by Cohen, Tammy
‘Here she is, the hero of the hour,’ said Ruby as Leanne came to sit down.
Leanne made a face. ‘Hardly,’ she said.
Ruby examined her more closely. Leanne had taken time with her appearance that morning, smearing foundation over her blotchy skin and concealer under her dark-ringed eyes, but she still looked exactly like what she was – a woman who’d spent half the night crying.
‘You OK?’
Leanne nodded stiffly.
‘It’s just that for someone who might very well have helped solve the most infamous murder case of recent times, you don’t look very happy.’
‘Is it that obvious?’
‘Only to a person with a modicum of emotional intelligence – which rules out 99.9 per cent of the people in this place.’
Leanne sighed. ‘I finished with Will.’
Ruby’s perfectly shaped eyebrows shot up. ‘But I thought things were great with you two.’
Leanne felt something tearing inside her as she remembered the myriad little kindnesses Will had shown her. She knew how it would look from the outside once people knew, yet she was convinced he hadn’t been using her to further his career. He had been trying to impress her. He had thought that was what she wanted – a man with ambition, a man going places. He’d been trying to compete with Pete, not realizing that it was precisely for his un-Peteness that she’d first fallen for him.
‘He let me down, Ruby. It was him leaking the stuff to the papers.’
‘Oh. Shit. Sorry.’
Leanne held up her hand. She couldn’t deal with anyone being nice to her at the moment.
‘Leanne?’
She hadn’t noticed Desmond until he was just yards from her desk. She was already clambering to her feet when he said, ‘In my office, please.’
Pete was already in there. He looked as rough as she did. His hair was a mess and his eyes had that droopy hooded look she remembered from when they were together, mornings after they’d stayed up far too late, talking and having sex. Instantly heat surged to her face and she cursed herself for letting her thoughts get carried away. Still, she couldn’t help glancing at him again. He was doing that thing he always did when he was excited, fluttering his fingers against his thigh as if playing an invisible piano.
‘Sir?’ The suspense was killing her. ‘Have you got a confession, sir?’
‘Not as such.’
Desmond loved this kind of scenario – having information that you didn’t have, eking it out, revealing things little by little.
In the end it was Pete who explained: ‘Lancaster admitted they were at the scene of the crime when Poppy Glover was killed – so that photo Julian Blake says he saw was authentic – but he says they got there after she died.’
‘What?’
‘These guys were obsessed with the case. They had a detailed online map of the area and they’d try to guess where the next victim would show up. One of them, a creep called Ben Gattis who lives in an apartment block just off the Heath Extension, became convinced that sooner or later the killer would dump a body there. It’s separate from the main bit of the Heath, very quiet, completely open to the road all around its border and, crucially, far smaller and more manageable than the other part. Gattis walks his dog in the area every day so he knows all the likely places – where the cameras are, and aren’t. It didn’t happen with Leila Botsford, but still, the day after Poppy Glover disappeared he was up again before dawn patrolling the Heath Extension. Bingo. He came across Poppy’s body and called the others.’
‘But why?’
Despite her training and her months in Vice, Leanne couldn’t or didn’t want to get her head around what these men were hoping to get from stumbling across the body of a child.
Pete sighed. ‘They’re fantasists, Leanne. They’ve built a world around fantasizing about having power over children. A dead child. It’s their ultimate fantasy.’
Leanne closed her eyes, feeling dizzy. Suddenly the emotion of the last few hours, combined with lack of sleep, made her feel she was going to keel over. Pete stepped across the room to put his hand under her elbow.
‘Breathe,’ he whispered in her ear. She took in a lungful of air. Her elbow burned where he touched it.
‘Are you sure you can believe them?’ she asked.
Desmond chipped in this time. ‘Once Lancaster opened up, the others caved in pretty quickly and, separately, they all told the same story. They came across the body in situ.’
Leanne felt too weak even to mind about Desmond saying ‘in situ’.
‘And they didn’t see who put her there?’
Pete shook his head.
‘But we still have the semen sample from the dock leaf, right? We still have that much evidence to find the killer?’
‘The semen came from one of the men. We’re not sure which one at this time.’ Desmond was clipped and to the point.
Leanne swallowed down the bile that had shot up into her mouth at the thought of what these men, these pillars of the establishment, had done when confronted with the body of a dead child.
‘They are the ones who took off her clothes as well,’ Pete continued woodenly, clearly thinking she might as well have it all in one go. ‘When they found her she was fully dressed and laid out carefully as if asleep, just like Tilly and Leila.’
So now they were back at the beginning again. Four little girls dead, four families decimated. And the man responsible for it all was still out there, going about his business, picking his next victim.
37
There were empty pizza boxes piled on the coffee table, their bases soaked with grease. Jason tried not to look at them. Earlier he’d suggested to Suzy that she might want to get a bin bag and clean them up along with the empty Coke cans and Quality Street wrappers but she hadn’t yet made a move.
They were all sitting around in Suzy’s cramped, red-cushioned living room. Jason and Suzy were squashed into the armchair while the four girls shared the sofa. They’d changed into their pyjamas in readiness for the sleepover and Jason had had to look at a point on the wall, next to the blown-up photo of Suzy and Bethany in a photographer’s studio wearing matching white outfits and in bare feet, so that he wouldn’t stare as they trooped in. He hadn’t been able to look at Emily at all, just the most fleeting glimpse of pale, skinny calves coming out of white cotton knee-length pyjama bottoms.
The flashbacks were coming almost constantly now – fragments that he batted away only to find another coming at him, and another. The curve of a bare shoulder, a sweep of dark eyelashes against a plump cheek, then a piercing scream, the kicking of a leg, his own voice shouting, the black fog of loss of control. Now panic. His breath being torn from him in strips of pain. Is she breathing? No. No, no, no.
He shifted in his chair, cursing Suzy who’d insisted on sitting on his lap and now lay across him like a dead weight, her head snuggled into his chest.
‘You sure you want to watch this?’ She raised her face up to whisper in his ear. ‘I’m sure romcom isn’t really your cup of tea. Why don’t we slip off and leave them to it?’
She was stroking his cheek now with her long nail. It felt like a cockroach running across his face.
‘No, you’re all right. I like her. Jennifer Aniston. I could watch her all day.’
She folded her arms across her chest in a mock sulk. To his left, Emily, who was wedged between Bethany and the arm of the sofa, shifted position and Jason closed his eyes against the sudden image of his own hands, huge, around a slender throat.
‘Come on, babe. Let’s go.’ Suzy was prodding him in the chest.
‘I said no. All right?’
It had come out harsher than he intended and he felt Suzy stiffen on his lap. The girls on the sofa suddenly went quiet.
‘Sorry. I’m a bit knackered and bad-tempered. Don’t pay any attention to me.’ He planted a kiss on Suzy’s forehead and she appeared to relax a little.
All through the rest of the film, he worried that
his outburst might have put Emily off. He didn’t dare look at her, but he could tell from the way she’d curled up tighter, pulling her legs right up under her, that he had made her uncomfortable.
He worked his fingers into the pocket of his jeans and grasped his keys, then he deliberately pressed the sharp edge of one into his thigh over and over.
38
Leanne felt drained of everything – energy, hope, love. All seemed to have seeped away. Will had called her so many times she’d put her phone on silent. She’d listened to the first message – an incoherent ramble trying to explain why he’d done it. Endlessly begging her forgiveness. She was the best woman he’d ever known, he said. He couldn’t face losing her. After that she didn’t listen to any of the others.
The whole station had been muted since the afternoon’s disappointment. For a moment they’d believed the Nemo gang were going to be the key that unlocked the Kenwood Killings case once and for all. But, after all, the body had been there when the men had arrived. Already dead. Now, hours later, they were all slumped at their desks as day dragged on into evening.
Back to square one. That’s where the investigation was, and that’s exactly where she was too. All the time she’d invested in Will, all the energy, all the trust. It hadn’t been an explosion of fireworks or anything, not like with Pete, but rather a slow, gentle sliding from friendship into love. And now it had been all for nothing.
Her phone started vibrating, convulsing against the laminate desktop. She almost didn’t bother checking it. Will again. It had to be. But when she finally gave in and flipped up the lid of the leather case, she saw an unfamiliar number.
‘DC Miller?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Gary Allison from the forensic lab.’
‘Blimey, you’re keen, aren’t you? Working on a Saturday?’
‘Yeah, well, I’m off on holiday on Monday and I had the ridiculous notion that if I came in on the weekend I might not come back to a mountain of stuff. Anyway, you asked me to run a DNA check for you?’
For a second her mind was blank, then suddenly it came to her: Donna Shields. Amid the emotional turbulence of the last twenty-four hours she’d forgotten all about the hatchet-faced woman and the hair sample she’d brought in for testing. Leanne’s heart sagged as she thought of the paperwork she’d have to fill in now that the test had been completed. Her mind was so preoccupied that she failed to properly register what Gary Allison was telling her.
‘What?’ she asked. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said we have a match.’ The man was trying to hide his excitement but there was a giveaway tremor in his voice. ‘The sample you sent me is a match for the DNA found on the body of Megan Purvis.’
39
‘Mum, Emily’s not feeling well.’
Jason and Suzy were sitting downstairs on the sofa watching on catch-up a programme where people were filmed on a first date in a restaurant. Suzy had been laughing like a drain, which infuriated Jason because he couldn’t hear what was going on in Bethany’s room upstairs where the girls had been for the last hour. He’d been trying to control his growing anger, digging the key ever deeper into his leg, but he could sense it building up, so it was a relief when Bethany had burst through the door.
Suzy, on the other hand, didn’t bother to hide her annoyance at the interruption. ‘What do you mean, not well?’
‘She’s got a temperature and she says she feels sick.’
Suzy rolled her eyes. ‘I did warn you, didn’t I? All that pizza and Coke and then you lot would go outside on the trampoline in your jim-jams. Go and find her a paracetamol. You know where they are.’
‘She wants to go home.’
Suzy’s head, which was tucked under Jason’s arm, started shaking from side to side.
‘No way. Uh-uh. I am not calling Emily’s mum. Poor thing doesn’t even have a car. She can’t be dragging her little ones on the bus to come here and pick Emily up. And there’s no way I can give her a lift. I’ve already had two glasses of wine.’
Jason sat frozen, sure they must be able to hear his heart thudding against his chest. This was it. He didn’t even have to think up a way to get her on her own. Yet at the same time as he was celebrating this turn of fortune, he could also feel the nausea rising. What if he messed up again? What if he lost control? Another flashback assailed him – carrying a roll of heavy-duty plastic sacking and noticing a little foot hanging out of the bottom. No. It wouldn’t be like that again. He had changed. He’d worked on himself. He was different.
Emily was different.
‘I’ll take her.’ The steadiness of his own voice surprised him. ‘I’ve got the car. It won’t take a minute.’
‘You don’t even know where she lives.’
That Bethany had an answer for everything.
‘If she goes to your school it can’t be far, can it?’
‘You don’t have to.’ Suzy sounded dubious. ‘I think we should just wait a while. Play it by ear.’
Luckily Bethany had an answer for that too: ‘Aw, Mum. Please let him take her home. She’s being a right moody cow. She’s spoiling my birthday.’
‘There you are. That’s settled. We can’t have the birthday girl getting upset, can we?’
Jason was rewarded with a smile from Bethany and Suzy caved in, as he’d known she would.
‘Oh, all right. You win. You’re a good man, Jason Shields. Bit soft in the head, but good. Go and tell Emily to get her stuff together, Bethany.’
Once the girl was out of the room, Suzy rested her hand on the crotch of his jeans.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to you when you get back.’
Her splayed-out fingers looked like fat spider legs.
40
One minute Leanne had been at her desk feeling like nothing good was ever going to happen again, and now here she was on a shabby street outside a door sandwiched between a convenience store and a launderette with the whole place cordoned off by patrol cars and yellow tape, and feeling like her heart was about to explode in her chest.
‘Back! Get back!’ shouted the cop nearest the door who, like the others in the advance group, was dressed in full protective gear. There was a loud crack and then they were all streaming in through the dark, narrow hallway and up to the first floor where Donna Shields had told her Jason rented a one-bedroom flat. Pete tugged her arm, pulling her back on to the pavement to wait.
She hadn’t yet had a chance to process it, this feeling of excitement mixed with anxiety. She knew that, without a confession, there might be an issue with the hair sample Donna had given her being used as evidence in court. The thought that they might catch him and then have the whole case collapse because she hadn’t followed procedure made her feel giddy with dread. But at least they had him. And they’d find something. There was always something.
The advance group, which had already made it upstairs, was now thumping on the flat door. Then there was another loud crack and the sound of thudding footsteps.
‘Not here!’ the shout went up.
The adrenaline that had been coursing around Leanne’s body for the last two hours dropped, leaving her able to breathe properly for the first time. By the time she, Pete and Desmond arrived upstairs, the cops in protective gear had gone back outside where they formed a guard around the main door of the building. Snapping on latex gloves and pulling covers over their shoes, Leanne followed Desmond into the small, neat, curiously impersonal flat, with Pete close behind.
‘Right, we’re looking for anything that gives us an idea where he’s gone. Scribbled note, anything at all.’
Another team had already gone to the strip club where Shields ran security, but they’d called to say it was shuttered up. Not open on weekends, apparently.
The flat was bland. The kind of thin grey carpet beloved of landlords everywhere, magnolia walls, a boxy two-person sofa and matching armchair covered in a beige synthetic fabric. A wood-effect coffee table that looked like it wo
uld snap if you put anything heavier than a magazine on it. An old-fashioned television with a deep back on a black metal stand in the corner. No pictures on the walls, no books, no DVDs. On the table between the two windows overlooking the street, there was a pile of what looked to be men’s fitness magazines, the corners all neatly lined up. There was nothing to say who lived here.
‘Leanne, check the bedroom; Pete, the kitchen.’
Leanne had to duck her head under the pull-up bar over the living-room door lintel. There was no room in the cramped hallway and her arm felt seared where Pete’s pressed against it as they opened the three closed doors. Tiny bathroom that stank of bleach and aftershave, a kitchen that wasn’t much bigger into which Pete disappeared, and a small, square bedroom with the same grey carpet and a narrow double bed neatly made. A line of shoes at the foot of the bed in matched pairs. Black shiny work-style lace-ups, pristine white trainers, well-preserved Timberlands, their laces neatly tucked into the boots.
She heard Pete cry out: ‘Guv? There’s a laptop in here!’
Then the sound of Desmond’s footsteps heading towards the kitchen. Jason Shields would have everything password-protected, she was sure of it. How long would it take to get into his laptop? An hour? Two? And all the time he was out in the world, looking at children in the street, sizing up his next victim.
She fought back a shiver.
There were no clothes on the floor or flung over the back of a chair, no glass of water by the bed. She looked at the toiletries in their grey bottles lined up in height order on the chest of drawers and the skin on her neck felt cold and clammy. This man left no trace of himself, as if he wanted to be J-clothed away. Still she went through the drawers with their neatly paired-up socks and dazzling white trunks and the colour-coded piles of carefully ironed T-shirts. Navy, grey, white, black. The last drawer had exercise gear. Lycra shorts and tops. White vests.