All the Rage (DI Fawley)

by Cara Hunter

  Gow pushes his glasses up his nose. ‘I think our Mr Scott may have genuinely believed he and Sasha were in some sort of relationship. That all he had to do was wait and eventually all the barriers holding them back would be miraculously cast aside.’

  ‘Including the minor inconvenience of her being under-age,’ says Gallagher grimly.

  ‘Precisely. Though that would have just added fuel to the delusion. Scott could tell himself that was why they had to keep it secret – why she couldn’t say anything to him in public. The problem comes, of course, when a man in that position is forced to confront the fact that the woman he loves doesn’t reciprocate his feelings and never will. In the face of that kind of rejection, well, let’s just say that things can escalate very quickly. Very quickly indeed.’

  ‘So if he did see Sasha at the bus stop that night –’

  ‘He might well have thought his moment had come – a perfect opportunity to tell her how he felt. Only to find her looking at him aghast like he’s some sort of pervert.’

  ‘Or laughing at him,’ says Gallagher.

  Gow nods. ‘That, of course, would have been even worse. His world was crashing in ruins and she was just laughing in his face. He loses his temper, lashes out –’ He shrugs; he doesn’t need to go on.

  ‘Added to which,’ says Gallagher, ‘that Morris Traveller of his is chock full with craft materials and decorating stuff. Including knives. Killing her may have been unpremeditated, but he had everything he needed to do it in the back of his car.’

  Gow makes a quick note. ‘Interesting, I didn’t know about that.’

  He looks up again. ‘There’s one obvious problem with all this, though, as I’m sure you’ve realized: Faith Appleford.’

  ‘I know,’ she says with a sigh. ‘The stronger we make the case for Scott’s obsession with Sasha, the harder it is to explain why he’d have assaulted Faith. Or anyone else for that matter.’

  Gow is nodding. ‘Which any competent defence lawyer is going to seize on at once. And he – or she – will have a point. And if Scott didn’t attack Faith, who did? You don’t need me to tell you the chances of two different men carrying out nearly identical attacks at the same time, in the same confined geographical area, are vanishingly small.’

  On the screen, Scott is talking intently with the lawyer, jabbing at the table to emphasize his point.

  ‘Do you think he could have done it before?’ says Gallagher eventually.

  ‘The stalking? Hard to say. If you forced my hand I’d lean towards no. Largely because something would probably have flagged in his employment records by now.’

  Gallagher is still staring at the screen. ‘Then we’d better make sure he doesn’t get another chance.’

  Scott’s lawyer has now got to her feet and is gesturing up at the camera to attract their attention.

  Gow nods towards it. ‘Looks like she has something to say. Or Scott does.’

  * * *

  ‘Turns out he has an alibi,’ says Gallagher, looking round at the team. ‘For Faith at least. Less than ten minutes after she was abducted, Graeme Scott was buying milk on Cherwell Drive. Or so he claims. And it gets better: he used contactless, so there’ll be an electronic record.’

  She looks round the incident room; at the weariness, the fatigue, the we’re-getting-nowhere. She needs to turn this around, and fast.

  ‘So the first thing we’re going to do is check that alibi.’ She turns to Gislingham. ‘And in the meantime, have we had anything from the lab?’

  He looks up. ‘They’re testing the knives and plaster dust from Scott’s car, and running his DNA against the Tesco bag from the allotments. I’ve put a rush on it.’

  ‘Right,’ she says briskly, addressing the room again. ‘And while they’re doing their job, we carry on doing ours. We don’t just check Scott’s alibi for Faith, we also check his phone records to see if he really was at home the night Sasha disappeared. And we carry on running down Ashley Brotherton’s known associates, because right now, we haven’t ruled that out either. None of this is rocket science, people, so let’s just get on with it, shall we?’

  * * *

  The reconstruction is going ahead as soon as it gets dark; by the time Somer and Everett get to Cherwell Drive there’s already a considerable crowd along the pavement. The TV lights and cameras are set up and the bus company vehicle is parked up in a lay-by a hundred yards away. The driver is talking to a couple of uniformed officers.

  Everett makes her way towards the BBC crew, but Somer stays where she is, scanning the faces of the bystanders, hoping Fiona Blake took her advice and hasn’t come. If Sasha had still been missing there’d be a point; but not now. Now, the only thing here for her is pain. And not just because she’s lost her daughter: Somer can see Jonathan Blake being interviewed on camera, and just behind him, the woman he must be living with now, rocking a small baby against her shoulder. Blake is speaking intently, a crease of earnest anxiety between his brows. And further away, behind the cameras, Sasha’s friends. Somer didn’t know if they were going to come – their parents were reluctant to agree, and the girls have been in such a state it was almost a cruelty to push it. But there’s no denying it could make all the difference: Isabel’s dip-dye, Patsie’s red leather jacket – either might prompt a memory. But as Somer knows full well, what makes sense for a police investigation is a whole lot different for the people who have to go through with it, especially if you’re fifteen and your best friend has just been horribly killed. Even from this distance Somer can see that Patsie is crying, and Isabel and Leah have their arms round each other. The girl who’s playing Sasha can’t be helping either. What with the clothes and the satchel and what they’ve done to her hair, the resemblance is unnerving. Thank God, thinks Somer again, that Fiona Blake didn’t come.

  ‘Erica?’

  The voice is familiar, and Somer turns to find herself face to face with Faith Appleford. She’s pale and even thinner than she was the last time they met, but she looks calm, which in the circumstances is little short of a miracle.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be here.’

  ‘We thought we should come. It just seemed the right thing to do.’ She shrugs. ‘It’s hard to explain.’

  ‘No, I understand,’ says Somer. ‘How are you? I’m so sorry we didn’t have the chance to talk more when I called you a couple of days ago –’

  ‘No, it’s OK,’ she says quickly. ‘I know you’re busy. And I’m doing much better. I know that sounds terrible after, you know, this.’ She flushes a little. ‘I guess I’m just realizing how lucky I was. How lucky I am.’

  Somer gives her a sad smile. ‘You’re right – you are. Never forget that. You have such a great future ahead of you.’

  She can see Diane Appleford too now, standing with Nadine just beyond the BBC van.

  ‘And even though all this is just horrible,’ says Faith softly, ‘at least it means that what happened to me – it can’t have been someone I know.’

  Somer wants to agree, but she’s not sure she can. Right now, it feels like they’re back to square one.

  The bus engine chugs suddenly into life, saving Somer from the need to reply. The bus door opens with a hiss and the two girls get in, first ‘Sasha’ then Isabel. Leah and Patsie are standing watching from the kerb, their eyes bright in the glare. A woman who must be Patsie’s mother reaches out and puts an arm round her daughter’s shoulders, but Patsie shakes her roughly away.

  Somer turns back to Faith. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’

  Faith shrugs. ‘Sure.’

  ‘I know you said it was possible it wasn’t a van you were taken in. Do you think it could have been some sort of car? Quite a small car, even?’

  Faith’s eyes widen. ‘You think you know who it was?’

  ‘There is someone we’re talking to, but that’s all I can say right now.’

  ‘Can’t you test the car then – you know, forensics?’

  ‘He claims to have
an alibi for that morning, but we haven’t been able to corroborate it yet. And in the meantime, yes, we are doing forensic testing on the car. But if there was anything else you remember, that would really help.’

  Faith looks troubled. ‘I’m really sorry, but I just can’t be sure. I want to help, but –’

  ‘No,’ says Somer quickly. ‘It’s fine. I understand.’

  Faith looks back towards the crowd around the cameras. ‘Oh, I can see a couple of my mates over there – do you mind? I said I’d meet them.’

  Somer follows her gaze. Two girls are waving to Faith; one of them is Jess Beardsley, the girl she talked to in the canteen.

  ‘I’m glad you’re making friends. That’s really great. And Jess seems really nice.’

  Faith smiles, a little shyly. ‘Yeah, that’s the one good thing to come out of all this shit. Turns out Jess’s brother is trans too. She thinks it’s no big deal.’

  Three small words, but a world of acceptance. The possibility of another life.

  Somer watches her go, sees the hug she gets. Perhaps something good really could come out of all this pain. Against the odds.

  * * *

  Sasha watches as the bus pulls away, then goes back to the shelter and sits down on the bench. She checks her phone, and then gets to her feet again. She looks up and down the road, her face anxious. She appears to be looking for someone.

  Then all the lights go out.

  * * *

  The cameras stop running and the girl playing Sasha turns and looks for her mother, avid for praise. And perhaps she deserves it – perhaps she really did look just like the girl she’s impersonating, because Patsie and Leah are clinging to each other, sobbing their hearts out, and when the bus door opens Isabel steps down unsteadily and collapses, weeping, into Yasmin’s arms. Everett watches as the woman drapes a blanket round the girl’s shoulders, then leads her away like the survivor of an earthquake. And maybe that’s not so far from the truth, thinks Everett; because the calamity those three girls have been caught up in has wrecked everything they thought they could count on, and even if that trust can be rebuilt the fault line will always be there.

  A few yards away, Jonathan Blake is talking again, to another cluster of journalists. He seems to have found his vocation, thinks Everett scornfully, before remonstrating with herself for being so cynical. Perhaps the man just wants to help. One of the hacks interrupts to ask if Blake can pose for a picture with his new family and after a moment’s modest demurral he calls his girlfriend forward. ‘Rach? Apparently they want you and Liam in this one as well.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ says the journalist as the cameraman arranges the couple and their child against the backdrop of the crowd. ‘The little brother Sasha never even got to meet. My editor will friggin’ love that.’

  * * *

  After her husband leaves for work at 8.00, Alex Fawley allows herself another half-hour in bed before hauling herself into the shower and turning it on. She tests both the water and the pressure before she gets in: not too hot, not too hard. She soaps herself carefully, caressing the skin where it stretches over her child. The baby rises to her touch and she smiles. It’s OK. Everything’s OK. And it’s not long now. Only seventeen more weeks. A hundred and nineteen days –

  She doesn’t hear the phone till she turns off the shower and steps carefully on to the mat. It’s her mobile; she must have left it in the kitchen. She decides to ignore it and reaches for a towel to wrap round her hair. The ringing stops eventually, only to start again barely thirty seconds later. By the time she gets downstairs and tracks the phone down she’s convinced herself it’s only Adam checking she’s OK, but when she picks up the handset it’s her office number staring back at her. And they’ve already rung four times.

  ‘Hello? Sue? It’s Alex – were you trying to reach me?’

  Evidently she was. It’s about one of Alex’s biggest clients. One of the firm’s biggest clients. And an imminent deadline, and a problem with the tax, and the partner who’s standing in for her being off sick, and – and – and –

  Alex sighs: she’s going to have to go in. But if she’s lucky it’ll only take a couple of hours. She’ll be back long before Adam gets home. He won’t even need to know.

  ‘OK,’ she says eventually. ‘I’ve only just got out of the shower, but I’ll get there as soon as I can.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ breathes the assistant. Who is, as Alex reminds herself, unquestionably very bright and very ambitious, but still terrifyingly inexperienced. ‘That is so kind of you.’

  ‘No problem,’ she says, trying to sound more animated than she feels. ‘Just hold the fort for an hour. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  * * *

  Ruth Gallagher can’t remember the last time she was in Alan Challow’s office. Six months ago? Longer? She’s run three or four murder investigations in the last year but it’s usually the DS who deals with the forensics. As for Alan Challow, he tends to come to you, not the other way round, so to be invited to his home turf is an anomaly, to say the least. She’d like to think he has something important to say, but if all these years in Major Crimes have taught her anything, it’s not to get her hopes up.

  There’s no answer to her knock, and she pushes open the door to find the office is empty. It looks exactly as she remembers it – the view down over the car park, the meticulously tidy desk, the complete lack of any personalization whatsoever. Ruth is good at detail – at seeing the meaning in the supposedly trivial; she’s learned as much about her temporary team from their desk detritus as she has from their personnel files. The toddler pictures stuck round the edge of Gislingham’s computer screen; Everett’s carefully tended pot plant and Somer’s photo of a woman so like her they must be sisters; the casual scatter of Quinn’s desk; the chocolate wrappers hidden in the bin under Baxter’s. As for Fawley, he has a photograph, too. His wife and son on a beach somewhere, tanned and barefoot, the sunset behind them redding their hair and making the resemblance between them even more striking. Jake Fawley is smiling, a little warily. It must have been taken the summer before he died.

  ‘Sorry to keep you,’ says Challow, coming in behind her and closing the door. He has his thermal coffee mug in one hand.

  ‘I thought it would be easier to do this one in person.’ He gestures to the chair and goes round the desk to his own seat.

  ‘So what have you got?’ says Gallagher, watching as he takes out a tub of sweeteners from his desk drawer and carefully counts out three.

  ‘Let’s do the dull stuff first. We’ve checked the samples we took from Graeme Scott against the plastic bag used in the Faith Appleford attack and none of the fingerprints are a match. The male DNA on it isn’t his either, and there was no DNA from Faith in his car.’

  ‘We’d all but ruled him out for Faith anyway. His alibi checked out. What about Sasha?’

  ‘None of the knives from the house, the cottage or the car were used in the attack, and there was no DNA from her in any of those places either. Sorry.’

  ‘You did check the front seat of the car, as well as the back?’

  Challow gives her an old-fashioned look. ‘I do know what I’m doing, you know.’

  ‘Sorry – it’s just that we were working on the theory that he might have offered Sasha a lift that night. But from what you just said –’

  He’s shaking his head. ‘Highly unlikely. It’s extremely difficult to clean any car that well, and Scott’s showed no sign of being vacuumed any time this millennium, never mind last week.’

  Gallagher sighs. ‘OK, so it looks like we can rule him out for Sasha too. But didn’t you say you had some non-dull stuff as well?’

  ‘Ah,’ says Challow, putting his stirrer down carefully on a napkin. ‘That’s a good deal more interesting. The carrier bag features there too.’

  ‘OK,’ says Gallagher slowly.

  ‘We ran the DNA profiles on the bag last week and didn’t get a match in the database. But there was one thing we didn�
��t do.’

  ‘And that was?’

  ‘Comparing those profiles to one another. It wasn’t a cock-up,’ he says quickly, seeing her face, ‘that’s never been standard operating procedure – in fact, if Nina hadn’t taken another look when we were doing the work on Scott –’

  ‘You’re losing me –’

  ‘Two of the DNA profiles we found on the bag – turns out they’re related.’

  ‘Related to what?’

  He sits back in his chair. ‘To each other. Almost certainly mother and daughter.’

  Her heart sinks – wasn’t he supposed to have something interesting? ‘That doesn’t get us very far, though, does it. We’ve always known the bag could have been picked up at random. Off the street, from a bin, pretty much anyone could have handled it, frankly –’

  But he’s already shaking his head. ‘It’s not as simple as that. The profiles aren’t just related to each other. They’re related to the victim.’

  Gallagher’s eyes widen. ‘They’re related to Faith?’

  He nods. ‘We’d need to compare actual samples for it to stand up in court, but I’m as certain as I can be. That bag was previously handled by both Diane and Nadine Appleford.’

  * * *

  Adam Fawley

  8 April 2018

  11.46

  ‘I’m Adam Fawley – they said my wife was here.’

  I’m struggling to get the words out, my heart is racing so hard I can hardly breathe, all the way in the car I’ve been telling myself –

  The nurse at the reception desk glances at me, then checks a list. ‘Oh yes,’ she says crisply. ‘I think Dr Choudhury is in with her now. Hold on a moment.’ She picks up a phone and dials a number.

  My brain is in freefall – this woman, she’s not meeting my gaze – she’s not smiling, either – wouldn’t she do that, if everything was OK – so does that mean –

  She puts the phone down. ‘Along the corridor on the right. Room 156.’

  Alex is sitting up in bed, in a hospital gown. And for a moment, that’s all I can see – her pale face, the tears welling in her eyes –