Tastes Like Fear (D.I. Marnie Rome 3) (41 page)

‘May found a way out of that building. So did Grace. Couldn’t you have left with them?’

‘I was scared. Aimee … was scared.’

‘But you’re Eric.’

‘Only with her. Only … now.’

He’d worn his disguise too well, lost himself inside it. Who was he really? Joel had spoken of risk-taking, casual sex with strangers. Just as Jodie had described a version of Grace that no longer fitted the girl who’d escaped from Harm. They’d played roles for that man, and the roles had reduced them. Eric Mackay had loved to dance in the rain. Now he was a killer.

‘He taught us all about survival.’ The boy’s eyes were wet. ‘But none of his tricks counted for anything in the end. I used to think he was strong, invincible. But I killed him with a piece of glass. He was … nothing. I thought
I
was scared. But he was terrified. Of living. Of being who he was.’ He clenched his hands together. ‘His heart was like
this
. Like a fist. Like a stone. May …’ He opened his hands slowly, spreading his palms on the table, facing upwards under the light. ‘Her heart was like this. I was scared it would make her weak. I warned her to hate him. Hate everyone, be afraid of everything. But she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She was braver than the rest of us – than anyone. Like Loz, like her sister. She stopped me doing worse. Before you came, I mean.’

He raised his eyes to Marnie. ‘That’s how I kept us alive. You should tell her that. Tell Loz that
she’s
the one who saved us. The brave one. Just like her sister.’

‘How was it?’ Noah asked.

‘He’s ready to go to prison for killing Calum, and Christie. He says he was afraid for his life, and Loz’s.’

‘Loz says the same. I didn’t ask her any questions, I know we need to wait, but she insisted on telling me. Christie was going to kill them, she’s sure of it. She’s blaming herself, because she told Calum that Aimee was Eric.’ Noah paused. ‘Her parents are with her.’

‘Good. I need to speak with them.’ Marnie turned her head when she heard her name.

Joe Eaton was standing in the hospital corridor. ‘Ruth’s here for a check-up. I heard you found her. The girl from the crash. Grace, is it?’

‘Yes.’ Marnie walked to where he was waiting. ‘She’s here, in fact.’

‘In the hospital? Can I see her?’

‘Can you …?’ The request surprised her. ‘I’m not sure. You could ask.’

‘I’d like to see her, if it’s allowed. She’s okay, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘I keep seeing her.’ Joe tapped his head. ‘Up here. I thought if I could see her for real … Only if she’s okay. I hope she’s okay?’

‘She’s in good hands.’

‘Good.’ Joe nodded. ‘I’m glad.’ He headed back down the corridor.

Noah watched him go. ‘Who’s helping Grace?’

‘Social Services, I imagine.’

Noah nodded, looking impossibly sad. ‘And Eric?’

‘Juvenile detention. With luck he’ll find a decent defence lawyer.’ She touched a hand to his elbow. ‘You did a great job, connecting Logan to Paradise House. Without that we might still be looking for them. Good work.’

‘There was Ledger’s phone call,’ Noah reminded her.

‘Ledger didn’t give me the inside track on what was happening in Calum’s head.’ She kept her hand on his arm until he smiled, accepting the praise. ‘That was down to you connecting the dots.’

‘It was down to Loz,’ Noah said. ‘I just followed her search history.’

‘I’ll tell her you said so.’

68

Loz was in a private room with her parents. Sean and Katrina sat close, holding their daughter’s hands, their faces wiped clean with relief, and love.

‘We’re waiting for the doctor,’ Sean told Marnie.

‘He means the psychiatrist.’ Loz swung her feet from the side of the hospital bed. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me, nothing physical, but I might have PTSD or some shit like that.’

Sean squeezed her fingers, managing to smile. He put his free arm around Katrina, who leaned closer, returning his smile. They looked ready to drop, but happy.

Loz looked wide awake, her bright stare sweeping the room. She was doing a good job of disguising her distress, but Marnie wasn’t fooled. Less than two hours earlier she’d held the girl in her arms, listened to her sobbing, felt her heart thumping through her skin.

‘I was hoping for a quick word with Loz before the psychiatrist shows up.’

‘A statement, you mean?’ Katrina looked up. ‘We want to be with her for that.’

‘You will be. No, this is informal. I wanted to thank her for her courage.’

Loz flushed. ‘Thanks,’ but her tone said,
Shut up
.

‘Would it be all right if we chatted for a couple of minutes? No longer than that, I promise.’

‘Loz?’ Sean stroked the back of her hand with his fingers. ‘Would that be okay?’

‘Sure.’ She swung her feet, nodding. ‘Yes.’

Marnie waited until Sean and Katrina had gone. Then she took a seat at the side of the bed.

‘Before you ask,’ Loz said, ‘they’re not abusing me.’

‘Why would I ask that?’

‘Because of the sketches. Because the sketches made you wonder and you never found out why May left and because we don’t hug.’ Loz tipped her head at the linoleum floor. ‘We’re not
tactile
.’

‘Plenty of families aren’t tactile.’

‘There you go then. We’re
normal
. No good reason for her to leave, or for me to leave.’ Swinging her feet determinedly. ‘Lots of people have it worse than us. That’s what the school keeps saying.’

Marnie sat very still, waiting for Loz to catch the different rhythm in the room and slow down.

‘So, no abuse. No mad
rules
. They can be a bit strict sometimes, but that’s how stuff gets done. May understood that. She didn’t run
away
. She ran
to
him. Eric. Because she was
in love
.’ Her voice said that abuse made more sense as a motive. ‘This was a
love story
.’ Her stare landed on Marnie, blackly. ‘In other words, I’ll be okay. I’m safe with them. And out there too. I’m not like May.’

‘Eric thinks you are. He said you two were the bravest people he’d met.’

‘Great.’ Her face didn’t change. ‘A double murderer thinks I’m cool. What else did you want to tell me?’

‘You asked if I’d forgiven him,’ Marnie said. ‘Stephen Keele. I didn’t give you a proper answer.’

Loz blinked in surprise. She’d been expecting platitudes, some variation of whatever she was afraid the psychiatrist was going to say. PTSD.
Or some shit like that.

‘I haven’t,’ Marnie said. ‘I won’t.’ She chose her words with care, needing Loz to listen. ‘I think about it all the time. About what I’d like to happen to him, how I’d like him to pay for what he did. I thought no one else understood. I thought I couldn’t say it out loud in case people decided I was dangerous, or crazy, or obsessed. But lots of people understand. You do. And your parents.’

‘They don’t,’ Loz said bluntly. ‘They loved her, of course they did, but that just makes it worse. All I am is what’s left. And I’m not enough, I’ve never been enough.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m stupid. Look what I did, going in there. Look what I put them through. I’m
stupid
.’

‘You’re remarkable. You helped save us. Eric said so. That was you.’

‘Don’t tell them that.’ Her cheeks were pink. ‘Please.’

Marnie understood. Loz had played the survivor for too long. She needed to be a kid again, to be allowed to stop pretending that she didn’t care and that nothing hurt when everything,
everything
hurt.

‘I won’t, but I need you to do another brave thing. Tell them how it feels. Your mum and dad. Tell them how angry you are, how much it hurts, how much you need them to look after you.’ She drew a breath, smiling at Loz. ‘Give them another chance. Let them make up for the stuff they’ve got wrong, because we all get stuff wrong, all the time. They’re hurting too. They’re sorry. Don’t shut them out.’

‘Is that what you did?’ Loz asked. Before answering her own question with the sagacity that made her so remarkable. ‘It’s what you
wish
you’d done, when you had the chance.’

‘It’s what I wish I’d done.’ Marnie nodded. ‘You have that chance, and the courage to take it. Do what I wasn’t brave enough to do. Tell them how much it hurts. Ask for their help.’

‘I don’t know if I can.’ She shook her head, blinking. ‘I’m the awkward one, remember? I don’t do asking for help. They’ll think I’ve lost it.’

‘Try.’ Marnie reached for the girl’s hands. ‘Please.’

‘All right.’ Loz stopped swinging her feet, sitting still at last, her hands in Marnie’s. ‘I’ll try. But,’ wrinkling her nose, ‘it’s your fault if they freak out.’

‘I can live with that.’

They smiled at one another, then Loz freed a hand to scratch her cheek. ‘One thing I don’t get. He had a sister. That’s what you said, when we were all in that room. He had a sister who was lost.’

‘Yes.’

‘How? What happened to her?’

‘We don’t know, just that she went missing when he was fifteen.’

‘They never found her?’ Loz searched Marnie’s face with her big eyes. ‘All that time … He never knew what’d happened to her?’

‘No one did.’

‘That’s horrible. At least we know.’ She shook her head, wise beyond her years. ‘At least we have that.’

69

A bed of dead rose bushes, black with thorns, marked out the front garden of the house in Chiswick. Rubbish had been dumped over the shallow wall between the street and the garden, empty bottles and beer cans, polystyrene boxes, a sodden pink blanket from a child’s bed. There was no one living in the house to stop the fly-tipping, just the ghost of a once-neat garden under the neglect. Over the front door, a rusted nail held the broken chain from a hanging basket, long gone.

‘Home sweet home.’ Tim Welland stood back for the forensic team. ‘This’ll sort out the rising house prices. I might even be able to afford a bedsit round here myself.’

‘Too many nosy neighbours.’ Noah nodded across the street. ‘You’d hate it.’ He handed Welland one of the coffees he’d bought, passing a second cup to Marnie.

‘So what are we looking for here, exactly?’ Welland sipped at the coffee, giving the clot of bystanders a filthy glance. ‘Apart from a starring role in someone’s YouTube video.’

‘This was where he first hid the girls,’ Marnie said. ‘It’s the house he grew up in. The one his sister ran from when she was seventeen.’

‘And Eric Mackay did the CPS out of a job, at least where Calum Marsh is concerned. Do we need more evidence than the blood and bodies in Brigantia Gardens?’

But Welland followed Marnie and Noah into the house.

Inside, it was cold and smelt of wax, like a church. Forensics had shrouded the windows in polythene, clouding the light as they moved from room to room. Stacks of boxes everywhere, an abandoned house clearance. Dust squares on the walls where photos had been taken down. Rugs rolled into corners to make space for sleeping bags. A clock ticking obstinately in the kitchen, where limescale had crusted the taps and the steel of the sink. The house had been empty less than six months, but it had the stale, settled chill of a derelict building.

The girls had stayed here, brought back by Christie for Calum, living among the boxes and the memorabilia of his parents’ half-dismantled life. Not all the photos had been taken down. Some showed a boy and his dark-haired sister, her mouth unsmiling. Calum and Neve, holding hands.

One wall was pinned with lists. Harm’s plans for the move to the tower block, the paper edges curling away from the wall like scales, or feathers.

Welland read a couple of the lists. Said, ‘He can’t have set out to kill them, or he wouldn’t have left this handy confessional for us.’

Upstairs, one of the rooms was different to the others. At the back of the house, overlooking the garden. Furnished like a guest room, but self-consciously, as if no guests had ever used it. The bed was made, its pale-red covers pulled smooth.

That waxy candle smell. The carpet worn down by the side of the bed.

Noah’s scalp prickled tightly.

Neve’s room.

A rag doll on the pillows, marking her place.

He walked to the window, looking down at the garden, a half-dug plot of earth where weeds had trapped the litter blown from the street behind. A wet breath of mould on the glass. The window frame, burnt by the weather, listed to the left. If he set a marble on the floor, it would race from one end of the room to the other.

The whole house crooked by their loss …

All those long years of searching, grieving. Calum, fifteen years old, trapped with his parents’ fears and hope, the wildfire of their imagination setting story after story spinning in his troubled head so that for years he caught glimpses of his lost sister in the faces of street kids.

Years and years of looking and hoping and fearing.

‘Exciting opportunity,’ Welland sniffed at Noah’s shoulder, ‘to acquire a fabulous family home in need of TLC.’

A dog barked below them.

‘DS Jake?’ Marnie was headed back down the stairs.

Noah followed her, through the kitchen, out into the garden.

The cadaver dog, a golden retriever, stood at the side of the half-turned plot of earth like an arrow, her whole body pointing.

‘Another girl?’ Noah measured the ground with his eyes. ‘There’s space here for a dozen.’

‘Just one,’ Marnie said. ‘I think. There’s just one girl buried here.’

He looked up, saw her shivering. ‘Who?’

She turned towards the bedroom where Welland was watching them. ‘Neve.’

A crow rattled from the roof.

The dog didn’t move, her coat bristling along her spine.

The disturbed earth was less than ten feet from the house.

‘Here?’ Noah said. ‘The whole time she was
here
? The rages, PTSD. You think her dad …?’

‘Calum.’ Marnie held Welland’s gaze across the neglected garden. ‘I think it was Calum.’

The dog barked again, before going still.

Marnie and Noah moved back, out of the way of the forensic team.