Come and Find Me (DI Marnie Rome Book 5)

by Sarah Hilary

  ‘She gave up on him. That’s what Dazza said. But Dazza’s the one putting it about that Mickey did the eyeballs and the teeth and the arson all at once. I wouldn’t trust a word Dazza says.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Marnie told him. ‘We’re not.’

  In the station’s interview room, Darren Quayle shifted in his seat, eyes sliding in the direction of his solicitor then across to DS Harry Kennedy. He didn’t look at the letters in the evidence bags, not even when Noah said, ‘Who wrote these, Darren?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘It wasn’t Michael Vokey, was it?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Why do you have a firearm on the allotment?’

  ‘No comment.’ Bruises under his eyes from the fever, but his chest X-rays were clear. Fit for interview, with no intention of talking.

  Harry tried, ‘Where did you get the gun?’

  Darren flicked his eyes at the bandage on Harry’s right hand then looked away. ‘No comment.’

  ‘Do you know where Michael Vokey is?’ Noah asked.

  He shut his eyes, sitting slumped in the chair at his solicitor’s side. ‘No. Comment.’

  ‘You need to talk to us, Darren. You want this to go away. That means talking to us, helping us to find Michael and put a stop to whatever the two of you started back in Cloverton.’

  Darren looked glassily at Noah for a long moment.

  The tape turned, furring the silence in the room.

  ‘Start at the end,’ Noah said. ‘If that’s easier. Tell us about the day of the riot.’

  Darren dropped his chin to his chest, the breath leaving his lungs like a slow puncture. ‘No comment.’

  33

  My little ligustrum was looking lovely that last day. I’d pruned her long shoots and trimmed the branches that conceal her trunk before sealing her wounds with paste. She had beauty, balance and realism. Until— Well, I don’t need to tell you.

  All that hard work gone to waste, everything I’d done to keep the peace. Dazza too, because he didn’t want war at the outset. He thought he could make it work and really, who was it hurting? It’s common sense you don’t want a man like Mickey making his own entertainment. But then it tipped over into more for Dazza, became showing off. Strutting, they call it. That was the first straw. And sometimes, you see, the first straw is the last straw. I hadn’t forgiven Mickey for Julie, there’s the truth of it. Hadn’t forgiven the foul way he talked about what he did to her as if it were nothing, passing over Natalie as if she didn’t even exist. He sat on that little girl’s mother and terrorised her, all so he could draw her picture. He needed to be stopped, even Dazza could see that.

  ‘What’s he going to do next?’ Dazza asked after a terrible night of terrors, the cell smashed up around us, and so I told him what he should be scared of, and what we needed to do about it. He listened, I’ll give him that. He could be a good listener, Dazza, you just had to be careful who was doing the talking. ‘We have to do something,’ I said. Well, it was the truth, wasn’t it?

  What you want to understand about Mickey is the way he steals what makes you special. He snuffs you out, and moves on to the next one. That’s a kind of addiction, and he’s never happy. He wasn’t happy when he sat on my chest, or Julie’s. He wasn’t ever going to be happy, or settled, or done. If you’re trying to solve the puzzle of Michael Vokey then you need to understand that he wasn’t ever going to be done. Look at what he did to my little ligustrum.

  The last present she ever gave me, my dear old mum. Mickey waited until I was asleep and he stole the scissors from my pocket, from right out of my pocket. And afterwards he sat with a sketchpad and a stick of charcoal, waiting to draw my face. That’s all he cared about, because I wouldn’t give him what he wanted when I was awake. Horror, fear, rage or remorse. All the things he found so mysterious he had to try and capture them. Often he drew me in my sleep, when I shook with the fury I kept inside the rest of the time, rocketing from the balls of my feet to the back of my throat, the dead taste of batteries under my tongue. I had my little ways, Mum always said. I’d trained myself out of them, in here. But there’s a line, isn’t there? No one’s denying there’s a line. ‘You have your little ways, Teddy.’

  I cared for her right up until the end, my dear old mum. Through those days when the walks grew shorter but took longer because she couldn’t move at the pace she once did, any more than she could settle in the house. All those sleepless nights because she didn’t trust pills of any description. I can picture her bedroom with its lemon walls a little greasy just there above the bed because I should’ve washed her hair more often, especially towards the end, except ‘Stop fussing!’, her hand tapping at the bedside cabinet, searching for her glasses, or her teeth. A right state, that cabinet. Cup rings, Vaseline, used tissues, I can see it now. I never had a minute to myself, to clean.

  Funny how the light in here makes everything flatter than it actually is. Hospital lighting, like someone took a hammer to the cabinets and beds, to me. Linoleum floors buzzing with the stuff they use to polish everywhere. There’s a man comes in the night with a machine. He polishes up the corridor then he polishes down. He props open the door to my room and stands watching me with his jaw rolling, chewing gum, hands slack at his sides and the machine purring behind him like a dirty great cat. Mum hated cats at the end, said they scared her, the way they looked at you, judging you, ‘Little brutes.’ Mrs Biggs was long gone by then.

  I remember the shape of Mum’s head in the pillows that last day. I put my hand there, and the pillow was still warm with her. I’d started to tidy the bedside cabinet but stopped because it was too soon. I wanted it to be her room a little longer. She hated me touching her things. Half a glass of water with her teeth inside, a library book, Andrew’s Liver Salts, all her rings and fancy bits that didn’t fit her swollen fingers or wrists, but she wouldn’t let me put any of it away in a safe place.

  ‘Stop fussing!’

  A lonely sort of love, ours. Anyone asks, I wouldn’t recommend it. Look what it did to me, hitting the ditch from the pillows where her head lay, opening the windows to air a room where I was never welcome, not towards the end, not even when I brought breakfast and the post. ‘Flaming bills!’ Language, I’d say. ‘And you can get lost!’

  ‘Shall I turn back the bed, Mum?’

  She’d look at me then, all sunken chest and self-reproach, and I’d pat her hand and pour the tea and two cups later she’d be fine.

  The ligustrum was her last present, because she knew how much I loved to fuss. She bought me the scissors too, my first pair. The little bonsai sat on the metal cabinet that last day, putting down her pretty shadow. I went to bed seeing her sitting there. Such a strange sound to wake to, the snipping of my scissors.

  My fingers twitch, trying to keep time, but the rhythm’s all wrong, too fast and too ferocious. Snipsnipsnipsnip. Mindless, with no thought to it, but I know her sound. My ligustrum. The scissors are thick with her sound, and her smell too. Silvery green, the tick-tick-tick of her leaves falling. I roll sideways to see her shadow on the wall, dwarfed by his.

  He’s wedged her pot between his legs, its inward rim and delicate feet pressed between the meat of his knees. My little bonsai’s smooth bark and the feminine curve of her trunk is facing away from him, as if in horror. Her sparse branches, always so gracefully curled, cower under his fist which is wielding the scissors like an axe as he slices into her, slices her open.

  I’m frozen on my side, staring down from the bunk, my hands and feet tangled in the sheet and blanket, sleep crusting the corner of my eye.

  He tears the leaves from her branches, stripping her bare, twisting her with his fists, stabbing her with the scissors, my scissors, slicing her open everywhere. I put out my hand, a shout opening my mouth, choking in my throat. It’s too late. I’ve woken up too late.

  I fall from the bunk, finally. Fall on him, the soft scrabble of flesh under my knuckles and knees, turning this way and tha
t like a pike, hot and breathy under me. I don’t stop, I can’t.

  I hardly noticed the stink. Only later, when my breathing’s calmed down. He never flushed the toilet after using it, but this was different. He’d blocked it deliberately, it was overflowing. It wasn’t hard to block the toilets given the diet they fed us, but this wasn’t his breakfast and supper. My cacti were missing. All but two of them, empty spaces on the cabinet, blood red like a massacre. That was my eyes, I realised, I was seeing red just like the stories say. So angry my temples pulsed, my whole head filled with the sound of drum-drum-drumming.

  I don’t remember what I did, precisely, or what I said. But it scared him. He stopped twisting finally and shrank, trying to make himself smaller, less of a target. I didn’t stop, not for a long time. I frightened myself, if I’m honest. You never know, do you, how much you’re holding in until it comes out. Only later, when I’d worn myself out and was lying up there under the lights, I heard him doing what he’d wanted to do. Drawing me.

  The hiss of the light and blood walloping in my temples, and underneath—

  A noise like a snake shedding its skin.

  His charcoal stick moving on the empty white page.

  34

  The makeshift incident room was hot and felt crowded, its trapped air tasting of paste and pens. Noah rolled up his shirt sleeves, his eyes on the women’s faces. Not just Julie and Lara and Ruth. The other women, and men. All the faces from Marion Vokey’s house.

  ‘Cameras make ghosts out of people.’

  Bob Dylan, of all people, had said that. Noah was standing in a room full of ghosts. In contrast to the main incident room where Vokey’s mugshots were pinned, each face on these walls was distinct. Noah focused on the nine nameless faces, the ones he’d copied to his phone. Who were they? Would he ever know, or had he to accept the impossibility of that? You can’t save everyone—

  He looked up when the door opened. Marnie had brought two bottles of water, handing one to him. ‘Are they talking to you yet?’ The faces, she meant.

  ‘Not yet.’ He sighed. ‘And Darren isn’t talking either. Silence on all sides.’

  ‘Tell me what you see.’ Marnie unscrewed the cap of her bottle, drinking a mouthful. ‘What you see of Michael, here.’

  ‘This is someone who doesn’t recognise himself in mirrors. Someone searching for control and clarity, some measure of understanding maybe. He doubts himself, doubts everything.’ Noah scratched at his cheek. ‘I showed his artwork to Dan. He sees a lot of fear in it, and superstition.’

  ‘He’s searching.’ Marnie returned to the first of these judgements. ‘That means he’s lost.’ She stepped closer to the wall, shoulder to shoulder with Noah. ‘They say you can lose yourself in art.’

  ‘We’ve lost him. The trail’s been cold for nearly two weeks. I’m afraid the only way we’ll find him is if he hurts another woman the way he hurt Julie. Either that or—’

  ‘Say it,’ Marnie prompted, keeping very still at his side.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Noah turned to look at her. ‘The gun on the allotment was fired.’

  ‘Darren killed him?’ She didn’t blink. ‘What was the motive?’

  ‘The hero worship soured at close quarters?’ Noah tried to imagine the cocksure young man in the interview room as a killer. ‘But Vokey should have been on high alert. Being good at deception makes you hard to deceive. I don’t see him trusting Darren, or anyone else.’

  ‘Ruth, and Lara.’ Marnie touched her hand to the women’s faces on the wall. ‘Why did they write to him, really? What did they want? Lara was lonely, weary, regretting an impulse, but it must have been more than that, at the outset.’

  ‘She had a line in one of her letters: “You see me. You’re the only one who does.” Perhaps it’s as simple as that. They become someone else, through his eyes. All that matters is him looking. Seeing. In Leeds, they said he brought out the worst in everyone, altered behaviours. It’s the way he looks at you, but it’s also the way he sees you. Everyone’s altered, in his eyes.’

  ‘I need to talk to you about Leeds.’ Marnie twisted the cap on her water bottle. ‘The young man who hanged himself. Charlie Lamb. I’ve asked Colin to look into it, something Aidan said.’ She studied the wall of faces. ‘He doesn’t believe Vokey was responsible for the riot, or the worst of the violence. We’ve built him up into a devil, he says. We need to break it all down, get at the truth of what Vokey did rather than the legend we’ve allowed ourselves to believe.’

  ‘Aidan sounds like Ruth,’ Noah said irritably.

  ‘Perhaps. But he was living at close quarters with Michael Vokey. And he has a point, hasn’t he? We’ve built a profile based on very few facts. No CCTV or eye witnesses, most of the forensic evidence destroyed in the fire.’

  Noah fell silent. He wasn’t able to argue against Duffy’s truth, but he wanted to. He hadn’t met the man, but he knew Aidan was manipulative and untrustworthy. A player of games.

  ‘Say you’re Michael Vokey.’ Marnie nodded at the room of faces. ‘This is your house, your mother’s house. You grew up here. After she dies, you move back in. No furniture or water, and no power. You make this room into your room. It’s where you sat together as a family, you and Alyson and your mum, but you turn it into this – fill it with the faces of strangers. Why? Why not upstairs, in the bedroom that was yours?’

  ‘Not big enough,’ Noah said. ‘And easier to work in here. My bedroom’s at the front of the house, someone could’ve seen me.’

  ‘So you’re cautious. You see others, but you don’t want to be seen. You were coming to this house when you were out on bail, after you’d attacked Julie. You put her photo up here, and Natalie’s. The photos you took from their house.’

  ‘I wanted them with me.’

  ‘They’re just pictures.’

  ‘They’re more than that. They’re people. They’re puzzles.’

  Marnie studied the walls in silence. ‘The pit in the cellar, who was it for?’

  ‘I don’t know, it doesn’t fit.’ Noah shut his eyes, trying to make this work. He’d role-played sadists before, and killers. He and Marnie had solved many cases like this, but with Vokey he wasn’t feeling it. He couldn’t connect to the man, or his motives. ‘For the woman§ who came after Julie? Who comes after Julie.’

  ‘People are puzzles,’ Marnie repeated softly. ‘You don’t understand them.’

  ‘They make no sense to me, there’s always a piece missing. But that could be from me, just as Alyson told Joe Coen. Those pictures of Ruth. I showed her no mercy, or pity.’ Noah gathered a breath, holding it in his chest. ‘All right. I know there’s something missing, I can feel it. I know my art’s twisted, indecent. It’s why I hid those particular photos under the floor. Because I know there’s something wrong with my art, with me.’

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘I’m doing it. I got away. I couldn’t be inside, Ruth’s right about that, I was scared in there. Of being found out, or kept away from the people I need. Like Alyson.’

  ‘Alyson’s sick,’ Marnie said. ‘Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. Joe says she hadn’t told anyone about the PSP, certainly not Michael. Joe asked her about the threatening letter she’d received – “We won’t warn you again” – but she dismissed it as hate mail. Colin’s seeing if it matches the forgeries found on the allotment.’

  ‘Darren didn’t write those,’ Noah said. ‘He doesn’t have the imagination, for one thing.’

  ‘That’s what Lara said, about Michael.’ Marnie pushed her curls from her face. ‘It’s how she knew the more recent letters were forgeries. Too creative, she said. Too articulate.’

  ‘And her letter about the red dress. If she didn’t write that then who did?’

  ‘That’s what we need to find out.’

  ‘We’ll be too late,’ Noah said. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of. He’s out there, he’s had days already, or someone has. We’re not even close. We’ll be too late to tur
n this around.’

  ‘We can’t think like that. We have to believe we’ll find him, or that he’ll hand himself in.’

  ‘Why would he do that? What’s he got left to lose?’

  ‘There’s always something left to lose,’ Marnie said.

  Noah was close enough to catch the clean scent of her skin; she’d splashed water on her face and neck. ‘I saw my parents,’ he said. ‘The day we found these faces at Marion’s house. I went to Pentonville because I knew they were visiting Sol. Mum didn’t speak to me, wouldn’t even look at me. She blames me for the arrest, of course. I thought I could make them understand but she already understands everything that matters. I betrayed my brother, betrayed them. That’s how she sees it, and she’s right. When you boil it down, that’s exactly what I did.’

  ‘What choice did he leave you? If you hadn’t arrested him, his gang would have gone after Dan, or you. That would have been a betrayal of Dan.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure he’s in danger right now.’

  Marnie looked at him. ‘Dan?’

  ‘Sol. I was stupid not to think it through. As if prisons aren’t full of factions, gangs.’ Noah closed a hand across his mouth, thumb and fingers pressing his cheekbones. ‘I told myself I was putting an end to it, getting him out of trouble. But all I’ve done is trap him in a place where he’s watching his back twenty-four seven. Making new deals, worse ways to stay safe.’

  ‘You can’t beat yourself up.’ She put a cool hand on his wrist. ‘That doesn’t help anyone. You, or Sol, or this investigation.’

  ‘I know.’ Noah nodded. ‘I do know.’ He drew a short breath, enough to be able to smile at her. ‘How are things with you?’

  He was expecting the familiar assurance, or another plea to give her time, but Marnie said, ‘Can you stand to see more photos?’ Her eyes were ink-blue, unwavering.

  ‘Of course.’ He watched her reach into her bag and remove a paper wallet. Judging by the creases at its corners, it’d been in her bag for a while.