What Doesn't Kill You (A DI Fenchurch novel Book 3)

by Ed James

  Fenchurch ground his teeth together as he trudged up the steps in the glow of the dim streetlights. He opened the security door and entered, his leaden shoes filled with concrete.

  Abi paced towards an open door and knocked on the wood. ‘PC Marks?’

  ‘I take it you’re Mrs Fenchurch?’ An old copper looked out of the door, his uniform needing a good pressing. ‘Call me Glyn.’

  Abi reached for Fenchurch’s hand as he arrived. ‘This is my husband.’

  He flashed his ID at Marks. ‘DI Simon Fenchurch.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ Marks’s eyes almost bulged. ‘Met, eh? Come on in.’ He held the door open and let them into the room.

  Fenchurch nudged the door shut behind him and stayed by it. Force of habit.

  Abi sat down in a cream armchair and fiddled with her handbag. ‘I want to know everything about Chloe Holland.’ Her voice was breaking. ‘You might know her as Chloe Simon.’

  Marks collapsed into another armchair and picked up a paper file from the side table. ‘Sorry, I didn’t investigate this case. That was . . .’ He flicked through the file. ‘Keith Holliday.’ He glanced over at the door, as if he’d suddenly appear through it. ‘He’s a DI in Bristol now. I checked with them and he’s in the Algarve on a golfing weekend or something.’

  ‘Tell us what happened.’

  Marks flicked through the thin file, like he was refreshing himself with the loose details. ‘The girl was shopping in town with her mother and sister. Stepped out in front of a bus. That’s it. The poor driver . . .’

  Abi reached over for a tissue, but just held it in her fingers. ‘Did she die on impact?’

  Marks winced at a page of the report, his skin losing a bit of tone.

  Fenchurch tore the file from Marks’s hands. He flicked through, immediately regretting it. The photos were brutal, like something you’d see in an abattoir. A polka-dot school dress with a navy cardigan in among all that crimson. Couldn’t even look at the rest. He flipped back to the start.

  A photo of a girl was pinned to the front page, the blonde hair she’d inherited from him cut short. The same school uniform as in the crime-scene photos. She wasn’t smiling, but there was a slight dimple on her cheek.

  It was her.

  Chloe.

  Two months from them taking her and she was dead. Why rehome her just for her to die? Why?

  Fenchurch stood and handed the file back. ‘Was there an autopsy?’

  ‘She got run over, sir.’ Marks tossed the file onto the table. ‘This is the file. End of story, far as I’m concerned.’

  Fenchurch frowned at Abi. ‘You said “sister”.’

  ‘Again . . .’ Marks tapped a finger of the file. ‘Just what I read in here.’ His eyes danced between them, narrowing. ‘What’s your interest in this case?’

  Abi took a long, deep breath. ‘That girl was our daughter.’

  Marks closed the file and sat back, sniffing. ‘I’m not following you.’

  Fenchurch paced over and stroked her arm. ‘We believe that Chloe Holland is our daughter.’

  Abi pushed his hand away. ‘We don’t believe it, Simon. She is. Was.’ Fire burned in her eyes. ‘Chloe was our daughter. She was kidnapped. We’ve . . .’ She cleared her throat. ‘We’ve recently discovered what happened.’ She broke off, prodding her eyes.

  Marks screwed up his face. ‘What?’

  ‘Like Abi said, Chloe was abducted from outside our house.’ Fenchurch took the report back and jabbed a finger at the door. ‘The Simons adopted her from the people who kidnapped her.’

  ‘What, you think they knew about this? You really think they’re involved in child abduction?’

  Fenchurch walked over to the door. ‘That’s what I’m about to find out.’

  Instead of a kitted-out Observation Suite, Dorchester station had a tiny cupboard with a folding plastic chair and a two-way mirror. The room stank of rusting cleaning buckets and stale sweat. Through the smudged glass, Larry Simon was deep in conversation with his lawyer.

  ‘Five minutes with him, Ab. That’s all I need. Five minutes and I’ll boot the truth out of him.’

  ‘The truth you want to hear isn’t the same as the truth you need to hear.’ Abi adjusted her seat on the fold-up chair. ‘He’s an old man, Simon.’

  Fenchurch sipped at his tea, more sugar than liquid. He wagged a finger at the mirror. ‘How much does he know?’

  Abi set her cup down. ‘You think he’s involved in the cover-up?’

  ‘A girl like that doesn’t just fall off the back of a bloody lorry.’ Fenchurch finished the tea, already dizzy from the Red Bull. ‘He must’ve known. If something’s too good to be true, it usually is. You’ve got to check the gift horse’s teeth.’

  ‘Simon, I know you’re angry, but just find out the truth, okay?’ She grabbed his arm. ‘I mean it.’

  Fenchurch crushed his cup and tossed it in the overflowing bin, which reeked of stale yoghurt and rotting apple cores. ‘You don’t have to watch this.’

  ‘I need to.’

  ‘Do you want me to send Kay in?’

  ‘Won’t she be better in the room with you?’

  ‘She’ll keep me calm, I suppose.’ Fenchurch went out into the corridor and rested his head against the wall, eyes shut.

  Keep calm and don’t kill anyone.

  ‘Simon?’ Howard Savage was waiting in the corridor by a noticeboard, frowning at him. ‘Alan Docherty called me. Are you okay?’

  Fenchurch stood up straight. ‘We found her, Howard. Chloe . . .’

  ‘So I gather.’ Savage tried a smile. ‘Have you managed to get anywhere?’

  Fenchurch snorted. ‘I want to kill someone, Howard.’ He ran his tongue round his teeth. ‘But I’ll settle for finding out what happened to my daughter.’

  ‘Listen, from what Al Docherty told me, it really feels like there’s a correlation between this case and my strategic work. It’ll certainly fall into my lap at a later date, so I’d rather get in on the ground floor, if that’s all the same?’

  Fenchurch put his hand on the door handle, the brass warm. ‘You’re welcome to sit in.’

  ‘It’s the other way round, Simon. You’re sitting in on my interview.’

  Fire burnt in Fenchurch’s gut. Then it flickered out, leaving just a flare of acid reflux. ‘You know what? Normally I’d pin you to the wall and shout and scream and . . .’ He let his shoulders sag. ‘But right now, I just want to know what happened to my daughter and find out who I have to throw off Tower Bridge.’

  ‘I’ll ignore the allusion to vigilantism, Inspector.’ Savage barged past him into the interview room and sat opposite Larry Simon. ‘Sorry for keeping you, sir. My name is Howard Savage and I lead the Met’s Trafficking and Prostitution Unit.’

  ‘Whoa, whoa.’ Larry’s lawyer had his hands in the air. A tall rod of a man, his bald dome poking through a crown of red hair turning to rust. ‘My client does not consent to answer questions relating to matters other than the fate of his late daughter.’

  ‘Then your client will be arrested on conspiracy charges.’ Savage got out a Moleskine notebook and opened it to a fresh page, pulling out an A4 sheet. ‘Mr Simon has played a key part in the abduction of a child, hiding her from the law and, more importantly, her parents.’

  ‘No. No, no, no.’ Larry’s tongue hovered between his lips, darting from side to side. ‘This is preposterous. My wife and I adopted this child in good faith. Her parents were dead! We gave her a loving home and treated her like she was our own!’

  ‘But she wasn’t yours.’ Fenchurch was resting against the door, hands clasping the handle tight. ‘She was my daughter.’

  ‘Chloe’s been dead a long time.’ Larry held out his hands, like he could ward off evil spirits. Or big cops. ‘You can’t just come in here and bring this all back up again. My wife and I had months of counselling to—’

  ‘She was my daughter!’ Fenchurch dug a finger into his chest. ‘She was kidnapped from outside our
home!’

  The lawyer flashed him a toothy smile. ‘And what proof do you have of my client’s involvement?’

  Fenchurch just about kept his voice level. ‘Your client engaged a criminal enterprise and took our daughter off their hands.’

  ‘I asked what proof you had of my client’s involvement. Seems like it’s none. Now, are we done here?’

  Fenchurch held the lawyer’s gaze. ‘Chloe wasn’t the first and she wasn’t the last. But she was the first they took whose father was a serving officer. Me. I knocked on every door in north London looking for her!’

  The lawyer was shaking his head, like that could change the past, change the truth. ‘My clients adopted her from a legitimate agency.’

  ‘Fresh Start?’ Fenchurch stepped away from the door. ‘Let me tell you a little story about where Fresh Start get their orphans from, shall I?’

  Larry pounded his fist into the table. ‘They’re a legitimate business!’

  ‘They kidnapped my little girl from outside our house in London.’ Fenchurch held Larry’s gaze until he looked away, his face flushing red. Shame or just anger? ‘The first guy drugged her and passed her to another guy. Her hair was cut and her clothes changed. Then she was passed on to someone else. But this third bloke was a cop, you see? He found out a cop’s daughter had gone missing. Didn’t take a lot of calculus to work out he had her in the back of his car.’ He left a pause. Larry just licked his lips. Over and over again, wetting and licking. ‘She ends up here, in the arse end of middle England.’

  ‘They’re a legitimate business.’

  Savage cleared his throat. ‘We believe they may not be.’

  ‘What? They . . . We didn’t know. I swear, we’d been looking for . . .’

  Savage coughed again. ‘Mr Simon, you need to start talking.’

  Larry looked at his lawyer, who flashed his eyebrows. He pinched his nose. ‘We’d just lost our own daughter. Amanda died of leukaemia. In 2002. She was seven. A year before, I’d been in an accident and . . . well, my wife and I can’t have children. Those are the cards we were dealt and this was the option we went with.’ His face twisted into a snarl. ‘It took us a year to get to the point of wanting to have another child. Then another two years to get through all the red tape. Then the system rejected us. This was our last hope in this country.’ He wiped at his eyes. ‘I just wanted my daughter back.’

  ‘So you took mine.’

  ‘I didn’t take anybody’s!’ Larry slammed his fist on the table. ‘They gave Chloe to us. They told us she’d had a difficult life. That she was traumatised. They told us she was broken apart by what happened to her parents.’

  Acid spat in Fenchurch’s gut. ‘What did she think happened to us?’

  ‘That her parents died in a car crash.’

  ‘And you believed them?’

  ‘We had no reason to doubt it. They had police reports and everything.’

  Fenchurch snarled at Larry, ‘You ever heard the phrase “Looking a gift horse in the mouth”?’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  What, you still don’t believe us?’ Cheryl’s jaw slackened, like she’d lost all motor control. ‘They fooled us. If Chloe was . . . taken from you . . . We didn’t know. I swear.’

  Savage sat opposite Cheryl Simon and the Simons’ lawyer. ‘That all tallies with what your husband told us.’

  Fenchurch pushed away from the door and walked over to her, standing too close probably, but he was past caring. ‘How did you get in touch with Fresh Start in the first place?’

  ‘An advert in the Mail. It took me a week to pluck up the courage to call the number.’ She brushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘They had an office in Poole and we visited them a couple of days after I phoned. They were very helpful, very thorough. They warned us we might not . . . might not get picked, but we did.’

  Fenchurch sweated. Abi was just on the other side of the two-way mirror.

  Cheryl swivelled round to glare at Fenchurch. ‘When you lost your daughter, what did you and your wife do? Did you consider adoption? Did you?’ Her lip curled up, twitching slightly. ‘Do you know what it feels like to watch your flesh and blood rot away to nothing? Amanda went from a healthy girl to skin and bones in weeks. We tried everything but we couldn’t save her.’

  Another glance over at the two-way. ‘That doesn’t excuse this.’

  ‘We needed to fill up a deep void in our lives. Fresh Start offered us the chance.’ Cheryl’s nostrils flared at Fenchurch. ‘I’ll ask you again, didn’t you and your wife think about adoption?’

  Fenchurch swallowed hard. ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘If you’re telling me this lot aren’t on the level . . .’ Cheryl gasped. ‘Jennifer, our daughter . . . We got her from the same agency we got Chloe. After . . . after what happened.’ She composed herself, her lips pressed tight together. ‘Jennifer’s just finished her first year at university. Finishing up for summer, though her exams were over a long time ago.’

  Savage gave a polite smile. ‘Mrs Simon, we’ll need to speak to your daughter in connection with this investigation.’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked round at Fenchurch. ‘Inspector, if someone gave you a chance to wind the clock back, wouldn’t you have taken it?’

  ‘I . . .’

  The door juddered open and Abi entered, standing beside Fenchurch, arms folded, face like thunder. ‘I believe you.’

  Cheryl gasped and covered her mouth, tears splashing down her face.

  Savage nodded at Fenchurch. Abi could stay.

  Cheryl wiped her cheeks. ‘You would’ve done the same?’

  Abi reached across the table to grab Cheryl’s hands. ‘When . . . when we lost Chloe, Simon and I split up. There was too much to deal with.’

  ‘You’re not still together?’

  ‘We are. It took a long time, but we . . .’ Abi pulsed her grip on Cheryl’s hands. ‘We came to an understanding.’

  ‘Here . . .’ Cheryl reached into her bag and pulled out an old photo album covered in dust. She rifled through it and handed it to Abi. ‘This is Chloe.’ She stabbed her finger on the page. ‘There’s not a lot. We thought we’d get more time with her.’

  Fenchurch sat down and looked through with Abi. Like the photo on the case file, Chloe’s hair had been cut into a short bob, still blonde. She didn’t smile in any of the photos, but it was definitely her. Hit him like a knife in the gut. He stroked a finger on the pictures and whispered, ‘My little angel.’

  Abi flicked over. Another six of Chloe, including one with a smile, her cheek dimpling. Her mother’s dimple. Definitely her, no question. ‘Jesus, Simon.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Fenchurch ran his fingers over the photos again, as if that could give some contact with their lost daughter.

  Abi got up, tears sliding down her face.

  Cheryl reached over and clasped her wrist. ‘If Chloe was your daughter . . . she . . . she was a lovely girl. Lovely. But . . . difficult. She had a darkness. The death of her parents had hit her hard.’

  Abi’s yelp punctured the silence. ‘Christ!’ She joined Fenchurch by the wall, folding herself into his embrace. ‘Tell me what happened the day she died.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can—’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Cheryl shut her eyes and exhaled softly, like a monk about to start chanting. ‘She was always running off from me, very impulsive girl like that, but this day . . . This day, we were shopping in town. Chloe didn’t look both ways. It was a bus. She didn’t stand a chance.’

  Fenchurch hugged Abi tight, pulling her close. Felt like he could break her, but he didn’t want to let her go. Didn’t want anyone to take her away from him.

  Cheryl held up the photo album. ‘I could have copies of these made, if you’d like?’

  Abi broke off from Fenchurch and blew her nose. ‘I’d really like that.’

  Savage clapped Fenchurch on the back and leaned against the door Larry Simon was behind. ‘I can’t even think w
hat’s going through your head, Simon, but I think it’s in our best interests if you leave now.’

  ‘But we’re—’

  ‘You’ve got your answers. My team will validate these stories, okay?’ Savage stood and buttoned up his blazer. ‘As it stands, we’re proving exactly what we knew. These poor people have been duped. The story DC Johnson told you about your daughter’s abduction . . . Well, it is panning out.’

  ‘I need to see this through.’

  ‘You need to be with your wife, Simon.’

  Fenchurch wanted to just punch through the wood and then punch and kick and scratch and bite and . . .

  He shook his head, trying to throw the rage off. ‘Are you going to catch the bastards who took her?’

  ‘I listened to the interview with DC Johnson on my drive over here. It’s a crying shame he’s . . . well . . .’ Savage wet his lips with his tongue, his brows creasing in. ‘The tale he told, however, precisely matches what happened to Cassie McBride.’

  ‘What?’ Fenchurch frowned, his gut climbing up to his teeth. ‘So these people shot her and Johnson?’

  ‘It appears that way, yes.’ Savage got a handkerchief out of his top pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘Cassie was abducted from her home, aged nine. A year later, a random stop and search found her in the boot of a taxi, asleep and with another girl. Their hair had been cut short. You know the second girl as Rebecca Thurston.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘2006.’ More dabbing, like Savage was waiting for Fenchurch to butt in. ‘Sadly, Cassie’s parents had passed away in the meantime. Cancer and . . .’ He shook out the hankie, dust motes dancing about in the strip lighting. ‘Suicide. Her father threw himself in front of a train.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  ‘Rebecca and Cassie went through a lot of counselling. Together. They remained close friends, struggling to get over their ordeal, not that they could ever recover fully, of course. When they were both sixteen, they moved into a shared house.’ Savage stuffed the hankie away. ‘Cassie’s birth name is Melanie Edwards, but we obviously renamed her during the witness-protection process.’