No Other Darkness: A Detective Inspector Marnie Rome Mystery

by Sarah Hilary

  ‘I just wondered, after what Beth said about his temper …’

  ‘He’s a teenage boy. His parents had no time for him. From what I can gather, they were wrapped up in some strange business.’ He shook his head. ‘Plenty of money, maybe too much, obsessed with security, locks all over the house. Clancy had a personal alarm he was made to carry everywhere. It went through to a private security outfit, if you can believe that. Outsourced parental responsibility … Am I allowed to call them neurotics, or is that un-PC?’

  ‘It sounds accurate, in any case.’

  ‘When people talk about neglect or abuse, they don’t usually think of kids like Clancy. His parents had plenty of money to spend on gadgets and gear, but they didn’t have time to spend with him, or any real interest in being parents.’ He looked down at the teddy bears and candles. ‘It’s not neglect on this scale, I know. Not like what you found in that bunker …’

  What you found, Marnie amended silently. She knew how hard it was to be the first witness to a crime of any kind, let alone one like this.

  Every witness suffered. Every witness carried away the stain of what they saw, but the first witness had a special burden not easily, if ever, put down. Tim Welland had been the first policeman on the scene of her parents’ death; Marnie still saw the weight of that in his face.

  ‘I’d like to hold a memorial service. If they can’t be identified, I mean, if there’s no one else to take care of that for them.’ Terry’s shoulders came up, self-consciously. ‘Does that sound macabre?’

  ‘No. It sounds right.’

  ‘Hard to tell what’s macabre and what’s not.’ He nodded at the fake flowers with the plastic raindrops. ‘It hurts us too. Our kids. That’s why I thought a service of some kind …’

  ‘It’s a nice thought. I think it would be a good thing.’

  They stood shoulder to shoulder, looking at the litter of sympathy, keeping their eyes wide of the garden at 14 Blackthorn Road.

  Marnie thought: How big is this man’s heart, how wide his arms?

  But there was another thought underneath: What went wrong in his past to make him care this much, about everyone and everything?

  From the pavement, a half-melted candle made a face at her. Her eyes went past it to a small round tin, tucked behind two candles. With a blue and gold label, a ring-pull fitted snug to its lid.

  Peaches.

  Someone had left a tin of peaches out here.

  She crouched, to be sure.

  It was the same brand as the ones in the bunker. Not water-stained or rusted. This was a new tin, but the same brand.

  Left with the teddy bears and fake flowers and the cards addressed to the dead boys, by someone who knew if not how they’d died then what they ate for their last meal.

  Tinned peaches.

  A brand popular with preppers.

  39

  The peaches had been wedged between a teddy bear and a third candle, in a jam jar.

  Marnie dug gloves from her pocket, pulling them on before she touched the jar. It was cold. The candle had been out for a while.

  They hadn’t told anyone about the peaches. The press didn’t know. No one knew, apart from Marnie’s team, and Fran’s team, and whoever had put the boys in the bunker.

  ‘What is it?’ Terry crouched at her side.

  She’d forgotten he was there.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She reached into her bag for an evidence kit.

  Very carefully, she stowed and sealed the tin, scanning the rest of the tributes, checking the cards in particular, looking for messages that didn’t ring true. Finding nothing, just sympathy cards like the ones on sale in the newsagent’s.

  In the end, she bagged the lot, afraid to take any chances.

  ‘Does the street have CCTV?’

  Terry shook his head. ‘The nearest is on the estate.’ He nodded in that direction. ‘This was always a quiet spot. Nothing much happened here until now.’

  He dropped his gaze to the evidence bags in her hand. ‘You think … someone was here? Someone connected to what happened?’ His voice was low and scared.

  ‘I don’t know. But I’m not taking any chances. I’m sorry, I have to go. Will you be okay?’

  He nodded. ‘Go. Do what you have to do. I should get back to Beth and the kids.’

  Marnie waited until he’d walked away before she speed-dialled the station.

  Debbie Tanner picked up the call.

  ‘The press who were outside the house yesterday,’ Marnie said, ‘especially the ones with cameras, I want names and contact numbers. I want to know who was here when the crowd was forming. Specifically, I want to know who was taking photos.’

  It was an outside chance, but she had to try.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Debbie asked.

  ‘Just do it. Please. I’ll explain later. Ask DS Carling to help.’

  ‘He’s following up on the travellers.’

  ‘Then ask one of the others. This is a priority. You spoke with one of the reporters yesterday. Adam Fletcher.’

  ‘He wasn’t taking photos. Not while I was chatting with him, anyway.’

  ‘What were you chatting about, detective?’

  A tiny beat, while Debbie caught up with Marnie’s mood. ‘Just … how horrid it was, what we found.’

  ‘What did we find?’

  ‘The boys … you know. I didn’t tell him anything, of course I didn’t.’

  ‘Good. Because that would be a disciplinary matter, wouldn’t it?’

  Marnie rang off, calling Noah next. ‘Change of plan. You’ll have to interview Mr Walton on your own. I need to follow up on something else.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Someone left a tin of peaches outside the Doyles’ house.’

  ‘Someone …’ She heard Noah process the information, knowing that no one outside the team knew about the peaches. ‘Shit.’

  ‘I’ll call you as soon as I know more.’ She rang off.

  One more call to make before she took the evidence bags for testing.

  ‘Hey, Max. Changed your mind about breakfast?’

  ‘You have a camera. Were you taking photos yesterday?’

  Adam said, ‘At Beech Rise? Sure. Nothing that’s going to win me a Pulitzer, but—’

  ‘Did you take photos of the people leaving flowers and cards?’

  ‘Those vampires? Yeah, I took a few.’ His voice sharpened. ‘What’ve you found?’

  ‘You send me your photos, and any others you can get hold of, and I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Exclusive?’

  ‘Depends what you send me. Maybe, yes.’ She glanced down at the bags in her hand. ‘You were chatting with one of my detectives yesterday, DC Tanner.’

  ‘Your top boy?’

  ‘Debbie Tanner. She was wearing a red shirt …’

  ‘Oh right, DC Nigella … Yeah, I was. Why?’

  ‘I need to know if she told you anything about what we found in those bunkers.’

  Like tinned peaches; a nice scoop for a reporter who knew how to work every angle or, in Debbie’s case, every curve.

  ‘You found two dead kids,’ Adam said. ‘She didn’t seem to know much more than that.’

  Marnie couldn’t tell if he was lying, not without seeing his face and maybe not even then. Could she believe it, in any case? Believe that Adam might have left the peaches? No. He was feckless, and hungry for a story, but he wasn’t cruel. Not in that way.

  Adam said, ‘You okay? Max?’

  She rang off.

  We all live by leaving behind.

  Where had she read that? Somewhere, years ago. Sixteen years ago, probably; Adam and his grappling hook, hauling her back into that past, even when there was work to do.

  Connie, the traveller, with her two little angels.

  A tin of peaches left with the tributes to the dead boys.

  Familial DNA inside the bunker.

  Clancy’s pills, his rich parents and his doodles, the circ
les like the ones she’d found in Stephen’s diary five years ago, right around the time the boys were being buried alive. She felt as if she was turning circles, each one smaller than the last.

  The truth is that we all live by leaving behind.

  Borges. That was it. Jorge Luis Borges’s Funes the Memorious, a book about a man who couldn’t forget anything, who was driven mad by his memory. Reading Borges had been light relief during her Camus phase, but that line had stuck with her.

  We all live by leaving behind.

  She couldn’t do it. Not with Stephen, not with Adam, or not yet. Certainly not with the dead boys. She needed to put the pieces of the puzzle together – the circles in the notebook, the anti-psychotics, the travellers and the preppers – she needed to piece it all together. Find the champagne glass that made sense of the chaos that had killed those children. Even if it was nothing as graceful as a glass – if it was a rusted pipe or a rotting branch – she needed to make sense of it, and soon.

  Before the press caught up with the Doyles, or Clancy’s temper got worse, or her team started to doubt her resolve to get this done.

  40

  ‘It was outside the Doyles’ house,’ Marnie said. ‘With the flowers and cards, part of the pavement memorial.’

  The tin of peaches sat on Fran Lennox’s desk, still inside the evidence bag.

  ‘People are ghouls.’ Fran was filling in paperwork to fast-track the tests on the tin, in case it matched anything they’d taken from the bunker.

  The rest of the evidence bags – the sympathy cards, teddies and candles – were in a plastic crate. Everything would need testing. A waste of time, Marnie suspected, but it had to be done. The peaches weren’t left by accident. The tin was unopened, its metal untouched by rust. Nothing like the ones found where the boys died. This tin was shiny-new. Looking at it made her angry.

  Fran said, ‘Did you skip breakfast? You look peaky.’

  The opposite of peachy?

  ‘I’m fine. Just pissed off at the idea that someone’s playing games.’

  ‘I could make toast,’ Fran offered.

  ‘Really, I’m fine. What I need is fingerprints, if you can get them.’

  ‘Let’s take a look.’ Fran scooped up the bag.

  Marnie followed her from the tiny office to the lab, where they suited up before Fran started work.

  In here, behind one of the brushed-steel doors, their boys were lying, waiting to go home.

  ‘No prints,’ Fran said. She bent over the tin, concentrating on her tests. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘They wore gloves?’

  ‘Woolly gloves, by the look of it.’ She reached for a pair of tweezers. ‘I’ve got fibres.’

  ‘It wasn’t cold yesterday,’ Marnie said. ‘Not cold enough for gloves.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ Fran was always cold, layering cardigans over vest tops and T-shirts. ‘So the gloves were worn in case of prints.’ She saved the fibre for testing. ‘By our killer, you think?’

  ‘No one else knew about the peaches. No one outside the team.’

  Fran heard the edge in her voice. ‘You think someone on the team might’ve leaked it?’

  ‘Why would they?’

  ‘No reason I can think of … Leave it with me. Between this and yesterday’s samples from the other bunkers, I’m yours most of the day. Anything else you want to chuck into the mix?’

  ‘Since you ask …’ Marnie dug out the strip of painkillers from Clancy’s room. ‘Not prints, but if you could tell me the likely effect on a teenage boy of taking these. He’s average build, post-pubescent, mood-swingy.’

  ‘Okay.’ Fran put the pills with the rest of the evidence. ‘Now clear off, before you think of anything else.’ Her phone buzzed as she said it and she beckoned Marnie back, reading a text. ‘More results from the first bunker. Might be nothing … Hang on.’

  She put the tin of peaches aside and peeled off her gloves, reaching for the nearest laptop.

  ‘Soil samples. Okay, this is odd.’ She turned the screen so that Marnie could see what she was seeing. ‘I’ve got nitrogen, phosphorus … a lot of potassium.’

  ‘And that’s odd because …?’

  ‘Not your average common or garden soil. This is compost-rich, and not just any compost. Properly organic, peat-free, bark-based, I’d guess. Something like conifer …’

  She straightened, frowning across the lab. ‘This is soil from the garden. Not the fields. From the garden, after the Doyles rescued it.’

  ‘Terry found the bunker,’ Marnie said. ‘He climbed down four rungs before he realised what he was seeing. If the soil’s from his boots, it’s bound to have bits of garden in it.’

  Fran shook her head. ‘I tested the boots yesterday, to rule out contamination. This is soil we took from beside the bed, right next to where the boys were lying. It’s a match for the soil on his boots, but it was taken from the floor by the bed.’

  She looked at Marnie. ‘Four rungs down, is that what he said?’

  ‘Why would he lie? He’s as desperate as we are to solve this case.’ Marnie considered the point. ‘Are you sure the soil isn’t older? From the killer’s boots, or mine? I walked across that garden, stood by that bed …’

  ‘You were suited. You took care. Whoever left this didn’t. Not the killer, or not from back then, because this kind of compost didn’t come from an abandoned field. The boys died long before the houses went up, and long before the Doyles got to work on that garden.’

  Fran pressed her lips together, frowning. ‘At some point in the last year, after the Doyles put nutrients into the soil, someone walked across that composted garden and down into the bunker. If Terry’s telling the truth, then you need to look at who else had access to the garden. Because whoever it was went all the way into the bunker. They stood by the side of that bed, right next to the bodies. They must’ve known what they were seeing. Why keep quiet? Who keeps quiet about a thing like that?’

  ‘Somebody with something to hide …’

  ‘Or someone scared out their wits,’ Fran said. ‘Or both. Scared and hiding. Who do you know who fits that description?’

  41

  ‘Tell me what you know about Clancy Brand.’ Marnie put her phone on the café table, so that there was no chance of missing a call from Noah, or Fran. ‘And edit the bullshit.’

  Adam raised his brows at her.

  ‘Edit it,’ she repeated, ‘because I don’t have a lot of time.’

  Adam’s skin was scuffed by the hot bulb over their heads. Tension just beneath the surface of his face warned her that she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

  ‘Clancy was excluded from his last three schools. Two of them suspended him, one tried to have him expelled, but there were loopholes in the paperwork so he was moved on, made into someone else’s problem.’ Adam took out his disposable lighter, turning it between long fingers. No nicotine stains on the fingers, and he didn’t stink of smoke this morning. ‘Three schools in three years … I’m betting this new one doesn’t stick any more than the others did. Once they find out what they’re dealing with.’

  ‘What are they dealing with?’

  ‘He touches kids.’ Adam snapped a flame from the lighter. ‘Little kids, not his own age.’

  He let the flame go out.

  ‘And Social Services know this?’ Marnie said. ‘Come off it. They would never have allowed the Doyles to foster him, for starters.’

  ‘This conversation isn’t going to work,’ Adam said, ‘if you’re going to pretend that Social Services know their elbow from their arse.’

  ‘But you do know. You have – what? Privileged information? Evidence, even?’

  Adam’s smile was empty, and savage. ‘Would I be sitting here, dying for a cigarette, if I had evidence?’

  Some people died for their countries. Adam Fletcher died for cigarettes.

  ‘I’m talking to the police, though. That’s a start.’

  Or an act of desperation. If he had a story,
he wasn’t going to hand it to the police, not before he’d sold it to the press. ‘How long have you had this … information?’

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘Days, or weeks? How long?’

  Adam shook a cigarette from the pack, putting it between his lips. The woman at the counter shot him a look, so he showed his teeth to her, holding up his hands in a gesture that was one part placation and six parts piss off. ‘A couple of months. Not much more than that.’

  ‘Two months. In other words, you’ve got nothing.’

  ‘I’ve got—’

  ‘Nothing. You wouldn’t have left the Doyles alone if you had anything worth convincing them with. They’ve got a little girl about the age Tia was when I found out you had a family.’

  Marnie edited the emotion from her voice. ‘You’d have warned them if you had anything. So what’s this really about?’

  Adam leaned forward until the light found his eyes. ‘He touches kids,’ he repeated. ‘Little kids, and yeah, I know about Carmen and Tommy. I know Clancy doesn’t give a toss whether it’s girls or boys he touches, and he gets angry if he’s threatened. That’s when he’s dangerous.’ All the time he talked, he kept the unlit cigarette in his mouth.

  He’d wanted to sit outside, but Marnie had made the rules, taking the pair of them to seats at the back of the café. ‘How do you know all this?’ she demanded. ‘He keys your car and you start digging, to this extent? I don’t think so.’

  ‘I told you, he gave me the creeps. So I asked around and it turns out I’m not the only one. Lots of people get a bad vibe from this kid. Maybe no one can make it stick, but that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe I can make it stick. It’s a good story. My editor likes it.’

  ‘You’re writing a story about a teenage boy now? Make up your mind.’

  ‘Whatever sells.’ Adam shrugged.

  ‘You said there was a connection to the bunker. That you could help with the case. How does this help with that?’

  ‘Clancy knew about the bunker. I’d bet money on it. He’s a sneaky kid. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.’

  ‘This is your evidence? It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise?’