Come and Find Me (DI Marnie Rome Book 5)

by Sarah Hilary

  ‘She came to the chippy two days ago.’ Julie snapped the elastic at her wrist. ‘Said you lot brought her to London to answer questions about Michael. I should start telling the truth, that’s what she said. Because that’s what it’d take to get him the help he needs. Him. The help he needs.’

  ‘What did she mean by that?’

  ‘He’s in danger, that’s what she said. You should be treating him like a missing person.’ Julie set her teeth. ‘Like Natalie. But you’re too busy pretending he’s a nutter, and that’s going to get him killed.’ She bit her lip, hard. ‘I said she was talking shit, she’s no idea what he’s like. That’s when she starts up about how I’d lied in court, said this’s on me because I lied and that’s what got him locked up where he went mad, so mad he had to run.’

  ‘Why didn’t you report her?’ Noah asked. ‘This harassment—’

  ‘This harassment’s my life,’ Julie said furiously. ‘Don’t you get that? I told you back at the house. I get it from friends and neighbours, I get it from kids, even my mum. I’m sick of being told I brought this on myself, that I should’ve done things differently. I’ve been doing as I’m told for months.’ She snapped the elastic so savagely the plastic bobble cracked against the bone in her wrist. ‘I didn’t want to lie in that court, I wanted to tell the truth because it should’ve been enough. It was enough. Just because he didn’t rape me, didn’t beat me up or kill me, somehow it was nothing? It wasn’t nothing. It was my whole life, changed.’

  ‘You didn’t want to lie in court.’

  Julie shut her eyes tight against Marnie’s stare. ‘They said I had to build it up, that it wasn’t enough because the jury wouldn’t understand. They had to see me terrified, see me cry. I couldn’t tell them he was just a creep, a nobody who followed me home from work, begging me to let him draw me, saying he just wanted to look at me. He sat here,’ rapping her knuckles on her breastbone, ‘and he looked and talked and it was just words, okay? He didn’t hit me, didn’t use his fists. It was all just words and his eyes on my skin, soaking me up.’

  Pain opened her face. She looked at Marnie, at Noah. ‘He wouldn’t shut up. Whispering these insults, all the ways I disgusted him, the sick things he was going to do, but he couldn’t even get it up. He’s nobody, a loser. If he’d got it up, I’d have known what to do. I’d have gone for his eye, or his balls. But it was just words and the way he stared, making me less than— Like I was nothing.’ Her wrist was bruised blue under the elastic band. ‘No one teaches you how to fight words or looks, not like that.’ She swiped at her eyes angrily. ‘I’ve been stared at in the street, course I have. Like I’m scum or like I’m meat, but this wasn’t that. This was like I was nothing. I could see myself in his eyes. Tiny. He kept saying it, “You’re nothing, you’re empty. Just a stink and some skin. You’re nothing,” on and on. He wouldn’t shut up.’ She collected her fingers into fists again. ‘When I gave up smoking, a mate lent me this hypnosis tape to help me quit. That’s what it’s like listening to him, that’s what his voice does. Goes on and on and on. Gets inside your head so you can hear it even after he’s gone.’ She drilled her fingers to her temples. ‘He’s here. He hasn’t gone away, not for a second. He’s right here.’

  Her legal team had advised her against making this statement in court, fearing it wouldn’t be sufficient to secure a conviction. It was hard to imagine any jury remaining unmoved by Julie’s palpable terror, her trauma. This, more than anything, convinced Noah they’d been right to label Vokey a monster. But Ruth refused to believe it. She’d taken Natalie because she wanted the rest of them to accept her version of Michael.

  ‘We have search teams looking for Natalie,’ Marnie was telling Julie. ‘We have hostage negotiators on their way.’

  ‘To negotiate what? You can’t give her what she wants, because it doesn’t exist. She wants her hero back with her, safe and sound. But he doesn’t exist. It’s a fantasy, she’s a fantasist. God knows what lies she’s telling to Nat.’ Julie’s eyes filled with tears again. ‘Why’d you have to bring her up to London? Why’d you have to feed her fantasy that he’s out there, waiting to be saved?’

  ‘He is out there,’ Noah said gently. ‘We’re trying to find him. Did Ruth say anything about where she thinks he might be?’

  Julie tipped her head back in a bid to stem the flood of tears. Her shoulders shook. It took a moment for Noah to realise she was laughing. Not happily, but laughing. ‘He’s dead! She thinks he’s dead, or dying. Trapped somewhere, tricked by someone, God knows. She’s crazy! She’s crazy and she has Nat. She thinks he needs help, not anyone else. Not me, not Nat. Just him. She went on and on about how scared he is, asking me to pray for him, begging me to tell the truth. “I know you lied in court and I know why,” as if she’s doing me a favour, giving me a chance to say sorry when it wasn’t even lies. It wasn’t the truth, but it wasn’t lies. What he did was far worse than what I said. You think I wouldn’t rather have bruises, broken bones? He’s in here.’ She struck her head with the heel of her hand. ‘He’s in here the whole time since it happened.’ She took a mouthful of air, shivering violently. ‘You’ve checked the chippy, yeah? She hasn’t tried to contact me there?’

  ‘Not yet. We have officers there, in case.’

  ‘Don’t you have her phone number? Can’t you find her that way?’

  ‘Yes,’ Marnie said. ‘That’s what we’re doing right now. We have officers out looking for her and we’re searching CCTV. Everyone is working to find Natalie.’

  Ruth wasn’t answering her phone, at least not the number she’d given to the police during the informal interview. Should they have held her after that, or escorted her home to Danbury? Why did it feel as if they’d failed to take her seriously, as a witness or as a threat?

  Marnie poured a cup of water and handed it to Julie. ‘Did she say anything else when she spoke with you two days ago? Anything which might help us find Natalie?’

  ‘Just that she knew he was in London, that’s why she couldn’t go home. She was looking for him, that’s what she said. “Just like the police should be, except they don’t care if he’s dead or alive.” Do you? Care?’

  ‘We want to find him, and return him to prison.’

  Julie stared at Marnie, looking ill with fear. ‘The sickest thing’s I understand her. If I were that empty, if my life were that empty, I’d want him to fill it. It’s the way he— He sits on you like a nightmare, like one of those nightmares where you can’t move and you can’t breathe and he’s so solid. It makes you want to give up.’ She set the cup of water down, pulling at Natalie’s hairband again. ‘He forces you to think about how hard it is to keep fighting when everything’s against you. The whole world, that’s how it feels sometimes. He’s like all of your loneliness and fear and all the things you hate most about yourself and your life, sitting here like a slab.’ She spread her hands on her chest, pressing. ‘You want to give up, it’s like he’s giving you permission to just – give up.’

  ‘We need to trace Ruth and Natalie as quickly as possible,’ Marnie told the team. ‘CCTV, Misper, the full works. We might think it unlikely Ruth will harm Natalie, but we can’t operate on that assumption. Where might she have taken her? We’re already checking train stations, bus stations, routes home to Danbury, and churches here in London. Where else should we be looking?’

  ‘What does she want?’ Debbie asked. ‘Is she punishing Julie for her evidence against Michael?’

  ‘That might be a part of it. From what Julie said of their encounter at the chip shop, Ruth’s frantic for news of Michael. Perhaps she believes this is how she’ll get it.’

  ‘We need to get Darren talking,’ Ron said. ‘If she’s after information about Vokey, Darren’s the one in the know.’

  ‘Noah’s on that.’ Marnie nodded. ‘Colin, you have the inventory from the allotment?’

  He dug it from the folder, handing it across. ‘Here, boss.’

  She scanned it quickly, looking for
the reason why her memory had been prodding her since the discovery that Darren had a brother. ‘One pair of men’s trainers, size seven.’ She tapped her finger to the list. ‘I’m willing to bet these are the running shoes Aidan procured for Michael.’

  ‘So?’ Ron frowned.

  ‘So why isn’t Michael wearing them?’ Marnie pinned the inventory to the board. ‘If he’s out there, running, why isn’t he wearing these shoes?’

  ‘Shit.’ Ron knuckled his eyes. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? Quayle killed him and Ruth knows it. Somehow. That’s why she’s going mental.’

  Marnie’s phone rang and she lifted a hand for silence.

  ‘DI Rome.’

  ‘I expect you’ve been waiting for my call.’ Her voice was smooth with self-importance. ‘This is Ruth Hull. I want to talk about Michael.’

  38

  ‘No comment.’ Darren Quayle lowered his head, tucking his chin towards his left shoulder, settling in for another hour of refusing to answer questions.

  ‘If I were you,’ Noah advised, ‘I’d reconsider going on record as not giving a stuff about a missing six-year-old.’

  ‘Do what?’ Darren looked over at his solicitor. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’

  ‘Julie Seton’s daughter Natalie was snatched by Ruth Hull two hours ago. Ruth wants to know what’s happened to Michael Vokey. Where he is, whether he’s safe.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake.’ He folded his arms on the table and buried his head there. ‘This’s such shit.’

  ‘What’s shit, Darren? That a six-year-old is being used as a bargaining chip between two people so infatuated with a violent offender they can’t see what’s in front of their faces? Michael Vokey isn’t worth going to jail for, I think you know that. He’s certainly not worth the safety of a child who’s already traumatised after seeing her mum assaulted in her own home.’

  ‘I don’t know where he is, okay?’ He croaked the words into the crook of his arm. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Ruth thinks you do. She needs news of Michael and she’s not going to stop until she gets it.’

  ‘I wasn’t there.’ Darren lifted his head to look at Noah. His eyes were watering pinkly. ‘I don’t know what happened. They called us in before the fire was out and he was gone. He was gone.’

  ‘Who started the fire?’

  ‘Vokey! His T-shirt, fat from the trays. It was him, okay?’

  ‘You heard, or you know?’

  ‘He showed me.’ Traces of last night’s fever showed as bruises under Darren’s eyes. ‘Said he had to get out of there.’

  ‘He told you he was planning to start a fire. Did you report it?’

  ‘If I reported everything I’m told, I’d be doing paperwork twenty-four seven. I didn’t think he meant it. I was keeping an eye on him. I was doing my job.’

  ‘He knew which route to take that night,’ Noah said. ‘Which doors would be open for the fire fighters. How did he know that?’

  ‘Fuck knows.’ He shrugged the question off. ‘I don’t.’

  He knew. It was written all over his face, the fever allowing his lies no hiding place. He’d aided and abetted, and that was just the tip of the iceberg.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I think, shall I?’ Noah leaned forward under the light, waiting until Darren’s eyes were on him. ‘You helped him escape. You hid him in the shed on your mum’s allotment, took him clean clothes and food. Money, too. Maybe you intended him to run, except he left his trainers in the shed, the ones Aidan got for him. He has small feet. You take a size ten, so why would you have trainers in a size seven? Because Michael Vokey was there, in your shed, overnight. He slept there, used your fire pit as a toilet. We have his DNA from bodily waste, and from the clothes you took to him, clothes and food. Your mum told us about that, said you were out on the night of the riot. You came home from the prison and went straight back out again, stayed out all night.’ Noah rapped his knuckles on the table. ‘Shit, Darren, we have your gun. The gun you hid in the watering can. We took swabs when we checked you in here yesterday, and found firearms residue. On you. You have a gun and you fired it recently.’

  ‘At squirrels.’ His voice was dull, but there was an undercurrent of panic. He hadn’t known about his mother’s conversation with the police, flinching when Noah mentioned Anita’s evidence. ‘I told you, I was pissed, shooting at squirrels.’

  ‘Your mum told us you were out the night Vokey ran. Not just during the riot, but afterwards. You were out all night. Is she lying?’

  ‘She got it wrong.’ Darren’s lower lip lengthened like a sulky child’s. ‘She thinks she gets to keep tabs on me just because she has to have it all nailed down.’

  ‘All what?’

  ‘Everything! Just because Dad was in the army, the house has to run like clockwork, checklists for everything, always packing and unpacking, moving on. No posters on the walls, not even Blu Tack because the walls aren’t ours,’ mimicking his mother’s voice, ‘the house isn’t ours. Nothing is ours.’ He kicked a foot under the table. ‘Less rules in the fucking prison. At least there the inmates get to settle in. They get to stick posters on the walls, whatever they like.’

  Noah thought of the ugly room in Harpenden where he and Marnie had waited for that first interview with Darren. Anita was an army wife, ready for anything except permanence, and the possibility that her son had assisted a dangerous prisoner.

  ‘Your mum’s worried about you, Darren, where you went on the night of the riot. I’m guessing she’s going to be a lot more worried when she hears about the firearms residue.’

  ‘Yeah? You don’t know shit about my mum if you think that.’ He bit down hard on his sulky lower lip. ‘You need to shut up about my mum. She’s nothing to do with this. She’s no clue what’s going on, that’s why she’s freaking out. Because she’s got no clue, and no control.’

  ‘You don’t like us talking about your mum. Okay.’ Noah sat back, looking through his notes, allowing the panic time to take root. ‘Let’s talk about the gun. Where did the gun come from?’

  Silence. Darren moved his feet under the table. His solicitor sat without speaking, hadn’t spoken since Noah informed them of Natalie Seton’s kidnap.

  ‘We traced the serial number, so you may as well come clean. Where did you get the gun?’

  ‘I found it.’

  ‘You found it. All right.’ Noah nodded. ‘Well, we know it was Charlie’s gun.’

  Darren stared at him, the colour leaving his face, greying his lips.

  ‘Your brother Charlie. It was his gun. Not the one he was charged for possessing, but from the same batch, so I’m guessing he bought two. Did he give one to you? He told the court he didn’t feel safe, that’s why he had the gun, to protect himself and his family. That’s you, Darren. Did he give you the gun?’

  ‘No.’ It was a whisper, low.

  ‘But you found it. After he died, or before?’

  Darren wet his top lip with his tongue, holding the tip of it between his teeth for a second. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’m talking about your brother Charlie who hanged himself in Leeds prison after spending six weeks sharing a cell with Michael Vokey.’

  His solicitor sat up. Darren slunk lower in his seat.

  ‘Did you speak with Michael about that? It must’ve been a shock to find yourself working with the man who most people believe was responsible for your brother’s death.’

  ‘Charlie hanged himself.’ Kicking a foot under the table again. ‘It was a suicide. End of.’

  He was angry, but mostly he was scared. This thing was closing in on him. His face scrabbled after his earlier insouciance, without result.

  ‘Was Michael cut up about it, then?’ Noah asked. ‘He was the last person to see Charlie alive, and the first person to find him dead. That can’t have been easy. Did you talk about that?’

  ‘We didn’t talk about Charlie, okay?’ Darren stuck his thumb in his mouth, using it to brush at his front teeth.
‘If you’ve made up some fantasy shit about this being revenge— Forget it.’

  ‘Oh, I think we can leave the fantasy shit to you, Darren. You have that covered. The online interview you gave, calling Michael a psycho cannibal and what else was it? “He makes Jack the Ripper look like nothing. Like your gran’s pet poodle.” I’d say you have that covered.’

  Darren squirmed in his seat, sliding his eyes out of range of Noah’s stare.

  ‘“He’s dead clever, dead cunning,”’ Noah quoted from the transcript of the online interview. ‘“They’ll only find him if he wants to be found. My advice? Don’t hunt what you can’t catch.”’ He set the transcript aside. ‘What did you mean by that, Darren? “Don’t hunt what you can’t catch.” What makes you so certain we can’t catch Michael Vokey?’

  ‘Because you’re shit at it! If you weren’t shit at it you wouldn’t be sitting here asking me dumb questions when a little kid’s missing. You can’t find him, and you can’t find her. You’re useless, all of you.’ He blew a laugh through his nose. ‘You couldn’t find a needle in a junkie.’

  ‘Is that how you persuaded Michael to escape, by telling him we’d be too stupid to find him? Boasting about the firearm you had. Did you tell him you’d hide him? I’m guessing he was stupid too, since he fell for that.’

  Seconds passed, slowly. The solicitor leaned in to murmur advice to his client, but Darren wasn’t interested. He squared his shoulders, attempting to stare Noah down. ‘Yeah, he was in the shed on the allotment. One night. I went back next day, was going to call the police, but he was gone.’

  ‘Gone where? Where is he, Darren?’

  ‘I’ve no fucking idea, okay? And I never told him to escape, never told him where to hide. He knew about the allotment because he’d heard me talking with Elms.’

  ‘Ted Elms.’

  ‘Yeah.’ A note of triumph in his tone, as if he’d played his ace. ‘He’s the one who knew about the allotment, because he’d asked so many questions about it. He’s dead keen on gardening and I was just doing my job, making connections. We talked about the soil and the size of the plot, which way the sun faces, how close the woods are. He had a lot of questions.’