’re closest to.’
‘And then he finds them and he moves his new family here. It’s horrible.’ She shivered. ‘They’re living over those little graves and he knows and he doesn’t say anything? And she doesn’t suspect anything? How can he play at being Terry when he’s Matt Reid?’
‘I don’t think he’s playing,’ Noah said. ‘That’s the thing with new identities. Ayana Mirza told me that she’s already thinking of the person she’ll be when she has her new name. She says it’s as if that person isn’t her, she’s finally shrugging off all the terrible things that happened to Ayana. Not forgetting, but it means she can lock the bad stuff away and start over. Maybe it was like that for Matt, when he became Terry.’
At number 14, a solitary PCSO was guarding the tape. He’d been standing a long time; rain from earlier in the day was slicking the shoulders of his jacket.
Behind him, the house was silent. Keeping its secrets, all its windows unlit.
Noah and Debbie ducked past, up the side alley to the garden where the forensic tent was still pitched over the bunker they’d opened.
The garden smelt of wet earth and vegetation. Two days ago, it had been bright and well tended, full of colour. Now it was ragged round the edges, weeds making the most of the hiatus from Terry’s care. The rainwater drums were overflowing, dripping on to a margin of mud by the kitchen wall.
Aware of being watched, Noah glanced in the direction of the house next door.
Julie Lowry was standing at the upstairs window. She gave a little wave of her hand when she saw him, then moved away.
‘Neighbourhood Watch,’ Debbie said. ‘But not one of them saw what was really happening here.’
• • •
The kitchen was just as he remembered: messy, lived-in, comfortable.
Nothing like the rest of the house.
Upstairs, in the bedroom belonging to Carmen and Tommy, the furniture was fastened to the walls and the windows were nailed shut.
Safety windows, the kind that could be broken with a rock hammer in the event of a fire.
They found the rock hammer in Beth and Terry’s room, together with a rope ladder and a fire extinguisher. Out of reach of the children, but readily to hand. The windows in this room were nailed shut too. The mirror above Beth’s dressing table was made of plastic.
Debbie and Noah searched for something with sharp edges, and failed to find it.
In the bathroom Debbie said sadly, ‘He was scared of everything, wasn’t he?’
Cabinets, out of reach of the smaller children, and locked.
Plastic mirrors, and plastic walls to the shower unit.
Another window that wouldn’t open.
‘Look at this.’ Debbie touched the door to the bathroom. ‘No lock.’
Just a raw hole where it’d been torn out. As if someone had taken a car wrench to it. Someone in a panic, desperate to open the door. Or desperate for it not to be locked.
‘Who takes the lock out of a bathroom door?’ Debbie said. ‘Unless one of the little ones got trapped in here, by accident …’
‘Wrong side of the door,’ Noah said. ‘If Carmen or Tommy got locked in, then the lock would’ve been removed from the other side … The police report said Esther cut herself in the bathroom. On purpose, and more than once. It was always Matt who found her.’
They looked at the bath and the shower, seeing pictures of what that might have been like for Matt Reid. Nothing Noah could conjure was bad enough.
‘It’s spooky.’ Debbie shivered. ‘Even if you didn’t know about Esther, this house is spooky. The windows, the doors. It’s weird. I mean, it’s so … safe.’
The way a prison was safe.
Terry had built a prison for his new family.
No locks on the doors meant no secrets.
The whole house felt oppressive. Threatening.
Was Terry so scared that he couldn’t see the huge shadow his fear was casting? And if he was this scared before Esther was released, what was he like now?
What had seeing his dead boys done to that fear?
‘I couldn’t have lived like this when I was a teenager,’ Debbie said, ‘with no privacy, nowhere that’s just mine. I’m not surprised Clancy ran off.’
‘And if Clancy took the kids?’
‘We don’t know what Terry was like, not really. Maybe Clancy was looking out for them … But we think it was Terry, don’t we? We think it was Terry who took the kids.’
‘We don’t know,’ Noah said. ‘That’s the problem.’
The house was holding its breath, silence packed solidly up the stairs. They checked the other doors in the house. The locks had been removed from every one, even the door in the attic where the pantiled roof was pitched like a tent.
Clancy’s room.
The bed, shoved back against the far wall, had collected a puddle of sun from the skylight. No posters on the walls, no iPod or speakers, nothing to say the room belonged to a teenage boy. A low chest of drawers was fastened to the wall like the cupboards in the kids’ bedroom downstairs. The round mirror above the bed was plastic, in a rubber frame.
Windows and skylight nailed shut.
Noah turned a slow circle, looking for evidence that Clancy lived here. No TV, no computer. Not even any bookshelves. Just the bed and the chest of drawers.
Debbie crouched and opened the drawers, one after another. ‘Underwear and T-shirts.’
The view from the skylight was non-existent. If you added blue, put fluffy clouds up there, it would still be depressing. There was nothing to see. No wonder Clancy spent all his time at the window, with its clear view to Julie Lowry’s garden and, further up the road, the shingle roof of Douglas Cole’s shed.
‘Look at this.’ Debbie had found something at the back of one of the drawers.
A china doll in a silk dress with green glass eyes.
Noah said, ‘Doug Cole collects those.’
‘So what’s it doing here?’ Debbie turned the doll until it shut its eyes.
‘Let’s ask Mr Cole,’ Noah said.
They were back downstairs when Noah’s phone played the station’s tune. ‘DS Jake.’
‘We’re going through Merrick’s paperwork,’ Ron said. ‘Remember Gutless Douglas?’
‘Cole.’ Noah glanced at Debbie, who raised her eyebrows at him. ‘What about him?’
‘He’s right here, on our list.’
‘Because he bought number 8 from Merrick Homes. Everyone living on Blackthorn Road is on the list …’
‘Forget Blackthorn Road. Cole and Merrick are mates.’
Noah looked at the doll in Debbie’s hand, his skin creeping. ‘Define mates.’
‘They belong to the same society,’ Ron said, ‘and guess what? It’s all about underground hiding places. Holes. Old tunnels. Bunkers. They call themselves “Buried”.’
20
Douglas Cole answered the door to number 8 before Noah and Debbie could knock on it. He was wearing his bespoke suit and his face was pinker than ever.
‘I was about to call you. I just got home.’ He swallowed. ‘You’d better co
me in.’
He led them in the direction of the kitchen at the back of the house. ‘I didn’t know, really I didn’t. I only just got back. I’ve been at work all day.’
The kitchen was neat and orderly, no sign of the toy collection that sprawled around the rest of the house. A big table, scrubbed clean, against one wall. Fitted units, showroom-shiny. The door into the sitting room was shut tight, like the back door leading into the garden.
From where he was standing, Noah could see the shed Cole had built over the bunker.
Something moved under the table.
Pink and yellow, hunched over.
A shuffle of shoes, the huffing of breath through small teeth.
Noah crouched on his heels and peered under the table. ‘Carmen?’
She scowled back at him, all plaits and duffle coat, a crayon in her fist, a sheet of paper under her heels, covered in scrawls. She was dirty, but she didn’t look hurt.
Noah felt a flood of relief; he propped a hand to the tiled floor. ‘Carmen, I’m DS Jake. I’m a policeman. I was with your mum and dad the other day, remember?’
‘Go ’way.’
Debbie crouched next to him. ‘Carmen, love, where’s Tommy? Where’s your brother?’
‘Go ’way.’
‘Ooh, can we see your picture?’ Debbie held out a hand.
Carmen shoved the sheet at them. She’d been chewing at the crayon; there was red wax on her mouth. A half-eaten banana was turning brown on the floor at her feet.
‘This is a great picture,’ Debbie said. ‘Is this your dad?’
‘No,’ scornfully.
‘Is it Clancy?’
Carmen nodded. There was mud on her shoes, and on the hem of her pink duffle coat, a leaf in her yellow hair. She sucked on the crayon, looking sleepy, her eyes glazed over.
Debbie said, ‘Did Clancy bring you here?’
The little girl was unresponsive.
‘Or was it your dad?’
Nothing.
‘Did they bring Tommy too?’
‘Go ’way.’
‘Where’s Tommy now, love? Is he with your dad, or Clancy?’
