Alice Clark-Platts
* * *
The Taken
Contents
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Part Two
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Part Three
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Part Four
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Epilogue
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PENGUIN BOOKS
The Taken
Alice Clark-Platts is a former human rights lawyer who has worked at the UN International Criminal Tribunal in connection with the Rwandan genocide and also on cases involving Winnie Mandela and the rapper Snoop Dogg. She studied at Durham University and is a graduate of the Curtis Brown creative writing course whose fiction has been shortlisted for prizes.
There was a young man of Dijon,
Who had only a little religion.
He said: ‘As for me
I detest all the three,
The Father, the Son and the Pigeon.’
Anon
PART ONE
* * *
. . . those promises which drew her across from Asia to Hellas, setting sail at night, threading the salt strait . . .
Euripides, ‘Medea’
1
Tristan Snow switched on the lamp and eased himself out of bed, the scratching of the material of his pyjamas against the polyester sheets causing him to involuntarily shiver. The early light of the day lay quiet and undisturbed outside the boarding house. His mouth was thick with sleep.
Once upright, Tristan inhaled deeply through his nostrils and swallowed, centring himself. He came to standing and moved to the middle of the small room. Bending stiffly after a night in repose, he moved the prayer stool on to the damson-coloured rug at the end of the bed, noticing as he did so, that in several corners, clumps of its wool were gummed together with indiscernible dirt. Tristan concentrated on one particular patch in which something wriggled. He forced himself to watch as a louse emerged from the fibres. He continued to breathe steadily, lowering himself to bring his knees on to the worn and polished wood.
He remained there, his back as a mast on a ship, feet together behind him; his soles pink and bare. He pushed his hands together in the familiar pose, his index fingers in the shape of a steeple, as the words of the prayers rippled through his mind like a chattering stream. He fought to still the waters, to make each word count, trying to ignore the extraneous thoughts which fizzed resolutely on the periphery of his brain. His mouth was closed along with his eyes. The prayer began to work its magic.
A few moments later, Tristan started sharply at the clatter of something crashing into the window. Wings beat against the glass, causing him to open his eyes, a small furrow between his eyebrows. A bird of some kind – confused, perhaps, by the sudden noise of the railway tracks overhead.
He closed his eyes again. Breathed once more, finding his way back to that place where the clouds cleared and he was in that state of blissful, silent white. He remained there for some time, calm and still.
He didn’t notice the door opening quietly behind him. Nor the shadow falling over him in the burgeoning light of the room. He failed even to register the blood trickling down his face as he fell forward on to the floor, so peaceful was his entry into eternity.
The dying red of the sun struck Erica Martin’s face as she reached for a glass of retsina. Sam and she sat behind a stone balustrade, overlooking a verdant valley as the last strands of daylight weaved their way through the treetops. As the sky changed colour Martin removed her sunglasses and glanced to the right, where Sam was having to squint at his book.
‘Shall we order?’ she said. ‘We’ve run out of wine.’
Sam looked up at her with a smile. ‘Sure.’ He shifted forward and gestured to the waiter who came over with a confident smile, the menu a familiar friend. Soon plates of stuffed olives, octopus salad, grilled sea bass and a basket of bread lay before them on the table. Martin watched Sam as he tucked in, spooning food on to his plate, his brow unlined and tanned, the creases on his forehead smoothed out by the calm of the last few days. She found tears pricking at her eyes all of a sudden, a storm of something passing through her, wrenching her gut into a knot. With effort, she put her fork gently on to the white linen tablecloth and reached for her replenished wine glass. Without seeming to notice any of this, Sam put his hand on her free one.
‘It’ll be all right, you know. When we get back.’
Martin nodded, not understanding why she suddenly felt so at bay.
‘Jim will be reasonable about us. He has to be.’ Sam looked out at the vista as the last red streaks of the sun finally disappeared behind the distant hills. ‘He left you, after all.’
Martin’s stomach muscles clenched at that and, just as quickly, the sadness ebbed. She put down her glass and reached for her fork as candles were lit, popping into flame around like them like fireflies. ‘And what about us?’ she said, almost lightly, nearly as casual as a shrug.
Is there an ‘us’? she thought, not daring to ask the question, pressing her lips together with a leaden pause.
He moved his eyes back to her and squeezed her hand. ‘If that’s what we want – what we decide – then of course there will be. No question.’ He moved his glass to chink against hers. ‘Here’s to holidays,’ he said, holding her gaze as he drank. ‘Here’s to the future.’
Martin waited a beat before tipping her glass back to his. ‘Salut,’ she said, with a sad sort of a smile. ‘To the future.’
2
Detective Inspector Erica Martin was already at her desk when the call came in that a body had been discovered at the Riverview boarding house. Snatching her keys from her desk, she made to exit the Major Crime Team office as soon as she heard the address from the uniformed police officer on the scene.
‘Hold your horses, Martin,’ DCI Sam Butterworth called after her, causing her to halt at the door.
‘Jones is already on site with the Fore
nsics Manager,’ Martin protested, edging past the door jamb. ‘It’s my rap.’
Butterworth followed her through the door to stand in the corridor outside the main MCT office. ‘Take it easy, Erica,’ he said in a low voice. ‘We’re just back from holiday. Are you sure you want to dive straight back in? What with . . . everything else going on?’
Martin looked at him for a moment, her eyes bright and determined. ‘This is what I do.’
Sam didn’t reply, his shoulders stiff, arms folded.
‘Honestly,’ she repeated, ‘it’s what I need,’ and she gave a small smile, her unspoken plea hanging in the air.
‘Management meeting as soon as you’re back, then,’ Sam said, his shoulders drooping. ‘And if it gets too much . . .’
‘I’ll shout.’ Martin nodded swiftly, turning her back and pushing through the double doors that led to the stairwell out of the building.
The Riverview boarding house was under the Durham viaduct about twenty minutes’ drive away from the MCT, which had moved to Chester-le-Street a year after Martin had joined it. Far from having a river view, the building sat halfway up the steep hill which led to Durham’s railway station. It was old, from some indeterminable period, its walls dirty white, with musty bay windows wrapping around its front and a scrappy patch of garden leading on to the street.
Wearing a blue paper suit with white polythene bags over her shoes and two sets of latex gloves, Martin jogged up the stone steps to the front door, which had patches of peeling paint curling down it like faded party streamers. She acknowledged the constable standing there, who indicated that she should proceed immediately up the narrow staircase to an even thinner corridor; a few more uniformed officers were tucked in against the walls, a sombre guard of honour. The house was dark and sallow its palette dull. Martin walked alongside clammy brown wallpaper, feeling a sense of pendulous quiet pulsing softly. A blast of something would come, she could feel the certainty of it emanating from the walls.
Entering the bedroom at the end of the corridor, Martin ignored the others in the room. She approached the body with the weighted respect she gave to all the tasks connected with her profession. This was what she loved about her job, the pulling of the world on to a pinhead, grasping the fibres of life which swarmed in the air and rolling them into a ball, tumbling it along the ground to where a solitary spotlight shone; blocking everything else out apart from this moment, the now.
The man’s body lay in that focus. Martin’s eyes travelled over him keenly, from his head to his feet, which were splayed awkwardly out from the rest of his body. It looked as though he had been kneeling on a small stool, now overturned, and had been shunted forward by force, on to his face. She studied the back of his head, the bald patch at its crown but otherwise thick black hair, small scales of dandruff clinging to his scalp, remnants of life persisting.
Martin breathed out a small sigh before crouching down on her haunches. She let her gloved fingers move lightly over the collar of his dark blue pyjamas where blood had dried hard and stiff, the product of the dark spot on his skull below the baldness. There, the bone had been shattered, punched in like a splintered hole through a wooden door.
Martin swallowed. She could see the man’s dead, still brain.
Detective Sergeant Emma Jones stood by the window of the small bedroom. Blue-flowered curtains were closed across them, thin as tissue paper, the morning sun putting her in shadow. ‘Reverend Tristan Snow,’ she said, folding her arms. ‘He’s well known. Got an MBE . . . self-help guru and preacher. Works with kids. Have you heard of him?’
Martin gave a small shake of her head.
‘His wife’s downstairs,’ Jones continued. ‘They’ve been staying here for a week. He was found first thing this morning by his daughter. She’s with the mother.’
‘Have I missed Walsh?’ Martin asked, not wanting to look at Jones yet. Her – what was it, a fling? – with DCI Sam Butterworth wasn’t public knowledge yet, if it ever would be, and she wasn’t yet prepared for the piss-taking she knew was inevitable from her team. If they dared.
Jones nodded, her voice normal. ‘Yup. He said he’d see you at the post-mortem.’
‘Morning, DI Martin.’ Carl Partridge, the Forensics Manager, introduced himself from the other side of the room, where he stood with a camera. Martin turned to nod an acknowledgement to him. She’d worked with Partridge before and he was nice enough, albeit with a loud and often inappropriate laugh. Still, he was good at his job and Martin was pleased to see him here.
‘We’ll need blood spatter analysis,’ Partridge said, and gestured towards the floor. ‘On first look, seems likely he was kneeling on that stool.’
Martin said, ‘He’s not dressed. What time did the daughter find him?’
‘Must’ve been just after 7 a.m.,’ Jones answered. ‘She came in to bring him a cup of tea. Says she found him like this. Didn’t touch anything. Ran and got her mother. Called us.’
Martin peered forward at the crevasse in Snow’s skull. ‘Some whack,’ she said. ‘Wonder how many blows it took. Any obvious weapon?’
‘Not that we’ve seen yet,’ Partridge replied.
Martin stood up and shoved her hands in her pockets. ‘How many people are staying here? Have we got a list, Jones?’
‘One of the lads is on that now. Getting names. Landlady – a Mrs Quinn – says there were five people staying here last night. So six, all in, including her.’
‘Any sign of a break-in?’
‘Doesn’t look like it. No windows smashed. Landlady says the doors were all locked from the inside this morning. She’d checked them last night before bed, around nine-thirty.’
‘The guests have a key though, presumably?’ Martin said. ‘So that might not help us, timing-wise.’ She scrutinized the body again. ‘And his watch is still working, so no clue there. We’d better get them into the station while we wait for Walsh’s report. Get their clothes, DNA, prints. How old’s the daughter?’
‘Eighteen,’ Jones replied. ‘Domestic, do you think?’
Martin looked around the room without answering. The air in the room was dense with the funk of stale blood and perspiration. She forced herself to breathe through it, to take in what she was seeing. A mahogany headboard was fixed to the top of the single bed, which she pointed towards. ‘The wife wasn’t sleeping with him, then?’
‘Could mean they were scrapping?’ Jones suggested.
Martin murmured to herself, continuing to look around the room. A dark-wood wardrobe loomed over the room from an alcove. A small desk sat under the window, a pointless blotting pad placed on its top, given the five or so biros which lay scattered across it. She walked around the body to the side of the bed, where books had been placed on a bedside table. The lamp was still on, its light negligible against the pale sunlight rinsing into the room. She picked up the top book, giving a quizzical exclamation.
‘Hostage to the Devil?’ Martin turned to show it to Jones, then looked again at the pile. ‘The Devils of Loudun by Huxley; Michael Pearl. The guy has some eclectic interests.’
‘What’s this under here?’ Partridge asked from where he was crouched on the floor, looking under the bed. ‘Can you see, DI Martin? It’s more on your side.’ Martin bent down, reaching into her jacket pocket to retrieve a pen. Stretching one arm under the bed, she managed to fish around and inch out the object.
‘What the hell is that?’ Jones asked.
Martin touched it with her pen, moving it around a little. Its dark grey wings were glossy but rigid, spread wide. The breast feathers gradually darkened up to the black of its head, from which a milky eye stared blankly at Martin.
‘It’s a dead bird,’ she said. ‘Some kind of carcass.’ She looked up at Jones and Partridge, her mouth turned down, puzzled. ‘It looks like a pigeon.’
‘Why would a pigeon be under the bed?’ Partridge asked. He walked across the room and pushed back the curtains to reveal the window, which was slightly ajar. ‘Window�
�s not open enough for it to have flown in. The gap’s too small.’
Martin straightened to standing. ‘Maybe it was put there for some reason? Or it flew in before the window was shut?’
Jones nodded and then frowned, observing Martin’s stance, the clench of her jawline. ‘Nice welcome back, Boss.’
Martin caught her eye and something passed between them, the merest whisper of comprehension and support. She smiled with a shrug. ‘Ah well. All good things . . .’ She touched the books on the bedside table briefly before heading out of the room.
Violet watched her mother. They sat opposite each other on the lumpy sofas in the ‘best room’, as the landlady of the boarding house had described it. There was nothing best about the room, Violet thought. Unless you considered it marginally more amenable than the rest of this scummy place. She and her mother had looked at her father in surprise when they’d turned up here a week ago. This was far below par, in comparison to the places they normally stayed.
‘Talk to Fraser about it,’ her father had muttered, lumbering up the front steps, leaving her and her mother to carry in the bags. They had walked into the dark entrance hall, the beady eyes of the landlady following them from the door all the way to the best room like a repugnant Mona Lisa – no smile whatsoever.
Sitting in the best room now, Violet studied her mother in the manner of an auctioneer looking anxiously at a Grecian vase about to topple from a pedestal. Would she move fast enough? In time to catch her mother when she tumbled? Sera was doing okay at the moment but it would only be a matter of time, Violet was sure of it. Soon, she would fall.
Violet heard a cough at the door and snapped her head round to establish the source of the noise. What looked like a policewoman was standing there. She had on a beige mackintosh with a white shirt and black trousers on underneath. Her red hair was drawn up, away from her face. Her eyes were green, cat-like. Violet sniffed surreptitiously. The woman smelt like authority. Like those ones at school. She was probably called Dorothy. Violet gave her best look of haughtiness and then turned back to her mother. Sera had also noticed the policewoman and shifted as if to stand.
The Taken: DI Erica Martin Book 2 (Erica Martin Thriller) Page 1