No Place to Die

by Donoghue, Clare

  To my family and friends.

  Your support means everything.

  I thrust my arms wildly above and around me in all directions. I felt nothing: yet dreaded to move a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls of a tomb.

  EDGAR ALLAN POE, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  NEVER LOOK BACK

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  PROLOGUE

  17th April – Thursday

  Maggie tried to run, but she couldn’t feel her feet. Her breath felt warm against her cheeks as each step pushed air out of her lungs. He was behind her. She could smell him: an earthy, feral scent chasing her through a labyrinth of hedges, trees and bare brick. She saw a door up ahead, its red paint peeling away from the doorknob, as if repulsed. As she reached out, it shook, shivered and vanished. She screamed herself awake until she lay panting, her lungs burning.

  She arched her back and let out a low groan, expelling the nightmare. Not even a street light penetrated the inky blackness of her room. Her tongue felt swollen and heavy in her mouth. Memories of the previous evening began to flit through her mind like a magic-lantern display. Had she had a lot to drink? She didn’t think so. She had been to his house. They had eaten dinner. He had been angry. They had fought. Then nothing: a void. She allowed her muscles to retract and draw her body back into a foetal position as she felt around for the duvet. Her hands felt heavy. Sleep was pulling at her, dragging her back under. She wanted to give in, but she was cold and yet she was sweating, her skin clammy beneath her cotton pyjamas. As she ran her hands over the freezing bed sheet she became conscious of a familiar odour. It was earthy – the smell of her parents’ front lawn after the rain. Her heart began to beat faster, a pain spreading and gripping her throat.

  This wasn’t her bed.

  She sat up, staring into the darkness. She reached up and touched her face. Her skin felt cool, slick, alien. ‘What?’ She turned her head from side to side, but there was no light to soften the darkness. ‘I can’t see. Please, help me.’ She stopped, her chest heaving. Her words sounded muted, almost lost by her leaden tongue. She listened. ‘What’s happening to me?’ Maggie tasted bile. It filled her mouth as adrenaline flooded her system. She tried to stand, but her head struck something solid above her. Her whole body was shaking, her teeth biting down on her tongue. She sat back and reached up, inching her hands higher and higher until they rested against a flat, marble-like surface. She pushed against it: no movement. She snatched her hands down and began rocking back and forth. ‘It’s all right. It’s okay.’ She drew her knees up to her chin, put her arms around her shins and held herself. Her head ached as she tried to pull her thoughts into focus. This wasn’t real. She was still dreaming. She began to count, slowing her breathing with each number, ignoring the aching in her bones and the slur in her voice.

  When her shivering body had settled enough for her to move again, she turned, until she was on her hands and knees in the empty space. God, she hoped it was empty. The counting was helping, but she needed more – she needed to break the silence. She began to sing as she crawled, crab-like, to her right. ‘One little elephant came out one day, upon a spider’s web to play,’ her voice trembled. She closed her eyes and forced out the words, ‘He – he had such tremendous fun that he called upon another elephant to come. Two . . . two little elephants came out one day, upon a spider’s web to—’

  She stopped, her head pulsing in rhythm with her voice as her hip struck something solid. With her palm flat, she crawled forward, running her fingers along the cool surface until she came to one corner, then another, and another, until she reached the fourth: the final wall enclosing her. She leaned closer, her nose pressed against the freezing surface. She took a deep breath. Soil, mud – it was earth, compacted earth, smoothed to a slick finish. ‘No, no . . . ’ Panic silenced her, like a shard of glass in her throat, tearing at the delicate tissue. An image of a grave flashed into her mind. She began to scream, all rational thought lost.

  She screamed until she didn’t know if she was screaming at all.

  CHAPTER ONE

  22nd April – Tuesday

  ‘I know,’ she said, waiting for the next line in what was a well-rehearsed piece. ‘Yes, Mother, I’m aware of that.’ Jane looked at the clock on the bottom right-hand side of her computer screen. ‘I agree. I’ll call as soon as I leave.’ The seconds ticked by. ‘Yes, clean ones are in his room.’ She resisted the temptation to drum her fingers on the desk. ‘That’s right, where they’re always kept.’ Jane could sense other people in the office beginning to tune into her conversation. ‘Nothing. There was no tone. Sorry – yes, you’re right. I’ll be home soon.’ Almost there. She hoped. ‘Before eight. Yes. Okay. Yes. Good. Thanks, Mum. Bye.’

  Detective Sergeant Jane Bennett put the phone back in its cradle, closed her eyes and let her head drop onto her desk with a thud.

  Her mother didn’t object to looking after Peter. Far from it. She was ‘happy to help’. Jane would have the words engraved on her mother’s tombstone: ‘Celia Bennett, beloved wife, mother and grandmother. “Happy to help”.’ The image relaxed Jane’s shoulders and she smiled. The ten-minute ear-bashing she had just endured was routine. The caveat to her mother’s favourite phrase was full entitlement to bitch and moan whenever the mood struck. Jane didn’t mind. Her working life didn’t allow for routine, something that her son craved. She couldn’t be there all the time. So every pick, veiled dig, subtle criticism or direct assault that her mother levelled against her was worth it.

  She lifted her head off the desk, using her fingertips to pull her fringe back into place. The heat of the day had all but gone. She turned and pulled her jacket off the back of her chair and slipped it on. Peter would be eight in June. When Jane looked at him she still saw the chubby, red-faced baby who was always hungry. That was before his autism had been diagnosed, before the invisible barrier separating mother and son had been explained. Eight years old. She couldn’t believe it. She would have to organize a party, get his friends over. Her mother would help. Jane rolled her eyes. It was an involu
ntary action, or rather a pre-emptive reaction to what her mother would say. She pushed the power button on her laptop and waited for it to shut down.

  One quick meeting with department heads, a briefing with the team and then she should be able to head home. She slipped her laptop into her bag, surveying the files on her desk, deciding what she needed to take home with her. She wanted to be ready the second the briefing was over. Peter had already picked out a book for tonight’s bedtime story. A bedtime story that Jane had promised to read to him. Her eyes settled on the most current file on the Stevens case. She shook her head. A serial killer in Lewisham. Five women dead. She couldn’t get her head round it. The man responsible was behind bars, had been for two months, but it wasn’t over. Not yet.

  She still had one girl to find.

  The young woman’s face had been a shadow, following Jane wherever she went. She picked up the file and two memory sticks and pushed them into her bag. It would take months – years – to erase the images that she and the rest of the team had witnessed. The killer’s two-bedroom semi could have been wallpapered with all the photographs found in his home-made darkroom. The majority were shots of his victims, names and faces Jane knew well, but there were a handful of pictures showing girls that no one knew. It was her job to identify and find them, to make sure they had been photographed – and nothing more. Two girls had been found safe and well, but the third? Only time would tell. Jane looked up and spotted her boss, DI Mike Lockyer, walking towards her. He returned her smile, but his pale skin and shadowed eyes didn’t match his expression.

  ‘Jane,’ he said, resting his arms on the partition that separated her desk from the rest of the open-plan office. ‘How are you getting on with the Schofield case?’

  ‘We’re pretty much there, sir,’ she said, reaching for the corresponding case file on her desk. ‘The husband’s with the custody sergeant downstairs. I don’t think it’ll take much to get him to talk.’ She watched Lockyer nod, rubbing his eyebrow, his fingers tugging at the skin around his eye. He had lost weight. He had the look of a sheet that had been left in the dryer too long: crumpled.

  ‘Are you leaving him for the morning then?’ he asked, no longer looking at her, his eyes no longer engaged.

  ‘Yes, in fact I was going to suggest Chris ran the interview,’ she said, putting the file back in its place, straightening the edges with her palms. She could see that he wasn’t really interested. In fact he had just about got by doing the bare minimum, since his return to the office three weeks ago.

  He was shaking his head, staring across the office. ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate, Jane, do you?’ he said. ‘Once Schofield’s admitted it, maybe; but to send Chris in at this stage – before we know we’ve got enough evidence to convict, with or without a confession – is just a risk. A risk I’m surprised you’re prepared to take, considering the mess the guy made of the wife. Have you even looked at the crime-scene images?’

  Jane sat back in her chair. His words didn’t bother her, and neither did the disapproval and judgement in his tone. But the look in his eyes made her stop and think about how to respond. She knew he was struggling to come to terms with what had happened on the Stevens case, but what more could she do? He wouldn’t talk to her; hadn’t talked to her. He hadn’t trusted her, and that hurt. More than she was willing to admit. She had always assumed that their relationship went beyond being mere colleagues; that he respected her, considered her a friend. His actions had proved her wrong on both counts. Now he prowled the office like some phantom from a horror movie, his eyes black, empty of reason. Most of the staff had taken tongue-lashings. But Lockyer was the boss. It wasn’t unusual to hear his shouts reverberating around south-east London’s murder-squad offices. But now he seemed to be going off the deep end about nothing, while overlooking something vital. She had been covering for him for weeks, but his behaviour had not gone unnoticed. Roger, the Senior Investigating Officer for the Lewisham squads, had already pulled Jane into his office and told her to keep an eye on him.

  ‘Not a problem, sir,’ she said now, her voice quiet, her words measured. ‘I’ll take Chris in with me on the initial interview and, if Schofield confesses, I’ll let Chris take over, under my direct supervision.’ She waited for some kind of response, or at least recognition, but there wasn’t any. ‘Are you happy for me to do that, sir?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s your case, Jane. Do what you like – you don’t need me to babysit you. I don’t need the details, just get it done. I’ve got enough on my plate.’ He ran his hands through his hair before dragging them down his face, his sallow skin pulled out of shape by the action. ‘I’ll see you in the briefing.’ With that, he turned and walked back across the room, into his office, closing the glass door behind him. The sun was setting outside his window. He sat motionless, his face silhouetted by the fading light. Jane couldn’t take her eyes off him. She wondered how long her boss could subsist on anger and regret.

  As she stood to leave, her mobile started to ring. She glanced down at the name on the screen. It was Sue, a fellow copper, albeit a retired one. They hadn’t spoken in months. Jane glanced at the clock mounted on one of the pillars in the centre of the open-plan office. It was ten past seven. Peter would be going to bed soon. The ringer on her phone seemed to increase in volume as if it could sense her indecision. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said, dropping back into her chair. ‘Sue, hey. How are you doing?’ Silence greeted her. ‘Hello,’ she said, straining to decipher the muffled sounds coming from the other end of the line. It was then that she heard a sniff. ‘Sue, are you okay?’

  ‘It’s Mark,’ Sue sobbed, more than said, down the phone. ‘He’s gone.’

  Jane felt a flood of relief that she had answered the call, but a tug of guilt that she wasn’t going to be reading Peter his bedtime story after all. She might just make it home for lights out. ‘Oh, Sue, I’m so sorry. What’s happened?’ she asked, sitting back in her chair. ‘I didn’t realize you guys were having problems again.’

  ‘What? No, Jane, it’s not that. He’s just gone. There’s blood, Jane . . . Mark’s gone.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  22nd April – Tuesday

  Three hours later Jane was standing in Sue Leech’s kitchen, surrounded by terracotta-coloured walls and ceramic wall hangings from trips abroad. Worktops lined the room, but there wasn’t an inch of space. Every surface was covered in ornaments, numerous glass paperweights, cookery books, sunglasses, paperbacks and drawings by the children. There were two noticeboards on the wall opposite the fridge overflowing with scraps of paper, receipts and more drawings, all held in place by a few coloured pins. In the centre of the room was a large pine dining table with six wheelback chairs. On any other day Sue’s kitchen would have been a perfect representation of a bustling family home.

  The forensic team was working in the utility room.

  Initial testing had revealed extensive blood-spatters on one wall. Scene-of-crime lights seemed to illuminate the entire rear of the house, as well as half the garden. Jane could see Mark’s herb garden, just beyond a small patio. It was his pride and joy, but somehow it looked spoiled by the glow cast over it. Whether the blood found was his remained to be seen. The lab had a major backlog from a gang-related incident that had happened over the Easter weekend. Three young lads had lost their lives, and another four had been injured. The side-street in Camberwell where it all happened was still a mess. Baseball-bats-versus-machetes was never going to be a fair fight. Jane turned away from the harsh spotlights and refocused her attention on her friend.

  Sue was sitting at the kitchen table answering questions in a monotone. She had lost weight since Jane had last seen her. The grey jumper she was wearing hung off her frame, her slim-fit blue jeans no longer tight. Her face looked gaunt, framed by an unkempt greying bob. Her appearance was understandable, given the circumstances, but Jane couldn’t help wondering what else was going on in Sue’s life. She looked like a woman who had been u
nder a considerable amount of stress for months, not hours. The constable conducting the interview was a new recruit to the Missing Persons team and couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. She looked pained to be at the centre of such emotional turmoil. She kept reaching over and touching Sue’s arm. The gesture showed a vulnerability that Jane wasn’t accustomed to witnessing from her own, more seasoned team. The majority of the DCs and DSs in the murder squad had been recruited by Lockyer – herself included. His position was clear: allowing personal feelings into a case clouded your judgement and led to mistakes. Not that he had observed his own rules. His behaviour on the Stevens case had made him a poster child in Lewisham nick for ‘what not to do’.

  The sound of the young constable’s voice brought Jane’s thoughts back into focus.

  ‘When did you arrive home?’ the constable asked.

  ‘Today, about six-fifteen,’ Sue said. ‘We spoke last night, Mark and I, about what time me and the kids would be home – what we should have for tea. He was going to cook a lasagne.’

  Jane replayed her own conversation with Sue when she had arrived at the house in Bromley three hours ago. On the drive over from Lewisham she had run through as many scenarios as she could think of, trying to find an explanation for Mark’s disappearance. In Catford, with the dregs of the rush-hour traffic slowing her progress and horns blaring, she had toyed with the idea that Mark might be having some kind of mid-life crisis, arriving home with a new haircut and a Porsche. She had dismissed the idea as stereotypical and stupid. Mark was an ex-copper: ‘rational’ was his middle name. As she had passed Beckenham Hill and negotiated her way around a three-car shunt, she had thought about the obvious scenario: that Mark had found someone else. Again, it hadn’t felt right. Mark and Sue had been together for thirty . . . thirty-five years. They had met on the force in their early twenties, married within two years and then spent the next fifteen working their way up in their respective departments. Thomas, their eldest son, had been born on Sue’s fortieth birthday, and George had arrived two years later. By the time Jane passed Millwall training ground she was running out of ideas. She knew that Mark had suffered from anxiety attacks since his retirement from the force five years ago. The transition from a detective chief inspector in the murder squad to stay-at-home dad and retiree had been tough. Sue had told Jane on several occasions that Mark felt redundant – without focus, emasculated somehow. She rubbed her eyes, resisting the urge to shake her head.