Tastes Like Fear (D.I. Marnie Rome 3)

by Sarah Hilary

‘Tarvin.’ Welland pulled at his upper lip. ‘She’s the nosy neighbour?’

  ‘She keeps a record,’ Marnie said, ‘of everyone who comes within eight feet of her front door.’

  ‘That’s a lot of wasted paper.’

  ‘Faster than processing CCTV.’

  ‘So’s a striking snail, but I wouldn’t put one forward as a witness for the CPS. You’re doing house-to-house?’

  Marnie nodded. ‘But not everyone’s as keen to talk to us as Mrs Tarvin.’

  ‘You astound me.’ Welland snorted. ‘Communal living at its finest. Last time I was on the Garrett, I’d have lit a fire just to keep the chill away. No one knows anyone else, or cares. Security’s a joke. Don’t bother checking the CCTV. It packed up years ago. No expense spent … From what DS Carling tells me, it’s got worse recently.’

  ‘Mrs Tarvin agrees. She has a particular problem with a group of teenage girls.’

  ‘Kids,’ Welland said disgustedly. ‘They lowered the age of criminal responsibility for a reason, but most of the time we can’t arrest them, never mind prosecute. They know it, too. I’ve seen six- and seven-year-olds working their patch, popping out to pick up Mum’s prescription from whichever lowlife’s dealing her a day’s oblivion. If this girl’s gone to ground on the Garrett, good luck finding her.’ He tapped his teeth with his thumbnail, shaking his head. ‘May Beswick has more sense than to set foot in that shithole.’

  ‘As far as we know,’ Noah said.

  Welland cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘Your pessimism does you credit, Detective.’ He nodded at Marnie. ‘Buy DS Jake a large coffee to go with that.’

  Marnie did as she was told, standing in the street outside the police station to drink coffee with Noah. ‘We should speak with the Beswicks.’

  ‘It’s been weeks since we had any news for them.’ Noah shielded his eyes from the glare coming off the station’s windows. ‘What if we’re raising their hopes for nothing?’

  Marnie worked the lid off her coffee. ‘When the press get hold of the story from last night, May’s parents will be on the phone wanting news. I’d rather call them before they do that.’

  ‘You still think it might be May? Mrs Tarvin mistook her for a prostitute, or a drunk.’ Noah frowned. ‘Assuming she was mistaken. Without a proper ID, how much can we tell them?’

  Marnie drank a mouthful of coffee before she answered. ‘They’ll see a connection because that’s what they need. This girl is alive. They’ll want to believe she’s May. I would, in their place.’

  ‘I wonder how Loz is coping.’ Noah felt a pang for the Beswicks’ younger daughter. ‘Poor kid.’

  Loz was thirteen, prickly with intelligence. Living in a house that was cracking apart under the stress of her sister’s disappearance. May was sixteen, with no good reason to leave home, or none Marnie and Noah had uncovered. Fearing the worst was easy. The hard part was hoping for the best.

  ‘Any news from the hospital about Logan Marsh or Ruth Eaton?’ he asked.

  ‘Logan’s condition remains critical. Ruth’s stable, for now.’

  ‘If we find this girl … will Traffic want to charge her?’

  ‘With what? A public order offence?’ Marnie’s blue eyes were dark, serious. ‘They’ll go after Joe Eaton if they can. They’ll want to know why he swerved instead of braking, how he ended up on the wrong side of the road while going fast enough for a smash on that scale. He said she wasn’t running, so why wasn’t there time to brake, or slow down? He’ll have to answer some hard questions, especially if no one else witnessed what happened.’

  ‘Do you think Mrs Tarvin was right about her being drunk, or drugged?’

  ‘Trouble, that was the word she used. New, and trouble. I don’t think Mrs Tarvin has much time for kids of any description.’

  ‘No family photos. Odd for someone of her generation not to have kids, or grandkids.’

  ‘Families fall out. And split up.’

  ‘She’s living alone up there. I wouldn’t want that for my gran, would you?’

  ‘I think she’s making a decent fist of it.’ A dry tinge to her voice. ‘But no, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘We did house-to-house on the Garrett after May first went missing. Same part of Lambeth. No one saw anything, not even Mrs Tarvin.’

  ‘No,’ Marnie agreed. ‘This girl’s found a change of clothes from somewhere. It’s possible she lives on the Garrett, or knows someone who does.’

  Not May Beswick, in other words.

  ‘D’you think she knows Natalie Filton or Abi Gull, our friendly neighbourhood arsonists?’

  ‘Let’s not take Mrs Tarvin’s word for everything.’ Marnie dropped her empty coffee cup into a litter bin. ‘And let’s see the Beswicks before this story breaks.’

  Sean and Katrina Beswick lived in a terraced house on Taybridge Road, not far from Clapham Common. The house was bay-windowed, clinging to its original features the way a pensioner clung to her handbag on pension day. The neighbours had put up a pierced cement wall, but the Beswicks had a privet hedge that until recently had been kept trim. In the last three months, it had grown a shaggy fringe.

  May’s father opened the door, face falling when he saw Noah and Marnie.

  ‘No news,’ Marnie said, knowing the news he feared. ‘We’re still looking for May.’

  ‘Come through.’ He held the door wide.

  They followed him to the sitting room. At six foot four, Sean was the only one on eye-level with the pictures he’d hung too high up the walls. Inoffensive landscapes, the kind Dan described as middle-class graffiti. A rack of wine bottles filled the gutted fireplace. No books. Flat-screen TV and shelves of glassware, sticky with dust. White walls, lots of empty space. An estate agent would’ve called the house bright and sunny. But it wasn’t, bent double under the weight of its missing child.

  ‘How’s Katrina?’ Marnie asked. ‘And Loz?’

  ‘On their way back from work, and school.’ Sean pushed his fists into the pockets of his jeans. He had a tall man’s stoop, fair head down, broad shoulders hunching. Not dressed for work, and he hadn’t shaved. A laptop was open on the low table by the sofa. He flicked a glance in its direction. ‘I’ve been registering with websites that search for missing kids, forums where kids can leave messages. Not that May was into computers, didn’t even use the phone we got her. Well, you know that … Loz is different, she lives on the internet.’ He flinched, backtracked. ‘We’re careful, of course. We have parental controls on the worst of the websites.’

  ‘She’s at school.’ Marnie gave the man her steady smile. ‘How’s that going?’

  ‘Questions, sympathy, you know. Some of the kids are cruel, maybe they mean to be, maybe they don’t, speculating as to whether May’s alive or dead, if she ran off or someone snatched her. The school deals with it, then they start up again. I wish we could keep Loz home, but we can’t. We agreed to try and carry on as usual.’ He blinked across the room at nothing, his brown eyes like May’s but fidgety with pain. ‘To try to be normal.’

  Marnie said, ‘Shall we sit down?’

  ‘Of course, sorry.’ He stooped to shut the laptop. ‘I’ll make coffee. Would you like coffee?’ He moved in the direction of the kitchen, carrying his hurt as a limp in his left leg.

  ‘Just water would be fine.’ Marnie let him go. Noah stayed with her, taking in the small changes since the last time they were here. Each visit a little more dust, another layer of neglect. One of the landscapes was crooked on the wall. It stood out like a handprint.

  Sean returned from the kitchen with two glasses of water. ‘Here.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Marnie sat on the sofa. ‘We wanted to give you advance warning about a story that might be in the papers tomorrow, or tonight.’ She waited until Sean was seated, his hands propped between his knees. ‘You might have heard about the traffic accident last night.’

  ‘York Road was closed.’ Sean smelt of stale sweat and cigarettes. No ashtrays in the house. Maybe he smoked in the garden. ‘K
at had to find another route to work.’

  ‘One of the drivers saw a girl leaving the scene of the crash. We’re looking for her. We’ll need to make an appeal to the public if we don’t find her soon.’

  ‘You think it’s May?’ His shoulders creaked as he leaned forward. ‘The driver saw May?’

  ‘We showed him a photo. He doesn’t think it was her. We’re looking for other witnesses, but we didn’t want you to see the news and assume it was May. The press are bound to speculate, since it happened nearby and everyone’s looking for May, hoping for news of her.’

  ‘It started out like that,’ Sean said. ‘But they stopped hoping after the first fortnight. We haven’t. We can’t. But it’s too long to ask ordinary people to stay interested in someone else’s kid. Kat says that at work they won’t look at her any more, as if they’ve decided it’s been so long, May must be … dead.’ His teeth clenched on the word. ‘They’ll start up again when it comes to trial. When you find whoever did it.’ His face collapsed, then reconfigured, scrabbling after a look that didn’t spell despair. ‘I don’t mean … It’s them, not us. We’re still hoping.’

  But he wasn’t. No glimmer of hope anywhere on his face. As if he knew for certain that his daughter was gone.

  ‘We understand,’ Marnie said. ‘We’ve not given up either.’

  ‘You came here to warn us not to hope. When we hear the news about this girl from last night, you don’t want us to get our hopes up. That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wanted you to know as much as we do at this stage. I’m afraid it’s not much. As I say, the driver doesn’t think it was May, but we’re doing everything we can to make certain.’

  Sean jerked his head in a nod. ‘I understand. Hope’s a horrible thing. I’ve learned that in the last three months. A horrible, horrible thing. But you can’t stop. We can’t stop. Not until you kill it.’

  He pointed a nicotine-stained finger at the street. ‘When you knock at that door to tell us you’ve found her?’ His hand shook. ‘That she’s … that you’ve found her. That’s when we’ll stop.’

  10

  Aimee

  Ashleigh was in the bathroom, trying to get the candle wax and spit off her face. I could hear her moving around. Happy because the heat was off her, even if his spit wasn’t. She’d never liked May, and she hated me.

  ‘I was here three fucking months,’ that was her favourite bitch, ‘before you two showed up.’

  True, but it wasn’t my fault he liked me best. It wasn’t like I wanted him to like me.

  Christie had been with him nearly two years, longer than any of us. She’d found Grace about a year ago, and the two of them had found Ashleigh. Always the same story, the same hook.

  ‘I know this guy,’ Christie would have said. ‘He’s got this house. He’ll let us stay if we behave ourselves.’

  Grace probably said something like, ‘Yeah? Behave ourselves on our backs, or behave ourselves on our knees?’ Ashleigh, too.

  And Christie would’ve said, ‘He’s not like that,’ and I bet Ashleigh was actually disappointed.

  The house was decent. Clean clothes, hot water, food. All of it free, and even if it wasn’t, so what? We’d all done worse, out on the streets. Except May, but she had me. We thought we were good, May and me, because we had each other. It wasn’t until the house got too small and we moved to the flat that the fairy tale turned to shit. We were a couple of stupid, dreaming kids, but we didn’t deserve that. May didn’t deserve it.

  Here’s the dumbest thing. We thought we chose him, not the other way around. We thought we were so clever tricking him into giving us a roof over our heads, free food, presents. Ashleigh with her tits like heat-seeking missiles. Wild Gracie, always fighting. May who looked like an angel but she wasn’t, she wasn’t – and now everyone knew it. And me, the victim. His favourite. He liked to sit at the side of my bed and hold a cloth to my head, a glass to my lips. He wouldn’t touch, except to take my pulse, and even then it wasn’t like you’d think. He wasn’t the sick one. It was me. Every day a little weaker, lighter, less like me. He was wiping me out with his cold cloths and his hot stare.

  So in case you’re thinking I was mad to ever come here, it wasn’t always like that. Once upon a time it was great. And we wanted to be in his good books, that’s the thing. It wasn’t easy to be in Harm’s good books. He wasn’t like other men, most men. Any men. I wished he was.

  I understood men. I knew what they wanted and how to keep them happy, but Harm wasn’t like that. Grace thought he was, it’s why she had to go. Insulting him by suggesting he wanted us in that way. He doesn’t. I don’t think he can. He never touched May, but she was pregnant and no one knew how. She wouldn’t say, wouldn’t breathe a word.

  I heard Ashleigh finish in the bathroom and walk back to her room. It was quiet, just London’s noise washing at the windows. I was waiting for May to come up. She always came to see me before bed. To talk, to say goodnight. I needed to know she was okay.

  This place – I could feel it boiling under me.

  I wanted her up here with me, not down there with him. If I’d had the courage I’d’ve gone to her room, braved the dirty looks from Ashleigh, risked getting caught by Christie, or Harm.

  My whole fucking life was if-I-had-the-courage.

  I’m pregnant.

  I’d been counting the minutes, hours, since she’d said that.

  Wanting her up here with me.

  Scared that she was down there, with him.

  And that he’d turned his back.

  11

  Noah heard the TV as he was unlocking the front door. Shouting and bullets being fired, guttural screams, wet flesh. Another zombie all-nighter. He dropped his keys into the bowl in the hall and toed off his shoes, going through to the sitting room.

  His kid brother Sol was sprawled on the sofa next to Dan, their faces lit red and green by the TV, which was showing a close-up of a machete removing the top of someone’s head.

  Sol grinned up at Noah. ‘Hey, bro.’

  ‘Hey. Sorry I’m late. Did I miss supper?’

  ‘I got your text.’ Dan rolled upright, coming around the sofa to kiss him. ‘Ordered Chinese. It should be here in twenty minutes.’

  On the TV, a man with a face like a chisel was wielding a crossbow at an approaching corpse. Sol slapped his knees. ‘You’re for it now, dick-brain!’

  Dan said innocently, ‘It’s won a Golden Globe.’

  ‘Twenty minutes until the food gets here?’ Noah hooked his thumb through the belt loop on Dan’s jeans, steering the pair of them into the hall. ‘Help me work up an appetite.’

  Dan pushed the sitting room door shut with his foot, leaving Sol with the TV. ‘We should warm some plates.’

  ‘Hmm. Warm me first.’

  ‘You don’t need it, you’re always hot.’ Dan tossed Noah’s tie over his shoulder, leaning in to tongue at his neck. ‘Taste good, too.’

  Noah let his hips go loose, relaxing into Dan’s grip, his breath hitching. ‘Christ… You’ve been watching way too many zombies.’

  ‘You don’t like being bitten?’

  ‘Rather be sucked.’ Pulling at Dan’s blond fringe, wanting the hot blue of his eyes. ‘Or kissed.’

  Dan pressed him into the wall, kissing until Noah’s head started to spin. ‘You taste of apples.’

  ‘Hmm. That was lunch.’

  ‘DI Rome doesn’t feed you?’

  ‘Not her job. We were busy. Over in Battersea, by the power station.’

  Dan rolled his hips against Noah’s. ‘Love it there. Keep getting invited to go climbing one last time before the rest of the chimneys come down.’

  ‘Your place-hacker friends,’ Noah deduced.

  ‘Urban explorers,’ Dan corrected. ‘Take back the city from the planners …’

  ‘… get arrested for trespass. Break your neck. Just as well you’re too smart to say yes to these adrenalin junkies.’

  ‘It’s not just about adr
enalin.’ Dan propped an elbow next to Noah’s head, kissing him between sentences. ‘It’s reconnecting with what’s ours, getting through the fences, under the city’s skin.’

  ‘Hmm. Your mates’ll get caught sooner or later. More CCTV cameras in the UK than the rest of Europe put together. They know that, right?’

  ‘They know I’m screwing a detective sergeant. That tends to limit the invites.’

  ‘Whatever works. I’d hate to have to handcuff you to a Heras fence.’

  ‘Not going to happen.’ Dan laughed into Noah’s neck. ‘But I get where they’re coming from, don’t you? Hardly anyone nowadays has a sense of place. You must see it all the time, kids on the streets with nowhere to go, not giving a shit about private property or Keep Out signs. They’ve got nowhere, so they make everywhere theirs. Go where they please, do what they want.’

  ‘Your urban explorer friends aren’t kids and they aren’t poor. Most are in work, and well-off. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have the cash to finance the exploring.’

  ‘How’d we get on to this?’ Dan kissed him again. ‘Oh, right. Battersea Power Station, phallic chimneys, you being hot …’

  Someone was buzzing to be let into the building.

  Sol stuck his head around the sitting room door. ‘Supper’s here.’

  ‘I’ll get it.’ Dan peeled away. ‘You can warm the plates.’ He headed out of the flat.

  Sol shook his head at Noah, tonguing the inside of his cheek. ‘You’re not even out of your suit, man. What’d your boss say?’

  ‘She’d say, “Is your kid brother still hanging out at your place, Noah, and did he nick your Oyster card?”’

  ‘Needed stuff from home.’ Sol fished in the pockets of his jeans. ‘Cheers, yeah?’

  ‘Next time, ask for cash.’ Noah pocketed the card. ‘I need this.’

  ‘Chill.’ Sol went in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Beer?’

  Dan came back with carrier bags smelling of fried rice. ‘Let’s eat.’

  They were decanting the food on to plates when Noah’s phone buzzed. ‘Boss?’