It was the first thing she’d said after Granville had unlocked the sliding door and they’d pulled her in from the balcony.
‘Did you father lock you out there?’ Ellen asked.
Her voice came out harsher than she’d intended. She was still recovering from the shock of seeing the woman’s face appearing as if from nowhere. And the immediate, terrifying thought that the face at the window was her dead sister, Eilish.
‘I was trying to study,’ Cosima said. ‘There was a knock on the door and I thought it was Nick. He does that sometimes, comes over to surprise me. I ran to answer it and when I saw my father standing there, I knew he’d found out about us …’
‘So he put you on the balcony,’ Ellen said. ‘Why?’
She was a parent herself and knew how she’d feel if one of her children ended up going out with a friend of hers. Even so, Cooper’s reaction seemed extreme.
‘He’s jealous,’ Cosima said, her voice flat and without emotion.
Everything Ellen had thought until now shifted and changed. Pete Cooper and his own daughter?
‘I’m so sorry,’ Ellen said. ‘I had no idea.’
‘No.’ Cosima shook her head. ‘It’s not what you think.’
‘So tell me,’ Ellen said. ‘What is it then? What am I missing, Cosima?’
‘I’ll explain,’ Cosima said. ‘But first you need to find Nick. My father will kill him. You have to find them before it’s too late.’
Ellen thought of Abby’s phone, going straight to voicemail. Beside her, Alastair sighed and she knew he was thinking the same thing as she was.
They were already too late.
* * *
He jerked awake suddenly, woken by the screaming. His good eye opened and he looked around, disoriented. No memory of where he was or why Charlotte was screaming.
The crack of a slap and the screaming stopped.
‘No!’ Pete’s voice.
‘Sorry.’
Memories rose and fell inside his head like dust. Settled into something that made a sort of sense. And with understanding came the fear.
‘I told you before,’ Pete said, his voice rising the way it did when he was angry or impatient. ‘You don’t hit women. Never, you hear?’
‘Charlie?’
She was nearby. He could hear her crying quietly, a sound as familiar as his own breathing. Her crying had never touched him when he was the cause of the tears but now, when it was someone else’s fault, he felt a sharp, unexpected stab of pity for her.
‘Over here.’
Pete crossed the room in front of Nick, disappeared out of view again. Nick tried to swivel his head around to see what Pete was doing but a shaft of pain up his neck stopped him. A moment later, Pete was back, dragging a snivelling Charlotte with him.
Pete pushed Charlotte onto the sofa opposite Nick and sat beside her. Kept his hand wrapped around her upper arm. Charlotte stared at Nick, blue eyes wide and terrified. Her face was deathly white with the exception of a deep red mark across her right cheek where Pete’s bastard sidekick, Clive, had whacked her. She looked sober. Might be better if she was drunk. Clive was a nasty brute who Nick tried to avoid whenever he could.
‘Nick, what’s happening?’
Pete shook her arm and told her to shut up. When she cowered away from him, self-loathing washed through Nick.
‘I’m sorry.’ He was speaking to both of them, wanted them to understand there was no need for any of this. ‘Pete, it’s not what you think. I swear to you. And none of it has anything to do with Charlotte. She doesn’t even know, for God’s sake. Let her go at least. Please?’
‘Seems you and me are the last to find out, love,’ Pete said, speaking to Charlotte.
‘Is this to do with Kieran?’ Charlotte asked.
Pete chuckled. ‘You poor cow. You haven’t a clue, have you?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Charlotte said. ‘I’ve had enough of not knowing. I don’t care that Kieran’s dead but he was living with our daughter and she’s broken-hearted and I care about that.’
Pete slammed his fist on the arm of the sofa, making Charlotte jump.
‘This isn’t about that scumbag,’ he said. ‘It’s about him!’
He pointed at Nick.
‘She’s been my life’s work, you know. Everything I’ve done, it’s been so I can keep her safe, protect her from men who only want one thing. Men who don’t care that she’s the purest, most perfect human being who ever lived. After her mother died, I made Cosima a promise. She was only a kid then, didn’t understand it. Not at first. It took time and dedication and self-sacrifice. Words that mean nothing to a self-serving piece of shit like you. Did you stop for one minute to even think about what you were doing? Did it never occur to you that she was special? Did it fuck. You’re like every other prick, aren’t you? Took one look at her and all you could think about was getting into her knickers.’
‘Nick?’ Charlotte’s voice wobbled. She sounded lost, like a little girl. It reminded him of Freya and the pain of what he was about to lose hit him afresh.
‘It’s not like that, Pete. Swear to you. I love her. I really, really love her and I’d never do a single thing to hurt her. I wanted to tell you but she wouldn’t let me.’
‘Shut up!’
Pete stood and suddenly he was towering over Nick, specks of spittle landing on Nick’s face as Pete shouted at him.
‘It’s too fucking late, you lying pig. You’ve ruined everything. How can I look at her again, knowing what she’s been up to with you?’
Nick’s stomach flipped. It had been there all along, staring him in the face. Except he’d been so stupid, so naively besotted with her that it had never occurred to him for a single moment.
‘You bastard,’ he said. ‘Your own daughter. Jesus fucking wept.’
‘No.’ Pete leaned down, shoved his face into Nick’s. ‘You accusing me of being some dirty pervert, Nick? You think I’d do that to my own kid? You’re even worse than I thought, you know that? Christ, how could she? How could she?’
Pete slapped him hard across the face. Slapped him again and might have kept slapping if Clive hadn’t shouted at him to stop.
‘Not here,’ Clive said. ‘We don’t want to do it here, Pete, remember?’
Charlotte started to say something but Pete lunged across the room, grabbed her, put his finger on her lips and spoke softly to her.
‘Hush, hush, sweet Charlotte. You need to stay quiet now. It’ll be easier that way.’
Charlotte pulled her head back and started to speak. Shut up pretty quickly when Pete pulled a gun from inside his coat and pressed it against her face.
A flash of light on metal as Clive moved closer. A wide-bladed hunting knife in his right hand. Nick pressed his body against the chair, as if that could protect him. He started crying, begging for his life, telling Pete over and over that he’d got it all wrong.
‘I love her,’ he screamed. ‘And she loves me.’
Clive lifted the knife. Nick screamed louder. Saw the knife flash through the air, pass down in front of him without touching. Realised, when his mind started working again, that Clive was untying the rope around his ankles. Not killing him. Not yet.
Clive reached around, cut the ropes on Nick’s wrists and pulled him up. Pressed the knife against Nick’s throat and laughed.
‘Think I’d be stupid enough to do it here?’
Clive pulled Nick through the conservatory towards the front door. More than once, Nick stumbled and the knife pricked his skin, causing trickles of blood to roll down his neck and soak into the collar of his shirt.
Outside, the boot of Nick’s car was open and Charlotte was climbing into it. Pete kept the gun on her until she was completely inside. Then he slammed down the lid, locked it and turned to Nick.
‘Your turn now,’ he said.
Pete’s Jaguar 4x4 was parked, boot already open. Waiting. Nick shook his head, tried to pull away from Clive’s iron grip, but he ha
d no strength left. He was dragged closer and closer to the open boot, like Jonah being swept along the water into the mouth of the whale. He dug his heels into the ground, trailing gravel and muck as he went.
‘I won’t get in there,’ he said.
Pete slammed the gun against the side of Nick’s face. Nick slumped against the car. Saw Pete moving towards him. Tried to kick out but couldn’t get his legs working. Felt his feet lifting as Pete grabbed his ankles. Felt Clive move behind him and shove him forward, face first into the waiting, unwelcoming darkness.
Seventeen
Ellen drove. Blue light flashing the whole way. Siren screaming as she swerved in and out of the heavy traffic, swearing at drivers who didn’t pull over quickly enough to let them pass. At Blackheath she passed a grey Jaguar 4x4 pulling out of Heath Lane. She raced past it and turned into the first house at the top of the lane.
Cosima was in the back of the car. She’d begged to come with them and Ellen had relented because she didn’t want to wait until a back-up team arrived to take care of her. Plus, she thought the girl might be a useful bargaining tool when she confronted Cooper.
No cars in the driveway but that didn’t mean there was no one home. She jumped from the car and ran up the steps to the front porch. When she touched the door it swung open. The fear she’d been trying so hard to control flamed up inside her. Images of Abby lying dead or injured filled her brain. She tried to push them down, make her mind go blank, but the fear wouldn’t let her.
She shouted at Alastair to stay with Cosima while she searched the house. She moved around the side of the hall, keeping close to the wall, head moving left and right, eyes darting around the room, catching the dark corners, checking for any sign of an ambush. Two doors on either side. Ellen started with the two on the left.
The first room was the living room. Two pristine, floral-patterned sofas sat facing each other either side of the giant-sized fireplace. Ellen and Abby had sat side by side on one of them. Abby had been wearing a pair of dark blue Diesel jeans and a crisp white shirt. Hair tied back in a tidy ponytail. Looking young and beautiful and invincible.
And dead. The image changed. Abby’s head thrown back. A bullet-hole through her chest. A dark stain spreading across her white shirt and out across the back of the white sofa. No! Ellen wouldn’t believe it and if she didn’t believe it, then it couldn’t happen. They would find her.
The next room she checked was a library. A pretentious, wood-panelled room with dark shelves and rows of boring-looking business books sitting – incongruously – alongside a collection of poetry anthologies. Something not right in here. She couldn’t put her finger on it at first. The room was perfectly tidy. Then her brain registered the anomaly. Over in the corner, a book lay face-down and open. From where she stood, Ellen could read the title. A collection of poems by the Irish poet, WB Yeats.
Do you like poetry, Detective?
There was such perfect order in the room that the book, lying as if it had been thrown, told another story. Ellen listened to the silence of the house, hoping to hear Abby’s voice calling out, telling Ellen she was still alive.
She checked the rest of the house, even though she knew it was pointless. There was no one here. The back door had been forced open, which proved Cooper had been here. There were splatters of blood in the conservatory and a turned-over chair. But Pete Cooper, Nick and Abby were gone. Whatever Cooper was planning to do, it wasn’t going to happen here in Gleeson’s house.
* * *
Sam was back. Calling for her. Abby remembered being cold and scared, but that was a long time ago. Now, all she wanted was for it to be over. To be with Andy, back home in East Sussex. A family again. The way they were meant to be.
‘It doesn’t hurt,’ Andy was telling her. His dear, lost voice whispering to her. For so long, this was all she’d wanted. To be with him again just one more time so she could capture every bit of him, savour him, and maybe then – if she had that one final chance – she would be better able to remember him.
‘It doesn’t hurt.’
He was wrong. It never stopped hurting.
* * *
In the kitchen, Alastair was on the phone, arranging for a trace on Gleeson’s car. Cosima sat at the table, watching him. Ellen was on her mobile, calling for back-up. They needed to search the house and surrounding area, not stopping until they found Abby.
A utility room led off the main kitchen. A washing machine, tumble dryer and a large chest freezer took up most of the space. The only other items in the room were several black plastic refuse bags stacked against the wall near the freezer.
‘And Cooper’s car,’ she called to Alastair.
Ellen lifted one of the bags, testing the weight of it. Heavy but nowhere near human body heavy. Even so, something about it piqued her attention. As she bent to look inside, she heard Alastair repeating back something he’d just been told.
‘A grey Jaguar, XE model. Registration PN32 ONW.’
In Ellen’s brain, the synapses sizzled and connected. A flash of memory. Abby overexcited, hyper after her date with Sam the lawyer. Walking to Cooper’s front door, passing his shiny new car.
‘Shit.’
She dropped the bag and ran back into the kitchen.
‘Cooper’s car! We just missed them. They turned left onto Elliot Vale. She replayed the moment, trying desperately to see which way Cooper had gone after he’d turned out of Heath Lane. But she’d been so focussed on getting to Abby, she hadn’t paid any attention to it.
‘We just missed them,’ she repeated. She grabbed Alastair’s arm. ‘We may not be too late. Tell Malcolm to get all units on this. Cooper can’t have gone far.’
Their first flicker of hope. She clung onto it. Abby was still alive. They would find her. Every cell in her body was focussed on finding Pete Cooper’s car. All thought of the black plastic bags and the freezer completely forgotten.
Eighteen
The terror was all-consuming, paralysing. Curled up inside the black boot, her body jerked from side to side as the car twisted and turned its way towards her certain death. At first, her mind shut down, unable to process what was going on. Which was infinitely better than what happened after that. When the overload of images rushed in to fill every corner of the dark space inside her head. Nick and Cosima. Kieran’s hands pushing up the inside of her legs. Cosima’s perfect face and huge dark eyes that hid all her secrets. A hand holding a knife, plunging into Kieran’s body over and over and over. The same hand on the steering wheel of a car. Ginny caught in the headlights, eyes wide open, scared. The screech of brakes blocking out her friend’s screams as the car roared towards her.
She needed to pee. Only realised how desperate she was when her bladder muscles relaxed and a stream of piss soaked its way through her pants and Jaeger trousers. Filling the small space with its bitter stench.
The warm water cooled, turned to ice that stuck to her clothes and seeped into her bones, making her shiver until her teeth chattered. Freezing cold, she wrapped her arms tight around her body and tried not to think about what would happen when the car stopped.
* * *
WPC Laura McKeown was pulling into the driveway of the big house on Heath Lane as Ellen Kelly came running out.
‘Here comes trouble,’ Gary murmured, unbuckling his seat belt and climbing out. ‘Get ready, Laura.’
Laura got out too, not bothering to answer. Gary Locke was an idiot. She smiled at Ellen but got no smile in response, just a series of short-fire instructions to search the house and call Ellen as soon as they found anything. Or anyone. And then Ellen was gone, jumping into the car with Alastair Dillon and speeding off, leaving a cloud of dust in the air after her.
‘Who’s the bird in the back?’ Gary asked.
‘Cosima Cooper,’ Laura said, recognising the girl from the photos on the board in the incident room.
Gary pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit up.
‘We’re mea
nt to be searching the house,’ Laura said.
‘No rush, is there?’ Gary said. ‘You go on in. I’ll just have my nicotine hit and I’ll be right in.’
‘You’d better,’ she said.
In fact, she didn’t care less if he stayed out here smoking. She would rather be on her own, anyway. Saved her ears from having to listen to his endless, pointless stream of chat.
Ellen had left the front door open and Laura walked inside, stood in the massive hallway, wondering where to begin. It would take time to search this place properly. Especially if she was doing it alone.
She looked over her shoulder, saw Gary standing in the same spot, smoking his cigarette and looking like he was in no hurry to start working. Sod him. If she found anything, Laura would make damn sure he didn’t try to pretend he’d had any hand in helping her.
Unsure what exactly she was looking for, Laura moved slowly through the rooms. She had her phone with her, making notes into the voice-recorder so she could use them later to write up her report.
She worked her way through the ground floor, noting a book on the floor in the library, an upturned chair and splashes of something that looked like blood in the conservatory. Downstairs, in the basement kitchen – bigger than the entire size of Laura’s small flat in Ladywell – there were more signs that something bad had happened here. Rust-coloured splashes across the white marble worktop that looked like blood; a broken glass on the ground, shards of glass crunching under her feet as she walked towards the utility room at the back.
‘Washing machine, dryer,’ she recorded. ‘Cupboard full of cleaning materials. Large chest freezer in the far corner. Black plastic refuse bags stacked in a row near the freezer.’
She paused her recording to examine the bags. They hadn’t been tied up and she saw a ready-meal carton sticking out from one of them.
She pressed the Pause button on her recording App and continued speaking.
‘First bag has food inside it. Boxes of ready meals. Frozen. Defrosting, actually. Like someone’s just taken them …’
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