Never Look Back (34 page)

One quick meeting with the department heads, a briefing with the team and then she should be able to head home. She slipped her laptop into her bag and surveyed the files on her desk, deciding what she needed to take home with her. She wanted to be ready to go the second that the briefing was over. Peter had already picked out a book for tonight’s bedtime story. A bedtime story Jane had promised to read to him. Her eyes settled on the most current Stevens file.

She still had one girl to find.

For the past month the young woman’s face had been a shadow, following Jane wherever she went. When she was found, would she be added to the list of victims on the Stevens case or would she be the luckiest girl alive? The irony made Jane pause. She picked up the file and two memory sticks and pushed them into her bag. She wanted a glass of wine in her hand and something by Elgar playing on her stereo before she even attempted to get back into the mindset of Lewisham’s first serial killer. It would take months, years, to erase the images her and the rest of the team had witnessed. The killer’s two-bedroom semi could have been papered with the photographs found in his home-made darkroom. The majority were shots of his five victims; names and faces Jane now knew well, but there were a handful of pictures showing girls no one knew. It was Jane’s job to identify and find them, to make sure they had been photographed and nothing more. Two girls had been found safe and well, but the third? Only time would tell. Jane looked up and spotted her boss, DI Mike Lockyer, walking towards her. He smiled but his pale skin and shadowed eyes didn’t match his expression.

‘Jane,’ he said, resting his arms on the partition that separated her desk from the rest of the open-plan office. ‘How are you getting on with the Schofield case?’

‘We’re pretty much there, sir,’ she said, her hand automatically reaching for the corresponding case file on her desk. ‘The husband’s with the custody sergeant downstairs. I don’t think it’ll take much to get him to talk.’ She watched Mike nod, and rub his right eyebrow, his fingers tugging at the skin around his eye. He had lost weight. Jane thought he had the look of a sheet that had been left too long in the dryer: crumpled.

‘Are you leaving him for the morning then?’ he asked, no longer looking at her, his eyes no longer engaged.

‘Yes. In fact, I was going to suggest Chris ran the interview,’ she said, putting the file back in its place, straightening it with her palms. She could see that her boss wasn’t really interested. In fact he had done only the bare minimum since his return to the office three weeks ago.

He was shaking his head, staring across the office. ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate, Jane, do you?’ he said, still not looking at her. ‘Once Schofield’s admitted it, maybe, but to send Chris in at this stage, before we know for certain that we’ve got enough evidence to convict, with or without a confession is risky. It’s a risk I’m surprised you’re prepared to take considering the mess the guy made of the wife. Have you looked at the crime-scene images lately?’

Jane sat back in her chair. His words didn’t bother her. Neither did the disapproval and judgement in his tone but the look in his eyes made her stop and think carefully about how to respond. She knew he was hurting, struggling to come to terms with what had happened on the Stevens case, but what more could she do? He wouldn’t talk to her, hadn’t talked to her. He hadn’t trusted her and that hurt. More than she was willing to admit. She had always assumed that their relationship went beyond mere colleagues; that he respected her, considered her a friend. His actions had proved her wrong on both counts. Now he prowled the office like some phantom from a horror movie, his eyes black, empty of reason. This wasn’t the first time he had been critical of her since his return. And it wasn’t just her. Most of the office had taken tongue-lashings. But Lockyer was the boss. It wasn’t unusual to hear his shouts reverberating around south-east London’s ‘murder squad’ offices. But now he seemed to be going off the deep end about nothing whilst overlooking something vital. She had been covering for him for weeks but his behaviour had not gone unnoticed. Roger, the Senior Investigating Officer for Lewisham, had already pulled Jane into his office and asked her to ‘keep an eye on him’. However, she could see that now was not the right time to address the issue.

‘Not a problem, sir,’ she said, her voice quiet, her words measured. ‘I’ll take Chris in with me on the initial interview and, if Schofield confesses, I’ll let Chris take over, under my direct supervision.’ She waited for some kind of response or at least recognition but there wasn’t any. ‘Are you happy for me to do that, sir?’

She felt almost compelled to reach out to him, to touch the arm of the statue before her but then his eyes seemed to clear and he said, ‘It’s your case, Jane. You do what you like; you don’t need me to babysit you. I don’t need the details, just get it done. I’ve got enough on my plate.’ He ran his hands through his hair then dragged them down his face, pulling his sallow skin out of shape. ‘I trust you, Jane. Just get it done. I’ll see you in the briefing.’ With that, he turned on his heel and walked back across the room, into his office, closing the glass door behind him. The sun was setting outside the window, and he sat motionless, his face silhouetted by the fading light. Jane couldn’t take her eyes off him. She wondered how long her boss could subsist on anger and regret.

As she stood to leave, her mobile started to ring. She glanced down at the name on the screen. It was Sue, a fellow copper, albeit a retired one. They hadn’t spoken in months. Jane glanced at the clock mounted on one of the pillars in the centre of the open-plan office. It was already gone seven. Peter would be going to bed soon. The ringer on her phone seemed to increase in volume as if it could sense her indecision. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said, dropping back into her chair. ‘Sue, hey. How are you doing?’ Silence greeted her. ‘Sue?’ Jane said, straining to decipher the muffled sounds coming from Sue’s end of the line. Maybe the phone was in Sue’s bag and she had dialled Jane’s number by accident. It was then that she heard a sniff. ‘Sue, are you okay?’ As Jane spoke, a dozen possibilities rushed through her mind. Sue and Mark had had a fight, one of the kids was ill, they’d been burgled, the cat had died. Jane shook her head. It could be anything.

‘It’s Mark.’ Sue sobbed down the phone. ‘He’s gone.’

Jane felt a flood of relief that she had answered the call but a tug of guilt that she wasn’t going to be reading Peter the bedtime story after all. She doubted if she would even be home before he was asleep. ‘Oh, Sue, I’m so sorry. What happened? I didn’t realize you guys were having problems again.’

‘What? No, Jane, it’s not that. He’s just gone, disappeared. There’s blood, Jane, there’s blood in the house. He’s gone.’

After ten years in London, working for a City law firm, Clare Donoghue moved back to her home town in Somerset to undertake an MA in creative writing at Bath Spa University. In 2011 the initial chapters of
Never Look Back
, previously entitled
Chasing Shadows
, were longlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger award.
Never Look Back
is Clare’s first published novel.

I would like to thank my editor Trisha Jackson, Natasha Harding and all of the Macmillan team for making my dream a reality. Hellie Ogden at Janklow & Nesbit for her time, enthusiasm and getting me here and Celia Brayfield and Bath Spa University for getting me started.

Thank you to my family for their love and assurance. Thanks also to Mark, for all the hours you’ve spent teaching me about London policing and Sue for always cooking up a storm. Huge thanks to my writing buddy and friend, Eve Wheaton. Your support and encouragement have been invaluable and to the rest of my writing group, Kes and Hannah, thank you. Finally, a big thank you to all the staff at the Beacon Centre at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton for their support and for looking after my father at a very difficult time.

First published 2014 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2014 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-4472-3929-1

Copyright © Clare Donoghue 2014

The right of Clare Donoghue to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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