by Helen Fields
‘And I’m slowing you down,’ Natasha sniffed, wiping her tears on the back of her hand. ‘I’m so sorry. What an idiot I’m being, taking up more of your time.’
‘Not at all,’ Ava said. ‘Given how much I love an opportunity to call you an idiot, I think you can take that at face value.’ Natasha gave a weak smile. ‘Go home. Try to eat. Sleep if you can, but otherwise distract yourself. And remember this. I can tell you from experience that when you’re being held captive, as Kate is, what gets you through is the thought of the people who care about you, those who’ll be worried sick, like you are. Kate knows she was due to see you and that she missed the appointment. She’s probably thankful right now that you were running the help centre, otherwise there wouldn’t have been an appointment for her to miss at all. She knows we’re looking for her, Tasha, and that will keep her strong and hopeful. The rest is up to us.’
Natasha took a deep breath and stood up. ‘I love you,’ she said, hugging Ava hard. ‘I don’t know what put that rod of steel in your backbone but I’m glad it’s there. When this is over, will you come and stay with me a while? It’ll be like old times. I just need to be around you a bit more. Even if I have to put up with your cooking.’
‘That sounds good,’ Ava said. ‘I think I could use a bit of TLC too.’
They said their goodbyes and Ava locked her office door for a few minutes. It was an amazing truth that kidnappings, rapes and murders generated almost as much guilt as they did paperwork. Parental guilt, spousal guilt, friends, colleagues, people who’d walked past a victim on the street and didn’t recognise the fear in their eyes until the television reconstruction. It was endless. The rigours of real life were the cause. It would be impossible to get through the day if you over-analysed every situation, imagined the possible repercussions of every action or inaction. But guilt lay in the cracks and the corners like cobwebs and shadows, waiting to darken every thought with that most futile of questions – what could I have done differently?
Checking her hair in the mirror, Ava tried not to think about Natasha’s distress. This was the job. You notified the parents, then you got back to work. You picked up the body, then you went back to work. You bore witness to the grief of others, then you went back to work. Anything less clinical, anything more emotional, and you couldn’t do your job properly. She pulled herself together. It was time to get tough with Superintendent Overbeck.
Her phone rang as she was about to leave her office.
‘It’s me,’ Jonty announced. ‘Sorry to bother you. I’ve just had some lab results back. They were puzzling, so I asked for some clarification. Apologies that this is rather late in the day. There’s a substance I noticed because it glistened under bright light. It wasn’t terribly obvious, not like glitter or a man-made substance, so we sent it away for clarification. I have no idea what the relevance of this might be, but it turned out to be marble, of all things.’
‘Marble,’ Ava said. ‘Was it found on Zoey or Lorna?’
‘Neither. But it was found on both the dolls.’
‘So the absence of it on the girls means that presumably it’s not environmental to where they’re being held and operated on,’ Ava said.
‘Precisely. It’s present in very small amounts, too. Frankly, it was a miracle we found it at all.’
‘Could you email the paperwork to the incident room, please, Dr Spurr? I’m just off to deal with something else, but we need to start fitting that into the picture immediately. I’m obliged for your help.’
Overbeck had just stepped out of her office for a minute. Ava elected to wait rather than get caught up in anything else until she had sorted out what progress could be made on Melanie Long’s murder. She stared at the end of Overbeck’s desk where her boss and her detective sergeant had created such a memorable tableau, and hoped it had been polished since the event, fighting the urge to get a cloth and wipe the area herself. Overbeck’s stilettos clicking along the corridor tiles persuaded her against it.
‘Good, you’re here. Didn’t think you’d get my message quite that fast,’ was Overbeck’s opener.
Ava shook her head slightly. ‘I didn’t get a message.’
‘To explain what you did this morning,’ Overbeck raised both her eyebrows and her voice. It was an unpleasant combination.
‘Yes, that’s why I need to talk to you, ma’am. DC Salter and I went to the Leverhulme School to speak with Leo Plunkett’s friends,’ Ava said.
‘I’m aware of that, Turner. I’ve just been talking to DS Lively who explained that he was given instructions to remain coordinating in the incident room while you were out, which is strange because I issued you with strict, and I thought crystal clear, instructions that he was to accompany you.’
‘Hold on,’ Ava said. ‘You were just discussing it with Lively? Before you talked to me? I am his superior officer …’
‘And I am yours, yet you still felt entirely free to disobey a direct command,’ Overbeck said.
‘I can conduct day to day investigations as I choose. You might be my superior but that does not involve you micro-managing every decision I take. It was my view that Salter would be a friendlier face when interviewing young people, particularly given Lively’s attitude to people like the headmaster,’ Ava shot back.
‘Don’t blame this on Lively’s attitude. You took Salter because you’re certain Lively’s reporting back to me,’ Overbeck said, throwing herself into the chair behind her desk.
‘A theory you just proved accurate when you discussed it with him first. And by the way, Salter was incredibly helpful at the school. My instincts were correct. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Leo Plunkett and his closest friends Oliver Davenport and Noah Alby-Croft are involved. I don’t know if there are any others yet, but it’s a good place to start. I want warrants to check their homes, their mobile phones and computers—’
‘What?’ Overbeck interrupted.
‘Warrants,’ Ava said. ‘The paperwork has to be in order. The boys made no secret of the fact they had been warned by Plunkett that they might be questioned.’
‘The names. Again.’
Ava paused. ‘Davenport and Alby-Croft.’
Overbeck said nothing. An imaginary clock ticked away thirty seconds of silence inside Ava’s head.
‘Are you out of your tiny, fucking, deluded, bloody moronic mind?’ Overbeck yelled. ‘Alby-Croft?’
Ava sighed.
‘Alby frigging Croft? Tell me you immediately realised your mistake and asked no more than if he’d happened to notice anything odd in the Meadows,’ Overbeck said, gripping the edge of her desk as if she were drowning.
‘Nope,’ Ava replied. ‘I asked him his whereabouts on the night Melanie Long was killed,’ she continued matter-of factly. ‘So go ahead – shout, swear, whatever – but I’m not going to go easy on a suspect just because his father’s on the police board, and frankly, ma’am, I’m absolutely fucking disgusted that you think I should have.’
Overbeck laughed. It sounded like a metal chair leg scraping along concrete. ‘Is that what you think is happening here? How long have you been a police officer, Turner?’
‘Twelve years,’ Ava said.
‘You’ve made DCI in just over a decade. Good old fast track. You must be feeling pretty smug,’ Overbeck said.
‘Not really. I worked hard and—’
‘Don’t give me the goddamned hard work speech. I’ve been at this game twice as long as you, from back in the days where no one had heard the word equality, and the concept of positive discrimination just meant that we didn’t have to use toilets with piss all over the seats. You went to the school to treat those boys as witnesses. You had no evidence to link them to the Melanie Long scene. Was Alby-Croft’s father there?’
‘No. He agreed the headmaster could sit in during the questioning,’ Ava said.
‘On the basis that he wasn’t being questioned as a suspect, a premise you then undermined by pushing one step too far. You were
supposed to assess them subtly and carefully. For the record, that means without effectively accusing them of involvement in a violent stream of attacks culminating in a murder!’
The last word was shouted loudly enough that Ava’s eardrums registered the air movement. She told herself to stay calm. Responding to Overbeck by fighting fire with fire was a mistake. Getting back on point was the only option.
‘I need a warrant,’ Ava said. ‘The boys were involved. Davenport was shaken when I explained that this is a murder case. And Alby-Croft was more than just cocky about it – he was enjoying the process. He had a prepared speech and—’
‘Just stop,’ Overbeck said. ‘Stop this crap right now. There are no grounds for a warrant.’
‘The key is enough to check Leo Plunkett’s phone records. If we can show he was with the other two boys during any of the attacks—’
‘Noah Alby-Croft’s father will already have instructed a lawyer. The parents of the three boys will, by now, have been in conference with one another. We won’t get near those boys again without their fingerprints being found in blood on Ms Long’s body. Why the fuck can you never just toe the shitting line, Turner?’
‘Toe the line?’ Ava stepped closer to her desk. ‘That’s what you want? That’s what you think the Major Investigations Team should do? A woman is dead. Her child has been left without a mother. She took a blade to the eyeball and spun into the path of a bus, but you want me to toe the line? The woman who doesn’t have a conscience about bending over her desk for a quick shag with a more junior officer is lecturing me about rules? God, you’re a joke.’
‘Turner, I swear, if you don’t apologise for that right now, I will have your job.’
‘No, you won’t,’ Ava said. ‘We’re in the middle of a multiple murder and kidnapping situation, with an additional series of violent attacks that has also resulted in a murder. If you sack me now, you’re as good as quitting yourself. When did you get so soft? Is that what your promotion did to you? Now you have to suck up to the big boys and go easy on their overprivileged offspring, even when the price is that they will literally get away with murder. You disgust me. I may have been in the job fewer years than you, but perhaps that means I can still remember what it’s all about. Did I break the rules? You bet I fucking did. Is the case going to get solved any other way? You know the answer to that. Those boys think they can do whatever they like and Daddy will protect them. After this, you’ll be responsible for that. When they feel entitled to hit their wives. When they couldn’t give a damn about stealing from their employees’ pension funds. When they decide that no means yes at some drunken party and they destroy a girl’s life. You make them untouchable now and we’re all complicit. We’re all guilty. Can you live with that?’
‘Get out of my office,’ Overbeck said. ‘I’m not going to tolerate this. You need to learn to take orders, and understand that the police service has a structure whereby you do what you’re told, like it or not. You’re going to regret speaking to me like that.’
‘You know what, I actually don’t think I am,’ Ava said, leaving the door swinging as she left.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kate
Kate was praying as the man entered. She hadn’t been inside a church since childhood, yet the words came easily. She lowered her voice to a whisper but continued the Lord’s Prayer. It felt wrong to break off in the middle. The words were the only comfort she’d been able to find in the dark and cold. If she thought about her parents and the suffering they would be enduring now, she knew she would lose the will to live.
‘For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory …’
‘What are you saying?’ the man asked.
Kate opened her eyes and stared at him. He spoke so rarely, only to give instructions to eat or move.
‘It’s the Lord’s Prayer,’ Kate whispered. Her throat was so dry that normal speech was a strain.
‘You dare address the Lord God? A sinner like you? Having brought yourself so low, using your body as an instrument of the devil. How dare you utter his name!’ he said, throwing her bowl of food across the room where it hit a dead plant and exploded.
Kate jolted, her heart thumping. She hadn’t seen him angry before. Even when she had freed one of her wrists, and he had caught her in the process of releasing her other hand, he had only grunted with mild surprise, then shaken his head as if in wonder at how she’d managed it. She’d paid a high price for her resourcefulness. Finding the sharp edge under the rough wooden table with her fingertips, she’d rubbed and rubbed to fray the twine that bound her. The skin of her wrist had filled with splinters though she’d ignored the pain and continued. It was only pain. She could stand that if the prize was freedom. Only when she’d been discovered, he’d retied her twice as forcefully. The splinters had grown hot beneath the bindings, then the itching had begun. For the first few hours it was simply an annoyance, then her brain had fully understood what she’d done. The splinters, so many of them, were infected. How could they not have been with all the dirt and debris around? Now there was a gross, sticky wetness beneath the bindings as she shifted. The sores on her wrist were suppurating. By the time twenty-four hours had passed, a sickly smell of rot had begun to issue from her arm and a fever had flared. Untreated, it would kill her, although that was a better prospect than lying here slowly fading while the man did just enough to keep her alive.
She wondered if her father would outlive her. His lung disease was reaching a critical point. Her mother had been increasingly unwilling to discuss his prognosis or the frequency of the doctor’s visits, and her father’s voice as her mother held the phone to his ear was slurred more often than not these days. The painkillers were slowly removing him from the world, which was both terrifying and comforting. All Kate wished was that she had access to the same oblivion before the man finally tired of her, or decided to introduce her to her fate. Being quiet hadn’t induced sympathy. Trying to engage the man in conversation had proved pointless. This was the first time she’d seen a shred of human emotion from him. Kate decided she preferred his anger to being ignored. At least his ire might reveal something useful about him.
‘I have as much right to speak with God as anyone else,’ Kate said. ‘More than you, anyway. You’re a monster. Look at what you’re doing to me. Do you think there’s a god in existence who would call this anything but deviancy?’
The man strode across, standing over her, breathing heavily through his nose, eyes wide. ‘You are nothing but a whore. You were willing to sell your body to me for no more than a hot meal and a few pounds. The Bible calls you harlot. I call you slut. Sinners like you must be brought to God’s holy justice. I only do his bidding.’
‘Wasn’t Mary Magdalene a prostitute? Even so, Jesus kept her within his closest circle,’ Kate said.
‘Jesus cast the demons out of her,’ the man yelled. ‘She was repentant. You are covered in sin. You stink of it. It crawls over your flesh like maggots.’
‘You think I wanted to sleep with you?’ Kate shrieked. ‘You really believe that I was happy to degrade myself by playing along with the idea that I chose to be with you? I needed the money to help support my parents. My father is dying! You want repentance, here it is. I regret all of it. Every single second. I regret having to wash my mouth out after foul men who repulse me shoved their tongues in it. I had to tolerate hours of old married pigs describing the things they wanted to do to me. I wanted to take my own life after one man tied me up and made me call him daddy. There is nothing, not one thing, I don’t hate about what I’ve done. Except that I’ve eased my parents’ burden. And if I had to, I’d do it all again. For them.’
The man blinked, frowned, his face slackening and softening. He reached a trembling hand towards the bindings on her ankle, his thumb and forefinger working the knot slowly. Then he lifted his head.
‘Such a fool. I remember now. I was told this would happen. The silver tongue is inside you. You speak the devil’s lies
. And look. Look at me, believing you, letting you worm into my soul. Pure souls are the most easily fooled, and as the Lord is my witness, you are the most sly snake I have ever known.’ He fell to his knees, arms extended, palms towards the ceiling, head lolling back as if he were looking directly into God’s eyes.
In his eyes shone a madness so ferocious that Kate wondered how stupid she had been not to have seen it the second she’d walked up to him. As he knelt there, muttering words she could barely make out, begging an unseen deity for guidance and strength, Kate indulged in a momentary fantasy.
She had been persuaded to go out with friends to watch the University team play rugby, and therefore had never met the ridiculously pseudonymed John White. In a parallel universe, the SugarPa website had crashed for several days, making it impossible for her to arrange any meetings that week, thereby avoiding a trap that would deprive her of her life. Then her favourite imagining – that she had spent her last pound after doing her weekly food shop on a lottery ticket, which had unbelievably, astoundingly, left her with a hundred thousand pounds. She was unwilling to fantasise about a figure greater than that. It seemed to be inviting divine retribution. She imagined logging off from SugarPa for the last time, taking the train back to see her parents in Durham and presenting them with the cheque that would make all their lives – or at least what was left of her father’s – that little bit easier.
But none of those realities were hers. Kate had spent three previous dates seeing a man who promised hundreds of pounds for her company, and who had instead decided to buy her a bracelet. When she’d taken it back to the shop, all they were willing to do was offer her a voucher to spend there in the sum of eighty-five pounds. In the end, she’d taken the bracelet to a pawnshop who had given her sixty pounds in cash.