No Other Darkness (5 page)

Noah was queuing in the local café for the team’s coffee order. He’d wanted the fresh air; his clothes smelt of the Doyles’ garden. The team was twitchy because they had a cold case on their hands. Decent coffee would help.

‘No. No, that’s enough. Put that down.’ At a table by the window, a man was struggling to placate a shrieking child, without conspicuous success.

‘Can I help you?’ It was Noah’s turn at the counter.

‘Thanks. Two lattes, one with an extra shot, one skinny, three Americanos and two flat whites.’

The father–son tableau reminded Noah of his brother’s childhood tantrums. Sol was in his twenties now, had long since worked out how to get what he wanted in more devious if sometimes still noisy ways. Back when Noah was ten and his little brother was four, Sol had thrown tantrums on a daily basis, making the whole house spin around him.

In the café, the boy’s mother reappeared, quelling the child with a look and a handful of words that Noah didn’t catch. Her husband sat with his shoulders curled in defeat. Every so often he risked a glance at his son, as if trying to work out where the fury had come from, or distrusting
the quiet, waiting for the next outburst. Noah’s father, Dylan, hadn’t put up with tantrums from either of his sons, but he had worked long hours, and late. Whenever he was out, Sol would start on their mother, Rosa, who responded by taking his temperature, feeding him pink medicine, baby stuff, unlikely to do any harm but unnecessary all the same. The fact that Sol never had a tantrum in front of their father told Noah, at the age of ten, that his brother was fine, and smart, and manipulative. He’d been wary of Sol ever since.

 • • • 

Back at the station, he handed round the coffees, earning a ‘Cheers, mate’ from Ron Carling.

Carling was unhappy about the case they’d brought back from Snaresbrook. ‘If we can’t catch this bastard, it’s going to be months of work and nightmares . . .’

Ron had two young boys, Noah remembered. ‘Let’s hope we catch him, then.’

‘Have you even looked at the statistics for solving a case this cold? You saw the bodies, you know what I’m talking about. No sleep and effing nightmares, for months.’

‘How’s it going with Missing Persons?’ Debbie asked.

‘How do you think? We don’t even know if the poor little sods were boys or girls . . .’

‘They’re boys.’ Marnie was in the doorway. ‘Probably brothers. The elder was about eight. The little one was four or five. We don’t know their nationality yet, but the clothes and books were bought in the UK, so let’s start here, in London. Fran says they died four, maybe five years ago. She’s sending over her initial findings. DC Tanner will make copies. Make sure you read them.’

She nodded at Noah. ‘DS Jake will be in charge of exhibits. We need to look at the labels from the food tins. Fran hasn’t seen the brand before. It’s the best clue we have right now.’

Ron said, ‘So we’re on this, then. Even though it’s so cold it’s going to give us frostbite.’

Marnie turned her steady gaze on him. ‘A cold case is something we’ve investigated and failed to solve. We haven’t investigated anything to do with these boys’ deaths yet.’

‘You know what I mean. Five years, for fuck’s sake . . .’

Marnie glanced at the family photos on Carling’s desk. ‘Someone’s been looking for these boys –
missing
these boys – for at least that long. Let’s see if we can’t bring them some peace.’ She nodded at the flat whites. ‘Is one of those for me?’

‘Yes.’ Noah carried the cup to where she was standing. ‘I’ll get on to the labels, see if I can find a match online.’

‘Good.’ Marnie nodded at Ron. ‘Try Missing Persons again now that we’ve got an approximate time frame and an idea of their ages. If Fran’s right, it could give us a match quite quickly. There can’t be many young brothers who’ve gone missing together in the last five years.’

She paused, looking at the team. ‘They’re our boys, but I want names. DS Jake?’

Noah closed the door to the office and waited for Marnie to sit behind her desk. She didn’t, standing with her back to him, her eyes on the brick-wall view from the window.

What was she thinking?

He’d always liked her silences, trusting her need to not always be talking, but now he wondered what she thought about when she went quiet like this. Debbie Tanner had told him about the day five years ago when Marnie’s foster brother had taken a kitchen knife to her parents before sitting on their stairs, waiting for the police to come and wash blood and tissue from his fingers so they could take prints at the station.

Noah couldn’t start to imagine what madness like that did to a person. Ever since Debbie had shared the story out around the station like so many home-baked biscuits, he’d wanted to say something to Marnie, to express his sadness and the pain he felt on her behalf. He couldn’t say anything, of course. For one thing, it would expose Debbie to more trouble than she deserved. Not that Noah liked the easy way she’d shared the tragedy, but she didn’t mean harm; she cared for Marnie in her way. Noah doubted she was capable of deliberate malice.
Of course that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of what Tim Welland called ‘malicious ignorance’, hiding behind the refusal to acquire facts, or tact, or both.

Marnie sat at her desk, nodding for Noah to sit too.

‘What else did Fran say?’ he asked. It would be in the report Debbie was copying, but he wanted to hear it from Marnie.

‘No wounds, nothing in the airways. No evidence they were constrained. No sign of a struggle. No broken bones.’ She dropped her hands into her lap. ‘Fran thinks they starved, slowly. She called it . . . a quiet death.’

‘A quiet death.’ He wanted to throw something. ‘But there were tins of food down there.’

‘Fran thinks they got too weak to open them.’ Marnie’s voice hardened; her way of focusing, keeping emotion in its useful place. ‘I don’t remember any searches five years ago, for brothers. I’d have seen a picture if they went missing in London, but I don’t remember any search for missing boys.’ Her eyes went to somewhere Noah couldn’t see but which he could imagine, thanks to Debbie’s lack of discretion. Five years ago, there was enough horror in Marnie’s life without looking for missing children.

‘I promised Terry Doyle I’d take him their names, once we know who they are . . .’ She drank a mouthful of coffee. ‘What’ve you got for me?’

‘The houses were built by Merrick Homes. I had a shufti on the internet and it looks like the development was due to start nearly six years ago, but it got stalled because of funding issues, or permissions. They didn’t go on-site until late in 2011. Blackthorn Road’s unusual in that all the houses are three-storey, built tall to take advantage of the views. They called it Beech Rise, after the trees that Merrick Homes thoughtfully preserved and incorporated.’ He paused. ‘That’s a quote from their website.’

‘It’s what else they preserved and incorporated that concerns me,’ Marnie said drily.

‘I have an address, and a name. Ian Merrick, owner and managing director.’

‘Good. Let’s pay him a visit.’ She checked her watch and stood, dropping her empty cup into the bin. ‘It’ll have to be tomorrow now. Get some rest while you can.’

‘I was going to swing past the refuge,’ Noah said, ‘and see how Ayana’s doing.’

Marnie scanned his face. ‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s just a visit. I know she’s fine, because she called me. I’d like to see her, though. I haven’t seen her since we got her out of that flat, away from her family.’

Into a witness protection scheme. Ayana was giving evidence against her brother, Nasif Mirza. A man had died after Nasif attacked him with a scimitar. An earlier attack, with a different weapon, had left Nasif’s sister Ayana blind in one eye. She was one of the most courageous people Noah had met, and he wanted to tell her so, in person.

‘Give her my best wishes.’ Marnie was tying her hair away from her face, working blindly; no mirrors in here.

Noah had never seen her consult a mirror. For someone so habitually neat, that was surprising. ‘We’re a team.’ Like Terry, he needed to know the boys’ names, and he wanted to be part of the effort that took them home. ‘What about Gutless Douglas?’ he remembered.

‘I’ve been trying his number, still no answer. He’ll have to wait until the morning too. I’ll brief the team first thing.’

Marnie nodded at Noah. ‘Get some rest while you can. I don’t agree with DS Carling’s pessimism regarding this case, but he’s right about one thing. It’s going to be a nightmare for the next few weeks.’

Marnie had no plans to move in with Ed Belloc, but sometimes you didn’t need a plan.

They’d been sleeping together for six months, at his place since hers was too much like a hotel suite; she’d caught Ed tidying the pillows. His flat was better, messier; lived-in. Hers could’ve been sprayed with plastic for all the impression she’d made on it. She’d liked her flat once, for precisely that sterile neatness, its estate-agent readiness, the sense of impermanence. But recently it had started to unnerve her, as if
she
was part of the mess it was trying to repel. Ed’s place, never neat, felt like home these days.

 • • • 

Ed was in the kitchen, stirring something red in a saucepan. ‘Pasta,’ he said. It smelt good. ‘I thought if you were late, it wouldn’t matter.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘I have Tupperware.’

She leaned into him for a second. ‘You’re getting domestic, Belloc.’

‘You should’ve seen how long it took me to find a clean saucepan . . .’

He abandoned the stirring and turned to look at her, searching her face the way he did whenever she came back
here, as if it was a new miracle each time. Steam had stuck his brown curls to his forehead and freckled his nose. ‘Tough day?’

‘Dead kids . . .’ She wanted to shut her eyes when she said it, but she didn’t, letting him look at her because it mattered to him. ‘So yes, not the best day . . . How was yours?’

‘Nothing as bad as that. Do you want to talk about it?’

She unstuck a curl from his forehead. ‘Later. You’ve got pasta to make. I’m going to take a shower. There’s hot water, right?’

Ed nodded, letting her move away. ‘Take as long as you like. This’ll keep.’

 • • • 

In the bathroom, she undressed awkwardly, clumsy with fatigue. It was frightening how tired she was after one day on this case. Perhaps Ron Carling was right and she’d brought them all a thankless task. Six weeks from now, they might be no further forward, no nearer finding out what had happened to the boys. It bothered her that she couldn’t remember hearing about a manhunt four or five years ago. Missing children lit flags across the Met’s systems, pulling in people from across forces. How could she not remember? But she knew how.

Five years ago, she’d been trying to deal with the huge hole torn in her life by Stephen Keele. She’d thrown herself into work, couldn’t remember details of any of the cases she’d taken on. She hadn’t cared enough, that was the trouble, only interested in the solve rate, in scoring points with Tim Welland to earn her another case, harder and faster than the last. The human cost hadn’t registered. Or if it had, only as an echo of the bigger pain, fresh pressure on the bruise she was safeguarding. It had taken her years to rebuild the part of her brain that connected
her compassion to her intellect. She was a better detective now. She didn’t solve cases as swiftly, but nor did she miss tricks because she failed to look where it mattered most: in the hearts of the people damaged by the crimes she was investigating.

She put her clothes aside for the dry cleaner’s. Maybe they’d be able to get the smell of the bunker out of her suit. Luckily, she had a change of clothes in Ed’s wardrobe.

She should talk with Ed, let him take custody of her tiredness and in return take custody of his. It was what couples did. Once, she’d have taken refuge in work, pulling its layers over her until she was numb. Even now, she was conscious of a nagging sensation in her skin, like an addict’s itch for caffeine or worse. Numb had felt so good, once.

She removed her wristwatch, concentrating on what mattered. Ed, and this new case.

Tim Welland was right, she had a good team. Debbie Tanner would make family liaison look easy. Ron Carling, once he was past his gut response, would work harder than anyone to find who did this. And Noah Jake was shaping up to be the best detective she’d worked with: compassionate, inquisitive and unsatisfied with easy answers. She was lucky.

She stepped into Ed’s bath, pulling the shower curtain carefully along its pole; like everything else in Ed’s flat, you treated it with respect or it fell apart. At her place, the water pressure was like a jet-wash, but Ed’s shower was gentle, serving the water softly, as if conscious of her skin’s sensitivity, the rawness she’d brought back from Blackthorn Road.

The Doyles had been playing and working in the garden for a year, digging a vegetable patch directly over the bunker. The developer, Merrick Homes, had planted the beginnings of the garden, but hadn’t bothered to add nutrients to the soil, deciding sand was good enough.

What other corners had they cut?

She imagined Merrick’s team unrolling cheap turf, tamping it down. Had they found anything, before they laid the lawn? Would they have cared if they had?

She didn’t see how they could have missed the bunker. It was only underneath three feet of soil. But if they were up against a schedule and a budget, perhaps they were told to ignore anything which got in the way of that. Sand instead of soil, the wrong sound under their boots when they walked across the hollow foot of the garden . . .

She was towelling herself dry from the shower when her phone buzzed: the station.

‘DI Rome.’

‘Boss?’ Ron Carling’s voice was ripe with disgust. ‘You’re not going to believe this.’

They’re all in the dark, each and every one of them.

The man sitting two seats down from us, he’s in the dark. The police who brought him here: in the dark. The man’s nose is broken and there’s blood down the front of his shirt, black under the lights. He’s holding a cardboard bowl. He’s been sick into it twice. The vomit is ninety per cent proof, its paint-stripper stink making our eyes water.

Esther’s sitting very still. I’m usually the fidgety one, but tonight I’m copying Esther and keeping like a statue, not wanting to be spotted. Too much is new, tonight.

It’s generally a lot quieter than this, which isn’t how I remember city life. Last time I looked, the city got lively after dark, dancing and dodging the night away before spilling its guts come morning. Things have changed. It’s been years since I saw a city after dark.

We’ve been away a long time, Esther and me. That’s why they think they can play games like this in a public place, somewhere we have no right being, even if we are keeping quiet, pretending to be statues sitting here.

It is nearly 2 a.m. and all’s quiet, except the man puking in the cardboard bowl. How long before the bowl soaks through and he’s sitting with a lapful of sick? Once upon a time they gave you a stainless-steel dish. Now it’s all cardboard, disposable, recycled. He’s probably puking into last year’s bedpan.

Clock’s chiming somewhere: 2 a.m.

I think I hear Esther murmur, ‘Bring out your dead,’ but I can’t be sure.

It wouldn’t be like her to say anything at all in a place where we might be heard, or seen. Sometimes she sits so still and quiet, I swear I’m the only one who knows she’s here.

The man ignores us, groaning self-pity through his broken nose. I wonder, briefly, who he is and why he’s here, but the train of thought requires too much energy and runs the risk that I’ll start thinking beyond this place and out into
there
.

Far safer to stick with these four walls, although counting them I see there are seven walls and one is made of glass. Safety glass, I bet. If I ran into it, or threw something – this plastic chair, for instance, which is crucifying my spine – it wouldn’t break easily, or usefully. No shards, or dangerous edges. Even so, it’s a hell of a lot less safe than the place we’ve come from, where they’ll return us before dawn and the arrival of the hospital cleaning crew. This experiment is risky enough. It makes me wonder what other risks they are willing to take. Do they really imagine we are ready for this, just because we’ve been good for so long?

Do they think it means we’re mended, that the bad we did is back in its box?

I don’t see how they can think that, not of me, certainly not of Esther.

The man with the broken nose is breathing thickly. I don’t
like the sound of it, phlegmy, and wonder whether Esther is hearing what I am, if memory’s playing the same trick on her. It’s like the sound of a puppy whining, deep in the pit of its throat.

This is a waste of time, a
criminal
waste of time. Sitting us here, to see who sees us and what reaction it provokes, if we’re recognised any longer.

It’s been five years.

At least I think it has. I’ve lost track of time, thanks to the pills.

The self-pitying pisshead two seats down couldn’t care less. We could be invisible for all the signs he’s giving. Maybe we are. Invisible. Maybe after all the needles they’ve stuck in us and the answers they’ve sucked out of us and the pills they make us eat, endlessly, like sweets – maybe we’re so empty we can’t be seen.

Stranger things have happened.

The woman behind the desk (I don’t think she’s a nurse, just an agency worker paid to pick up the phones) isn’t interested in us. I don’t blame her. Personally, I’m sick of the sight of us. Me and Esther, sitting here in our borrowed clothes, trying to be normal, or
pretending
to be trying to be normal, in Esther’s case. She was always a sneaky one.

No, I don’t blame Ms Agency Worker, not even when she yawns and points her eyes at the clock, wanting her shift to be over so she can go home – to what, I wonder?

A husband? A family?

I bite my tongue to stop myself thinking any further down that dead end. Just the tip, where all the nerve endings huddle. The tip of my tongue is lumpy with scar tissue, from being bitten too much. I’m not as bad as Esther, whose mouth is full of sour, watery ulcers.

I look away, down the corridor to the glass wall that can’t be broken. Most people who come here are sick or scared,
worried for themselves or someone else. That isn’t us. We’re not ill, or not in any normal way. Of course they say Esther was sick, very sick. But they also say she’s better now, and that’s why we’re here.

Esther was famous once. They think maybe the people who come here, sick or scared, will recognise us. Not that they’d know me; at least I doubt it. It was Esther’s face all over the news. But I’m not sure we’re all that different – same eyes, same size – although I’m an inch shorter and less skinny, at least than Esther used to be.

A hospital porter comes to collect the pisshead and I stiffen in panic. I’m the only one who does; not much can panic Esther. She has less to lose, of course, from this experiment.

I could lose everything.

Esther’s already lost that.

I should stop ascribing my emotions to her. That’s what the therapist, Lyn, says. ‘It’s good,’ she says, ‘that you feel empathy. Empathy is important.’

So now I scrabble after empathy, like I scrabble after forgiveness. And mercy too, except I shouldn’t expect too much of that, and so I don’t.

Believe me, I don’t.

You don’t do the things we’ve done and look for mercy.