by Knight, Ali
He trudged the corridors, figure-eighting and wiping, and came to the kitchen, passing a straggle of inmates and two nurses who were moving in the other direction. Olivia was not among them.
Inside the kitchen the clattering of pans and the babble of voices was a welcome relief from the oppressive silence of the corridors.
He couldn’t see Chloe. She was working that day, he knew, but he didn’t even catch a glimpse of her. Instead he found Berenice roaming the room, rearranging chairs. She caught sight of him and came over and gave him a hug.
‘Darren!’
‘You’re in a good mood today,’ he said, the breath squeezed out of him.
‘You betcha!’ She picked up a tabloid from a table and gave its pages a shake. ‘Look at this man! He’s a big noise, an upstanding highly regarded member of the community. He’s a family man, but he’s been exposed as a multiple murderer. He’s confessed on camera to being one of Britain’s worst ever serial killers. Worse even than Duvall.’
Darren looked at the paper she was holding. A middle-aged man in a suit and tie stared out of a photo. Gert Becker had been sniping at Darren’s subconscious all morning – snippets on the radio at breakfast at home, the front pages of the newspapers people held up in the coffee shop in Clapham, the headlines on a pile of freebies outside the tube station. It was an extraordinary case. The millionaire businessman from Birmingham had confessed on camera to kidnapping, raping and murdering fourteen women and girls over a period of nineteen years. He had targeted runaways, prostitutes and foreigners – had bought girls from criminal gangs operating out of five European countries. He had made his confession from his fishing boat in Great Yarmouth, over whose very sides he had thrown the corpses into the North Sea.
He knew the names of only seven of his victims; just five were registered as missing at all.
Gert Becker hadn’t been alone when he made his confession. Someone had taken the video and posted copies of it to the UK’s major news outlets. Becker was found the previous day, hanging by a noose from the side of his boat in what first indications had suggested was suicide.
Berenice was flushed, anger and disdain chasing themselves round her fleshy face. ‘It makes you think, doesn’t it, how cheap the lives of women are. So cheap they can be thrown away like a used tissue. The police didn’t even know a crime had been committed. These women we serve in here are saints by comparison! This man was cold, calculating, unspeakable.’
‘You obviously feel very strongly about it,’ Darren said.
‘Yes I do. Oh Darren, today is a good day, a magnificent day. When justice is finally done, the world is a better place.’ She stopped and stared at him as if for the first time. ‘My God, what happened to your head?’
He couldn’t explain it, but he felt the panic of tears beginning to form and he didn’t want her to see them. She was so happy and the day was so bright and summery and he was so tired and ground down. But Berenice did notice, and took a step towards him and put her fleshy hand on his arm. ‘I was beaten up last night—’
‘I’m so sorry.’ She shook her head. ‘It makes you doubt everything, it makes you hate yourself.’ She squeezed his arm. ‘I know how it feels because it’s happened to me. I’m going to make you a cake, make you feel better.’
A tear dribbled down his cheek. Here in this kitchen was the kindness of strangers, something the girls who encountered Gert Becker had never found, something that Carly had needed so desperately.
Berenice had the good grace to stand in front of him to block his tears from the team in the kitchen behind her. ‘You’re going to be fine, it’ll just take a while. I’ve got to bake like mad for market day tomorrow – it’s full on production at the lock-up – so I’ll bring one in on Monday. Comfort food, there’s nothing like it.’
She pushed a pile of trays further down the counter and turned back to him, wiping her hands down her apron. Her voice was quiet when she spoke. ‘When I was attacked I was like you, I was very young. But I knew that one day I would feel better.’
Darren nodded, scrubbing the floor furiously with his mop, half imagining Kamal’s face under the water-soaked strands of cloth. She was talking a lot of sense.
‘I knew I would be over it when I got my revenge.’
Darren looked up at her. ‘And did you get your revenge?’
She gave Darren a strange look that he didn’t understand. ‘Completely.’
69
Helen was coming out of Roehampton with a leaving card for Dr Chowdray. He was moving to Oxford and she needed to get the staff to sign it before they all left for the day.
She came out of the staff entrance by the kitchens and found a group of women on a smoking break. One of them was Chloe. ‘Hiya Dr McCabe,’ she said.
‘Oh hello, Chloe, isn’t it? Please call me Helen.’
‘That was a nice drink at the pub the other night.’
‘Yes, it was nice to sit outside in this wonderful weather.’
‘Darren’s been amazing, hasn’t he?’
For a horrid moment Helen wondered if Chloe knew all about Darren and her, but then she realised that she was just being friendly. ‘Yes indeed.’
‘He’s been through a lot though, hasn’t he? Seeing that attack, and his mum’s got cancer, did you know that?’
‘Oh, I didn’t. I’m sorry.’ So Darren had a sick mother – that was a turn-up. He hadn’t felt able to share that with her. She felt for him – distractions were what he had been seeking, she understood that.
‘Even his dog Chester died recently – it can all pile up, can’t it?’
Helen nodded at that. ‘That’s too true, Chloe, isn’t it? Here girls, Dr Chowdray’s leaving us for the green and pleasant lands of Oxford.’
They oohed and aahed and she held out the card.
They reached for the pen and filled the blank space with well-intentioned scribbles. ‘Thanks.’ She skirted the car park to enter the building via another door, thinking she needed to remember to talk to building services about the fag butts littering the entrance.
So Darren’s dog had died. Helen had never liked dogs, though she did sometimes wonder whether it was time to get an aquarium. Chester the fish. She smiled. It was a good name.
Helen stopped. When her brain made connections the world held its breath, as if waiting for a stone to land in a well. Chester. One of Olivia’s victims had had a puppy called Chester. Her mother had come to the prison recently – because she had cancer.
The stone hit water at the bottom of the well. Carly Evans had a brother.
Helen ran for the door and through security. She took the stairs to her office two at a time, burst in, typed her computer password and scrolled through Olivia’s file. She had to be sure, but with every second that passed she knew with greater certainty.
The page with the details of the victims was before her on screen. Carly Evans. Her mother was Melanie, father Andy. They lived in Streatham. Carly had a brother called Darren.
It was him. He had been in Olivia’s room that night at St George’s.
As Helen ran out of her office and along to security she thought of many things, none of them good: grooming, revenge, obsession, copycats and the fact that she had been used. Darren hadn’t dated her because he liked older women or was intrigued by his boss or because he fancied a fuck: he did it because he had wanted information. Their affair would not stay secret after this and the one thing that Helen prized above all others, the thing she never wanted to lose, was at stake: her professional reputation.
‘Lockdown! Put this place into lockdown!’ she screamed at Sonny.
Sonny took one look at Helen’s face and felt the sharp stab of action, so long anticipated, never before deployed. Her face was livid, her hair flying. ‘Now!’ she screamed.
Sonny turned to the big red button on the wall, its protective sheet of perspex reflecting the light. He was confused: he had seen nothing untoward on the security cameras, had had no phone call; but he was bein
g given his chance and he was taking it, because he had waited for nineteen years. He got up, balled his fist and smashed it on to that big red button.
When he turned back round Helen was already gone but the noise – short, pulsing firecrackers of sound – was beautiful to him.
70
Darren was pushing open the last exit door at the end of his shift when the siren went off. Nathan, standing by the security barrier, hurriedly reached for the radio on his belt.
The siren was making Darren’s mind jump in crazy directions. He let the door fall shut behind him and glanced back over his shoulder. He saw the way Nathan was looking at him as he listened to whatever was being said by the person at the other end of the radio.
Darren ran.
He heard Nathan shouting behind him. He was out in the car park. The siren was louder out here; people stopped and turned. He had just seconds to spare. The bike racks were at the far end of the car park. He dodged parked cars and raced towards them, pulling the keys from his pocket.
Nathan and another man were in pursuit, blocking his path to the exit gate.
‘Darren,’ Nathan called, slowing down and walking towards him, ‘stop and we can work this out. It’ll be a misunderstanding, mate.’
Nathan didn’t know yet what was at stake, but Darren needed to be gone from here, right now. Behind him was a bank where shrubs grew and beyond that a low chain-link fence by the road.
He could hear the faint shrill of a police siren.
‘That’s it, mate,’ Nathan said slowly, his hands out wide like he was herding sheep. ‘Just come back inside and we can talk this through.’
Darren picked up his bike and ran up the bank, hurling it over the fence into the road.
Nathan ran at him as he vaulted over, a car screeching to a halt. He began to climb the fence, shouting at Darren to stop.
Darren got on the bike and pedalled away.
71
Orin was standing checking a press release over his secretary’s shoulder. It was about to be emailed to all news outlets and put up on The Missing’s website. A photo of Darren with his new shorter haircut had been screen-grabbed from the security camera Orin had running in the office reception and blown up. He looked thoughtful, committed, respectable. It was perfect. The fact that Darren hadn’t actually agreed it with Orin didn’t concern him; he hadn’t got where he was by toeing the line. ‘Send it,’ he told her.
Two minutes later Orin got a call from the man he’d sent to tail Darren. ‘That guy on the pushbike’s just done something really stupid, from what I can tell.’
Orin listened to the story, hung up and stood very still. He walked back into his office and closed the door. He unlocked the bottom drawer in his desk, pulled out his washbag and carried it into the toilet.
Darren got off his bike in a housing estate in south-west London and stood in the road. He didn’t know where to go. He didn’t know what to do. He had a crushing sense that his life, in the form he had lived it up until now, was over. And the worst thing was he couldn’t get out of his head the idea of Olivia lying on her cell bed, enjoying his failure, revelling in her victory.
What had he achieved in the month he had been cleaning at the hospital, trying to get to her? Precisely nothing. He had got Linda killed, nearly got arrested and stuck in an incinerator, had alienated his family by getting into bed with Orin Bukowski, had lied to those he loved.
He had got Molly back. That was something; but it had come at a heavy price. Her bones had raised as many questions as they had answered. Closure, Darren realised, was not something that you were given, it was something you found within yourself.
Murder laughed at him.
He lashed out and punched a lamp-post, then snatched his hand back with the pain, his knuckles cut and bruised. Tears stung his hot eyes.
He was out of time and he clung desperately, like a man at sea, to the only thing he had that could keep him afloat: Rollo McFadden. This was the only clue he could still pursue. Why had Olivia given him this information? He had to go to Orin’s to take a look at what he had.
He needed to move fast, before Orin got hold of the news of what had happened at Roehampton.
He tried phoning Orin but there was no answer, from either his mobile or his office. He tried again: nothing.
Darren got back on his bike and began the long ride to Orin’s office on the South Bank.
72
Melanie was feeling sick again, a great wave of nausea overwhelming her like sea water on a harbour wall. One of the drugs in the cocktail she was taking was making her skin itch so that she couldn’t sit still, so the doorbell ringing was a relief – she could distract herself by going to open the door.
When she saw the two policemen standing there in uniform, she didn’t react. She was calm. Uniformed police had visited her door often at the beginning of that hellish ten-year period. It was with considerable surprise, though, that she listened to them say that they were here about Darren.
Andy was at her shoulder now as she invited them in to the house. The itching of her arm was intense now, burrowing deep into her tissues.
‘We’re looking for Darren urgently.’
‘Why?’
‘We really need to speak to him. Do you know where he is?’
‘He’s at work.’
‘Did you know that he was working at Roehampton High-Security Hospital?’
Melanie was too surprised to reply.
‘He works at King’s College Hospital, in the records department,’ Andy said.
The policemen looked at each other. ‘It seems he faked an identity and was working as a cleaner to gain access to—’
Melanie took a quick step forward to counter what she knew was coming. ‘That is rubbish.’
The policemen looked at each other again.
Melanie didn’t answer. She walked out of the room and took the stairs two at a time to Darren’s bedroom. When Andy and the police officers came into the room behind her, she was already rifling through disorganised piles of paper and drawing pads, cigarette papers and clothing.
‘As you can appreciate, this is a serious security breach and Darren has committed fraud,’ a police officer said. There are concerns that he may have passed Olivia Duvall inappropriate material, or been subjected to influence that may be dangerous.’
‘Dangerous to who?’ snapped Melanie.
‘The public, Mrs Evans. As a relative of a victim he is in an acutely dangerous position having access to Olivia Duvall. Inmates such as her are manipulative and potentially a danger to those they interact with.’
Melanie’s itching was overtaken by her anger.
‘Darling, what are you looking for?’ Andy asked desperately.
Clothes were raining down from shelves, dusty video game cases clattering to the floor. ‘He told me he was seeing someone he worked with—’
She stopped, her hand on a cheap blue polyester top. She unfolded it and froze. There, above where Darren’s heart would be, was Roehampton High-Security Hospital’s logo.
Melanie turned to Andy and felt herself tipping sideways. Her desire to find Carly had made her go through the madness of meeting the Witch, and inspired by her, Darren had chosen his own, more extreme and dangerous version of the same thing. She was convinced she herself had sown the seeds of his destruction.
And as so often in recent times, as she fell to the floor she saw Andy reaching out in a desperate attempt to save her.
73
The ride to Orin’s building took Darren forty minutes. He tried to go up to his office, but when he got there the door was locked and no one was around. He cursed silently. He had hit a dead end. He came back out into the street and walked round the corner to a walkway by the river. He tried calling Orin again but there was still no answer. He hung up and saw that he had two missed calls, the first from his mum.
When he played back her message it nearly broke his heart.
‘Darren? Where are you? You need to com
e home. The police are here. They say you’ve been seeing the Witch.’ Her voice caught in her throat. ‘You need to ring me and tell me it’s not true.’
The next person on the voicemail was Chloe. ‘You lying toad! I don’t even know what your name is. I hate you! I trusted you, I shared things with you and you lied! Over and over again.’ She didn’t say goodbye when she cut the call.
He took his phone and hurled it as high and as far as he could into the river, then stood staring at the grey swirling surface. He stood there for a long time, marooned. He knew he had to go home and face the music, but he couldn’t do it. He was a coward and he couldn’t do it.
He looked about him. He was near Borough Market, where Berenice was baking cakes to sell in the morning. She would give him a sympathetic ear; she wouldn’t condemn him for trying to get to the truth. Hadn’t she only this morning revelled in the revenge she herself had enacted on the man who had attacked her? Her reaction to the paedophile in the paper this morning convinced him that Berenice’s was where he needed to go.
The market was closing when Darren got there, road sweepers cleaning away blown-about newspapers and takeaway cartons, council refuse trucks emptying huge rubbish bins that made the unpleasant summer smells of the city puff across the expanses of tarmac. Borough Market had once been the capital’s premier fruit and veg market, sheltering under the railway lines that tangled their way from Blackfriars and London Bridge stations to south-east England, boxed in by Victorian buildings in no regular pattern. During the day asparagus from Surrey and apples from Kent crowded next to expensive fudge stalls for tourists and tables groaning with French cheese, and at night bars and restaurants did brisk trade selling food from every corner of the globe.