The Taken: DI Erica Martin Book 2 (Erica Martin Thriller)

by Alice Clark-Platts

  Jonah Simpson, who worked as a preacher with Snow, has claimed that several of the vulnerable children who were supervised by the church were subjected to abuse by the Reverend while in his care.

  ‘He was a sort of Godlike figure,’ Simpson said. ‘Everybody knew of the good that Tristan did and what he did for children. But these children were powerless.’

  Tristan Snow, who appeared on television shows such as This Morning and as a recurring celebrity guest on various game shows, was found dead in suspicious circumstances last Monday.

  An alleged victim of the abuse, Nina Forster – who was thirteen at the time – said she had been molested in Snow’s dressing room after one of his popular shows on the Blackpool promenade in the 1990s.

  ‘I knew the moment I was asked to join him in his dressing room, I knew what was expected of me. Because I was having this wonderful time, and I was expected to pay for it. And that’s what I did.

  ‘I now know it was wrong and I can still get very angry about it, but nobody believed me then, so I don’t expect anybody to believe me now, if I’m honest.’

  Durham police who are investigating Snow’s death have said they will be looking into the allegations, and are working together with Lancashire police in conjunction with these claims.

  For more on this story, see pages 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

  Have you suffered any abuse at the hands of Tristan Snow? Were you a member of the Deucalion Church? If so, get in contact with Sean Egan via email at segan@durhamchronicle.co.uk or @seganjourno on Twitter.

  DC Fielding looked up at the boarding house from across the street as a train rumbled over the viaduct above. He glanced at his watch, checking that he still had time to kill before he was due at Martin’s morning briefing. He shuffled his feet and thought about the best way forward. His stomach gurgled with hunger. He should be in the café with a bacon sarnie, not standing here without any kind of clear plan.

  This was what his ma had only just last night yelled at him for. His lack of direction. Jesus wept, she had cried, raising her hands to the ceiling in a typically dramatic pose. The photo of John Paul II gazed beatifically down at them both from above the mantelpiece. His ma had yet to accept his passing, refusing to adjust to Pope Benedict XVI, let alone the latest pontiff who, his ma was apt to whisper in an appalled tone, agreed with The Gays, as she called them. Homosexuals, drug addicts, prostitutes and single parents were always capitalized in his ma’s house. Fielding sighed. Her beef these days was his single status. He knew she worried he was himself one of The Gays. When was he going to give her the grandchildren she deserved, she would cry. As if there were some kind of guarantee possible, a thirty-year warranty the likes of which you got from Argos – except they handed it to you with your firstborn at the hospital, and a few decades later you’d be fully entitled to expect a grandchild. He was incapable of making a decision, she would say to him. He should be getting down on one knee to Kelly, or Rachel, or Sarah or whoever it was he’d been seen chatting to in the Royal Oak last weekend.

  So absorbed was Fielding in his recollections of this haranguing, that he failed to notice the Riverview front door open.

  ‘You coming in then, or standing there all day?’ Eileen Quinn yelled at him, standing in her slippers.

  Fielding jerked his head up and gave her a grin.

  ‘Cup of tea, do you?’ She sniffed, before turning back into the hallway.

  Nodding ruefully, Fielding went across the street and up the steps into the house.

  *

  Eileen Quinn poured the tea. ‘My father was a policeman,’ she said, skewering Fielding with a territorial look.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘So I know about you chaps.’ She sat down heavily, opposite him, taking a digestive from the packet. ‘Know what makes you tick.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Quinn,’ Fielding said, turning the mug of tea around on the table, putting off the inevitable moment when he would have to drink it.

  Eileen drank her own, her eyes fixed on Fielding. ‘You came back,’ she said.

  Fielding nodded, his mouth pursed in consideration. ‘My guv told me you’d been iffy with her. Hadn’t wanted to tell her what’s going on.’

  Eileen took a breath. She narrowed her eyes.

  ‘But,’ Fielding continued, ‘I thought that you and me got on.’ He smiled at her. ‘So . . .’

  ‘You thought I might tell you?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Fielding forced himself to take a sip from the mug. ‘Will you?’ he asked with difficulty, as he swallowed the foul-tasting liquid.

  Eileen sighed. Her eyes moved once again to the sideboard. She studied the boy in front of her. So young. He barely looked old enough to drive. Could she trust him?

  Fielding reached for a biscuit and took a bite, crumbs leaping from his mouth as he spoke. ‘Did you know Reverend Snow? Before they came here?’

  Eileen looked down at her fingernails and considered this question. Of course, this was what they wanted to know – she had given them the photograph, after all. She had led them to her. She wasn’t an imbecile. She knew what she was doing. Remembering those times: how she and Tristan had met all those years ago. How they had fumbled with each other backstage; hot and breathless, cheeks flushed with desire, grabbing at zips and buttons while out front, on the stage, the audience sat silently in the dark, watching people pretend to live when all along, life was rumbling along with passionate intensity behind the curtains.

  ‘I did,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Why did you bring the photo to the station, Mrs Quinn? You wanted us to know something. What was it?’

  ‘He was a liar,’ she said with bile. ‘He turned up here, same as he’d always been. I couldn’t believe it when I opened the door to them. He didn’t recognize me, of course. Walked straight past me in the hall as if I wasn’t there.’ She darted a look at Fielding, a smudge of embarrassment on her face. ‘Just because I’m old, and fat, and . . . useless these days,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings. That I’m not the same person I used to be, deep down.’

  ‘I know, Mrs Quinn,’ Fielding said, patting her gnarly hand. ‘I understand.’

  ‘She knew, of course. She remembered everything.’

  ‘Mrs Snow?’

  Eileen glared at him. ‘She treated me like Salome, for heaven’s sake. As if it all hadn’t happened a million years ago.’ She sniffed. ‘When he was . . . when he was dead, I wanted it known. How he had treated me. What kind of man he was. I deserved more than that, but he didn’t care.’ She looked up, almost bewildered, at Fielding. ‘He just didn’t care.’

  ‘How did you get the photograph?’

  Eileen pursed her lips. ‘I stole it. Years ago. Back when we were in the theatre. He had it on his wall in his dressing room. Can you believe that?’ She stared at Fielding. ‘A picture of him with his own wife’s sister! One evening, after he’d ended it, I took it. I don’t know why, really. I wanted something of him. Something . . .’ she paused. ‘Something that I could use to hurt him. Later on. When he wasn’t expecting it.’

  They sat in silence for a few moments, Fielding digesting these revelations along with the tea.

  ‘But . . .’ Eileen continued. ‘All that’s not going to help you.’ She nodded towards the sideboard. ‘What’s important is . . . well, it’s in there.’ Her voice shook all of a sudden, fear flashing across her face. ‘That’s what . . .’ She faltered.

  Fielding swallowed the remainder of his biscuit with an effort, unable to drink more tea to wash it down. He leaned forward over the table towards the landlady. ‘What is it, Mrs Quinn?’ His eyes were kind, crinkling at the edges. ‘You can tell me. Let me help you.’

  Eileen watched him before deciding. He reminded her of her nephew, Roger.

  ‘You can trust me,’ Fielding nudged. ‘What is it you’re so afraid of?’

  35

  Violet tried to produce some saliva in her arid mouth. She moved her lips from
side to side, feeling them stretch and crack for lack of moisture. Her tongue was heavy and furred. It was no good: she was the fucking Gobi Desert.

  She must have fallen into unconsciousness again at some point. When she came to, the blindfold had been removed. Gradually, her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see she was in a kind of cellar. She was on a hard concrete floor and the ceiling was rough plaster covered in cobwebs. Her feet were tied tightly to each other and she jolted as something hairy brushed against her big toe. Her shoes must have been taken off. Her hands were also tied, uncomfortably, behind her back so she felt as if she were rocking on them, her shoulders pinching together. The pain of that had worn away to a numbness so that she could no longer feel her arms. That, and the weight of the darkness, gave her the curious feeling of being suspended in space; she was only a head, bobbing in the black. Albeit a head that throbbed with the intermittent ache of the effects of a crash into her skull.

  How had this happened? The last thing she could remember was going down in the lift with her mother to the hotel bar. After their row, Sera had ordered her another gin and tonic and then said they should move downstairs. By then, Violet had felt unsteady and suggestible. Sera had shaken off her silence and become warm. Violet loved her mother when she was like that. She had wanted to bury her head in her lap and have her stroke her hair. The gin sank like a stone in her stomach and she floated down after it. The lift doors had closed and then . . . nothing.

  Where was she? What could have happened? Who had tied her up in this way, hit her over the head? And what was wrong with her insides? They griped and raged like an angry cobra leaving her sick and then winded in turn. Violet tried again to work her tongue against the inside of her cheek in order to create some liquid, something to swallow to quench the dreadful thirst, calm the nausea.

  A vision of a huge papier-mâché head came into her sights, from her favourite film as a child: the image of Oz, green and vaporous and huge. Her head was Oz’s head. She was the great and powerful Oz. She had to get home, there’s no place like home. The ruby slippers. She had worn them one Christmas. Had she been five or six? The heels were like blocks underneath the soles, so wide she could actually walk in them. The red glitter of the shoes so rough to touch, but so sparkly. She had tapped her way across the kitchen floor, her hands reaching up to the skylight, a moment of candy-striped happiness.

  Then her father had lifted his head from his armchair and seen it. Happiness in any form, innocence at its zenith, would only be tolerated under his command. She saw the panic ooze from him like hot tar spread across a new road. It would be stamped out, this moment of delight; made to succumb to his say-so. But not outright. Even at five, she knew this.

  Christmas night, when she was supposed to be asleep, she had woken up for some reason, and crept downstairs. She had watched Tristan as he carefully placed the ruby slippers into the fire in the sitting room. He had sat alone in his armchair and Violet had sat at her station midway up the stairs. Whether he had known she was there, she didn’t know; he never turned to face her. They sat together but apart, until the slippers were burnt and the fire was cold.

  She was the great and powerful Oz, she murmured, as the relief of unconsciousness fell over her again. She was the head of Oz that had the answers. She would let them all go home. There’s no place like home. She nearly drifted off into oblivion, begged for it as a means of relieving her thirst. But a chink of light startled her, causing her eyes to widen.

  Violet watched as somewhere above her, somewhere in the darkness that swirled around her, a door began to open.

  36

  Now we’re getting to it, aren’t we?

  Getting closer to the nub of things.

  The day when everything changed – and, in a way, the day that probably led to what happened to Mercy and the others . . . you certainly remember that.

  Do you recall, sweet sister?

  You had a delightful bruise on your cheek. Delivered with a kiss from my husband the night before. I thought it interesting that nobody noticed in church. They didn’t ask you about it, anyway. Maybe they had some sympathy for me, the downtrodden wife. Maybe getting a few slaps and punches from Tristan was seen as a decent punishment.

  I know what he used to say when he did it to me. He would have tears in his eyes. He used to cry that I just didn’t love him enough.

  You see?

  It’s beautiful in its own way.

  We were packing up the teas and coffees as everyone filed out after morning service. You stood by the great steaming urn as I threw the plastic cups into the bin. I ignored you as I did much of the time. I bet you thought my face was flat, didn’t you? Fatfish, Flatfish, you used to call me when we were children. I wasn’t fat. And neither is my face anything that you can describe. It’s just my face. And if you could be bothered to try to see beneath it, maybe you’d find out some things.

  Anyway.

  I saw you watching Tristan at the door, shaking hands with the congregation, his well-wishers, his donors. Fraser was there, too, of course, never far away was Fraser. You almost looked admiring as you stared at him. Tristan was as I knew him constantly to be; a smiling Houdini, always in control of the escape. I saw when he’d greeted you that morning, kissed both cheeks, his lips grazing the cut under your eye as if it were his, as if he owned it.

  The men moved out of sight into the hall porch, their voices fading to a murmur. The twins continued to play in the hall, a shriek and a thudding of shoes the intermittent reminders of their game. I put down my cups, stood still, taking you in.

  ‘Just get it over with, Sera,’ you huffed a sigh, oozing bravado. ‘You can see I’ve had my punishment. What more do you want to dole out? A lecture too?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I know it’s wrong. But . . .’ You began to twist the top of a paper packet of granulated sugar around and around. ‘But, it’s just the way it is.’ What you did next made me laugh as you lowered her voice, checking your eyes at the door, desperate for Tristan not to see this little tête-à-tête. ‘This is the deal. You give him something . . . And I give him something else,’ you said, putting the sugar into the crate filled with tea and coffee supplies. ‘It’s not normal, perhaps, but it’s the way it works in this family.’

  That word, normal, again!

  ‘This family?’ I asked, genuinely confused. To me, a family is rooted in loyalty. As soon as you whored yourself with my husband, you destroyed our family.

  You nodded but couldn’t meet my eyes. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is this family?’ I asked you, quietly.

  ‘You, me, Tristan and . . . the boys.’

  Oh, that was cruel!

  I was speechless. I became stiff, as if all the words in the world had been sent away. As if all the laughter was gone. You knew you’d made a mistake. You drew back, your hand still clutching the sugar.

  ‘Family,’ I said again. I felt as if I were floating. ‘What is it like, do you think – to be in a family?’ I asked.

  You looked at me, bewildered. ‘It’s like this. We’re in a family. It’s like this.’

  ‘Like living?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And breathing?’

  ‘Yes,’ you answered, your voice frustrated.

  ‘Like eating when you’re hungry, or swimming into a patch of warm water in a cold lake?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sera,’ you said, picking up the crate.

  ‘Wait . . .’ I said. ‘Let me show you.’ I came to stand next to you, on your side of the table. ‘How can you know whether any of it is worth it?’

  ‘Any of it is worth what?’

  ‘All of it. The marriage. The sex. The children . . .’

  ‘I don’t know. You just do, I suppose. You have good days and bad days.’

  ‘That’s what you think, is it? That it’s so mundane that you can just shake it off when things feel bad? That you can just toss it away, push it under the carp
et – don’t worry – things will get better?’

  ‘Well, yes. I mean. What else can you do?’

  The boys were still screeching around the hall, I could see the dark of their shapes scuttling around, running faster and faster. But it was only background noise. My eyes blazed into yours, asking you to understand. And then I felt your pity for me, sharp as a knife.

  ‘We’re on the same team, you and me,’ you said with conviction. ‘We’re in this together.’

  ‘Things won’t get better,’ I said, as if you hadn’t spoken. ‘Because you end up watching it all taken away from you. By death. Or,’ I enunciated my words very carefully, so that you could understand, ‘by your own sister. Which feels like this . . .’

  I moved my hand underneath the tap of the silver urn. ‘Better to feel it and exist, though,’ I said, turning the tap on, sending boiling water gushing on to my skin.

  ‘Sera, stop!’ you cried, trying to dash my arm away. You hopped back as water splashed up on to your legs from where it was hitting the floor in a stream. I wasn’t as afraid as you. I closed my eyes and let the water turn my hand red and raw.

  ‘Turn it off. Please God! What are you doing?’

  ‘It’s like this, my sister,’ I said to you. ‘Better to teach yourself how to experience pain than have it forced upon you.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Tristan suddenly appeared at the doorway, his eyes moving from our faces to my outstretched, dripping hand.

  Well, I knew we were for it now. I quickly flipped the tap.

  ‘Nothing,’ I answered. ‘Just tidying away.’

  You refused to meet Tristan’s eyes and stared at the floor. The twins had pulled up short and sat cross-legged, quiet as mice.

  ‘Sera,’ Tristan said, softly. ‘Show me your hand, please.’

  I extended my arm to him and showed him how little white blisters had begun to pop across my skin.

  Tristan frowned. ‘Are you hurt? How did this happen?’

  I shrugged. ‘It was an accident.’

  We looked at each other, the three of us, for a long minute.