Last Place You Look

by Louisa Scarr

  So, as they got older, Liv turned to alcohol and coke, and Amy went the other way. Amy had been protected. And as a result she was free to build a life for herself with a nice career, in a big house, with a loving husband. Everything Liv had been denied.

  And now? Liv lights a new cigarette from the butt of the old. Amy is something else entirely. And, if the truth be known, it scares the living daylights out of her.

  37

  Friday

  Freya spends the night tossing and turning. At five a.m. she gets up and fetches the file again. She had a message from Butler that evening – How’s it going? – but she didn’t dare reply. Hiding all this from her boss, it feels more like a punishment. And in the dark cold early morning, she doubts herself.

  She’s never run an investigation alone. What if she makes a wrong turn, what if she misses something important? Previously, it was her and Butler. And before him, another DS or DI. She’s had someone there, asking the right questions, telling her what to do.

  But she’s a good detective, she tells herself. Cover all your bases, follow the evidence. And she knows it’s not all here. Her first stop, arranged via text the night before, is to the SCIU, to meet with the investigating officer from all those years ago.

  * * *

  Freya misses the road at first, turning round in the forecourt of the Volvo garage and heading back. And then she spots it.

  Look for the hideous seventies building, she was told, you can’t miss it. And, sure enough, there it is. He wasn’t joking.

  A low concrete roof, ugly grey curves and brown-tinted windows underneath. A hedge blocks the worst of it, but it’s clear the local planning department were having an off day when that design was approved. She drives past it and parks in one of the bays marked SCIU. In the distance she can see the distinctive yellow fluorescent vans, and climbs out of her car, walking away from the seventies monstrosity towards an altogether more beautiful building.

  The Serious Collision Investigation Unit is located in the manor house next door. Ivy climbs up one side of the curved bay window, a large pillared doorway in the middle. A man waits on the steps, dressed in the usual distinctive black uniform, and holds out his hand. His muscular arms are covered with two full sleeves of tattoos – skulls, roses, thorns – his head completely shaved. His nose is wonky from previous breaks and he has one cauliflower ear. But despite his intimidating appearance, his smile is wide. Freya warms to him instantly.

  ‘Kevin Burton,’ he says, towering above her. ‘You must be DC West. Come inside.’

  The hallway is large and grand but has clearly seen better days. The carpet is stained and threadbare, the paint chipped and peeling. A large metal shelving unit has been set up on one side, containing rows of identical black kitbags and fluorescent vests.

  ‘Supposed to be here temporarily, that was two years ago,’ he says. ‘Want a cuppa?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘How do you take it?’

  Freya follows him down the low-ceilinged corridors, watching him duck to get through the doorways. Temporary green fire exit signs have been put up, at odds with the period features that Freya knows must have been part of the of the original decor. He makes them both tea, handing her one in a pale blue mug with Keep Calm and Know Your Rights written on the side. Some union thing, she assumes.

  He leads her into the main office. Square functional desks and computers line one side, contrasting with the round bay window behind them. One of the sash windows is open, propped up with a box file, a cool breeze blowing through. Burton pulls out a chair and she sits down next to him.

  ‘So, what do you want to know? It was the Stevens accident, right?’

  ‘Yeah. November 2018.’

  ‘Got it here.’ He points to the pile of brown boxes by his side. ‘Where do you want to start?’

  ‘Tell me everything you know.’

  Burton sits back in his seat, clearly relishing the distraction from his normal work. Because of his height, the computer is propped up on two reams of paper, his chair set to the highest setting. It makes Freya feel tiny: a primary school kid listening to her teacher. But she doesn’t mind, she’s there to learn.

  ‘It’s always the dog walkers,’ Burton says, with a smile. ‘Remote crime scene, guarantee it’ll be those guys that find them.’ He wiggles his mouse to wake up his computer, then clicks around, finding the right file.

  A photograph is loaded and Freya cranes forward. A long, straight road, early dawn, trees on one side, tall hedge on the other. To the left, a car waits, half on, half off the road. Even from this view, taken from behind, Freya can see the effects of the fire.

  ‘The guy saw the flames, called the fire brigade. They were the first on the scene. They called us.’

  ‘No ambulance?’ Freya sips her tea again and listens to the sergeant talk.

  ‘No need.’ Burton clicks the photograph forward and a different view appears on the screen. A side view, glass smashed, black body in the driver’s seat. ‘They knew he was dead. Melted onto the seat. Took the body recovery team an age to get him out.’

  ‘And you did the investigation?’

  ‘Yeah. Let me get the report up.’

  More clicking and a document loads. Burton scrolls down through the text.

  ‘So,’ he begins. ‘Debris field was wide, shit scattered all across the road.’ A new photo, small reflective studs and yellow paint visible on the grey concrete next to the familiar yellow triangles marking the positions of the evidence. ‘You can see from the markers the car swerved, seemingly out of nowhere, skid marks here—’ a large finger prods the screen ‘—and here. But he must have been going at some speed. There was a huge amount of damage to the vehicle.’

  Another photo, the bonnet of the car concertinaed around the trunk of the tree.

  ‘And why did it catch fire?’ Freya asks, finishing her tea and putting the mug back down, freeing up her hands to take notes.

  ‘Mechanics had a look at it back at the compound. The force of the crash sheared the bonnet completely from the car, which dislodged the fuel injectors from the engine. Petrol sprayed on a hot engine, and boom.’

  ‘So, unlucky?’

  ‘Very. Especially for us. Fire destroys absolutely everything. Both airbags deployed, and we’d normally check them for mouth DNA, work out who’d been sat where, but there was nothing left.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Freya stops him. ‘What do you mean, “who had been sat where”? Trevor Stevens was the only one in the car, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Well, yeah. That’s what we concluded in the end. But, you know, I always wondered. See here—’ Burton goes back to an earlier photo. ‘The passenger door was found open. Of course,’ he adds, seeing Freya about to speak. ‘That could have happened in the crash, but the seat belt was odd, too.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Burton sits back in his seat and picks up his mug of what must now be cold tea. He takes a sip but doesn’t seem to mind. ‘So, seat belts, when they lock at speed, the mechanism gets super-hot, super-quickly. There are a lot of forces involved in an accident like this one – people thrown forward in their seats, a lot of pressure on the seat belt. And it deforms. See, like this one.’

  He clicks around again and points at the screen. Freya can clearly see raised ridges and bumps on the black fabric.

  ‘And the position of these bumps would indicate someone else was in that car.’

  ‘But – what?’ Freya asks. ‘Is it possible to survive a crash like that? They must have been injured?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Burton agrees. ‘People in car accidents get thrown around like they’re in a washing machine. Head injuries on the A pillar, leg injuries as the engine and dashboard push forward into the car. Whiplash, at least.’

  ‘So where did they go?’

  Burton shrugs. ‘We had no other evidence to show anyone was there. But—’ he adds, remembering some other information. ‘The airbags definitely deployed, so whoever it was would ha
ve been blinded.’

  Freya knows that when airbags explode out of the dashboard a fine white powder comes with them. It’s designed to stop them catching fire, but has the added effect of temporarily blinding whoever’s sitting there. It’s not fun.

  ‘Did you get anything from the engine control module?’

  ‘Burnt out. Not even the engineers in Amsterdam could save it.’

  ‘And there were no other witnesses?’

  ‘Nope. We put appeal boards up at the scene, did a media release, but nobody came forward.’

  Freya sits back in her chair, her pen lowered. ‘So what did you conclude?’

  Burton shakes his head. ‘The only thing we could – accidental death from a road traffic accident. My guess? The guy was drunk, as the papers said.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘The JD bottle in the footwell. You know about that, yeah?’ Freya nods. ‘And the fact that he comes flying off a totally straight road. Look at it.’ He pulls the photo back on the screen. ‘Not even a bump in the tarmac. The patterns on the road and the tyres are different depending on whether the car was under power when it crashed—’

  He flicks through another few photos – black marks on the road, the remaining tread on the tyre. Burton continues, ‘—and this one never slowed. He’s pissed, dozes off a bit, comes to, realises he’s strayed into the middle of the road and overcompensates, losing control and charging into the tree.’

  Freya nods, thinking it all through.

  ‘Alcohol slows down reaction time and judgement. When you’re pissed and driving that fast you can’t multitask. Plus it was raining that night. Hard. If this guy lost control, it was a foregone conclusion.’ Burton whacks the back of his hand against the palm of the other to illustrate his point. ‘Straight into the tree.’

  ‘And there was nothing wrong with the car?’ Freya asks.

  ‘Not that we could find. Speed on the dash sometimes indicates speed on collision but that was fried to hell. You want to take this lot?’ Burton asks, pointing to the three boxes.

  ‘Please.’ Then something occurs to her. ‘While I’m here, could you help me track down another case? A bit older?’

  She passes him the case reference and Burton nods slowly. ‘I didn’t know this was up for review as well?’

  ‘It’s not, but it’s…’ Freya tails off. Why is she curious? ‘Just a side project,’ she finishes. ‘Will it be easy to find?’

  Burton laughs. ‘Sure,’ he says, but something about his tone makes her doubt. ‘Follow me.’

  He stands up and she walks after him out of the office, watching his practised movements, bending automatically as he goes through doorways. They arrive at the back of the house, and he opens a heavy wooden door.

  He reaches round and flicks on the light. Freya gasps. Inside are rows and rows of brown cardboard file boxes, stacked up on each other, going back as far as the eye can see.

  Burton chuckles. ‘It’s all yours.’

  * * *

  Freya spends the next three hours going through the boxes. This isn’t what she’s here for, she tells herself over and over, but for some reason she keeps going. And despite Burton’s obvious amusement, there does seem to be some sort of order to the chaos, she reflects, eventually noticing a row of dates from 2015: February, March, then, at last, September.

  And then she finds it. It’s old, water-stained and crumpled from the effects of the three other boxes that have been piled on the top. Written on the end: September 2015. Riley.

  The case files from Butler’s sister’s death.

  38

  His phone wakes him.

  ‘Butler?’

  Robin mumbles something incomprehensible into his handset.

  ‘You know your CCTV?’

  Robin sits up in bed, and rubs his hand over his hair. He’s not awake, only dimly registering that someone’s talking.

  ‘CCTV?’ he manages.

  ‘Yeah. The one from the Premier Inn? Your hanging wanking guy. Butler? You there?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Robin’s realised who’s talking at last. It’s Greg, from the digital lab. ‘What about it?’

  ‘I need to show you. Are you in?’

  Robin squints at the clock. Shit. He’s overslept again.

  He hasn’t had a proper night’s sleep for as long as he can remember. During the day, he’s shattered, desperate for half an hour of shut-eye, but the moment he gets into bed his brain refuses to switch off. He lies there, warm, comfortable, but awake, as the clock ticks round to two, three, sometimes four a.m. His mind will wander, on the edge of dreams. But then he’ll hear a small cry, or a voice, maybe real, probably imaginary, and he’ll be jolted awake again, his heart thudding in his chest. Finally, he’ll drift off, but then he’ll wake, barely hours later, blurry, exhausted and desperate to be left alone.

  But Greg’s not shutting up, still talking down the phone.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Robin says.

  * * *

  An hour later, Robin’s dressed in something vaguely clean and sitting at Greg’s desk, takeaway coffees in hand. Robin’s worked with Greg for years, and Greg’s complete lack of care for social niceties means the two men have always got on. Robin’s blunt manner matches the techie’s, both understanding the need to get to the point fast, as well as the desire for a continuous supply of caffeine. Greg takes the matching coffee cup without acknowledgement and now presses it to his lips, while pointing at his screen with his other hand.

  ‘What?’ Robin asks.

  Greg taps with his finger on the figure in the CCTV. It’s the footage taken from outside the Premier Inn, on the evening that Jonathan Miller checked into the hotel.

  ‘So your guy was about five-nine, five-ten, right?’

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘This guy’s not.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Robin asks. After his run-in with Liv, Robin drove home, stopping at the Co-op on the way for a frozen dinner and a six-pack of beer, asking for a packet of twenty Marlboro Golds as an afterthought when he got to the till. He spent the evening smoking and drinking, and as a consequence his brain is blurry, his throat scratchy and sore.

  ‘This guy—’ Greg taps again ‘—is too tall.’

  Robin coughs, feeling the muck from the cigarettes rattling in his lungs, then takes another gulp of coffee. He isn’t with it enough to understand Greg this morning.

  ‘What do you mean, too tall?’

  Greg talks him through some complicated process involving algebra and geometry and the height of the door of the car the guy is standing next to. Robin blinks.

  ‘So how tall do you think this guy is?’

  ‘Six-two, six-three?’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  Greg stares at him through his glasses, stone-faced. ‘Would I?’

  ‘Shit.’ Robin slumps back in the chair. He thinks about Jonathan Miller’s Mazda – left at the Premier Inn, now impounded in the police garage. ‘What about the forensics from the car? Anything back on that?’

  ‘Wait a sec.’

  Greg turns round and shouts to one of his colleagues. ‘Sent to West,’ Robin hears him reply.

  Greg turns back, sees the look on Robin’s face. ‘I’ll find it now,’ he grumbles. ‘Where is West, anyway?’

  ‘On another case. Temporarily.’

  ‘Pity. Still single?’ Greg asks without turning from the screen.

  Robin looks at Greg’s unstylish haircut, his thick specs, the stained Star Wars T-shirt. Then he thinks about Freya. ‘You don’t have a chance, mate,’ he replies, although he realises he doesn’t actually know Freya’s relationship status. He’s never asked.

  A glance from Greg. ‘Well, nor do you. You smelt yourself this morning?’ Robin does a surreptitious downward sniff. ‘Just saying a shower wouldn’t have gone amiss.’

  He’s not wrong, but before Robin has a chance to defend himself Greg’s got the report on the screen.

  ‘So. Samples taken from the driver
’s side show the presence of three separate DNA profiles. One belonging to Jonathan Miller, two unknown.’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Yeah. Fingerprints the same – a load of Miller’s, then a whole heap of partials we can’t identify.’

  ‘Anything else in the rest of the car?’

  ‘Not anything helpful. Mud, dirt, crap in the boot. But no biologicals.’

  So, no hair, no skin. No bits from a dead body, Robin thinks. ‘And the belt?’ he asks.

  ‘Yep, yep, wait a sec.’ More clicking from Greg. ‘Not much on the top surface, shiny and smooth so less likely DNA would be transferred and retained.’ Greg looks up. ‘No fingerprints, either.’ He focuses back on the screen. ‘Under surface rougher and more porous, better transfer, and yep.’ Robin looks up, interested. ‘DNA from your victim.’

  ‘No one else?’ Robin says, disappointed.

  ‘Nope. Oh, and here’s the results from your porn,’ Greg continues, his eyes not moving from the monitor.

  ‘It’s not my porn,’ Robin mutters, but Greg’s not listening.

  ‘One DNA profile. And fingerprints, some of which match to Miller’s.’

  ‘Some?’ Robin’s interest is caught again.

  ‘Yeah.’ A pause while Greg reads from the screen. ‘The DNA wasn’t your victim’s, but one handprint was. Oh, now this is odd,’ Greg says, showing Robin the photo. ‘A full handprint, across one page. And only that.’

  Robin squints at the picture. Across the naked woman, Robin can see the telltale black mess of the fingerprinting dust, then a separate shot of the handprint once the dust had been removed. Four fingers, a thumb and a palm, laid out like someone had pressed their hand to the centre of the page.