Tastes Like Fear (D.I. Marnie Rome 3) (11 page)

‘Can we come in?’ Marnie was aware of Noah shivering at her side.

‘Of course, sorry.’ Joe held the door wide. ‘The kids are with Carrie. I’m meant to be catching some rest. Didn’t think I’d sleep, but I did.’ He pointed them towards the sitting room.

Toys, everywhere. A duvet on the sofa, a laptop on a low table. The neck brace from the hospital was in an armchair by the gutted fireplace. The Beswicks had filled their fireplace with bottles of wine. This one was filled with DVDs for the children. Sorcha, and Liam.

‘Carrie is their aunt?’ Marnie said.

‘Ruth’s sister. They love her to bits. It’s not easy getting them to do what they don’t want to. It’s just for today, they’ll be back tonight. Ruth’s improving.’ He grimaced with relief, and guilt. ‘They think she’s going to be okay. I just wish … Logan had his whole life ahead of him. Do you want something to drink? I could use a coffee.’

‘Thanks, but we don’t have a lot of time. We wanted to ask a couple more questions about the girl from the crash. DS Jake?’

‘We have a CCTV sighting.’ Noah held his phone where Joe could watch the clip. ‘We think this might be the girl you saw?’

Joe leaned close, frowning at the phone. ‘She’s wearing different clothes, but the build’s the same. Has she got bare feet? Yes, it could be her. The other girl – it’s May Beswick? I heard on the news that you’d found a body at Battersea Power Station.’

Marnie nodded at Noah, who moved his thumb across the screen, holding the phone up again.

‘The scratches you saw on the girl who caused the crash. Could they have been this?’

Joe leaned in again. ‘This is … writing? You think what I saw was writing?’

‘We wondered,’ Marnie said. ‘You’ll understand that we’re investigating May’s death and what we’re showing you is confidential, and sensitive.’

‘Of course. Her poor parents.
Christ
… Gina’s coping better than I would, but maybe it hasn’t hit them yet. May was younger than Logan, wasn’t she? Still at school.’

‘She was sixteen.’

‘It could’ve been this.’ Joe peered at the phone, blinking shut his left eye. ‘Writing. On that girl. It could’ve been. But what does that mean? Was she involved in May’s death?’

‘We don’t have any reason to suspect that.’

‘But that’s May with her, isn’t it? That’s May Beswick.’

‘You’ve had some good news?’ Marnie said. ‘About Ruth?’

‘The surgery went well. She’s responding, that’s what they’ve said. I can see her later, before I collect the kids.’ He looked wary, rubbing the palms of his hands on his pyjamas. ‘You’ll want to question her about the crash, about this girl. I don’t know when she’ll be ready for that.’

Marnie glanced at Noah. ‘We’ll be in touch, Mr Eaton. Thanks again.’

In the street, she asked, ‘How bad is it?’

Noah put the flat of his hand on the car. He didn’t answer right away.

‘Migraine?’

He thinned his mouth. ‘Sorry.’

‘I’ll take you home.’

‘I can get a cab.’

‘It’s not far. I’ll take you. Get in.’

Noah didn’t argue. He climbed into the car vigilantly, as if every bit of him hurt. Fastened his seat belt and shut his eyes. His face was pinched with pain. Marnie started the engine and pulled into traffic as smoothly as she could. She’d known that Noah suffered from migraines, but she hadn’t witnessed an attack up close before. He looked like someone had hit him on the back of the head with a blunt weapon. They were headed the right way for the traffic; it took less than twenty minutes to reach Noah’s flat. She double-parked and cut the engine, switching on the hazard lights before getting out and opening the passenger door for Noah. She waited while he climbed out, standing back to give him space but staying close enough to catch him if he fell.

‘Thanks.’ He leaned against the car for a second before straightening. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ She glanced across at the house, remembering how many stairs had to be climbed to reach his flat. ‘Is there someone home to give you a hand?’

‘Sol … But I’ll be okay.’

The blare of a car horn made him wince. A white Kia Sportage was waiting for Marnie to move out of its way. She ignored it, concentrating on Noah. ‘Come on.’

They crossed to his flat, waiting while he searched his pockets for his keys. The Kia Sportage hit its horn again. Noah found the keys and handed them to Marnie. It was an effort for him to stay upright. She unlocked the door and got him as far as the stairs, sitting him down.

Outside, the Sportage was blaring incessantly. Marnie said, ‘Hold on.’

She walked out into the road, to where the Kia was waiting. The driver had a shirt as loud as his horn, suit jacket slung from the hook behind his seat. She motioned for him to wind down his window.

‘You can’t just stop in the middle of the road, you dozy bitch—’

Marnie shut him up with her badge. ‘Find another way round.’ She put the badge away. ‘And stop playing with your horn.’

She went back to Noah, who was standing and had mustered a smile. ‘I’ve got it from here. You need to be working the case. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll be back on my feet.’

It was a long speech, and he looked less ghastly than he had in the car.

Marnie nodded. ‘Take care. Call me when you can, but not before.’

Noah climbed the stairs to the flat with his hands on the walls either side of him. Blind, because the left side of his head was a sliding mess of colour, everything red and green like Sol’s favourite TV show. The pain was twin hammers in his head, one for each temple. At least he hadn’t thrown up in the car. He reached the flat and felt with his fingers for the lock – a snagging sensation like teeth. Fitted the key. Pushed at the door. One foot in front of the other.

Make it to the bed and lie down.

Lie down.

He closed the door, checking it was locked, waiting for the throb of nausea to subside. The migraine had repainted the hallway, set it at an angle hard to negotiate even with his hands holding on to the walls. Like crawling up a tunnel that got narrower the further he went.

‘… fuck with me, you little fucker!’ A stranger’s voice.

Noah stood listening. Hard to hear past the thundering in his head and he needed –
God
– he needed to lie down. The stranger’s voice came again, too low to hear but raging, anger like a solid object pushing at the wall between him and the sitting room.

‘Sol?’ His voice came out frayed.

Seven steps from the hall to the sitting room. He took five before his brother came out into the hall. ‘Shit.
Shit
. Come here, man.’

Noah held him off with a look. ‘Who’s in there?’

‘No one. A mate.’ Sol shook his head. ‘You look dead, bro. What’s up?’

‘Migraine. Who is he?’

‘No one. I told you. Come on.’ Sol took his arm, steering him away from the sitting room, towards the bedroom. ‘Shit, man. Haven’t seen you like this in
years.
’

‘He was swearing at you.’ Noah lay on the bed, blocking the light with his arm while Sol drew the curtains. ‘Your mate. Called you a little fucker.’

‘Banter.’

Noah kept the crook of his elbow across his eyes. The migraine was an iron spike through his left temple. ‘Get rid of him.’

‘Yeah.’ Sol covered Noah with the side of the duvet he wasn’t lying on. ‘You gonna puke?’

‘Not if I can help it.’

Sol said something like, ‘Hang on.’ Noah couldn’t hear past the thundering in his skull. He badly wanted to pass out. It wasn’t nearly dark enough in the room. May Beswick …

He should be looking for May Beswick. No, for her killer. That was what he should be doing. Not lying here praying to pass out. He was meant to be looking for a killer.

‘Bucket.’ Sol put a hand on Noah’s elbow, an awkward, brotherly pressure. ‘In case you puke.’

It’d been years, but Sol hadn’t forgotten what to do when Noah was like this. Pure chance he was here to close curtains and fetch buckets, and who the hell was in the flat, calling him a fucker, threatening him? No good …

Noah had to sleep. He had to be unconscious. It was the only cure he knew, when the pain got this bad. ‘Tramadol,’ he begged his brother. ‘Bathroom cabinet.’

Sol said, ‘I’m on it.’

19

From the bedroom window in Taybridge Road, Marnie watched the vertical climb of the city, its high-rises topping out the trees in Battersea Park, dwarfing the sprawl of the Garrett estate.

Engineered exclusion: the higher the city climbed, the fewer people had access to it. It wasn’t just the penthouses at the power station that cost millions. The cloud-kissing office space was reserved for the elite. For the view from the Shard you needed a pricey ticket and a security scan. More and more of London was being fenced off for fewer and fewer of its citizens, the private stamping ground of the super-rich, or corporations. Good news in this particular case; she was looking for someone who had access to the showroom flats at Battersea Power Station, and the list wouldn’t be long – she’d have it in her hands by the end of the day – but she mistrusted the illusion of control. She didn’t control the crime scene any more than she controlled the city. No one did. Unless it was the killer, with his rhetoric of terror. What had Noah called it?
A normal reaction to social living.
Marnie turned from the window to look at May’s bed.

Clean sheets, a faint scent of fabric softener. Katrina had made the bed on the morning May went missing, before she discovered her daughter wasn’t coming home. She’d put clean underwear in the drawers of the dressing table where May’s hairbrush was gathering dust. Even before the discovery of May’s body, this room had looked odd to Marnie. Everything neat and untouched under a sticky topcoat of dust. Books, CDs, toys – nothing had been moved recently, picked up and put down, used. May had been gone less than twenty-four hours when Marnie first came here, but the room had looked unlived in. ‘She didn’t spend a lot of time in here,’ Sean had said. ‘Preferred the kitchen or the sitting room, sometimes Loz’s room.’ The posters on the walls belonged to a much younger girl. ‘She put those up years ago,’ he said. ‘Never took them down.’

May hadn’t lived in this room for a long time, not in the way most teenagers lived. Messily, chaotically, joyfully, grumpily. Impossible to imagine her lying on the bed listening to music or chatting on the phone to her friends. No ghost of her was in the room, then or now. Where had she gone to do her living? To the place where she was killed? CCTV put her less than a mile from here on the night before she died. So close to safety, but she chose to stay away. Assuming she’d had a choice.

‘She hated it in here.’

Marnie turned to see Loz standing in the doorway to her sister’s room. In the school uniform that swamped her, black hair brambly, eyes big with unshed tears.

‘I love my room, love to be sent to it.
Go to your room, Laura!
as if it’s not the best place in the house anyway. But May hated it. She liked the garden, digging, planting stuff. She’d come into my room sometimes. I liked it when she did that, but I could never get her to stay. She was always moving around. Like … a kite.’ Her voice caught.

‘Where’s your dad? Your mum went for a lie-down, I think.’

‘They both did.’ Loz put her eyes around the room. ‘I suppose this’s how it’ll stay now. That’s what parents of dead kids do, isn’t it? Keep their rooms exactly as they were. Except there’s no point with May’s. Not like she was ever
here
. Not really. Not in ages.’

Marnie recognised the spikes Loz was putting out to keep the world at bay, each one as sharp and shiny as a needle. It was frightening how much of herself she saw in Loz’s anger, and her grief. She’d wanted to leave this task to Noah, believing him better equipped to communicate with Loz. She hadn’t wanted to be the one asking the questions or seeing at close quarters this girl’s pain. It was never easy being face to face with a grieving relative, but Marnie made the effort because it was important. This was different, not any less important just …

Harder. Because Loz reminded her so much of the girl she’d been.

‘Who’s looking after you? Is there someone here apart from your mum and dad?’

‘Just them.’ Her face was small inside the storm cloud of hair. ‘Where’s Noah?’

‘He got sick. I took him home.’

‘Sick from seeing May?’

‘No, he had a migraine. He gets them sometimes.’

‘Mum felt sick after the mortuary. I told her it was probably adrenalin.’ Loz put her thumb between her teeth. ‘Do you think she knew who did it?’

‘Your mum?’

‘May. Most people are killed by someone they know.’ Those fierce eyes, demanding the facts more plainly than Marnie had served them to her parents. ‘D’you think May knew her killer?’

‘What happened with Alice Gordon? You fell out.’

‘She was a liar. She said May was coming back, that everything would be all right. We’d be a
family
again, as if that was ever true to begin with. She wasn’t even a
good
liar. Did you have to put up with that when your parents were killed?’

The sudden switch of focus made Marnie blink.

‘They were murdered,’ Loz said. ‘I read about it online. Your stepbrother did it when he was fourteen. Stabbed them to death. May wasn’t stabbed, was she? She was strangled.’

‘Loz … It’s not appropriate for me to be talking to you about this. Not without an adult present.’

‘You’re an adult.’

‘I’m a detective.’

‘Same difference. It would only be a problem if you were trying to get evidence out of me, which you’re not. I’m just talking. I’m always talking. I open my mouth and stuff falls out. Until I put my foot in there and stop it, that’s what Dad says.’

Her dad had a point.

‘Are you part of the Forgiveness Project?’ Loz said next. ‘It’s a prison project to help victims come to terms with what’s happened, by forgiving the people who hurt them. Will we have to forgive whoever killed May? Because I won’t. Even if Mum and Dad join in, I’m not forgiving them, ever. May wouldn’t want me to.’ Her stare shone with tears. ‘Did you have to forgive Stephen Keele? I googled you after you came here that first time. Actually I googled Noah, but I couldn’t find anything so I googled you and I found loads. From five years ago. He’s nineteen now.’ She bit her lips together until they turned white. ‘Have you forgiven him? Did they make you do that? I mean, did you
have
to, because you work for the police? Or as therapy? I bet you had a lot of therapy. You’ll be telling us about that next, I suppose. Bereavement counselling, coming to terms with our loss. Or will you wait until we’ve buried her? If they bury her. Probably it’ll be a cremation.’ She wiped at her eyes, looking angrily at her wet hand. ‘We’ll have to wait anyway, won’t we? For you to finish the post-mortem, and even then you’ll keep her body for evidence. For when you find the killer, which could take ages. You could have her for months and months. Mum and Dad don’t get that she belongs to you now, to the police. And then to the courts. She’s evidence. She’s yours.’ She gulped a breath, rubbing her hands on the front of her jumper. ‘It’s not your fault. No one’s saying that. But it’s
someone’s
fault. The killer’s, for starters. I won’t ever forgive whoever did it. Just so you know, if you start any of that forgiveness shit around me? I won’t join in, not even to please Mum and Dad. I can’t do much to help. I can’t do
anything
. But I can hate whoever did it.’ She had started to shake. ‘I can do that.’