All the Rage (DI Fawley)
Page 35
And I want to thank you guys as well, especially all the hundreds and hundreds of new followers I’ve got since last summer. I’ve had so much amazing feedback from you guys – both from my fashion passionistas and all the trans girls who are following me now. I love you all and I am SO SO happy that my own experiences are helping other people to feel as beautiful on the outside as they are on the inside.
Beckons to someone off-screen; Jess appears, smiling and waving. She’s holding a cake with candles on it
So, that’s it for today. A bit shorter than usual but it’s Jess’s birthday and we have a party to go to – yay!
This is Faith, signing off the same way I always have: Look good, be kind and love who you are.
Epilogue
HMP Wandsworth
23 May 2018
The car is waiting for him opposite the gate. His mother. He didn’t want any bloody fuss, and certainly not the fucking kids. As for the press, there’ll be time enough for that. His lawyer says they’re queuing round the block. It’s just a question of how much money they’re prepared to cough up. A story like this – it’s pure pay dirt.
His mother gets out of the car. Still the same shitty Fiat. That’s something else he’s going to bloody well fix.
‘You all right?’ she says as he crosses the road towards her. It’s starting to rain. There are splashes on the shoulders of her coat.
‘Just get in, Mum,’ he says. ‘No point getting wet, is there.’
She doesn’t hug him. Just looks him in the eye and hands him the keys.
‘Thought you’d want to drive.’
He smiles. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Why not? Get back in the swing and all that.’
He gets in, then leans over and pushes the passenger door open for her. He can smell her fag smoke, under the artificial pine. There’s one of those air freshener things stuck on the dashboard. It makes him want to gag. All those years in prison seem to have sharpened his sense of smell.
His mother pulls the door shut, then turns to face him. ‘Well?’
‘I’m not going to let them get away with it, you know.’
He expects her to tell him to let it go. To move on. But she doesn’t.
‘That fucking copper,’ he says. ‘And that bitch wife of his. They fitted me up – you do know that, right?’
She looks at him, then nods. ‘Let’s just go, eh? Get you home. You can think about the rest of it later.’
But he’s not finished. ‘I know there was no hair in the fucking lock-up, Mum. That bloody bitch planted it. She planted it to frame me.’
His mother sighs. She’s heard it all before; he’s been saying the same thing for nigh on twenty years.
‘I’m serious. Just you wait – those bastards, I’m going to make them pay.’
Pay for all those years inside.
Pay for him not seeing his kids grow up.
Pay, above all, for playing him at his own game.
He knows there was no hair in the lock-up because he wasn’t stupid enough to leave it there. Because he knows where to hide precious things like that. Because he knows places the police would never think to look.
And what he hid, all those years ago, will still be there, waiting for him. The long auburn strands he yanked out of that bitch’s head. Emma’s blonde. Alison’s red. The jewellery and the silk knickers and all the other things he took from those girls. He feels a stir in his groin just thinking about it. But that’s for later. There’s no need to rush. Not now. Thanks to Jocelyn Naismith and The Whole Truth and his dumb-arse lawyers, he has all the time in the world.
He sits a while, clenching and unclenching his fists, allowing his heart rate to slow. Then he puts the key in the ignition and starts the engine.
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Acknowledgements
There are so many people in ‘Team Fawley’ who have helped make this book what it is.
First, my team at Penguin, starting with my brilliant editor, Katy Loftus. A special thank-you to her this time, for pushing me into doing two final rounds of edits when I was very tired and really didn’t want to have yet another go. But she was right, and it’s a far better book as a result (it won’t happen next time, I promise!). Also to editorial assistant Rosanna Forte, and my fabulous marketing and PR team Jane Gentle, Olivia Mead, Ellie Hudson and Lindsay Terrell, the mastermind behind the Cara Hunter newsletter (there are details on how to sign up for this on p. i.)
I am also indebted to Karen Whitlock for her outstanding work as my copy-editor, and to Emma Brown and the Penguin production team – I’m always giving them new challenges in my typescripts, from transcripts to Twitter feeds to the maps in this book, but they never fail to rise to them! Thank you likewise to the late, great John Hamilton and the design team who’ve developed such a striking and eye-catching look for the book jackets, to the Dead Good team, and to James Keyte and everyone involved on the audio side, particularly Emma Cunniffe and Lee Ingleby, who bring the books to life so brilliantly well.
Thank you also to my agent Anna Power, of Johnson & Alcock, for her support, insight and her patience! And also to Hélène Butler – it’s thanks to her that the Fawley books are now being published in over twenty countries across the world.
My team of professional advisers have given me invaluable advice on the technical and procedural aspects of All the Rage, as they have with the other books: Detective Inspector Andy Thompson, Joey Giddings, Nicholas Syfret QC and Ann Robinson. Any mistakes that might remain are entirely down to me.
Closer to home, I want to thank my husband, Simon, and the kind friends on my ‘early reader’ panel – Sarah, Peter, Elizabeth, Stephen, Andy, Richard, Neera and Deborah.
Thanks also to KUCHENGA for providing such a brilliant read.
And finally I want to thank you – my readers. Penguin told me that someone buys a Cara Hunter book every fifty seconds (unbelievable!), and people get in touch on Twitter or Instagram every day to tell me they’ve enjoyed the books. I can’t tell you how nice that is: being a writer is a wonderful life, but nothing beats that. I’m so grateful to everyone who’s bought, borrowed or recommended the series in the last two years, and especially those who’ve taken the time to put a review on Netgalley or Amazon, and the bloggers who’ve given the books so much support.
A few last words on the book itself. As before, while there are some real Oxford places and roads in the novel, I have taken a few liberties with actual geography here and there, and some places are my own invention. For example, there is no ‘Summertown High’, ‘Windermere Avenue’ or ‘Rydal Way’. The news items are also entirely fictional; none of the people represented is based on a real person and any similarity between online usernames in the book and those of real people is entirely coincidental.
And for the eagle-eyed among you, 1 April 2018 was actually a Sunday, but I had to shift it to a Monday for the purposes of the plot. But well done anyone who spotted it!
Someone took Daisy Mason. Someone you know.
Last night, eight-year-old Daisy Mason disappeared from a family party. No one in the quiet suburban street saw anything – or at least that’s what they’re saying.
DI Adam Fawley is trying to keep an open mind. But he knows that nine times out of ten, it’s someone the victim knew.
That means someone is lying …
And that Daisy’s time is running out.
Do you know what they’re hiding in the house next door?
A woman and child are found locked in a basement room, barely alive …
No one knows who they are – the woman can’t speak, and there are no missing persons reports that match their profile. The elderly man who owns the house claims he has never seen them before.
The inhabitants of the quiet Oxford street are in shock – how could this happen right under their noses? But DI Adam Fawley knows that nothing is impossible.
And that no one is as i
nnocent as they seem …
It’s one of the most disturbing cases DI Fawley has ever worked.
The Christmas holidays, and two children have just been pulled from the wreckage of their burning home in North Oxford. The toddler is dead, and his brother is soon fighting for his life.
Why were they left in the house alone? Where is their mother, and why is their father not answering his phone?
Then new evidence is discovered, and DI Fawley’s worst nightmare comes true.
Because the fire wasn’t an accident. And the killer is still out there …
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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First published 2020
Copyright © Cara Hunter, 2020
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover design by Headdesign.co.uk
Cover photos © Silas Manhood and © Getty Images
ISBN: 978-0-241-98512-0
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