Tastes Like Fear (D.I. Marnie Rome 3) (12 page)

Marnie had stayed silent while the girl burned through her questions. Now she said, ‘That’s allowed. You’re allowed to hate whoever did this.’

‘Do you hate him? Stephen Keele. Even after five years?’

‘I don’t know. You’re right, they wanted me to take part in the Forgiveness Project. I signed on because it was expected of me. But I didn’t believe in it, not then.’

‘It’s
stupid
. Weak.’

‘It can feel that way. But it can wear you down, always being angry.’

‘I’d rather be worn down than
accepting
.’ Loz shoved her hair back from her face. ‘I hate people who do that, who
carry on.
As if none of this,’ pushing her hands at her dead sister’s room, ‘ever existed. I won’t do that. Ever.’

She turned her black stare on Marnie again. ‘Everyone says
I’m
the strong one. May was the dreamer, always tuning out or joining in. No questions, no trouble to anyone. Well I hope she was trouble to
him
. The killer. I hope she fought back. Even though she never did when she was alive. Not like me, the
awkward
one. The troublemaker. Well, fine.
Fine
. I wish I could make trouble for whoever did this. Strangled her and whatever else he did. When will you know what he did? When’s the post-mortem finished?’

‘Soon.’ Marnie felt battered by the girl’s unhappiness, her need for answers. Her throat ached with not answering. And with empathy.

‘Will you tell me?’ Loz demanded. ‘
They
won’t. Or I’ll get some safe version. But I want to
know
. I need to know what happened to her. Will you tell me? Promise me you’ll tell me.’

‘I can’t do that. I’m sorry. I won’t make a promise I can’t keep.’

‘They told
you
everything. You didn’t have to imagine worse than what actually happened.’

‘I was twenty-eight.’ And there was no
worse
than what happened.

‘You were looking for something.’ Loz bit her lip at her sister’s room. ‘What?’

‘The Sharpie pens.’ An answer, of sorts.

Loz’s stare jerked to Marnie. ‘The pens.’ Scuffing her toes at the floor. ‘You saw, then.’

‘I saw the writing. Did you? Before. When May was living here.’

‘She showed me. She wanted me to write something once.’

Marnie thought of the words she’d read on May’s body. Ugly, insulting words. A solitary act, she’d thought. Facing a mirror or locked in the bathroom. She hadn’t imagined an accomplice when May wrote those warnings on her body. ‘What did you write?’

‘I didn’t write
anything
. I wasn’t going to put stuff like that on my sister. It was all lies, and
shit
. It was shit. I
hated
it.’ Blinking back tears. ‘I hated what she wrote.’

‘Of course. I’m sorry. But she asked you to write something?’

Loz gave a reluctant nod, not wanting to betray her sister’s secrets. ‘She called it a game.’

‘How long had she been playing it?’

‘I don’t know. A long time.’

‘Did she play it with anyone else?’

Loz hesitated again. ‘Sometimes. I don’t know for sure, she never said, but I think so.’

‘School friends?’

‘No.’ Loz flashed a look of scorn. ‘That place throws a fit if you don’t have the right hair extensions. She didn’t have any real friends there.’

‘Where were her real friends?’

‘Loz …’ Sean Beswick stood at the other end of the corridor, his face haggard, staring at his daughter. ‘What are you doing?’

Loz slid her eyes at Marnie with a tiny shrug. ‘Asking questions, being difficult, you know me. But you needn’t worry. DI Rome’s far too professional to talk to me without an appropriate adult present.’ She pushed away from the wall. ‘I’ll make tea. That’d be helpful, wouldn’t it?’

Her dad watched her go down the stairs. Marnie read fear in his face, as if he was scared of the questions Loz had been asking. Or scared of her grief.

Why was it so hard for the Beswicks to hug their younger daughter? Were they afraid of losing her too? The troublemaker. How many awkward questions had Loz asked her parents before Marnie arrived? No answers to some of those questions, not yet, maybe not ever. How exactly May had died, what had happened to her in the twelve weeks after she went missing. Why she was killed, and by whom. Marnie wanted the answers as badly as Loz did.

Sean said, ‘Sorry. I had to stay with Kat. She’s in a bad way.’

‘Of course. I understand.’

‘You had questions. Do you need both of us? Kat could really use some sleep.’

‘I wanted to ask about May’s friends, anyone she might’ve been in touch with during the three months she was missing.’

‘You spoke with her friends.’ Sean rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand. ‘Didn’t you? We gave you all the names we knew, weeks ago.’

‘We spoke with her friends at school, but was there anyone else, someone we might’ve missed? A boyfriend, perhaps.’

Sean had seen his daughter in the morgue, her clipped nails, clean hair. Hadn’t he wondered where she’d been, to be so well looked after? No, of course he hadn’t. He’d seen his daughter dead, strangled. There was no ‘well looked after’ in that. Marnie couldn’t stop thinking like a detective, but nor could she expect a grieving parent to think like one.

‘A boyfriend? No. I’m sure there wasn’t.’ A tension in his face, like a barrier to her question. ‘If she’d been seeing
anyone
, even someone we hated her seeing, we’d have told you. We’d have given you that name first, probably.’ He dropped his hand to his side. ‘Why? Do you think she knew
whoever killed her?’

‘She was missing for twelve weeks. We need to establish whether she was with the same person all that time, or somewhere else. Perhaps somewhere safe, until recently.’

‘She was safe
here
.’ He punched the wall. ‘
We
had her safe. Until he took her.’

Marnie waited a moment out of respect for his pain. ‘May was an artist. You showed us her sketchbooks. Some of her pictures …’

‘Battersea Power Station.’ He nodded. ‘She was obsessed with the place, did an art project recording its history, the way it’s changing. When you told us where she was found, I thought we should’ve looked there sooner. She was always hanging around the place.’

‘We searched the area twelve weeks ago,’ Marnie reminded him. ‘The house-to-house team was very thorough. Did May ever visit anyone on the Garrett estate? A girl, perhaps?’

‘No.’ Another emphatic answer. ‘None of her friends lived over there. Some of the kids at the school for sure, but none of her friends. We told the girls to steer clear of the place. Why are you asking? Did she … Do you know who did this? Have you found someone …?’

‘Not yet, but we have a recent CCTV sighting of May and another girl—’

‘Recent? You mean she was
here
, out on the streets? Why didn’t she come
home
?’

‘We don’t know. I’m sorry.’

‘What girl?’ He dropped his voice, hearing Loz on the stairs. ‘Do you have a name?’

‘Not yet. She has dyed red hair. Very red, and lots of it. She’s slim, about May’s height and age. Do you remember seeing May with a girl who answers that description?’

Sean shook his head, eyes straining at her face. ‘She lives on the Garrett?’

Loz was carrying two mugs of tea. She held one out for her father, the other for Marnie. ‘The Garrett’s full of losers. Druggies and cutters, all the worst kids in the school. The police came and gave us a talk because some boys brought knives into school and said they got them from the Garrett. You can get anything over there. Glue, booze, fireworks.’

‘Okay, Loz. That’s enough.’

‘I was just explaining to DI Rome why we wouldn’t go there. No
nice girls
on the Garrett.’ She looked directly at Marnie, her big eyes unblinking. ‘You’d only go there if you were into self-harming or some shit like that.’

‘That’s
enough
.’

‘Go to my room? Fine by me.’ She walked to the room, closing the door behind her with a click.

Her unhappiness stayed in the corridor after she’d gone, making the air parched and spiky, lodging its ache in Marnie’s chest.

Tim Welland was frowning at the incident room’s whiteboard, a mug of tea in his right paw. He acknowledged Marnie’s return with a nod at May’s photo. ‘How’re her parents holding up?’

‘Barely.’ Marnie removed her coat, going to her office.

Welland followed her. ‘I saw the CCTV footage. Is that Traffic’s girl from the crash?’

‘Joe Eaton thinks so, and he’s our only eyewitness at the moment. We should get the crash site footage soon. Nothing from Battersea worth watching.’ Her wrists ached from gripping the steering wheel too tightly. ‘I’d like to go back to the Garrett to look for this missing girl.’

‘You think she might be next?’ Welland sucked tea from his mug. ‘Or you think she’s part of it? She and May didn’t look too friendly from what I saw on the CCTV.’

‘No,’ Marnie agreed. ‘But
she
didn’t carry May up to that flat.’

‘She could’ve held the doors open for whoever did. Easier with two.’

‘I’m not ruling it out. I just don’t think it adds up, yet. The night of the crash she was in shock, half dressed. She could’ve been hit by Eaton’s car. She was lucky she wasn’t.’

‘Luckier than Logan Marsh. Or May Beswick.’ Welland walked to the window, looking down. ‘If she had a narrow escape, why not come to us? Why change her clothes and run?’ He turned to study Marnie, his heavy brow lowered. ‘Give me reasons. Beyond the fact that you know what it feels like to be a teenage runaway.’

‘She changed her clothes on the Garrett, so either she lives there or she has friends there. Neither of which disqualifies her from seeking police protection if she’s in trouble, but it makes it less likely, don’t you think? When was the last time anyone on that estate looked to us for help? Apart from Mrs Tarvin, and she’s not exactly our number one fan.’

‘That’s who she reminds me of … Kathy Bates in
Misery
.’ He lifted his mug in a toast. ‘Sorry, you were saying? Something about this being more than empathy on your part.’

‘Do we need to have a chat, sir? Only I’m picking up a vibe.’ She moved her hand, gesturing at the distance between them. ‘It’s a long time since I was a teenage runaway.’

‘Nineteen years. Not that long, in the scheme of things.’ He watched her across the lip of the mug, his left eye still shadowed by the cancer that had threatened his sight three years ago.

His illness had dragged Marnie out of the pit of her grief. The thought of losing him made her throat hot even now. She wanted to make him smile. ‘This isn’t empathy. I’ve no idea what was in May’s head when she left home, but I think she
did
leave. I don’t believe she was snatched. I’m not even sure she was with the killer until recently.’

‘So who got her pregnant? Nothing about a boyfriend in any of the statements twelve weeks ago.’ He set his empty mug on the desk. ‘I can’t think of many sixteen-year-olds with the wit to keep quiet about their sex life. Most of them are splashing relationship updates all over the internet.’

‘Not May, or not according to her family. Her sister said something interesting just now: none of May’s real friends was at school. Perhaps we’ve been speaking to the wrong people and she had a life we’ve not uncovered yet. Not online. A
real
life, somewhere she went twelve weeks ago. Somewhere she met Traffic’s girl.’

‘On the Garrett? That’s not an escape route, it’s a dead end. And she had a good life. Her parents were well-off, decent people. No evidence of abuse or neglect.’

‘No,’ Marnie agreed.

‘But you think she ran off. Because she got pregnant?’

‘The conception was more recent, so no. I think she left because she couldn’t live there, for whatever reason. I think she was terribly unhappy.’

‘So this was … teenage angst?’

‘At that age? Unhappiness can feel like the end of the world. And the Beswicks are … box-tickers. I’ve nothing against them. I feel sorry for them. But in twelve weeks, I haven’t seen either one of them hug their daughter. Not even in the last forty-eight hours.’

‘Laura Beswick is how old? Thirteen?’

‘Young enough to be hugged after her sister’s been killed.’

Welland digested this in silence. ‘How’s DS Jake?’

‘On the mend, I hope.’

‘You and I know what this looks like. The start of a spree, maybe a serial offender.’ He avoided saying
serial killer
, but he grimaced. ‘Your boy’s good, but he’s young. If you want someone with more years on him, or someone senior …’

‘I don’t, thanks. Noah saw what it was straight away. One look at the crime scene and he was working the case. He knows what we’re in for. I need his brain and I value his instincts.’

‘All right, Boy Wonder stays. Just make sure you’ve got what you need to keep on top of this. I’d prefer no more corpses in high-profile places, don’t want some tourist stumbling on a dead girl in the London Eye, or anywhere else for that matter.’

‘I’d like Traffic’s cooperation. Are they thinking of going after Joe Eaton?’

‘I’ll find out. Tell me what the CCTV chucks up, and when and how you want the press briefed.’ His face knuckled with distaste. ‘The Battersea developer’s bitching like a low-grade secretary with my hand up his skirt, so I’ll deal with that, too.’

He retrieved his empty mug from Marnie’s desk. ‘This? Runneth over.’

Ron was scowling at the whiteboard when Marnie rejoined the team. ‘Can you believe the bloody shambles over at Battersea? The millions they’ve sunk into those flats, and they can’t connect the ruddy cameras. Talk about getting your priorities straight.’

‘Do we have all the statements from the on-site security?’

‘For what they’re worth. The only one with his eyes open was the ex-squaddie, Ledger. I wouldn’t trust the rest of them to see shit if it was sitting on their top lip.’

‘What about the list of people with access to the site in the last twelve weeks?’

‘We’re still pulling it together. So far we’ve got contractors, developers, estate agents. The estate agents need to give us the lists of people who’ve been for viewings. You can imagine how they’re falling over themselves to do that. Then there’s a media party they threw on site six weeks ago. Press, photographers – anyone they hoped would spin a good story and help them shift a few flats. We’re waiting on the invite list.’