No Other Darkness: A Detective Inspector Marnie Rome Mystery

by Sarah Hilary

  The fear paralysed her.

  ‘Be quiet,’ Clancy hissed. His body was rigid against her. ‘He’s coming.’

  He’s coming …

  Terry Doyle. Matt Reid.

  She strained to hear above the beating of the blood in her ears and the thud of Clancy’s heart against her shoulder blades.

  Light, first.

  Yellow, from a torch searching like a dog’s snout, sending shadows scattering ahead of it, making the graffiti leap and scuttle up the walls.

  Her head churned, sickeningly. She fought Clancy’s grip on her, but he held harder, his breath hot at her cheek. ‘Be quiet!’

  The shadows stopped, squatting at their feet.

  Behind the shadows, torchlight ate everything, like looking into the sun.

  Marnie strained against the boy’s hands.

  Whatever was behind the shadows and the light, whatever was making Clancy’s palm sweat acid into her mouth …

  She had to see.

  37

  Noah and the unit leader stood at the newly opened neck of the tunnel system, listening for sounds from inside. Their torches swept the empty space for eighteen feet or so.

  No sign of DI Rome, or anyone else.

  Colin said, ‘The tunnel runs south, under the river eventually. Lots of boxes and junctions. You’ll need to stick to the map. If she’s lost in there …’

  Noah straightened, stepping back from the gap. ‘We’d better assume she’s with Terry, or Clancy. Or both of them. We need to get a rescue team together.’

  ‘DS Jake!’

  Another member of the search party was coming at a jog from the south side of the site.

  In his hand, a blue canvas duffle bag. Muddy, with scratches up the sides.

  Noah took the bag and checked the contents.

  Oyster card, cash, bottled water, a change of clothes …

  It was Clancy Brand’s go-bag.

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  The man pointed, and Noah started in that direction, until Debbie Tanner called him back.

  She was running, out of breath. ‘Esther …’

  ‘She’s at St Thomas’s. Isn’t she?’

  Debbie shook her head. ‘DC Barrow called from there. Esther gave them the slip.’

  ‘Shit. At this rate we’ll be organising search parties for half of London.’

  ‘Her mum thinks she’s headed back this way.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Esther heard the boss talking on the phone, when they were in the car. She knows we’re at the Isle of Dogs and that we’re looking for Terry. For Matt, I mean.’

  Debbie got her breath back. ‘Connie says it’s what she’s been wanting for the last fortnight. The chance to see Matt. She says Esther’s coming this way.’

  38

  The torchlight sat on Marnie’s feet.

  Cold white light, like lymph from a wound, carving a hole behind itself where a boulder was wedged. Except it wasn’t a boulder, it was a man.

  Terry Doyle.

  Matthew Reid.

  Marnie knew him by the shape of his right wrist, the unravelling red jumper he’d worn the last time she saw him. She was trapped, held hard by Clancy’s hands at her mouth and chest. She recognised the taste of the boy’s hand. Clancy was the one who’d put her in that box, just like he’d put Carmen and Tommy in Cole’s house. Out of harm’s way.

  ‘Where are they?’ Weird acoustics fractured Terry’s voice, the words falling like spears into the shallow light at their feet.

  Clancy was shaking at her back, his hand so wet it slid across her lips, her teeth.

  ‘Where are they?’ Another volley of spears.

  Marnie cringed into the boy in a bid to shield him from Terry’s wrath.

  ‘Where?’

  The torchlight flushed up Marnie’s thighs, to her face. She blinked through it, shaking her head at Terry to stand down. Her head was bursting with pain.

  Clancy let her go, suddenly. He was going to make a run for it, she knew. There was nowhere to run except straight into the wall of Terry’s anger.

  ‘Terry … Mr Doyle …’

  He swung the torch away from her, hitting Clancy with its beam.

  Marnie heard the boy hiss in terror.

  ‘Terry!’ She snapped it, needing the man’s attention on her. ‘Carmen and Tommy are safe. They’re with their auntie. Beth’s sister.’

  The words didn’t reach him, no echo to bounce them past the wall of his rage.

  If she put out her hand, she’d feel it. His rage. Solid, impassable. It would bruise her fingers. Words wouldn’t help. She could snap all she wanted. Nothing was getting past.

  ‘Stay still,’ she told Clancy. ‘Stay still.’

  The boy whimpered, his anger eclipsed by Terry’s.

  Not good. She needed him angry.

  Angry kept you alive.

  Torchlight hit her face like a hand, cold. Her chest was cold too, where Clancy had taken his arm away. She wanted it back. The boy’s anger and his heat, the way he’d held her hard against him, keeping her upright, keeping her quiet.

  ‘Where are they?’

  No echo. The words didn’t bounce, but they jarred enough to put cracks in the cellar walls. Something was going to break, bury them …

  She reached behind her for Clancy’s wrist, holding the boy still, and stared into the dark behind the torchlight, the place where the man was standing. ‘They’re safe. Carmen and Tommy are safe. They’re with their auntie and their mum—’

  She’d used the wrong words.

  Light cracked so savagely that for a second she was sure he’d hit her, her head snapping to the left, but it was just the beam from the torch.

  Was that what he’d used to fracture Merrick’s skull?

  Where are they?

  She wasn’t even sure he was asking about Carmen and Tommy. She didn’t recognise this furious man, not as Terry Doyle. But she knew him. Knew his rage and loss. Gut recognition, like looking in a mirror. He was the father of their boys. Esther’s husband, broken into a thousand pieces. He was Matt Reid.

  She kept hold of the boy behind her, wanting Clancy wide of the man’s retribution.

  Matt smashed the torch at the wall, cracking the glass so that light leaked out everywhere before it slunk back to his feet.

  He was nothing like the man she’d left at the safe house.

  Safe house.

  What a joke. Life was just limping from one disaster zone to another, decamping, taking your dead and injured with you, blowing bridges as you went, if you had the ammunition, and the sense, to spare.

  Anger flooded her sweetly, like relief.

  ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What’re you going to do? Beat us up? Bury us here? You can’t dig in cement, and in case you’ve forgotten, I’m a detective inspector. You’ll be in prison for a long time. Your kids won’t recognise you when you get out.’ She winced as she said it.

  ‘What do you know?’ Matt’s voice was in the pit of his throat. ‘What do you know about my kids?’

  ‘I know you loved them, the way you love Carmen and Tommy. That’s why we’re getting out of here. All of us. Back to the children. They’re waiting for you—’

  Smash of the torch into the wall.

  Light guttering on the ground again, before crawling back to his feet like a wounded dog.

  He keeps this up, he’s going to break the torch, and then it’ll be him and me in the darkness, and how the hell can I keep Clancy safe …

  ‘They’re waiting for you,’ she repeated. ‘Carmen and Tommy are waiting for their dad.’

  Like Fred and Archie, waiting for five years until you found them, God help you, you found them …

  ‘We need to go back up. Back to Carmen and Tommy …’

  Clancy said, ‘You can’t let him. He’s crazy. He was crazy before and he’s getting worse.’

  Matt made a hard sound. ‘Get out here.’

  He pointed the nose of the torch at his feet.
‘Hiding behind her … Get out here!’

  Clancy would have done as he was told, from bravado if not obedience, if Marnie hadn’t held him back.

  ‘I’m not scared of you.’ The boy’s voice shook as he said it.

  ‘Get. Out. Here.’

  Each word colder and harder than the last, like rocks coming loose from the walls.

  Marnie had to get them out. She had to get Clancy out.

  She pushed the boy behind her, moving to the left in a bid to prompt Matt to do the same; hoping it would clear at least a little space between him and the only exit.

  Not much of a chance, but better than nothing.

  Matt stayed standing, his shoulders squared, his shadow like a cobra’s hood, death in his eyes.

  So much of it that Marnie couldn’t see a way past.

  39

  Esther had taken a high-vis jacket when she absconded from the hospital. That should have made her easy to spot on the site, but it didn’t. She’d gone to ground.

  ‘She said she knew this place,’ Connie Pryce told Noah. ‘There are tunnels here, that’s what she said.’ Her face was set in hard lines, made harder by the site’s artificial lighting. ‘She knows a way in, one of Merrick’s hiding places.’

  ‘We’ve found it,’ Noah told her. ‘We’re looking for DI Rome. And Matt and Clancy.’

  Debbie was holding the boy’s duffle bag.

  ‘He wouldn’t have left that behind,’ Noah said, ‘if he was in charge of what was happening. Beth Doyle said he never let the bag out of his sight.’

  ‘Terry,’ Debbie said. ‘He’s down there too?’

  ‘Matt,’ Connie said. ‘He’s Matt. No point pretending otherwise.’

  She looked at Noah. ‘That’s what you’re dealing with. I hope you’re prepared.’

  40

  Shadows shrank the exit to a pinhole behind Matt’s head.

  Marnie forced herself to focus on the broken torch in the man’s hand.

  It was the only weapon he had, if you discounted the death in his eyes. A broken torch. Rubber, not metal, which probably meant it would hurt more when it hit her, but at least it wouldn’t cut. A broken torch wasn’t a knife. He didn’t have a knife. But he’d managed to fracture Merrick’s skull.

  Eyes, ears, throat. Those were his weak points. Not his balls – men expected that – but she could go for his ears, or his knees.

  He was out of his mind, she could see that.

  Out of his mind with grief and guilt and the need to know what Clancy was hiding. She didn’t want to hurt him; he was hurting enough. But she was damned if she was getting bounced around a condemned tunnel by a madman with a torch.

  She hissed behind her at Clancy, ‘When I tell you, you’re going to run. You’re not going to fight. You’re going to get out of here and fetch help. Understood?’

  She never got the chance to find out whether Clancy understood or not.

  Matt swallowed the shadows in two strides, sweeping her out of his way, grabbing Clancy by the scruff of his neck and swinging him at the nearest wall.

  Clancy yelled in pain, hitting out, some of the blows connecting but with no effect other than to drive Matt harder, pushing Clancy ahead of him into the wall, the boy’s head thumping against the bricks.

  Marnie tried to sweep Matt’s ankle, a move she’d perfected in the self-defence classes with Kate Larbie. It was like trying to swat a bull with a feather. Matt just thrust an elbow back and she ended up on the floor again.

  ‘Matt! Matthew!’ A shout, from behind them. ‘Matthew!’

  Footfall coming up the tunnel, someone running towards them, calling out. ‘Matt!’

  Matt froze, his forearm jammed up against Clancy’s windpipe, his whole body jumping in response to his name, and the voice that was calling it.

  Esther.

  Marnie got to her knees, tears wrecking her vision so that what she saw coming through the cellar’s mouth was a blaze of white, stuffing the entrance as if something solid was being shoved into place, trapping them inside.

  ‘Matt!’ The shout, whip-hard, made all three of them jump.

  Matt’s arm dropped from Clancy and the boy kicked out, shoving Matt off as he slid down the wall, hugging his knees, his mouth bruised blue by lack of air.

  Esther was dressed in fiery yellow. Fluorescent; a high-vis jacket.

  Marnie forced herself to her feet, moving to where Clancy was heaped, touching careful fingers to the boy’s neck. He was icy with shock, sucking breath between his teeth.

  She lifted her head and looked at Matt Reid and his ex-wife, spotlit by the yellow of the borrowed coat, her face fiercely haggard.

  Matt couldn’t look at her. He stood cowed, all the fight wiped out of him.

  Marnie could smell his fear from where she was crouched at Clancy’s side.

  It was sweet and rank, like death.

  41

  Connie Pryce stood watching the last of the light as it clung to the polythene sheeting of Merrick’s stalled development. ‘So much,’ she said, ‘for keeping her safe.’

  Noah glanced at her. ‘She chose to run. She was told to stay in the hospital.’

  ‘Your boss should’ve stayed with her. She knew she was sick. Now she’s down there.’ She jerked her head. ‘Down in the dark with God only knows what …’

  ‘My boss is down there too.’ Noah’s jaw ached where he was clenching it.

  He was waiting for word from the specialist unit that was making the area safe. However much he might want to drop down into the hole that had swallowed Marnie, he couldn’t. Not without backup. It could put her in more danger.

  At his side, Connie shivered.

  ‘Esther was always on about site safety. She was obsessed with it. She wouldn’t let anyone go anywhere without hard hats, steel-toe shoes, the full rig-out. She was responsible, she said.’ Connie shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t know it now, but she was such a happy girl, once. And funny. She could win a laugh from anyone. That’s why he fell in love with her, I expect. That and her common sense. Of the two of them, she was the sensible one. And so conscientious. If anyone got so much as a scratch it would be on her conscience and she couldn’t live with that. She said she couldn’t live …’

  More floodlights came on, drowning the site in white.

  Noah and Connie blinked, blind for a second.

  ‘Health and safety,’ Connie said. ‘What a joke.’

  42

  Esther filled the mouth of the tunnel, her face wet with the slick light jumping from the torch in her ex-husband’s hand.

  Matt looked like someone had skinned his face to bone. Seeing the murderer of his children, his worst nightmare. His monster.

  Behind Marnie, Clancy shuddered, nearly as scared as Matt. What had he witnessed to make him so afraid of the man he’d known as Terry Doyle?

  Esther said, ‘Matt,’ gently now.

  He cringed as if she’d struck him.

  Their eyes locked, a fused stare that stretched from terror at one end to pity at the other. A terrible pity, almost pitiless, and surely he could see … surely Matt could see that Esther had not forgotten or forgiven the woman she was when she destroyed their family.

  Clancy was holding on to Marnie. How was she going to get him past Esther and Matt? She couldn’t leave them down here like this. Too many ways it could end in disaster.

  ‘Esther …’ She wanted the woman to look at her, give some sign that she was here to help, not for punishment or retribution, or because her mind was lost again.

  Esther’s stare was locked to Matt. Thirsty. Drinking him up, his fear and all.

  What had she called him, back at the station?

  Her mirror.

  Marnie said, ‘Esther, we need to get out of here. Now.’

  The torch hung from Matt’s hand, swinging a little as he shook, marking stripes on the floor that hurt Marnie’s eyes.

  ‘I wanted to be back with my boys.’ His voice was pulled inside out by grief. ‘I ju
st wanted to be … with them.’

  Esther didn’t speak. Her shadow swallowed half the tunnel.

  Matt smashed the torch at the wall, screaming the next words: ‘You buried them alive! You buried my boys!’

  Clancy cringed into Marnie. She held him still, her eyes on Matt.

  ‘Fred and Archie. My boys!’ White spittle flew from his mouth. ‘Louisa … little Louisa. That wasn’t enough? You had to take them too? Down in the dark for years and years and years. Bones … they were just bones. I saw them like that, the way you left them!’

  ‘Matt …’ Esther’s face was a mask, rigid with remorse.

  ‘You warned me you’d do it.’ He moved his arm in Marnie’s direction. ‘She kept saying she’d kill herself and the children. No one but me believed her.’ A laugh cracked his voice in two. ‘The doctors said to keep sharp objects out of sight, as if that was all it took. I was always hiding stuff and she …’ his arm swung back to Esther, ‘you were always finding it, hoarding it, like a sick game we were playing. You were only happy when you were hiding pills and razor blades and pencils … But not them. I didn’t think you’d hide them. Not like that, not in the dark. They hated the dark. You know they hated the dark …’

  ‘I know. I do know. Matt, I’m so sorry …’

  ‘I kept some of your pills, did you know that? After they took you away, when they started asking why I hadn’t done something. Anything. I wanted proof that I’d tried to get you help.’ Across his shoulder to Marnie: ‘She wouldn’t take the pills. She said she couldn’t, when she was expecting Louisa. I put them out of reach of the children, on a high shelf …’

  Not too high for Clancy to reach. The boy’s fingers clutched coldly at hers.

  ‘Matt …’ Esther tried again.

  ‘She sharpened pencils all the time, to stab at herself … Holes in both ankles where she tried to find veins.’ He shivered, staring at the woman in front of him. ‘You have holes in your ankles, but nothing hurt you. Nothing stopped you. I didn’t.’

  His voice dropped abruptly. ‘I didn’t stop you.’

  He started to sob, his chest heaving. ‘I saved you. I saved your life. It’s my fault they’re dead. If I’d just let you do it … let you die. They would be alive. It’s my fault, mine.’