by Gwyn GB
‘Fine.’
‘Fine? Come on. The guy’s strange.’
‘That guy saved my life. If it weren’t for him, I’d have been space dust years ago. He’s just quieter than most.’
‘Quieter… that’s one way of putting it,’ Jack humphed.
‘He’s a good bloke,’ Ryan qualified again, and looked directly into Salter’s blue eyes. Despite being bloodshot and tired, they stared back at him, but he didn’t budge.
‘Fine.’ Realising he was getting nowhere, Salter sprang off the desk and headed towards the door.
‘When he decides to show up, tell him the boss wanted him in her office, and I doubt she’s going to be happy with him for being AWOL. I’m not covering his arse.’
‘Okey dokey,’ Ryan said with as much disrespect as he dared.
Salter turned and glared at him as he walked out.
‘This is what happens when civilians do police work,’ he spat back.
Ryan sighed. Time to take a chill pill and cool your beans, DS Salter. When he was sure he’d gone, he picked up his mobile and texted Harrison.‘Salter’s on the warpath looking for you. The DCI wants you in her office now.’
He smiled when he put the phone down then went back to his computer screen. Harrison always kept his phone on, day and night, and Ryan had a tracking app on it. He always knew exactly where his boss was, but he wasn’t going to tell Jack Salter that.
Harrison and Tanya arrived at DCI Barker’s office just before Jack Salter returned to the incident room. They’d already taken their seats at the table when he walked in, and Harrison had no idea why he received the glare he got from the DS.
‘You up with the latest, Harrison?’ DCI Barker asked as he came into her office. She was halfway through a pack of Maltesers.
‘I’ve read the initial report, yes,’ he confirmed.
Jack shot him another disdainful look.
‘Okay, let’s see where we are with this.’ DCI Barker waved Sergeant Steve Evans in. He joined them at the table, along with two other detectives. Everyone else was out. ‘So, first, well done, Jack, for coming up trumps and finding who our man is. There’s no doubt in my mind that Cameron Platt is who we’re looking for. The issue we have is where the hell he is.’ She looked around the table at her team, knowing she was stating the obvious. ‘Jack, you’ve been collating the latest intel. What do we know about the Platts?’
‘Platt Senior paid one visit to the doctor where cancer was confirmed,’ DS Salter said. ‘It was advanced, and he refused treatment, said God would take care of him. That was around six months ago. Doc reckons he’d only had around three to four months to live untreated. Looks like that was quite accurate, as it seems the smell had been evident for some weeks. ‘Neighbours say they complained several times, but the manager, like a lot of them, was wary of Platt Senior and thought the smell would just go away. But once he’d got a complaint of a stain coming on the ceiling into the downstairs flat, he finally plucked up the courage to investigate. He realised it was more than a blocked drain and called it in, but we were already on the way there after speaking to a colleague of Cameron’s at the spray-paint shop.’
‘So what kind of people are they?’ She looked around the table.
‘Neighbours said they kept themselves to themselves,’ Sergeant Evans said. ‘After the dad gave up work, they rarely saw him around. Seems he stayed in the flat most of the time, unless it was to go outside and shout at them to be quiet. Jabba they called him, like the big fat one from Star Wars. The son is the opposite. Small bloke, thin. He did all the shopping, and although he wasn’t friendly, neighbours had seen him around the place up until a few weeks ago. We’re still on the door to doors, so I’m hoping we might get more information.’
‘Relatives? Friends?’
‘None of the neighbours ever saw any visitors. The mother disappeared decades ago.’
‘You’re trying to track her down, I assume?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Great. So likely natural causes for death with Platt Senior.’ DCI Barker nodded. ‘And Cameron Platt?’
‘No previous, but we’ve got the DNA back from the Darren scene, so that’ll be cross-referenced with the flat. There are no mobile phones registered to him or his father. We’re chasing bank records now. No vehicles registered to him, but that doesn’t mean the van isn’t his. He has no known friends, or close family. The guy was a complete loner with no links to anywhere else in the country or round here. We’ve drawn a blank so far on where he could have gone.’
Barker looked at Harrison and raised her eyebrows to cue him.
‘From what we have so far, the Platts were very religious,’ said Harrison. ‘That’s pretty obvious from all the Bible quotes on the walls, but the Bible shoved into the father’s mouth along with the Devil’s horns are more interesting. We need to ask the neighbours about his childhood. I suspect the father was harsh, perhaps abusive, emotionally rather than sexually. His death has triggered something in Cameron, which isn’t unusual in relationships where an overbearing person suddenly dies. Why take the boys? I’m not sure yet. I think it’s their relationship—his and his dad’s—that’s key. We need to look into the father as well as Cameron.’
Barker nodded. ‘So we know who he is but we’re no closer to finding him. A ghost! I’m going to use the press, put out a call for information. They’ll need food. Can you both work together on interviewing everyone who knew him? We need a list of potential sites to search by this afternoon. We have to turn this neighbourhood upside down until we find them. He’s had Alex for forty-eight hours now. We’re running out of time.’
‘I’ll get on it now.’ Harrison got up to leave.
‘Thanks for your help earlier with Mrs Fuller,’ DCI Barker said before he left.
‘She all right?’
‘As good as she’s going to be until we bring her boy home.’
Harrison gritted his teeth and left along with Tanya and the other three officers. DS Salter hung back.
‘Everything all right, Jack?’ DCI Barker asked.
‘Not really. I can’t get hold of Marie. She’s not picking up at home or on her mobile.’
Barker frowned. ‘I need your full focus on the job. There’s a boy’s life at risk. If you need time off, I’ll have to pull someone else in.’
‘No, I know, I’ll sort it, Sandra. I mean it. Just need an hour to make sure they’re okay.’
‘Be quick and get it sorted. You can’t go on like this. Get some help for her.’
Jack left her office, head hung. She was right, he knew he couldn’t go on like this. His stomach was a tight-fisted knot of anxiety. He wasn’t eating, wasn’t sleeping, and wasn’t focussing on his job. Something had to change.
24
DS Salter drove home as fast as he could, legally or not. He’d tried Marie again, but there was still no answer. His anxiety levels were through the roof. He’d seen it before, walked in on scenes where mothers had been suffering from post-natal depression—invariably younger women and very young children; it was heartbreaking stuff you never forgot. He’d tried to talk himself down on the journey home. Kept telling himself his paranoia was because he was a police officer and he’d been exposed to some of the worst sides of life. He felt as though he were betraying Marie whenever those bad thoughts came into his head, but he couldn’t lose them. He had to get home and see for himself.
When he reached the house, he pulled up on the garage ramp and peered at the front. Their bedroom was at the back, so he couldn’t see if the curtains were closed. He knew he’d opened the ones in the sitting room before he’d left for work that morning, but had Marie got up since?
Jack strained to hear something as he rushed towards the front door. There were no sounds other than the bin men banging and clanging a couple of streets away. The house gave away nothing.
He plunged the key into the lock and let himself in.
Silence.
Immediately he went into i
nvestigation mode. He clocked that the baby’s pushchair sat folded in the hallway and Daniel’s coat was hung up next to Marie’s. They hadn’t gone out. So why was Marie not answering any of his calls? He’d tried the house and her mobile. Panic rose from the pit of his stomach.
‘Marie? Marie?’ he called out.
He burst into the sitting room. Empty. He spotted a crumpled nursing cloth from where Marie had fed their son and a cold empty cup that had once contained her tea.
The kitchen. Empty again. The silence hurt his ears, its presence foreboding. Surfaces that had been messy and full of dirty dishes yesterday were cleaned and empty. It shouldn’t have, but that made him worry more. He’d seen homes like this. Organised. Cleaned. Prepared and ready.
He sprinted up the stairs, two at a time.
First room at the top was Daniel’s. Empty.
Their bedroom door was closed.
He hesitated, fear strafing his spine and sending hot metal into his heart.
Jack breathed deeply then held his breath.
He opened the door.
On the bed was Marie and next to her their baby.
They were both still. Eyes closed.
His eyes caught sight of the bottle of sleeping pills on the bedside table. He’d forgotten to move them. So tired and preoccupied last night.
‘Marie? Marie?’ he called to her.
They didn’t move.
He rushed across to the bed and shook Marie first. She groaned. Then he picked up their son.
‘Marie, what have you done?’
Marie came to with shock, just as the baby kicked off, crying after being so rudely awoken.
‘What are you doing, Jack? Why are you waking him?’ Panic was written all over her face. Her heart was beating so fast and hard that her skin had paled. The blood drained from it. ‘You frightened me. I’d just managed to get him to sleep.’
Jack’s heart was also racing, his breathing shallow and rapid. For a moment he thought he might pass out. He slumped down onto the bed, cradling his son to him. Relief first, then shock that he had reacted like that. What was wrong with him? He was so tired. So stressed.
‘I thought you were…’ He felt ashamed to even say the words, as though he’d betrayed his wife.
‘Thought we were what? Why are you even home at this time?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, and bent his head so his lips touched Daniel’s soft hair. He kissed him and breathed in the smell of him.
‘Oh, my God, did you think we… I’d…?’
‘You didn’t answer the phone. I called the house phone and your mobile.’
‘We were in the garden and went for a walk. I thought some fresh air might make him tired. It did.’
Jack comforted his crying son, his own eyes welling up as he rocked him back and forth. He couldn’t carry on like this. He was going to lose his job. Hell, he was going to lose his mind if they didn’t sort this out. He kissed his son’s forehead again and looked at his wife.
‘I’m worried about you, Marie. You won’t talk to me. I can’t focus on work because all I think about is you and Daniel and whether you’re both okay. I feel guilty being at work, but I can’t be here all the time.’
He tried to look into Marie’s eyes, but she turned away and rose from the bed. Her shoulders were hunched. She turned her back to him and went to stand at the window. Jack strained to see her face reflected in the glass, but the pale light and her pale complexion merged so there was nothing but a ghostly outline of her figure. Marie’s black hair hung limp and lifeless. She’d not bothered with her appearance since before the birth. Jack didn’t care if she wore make-up or if she brushed her hair or put ribbons in it. He just wanted her back, the woman he’d fallen in love with. The woman on the inside. She seemed to have been subsumed by someone else. Where had she gone?
He waited. He’d had enough experience interviewing people who were distressed to know you couldn’t force them to speak. Jack wanted her to want to talk to him.
Finally, she did. ‘I’m scared, Jack. It’s not meant to be like this.’ Her voice was thin and strained. He could hear the tears in her eyes. ‘I’m a bad mother. There’s something wrong with me. I don’t think I can do it.’
‘Of course you can,’ he countered. ‘You just need time and some help.’
Marie spun round, panicked. ‘Help? No, you can’t tell anyone. Promise me. Please. My mother brought up four of us, your mother three, and our friends have babies without any problems. They’ll all think I’m useless.’
Jack’s face dropped, and tears threatened to spill onto Daniel’s forehead. Their son had calmed down now, so he reached out for the rubber soother toy and lay him in the middle of the bed where he could kick his legs and gurgle at the ceiling.
Then he went over to the other person he loved more than anyone else in the world.
He touched her shoulder to turn her around. ‘Sweetheart, you aren’t well—that’s all. There are other women who feel like this. You know that. It’s not your fault.’
‘But you think I’m a bad mother too. You thought I’d harm our son.’
‘I don’t think you’re a bad mother, Marie. I don’t.’
‘I am. I am a bad mother, but I still love him. I just don’t like him, and I don’t know how to be his mum.’
She turned to him at last, tears pouring down her face. It broke his heart to see her like this. He wanted to look away from her pain; it was so raw, but at least she was showing some emotion. What he couldn’t take was when she was like she’d been last night, silent and unresponsive.
‘Why me, Jack?’ She looked up into his face, pleading. ‘Why can’t I be like Trudy or Milly? Her baby, Evan, was ill for weeks, and she just dealt with it.’
‘You can’t blame yourself. It’ll get better. Do you feel you’ve made any progress at all?’
They both looked over to the bed, and the little boy who wriggled, oblivious to his parents’ anguish.
‘Maybe a little.’
‘It was a long and traumatic birth, Marie. It must have had an impact on you. You need to give yourself a break. Please let me call your mum.’
Marie grabbed him and held the tops of his arms with her hands.
‘Promise me, promise me you won’t. That you won’t tell anyone.’
Jack’s mind went to DCI Barker, and a sliver of guilt wriggled through him.
‘Jack?’
He didn’t know how to respond. He wanted her to get help, wanted this anxiety to end so they could get on with their lives. He wanted his wife and child to bond and be happy. Should he force her and be tough? Or would that do more damage? She stared at his face, searching for his response.
He didn’t have time to try to voice his feelings because his mobile rang.
‘I’d better see who that is. It might be work. Might be important,’ he said, and then felt guilty, as though what they were doing right then wasn’t important. It was. It was everything to him, but he also had a responsibility to another family. He took the phone from his pocket.
It was DC Oaks.
‘David?’ Jack said and watched as Marie walked away from him and back to the bed, where Daniel had just started to grumble after becoming bored with kicking at the air. Jack tried to concentrate on what DC Oaks was saying, but he was watching Marie intently. She sat on the bed and looked at their son. He could see she was trying to fall in love with him. Willing it with every fibre of her being.
He hadn’t heard a word that David had said to him, but he got the punch line.
‘There’s a lock-up Cameron Platt uses. Someone’s come forward from the media appeal and tipped us off. They’re pulling a Tactical team together now.’
25
Harrison was looking at the photographs taken at the Marion Estate flat, trying to decipher what the Bible graffiti meant. He sat putting together a full profile of Cameron Platt. What drove him? What were his motivations and their history? All in a desperate attempt to work out wher
e he might have gone.
His mobile rang. It was a detective inspector from one of the other MITs who’d found herself with an unusual crime scene. The body of a young Brazilian woman had been discovered in a house, and another girl with her was hysterical and trying to harm herself. She was behaving as though she was possessed. The family who owned the house were away for a long weekend, and it had been the dog sitter who’d come across the girls. The SIO had requested that he come view the scene. It was an urgent operational query, and as he needed a change of thought process, he agreed.
When Harrison arrived at the address in Dulwich, he found it to be an immaculate town house in a wealthy street that boasted a couple of celebrities as its residents. The SIO was pacing the pavement, talking on her mobile. As soon as she saw Harrison pull up, she ended her call.
‘Dr Lane, DI Dipika Chowdhury.’ She extended her hand to him. She was a petite woman with long black hair scraped back from her face and tied up. It accentuated her delicate bone structure and large brown eyes. Today those eyes looked worried, and they took in Harrison with relief.
‘I’m so glad you could make it at such short notice,’ she said. ‘We need a quick steer on this one. We have one deceased female, and another who’s currently sedated at the hospital, but screaming that she’s been possessed and is going to die. The medics and I need to know what we’re dealing with here. The family is away for a few days and not due back until tomorrow. They’re Brazilian nationals, and the man’s well connected. I don’t want to contact them until I have an idea if they’re a flight risk. The girls were discovered by the dog walker, who heard noises coming from upstairs and went to investigate.’
‘Okay, has forensics finished?’
‘They’re still in there, but we can go in. Shall we?’ DI Chowdhury motioned for Harrison to enter the house.
‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather go in alone. I find it’s easier to assess the situation.’
DI Chowdhury looked a little taken aback but nodded. ‘Of course.’ She’d heard that Dr Lane had a slightly different approach. ‘I’ll make sure everyone gives you the space you need.’
