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

by Sarah Hilary

  Packed with people, their smell swallowing her up. She worked numbers into the ticket machine with her fingers jumping, stashed the credit card back in her pocket, headed for the barriers.

  One stop, a lot of stairs.

  Up into the blue light of a shop selling coffee and pastries. Its smell made her stomach clench. So long since she ate good food. Bad food. She ate properly now. Coffee dehydrated you, and cake was just empty calories slowing you down, making you sick. Her reflection in the shop’s window was hungry, hollow-eyed. She forced her face to smile. Hot chocolate. Her tongue touched her lips, tasting it sweet and fatty in her mouth, and just for a second she wanted to run. Snip the thread. Get free, get away. Too late, it was too late now.

  She swung away from the shop, in the direction of the tunnels.

  The subway sat with its mouth open, turned towards the road. Its roof dripped as she ducked inside, out of the rain.

  Suddenly, it wasn’t London. The noise she’d carried with her was gone, and so was the metal-meat smell of the Underground. Orange light in rectangles from boxes fixed to the walls, but the light rolled away, back into the tunnel’s throat. Dark, and dry. She remembered this. How weird it felt to be warm when there was no door and the rain could blow inside. Pipes under the floor ran all the way back to the power station. Harm had taught her that. Miles and miles of pipes taking excess steam to the council estate across the river.

  Four kids on the floor, faces inside hoodies, empty bottles at their feet. Sitting like cave-dwellers, hands hanging, heads down. If Christie did this right, there’d be three kids tomorrow.

  ‘I’m looking for Neve.’

  Two of the faces turned towards her, slackly. She ignored the flare of contempt from under her ribs and made a judgement based on instinct. The girl with the big eyes, she was the one. The one Harm would choose. Just a kid, lost-looking.

  ‘Neve,’ Christie repeated. ‘Any of you seen her?’

  ‘No.’ One of the boys, speaking for the group. Tough, or pretending to be. If he was tough, he wouldn’t be running in here at the first sign of rain.

  ‘Shit.’ She leaned into the wall, then slid until she was sitting on the floor of the subway. ‘Shit.’

  The boy stared and moved his mouth. ‘What?’

  ‘I think she’s dead.’ Christie put her head back against the wall, under the sign that said Fearz. ‘Neve. I think she’s dead.’

  ‘Who is she?’ The girl with the big eyes had spikes in her voice.

  ‘My sister.’ Christie wiped her face with the cuff of her shirt. ‘She’s my sister.’ It was near enough to the truth. Harm’s sister, the one he’d given up for dead. ‘Been everywhere, all across London. Everywhere she used to go.’ She kicked at the scarred tilework. ‘Fuck. Fuck.’

  ‘We haven’t seen her,’ the boy said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Forget it. She’s gone. Just can’t stop looking, you know?’

  Silence. The seep of heat under her legs. Miles of pipe packed with steam from the long-dead chimneys of the power station. Like the core of the earth coming up.

  ‘D’you think she was killed?’ Big Eyes looked twelve, maybe thirteen. Wild hair like black brambles. Clothes too big for her, just like her eyes. Spikes in her voice and in her stare.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Christie said. ‘Maybe. It happens.’

  ‘It’s happened recently,’ Big Eyes said. ‘More than once.’

  The boy nodded, looking important. ‘The police were round here earlier. We had to wait until they’d cleared off. They’re looking for a killer.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard about that.’

  ‘D’you think it happened to your sister?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ She shut her eyes. ‘Stupid thing is, I’ve a place to stay now, somewhere safe. That’s all she wanted, and if she’d just waited, two or three weeks …’ She broke off, shaking her head.

  ‘Where?’ Big Eyes asked.

  ‘What?’ Rolling her neck tiredly, as if she didn’t care about the question or its answer.

  ‘Where’re you staying? Somewhere safe, you said.’

  Big Eyes was quick, not another Aimee. Harm wouldn’t see that, not right away. He’d see her face looking lost in its tangle of hair, and how she hugged herself. He’d like her, until it was too late. He’d choose her. Until it was too late.

  ‘Yeah. I got lucky. Too late for Neve …’

  ‘A squat?’ The boy had a home to go to. Only someone with a home would say, A squat? like it was somewhere cool he’d read about in a book or on a website.

  Christie opened her eyes but turned her head away. ‘Not a squat.’

  Big Eyes was watching her. She had a hot stare, like Harm’s. It made Christie angry. ‘Look, piss off, okay? There’s no room, anyway. No room for anyone else. We’re full.’

  ‘How long’s she been missing?’ Big Eyes asked. ‘Neve.’

  ‘Weeks. Months.’ That was not good. She should know exactly how long. She should be counting every hour. ‘Thirteen weeks and four days.’

  Big Eyes nodded, dropping her stare. ‘Sorry,’ she said, losing some of the spikes.

  ‘That’s okay.’ A breath. ‘I’m Christie, by the way.’

  ‘Hi,’ the kids said, one after another. The boy said, ‘I’m Joel,’ and one of the others gave his name too. Big Eyes didn’t say hers. On her guard.

  Christie didn’t look like one of them any longer. Was that it? She’d lost her disguise. With Grace and the others, it’d been easy. Tell them about the house – somewhere warm, with free food, beds – and they followed like mice to a trail of crumbs. Big Eyes was suspicious of her, the way Christie had been suspicious of the rich creep in his plastic cape. Had she become someone like that, to be feared? Or like the religious couple telling her to be ready for what was coming when they had no idea what that was. Harm had saved her from the pervert, the threats and promises. She owed him. Even if she didn’t, she couldn’t go back empty-handed. But she could take someone he wasn’t expecting, someone to remind him why he needed her. Christie. He wouldn’t know what to do with Big Eyes, not without her help.

  ‘Did you know them?’ she asked the kids. ‘The girls who got killed.’

  Joel shot a look at Big Eyes, but she shook her head. ‘We heard about them, on the news.’

  ‘Have you got somewhere to go?’ Christie asked, grudgingly. ‘Safer than this, I mean.’

  Joel said, ‘Depends what you mean by safe,’ as if he had a story he could tell.

  Christie could guess the story. Abuse. Boys like Joel always thought abuse made them special. Boys like Joel didn’t know they were born. He had a watch on his wrist that another kid would’ve killed for. And still might. She could see him dead. A look of surprise on his face that said, I didn’t deserve this, but he did. For sitting drinking beer from glass bottles, telling sob stories to his friends, every one of whom had a home to go to. Playing at being lost. Like the rain was a stream they could paddle their soft feet in before going back to their warm beds.

  Big Eyes was different. She looked lost, but it could be a disguise or a trick of the light. Christie wouldn’t know for certain, not until she took the girl home to Harm.

  ‘What about you?’ The tunnel took her words, made them hard.

  Softly, Harm always said. Softly, softly.

  ‘What about me?’ Big Eyes was staring at Christie, soaking her up with her stare. Seeing her. The way Harm had seen her two years ago, the way no one else ever saw her. Christie wanted to scream. She wanted to put her feet into these kids until her shoes were sticky.

  Bring me another girl.

  ‘Have you got somewhere safe to go?’ she asked softly.

  Big Eyes said, ‘No.’ It was a lie, but Big Eyes was good.

  She didn’t care whether Christie believed her or not. She wasn’t like Joel or the others; this wasn’t a game for her. She was here because she’d run out of whatever else was on offer. Tears and shame and all the rest of it. Nothing left of her. She’d rea
ched the end.

  Christie pictured a house for Big Eyes, like the one she’d run from years ago. A nice house on a nice street. Curtains at the windows, pale carpets. Take your shoes off at the door, a rule of the house. Wooden floors downstairs so that echoes chased you and you held your breath when you crept to the kitchen at night to drink milk from the carton in the white hum of the refrigerator. Nice people sleeping in the bedroom upstairs. A man and a woman, him with brown hair and eyes, her highlights expensively done every six weeks, body tight as a twang, no comfort in her anywhere. The milk tastes blue and fatty and it’s forbidden like this, straight from the carton. Through the kitchen window, the cat’s eyes watch you. It’s shut out at night. You should be shut out too. Lists pinned to the fridge door, things to do and buy, goals for the week. The fridge’s cold breath makes the lists move, but they’re pinned with magnets, don’t fall. You gulp at the milk so it spills, staining the neck of your T-shirt. You’ll smell bad in the morning. You tip your head and drink, seeing yourself in the copper belly of the pendant lamp, the greedy way you’re sucking at the carton’s cardboard lip, your body squat, features spread fat across your face. You give Ugly a bad name.

  This is the house Christie pictured for Big Eyes.

  Nothing wanting, everything provided and paid for. She had no complaints, only that she couldn’t eat, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t live.

  It was the same for Big Eyes.

  She’d reached the end of being her.

  Ready to be wiped out, like Ashleigh and May.

  Big Eyes wanted to die.

  Christie could help with that.

  41

  ‘Grace must have been in here the whole time,’ Noah told Marnie. ‘When we were talking with Emma about the crash, when she was telling us about the arson. She was in here the whole time.’ The cupboard was fetid with the girl’s fear. ‘We found a note in her pocket with this address on it, and Emma’s name. Someone told her it was a safe place to stay … The paramedics said she hadn’t eaten in three days, maybe longer. Sedated. Hypernatremic. Twitching, just like Fran said, but that could’ve been shock.’ He turned to look at Emma Tarvin’s bedroom. ‘I can’t believe it. Can you?’

  He couldn’t believe a seventy-six-year-old woman had taken a fifteen-year-old girl prisoner. Starved her. Tied her up and beaten her. Or maybe it was Emma’s arrogance he couldn’t believe, drinking tea and fielding questions with their missing girl locked in the next room. Inviting their attention by reporting Abi time and again, her opinion of the police so low she couldn’t imagine being caught.

  A glass on the bedside table was filled with dead water where the old woman put her teeth at night. Marnie could picture the teeth inside the glass, water magnifying their grin.

  ‘And why?’ Noah said. ‘Why did she do it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Marnie said. ‘But I’m wondering if Abi Gull does.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Abi said. ‘I know what that cow is. Like you finally give a shit.’

  ‘What is she?’ Marnie asked.

  ‘An evil bitch.’ Balling her fists in the high pockets of her hoody. ‘An evil murdering bitch.’

  ‘Who did she murder?’

  Abi stared at the wall. She wasn’t going to speak his name, not in here. But Marnie had done her research after Ron called in the fire, or rather she’d asked Colin to do the research while she was driving back from Sommerville. Thanks to Colin, she knew exactly what Abi was hiding.

  ‘It was worth it, that’s what you told DS Carling. Worth being caught. Worth being arrested.’

  This was personal between Abi and Emma. Fire was personal, and so was violence of the kind Marnie had seen in Emma Tarvin’s eyes, and was seeing now in Abi’s.

  ‘Your brother Clarke died of a drug overdose in January.’

  ‘So?’ The same edge had been in Abi’s voice when she’d asked whether Ashleigh Jewell had died of an overdose. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Marnie had suspected Abi of being a dealer. But that was before Colin told her about the girl’s brother. ‘Clarke was ten when he died. How long had he been an addict?’

  ‘He wasn’t an addict.’ Kicking the leg of the table. ‘Bitch.’

  ‘Where did he get the drugs that killed him?’

  Silence. You didn’t speak to the police; that rule was written all over this girl’s face.

  ‘Come on. It’s obvious. He got the drugs from Emma Tarvin.’

  ‘Prove that, can you?’ Abi was scared of Emma. Not as terrified as Grace had been, but Emma hadn’t locked Abi in a cupboard and beaten her with a walking stick.

  ‘You’ve been watching her,’ Marnie said. ‘Did you see Grace Bradley go into her flat on Tuesday night? The night of the crash.’

  ‘Seen a lot of kids going into her flat.’

  ‘You knew we were looking for a girl with red hair. DS Carling showed you a photo.’

  Abi shook her head, reluctantly, as if it pained her to tell the truth. ‘I never seen her.’

  ‘How often does Mrs Tarvin leave her flat?’

  ‘Not often enough, or I’d have done her before now, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘We found prescription drugs in her flat. Painkillers. Antidepressants. Too many for one person, but she has prescriptions. So we have proof of hoarding, but that’s not proof of dealing.’

  ‘In other words, there’s fuck-all you can do. Like there was fuck-all you did about Clarke.’ Abi leaned forward, stabbing at the table with her finger. ‘I told the police it was that bitch, said I seen kids going into her flat and coming out off their tits on whatever she’d sold them. How’d you think she afforded that big telly? She’s got them doing her shopping, running errands, anything she likes. She’s got a lookout, for fuck’s sake. That’s how she gets to stay in her flat being waited on hand and foot. She loves us lot grovelling because she hates our guts, wishes we were dead like Clarke. Sweets, that’s what she calls them. It’s not like coke, not like heroin. She’ll give sweets to anyone thick enough to go up there and beg her for it. Little kids, she doesn’t care how young.’

  ‘What’s her lookout’s name?’ Noah asked.

  ‘Linton Mays.’ Curling her lip. ‘He was mates with Clarke until shit started going down. Now he works for that bitch. Telling her who’s new, who wants to score. Making sure you lot don’t get in the way of her fucking deals.’

  ‘Eleven years old. Wears a beanie, rides a girl’s bike. That’s Linton Mays?’

  She nodded. Blinked. ‘He was a nice kid, before she got her claws into him.’

  ‘Do you know a girl called Christie Faulk? Linton says she used to come on the Garrett.’

  ‘Her.’ Abi folded her arms, hard as nails again. ‘Yeah. Why?’

  ‘Have you seen her recently?’ Noah asked.

  ‘Not since the abortion.’

  ‘Christie had an abortion?’

  ‘She’s whoring for that old bitch, so yeah. She gets an abortion because she’s told to. Then Tarvin chucks her out anyway. That’s the kind of cow I’m talking about. She lets you stay, pretends she likes you, and maybe you fall for it, because she’s old, like your nan old. Gets you hooked on her shit until you’re paying for it any way you can. Nicking stuff, whoring. Christie moves in, and it’s like the sun shines out of Emma, yeah? Cooking, cleaning, shopping. She’d have shaved her head for that bitch. But Tarvin chucks her out as soon as she sees which way it’s headed.’

  ‘Which way was it headed?’ Marnie asked.

  Abi screwed a finger to the side of her head. ‘She’s going nuts. Trying to be what Emma wants. Dressing like a slut, going with anyone, even old blokes, the ones no one else’d touch. Tarvin liked whoring her to the weird ones. Found her on the streets, so yeah. Probably she was scared she’d end up back out there. Always trying to fit in, trying to please everyone. Stupid cow.’

  ‘Emma found Christie on the streets?’

  ‘Begging, that’s what she said. Silly cow probably thought she was being saved. She was s
o grateful, it made me puke. So loyal. Nothing’s too much trouble as long as Emma’s saying she counts for something. Like giving blow jobs gets you a case review.’

  Noah tried to imagine the girl Abi was describing. Desperate to please, frantic for a foothold in what must have looked at first sight like a normal life. A woman old enough to be her grandmother, who needed help with shopping and cleaning. Someone Christie could help, a place where she felt wanted, valued. What had it done to her to be thrown out by her protector?

  ‘When was the last time you saw Christie?’ Marnie asked Abi.

  ‘Back before Christmas. Way back.’

  ‘Linton says he saw her with Ashleigh Jewell.’

  ‘Yeah? I never, but it figures. Probably pimping for that old bitch. She told me if I was ever in trouble I could go to Emma for help. Told loads of girls the same shit. Seriously, she was mental. If you’re looking for her, you’d better have a fucking straitjacket.’

  ‘Did you ever see her with this man?’ Noah showed Ledger’s photo on his phone.

  ‘Saw her with loads of men.’ Abi didn’t look at the photo. ‘It’s not the men you want to worry about. It’s her. Tarvin. And it’s the kids. It’s us. What’re you doing about us?’

  Her eyes burned in her face. ‘I seen eight-year-olds up there. Little kids. She doesn’t give a fuck, makes you beg her, “Please, Mrs Tarvin. Thank you, Mrs Tarvin.” She’s a psycho. Evil. So, yeah.’ She threw herself back in the seat. ‘I kicked the shit out of her, and you know what? I wish I done a proper job, not stopped until I’d put her in the ground. Before another one of us ends up there.’

  Tears heated her stare suddenly, and she was a thirteen-year-old girl grieving for her dead brother, grieving and scared. ‘None of us is safe with her up there. None of us.’

  Back in the incident room, Noah updated the whiteboard with Grace Bradley’s details, and the rest of the information gleaned from Abi Gull. ‘The hospital says we can’t interview Emma until a doctor’s seen her. Grace is a different problem. We can see her, but she’s not talking. To anyone.’