by Kate Simants
‘Good,’ Suzy says. She reaches for Wren’s hand and squeezes. ‘Because I need you here, properly here. Everything else we can just – just forget, for now. OK?’
Wren returns the pressure on her hand. ‘OK.’
She thinks about the phone in her car, how she is going to go about getting it back to the station. Then there is a cursory knock, and the door opens.
The doctor strides over to collect the clipboard at the end of Suzy’s bed. ‘You girls ready to be mums?’ she asks, making a note, replacing it. ‘You’re booked in for 7 a.m. We’ll keep an eye on you and baby in the meantime, but I’d get some rest.’ She gives them a thumbs-up, and then she is gone.
Suzy watches her leave, her face slack. ‘Holy fuck,’ she says at last. ‘It’s happening, then.’
Wren grins. ‘You’ll do brilliantly.’
Suzy tries to return the enthusiasm but there is an obvious effort to it. Her fingers move, seemingly unconsciously, to play at the butterfly stitches on her head.
Wren cranes to see the wound, and is instantly gripped with fury. Suzy’s injury is swollen but clean, the broken edges of skin already knitting together.
‘What kind of arsehole hits a pregnant woman, though? In her own house?’
‘He didn’t hit me. I mean, he’s still an arsehole, but I slipped. I ran at him, and he backed off, and then I hit the floor. Blacked out. But – I don’t know. He didn’t seem right, Wren. It all seemed so… off.’
‘Like what?’
Suzy frowns. ‘I’ve done hundreds of burglaries, you know? So many interviews and arrests. But this one, it was like he didn’t want to be there.’
‘Bit early for Stockholm syndrome, isn’t it?’ Wren says, which wins her a smile. Then Suzy sniffs the air and looks suddenly shocked. ‘Wren! Tell me you haven’t been smoking again!’
‘No. It was Ashworth. He was desperate so I just let him get on with it.’
‘Desperate how?’
Wren doesn’t want to lie about it. ‘He absconded. It’s fine now,’ she adds hurriedly, ‘but he was missing for a good while and when I found him he was, well, not in a good way.’
But from the expression on Suzy’s face, she’s not thinking about Wren’s offender’s state of mind.
‘What is it?’
‘When did he go missing, Wren?’ she asks gently.
‘Few hours ago? Three?’
Suzy nods. ‘And how does he… feel about you?’
‘I imagine he thinks I’m a tosser, they tend to,’ Wren says, trying to deflect it. But Suzy’s not smiling.
The implication of Suzy’s question suddenly breaks. Ashworth. Could it have been him? She does the sums: had there been time for him to get to her house before he went to Meadowside? Maybe. Wren glances at the clip on Suzy’s finger, and the monitor attached to straps circumnavigating her belly. The machines monitoring every peak and trough of her vital signs. And she forces a smile, wrinkles her nose, and lies.
‘Nah,’ she says. ‘It couldn’t have been him. Timing doesn’t work.’ Because putting it down to a random break-in is surely less terrifying than the alternative: that Wren’s work brought this to their door.
Suzy shrugs. Then from under heavy lids, she gestures with her eyes to the door. ‘You want to pick us up some snacks and stuff? I’m going to get some sleep. CID should be here soon. And my mum, actually.’
Wren kisses her hair and gathers her bag, dimming the light as far as it will go as she leaves.
She walks down the corridor towards the lifts, hardly looking where she is going.
Someone else has called this in, she thinks again.
The metal doors slide open and she goes in, hitting the button for the ground floor. She stands aside to allow a porter to back in with a sleeping teenager in a wheelchair.
Forcing herself to concentrate, she goes into the little shop in the main hospital concourse, but thirty seconds’ browsing tells her she isn’t going to get anything Suzy wants from there. But there is a decent supermarket maybe five minutes’ drive away.
Outside, the usual wall of cigarette smoke hits her and she slows her pace, her cravings instantly igniting. She is just starting to consider whether the events of the day warrant a cigarette, just one to take the edge off, when her phone rings.
‘Wren Reynolds.’
‘Hi, Wren. This is Sergeant Mahmood from the Bridewell? I’ve just booked Robert Ashworth in. He wanted to use his phone call to speak to you.’
‘Right.’
‘You know the drill?’ the sergeant asks. ‘You’ve just got a few minutes, all right?’
‘OK. Put him on.’
There is a pause. ‘Wren.’ Ashworth’s voice is tight. He draws a breath but Wren cuts him off before he can start.
‘Were you at my house, Rob?’
There’s a pause. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Were you at my house?’
‘No. I wasn’t. I don’t even know where you live, how could I have been—’
‘Fuck you, Robert.’
‘Please, Wren, listen to me.’
Face knotted in a furious grimace, she passes the phone to the other ear. ‘What.’
‘Can you do something for me?’
‘Ha! Are you serious?’
He ignores that. ‘If you find them, my mum and Luke, can you tell them something for me?’ He drops his voice low, as if they’re some kind of friends. ‘I didn’t have that bracelet. I never had it, never even saw it. I want them to know because if they think I kept it for myself—’
She can’t believe that this is what he’s wasting his phone call on. ‘You do realise what’s going to happen to you, right? You had her clothes in your flat. You’re going to prison for murder. Your mother isn’t going to give a flying fuck about any jewellery.’ She doesn’t need to do it but the rage has taken hold of her and all she can see is hatred. So she twists the knife. ‘If they didn’t want anything to do with you when you were in for aggravated burglary, Rob, I don’t think you’re going to get a whole lot of visits when you’re doing life for killing a young girl. Do you?’
Ashworth makes a choked sound. ‘Please,’ is all he says in reply.
And then Mahmood is on the line telling her that the time is up, and the line goes dead, but then instantly buzzes again in her hand. It’s a message from Roche.
Forgot to tell you, he says. Spoke with colleague who worked care placements. Got a lead on Leanne Garrett, the mum. Strange you missed it. Can we talk.
Wren breathes out a long, slow breath. Before she’s even had a chance to put the phone away, she hears a shout.
‘Hey! Wren!’
She turns to see a suited man, youngish, jogging across the road. As he gets closer she recognises him: Andy, who got his sergeant stripes with Suzy last year but has moved to CID.
‘How’s she doing?’ he asks as they shake hands.
‘Shaken, but OK, we think. Got anywhere yet?’
‘Not yet. But don’t worry, we’ll get him.’
‘I know you will. Look, can I ask – are you across what’s happening with Robert Ashworth?’
Andy regards her uncertainly.
‘I can keep a secret,’ she adds.
‘You’re his PO, right?’
She nods and makes a pleading face. ‘I just really want to know what the deal is for him. Off the record. The bag of clothes, all of that.’
Andy nods slowly. ‘Far as I’ve heard, they’ve got a team down at Crew’s Hole looking for remains, but nothing yet. Your boy says he knows nothing about the bag, but,’ he makes a dismissive face, ‘obviously he’s going to say that. Said something about a catflap, reckons someone must have planted the bag in his flat. My guess is they’ll put a rush on the lab work, get the DNA done in forty-eight hours.’ He pauses, then says, ‘There was this one thing – they can’t get hold of the bloke who called it in. Dog walker, saw him digging the hole.’
‘What, he called anonymously?’
‘A
pparently. Ashworth’s shouting the odds about it, saying someone’s setting him up. Reckons it must be us because no one else knows where he lives.’ The expression on his face invites her to laugh.
But she doesn’t laugh. She thinks, maybe it’s true.
Maybe he hasn’t told anyone where he lives. But there is someone else who knows, other than the NPS and the police. There is one person who’s been guided there in the back of a taxi, who’s had the flat pointed out to him.
James Yardley.
‘Wren?’
She blinks, looks up. Andy has asked her a question.
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘I said, do you know if Suzy’s got her phone?’
‘No, why?’
‘Just, we think the intruder emptied out her handbag, like he was looking for something. And he didn’t take the purse, even though there was over a hundred quid in cash and all her cards. Pretty unusual, but I don’t know. Maybe they took her phone. We couldn’t find it.’
‘She always keeps it in her bag,’ Wren says, bringing out her own phone to call Suzy’s number. But Andy puts his hand out to stop her.
‘Tried that, goes to voicemail. Got someone tracking it now.’ He flips out his notebook. ‘What model was it?’
Wren grimaces, trying to remember, and reels off a couple of makes it might have been. ‘Old and crap, honestly. I’ve been trying to get her to upgrade for years. But she doesn’t use it much, she’s pretty strict on having it out at home. Leaves it at the door – if anyone needs to call her in they use the landline.’
As she’s saying that, thinking about Suzy’s phone, something else occurs to her.
They didn’t take the money, but they took the phone? A crappy old thing she’d had for five years? It’s probably even older than Paige’s—
That’s what the masked burglar was after. That’s the reason Suzy could have died, the reason her unborn child might have never drawn breath. The phone.
‘You OK?’ Andy’s asking.
Wren cracks a smile. ‘Fine!’ She mumbles something about supplies, the birth, and says goodbye.
She resists the urge to shoot a glance over her shoulder until she is well out of sight, around a corner and shielded by a thick hedge. She keeps walking, beyond the entrance to the hospital complex, keeping its low perimeter wall beside her. She finds her car, gets in. She brings up Facebook and finds Cara, the ex-girlfriend that Suzy and the security guard had in common. Skimming that feed, she finds the guard’s name. She drops her a friend request, adds her own number into a message to go with it, asking her to get in touch. There’s a green dot next to the woman’s icon, meaning she’s online right now.
Seconds later, Wren gets a text. Hi, what’s up?
Hey, Wren texts back. She doesn’t waste time with small talk. Just crossing some ts here re my offender this afternoon. What time did he turn up?
The three dots jump in their wave pattern, telling her a reply is coming.
I’m just writing it up, the text bubble says, and it’s followed by a photograph of a paper form. Wren zooms in, scans down. It says the police were on site seventeen minutes after the call. Wren squints at the sky, working it out. She knows Ashworth went to the nursery in Westbury after he fled his flat. There’s no way he could have got to Meadowside in that time if he’d gone to hers for a spot of housebreaking in between.
But it was never just Ashworth who was interested in that phone, was it?
From the glovebox she retrieves it. She holds it in the palm of her hand, replaying James’s warnings.
And then she turns it on.
42
Before
Luke’s breath clouds in front of his mouth and his face is freezing already. Frost sparkles on the roofs of the parked cars all along the street. He’s out of breath keeping up with her. Treading softly is hard to do in Caterpillar boots but he’s keeping his distance, and anyway, she hasn’t looked behind her once. She takes a left onto Feeder Road and it’s wider, more open. She reaches the end of the road where it meets the river, turns right over the bridge, then along the overgrown alley. A hundred years ago when he came here with Leah, there were flowers. But they’re gone now.
His lungs are burning by the time they reach the old warehouse.
From where he’s standing, tucked around a hedge fifty metres back, he follows Paige’s gaze to the roof, but there’s nothing there. She darts off around the building. He loses her for a moment, until a scrape of metal screams in the silence and there she is, crouching, teeth bared as she yanks the wire mesh of the fence, a weak spot.
He gives it to a count of ten and then he goes after her. A spike of exposed wire scrapes hard against his hand and he almost cries out, and when he brings it close to his face he sees black spheres of blood springing out against the white of his skin. He wipes it on his thigh and keeps going. Into the building, silently through a wooden side door almost off its hinges. The dark in there almost complete.
As his eyes adjust he finds a slip of light, maybe three metres up, the other side of the floor. There is a moment when she is suspended impossibly on the wall, halfway up, and then he sees the metal staircase she’s standing on, and that massive steel frame bolted to the wall beneath it. She goes higher, careful to navigate the missing steps, moving out to the edge and climbing along the safety railing until she’s past the big hole. Her hair is loose, lifting in the draught.
She takes his breath away.
Suddenly she stops, as if startled.
‘Luke?’ she whispers into the gloom, stock still now, hands on the rail.
Luke says nothing. There will be time to talk later, when it’s all over. She can thank him then.
She carries on, and when a moment has passed he goes up after her, taking the steps, sticking to the shadowiest part against the wall. He hauls himself past the missing section with his hand on the scaffolding pole.
Up higher it’s easier to see, empty windows all around. Right across the other side of the wide-open building is another flight that’s so steep it’s nearly a ladder, ending in a narrow door.
The exit to the roof.
From his side, he waits. Paige makes it to the top and pushes open the door. It cries out as it swings wide, open to the night, and she disappears from his view.
With numbing hands, Luke grips a rung and starts the final climb, placing each foot as softly as he can manage.
When he’s up, he pauses, tucking himself behind the door. He makes himself open his eyes, and forces himself to look at the sweep of the roof, at the lights of the city beyond. But he can’t quite look at the building’s edge. That drop to the concrete below is beyond terrifying, but he can’t trust himself to resist it.
Paige is standing in the middle of the vast flat space. And there’s someone else there.
It’s Yardley, sitting right on the edge.
Luke’s guts turn to oil, and he puts out a hand on the doorframe and it’s like his body wants to lurch forward.
‘You came, then.’ Yardley says it without looking around. ‘Thought maybe you just asked me here to stand me up, humiliate me a bit more.’
There’s a click, and a soft flare of brightness as he lights a cigarette. He pulls his legs back around and stands, facing Paige.
‘I’m… I’m sorry,’ she says.
He cocks his head. Then wheezes out a laugh, looks away like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. ‘You’re sorry? Paige, your little plan is going to ruin. My. Life.’ He jabs the cigarette in her direction with every word. His face twists, tight and furious. ‘I had to spend the last hour with the police, do you realise that? Lying. Telling them you’re just a student, that I have no idea why you broke into my fucking home. I thought I could trust you. I loved you, Paige.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen. It wasn’t my idea.’
‘No? But you went along with it, right? You and your boyfriend,’ he says, venom in the word. He means Rob, Luke thinks. An
d he’s wrong. But none of that matters now.
‘James, please.’ Paige walks towards him, her hands outstretched. ‘I need your help. Please. I never meant for any of this to happen. They’re going to—’ she says, and her voice catches. ‘I think they’re going to take the baby away.’
The wind picks up and Yardley staggers, his jacket flattening against his stomach. ‘Yeah, well,’ he says. ‘You’re on your own now, you little bitch.’
Luke takes a step forward. His hands go loose by his sides. He stands full height.
And he says, clear and strong, ‘She’s not on her own.’
Yardley whirls round. Looks from Luke to Paige, then back. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
Paige wraps her arms around herself. ‘You followed me? All the way here? What the hell, Luke?’
He doesn’t look at her. Everything he needs to say, he’s going to say to Yardley. ‘You’ve got to help her.’
‘Have I? I don’t think I have, Luke. I don’t think I’m going to do anything for her, after what she’s done to me.’
‘I’ve seen the pictures. The messages you sent her.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Yardley sucks hard on the cigarette, and his face glows orange for a moment, and Luke sees him clearly, the way he really is. In that moment, he’s not a human being at all. He’s a wolf. ‘And?’
‘And I can get the phone back. He’s my brother. He’ll listen to me. But you’ve got to help her,’ Luke says evenly. ‘You’re the only person we know who’s got money. She needs to get away, start again.’
‘Ha!’ There’s brutality in his eyes. ‘Only because she just committed aggravated fucking burglary!’
Luke doesn’t blink. ‘Do you know what they call it when a man like you fucks a fifteen-year-old?’
Yardley’s lip curls.
‘I thought so,’ Luke says.
‘You know what?’ he hisses, turning to Paige again. ‘I don’t give a toss about your brat. They can drown it for all I care. My life is over now, because of you.’
Luke takes another step. ‘But it’s your child!’
There’s an awful noise from Yardley. It starts like a wheeze, but then it’s not. He’s laughing.