by Andrew Lowe
Part I
MADE OF STONE
1
Jake Sawyer stepped out of the main doors of Greater Manchester Police HQ. In a single motion, he spun his jacket around over his head, twisting it and slotting in his arms, then shrugged it over his shoulders and headed for the car parked over the road.
He was a tall man: broad shouldered, long armed, with a lope to his walk that never quite slipped into a swagger. His black hair was cropped tight, and he had trimmed his beard down to a shadow, pruning a couple of years off his thirty-six. His long jacket flapped in the icy wind, and he kept his keen green eyes on the driver as he approached the car. He blew into his hands, opened the door, and flopped into the passenger seat.
In the back, two young children wore wireless headphones and stared into the screen of a seat-mounted iPad. Maggie Spark started the engine but didn’t move off. She kept her eyes on Sawyer, as he tilted his head and rested it on the window. Maggie was slight and compact: around Sawyer’s age, with shoulder-length rust red hair and enquiring hazel eyes. She was dressed down for the occasion: wash-day jeans, comfort jumper.
At last, Sawyer shifted his eyes to her. ‘Thanks.’
She pointed to the cup holder. ‘There’s a latte. Might be a bit tepid. Sugar’s in the glovebox. And a pastry. Chocolate.’
Sawyer squeezed out a lopsided smile, dimpling his right cheek. He switched his gaze to the windscreen and Maggie steered the car onto Northampton Road, away from the bland business park, with its permanent parade of evenly spaced, manicured trees; more North Korean than northern England. She threaded through the back streets of Newton Heath, past the ugly wholesalers and shuttered pubs. Sawyer didn’t take the coffee or look for the pastry; he just sat there, eyes front.
Maggie glanced back at Mia and Freddy, lost to Incredibles 2. She slowed for a gridlock outside Asda. ‘Have you eaten?’
Sawyer shifted in his seat. ‘Partially defrosted lasagne.’
‘No special treatment for Detective Inspectors, then?’
He shook his head. ‘Well. The common lags get Tesco Dinner For One. Pretty sure mine was Waitrose.’ His voice was soft, muffled by the strain, but still clear. The vowels were extended: northern, with a twist of London.
Maggie hustled through the late-afternoon traffic, following the signs for the M67: the escape route from the urban squall to the relative peace of the Peak District National Park. It would be a long, tense hour, unless she could draw him out. But after ten years as a counsellor, she had honed her technique with the cold starters. ‘Remember when we were at Keele, Jake? Your battered old Fight Club VHS? Your housemates hated it, and it was your way of clearing them out when I came round. I hated it, too, at first, but you won me over. Wore me down, actually.’
Another dimpled smile. Warmer, this time.
‘Remember that line from the film? “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” It fits with your Stoicism. You can’t control what’s happened to you, but you can choose how to react, what steps to take to rebuild.”
Sawyer let his head drop against the window again. ‘Are you okay with it?’
‘What’s “it”?’
‘Your separation. You mentioned it over breakfast.’
‘Three days ago, yes.’ She sighed. ‘It’s ran its course. Better to get out while we’re still friendly.’
Sawyer took out his phone. ‘What’s Justin doing now?’
‘He’s a partner, at his Stockport firm. His mother lives there. He’s staying with her while he finds a place.’
He nodded to the back seat. ‘Kids know?’
Maggie lowered her voice, despite the headphones. ‘Sort of. It’ll be hardest for Freddy. I’m just telling him that his dad’s very busy at the moment. Mia’s a mummy’s girl. And she’s older, more mature.’
Sawyer scrolled through the stories in his news app. ‘Sorry to hear.’
She stopped for a red light and studied him. ‘Jake. You do have a way of confounding my expectations. Usually when I start to relax and think that things are going right for a change.’
‘You mean the getting arrested for murder thing?’
The car behind honked its horn; the light had changed. She moved off. ‘Yes. That certainly raises the bar. Extreme, even by your standards.’
Sawyer opened a local story.
POLICE STEP UP HUNT FOR MISSING GIRL
‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I posed as a journalist to get close to Marcus Klein, the man who was wrongly convicted of murdering my mother thirty years ago. I used him for leverage to get the name of the person I believe actually did it. But then he was killed, probably by the same person. And now I’ve been framed for his murder.’
Derbyshire police issued a new appeal today in the case of Holly Chilton, the ten-year-old girl reported missing by her family over a week ago.
He held up the phone. ‘You seen this?’
Maggie ran a hand across the back of her neck. ‘So, what now?’
‘Keating handed me over to Manchester police. They questioned me. Not very well. Held me for two days. They must have got an extension on the standard twenty-four hours, so I assume there was a tussle about charging me. CPS demanding more evidence. They don’t like to bin off one of their own unless there’s a really good chance of getting a result.’
Hundreds of people have been involved in searches to find Holly, who was last seen on Monday near Hartington.
‘And you’re suspended, right?’
He glanced over. ‘Right. I’m out on bail, pending charge. No warrant card. Suspended with pay. They’ll have searched my house and, because they haven’t charged me already, I assume they didn’t find much.’
‘And what are your conditions?’
In an emotional video appeal, Holly’s parents, James and Sara, pleaded with anyone who might have seen something, or who might have information relating to Holly’s whereabouts, to come forward and speak to the police in confidence.
‘Surrendered my passport, and I have to stay out of range of Klein’s brother’s house. Oh, and I’m required to sign in at my own station twice a week.’ He pocketed the phone and looked over. ‘Awkward.’
2
At Sawyer’s cottage on the edge of Edale, Maggie parked in front of the orange-and-black Mini Convertible. Sawyer got out and let himself into the house.
She turned to the children and they lifted their headphones. ‘Do you want to stay here or come inside?’
‘Stay here!’ In unison.
‘How long for the film?’
‘Ten minutes,’ said Mia. She waited for Freddy to replace his headphones. ‘Is Uncle Jake okay?’
Maggie patted Mia’s wrist. ‘He’ll be fine. I won’t be long. Don’t talk to any strange men.’ Mia rolled her eyes and replaced her headphones.
Maggie followed Sawyer inside the low-beamed, L-shaped sitting room. It was her first visit, and she was surprised by the tidiness. A bookshelf with a section reserved for neatly packed DVDs, PS4 and games was tucked under the small TV. The galley kitchen was spotless, with an empty dishrack, nested chopping boards, gleaming surfaces. It was a gloomy morning, and Sawyer had switched on the overhead light, revealing a side door leading to an unloved patio and picnic bench. There was a faint tang of cleaning chemical.
She crouched by the DVDs. Mostly blokey, with a couple of sports titles and natural history box sets. ‘You still watch these?’
Sawyer looked over from the kettle. ‘Yeah. Streaming services are patchy. And things disappear because of rights issues. You don’t come home and find one of your DVDs missing. Tea?’
Maggie shook her head. ‘Got to go.’
Sawyer opened a cupboard and pulled out an opened packet of biscuits, twisted shut. He approached Maggie, held eye contact for a second, then waved the biscuits at her.
She shook her head, and ran a finger over the dining table. It came up clean. ‘Now this is special treatment. They wouldn’t make i
t so nice for a civilian.’
Sawyer nodded to the floorboards. ‘Sally’s team, I’ll bet. Hard to tell, but I think they’ve stuck the Hoover round. Pretty good, considering I don’t have one.’ He walked back to the kitchen.
Maggie gulped in a breath and winced at the lungful of soapy air. ‘I spoke to Shepherd. He fed your cat.’
‘Uhuh.’ The steam from the kettle drifted over Sawyer. He kept his head down, lost to something.
Maggie perched on a kitchen chair. ‘So when you say they didn’t question you well, do you mean they missed things?’
‘They’re meant to keep you in the dark on what they know. But it was pretty obvious. They haven’t got much. Keating said they found an “item” of mine at Klein’s place. Circumstantial. Didn’t feel like they had any supporting evidence. They were mostly trying to put me at the scene. They knew that I knew. Waste of energy all round.’ The kettle clicked off and they shared a moment of silence. ‘It’s a good thing.’
‘What is?’
‘Klein’s death.’
Maggie flinched.
‘It means I’m not going crazy. It means I’m right. It means my mum’s killer is still out there. Someone was following Klein and didn’t like the idea that we were getting close to the truth.’
She squinted at him. ‘Will Keating keep you under surveillance?’
‘I would, if it were up to me. I’d put Moran on it. Not my biggest fan. Good copper. Bit unreconstructed.’ Sawyer turned away and prepared his tea.
Maggie stood. ‘So what are you going to do with yourself?’
‘Wait until they either charge me or give me my warrant card back.’
‘How long could that take?’
‘Couple of weeks. Maybe three.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘And, yes, I’m still seeing Alex. Appointment on Thursday.’
Maggie smiled. ‘That’s good. You’re going to need her.’
He scoffed, with affection. ‘How about you? What are you up to?’
‘Jake, you know I can’t talk about any family liaison work.’ Sawyer nodded, squeezed out the tea bag. ‘I have to go. Let’s have coffee soon.’
He turned. Maggie moved in for a hug, but he pivoted towards the fridge and opened the door. ‘Fresh milk. Definitely Sally.’ Sawyer added a splash to his mug and stirred. He toyed with the mug handle and turned again, holding out his arms, forcing a smile. She hugged him hard. He felt rakish, taut. Tightly wound. All edge and sinew.
She stepped back and looked up at him. Was it a trick of the light or were his eyes glassy? ‘Self-care, Jake. Keep your head down for a while. Get a lawyer. Keep your appointment with Alex.’
‘Thank you, Mags. And let me know if you need my help.’
‘In what capacity?’
He shrugged. ‘Concerned citizen.’
3
The house was cold, but Sawyer stripped to his underwear and worked out on his Wing Chun kung fu dummy: jabbing and thwacking his forearms against the wooden poles, following the forms, holding a precise centreline. He was slow and sloppy, his normally sharp reflexes deadened by the prison limbo: the burnt coffee, the unstifled smirk of the desk sergeant, the indignity of being bossed around by bobbies.
He showered and scrubbed up. As he padded out of the bathroom, he froze. Scratching sounds. He walked through and opened the back door. His adopted black-and-white cat, Bruce, slunk into the kitchen and wound himself around his ankles.
‘Tired of the mice, big man?’ He scraped some evil-smelling food into a saucer and scratched Bruce’s back as he ate, staring at the claw marks in the paintwork around the door frame.
He dressed and switched on the TV, selecting the original 1979 series of David Attenborough’s Life on Earth on iPlayer. He started the first episode—The Infinite Variety—and sprawled back on the sofa with his laptop. The IT boys would have had a rummage through his files and browser history, but there was nothing to find.
He opened the Derbyshire Times website. Two photographs, side by side. A posed school photo of a young girl with long brown hair, and an older boy, seated at a dinner table, zoomed in to crop out the surroundings. The girl gazed into the camera, looking bored, impatient. The boy grinned: head tilted back, teeth bared. The story confirmed that both were missing: ten-year-old Holly Chilton for seven days; eleven-year-old Joshua Maitland for close to four months. Holly’s parents were quoted, urging locals to join their daily searches of the farmland near the family home in Blackwell. She had left to visit a ‘friend’ after school one afternoon, and never returned. Over the last two days, Sawyer had noted the journalists’ tone shifting from urgency to inevitability. Soon, there would be talk of closure, and the enquiry would be scaled back. There were only so many patches of water that could be dredged, outbuildings searched, sections of woodland probed with thermal imaging.
Joshua had simply failed to come home from school one day. His disappearance, back in September, pre-dated Sawyer’s transfer from the Met by a few days, and the case had been covered by local police near Joshua’s home in Youlgreave. Now, though, with two children missing, Sawyer’s MIT unit at Buxton station would have taken over, with Maggie working as liaison to both families.
He glanced at the TV. An impossibly young and dashing Attenborough, crouched in the jungle, enthusing about fossils. Clues: to our microscopic beginnings, our endurance over dizzying timeframes.
He leaned in closer to the laptop screen, studying Holly’s imperious expression. According to her parents, she was ‘wilful’ and always ‘pushing boundaries’, but also ‘big hearted’. Sawyer would have dispatched officers to talk to Holly’s friends, tracked her online activity, checked for parental disagreements, trawled CCTV near her home and school. But he had no power to give orders, and nobody obliged to take them. He had been stripped of his role, his status, his dignity.
But not his instinct.
He was sure that Holly Chilton’s big heart was still beating.
4
The Rambler Inn, just outside Edale village, was a converted pub-hotel that served as a fuelling station for the casual climbers out to conquer Kinder Scout: the highest point in the Peak District. It sat at the end of a leafy lane, minutes from the start of the Pennine Way: a 268-mile stomp along the backbone of England. Sawyer ducked into the doorway and scanned the room. Eva Gregory had taken a corner seat at the far side, requiring him to sidestep along the edge of the bar scrum.
Eva was reading and, as he arrived at the table, she took off her thick-framed Tom Fords and lifted her eyes, but didn’t move her head. ‘Hello.’ Smile. Mock surprise.
She was laid out and long boned, with glossy black hair pinned to one side. She hadn’t removed her coat: a fitted woollen wrap with a waist buckle. As Sawyer took his seat opposite, he stole a look at her toned legs, encased in tight jeans tucked into knee-length boots. A less confident woman might have blended in to the rustic backdrop. But Eva had a way of switching the polarity in a room, fading out the surroundings.
He swung his jacket around the chair. ‘Not stopping?’
Eva put down the book: The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle. ‘You sound like my dad.’
‘I’m not a natural father figure.’
She leaned over and kissed him. One cheek. He caught her perfume: subtle, expensive. Not for public consumption. ‘Did you drive?’
He shrugged. ‘Could have walked, but it’s getting late. Dangerous.’
Eva wriggled out of her coat and folded it over the chair beside her. ‘You’ve been quiet. Four days since we agreed to meet. I’d expected a bit of text tease.’
He leaned back. ‘You could say silence is the ultimate tease. Would you like a drink? Are we eating?’
‘I am, yes. But not here. I’ve got about an hour. How about dinner later in the week? You said you’d cleaned the place. I could come over. Let you know if I agree.’
They ordered coffee: black for Eva, white for Sawyer.
He lobbed in a lump of brown sugar and watched it sink
into the froth. ‘How’s Luka?’
‘Still tricky. Still going on about your promise to show him some of your… underhand skills. Whatever you think of Dale, he’s Luka’s dad. And when you’re ten, and your dad is moving out, it must be hard not to read it as a personal rejection.’
‘Might be tough now, but he’ll be better off in the future without a petty gangster father.’
She laughed. ‘Dale isn’t a gangster.’
‘Maybe not in the traditional sense.’
‘He sells property. Refurbishes old places.’
Sawyer blew on his coffee. ‘So he’s in construction? Who are you, Carmela Soprano?’
‘Never seen it.’
‘In denial, I mean. Dale used to get his hands dirty. He’s implicated in a few legacy cases. But now he gets his associates to take the risks. He sent a few friends round to see me, you know. About seeing you.’
Eva ran a finger around the rim of her cup. ‘And how did that go?’
‘We agreed to disagree. You mentioned a going-away party?’ Sawyer took a European Health Insurance card out of his wallet. ‘I swiped this from one of Dale’s goons.’ Eva raised her eyebrows. ‘Stooges? Henchmen? Associates. He was one of my visitors. If I hadn’t strongly objected, he would have chiselled off one of my thumbs.’
She squinted at him. ‘What? Literally?’
‘Yeah. Just the one, though. He’s not a monster.’
Eva studied him for a second, then looked at the picture on the card. Unevenly shaved head, poking up from a black polo-neck. Irritated expression. ‘Shaun Brooks. He used to be one of Dale’s bouncers, at his old club in Sheffield. He was at the party the other night.’
‘So where is Dale moving to?’
‘Manchester. He’s opening a new club in Deansgate. They were talking about gaming. Videogames for the kids, pool and snooker for the adults. Two tiers. Different licenses. I think they want to make it a franchise. The main place in the city centre is above a pizza parlour called The Firehouse. Dale will buy that out, probably.’
