Sweet Little Lies: The most gripping suspense thriller you’ll read this year

by Caz Frear

  It’s obvious where this is heading but I need to hear him say it.

  ‘So Maryanne got me thinking – ’cos she was upset, you know – she wasn’t blasé about the abortion, she just thought she didn’t have a choice. And so I looked at her – fit, healthy, good-looking, smart, that perfect Irish colleen thing going on, and I thought, “well maybe you do have a choice, missus?” Patrick Mackie had all the contacts and I mean, it was obvious any rich couple would take one look at Maryanne and fall in love with her, which meant falling in love with her baby ten times over, so I knew it meant big money. Enough for her to make a clean break away from that shit of a father. So I made that clear to Mackie, when I finally got up the guts to make contact. I made sure he understood this wasn’t some skank-whore he could palm off with a couple of grand, he’d have to pay big but then he’d get paid big as well – at least five times what he was paying Maryanne – so it was a good deal for him . . .’

  ‘And a good deal for you. You’d be back in the good books. Everyone’s a winner, eh?’

  Defensive. ‘Everyone was a winner, sweetheart. Maryanne bit my hand off.’

  ‘Everyone apart from the baby, sold off to the highest bidder like a meat raffle.’

  I should want to spit at him. Bounce his head off the wall. Tear at his face. But I don’t feel angry, I feel nothing. Hollow and weightless. I dig my nails into the palms of my hands just to feel the sensation.

  ‘I thought the highest bidders were good people. Criminals maybe, but having a few brushes with the law doesn’t mean you can’t give a child a good life. It doesn’t mean you don’t know how to love. Do you know how hard it is to adopt legally if you’ve got more than a speeding fine? Might have changed now, of course, but back then . . .’ His voice trails off.

  ‘So what happened next?’

  ‘What she’d asked to happen. I picked her up, she hid in the boot until we were well out of Mulderrin . . .’

  The Tinkerbell mystery solved, eighteen years and a hundred battles too late.

  He frowns, confused as to why I’m so shaken by such a small detail. ‘Well, it’s just you never knew who you’d pass on the road,’ he says, explaining, ‘Or who’d flag you over for a quick chat. We just didn’t want to take the risk, that’s all. But as soon as we were a good few miles away, she jumped into the back, went to sleep I think, and I drove her to Dublin as planned and she got on the ferry. Only difference was that someone from Mackie’s crew was waiting at the other end to take her to London. And she didn’t go through with the abortion and she got paid £10,000 quid.’

  Ten thousand pounds. Around £12,000 in today’s money. The watch on Dad’s wrist couldn’t have cost much less.

  ‘So if it was such a happy-ever-after, why is Maryanne dead? Why are you hiding in the dark in your own bloody house?’

  ‘Maryanne was supposed to be a one-off,’ he says, pressing his fingers into his forehead, squashing the memories. ‘I mean, I can’t believe now that I was so fucking naïve, but it never occurred to me that Mackie would want to run with it, turn it into a separate operation. And Maryanne, you know, she’d got a taste of the high life, she wanted more. It was her idea to target someone working at an abortion clinic.’

  ‘Saskia.’

  He nods. ‘A lot of the Irish girls headed for Manchester or Liverpool, nearer to the ferry I suppose, but some of them would get the train down to London and Camden was the nearest clinic to Euston. That’s where Saskia worked. Basically, she’d tip off Maryanne about any girl who sounded like she was wobbling, pass on their contact details. Maryanne would make the approach and the odd one would go for it. There you have it, big business,’ he adds with a sneer.

  I almost laugh. ‘And what, you didn’t approve? Don’t tell me you weren’t getting a decent kickback. Commission, was it? Payment on delivery? Literally.’ I look around the room at all the handmade furniture, all the gadgets, the stuff. ‘Oh my God, that’s what paid for everything, isn’t it? For all this shit. For my fucking education.’

  He picks up a coaster, turns it over, turns it back again – something to do to avoid meeting my eyes. Eventually he says, ‘You won’t believe me but I wasn’t comfortable with it all. Not one bit. I hadn’t meant it to spiral like it did – but Maryanne and Saskia, especially Maryanne – it was like she thought they were performing some kind of public service, helping girls make the best out of a bad situation, that was her argument – no abortion required, girl gets paid, we all get paid, doting parents get bouncing baby, where’s the problem? She had me convinced for a while that it was a kind of victimless crime. And yeah, I liked the money so I just blanked out the bad feeling.’

  ‘Which was what?’

  A bold stare. ‘That it was wrong.’

  Does that change anything? Mean anything? Does it make him a better man than I thought, or worse?

  ‘Did Mum know about this. About any of it?’ I choke on the words, fearing the answer.

  Mercifully, he shakes his head, appalled. ‘No, never, absolutely nothing. She turned a blind eye to a lot of stuff, your mum – she wasn’t Mother Teresa, you know, she liked the high life too, the nice things – but she wouldn’t have turned a blind eye to this, no way. The less she knew the better.’

  So there we have it. I might have to do a surface edit of the past, lightly reconfigure my image of Mum so that she’s less righteous and more mercenary, but essentially it’s quite simple.

  She was human. She was flawed. She liked fancy things. She loved Dad.

  But she had her limits.

  I can live with this.

  I turn my focus back to Dad. ‘You said Maryanne had you convinced “for a while”. What changed?’

  ‘I learned things.’ His mouth twists and quivers, fury and disgust. ‘Most of those babies weren’t being sold to doting parents, they were being sold on to other trafficking networks, global networks. God knows where they ended up, who they ended up with?’ He rocks slightly, his knuckles white around his glass. ‘I actually can’t bring myself to think about it, Catrina. If I think about it too much I . . . It haunts me every day of my life what I started.’ He looks at me, desperate for understanding. ‘As soon as I knew, I told Mackie I didn’t want anything more to do with it, not that I had much to do with it by that time anyway, I was just helping out on the sidelines really, driving the girls around, maintenance of the flat, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Girls?’

  He nods, the effort seems to pain him. ‘Yeah, there’d be three or four pregnant girls in that flat at any one time. Maryanne and Saskia lived there too, minding them. “Guiding them” Maryanne used to call it.’

  A baby-factory right in the middle of central London. Right now, I wish there was a window to look out of. Something to remind me there’s life – stars, sky, people, laughter – outside this snake pit of a room.

  ‘What about medical care? I mean, how did they . . .?’ My voice is cracked, hoarse.

  ‘Mackie’s daughter, Gina. She was a trainee doctor back then. Daddy insisted she had a respectable job and a doctor’s a handy person to have in the family for people like Mackie. Gina’s the one who actually oversaw things on a daily basis. She was Maryanne and Saskia’s boss, I suppose.’

  I lean forward. ‘What happened, Dad. This was years ago. What brought everything back up?’

  ‘Maryanne brought it all back up. She tracked me down a few months ago. I literally hadn’t laid eyes on her in fifteen years and there she was, standing on my doorstep one night, saying she wanted to contact Gina. Wouldn’t say what for. Just that she’d been thinking about the past and . . .’ He puts his hands up in a ‘who knows?’ gesture. ‘Anyway, she said she’d seen Saskia but Saskia wouldn’t tell her where Gina was. I said that was probably for a bloody good reason – I knew Gina’d gone all respectable in her old age and she wouldn’t thank Maryanne for turning up. But Maryanne wouldn’t let it go. She seemed a bit desperate, pitiful really. And I felt guilty for what
I’d got her involved in all those years ago, so eventually I cracked and I told her. Not that I knew Gina’s exact address but I know people, I can find out things.’ He stares into his drink, broken. ‘Week later, Maryanne was dead.’

  I wait a while, although it’s probably only seconds. ‘So Gina killed Maryanne, is that what you’re saying?’

  A small twitch of his shoulders. ‘You’re the detective, you do the maths.’

  Fear and love combined equals panic. ‘So does she blame you for sending Maryanne her way? Have you been threatened? Is that why you’re hiding? Jesus, Dad, couldn’t you think of somewhere better than hiding out in your own house?’

  He shrugs, a hint of the old bravado. ‘I doubt Maryanne told her it was me, and I don’t know if Gina’d remember me that well, anyway. I worked for Mackie, not her. Gina just saw me as this well-paid handyman. And Mackie, well he hasn’t been seen for years. Went on the run. Could be dead for all I know.’

  ‘So why all this?’ I say, circling two fingers.

  ‘A precaution.’

  ‘Against what? You said you don’t think they’ll come after you.’

  The door opens. I age twenty years but Dad looks more annoyed than afraid.

  ‘He’s protecting me, not himself.’

  Saskia.

  ‘I came to him,’ she says, edging into the room – ‘so lay off him’ being the obvious subtext. ‘That thug turned up . . . threatening me – “delivering a message”, he said . . . I couldn’t stay there . . . I didn’t know where else to go.’

  The ‘thug’ throws me. ‘Patrick Mackie?’

  She looks to Dad, her face blanched with dread. ‘Why’s she bringing him up, Mike? You said he was long gone? Dead, with any luck.’ She turns to me. ‘I’m on about Gina’s son. Mummy’s little henchman. You know, he actually thought I was scared of him – as if I’d be scared of that little twerp – but I’m scared of that family. Fucking terrified.’

  I break it to them. ‘Patrick Mackie’s not dead and he’s back in England.’ Dad jumps up, shifting the desk a few inches. ‘Relax. He’s dying, if that’s any comfort. And he’s in police custody, as is Gina Hicks. You’re safe so turn the rest of the fucking lights on!’

  ‘Custody,’ snarls Saskia. ‘You think the Mackies don’t still have a long reach? If they want to shut me up, they’ll find someone to do it, doesn’t matter if they’re in custody.’

  ‘Why do they want shut you up? Because you know about the past? Or because you know what happened to Maryanne?’

  Dad gives her a nod, a resigned go-ahead. ‘Two sides of the same coin, really. I know everything.’ She slides down the wall, slumping hard to the floor, exhausted. ‘So how did you nail them? Who talked?’ Her head snaps up, eyes wide. ‘There’s no way they’ll get bail, is there? Not for this?’

  I can’t lie. I mean, literally, I can’t. I don’t have one ounce of guile left in me.

  ‘We don’t have them for this. We’ve arrested them on other grounds for now but they aren’t exactly top-drawer. They’re locked up for tonight, that’s all I can promise you.’ So make a decision, quick. ‘We’re going to need more to hold them for longer. Can you give us more? We can protect you, Saskia, if you tell us everything you know. It’s the only way you’ll be safe in the long run.’

  I say ‘we’ but my career’s surely over. It was over after the first lie. I don’t need to read the College of Policing’s ‘Standards of Professional Behaviour’ to know mine have been utterly abysmal.

  Saskia looks to Dad again and something weighty passes between them. I’m not sensing a romance but something deeper. True friendship might be Disney-coating it, more a mutual kind of dependency.

  She takes a deep, trembly breath, a life-changing one. ‘OK, I’ll tell you everything on one condition. You keep Mike – your dad – out of it.’

  Has she always known who I am? Did she know the day I was at the King’s Cross flat?

  ‘He doesn’t need to be involved. He wasn’t really involved anyway, not in a big way, or in the worst way. And he took care of me that night, the night Maryanne died, when I had nowhere else to go, and I won’t see him punished for this. I won’t. He’s the only person who ever gave a shit about me and Maryanne, then and now. He looked out for us, had a laugh with us, treated us like human beings, not like prison guards and the girls like cattle. So that’s the deal. You don’t need Mike to take them down, you only need me.’

  It’s a lovely spin to put on things and I nearly ask her to keep talking. To pull up a pew and tell me all about the great man I’ve missed out on, all the wonderful traits I could never see. And it’s a lifeline too. A chance to cling on to the job I love for that little bit longer – because I’m not stupid enough to think that it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the end, of course. But just a little bit longer would be nice. Long enough for me to be remembered for more than just this.

  It’ll never happen though. How can it?

  ‘You might want to keep my dad out of it, Saskia, but when we charge Gina Hicks, she might have other ideas. And Patrick Mackie.’

  She slaps me down quickly – she’s clearly thought this through. ‘That’s not the way they work. Their type don’t drag people down with them, certainly not – no offence, Mike – the small fry. What would be the point? You’re only giving someone ammunition to spill more shit about you and Mike has plenty of shit on them, stuff that goes beyond this. They wouldn’t run the risk, I know it. There’s no benefit in dragging him into this for anyone.’ A pointed look towards me. ‘Including you, I’d have thought?’

  So Saskia tells all. The Hickses go down. One of the UK’s most wanted villains is back under our jurisdiction and Maryanne gets justice.

  And I get to keep my job, or at least have a wild, gutsy, come-what-may stab at keeping it.

  Everyone’s a winner, right?

  I slowly nod my head but I feel laden with loss.

  27

  I picture us in the pub when this is all over. Flowers is getting the round in. Ben and Seth are monopolising the jukebox as usual. Me and Parnell have bagged our regular table – the oak-panelled booth, big and round enough to house a mid-size Murder team and Renée’s swearing she’s only staying for one – later claiming she meant one bottle, not one glass. Emily’s being chatted up by someone – could be one of the old boys who drink in here because the beer’s fairly cheap and they show the Channel 4 racing, or maybe one of the young suits, who pour out of local offices, professing their love for a ‘proper old boozer’ before loading up on low-strength bottled lager and bags of vegetable crisps.

  As ever, the busiest woman in Christendom – DCI Kate Steele – ‘will be there in a minute’.

  Then once the booze has been bought and the tunes have been chosen, conversation will inevitably turn to the moment this case cracked open. Our breakthrough. Everyone will stake a claim in it, of course. Exaggerate their part in its unravelling. But the fact of the matter is nobody swung this case one way or the other. No one gets the bragging rights. Because as far as anyone except me is concerned, at nine fifty-two p.m. on December 31st 2016, Saskia French walked into the reception of Holborn police station and voluntarily, and of her own volition, asked to speak with whoever was in charge of the Maryanne Doyle investigation.

  Parnell was out at the time, having a quick walk around the block – his ‘evening constitutional’ to quote the great man himself, so Seth got the gist down while Parnell hot-footed it back to HQ, read Saskia her rights.

  She refused a solicitor.

  This is how it happened, no matter how it’s romanticised and re-configured in the annals of MIT4 history.

  This is how it’s happening right now, in fact.

  Present in the interview are Acting Detective Inspector Luigi Parnell and DC Renée Akwa. Parnell and Renée are a good combination. More nuanced than good cop/bad cop, they aim for friendly cop/formal cop with Parnell doing the empathy, Renée, the direct questions.

 
Slumped in the observation room watching everything on TV is me.

  I haven’t worked out what I’ll say to Parnell about why I’m back here. Why I’m not tucked up in bed nursing my sudden mystery illness. All I know right now is that I need to be here. There’s no way I can let Saskia out of my sight, not now she a significant witness.

  A significant witness with an incendiary energy you can never quite trust.

  A significant witness who’s wearing a jumper of mine, nicked from the wardrobe of my old teenage bedroom.

  *

  ‘OK, Saskia, let’s start at the beginning.’ Parnell leans back, getting comfy – a signal for her to do the same. ‘It is Saskia? Not Sarah?’

  A slow smirk as she trails a finger along the edge of the table. ‘Saskia.’

  ‘Why did you change it?’ asks Parnell, as though just curious.

  ‘There’s no big story. I just wanted something more exotic for work. Sarah seemed a bit conventional, a bit wifey. That’s not what clients want.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Renée takes over, masking her innate warmth with a cool, factual tone. ‘When did you first meet Maryanne Doyle, Saskia?’

  She stretches out her hands, examines her chipped nails.

  Arrogance personified but I know it’s all front.

  ‘In 1999. I was having a fag at the back of the clinic and it was fucking freezing so it can’t have been any later than say, February. She bummed a light off me, said she worked in an office across the road, and then every fag break for a few days after, there she was. Anyway, we got talking, just about bands and that, and then one day she produces these tickets – Faithless, Brixton Academy. I thought it was sold out but she just laughs, says she knows people, and then she says none of her mates are that into them, so do I fancy it? I mean, I thought it was a bit weird but I really wanted to see them so I thought “fuck it”. And then we sort of became mates. She always had loads of money, she was always paying for things – more gigs, swanky bars, the best clubs . . .’ She draws her hands back, sits on them. ‘Anyway, this went on for a couple of months and then she asked me. I knew she’d been building up to it then, this “new best friend” act had just been a load of bollocks.’