by Kate Simants
‘Oh, for – seriously?’ She can practically see him screwing his face up and jamming the heels of his hands against his temples the way he always does when he is stressed. But he lets out a breath and asks, a little softer, ‘You’re sure the clothes were hers? The victim’s?’
Wren shuts her eyes.
‘Wren?’
‘They – they’re testing it. I don’t know.’ But it’s a lie. The shirt, the necklace, the scrap of denim she saw before she dropped the bag and threw her hands back, away from the horror of what it meant: well, either it was a hell of a coincidence or… no. They were Paige’s. That was the evidence: that the clothes of a girl who had been missing for years had turned up, all in the same place, in the flat of the man who had been the prime suspect in a case that had never quite shifted over into a murder inquiry.
All that’s going to change now, of course.
‘Why were you even there?’ Roche is saying. ‘I thought you were prepping for O’Shea this afternoon.’
‘I was tying up some loose ends.’
He growls in frustration. ‘Great. Just great, Wren, this is exactly what we needed. First tranche of fucking offenders, two weeks in and we’ve already got the police applying for immediate recall. They’re coming out here for your notes in about ten minutes. Anything you want me to say in your defence, or shall I throw you to the fucking wolves like I was planning to?’
Wren sighs heavily. ‘Do what you want, Callum. I’ve said I’m sorry.’
‘Fine. Just – fine then. You’ve already given your statement?’ ‘Not fully.’ She’d waited in the flat until the backup arrived, sitting on Ashworth’s sofa, rubbing at the muddy water mark on her trousers like Lady Macbeth. A uniformed officer, a woman whose name and face she can’t remember, had made her a cup of sweet black tea and sat her on the sofa until she’d been able to form sentences again. Just shock, the woman had said. They’ll find him though, don’t worry. Wren had nodded, letting her believe that her tears were for her oversight, for the loss of her offender. ‘I told them what happened but I didn’t have much for them. They said I can do the formal statement when I go to the station.’
‘You’ve got no idea where he’s gone?’
She opens her mouth to reply when her phone buzzes against her ear. It’s James, for the hundredth time. ‘I’ll call you back,’ she tells Roche.
Wren hangs up, relieved, and answers James.
‘Why are you ignoring my calls?’
Walking fast, Wren comes out of the estate and onto the main road. ‘Something’s happened,’ she says.
‘Are you there? At Ashworth’s?’
She stops at her car, gets inside. ‘He’s run off. Absconded.’ She lets her eyes close, hardly able to make herself breathe.
‘Right.’ She hears him take a long breath. ‘Why didn’t you meet me like we arranged? Where’s the phone? Have you still got it?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘You need to bring it here, OK? Right now.’
‘I – I can’t, James. Everything’s changed now, I’ve got to—’
‘Yes you can,’ he tells her, gently. ‘You can. We can look at what’s on it, and then you can take it wherever you need to.’
She puts him onto hands-free, then moves the stolen phone from her pocket to the passenger seat, along with her jacket, neatly folded, and her bag. She sits in the driver’s seat and rests her hands on the wheel.
‘I found something. In his flat. It’s… it’s bad.’ Her voice cracks. Do not cry. Do not fucking cry.
‘Shit, Wren, what?’
He waits, patiently, and when she can breathe, she tells him falteringly about the bag. The fabric, the mud, the few threads of hair.
‘Is there a chance it was something else?’
‘No! It was hers! The shirt was the exact one she was last seen in. Skinny jeans. There was a necklace even—’ She breaks off. Breathe, Wren. Then she tells him in choked fragments how the whole thing had been taken off in a sealed bag, how the forensics crew are all over his flat now, looking for anything else.
‘Look, are you still there? At his flat? I’m two minutes away,’ he says. She hears the rumble of his engine as he starts it up. ‘Stay where you are.’
‘Yes, but I have to go and give samples,’ she tells him. ‘Because I touched it.’
‘We can meet before you have to—’
‘And a statement!’ she adds, her pitch rising again. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say. I let myself in, James. He found me with the phone in my hand. Why didn’t I just tell them? What was I thinking?’
There’s silence for a moment. Then with a calm in his voice that strikes the crest off her panic, he says, ‘All right. Nothing has changed. We still get one step ahead of him with whatever he’s hiding on that phone—’
‘No way. I’m handing it in.’
‘You’re not. Wren, look. I’ve worked with the police dozens of times, child protection stuff. And we’ve got two very big problems here. The first is that you have taken that phone out of his possession. Whatever they find on it is going to be inadmissible.’
‘But I haven’t even turned it on!’
‘They don’t know that. When he gets prosecuted, and you get put up in front of the jury as a witness – which is what is going to happen by the way, if you do this – they are going to tear you apart.’ He lowers his voice. ‘We both know there’s things you’ve done in the last few weeks that aren’t… strictly professional.’
She shuts her eyes, saying nothing.
‘And me, I’m on your side. I’m happy to let that stuff slide. I won’t pry. But a defence lawyer, trying to save their client from a murder charge? That’s going to be a different deal altogether.
‘The second thing,’ he goes on, ‘is that anything might happen to that phone when we turn it on. It might somehow have the GPS data from her last movements, which could get wiped if it updates.’
This isn’t something she’s heard before. ‘Look, I don’t know how all of this stuff works—’
‘But I do. If Ashworth is half as slippery as he was when he went to prison, he’s going to have protected it.’
Wren rubs at her wet eyes. ‘No,’ she says, finding the level in her voice again. ‘He doesn’t know stuff like that. Honestly, he’s not like that.’
‘You don’t know that for sure,’ James says, raising his voice over hers. This could be crucial. Whatever it is that he so badly wanted to get hold of could be destroyed, if you don’t do what I’m telling you.’
‘But the police… their forensics people…’
‘They have no idea what they’re doing half the time! Where do you think the best and brightest minds in IT work? Because I can tell you for a fact it’s not the public sector. I would put money on them wiping or losing or corrupting that data before they’ve even got it out of the fucking bag. Do you want to lose your career for that? And not just your career, either,’ he adds.
He doesn’t have to say the next part.
Suzy, her partner, the mother of the child they are going to raise together, is a police officer. And despite being pushed away, held at arm’s length because that’s what Wren has always chosen over risking judgement and rejection, Suzy has persevered and shared her life, and loved her.
Right now, they are on a knife edge. Will she really stand with her through this?
Would Wren, if it was the other way around?
This, everything she’s done in the last few weeks, culminating in these last few hours: this is a fuck-up of monumental proportions. All she’d wanted was to know for sure what had happened to Paige.
All she can do now is own it. She isn’t going to let it get any worse. As if by divine intervention her phone buzzes. It is a message from Suzy.
I love you too. Do what you’ve got to do, then come back. I’ll see you at home.
It is all she needs.
‘Sorry, James,’ she says. ‘But I’m doing this my way.’
‘Wh
at the hell does that mean? Stay where you are, I’m right around the corner—’
‘I’m going home,’ she says. ‘I’m going to go home, take a shower, sort things out. And then I’m going to take the phone to the police station, and it’ll be out of my hands.’
Then, with James bawling at her down the line, she cuts the call. And it is easy. It is the only option she has left.
33
Before
The pictures from that screen burn through his dreams, but it’s her face that propels him awake. Rocketing closer and closer until he felt that her darkness would just swallow him whole.
He wakes ten, twenty times in the night, until he gives up at half-five. He sits on the edge of his bed, staring at the wall but not seeing it. Not seeing anything but her.
His own phone is on the desk. He goes over and turns it on. The calls from Rob had started last night maybe half an hour after he’d left the flat, and after that they’d come every ten minutes until he turned the phone off. Luke hadn’t even gone to the window when he heard the stones hitting the glass. He’d known it was Rob without even looking. So he’d just put his pillow over his head and waited for him to go away.
His own brother. Knowing she was being treated like that, taking pictures of herself for someone like that, and doing nothing about it.
Why? And why did he have her phone?
Luke’s got fifteen voicemails, but he doesn’t listen to them. As he deletes the notifications, it dawns on him that he didn’t hear her come back last night.
On his way to the bathroom he pauses by her door, but he can’t tell if she’s in. Luke showers and dresses, and by the time he’s ready, the night shift is swapping with the day and there’s movement in the kitchen. Just before he goes downstairs, he thinks of something. He tears off a scrap of paper from a piece in his bin, and places it between the door and the frame when he closes and locks his door.
He goes down. Paige’s shoes are in her box.
Fat Jake’s in the kitchen, spooning sugar onto his sugar-free cereal. He jumps when he sees Luke, and looks away. The bandage across the side of his head is gone now and the black eye is fading into a bluey green, but that’s just what’s on the outside. Jake’s sort of disappeared, since the thing with the saucepan. He stays in his room, doesn’t even talk to Cameron. Luke had heard him complaining to Geraint a few days back about how Paige wasn’t bollocked, and it wasn’t exactly true but Luke gets his point. She basically got away with attempted murder.
Funny that, Luke thinks bitterly. Because from where he’s standing, it’s almost like someone’s pulling strings for her.
He microwaves a mug of milk and adds chocolate. He takes it into the dining room, trailing circles in the mug with a spoon, watching the granules melt. Upstairs, one of the day staff is banging on doors to get everyone up. He doesn’t recognise the voice; it’s someone new. He’s given up keeping up with who’s actually working at Beech View, they change so often.
He plays a game on his phone but half-arsed, his mind drifting up to the first floor, into Paige’s room. Listening and waiting for her, until eventually, at half-seven, down she comes.
Out of the corner of his eye he watches her put the usual three spoons of muesli into her bowl – a small bowl so it looks like more, she reckons – and cover it with about a thimbleful of red-top milk. She’s humming as she brings it to the table, sits down.
Luke keeps his eyes on his game, scraping away in his head for the explanation, any explanation for what the fuck is going on. The first thing she does in the morning is check her phone. He’s seen her coming out of her room scrolling through her feeds before her eyelids are even really open. But he stole her phone back from Rob, and it’s been down the back of his desk since midnight. She hasn’t had it since at least five o’clock yesterday, and she’s not even bothered.
There’s only one explanation. She knows Rob’s got it. He was supposed to have it.
‘All right, Luke,’ Geraint says with a laugh, coming in. ‘Tough level?’
‘What?’ Luke says, emerging from his churning thoughts, and Geraint gestures to the game he’s pretending to play. ‘Oh, yeah. Yeah.’
Paige glances over, gives him a smile. There’s a beep and she puts the spoon down and digs in the pocket of her blazer. And as if nothing’s wrong, as if it’s completely normal, she brings out a phone. A different one, recognisably expensive.
‘That new?’ Luke says.
She shrugs. ‘Yeah.’
‘Been saving up?’ He bores into her with his eyes and she meets them. She knows what he’s saying, what he really means, and without saying it she’s begging him to leave it.
But he’s not going to leave it.
‘What’s that worth then. Five hundred quid?’
Fat Jake looks up, his stupid forehead rising. Paige gives him a look like yes? and he makes a face like someone’s shat in his mouth. He gets up with his bowl, slamming his chair into the wall as he goes.
‘Bitch,’ he says.
Paige doesn’t even flinch. She keeps looking at Luke.
‘What happened to the old one?’ She doesn’t know it’s hidden in his room. ‘Just, what? Threw it away?’
The one she’s holding beeps again with a message. She reads it and slowly, slowly, her face falls. ‘Shit,’ she says, almost to herself.
Then she gets up, does it so fast she knocks the table and hot chocolate sloshes out of Luke’s mug. The phone’s against her ear as she leaves the room, ignoring Geraint telling her to clear her breakfast.
Luke goes out too, but her door closes before he’s halfway up the stairs. He hovers on the landing, leans against the wall. Through her door he can hear her hissing half a conversation.
‘What the fuck do you mean, Rob? You had it! It was in your bag!
‘Where is it? Well, who?’
Then, muffled, her hand over her mouth maybe, ‘You are fucking kidding me.’
Clearer, smaller: ‘Oh, no. No. You promised me this wouldn’t happen.’
There’s movement then – she’s coming out. Luke slips down the stairs, gets to the front door as her bedroom door opens.
She calls his name but he doesn’t stop. He pulls on his trainers, puts his bag on his back. He goes to open the front door but then she’s there, her hand on his shoulder.
‘Luke,’ she whispers, panic on her face.
‘What.’ He knows he shouldn’t be angry but it’s all so messed up now.
Because what he’s got in his room is her phone. She took those pictures. And yeah, she was asked to do it, told to do it, and the messages sent to her were fucking disgusting, but she’d replied, hadn’t she? So did she want it?
‘Come on,’ she says, her eyes watery. ‘I need it back.’
He straightens up. It’s cruel, but he makes himself smile at her. ‘Need what back, Paige?’
She wraps her arms around herself. ‘Stop it, Luke. Just give it back. Please.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says. And he opens the front door and leaves.
He’s never been much of a runner but he walks fast the whole way, and by the time he gets to school his lungs are burning and the sweat is trickling down his spine. He’s the first one there for Tutorial, but he stares out the window the whole time.
And then he goes to English, and that’s when it all goes tits up.
Cameron’s in his class, always chucking stuff at him and giving him gyp. It’s been way worse since Fat Jake got smacked because Cameron’s lost his only mate, and so all that anger, all that stupid, has got to go somewhere else. And today, that somewhere happens to be Luke.
Cameron comes in just before the bell, and he slings his bag down hard next to Luke, deliberately catching him on the side of the head with it. He gets a chair and turns it round the wrong way and sits down, legs wide open like his balls are as big as his brain is small.
‘You missed all the fun this morning,’ Cameron says, all singsong.
&n
bsp; Luke ignores him.
‘Must have done something preeetty bad to your batshit little girlfriend.’
Luke unpacks, placing his pencil case on the table with his forefingers and thumbs, lining it up.
‘Don’t know what it is you’ve got of hers in your room but she is not fucking happy. Took two of them to stop her trying to smash your door in, mate.’
Exercise book next to the pencil case. Straight and neat.
Cameron leans in. ‘What is it you’ve got up there that she wants back so bad, Lukey-loo? You sneak a pair of panties out of her dirty washing?’
Textbook. Highlighters.
‘Or did you forget to give her dildo back? Yeah,’ he says, face brightening, leaning back with his hands behind his head. ‘That’d be it. Bitch like that’s gonna have a great big one too! Oh! Oh!’ he goes on, high-pitched, miming it with his empty fist at his crotch.
And then it happens. It’s not like Luke makes a decision. It just happens.
Luke’s on his feet. He kicks out the back legs of Cameron’s chair and he does it so hard and fast that the whole thing pitches forward with Cameron in it. His face hits the edge of the desk and he screams as he smacks into the floor. But he gets straight up, and there’s a scraping of chairs behind Luke and all around, everyone standing up, getting out of the way, and someone shouts, ‘Fight!’ and then it’s a chant, all around him. Fight! Fight! Fight!
But it isn’t a fight. It’s Cameron, twice Luke’s size and with his eyes on fire and hate snarling up in his face, launching a fist into Luke’s head, just once.
And then it goes black.
34
Now
Wren is nearly home when she pulls over to take an incoming call. It’s from the uniform who’d made her the tea in Ashworth’s flat, asking her to come to the station later than planned.
‘We’re on skeleton staff as it is because of the Rovers game,’ she explains, sounding exhausted. ‘And we’ve got to prioritise tracking Ashworth down.’
‘OK,’ Wren says, relieved. She’s on the edge of the dual carriageway heading towards St Philips, and the little Corsa rocks from side to side as an artic passes. ‘Guess this means you haven’t found him.’