Tastes Like Fear (D.I. Marnie Rome 3) (35 page)

‘Safety in numbers, he says. He’s obsessed with safety. It’s why he moved us up here. The house wasn’t safe. His job’s fitting alarms, listening to people go on about break-ins and robberies. He thinks he’s got it sorted, that he’s keeping us safe. That’s how it starts. He finds us, or
she
does, brings us back, takes care of us. To start with.’ He wiped at his face again. ‘It’s like he’s … searching for someone. Or he’s guilty about something. I don’t know, I can’t figure him out. Just that he’s not right. I didn’t think it was worse than that. I didn’t know he was a killer.’ Sucking a breath. ‘I’d never have let her come here if I’d known that.’

‘What about Christie?’ Loz needed a chink in the armour of this place. She’d have taken a knife from the rack in the kitchen if Christie hadn’t watched her so well. ‘Where does she fit in?’

‘I suppose she was abused. She doesn’t know when to stop, thinks she’s in control but she’s not, not really. I knew girls like her in care. Usually they’d been abused.’

‘You were in care.’

‘All of us were. Grace, Ashleigh.’

‘May wasn’t.’

‘No.’ His face broke again. ‘I can’t believe she’s dead.’

‘Can’t you?’ Loz looked at him pityingly. Her head was ringing with dizziness. She’d not eaten in hours. ‘You’ve just told me what a psycho he is. And you’re up here because you’re scared of him. Why’s it so hard to believe he killed her? And not just her. Ashleigh’s dead, too.’

Eric stared at her. His eyes were weird, flat. Was he on drugs?

‘How did you find us?’ he said.

‘The subway, I told you. May had drawings of you. I knew where she went, but I didn’t know about you. Not properly. Not until now.’ Loz looked around the room. ‘What else about Christie?’

‘She’s been with Harm a couple of years. His watchdog. I suppose she’s in love with him.’

Loz wrinkled her nose. ‘Worst advert for love, ever.’

He nearly smiled.

‘I didn’t just mean
her
.’ Loz headed for the door.

‘Where’re you going?’

She took out her phone. ‘No signal in here. Otherwise I’d have called the police already.’

‘She let you keep your phone?’ His face twitched with panic. ‘She never does that.’

‘She gave me a key, too.’ Loz wanted to see if he knew about the keys. She couldn’t be sure he was telling her the truth. About May, or Christie, or any of it.

‘The keys don’t work.’ He dropped his hands to his sides. ‘Gracie told me that.’

‘Who’s Gracie?’

‘She lived here too. She was the first to go. The day before May … before May went.’

‘You mean Gracie’s dead as well?’

‘I don’t know.’ He frowned. ‘Maybe. If Ashleigh’s dead.’

He didn’t believe it. Or he didn’t care.

‘Does Grace have red hair?’ Loz asked.

Eric nodded. He was so skinny and pretty. She had to remind herself how strong he’d been when he grabbed her.

‘And she writes on herself?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s not dead. At least I don’t think so. She caused a car crash, the night before May was found. The police are looking for her.’

‘Do they know you’re here?’

Should she lie? Tell him she had backup, that the place was surrounded? That was what they’d do on a TV show, or in a book.

‘Maybe. I’m not sure. They’ll be looking for me.’ She glanced at the window, her eyes stinging suddenly. ‘Mum and Dad’ll be freaking out.’

‘Why did you come?’ he demanded. ‘You thought I’d killed her, that’s what you said. Why did you come here if you thought that?’

‘I wanted to know for sure. No one would tell me anything. All I had was this.’ She took the page from her pocket, torn from May’s sketchpad, carefully so DI Rome and DS Jake wouldn’t notice it was missing. Christie’s face, like a bad photo, but it was her. May didn’t draw faces like bad photos, not unless there was something wrong with the person she was drawing. On the same page, her sketch of the subway, grass growing around the entrance, graffiti on its walls. Loz had torn the page at random, knowing the police would take the sketchpad, but needing this evidence of where May had gone. ‘She drew you, too.’ She’d left Aimee’s face in the sketchpad, for DI Rome, along with all the other sketches of the subway.

Eric stared at the picture of Christie as if he hated her. ‘It’s not safe here.’

‘It’s not safe anywhere. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Why you haven’t tried to leave.’

‘I was in trouble with the police. I thought I’d be arrested. May said it wouldn’t happen. She said she’d keep me safe, but it wasn’t for
her
to do that.’ He rubbed weakly at his eyes. ‘I should’ve been the one looking after her, not the other way round.’

‘Because you’re a boy and she’s a girl? That’s stupid.’

‘I wasn’t good enough for her. She deserved someone better.’

‘She chose you, didn’t she? Over us.’ Her nose burned with held-in tears. ‘Over me.’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘She talked about you all the time. How brave you were. She wished she was more like you, that’s what she said. She made me want to meet you. She loved you.’

‘Stop it.’ Her legs felt funny, rubbery. ‘Stop saying shit to make me feel better. Stop lying.’

‘I’m not lying.’ He came towards her, holding out his hand. ‘She told me you’d make the best auntie in the world because you were so brave. Nothing scared you, not really, not for long. If the world gave you shit, you gave it straight back. That’s what she said.’

Loz shook her head. Her throat was so swollen and salty she couldn’t speak.

‘She was brave too.’ Eric took her hand and held it. His fingers were cold. ‘She stood up to Harm. Not like Grace did, by shouting or fighting. Quietly. She kept me sane. I’d have gone mad without her. I
was
going mad … She’s the bravest person I ever met.’

Loz blinked. Her shoulders wouldn’t stop shaking.

‘She’d have fought for us.’ Eric put his arms around her. ‘If I’d let her. And she loved you. She
loved
you.’

‘Then why did she leave me?’ Loz sobbed. ‘Alone with them? If she loved me, why did she leave me on my own?’

‘She was coming back.’ He was crying too. ‘She
was
. We were going to live together. You and me and her. And the baby. We were going to be together.’

He was making the side of her neck wet.

Loz pulled away. ‘I’m going.’ She rubbed her face dry, wiping snot from her hands on to her jumper. ‘Are you coming with me?’

He stared at her. ‘You can’t just … leave.’

‘Why not?’

‘She won’t let you.’

‘Christie? She let me keep my phone.’

‘She won’t just let you go. Especially not now.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You know about Harm, this place.’ He half shut his eyes. ‘Dead girls, you said. Murders.’

‘So? You’re not going to tell her. You’re too scared.’

‘I don’t have to tell her,’ Eric said. ‘She already knows.’

‘What?’ Her head throbbed with confusion. ‘How?’

‘She’s been out there the whole time. Listening.’

Loz looked at the closed door, feeling sick. ‘She …’

‘Listens. It’s what she does.’ He stared at the door like he loathed it. ‘It’s who she is.’

The handle of the door held the light.

A brass handle, dark brown with a lick of white running through it. No lock. A heavy door, the kind that shut itself with a chain even when you tried to leave it open.

Loz thought of all the rooms she had to get through to get out of here. Then the stairs, flight after flight of stairs before she was safe in the street.

‘We need to go. Now, while it’s just her. Before Harm gets back.’

‘Too late.’

‘What?’

‘Can’t you feel him?’ Eric hadn’t stopped staring at the door, hating it with his whole face, his body tight as a fist. ‘He’s back. He got back while we were talking.’

His eyes burned at the door. ‘He’s here.’

54

‘Grace remembers stairs leading up to the rooms where they were being kept. At least a dozen flights of stairs. Inside the building.’ DC Terence Waywell pinned five photos to the board. Blocks of flats and offices, each with an address. ‘They didn’t use the main entrance, she says. There was a second entrance around the back. Like a social housing concession inside a private development.’

‘Poor doors,’ Debbie said. ‘Isn’t that what they call them?’

Terence nodded. ‘That’s the sort of thing we’re after. Me and Col have narrowed it down to these five, based on what Grace can remember. Best thing would be to walk the route with her, working backwards from the crash site, but the hospital’s saying she isn’t fit for that yet. So this’s what we’ve got to work with.’

‘Don’t any of these places have proper security?’ Ron complained.

‘Let’s find out,’ Noah said. ‘Call the site managers, or whoever’s in charge of each place. We’re looking at a relatively small area. We don’t want to alert the killer by sending in teams to neighbouring sites. Let’s try and narrow it down as quickly as we can.’

‘The boss is still with Welland. Guess that means she’s having to beg for back-up. You’d think two dead girls would’ve got us SWAT teams coming out of our arses.’

‘We’ll only need one SWAT team,’ Noah said. ‘If we do the next bit right.’

‘This witness statement about Grace Bradley.’ Welland looked tired, the skin of his face too tight around the eyes. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘You think she can’t be trusted?’ Marnie asked.

‘No. I don’t like the source of the statement.’ He touched a hand to the paperwork. ‘You went to Sommerville for this. Why didn’t you send DC Tanner, or Waywell?’

‘It was quicker for me to go. They know me there. I was able to get what we needed and get back here, fast.’

‘With a young girl missing?’

‘We didn’t know at the time that Loz was missing. We didn’t know Grace was in Emma’s cupboard. We needed a witness statement from Jodie Izard and it made sense for me to get it.’

Welland hooded his eyes from her. ‘Did you see Stephen Keele when you were there?’

‘Not to speak to,’ she said truthfully.

‘But you saw him.’ His expression was unforgiving, censure a distant outpost. It stung her, the way it always did. She wanted Welland’s approval, and not just because he was her boss.

‘Yes, he was there. Look, Eric Mackay’s in the place where the girls are being kept. Christie, Eric and this man Harm. I need a hostage negotiator. I’d like Toby Graves if he’s available.’

‘Noted. Who do we think is the more dangerous of the three? The survivalist, Harm? Christie Faulk, who’s luring the girls away? Or this boy who’s pretending to be something he’s not?’

‘I don’t know. We have to assume all three are dangerous.’

‘But only one of them,’ Welland pressed the taut skin above his left eye, ‘is a killer.’

‘Probably, yes.’

‘A lot of role-playing going on. A lot of smoke and mirrors. I don’t like it.’

He could have been talking about Stephen, about the roles Stephen was playing. Foster-brother, senseless killer, police informant. ‘None of us likes it,’ Marnie said.

‘The press have latched on to the Beswicks. A second daughter missing. It’s making them look unlucky, or dodgy. Are you sure we shouldn’t be looking in that direction?’

‘I’m not ruling anything out. But their house is clean, no clues there. We need to find the place Grace ran from. We’re getting close, thanks to DC Waywell and Colin Pitcher.’

‘I hope you’re right. This is enough of an unholy mess. Would you believe I had the Mayor of London rattling my cage about foreign investment at Battersea? Corpses aren’t good for business, I’m told. Especially not young, pretty ones.’

‘Toby Graves,’ Marnie said. ‘And a SWAT team on standby. That’s what I need. I want to go in as soon as we have a location.’

DC Waywell unpinned one of the photos from the board. ‘This one’s out. Stairs aren’t finished, according to the developers.’

‘The list’s coming down, that’s good. Keep at it.’

Noah tried to see the evidence afresh, searching for a clue they’d missed, something to lead them to Loz. Her face looked back at him, big-eyed, accusatory. She hadn’t liked having her photo taken. Had she let her sister sketch her? She’d known about May’s sketches of the subway, where to search for her sister’s killer. Why hadn’t she given that lead to the police? Because she didn’t trust them to find the murderer, or because she was keeping her sister’s secrets?

All teenagers kept secrets, that was part of growing up. Noah looked at the other girls on the board, their faces caught by the camera, slick with smiles but with the same accusation in their eyes. Who had looked out for them? No one. Grace’s photo was pinned below Logan Marsh’s, next to May’s post-mortem results. Pregnant; hypernatremic. Grace, falling from the cupboard at his feet, twitching. Both girls had been taught how to salt fish, how to survive. Taught by a killer. Trained …

Noah’s hand moved to the photo of Jamie Ledger, hesitating there.

Ron was talking on the phone in a low voice, ‘If I can, mate. We’re working all hours here. I’ve got to get on. Yeah, will do.’ He hung up, catching Noah’s eye. ‘Memorial service next week for Logan Marsh; his mum’s organising it. Kenickie wanted to know if we’d be going.’

‘How is Logan’s mum?’

‘Bearing up. Kenickie says the dad’s staying out of the picture. Guilt, he reckons. Logan’s mates are helping out. They’ve put up a Facebook page about his volunteer work, stuff he did for charity. He was a bit of a local hero. I know we’ve got other things to think about, but I’m going to try and make it to the service. He was just a kid, like the others.’ Ron pinched his nose hard with his fingers. ‘Think we’ll find her in time? Loz Beswick.’

‘Not like this,’ Noah said. ‘Let’s eliminate more of these sites.’

Ron nodded and picked up the phone.

Noah went to his desk, pulling up the profile he’d been working on, for the killer.

White male, mid forties, loner. It read like a textbook entry. Psycho 101. That felt wrong, for starters. The profile matched Jamie Ledger, but Grace insisted he wasn’t the man who’d given her a home.
Harm
, with his rules, obsessed with sickness, survival. Three teenage girls and Eric Mackay, pretending to be a fourth. Was it Eric who’d got May pregnant?