First One Missing (7 page)

People always expected the families to be a harmonious little group, bound together by tragedy, supporting each other through the nightmare they’d stumbled into. But they were just like everyone else. Some were prickly (Fiona Botsford), some overbearing (Simon Hewitt). They didn’t stop having personalities just because of what had happened to them – they could still get right up each other’s noses, despite the horrible thing that had brought them together. They could still bicker and snap and wind each other up and say the wrong thing. Being tragic didn’t suddenly make you world experts in diplomacy, Leanne had discovered. You didn’t become a nicer, kinder, better person simply because your daughter had been murdered.

Still, she felt for them. Emma Reid had once told her that when Tilly died it was as if someone had turned out all the lights. Life still carried on, but you were just stumbling about in the dark. Like veal, she’d said. Leanne had thought it such a strange thing to say.

The press conference was held in New Scotland Yard – very convenient, Leanne didn’t think, seeing as she’d have to travel all the way back up to North London afterwards. As soon as it was finished she went to find Desmond. He’d told her to check in with him (Desmond loved phrases like ‘check in’ and ‘touch base’) before she visited the Reids. She located him in a corridor outside talking urgently to the Met’s head of press.

‘Sir?’ Leanne hated the way her own voice automatically turned obsequious in the vicinity of her über-boss.

‘Ah, Leanne.’ Desmond gave an apologetic shrug to the head of press, who smiled in a knowing way Leanne didn’t altogether like before inclining his head slightly and bustling off, tucking folders under the arm of his grey suit jacket as he went. ‘I just wanted to get you completely up to speed before you drop in on the Reid family.’

Desmond had a weird flap of loose skin on one of his eyelids that drooped over his eyeball, making his left eye look considerably smaller than his right. Whenever she talked to him, Leanne found herself transfixed by that flap of skin, wondering how it felt to look out on the world past a blur of pink flesh.

‘We’ll just wait a couple of minutes for the others to join us.’

‘Others, sir?’

‘The other FLOs assigned to this case.’

Oh. So that meant …

Hearing Pete’s voice was like rediscovering a long-forgotten favourite jumper at the back of the wardrobe. Leanne took a deep breath before turning to face him.

‘All right, Pete?’ she said, allowing her gaze to slide off his cheekbone, so as to avoid meeting his eyes.

‘Not bad.’

Leanne’s determinedly downcast eyes watched Pete’s feet, in their black slightly pointy lace-up shoes (he always did have such terrible taste in shoes), shuffling nervously. How bizarre it was that they’d shared all those things – breakfasts in bed, vomiting bugs, weddings, funerals, quarrels, makings-up, bad sex, good sex, rushed sex in public places that had ended with both of them laughing too much to go on – and yet here they were meeting as virtual strangers.

‘Right, why don’t you two come with me. Jo Barber – she’s the Purvises’ FLO, as you know – is already waiting for us.’

Oh, this isn’t awkward at all
, Leanne thought as she and her ex-husband followed Desmond along the corridor in agonizing silence.

Jo was waiting for them in a small, windowless room with a desk in one corner and five plastic chairs arranged in a cramped circle in the centre. Whatever perfume Jo was wearing rose to meet them like an extra person as they entered the room. She was a small, plump woman with a curiously blank, round face, like someone had over-polished it and smoothed out all the features. Leanne remembered that she worked in dog training when she wasn’t acting as FLO. ‘You know exactly where you are with a dog,’ she said once, and Leanne and Pete had laughed about it afterwards. She felt that churning sensation in her stomach again. Leanne hoped this wasn’t going to continue all through the investigation, this unsettling feeling of things shifting around inside her.

‘Hi Jo, how—’

Desmond cut right in, his hand raised. ‘No pleasantries, Leanne. The demands on my time are, as you can guess, considerable. I just wanted to keep you all in the loop with what’s going on in the investigation, before you go to see the families.’

In the loop.
Where did Desmond get this stuff from?

‘Just to recap, there’s been another murder. Same MO. Definitely our perp.’
Perp?
‘Victim is Poppy Glover, aged seven. She was on the Heath with her parents, by one of the ponds. Begged her parents to let her go to the ice-cream van on her own. Ice-cream van was on the road but just visible from where they were sitting. Beautiful day, lots of people around. Poppy was standing in the queue, then there was a commotion. Someone’s bag was stolen. Everyone shouting and people darting about all over the place. When Oliver Glover went to find Poppy a minute or two later, she’d disappeared.’

‘So you think he had an accomplice this time?’ Pete asked.

Leanne had heard all this in the press conference and had the same reaction as Pete – that someone had created a deliberate diversion, but Desmond didn’t seem convinced.

‘It’s a possibility. Or it’s a coincidence, and our perp saw an opportunity and took advantage. Anyway, what’s important is it’s the same MO. No sign of a violent struggle. It’s too soon to be definitive but early indications are she was drugged and then suffocated while asleep. Same as the others.’

‘Apart from Megan.’

It was the first time Jo had spoken and Leanne had forgotten about her strange, high-pitched, girlish voice.

Desmond looked irritated and glanced pointedly at his watch to show he considered this time-wasting.

‘As we all know by now, our profilers believe Megan Purvis was almost certainly his first victim. The theory is he was more reckless back then and less controlled and probably panicked in disposing of the body. That having been said, there are too many similarities between all the cases for it not to be the same perp.’

‘But Megan Purvis was also semi-naked,’ Jo continued, unperturbed by Desmond’s brusqueness. ‘And traces of semen were found on her clothes. So far that hasn’t been the case with any of the others.’

Desmond stared at her, as if weighing something up in his mind.

‘Actually – though this info is strictly classified – this body also was partially unclothed and there was a semen sample recovered from the scene of this latest murder. Not on the body itself, but on plant matter nearby.’

Leanne was almost too intrigued by this fresh information to mind him saying ‘plant matter’ instead of ‘grass’.

‘So that links in to Megan’s case. And then, of course,’ continued the detective chief inspector, ‘there’s the killer’s usual USP.’

Only Desmond ever used marketing jargon to describe a detail of a murder investigation. Unique Selling Point. That’s what he called it. The killer’s calling card. That tiny ‘SORRY’ written in blue biro on the right leg, just under the sock, which handwriting experts had concluded was done left-handed by someone who usually wrote with the other hand.

‘And you’re still working on the theory that he films the girls in some way?’

Leanne asked the question more out of an awareness that she hadn’t contributed yet to the discussion than any real curiosity. She knew that Desmond would have said something by now if there were any new theories being bandied around. He loved to be the first with the news.

‘Going by what our profilers have told us, that still remains our number-one avenue of enquiry, yes. No footage has shown up as yet but we do have several sources on the case.’

‘Sir?’ Pete again. ‘Have you had a call from Helen Purvis yet? I bet Megan’s Angels will be waiting to welcome the Glovers with open arms.’

‘That’s a bit uncalled for,’ Jo remonstrated in her squeaky little voice. ‘That group has provided strong support for the families. I don’t know how any of them would have coped without it.’

‘I agree with Jo,’ Leanne said. ‘No one else can understand what those poor sods are going through. Just them.’

‘Yeah, well, not sure whether Fiona and Mark Botsford are getting much out of it,’ Pete said.

‘They still go though, don’t they? Presumably no one is making them.’

Ten minutes in each other’s company and they were already winding each other up.

‘Much as I’d love to listen to you two squabbling, I really do have important things to do.’ Desmond was making his Sucking on a Lemon Face, and leafing through some papers on the desk, and Leanne knew they were being dismissed.

Outside the building, the three of them blinked myopically in the white sun. Until a week ago it had felt like the disappointing spring would never end, but maybe now summer had finally arrived.

‘Wish we could all stop meeting like this,’ said Leanne, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

Jo smiled sadly. ‘I know what you mean. Nothing personal, but I’d love it if we three never had to meet again.’

After Jo had gone to find her car, Leanne and Pete stood together in awkward silence. Leanne had forgotten Pete’s habit of kicking the toe of one foot repeatedly against the ground when agitated. Bugger if that wasn’t annoying.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘I suppose I should get going. Dreading the rest of the day, to be honest with you.’

Pete nodded. He knew how tricky that initial time with the Reids had been in Leanne’s life. He bloody well ought to. He’d been the one making a difficult situation unbearable.

‘Never mind. I’m sure your boyfriend will be on hand to run you a hot bath when you get home,’ Pete said.

It was nearly a year since she and Will had got together and the bitterness Pete felt was still there, bubbling away under the surface.

‘Yeah, well. I’m off then.’

She’d gone about five paces before he shouted after her.

‘Sorry!’ he said. Or at least that’s what she thought he said. But by the time she turned, he was heading in the opposite direction, shoulders back, same cocky walk as ever.

Standing up on the tube, clutching on to the railing during the long trip up to Highbury and Islington, where she’d get on the overground to Hampstead Heath, the nearest station to the Reids, Leanne replayed their conversation, and that word Pete had yelled out. The more she thought about it, the less convinced she was she’d heard right. When had Peter Delagio ever said sorry to anyone? Sorry wasn’t in his DNA. She tried to think of other words that sounded like sorry. Lorry? Now that would be too random, even for Pete. Eventually she gave up. The thing was, Will probably
would
run her a bath when she got home. He knew how hard today was going to be for her. It didn’t make him any less of a man, just because he wanted to make her life easier. Pete was an idiot. A Neanderthal. That’s why their marriage hadn’t worked. That and the small fact he’d cheated on her with a woman nearly ten years younger.

Still, she wished she knew what it was he’d said.

7

Having a murdered sister was like wearing a badge you couldn’t take off. A loud, attention-grabbing badge. With flashing lights. And bells.

People didn’t look at him and say, ‘There’s Rory Purvis, he’s doing ten GCSEs,’ or ‘He’s fit,’ or ‘He’s five foot eleven and a Scorpio and has seven metal pins in his leg from breaking it snowboarding.’ No, they said, ‘There’s Rory Purvis, his sister was murdered.’

Sometimes it made him fucking sick.

And now they’d found another body, things were going to get worse. All the same stupid people coming round insisting he must want to talk about it. Counsellors sitting expectantly on the edges of their chairs with their boxes of tissues.
You must be feeling this, Rory. You must be feeling that. Blah blah blah.
What he must be feeling is fed up with having to sit with people who just wanted to put a tick in the box saying, ‘Victim’s family has been offered support.’ TICK.

Even worse, they would use that horrible photo again. Just thinking about it made Rory cringe – the school photo of him and Megan taken the year before she died when he was in the last year of primary. He looked like a geek. His hair was doing this thing where it sprang up, bouffant, like some kind of mushroom-head. And he was smiling a horrible fake smile so you could see where his adult teeth had come through insanely big. At least he didn’t have braces back then. Metal-mouth as well as mushroom-head – now that would have been a seriously bad look.

He hated that photo.

Walking home from school with his mates, they passed the newsagent’s with a board outside with a headline about the new murder.

‘Kenwood Killer? Isn’t that your sister’s one?’

Jack W. was a twat sometimes.
Your sister’s one
– like he was talking about her fucking phone provider. Dickhead.

Jake H. shot him a sideways look like you do when you want to see the expression on someone’s face but don’t want to freak them out by staring straight at them.

‘Sorry, mate.’ Jake H. mumbled at the best of times, but now his voice was all but inaudible. ‘You OK?’

‘Yeah, sound.’

‘Hey, does that mean you get to see your
girlfriend
again?’

Jack W. again, of course.

Rory gave him a thumbs-up, but inside he was raging because Jack W. was right. Another murder meant Mum would insist on organizing another of her get-togethers, which meant another afternoon being stared at by Jemima Reid. Enough was enough.

Trudging up the road towards home, his steps became slower than normal. Last summer he’d been stopped and searched by police who accused him of ‘walking slowly next to cars’. They’d thought he was casing them out or something. Those were exactly the words they’d used – ‘walking slowly next to cars’. Like that was a crime. He smiled remembering how his mum had rung while they were searching him, and had insisted on being put through to the policemen and giving them a hard time. ‘But that’s how he always walks,’ she’d snapped at them.

Now he was walking so slowly he wasn’t sure it even counted as walking. The thing was, he really didn’t want to reach the corner because he knew he’d see them, the usual little knot of photographers standing outside the gate leading to his house, smoking their fags and talking their usual bollocks.