No Other Darkness (20 page)

‘The Foster Service,’ Noah said, ‘has no record of Clancy Brand.’

‘No record,’ Marnie repeated. ‘What does that mean, exactly?’

‘It means the Doyles aren’t fostering him. They can’t be. Plus we found this, in the paperwork that came through.’ He handed her a sheet of paper. ‘Merrick built a panic room for a couple in South Kensington. The planning must’ve been a nightmare because we’re talking about a listed house, so I’m guessing Merrick cut corners, or bribed someone. The couple who wanted the panic room? Scott and Christina Brand.’

‘Clancy’s parents?’

Ron nodded. ‘Don’t ask us why he ended up with the Doyles instead of at home with his parents. Unless there wasn’t enough space in the panic room for a moody teenager . . .’

‘You didn’t find a link between the Doyles and Clancy’s parents?’

‘Other than Ian Merrick?’ Ron shook his head. ‘Nothing. We’re still looking.’

Noah said, ‘I don’t understand why Clancy would take the children.
If
he did. They’re hard work, apart from anything else. If he’s not even their foster brother, if the Doyles lied about that . . . why was he looking after them in the first place? Why were they
letting
him look after them? It doesn’t make sense.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t feel like we have a handle on who Clancy really is, do you?’

‘No,’ Marnie said. ‘But I know a man who thinks he has.’

She nodded at Noah. ‘Call DC Tanner, and tell her we need to interview the Doyles. Send a car for them. Ed’s there too. Bring everyone back here.’

Adam Fletcher stretched his feet under the interview table. ‘So he’s taken them. Clancy Brand.’ Anger lifted off him in a solid wave. ‘He’s taken those little kids. Your lot were all over the estate, asking questions . . .’

‘If you have information that would help the police,’ Marnie told him, ‘this is your last chance to give it up.’

‘They’re not on the estate. I looked.’

‘You looked.’

‘I’ve been watching him. You know that.’

‘A shame you weren’t watching him four hours ago, when it’s possible he went to the park with Carmen and Tommy Doyle.’

‘Yeah, well there’s only so much hanging around playgrounds you can do before someone reports a pervert to the police . . . He’s not on the estate. Who told you he was?’

‘Terry Doyle. He’s been living with Clancy for months. What’s your qualification?’

A flash of something – the truth; was he about to tell her the truth? It was gone so fast she might have imagined it, his blue stare coming up like shutters.

‘What do you know about the Doyles? I don’t mean the kids. I mean Terry and Beth.’

‘I know they took a huge fucking risk having that psycho under their roof, as witnessed by this shitstorm.’

‘You could’ve warned them. Why didn’t you?’

‘I warned
you
.’

‘Not really. You pussy-footed around, pretending you had evidence that patently you don’t or you’d have handed it over. Now that Tommy and Carmen are missing, I mean. I appreciate you had to honour your bullshit code of silence earlier on—’

Adam kicked the leg of the table so hard it shook. ‘You don’t know what the
fuck
you’re talking about.’

‘And you wouldn’t know the truth if it was standing in front of you wearing a shiny hat and waving pom-poms.’

His eyes gleamed appreciatively. ‘Good to see you showing your true colours.’

‘Yes? Unless black and blue are the colours you have in mind, you’ll stop kicking the furniture and start answering my questions.’

‘Police brutality?’ He nodded at the tape recorder, then scrubbed at his scalp suddenly, as if he’d had enough of the game.

Marnie looked at him sitting there smelling of cigarettes, smelling of
her.
All the rotten ripeness of her teenage derailment, her mistakes and cravings, self-loathing and hard-snatched happiness.
God help me
, she thought,
I was happy. Causing them hurt, staying out all hours, making them sick with worry –
I was happy,
hating
them.

‘Where on the estate did you look for Clancy Brand?’ she demanded.

‘Everywhere the kids hang out. I’ve seen him there before. I know the places he goes.’

‘You can’t possibly have been watching him twenty-four
hours a day.’ She thought of something. ‘Did you have anyone else keeping an eye on him? Women. Smokers, like you.’

The women Beth had seen with Clancy, up on the estate.

Marnie had been afraid one of them was Esther Reid, but now she was remembering the easy way Adam had flirted with Debbie Tanner, and Julie Lowry.

‘You have mates on the estate keeping an eye on Clancy. That’s right, isn’t it?’

The flicker in Adam’s eyes said she’d guessed correctly. He didn’t answer right away, looking at the tape recorder. Finally he said, ‘People get worried when there’s a dangerous kid around. Parents get worried. Even the police give a shit, eventually.’

‘So you had people watching Clancy. Watching where he went.’

‘Just a couple of drinking friends. Women, like you said. He’s not on the estate. We looked.’

‘Terry made him promise to stay away.’

Adam scoffed through his teeth. ‘Doyle couldn’t extract a promise from a politician. I suppose you think he’s a hero for taking in a kid like that.’

‘You clearly don’t. Why not?’

‘Doyle’s the last person a kid like Clancy would trust.’

‘The last person . . . Why?’

‘He’s too straight for one thing, too
decent.
Mister green-fingered salt of the earth . . . I’ll bet he’s never lost his temper with anyone. A kid like Clancy needs someone who won’t take his shit at face value. He won’t have told Doyle the truth about anything that mattered.’

Marnie thought of the boy’s eyes thumping at her face –
He’s not my fucking dad
– so full of hate she’d wanted to take a step wide of his rage.

‘So what’s this about?’ Adam asked. ‘Really?’

‘The Doyles aren’t fostering Clancy. But you knew that, didn’t you?’ Marnie met his stare head-on. ‘You know about Clancy’s parents and the panic room that Ian Merrick built. You know why he isn’t living at home, why the Doyles took him in. All of it. You know.’

Adam looked at her for a long moment before he nodded.

‘For the tape,’ Marnie said inflexibly.

He moved his mouth as if it hurt. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I know.’

‘Have you spoken with the travellers?’ Adam asked Marnie. ‘They’ll tell you about Ian Merrick. “He hasn’t got a heart, he’s got a swinging brick,” that’s what they told me back before they found out I was a scumbag journalist.’

‘What did they think you were?’

‘A traveller. I told you, I was chasing a story. Undercover. I talked with everyone who lived on the site before Merrick bulldozed them out. Not just Beech Rise. He’s got sites right across London. Always places with a history, when you start digging. And I started digging. My editor wanted a story about travellers, but I found something better. I found
preppers
.’ He said it like an obscenity. ‘Merrick specialises in safety, and storage. He finds disused tunnels, bunkers, abandoned drainage plants, septic tanks, you name it.
Subterranea
, he calls it. The kind of unfilled landfill that no one’ll touch because it’s a planning nightmare. Health and safety have a fit if they get within fifty feet of it, but Merrick makes money out of it.’

Adam curled his mouth. ‘According to Merrick, you used to be able to make money from architecture,
spectacle
. Now it’s all about the buildings you can’t see, rather than the ones you can.’

‘Subterranea,’ Marnie repeated. ‘Like the bunkers on Blackthorn Road.’

‘Like that, yeah.’ Adam pushed the heel of his hand at his right eye.

How long since he’d slept? He looked dead on his feet.

‘You’re saying Merrick is breaking the law?’

‘No. He’s too slippery for that. He’s just got a gift for exploiting paranoia.’

‘Tell me about Scott and Christina Brand. Clancy’s parents.’

‘Rich, scared, controlling.’ Adam shifted the length of his legs under the table. ‘They were going to be the stars of my story. Guess I can kiss goodbye to that now.’

‘How do they know Terry Doyle?’

‘Through Merrick. Doyle’s a gardener, isn’t he? He does landscaping for Merrick. He sorted out the garden for Scott and Chrissie after their panic room was finished.’

‘And Clancy. Why’s he living with Terry and Beth instead of with Scott and Chrissie?’

‘You’ve seen Doyle. He’s a do-gooder. Clancy ran away from home, more than once. His parents are control freaks, and he was out of control. He’d have ended up on the streets if it wasn’t for Doyle.’

‘The Doyles told me they’re fostering Clancy. You told me more or less the same thing, gave me a lecture about Social Services not knowing their arse from their elbow. What was that, misdirection? To keep me wide of your real story?’

‘If you’re asking whether I lied to the police,’ Adam looked at the tape recorder, ‘the answer’s no. I don’t have the full facts of the arrangement. Most of it’s guesswork. Hunches, you ever get those?’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I told you to look into Clancy. I gave you that.’

‘You told me he was excluded from school for touching small children. Was that guesswork too? Or was it a lie?’

Adam put his hands in his pockets, legs at full stretch,
spine low in the chair. His eyes were diamond-bright. ‘It was a story doing the rounds. I told you I follow stories. It’s what I do.’ Something wasn’t right with his gaze, the studied way he was slouching.

He was holding something back. Something big.

He leaned forward under the light, showing her the shadows in his stare. ‘The point is this, Detective Inspector. Clancy Brand is an evil little shit who’s taken two small children fuck-knows-where and on
your
watch. Because you chose to think that all the warnings I gave you were me pissing about for the fun of it.’

‘You haven’t given me any evidence, at any point. You’ve given me guesswork and hunches and
smoke
because you’re protecting your story, whatever it is.’

‘Trying to help.’ He looked away from her, a muscle twitching in his cheek. ‘I really was.’

‘You got it wrong, in any case. About Clancy, probably. Definitely about the Doyles. They’re not who you think they are. For starters, they lied to the police . . .’

‘What about Stephen Keele?’ Adam said softly. ‘Am I wrong about him?’

Her heart thumped in her chest. ‘What?’

‘Stephen Keele. The kid who killed your mum and dad. His parents were preppers. You think it was a coincidence, me going after this story?’

‘You . . .’

His mouth hardened. ‘No coincidence. I knew what I was doing.’

‘This . . . was about
Stephen
?’ She couldn’t believe it.

‘I wanted to help.’ Adam looked at her. Something was wrong with his eyes; they were too dark, too hot. ‘I wanted to give you peace because I know what it’s like to live without answers. To have your whole world wiped out, and not know who or
why.
’

‘You . . .’

Adam shook his head. ‘At least you know
who
, Max. At least you have that.’

‘What happened?’ She felt ill asking the question because she half knew the answer; it was there in Adam’s eyes, the grief he was letting her see for the first time. ‘Not Tia?’

He moved his mouth but didn’t speak. After a beat, he nodded.

Tia. His daughter. Dead.

‘When?’ Marnie asked.

He glanced at the tape recorder. She thought he was going to ask her to switch it off, but he didn’t. ‘Five years ago. Nearly . . . five years.’

When Tia was fourteen.

‘How?’

‘Coach crash. School trip. Not anyone’s fault, that was the verdict.’ He pushed the heels of his hands at his eyes. ‘Two dead kids and no one to blame. So . . . yeah. My marriage broke down. I was a wreck, a cliché. Too bound up in my own misery to care about anything else.’

‘That’s when you went abroad?’

‘I tried running, yeah, but guess what? You can’t outrun crap like that. I guess I don’t need to tell you . . .’ His mouth wrenched. ‘I lied about Tia. All those years ago, when she was just a kid and we were . . . I lied. Pretended I wasn’t a dad. Not hers, not anyone’s. Pretended she didn’t exist. Nothing like appreciating what you’ve got after it’s gone . . .’

His eyes blazed with unshed tears. ‘I let that drive me crazy for a bit. Then I found out you lost your mum and dad around the same time. I found out about that
shit
Stephen Keele. What he did to you, how he wouldn’t tell you
why.
It was different with Tia, there wasn’t anyone to blame, but Keele? There’s something there. A story. I could smell it a mile off.’

‘You smelt a story,’ Marnie repeated, sick with disbelief.

‘I didn’t want it for myself,’ Adam said angrily. ‘For
you 
. . .’

‘This is penance? For what we did? Because you lied to me, pretended she didn’t exist?’

‘I wanted to bring you
peace
—’

‘By investigating Stephen’s parents.’ She cut him short. ‘What did you find?’

‘They’re preppers, just like Clancy’s lot.’

‘Do they
know
Clancy’s parents? Do they have
any
connection to this case?’

‘Maybe. Look.’ He leaned in, drawing a line on the table with his hand. ‘Merrick’s a crook. That’s why I followed the travellers.’

‘You followed Clancy too. Or you had him followed. Why?’

‘Something’s up with that kid. You saw it, I know you did. His parents are whack-jobs, just like Keele’s . . .’

‘And he’s the same age Stephen was when he went off the rails.’

‘Yes.
Yes
.’ Adam looked relieved, as if she’d finally got it.

‘Fourteen. The same age as Tia when she died. Clancy’s dropping out of school, getting into trouble, running away from home . . . What a waste of a life. He’s throwing it away.’

Not like Tia, who would have made her dad proud, had she lived.

Adam moved his head, adjusting his focus. Listening to what she was saying.

‘Believe what you like,’ he said at last. ‘I know what I was trying to do. I wanted to find you
answers
. It’s what I’m good at. So yeah,’ he nodded at the tape recorder, ‘go ahead and call me on my redemption bullshit, but Clancy led me to Scott and Chrissie Brand, who led me to Merrick and his merry men. To preppers. And back full circle to Stephen Keele.’

‘How, exactly?’

‘What if Keele’s parents knew Merrick? What if he built
them
a panic room?’

‘Did he?’

‘Ask me when I’m done digging.’

‘No, in other words. Even if they knew Merrick, they don’t know why Stephen did it. No one knows that except Stephen, and maybe even he doesn’t know. Do
you
know why you did the things you did when you were fourteen? I don’t.’

‘But you
want
to know,’ Adam insisted. ‘Why he did it. Why they died. I want to help. I can find the answers you’re after. I may be a scumbag, but I’m a nosy scumbag. I get results.’

She recognised the light in his eyes. Obsession. She’d been like that once.

‘Adam . . .’

‘These preppers,’ he said furiously, ‘they’re psychos. Scott and his fucking panic room like a padded cell . . . He’s got a gun, d’you know that? Scott Brand. He’s got a gun. With a licence, but so fucking what, frankly. They had a teenage boy in that house doing whatever he wanted because there was no one telling him to stop and there’s a fucking
firearm
in the house . . . So he’s acting up, trying to get Mummy and Daddy’s attention and guess what? They don’t take him to a psychiatrist, they don’t sit him down and talk to him about why he keeps getting into fights at school, why he’s being excluded, why the other kids are accusing him of being a pervert even if the teachers never
see
anything . . .’

‘Adam . . .’

‘What’d they do? They fitted him with an alarm. Did Doyle tell you about that? An alarm, like a dog. They’d have had him microchipped if they could. Hey, if this was America, that’s
exactly
what they’d’ve done. Microchipped the little
bastard, so they knew where he was whenever he sneaked off.’

‘A personal alarm system,’ Marnie said. ‘Yes, Terry told me about that. Do you know the name of the security company that provided the alarm?’

‘What?’ Adam looked baffled by the question.

‘Forget about Stephen Keele,’ she said. ‘I need to find Terry’s kids, and Clancy. Do you know the name of the security company that provided the personal alarm system the Brands gave to their son?’

‘He stopped using it when he went to live with Terry . . .’

‘All right. But if they kept the data, they might know where Clancy used to hang out. They might know his old hiding places. Do you have the name of the firm?’

‘No.’ Adam thought for a moment. ‘But I could find out.’

A knock on the door made Marnie look up.

Noah was outside the interview room, holding a phone.

Something had happened, it was written all over his face.

Through the glass he mouthed, ‘Front desk. You’ll want to come.’