First One Missing (33 page)

For someone who’d been up all night, Desmond was looking surprisingly chipper. Leanne wondered if he kept a supply of toiletries in his office for emergency spruce-ups.

‘Development, sir?’ Pete was gazing at him blearily.

‘We’re going to agree to immunity from prosecution for Lucy Cromarty – the girl Leanne interviewed the other day who says she has information about the Poppy Glover abduction. With Shields in custody her evidence might be crucial in having something to charge him with. Pete, I want you to take a break, and then go in there and find out what she has to say.’

‘But, sir, what about Shields?’

‘I’m going to take Leanne back in with me – see how he reacts to a woman asking him questions. And we’re going to hit him with the photographs of the crime scenes. He’s really on edge. Did you see how he was when you were grilling him about Leila Botsford? His whole body was tense, like a coiled spring.’

You could say this much for Desmond. Exhausted or not, he never missed a chance for a cliché.

‘I’m going to go and get the files. Leanne, you meet me downstairs in ten minutes. Give him time to stew a little.’

After Desmond left, Pete leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

‘You’re not peed off, are you? That I’m going back in there instead of you?’ Leanne was excited but also nervous and her voice betrayed her tension.

‘A bit. Nah, not really. I was dying in there by the end. Couldn’t wait to get out, to be honest.’

‘You could always nip home for a bit. Kelly and Daisy will be happy to see you, I expect.’

She’d kept her voice deliberately neutral. Pete leaned forward again and put his head in his hands.

‘I miss you.’

He wasn’t looking at her so at first she thought she must have misheard.

‘What?’

‘I said I miss you.’

And now he did look at her with those green eyes. Her stomach caved in, her ribcage sliding open. She was too tired for this. Too tired for the resistance she needed to find. It would be too easy to get up and step round to the other side of the table and sink down on to his lap and feel his arms around her.

‘Don’t, Pete,’ she said so quietly she wondered if she’d even uttered the words.

‘I’ve got to say it, Leanne. I know I cocked up, and I know I’ve got to deal with it. And Kelly’s sweet and nice and she deserves better, and Daisy’s adorable and I’d give my life for her and I want to be there for her, but I’m fucking lonely and I miss you and I can’t bear that I hurt you. And I know I should feel happy that you’ve found Will and you’re happy, but I can’t. I want to come back. I want to come home.’

Leanne got up so abruptly the plastic chair she’d been sitting on scraped across the vinyl floor.

‘Look, Leanne, I didn’t mean—’

‘I know. It’s OK. I have to go.’

When she arrived at the interview room downstairs, Desmond was already waiting outside. ‘Are you sure you’re OK, Leanne? You look upset. I know you’re close to the Reid family. I hope this isn’t going to be too difficult?’

‘No, sir. I’m good to go, sir.’

Good to go
. Where had that come from?

‘Excellent. After you.’

Up close, Jason Shields was smaller than Leanne had thought. It was all that body-building stuff that made him seem more intimidating. His arms where they came out of his polo-shirt were the size of one of her thighs – and that was saying something. He had the same hardness in his face as his wife, only without that same ex-addict look. She’d seen his file: violent father, neglectful mother, in and out of care. Stint in the army including a tour in Iraq. An early disciplinary warning for fighting with another squaddie but then a commendation for bravery. Yet until now he’d had no criminal record, no history of substance abuse. Held down a security job in a City club for the last seven years. Clearly he was someone who had learned to keep himself under the tightest control. But the thing about people who kept themselves so locked in was that sooner or later they had to break out. And Jason Shields had the look of someone who was very close to breaking point. His thin lips were tightly pressed together and, as Pete had said, there was a clearly visible tic in his neck and also, now she looked closely, at his jaw. His hands where they rested on the table in front of him were trembling.

‘We’ve got some photographs we want to show you, Jason,’ Desmond began. ‘These are the victims in the Kenwood Killings case. I want you to take a close look at them. Tell me if there’s anything you recognize. First we have Megan Purvis.’ He flung down some photographs on the table.

Leanne made sure her eyes stayed fixed on Jason Shields. She’d seen the pictures, of course, but that didn’t mean they didn’t affect her. Over the years, she’d perfected a technique of blurring the thing that she didn’t want to see, even while staring right at it.

Jason Shields glanced down at the photographs of Megan Purvis without giving anything away, but Leanne saw the muscle spasm in his cheek go into overdrive.

‘Have you anything you’d like to say?’

The man in the chair opposite shook his head. The tiniest movement.

‘And now Tilly Reid. Here’s how Tilly looked when we found her.’

Again Desmond carefully laid the photographs down. But this time there was no mistaking the struggle going on inside the man in front of them. The tremble had moved up from his hands through his arms and chest and now his whole body seemed to be shaking.

Come on
, Leanne urged him silently.
Come on, spit it all out.

The confession was close enough to taste.

47

On and on and on, one right after the other. Jason felt like he was being buried under a hailstorm of questions. He tried to keep in control, practising a few techniques that stress doctor, Dr Ancona, had taught him. You had to take your mind to your happy place. Well, Jason hadn’t had that many happy places. Nothing from his shitty childhood, that was for sure. Him and Donna had gone to Crete one year when Keira was little – a beautiful resort near a little rocky cove – but they’d had a big row on the second day and she’d made him so mad he’d picked up the ceramic lamp from the bedside table and smashed it against the wall.

But then they started with the photographs. The woman was there by then – he could see her judging him the minute she walked in the door. Her type always did that. Looked at his muscles, found out what he did for a living, thought they had him sussed. Well, she didn’t have a fucking clue. He wasn’t who they’d decided he was. You couldn’t judge a person by the lowest point in their life or the worst thing they’d ever done. But that was exactly what that woman cop was doing. He could see it. And as soon as he saw it, the flashbacks started. Normally he’d have been able to fight them off, but then they started with the photographs and it was just like it was all happening again.

He was walking through the park trying to kill time before going to work. He was early but he’d had to get away from home as Donna was doing his head in. They were arguing all the time at that stage and he only had to look at her to feel the rage building in his veins. So he’d parked the car on a whim right by the park gates and gone inside. He hadn’t been planning to case the playground. He hadn’t, he hadn’t. And when he’d seen the girl playing there alone, he’d just been worried about her. He’d been taking her to find help. That’s all he had been doing. But now they were showing him photographs of her body, dead, and he was remembering how his mouth had gone dry and the blood had been pounding in his ears so he couldn’t hear anything except the roaring of his own heart. And she hadn’t wanted to come and that had made him so angry because he was trying to help, and why couldn’t she see that? And it was nearly dusk and no one was around except the boys playing football in the distance and they hadn’t noticed when he picked her up with his hand over her mouth and carried her to the car. People should be more careful with their kids. He’d never have let Keira …

But now they were showing him other photographs and no, no, no. That wasn’t right. He’d tried so hard not to think about it, not to dwell on it. But now he couldn’t hold it in any more. He knew he should wait for his solicitor to arrive but the anger was building and building inside, heat searing his lungs until he could hardly breathe, and that woman cop was staring at him like she knew all about him even though she had no fucking clue, and now everything was red and there was no happy place and that woman had better stop staring at him and it was no good, he’d buried it so long he was about to explode with it.

‘You lot think you’re so fucking clever, don’t you? You haven’t got a fucking clue …’

48

It hadn’t taken long for Rory to find a charger that fitted. His mum and Simon were always droning on about the state of his room but the truth was he knew exactly where everything was.

At first he’d thought the phone might be a goner as there was no sign of life at all when he plugged it in, but after a few minutes a light had come on and they’d been up and running, which was a relief, as he had a night out to arrange.

While he waited for the phone to charge, he opened up his laptop and scrolled through his Facebook page. He was on the bed leaning back against the pillows with the computer resting on the duvet. Simon always had a go at him about that too. He said the laptop would overheat and very possibly explode. Yeah right, because the news was full of people dying from exploding laptops.

One of the boys in his year had had a party the night before and there was the predictable run of photos. Rory had thought about going but he hardly knew him and hadn’t been invited, and anyway he’d spent too many Saturday nights standing around with his mates outside houses where they weren’t welcome. That was the kind of thing you did in Year 10. Now he was nearly at the end of Year 11 – don’t think about the exams coming up after half-term – he was over all that.

This morning there were a load of posts from people who were in the middle of revising. Rory always felt a pang of guilt when he read about how much work other people were doing for their GCSEs. He knew he should be doing more. It was just that there was something in his brain that stopped him from being able to concentrate when a book was open in front of him.

He saw Jemima Reid had posted something – a YouTube clip of a dog biting its own paw thinking it was about to steal his bone which was actually pretty funny.

Fingers poised over the keys, he started a post: ‘Gave my phone a bath lol. Need numbers so txt me on—’ What was his new number? He rifled through a drawer in his desk until he found the SIM card he’d got the last time his mum had bought him a cheap phone.

Downstairs he could hear someone arriving for the interview. From the loud, posh voice he guessed it was that blonde journalist and was glad he was up here so he didn’t have to go and face her. The couple of times he’d met her in the past she’d done that thing of putting her head on one side while she looked at him and screwing up her face, which is what people who had no actual feelings did when they wanted to look sympathetic, because they couldn’t think of any actual sympathetic words.

He finished his Facebook post and got up and checked the screen on the phone. Four per cent charged. Could it actually be any slower? Still, soon it should be enough for him to make a few calls. He just had to be patient.

49

It was all Leanne could do not to turn to Desmond open-mouthed. Jason Shields wasn’t just talking, he was practically spewing words from his mouth – and what he was saying beggared belief.

‘You lot think you’re so fucking clever, don’t you?’ he’d opened with. ‘You haven’t got a fucking clue.’

And, if he was telling the truth, he was absolutely right. They hadn’t had a clue. Yes, he’d killed Megan Purvis. But, and here was the thing she still couldn’t get her head around, he was denying he’d ever gone near any of the other three girls. Tilly, Leila, Poppy. What was the point of a partial confession? Why admit to what had always appeared to be the most brutal of the killings but deny the rest? It didn’t make sense.

As Jason Shields rambled on, unstoppable as though someone had opened up a valve in him that could not now be shut off, Leanne thought again about the murder of Tilly Reid and how it had surprised them all because it was so different from the first murder, even though there was still that telling detail – that blue biro ‘SORRY’ written on the leg in awkward left-handed writing. Tilly had been fully dressed, peaceful, carefully arranged. No sign of a struggle or of any sexual activity. They’d been able to tell from the hairs on her jumper that her hair had been brushed and re-styled. Same with Leila Botsford. Poppy Glover had been different. Partially unclothed, with that semen sample found nearby. But the Nemo gang had been responsible for that. Without them the body would have been in the same condition as the previous two.

It seemed incredible. And yet she was convinced beyond all shadow of a doubt that it was true. Jason Shields might be guilty of the first murder, but there was a copycat killer out there. And they had no idea who it was.

50

It was only two weeks since they’d last been at the Purvises’ house for the Megan’s Angels meeting, but it felt to Emma as though everything had changed as she, Guy, Jemima and Caitlin stood waiting outside the front door. Then they had seemed like a random group of unhappy individuals, but now they felt like a family, maybe for the first time in years. Not a happy family, she wouldn’t go so far as that, but a family nonetheless. She and Guy were standing shoulder to shoulder, and neither was pulling away as they would have done even a few days ago. Since the scene where he’d broken down and admitted to lurking outside schools to feel closer to Tilly, something had shifted between them. They were talking to each other, not around each other. Sometimes they even looked at one another when they spoke.

The news that the police had made an arrest had put an electrical charge through all of them.

She’d been nervous of telling Jemima the police had a suspect, thinking it might send her spiralling backwards into that wordless rage, but the change she’d noticed in her oldest daughter over the last few days was still evident this afternoon. She hadn’t even made a fuss about coming to the Purvises’.