No Other Darkness (14 page)

The peaches had been wedged between a teddy bear and a third candle, in a jam jar.

Marnie dug gloves from her pocket, pulling them on before she touched the jar. It was cold. The candle had been out for a while.

They hadn’t told anyone about the peaches. The press didn’t know. No one knew, apart from Marnie’s team, and Fran’s team, and whoever had put the boys in the bunker.

‘What is it?’ Terry crouched at her side.

She’d forgotten he was there.

‘I’m not sure.’ She reached into her bag for an evidence kit.

Very carefully, she stowed and sealed the tin, scanning the rest of the tributes, checking the cards in particular, looking for messages that didn’t ring true. Finding nothing, just sympathy cards like the ones on sale in the newsagent’s.

In the end, she bagged the lot, afraid to take any chances.

‘Does the street have CCTV?’

Terry shook his head. ‘The nearest is on the estate.’ He nodded in that direction. ‘This was always a quiet spot. Nothing much happened here until now.’

He dropped his gaze to the evidence bags in her hand.
‘You think . . . someone was here? Someone connected to what happened?’ His voice was low and scared.

‘I don’t know. But I’m not taking any chances. I’m sorry, I have to go. Will you be okay?’

He nodded. ‘Go. Do what you have to do. I should get back to Beth and the kids.’

Marnie waited until he’d walked away before she speed-dialled the station.

Debbie Tanner picked up the call.

‘The press who were outside the house yesterday,’ Marnie said, ‘especially the ones with cameras, I want names and contact numbers. I want to know who was here when the crowd was forming. Specifically, I want to know who was taking photos.’

It was an outside chance, but she had to try.

‘What’s happened?’ Debbie asked.

‘Just do it. Please. I’ll explain later. Ask DS Carling to help.’

‘He’s following up on the travellers.’

‘Then ask one of the others. This is a priority. You spoke with one of the reporters yesterday. Adam Fletcher.’

‘He wasn’t taking photos. Not while I was chatting with him, anyway.’

‘What were you chatting about, detective?’

A tiny beat, while Debbie caught up with Marnie’s mood. ‘Just . . . how horrid it was, what we found.’

‘What did we find?’

‘The boys . . . you know. I didn’t tell him anything, of course I didn’t.’

‘Good. Because that would be a disciplinary matter, wouldn’t it?’

Marnie rang off, calling Noah next. ‘Change of plan. You’ll have to interview Mr Walton on your own. I need to follow up on something else.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Someone left a tin of peaches outside the Doyles’ house.’

‘Someone . . .’ She heard Noah process the information, knowing that no one outside the team knew about the peaches. ‘Shit.’

‘I’ll call you as soon as I know more.’ She rang off.

One more call to make before she took the evidence bags for testing.

‘Hey, Max. Changed your mind about breakfast?’

‘You have a camera. Were you taking photos yesterday?’

Adam said, ‘At Beech Rise? Sure. Nothing that’s going to win me a Pulitzer, but—’

‘Did you take photos of the people leaving flowers and cards?’

‘Those vampires? Yeah, I took a few.’ His voice sharpened. ‘What’ve you found?’

‘You send me your photos, and any others you can get hold of, and I’ll let you know.’

‘Exclusive?’

‘Depends what you send me. Maybe, yes.’ She glanced down at the bags in her hand. ‘You were chatting with one of my detectives yesterday, DC Tanner.’

‘Your top boy?’

‘Debbie Tanner. She was wearing a red shirt . . .’

‘Oh right, DC Nigella . . . Yeah, I was. Why?’

‘I need to know if she told you anything about what we found in those bunkers.’

Like tinned peaches; a nice scoop for a reporter who knew how to work every angle or, in Debbie’s case, every curve.

‘You found two dead kids,’ Adam said. ‘She didn’t seem to know much more than that.’

Marnie couldn’t tell if he was lying, not without seeing his face and maybe not even then. Could she believe it, in any case? Believe that Adam might have left the peaches? No. He was feckless, and hungry for a story, but he wasn’t cruel. Not in that way.

Adam said, ‘You okay? Max?’

She rang off.

We all live by leaving behind.

Where had she read that? Somewhere, years ago. Sixteen years ago, probably; Adam and his grappling hook, hauling her back into that past, even when there was work to do.

Connie, the traveller, with her two little angels.

A tin of peaches left with the tributes to the dead boys.

Familial DNA inside the bunker.

Clancy’s pills, his rich parents and his doodles, the circles like the ones she’d found in Stephen’s diary five years ago, right around the time the boys were being buried alive. She felt as if
she
was turning circles, each one smaller than the last.

The truth is that we all live by leaving behind.

Borges. That was it. Jorge Luis Borges’s
Funes the Memorious
, a book about a man who couldn’t forget anything, who was driven mad by his memory. Reading Borges had been light relief during her Camus phase, but that line had stuck with her.

We all live by leaving behind.

She couldn’t do it. Not with Stephen, not with Adam, or not yet. Certainly not with the dead boys. She needed to put the pieces of the puzzle together – the circles in the notebook, the anti-psychotics, the travellers and the preppers – she needed to piece it all together. Find the champagne glass that made sense of the chaos that had killed those children. Even if it was nothing as graceful as a glass – if it was a rusted pipe or a rotting branch – she needed to make sense of it, and soon.

Before the press caught up with the Doyles, or Clancy’s temper got worse, or her team started to doubt her resolve to get this done.

‘It was outside the Doyles’ house,’ Marnie said. ‘With the flowers and cards, part of the pavement memorial.’

The tin of peaches sat on Fran Lennox’s desk, still inside the evidence bag.

‘People are ghouls.’ Fran was filling in paperwork to fast-track the tests on the tin, in case it matched anything they’d taken from the bunker.

The rest of the evidence bags – the sympathy cards, teddies and candles – were in a plastic crate. Everything would need testing. A waste of time, Marnie suspected, but it had to be done. The peaches weren’t left by accident. The tin was unopened, its metal untouched by rust. Nothing like the ones found where the boys died. This tin was shiny-new. Looking at it made her angry.

Fran said, ‘Did you skip breakfast? You look peaky.’

The opposite of peachy?

‘I’m fine. Just pissed off at the idea that someone’s playing games.’

‘I could make toast,’ Fran offered.

‘Really, I’m fine. What I need is fingerprints, if you can get them.’

‘Let’s take a look.’ Fran scooped up the bag.

Marnie followed her from the tiny office to the lab, where they suited up before Fran started work.

In here, behind one of the brushed-steel doors, their boys were lying, waiting to go home.

‘No prints,’ Fran said. She bent over the tin, concentrating on her tests. ‘Sorry.’

‘They wore gloves?’

‘Woolly gloves, by the look of it.’ She reached for a pair of tweezers. ‘I’ve got fibres.’

‘It wasn’t cold yesterday,’ Marnie said. ‘Not cold enough for gloves.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ Fran was always cold, layering cardigans over vest tops and T-shirts. ‘So the gloves were worn in case of prints.’ She saved the fibre for testing. ‘By our killer, you think?’

‘No one else knew about the peaches. No one outside the team.’

Fran heard the edge in her voice. ‘You think someone on the team might’ve leaked it?’

‘Why would they?’

‘No reason I can think of . . . Leave it with me. Between this and yesterday’s samples from the other bunkers, I’m yours most of the day. Anything else you want to chuck into the mix?’

‘Since you ask . . .’ Marnie dug out the strip of painkillers from Clancy’s room. ‘Not prints, but if you could tell me the likely effect on a teenage boy of taking these. He’s average build, post-pubescent, mood-swingy.’

‘Okay.’ Fran put the pills with the rest of the evidence. ‘Now clear off, before you think of anything else.’ Her phone buzzed as she said it and she beckoned Marnie back, reading a text. ‘More results from the first bunker. Might be nothing . . . Hang on.’

She put the tin of peaches aside and peeled off her gloves, reaching for the nearest laptop.

‘Soil samples. Okay, this is odd.’ She turned the screen so that Marnie could see what she was seeing. ‘I’ve got nitrogen, phosphorus . . . a lot of potassium.’

‘And that’s odd because . . .?’

‘Not your average common or garden soil. This is compost-rich, and not just any compost. Properly organic, peat-free, bark-based, I’d guess. Something like conifer . . .’

She straightened, frowning across the lab. ‘This is soil from the
garden
. Not the fields. From the garden, after the Doyles rescued it.’

‘Terry found the bunker,’ Marnie said. ‘He climbed down four rungs before he realised what he was seeing. If the soil’s from his boots, it’s bound to have bits of garden in it.’

Fran shook her head. ‘I tested the boots yesterday, to rule out contamination. This is soil we took from beside the bed, right next to where the boys were lying. It’s a match for the soil on his boots, but it was taken from the floor by the bed.’

She looked at Marnie. ‘Four rungs down, is that what he said?’

‘Why would he lie? He’s as desperate as we are to solve this case.’ Marnie considered the point. ‘Are you sure the soil isn’t older? From the killer’s boots, or mine? I walked across that garden, stood by that bed . . .’

‘You were suited. You took care. Whoever left this didn’t. Not the killer, or not from back then, because this kind of compost didn’t come from an abandoned field. The boys died long before the houses went up, and long before the Doyles got to work on that garden.’

Fran pressed her lips together, frowning. ‘At some point in the last year, after the Doyles put nutrients into the soil, someone walked across that composted garden and down
into the bunker. If Terry’s telling the truth, then you need to look at who else had access to the garden. Because whoever it was went all the way into the bunker. They stood by the side of that bed, right next to the bodies. They must’ve known what they were seeing. Why keep quiet? Who keeps quiet about a thing like that?’

‘Somebody with something to hide . . .’

‘Or someone scared out their wits,’ Fran said. ‘Or both. Scared
and
hiding. Who do you know who fits that description?’

‘Tell me what you know about Clancy Brand.’ Marnie put her phone on the café table, so that there was no chance of missing a call from Noah, or Fran. ‘And edit the bullshit.’

Adam raised his brows at her.

‘Edit it,’ she repeated, ‘because I don’t have a lot of time.’

Adam’s skin was scuffed by the hot bulb over their heads. Tension just beneath the surface of his face warned her that she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

‘Clancy was excluded from his last three schools. Two of them suspended him, one tried to have him expelled, but there were loopholes in the paperwork so he was moved on, made into someone else’s problem.’ Adam took out his disposable lighter, turning it between long fingers. No nicotine stains on the fingers, and he didn’t stink of smoke this morning. ‘Three schools in three years . . . I’m betting this new one doesn’t stick any more than the others did. Once they find out what they’re dealing with.’

‘What are they dealing with?’

‘He touches kids.’ Adam snapped a flame from the lighter. ‘Little kids, not his own age.’

He let the flame go out.

‘And Social Services know this?’ Marnie said. ‘Come off it. They would never have allowed the Doyles to foster him, for starters.’

‘This conversation isn’t going to work,’ Adam said, ‘if you’re going to pretend that Social Services know their elbow from their arse.’

‘But
you
do know. You have – what? Privileged information? Evidence, even?’

Adam’s smile was empty, and savage. ‘Would I be sitting here, dying for a cigarette, if I had evidence?’

Some people died for their countries. Adam Fletcher died for cigarettes.

‘I’m talking to the police, though. That’s a start.’

Or an act of desperation. If he had a story, he wasn’t going to hand it to the police, not before he’d sold it to the press. ‘How long have you had this . . . information?’

‘Not long.’

‘Days, or weeks? How long?’

Adam shook a cigarette from the pack, putting it between his lips. The woman at the counter shot him a look, so he showed his teeth to her, holding up his hands in a gesture that was one part placation and six parts
piss off
. ‘A couple of months. Not much more than that.’

‘Two months. In other words, you’ve got nothing.’

‘I’ve got—’

‘Nothing. You wouldn’t have left the Doyles alone if you had anything worth convincing them with. They’ve got a little girl about the age Tia was when I found out you had a family.’

Marnie edited the emotion from her voice. ‘You’d have warned them if you had anything. So what’s this really about?’

Adam leaned forward until the light found his eyes. ‘He touches kids,’ he repeated. ‘Little kids, and yeah, I know about Carmen and Tommy. I know Clancy doesn’t give a
toss whether it’s girls or boys he touches, and he gets angry if he’s threatened. That’s when he’s dangerous.’ All the time he talked, he kept the unlit cigarette in his mouth.

He’d wanted to sit outside, but Marnie had made the rules, taking the pair of them to seats at the back of the café. ‘How do you know all this?’ she demanded. ‘He keys your car and you start digging, to this extent? I don’t think so.’

‘I told you, he gave me the creeps. So I asked around and it turns out I’m not the only one. Lots of people get a bad vibe from this kid. Maybe no one can make it stick, but that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe
I
can make it stick. It’s a good story. My editor likes it.’

‘You’re writing a story about a teenage boy now? Make up your mind.’

‘Whatever sells.’ Adam shrugged.

‘You said there was a connection to the bunker. That you could help with the case. How does this help with that?’

‘Clancy knew about the bunker. I’d bet money on it. He’s a sneaky kid. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.’

‘This is your evidence?
It’s
too much of a coincidence otherwise
?’

‘Don’t tell me you started believing in coincidences.’ Adam slung his shoulders back in the chair, eyeing her in that old way, proprietorial. ‘You used to know better.’

Like finding a child’s seat in the back of your car, seeing the wedding ring you forgot to take off, too late to do me any good – coincidences like that?

‘Give me what you’ve got on Clancy Brand, or I’ll arrest you for withholding evidence.’

‘I’m giving it to you right now. He touches little kids. He knew about that bunker. What more do you want?’ He challenged her with a stare.

‘How do you know he knew about the bunker? Just because you get a bad vibe—’

‘And you don’t? Come on, Max. Drop the bureaucratic bullshit for a second, and tell me your skin didn’t crawl the first time you met the kid.’

‘It’s crawling right now. Doesn’t mean I can make an arrest that will help my case.’ She drank some coffee. ‘On the other hand, it would get you off my back.’

Adam leaned back in his chair, looking lazy, looking lethal. His eyes gleamed, as if she’d flashed her bra. He was enjoying this, too much.

‘How do you know,’ she repeated, ‘that he knew about the bunker?’

‘I asked the right questions. Something you and your token DS can’t manage.’

‘Excuse me? My what?’

‘Noah Jake.’ Adam traced a pattern on the table with his thumb. ‘Black, gay and good-looking . . . Nice box-ticking, Detective Inspector.’

Marnie looked at him coldly. ‘Your story stinks. I’m not surprised the papers won’t touch it, although your bigotry’s a good match for a couple of them.’

‘Hey.’ Adam held up his hands again. ‘I’ve got nothing against your boy. Other than the crap questions he’s been asking. If he was half as good as you need him to be, he’d have asked Julie Lowry how often she saw Clancy out there after dark, digging round the bunker.’

Marnie waited a beat before she said, ‘You’ve been talking with Julie Lowry?’

‘I’ve been talking with everyone. Nige and Caro Fincher . . . Did you see that patio furniture? They’ve got way too much disposable income.’

There were two empty glasses on the table. Marnie wanted to bury at least one of them in Adam’s self-satisfied smile. ‘And they all said that Clancy knew about the bunker?’

‘Just Julie, but she’s the one next door. The others said
Clancy was a dodgy kid, they wouldn’t want him living under their roofs.’

‘Funny, because I can just imagine a couple of warring egotists wanting to give house space to someone else’s moody teenager . . . This is crap, and you know it.’

Her phone buzzed. Text from Ed:
Missed you this morning, hope your day’s okay.

He’d been sleeping when she left. She’d taken care not to wake him.

When she closed the text, her phone reminded her of an old message she’d failed to delete: Paul Bruton at Sommerville, again. Another visitor request from Stephen Keele. How many was that now? Four in the last month. Stephen had something on his mind. Or he was playing with her, the way Adam was playing. Snakes and Ladders. Unhappy Families. She still had Clancy’s piece of paper in her pocket, the keyhole garden he’d drawn, like the ones in Stephen’s notebook. Circles, getting smaller.

A waitress brought their breakfasts: bacon sandwiches and orange juice, more coffee; Adam had ordered before Marnie got here.

He fed ketchup into his bacon sandwich and flattened it back together before taking a big bite. ‘The Finchers play golf in matching gear; you’ve got to see that to believe it . . . You know this part of London’s only got one private golf club?’

Marnie looked disbelieving.

‘Yeah,’ Adam agreed. ‘It’s a fucking scandal. I’m writing to my MP about it.’ He started on the second half of his sandwich.

Marnie should have given him a speech about speaking to witnesses during an investigation, but she didn’t, waiting to see what else he was going to say.

Julie Lowry had flirted with Noah while she was telling
him about Clancy’s peeping Tom routine. It was hard to believe she’d held back anything more damning, like Clancy digging around the bunker late at night. More likely she’d lied to Adam. As for the Finchers, it was funny how so many people had their eye on Clancy but no one had actually seen anything. Adam had nothing, no real evidence. But Fran did. Soil samples that said someone had walked across the Doyles’ garden and down into the bunker. All the way down, standing next to the makeshift bed where their boys died. Who, and why?

‘We ever do this before?’ Adam licked ketchup from his knuckles.

‘Breakfast? No.’

‘We had a Chinese.’ Adam drank juice, his throat moving smoothly as he swallowed. ‘Remember that?’

Marnie remembered. Chopsticks between Adam’s long fingers, and then, later . . .

‘No,’ she said. There was satisfaction in lying to Adam, although admittedly not much.

He finished the sandwich, wiped his mouth on a napkin. ‘You’re not eating.’

He’d shouldered his way into her dreams last night, while Ed was curled at her back, keeping her warm. ‘I’m not hungry.’ She pushed her plate towards him. ‘Knock yourself out.’

‘And you’re not asking questions.’

‘About London’s lack of private golf clubs? No, I’m not.’

‘About Clancy Brand.’ He eyed her. ‘You’ve got something, haven’t you? Something that’s telling you I might be right about him.’ He balled the napkin and tossed it aside.

‘One of us has something,’ she agreed. ‘But it’s not you.’

‘You should talk to Nigel Fincher. I bet he’s noticed something about that kid. He’s a watcher. I know the type.’

‘You don’t know anything.’

‘Trust me. The matching golf gear’s a dead giveaway. He’s a control freak.’

‘Well, you know
that
type,’ Marnie conceded.

Adam reached for his second cup of coffee. He dropped his eyes to the table, lifting them to say, ‘I was sorry about your mum and dad.’

The apology caught her off guard. She felt her eyes expand with shock.

‘Should’ve said something sooner, sent my condolences as soon as I heard. It wouldn’t have killed me to pick up the phone or send a card.’

She was out of breath, as if he’d punched her. ‘And break the habit of a lifetime?’

‘Yeah . . .’ He turned the coffee cup in its saucer. ‘I owe you another apology, too.’

‘Careful,’ Marnie warned thinly. But she was waiting.

‘More than one, but who’s counting, right?’ Adam tried a smile. ‘Mostly, though, I’m sorry about your parents.’

The apologies were collateral, she knew that. His way of pulling her back to him. He’d guessed how it was, her better judgement warring with nostalgia. A strange sort of nostalgia, for a place where she’d never been happy. Her parents’ house.

Adam moved his coffee cup to one side. ‘I know how it must’ve felt, losing them . . .’

‘You don’t know anything.’

He adjusted the smile, making it sad. A glass was no good; it wouldn’t even scratch the surface of Adam’s disguise. What Marnie needed was a chair, or a window.

‘You don’t know anything,’ she repeated. ‘Not about then, not about now.’

She pushed back her chair and stood, putting the heel of her hand on the table and looking at him with her face open, hoping he saw every line and shadow on her skin. ‘If you fuck up my investigation, I’ll bury you. Understood?’

Adam studied her. If he was seeing lines and shadows, he gave no clue to it. Maybe, like her, he couldn’t see past
the memories. Not just of him and her – of
then
and them. The last time they stood this close, her parents were alive and the only monsters in her life were the ones she chose to chase. She said, ‘I won’t warn you again.’

‘If I have something that’ll help, what then?’

‘Give it up.’

‘To you,’ he said. ‘I’m not giving it to anyone else.’

‘I don’t have time to stroke your ego,’ Marnie told him. ‘But I can make time to have you arrested for withholding evidence, if that’s what I think you’re doing.’

 • • • 

In the street, she took out her phone and speed-dialled the station.

Debbie Tanner picked up. ‘I’m leaving messages, for the photographers. No one’s around yet. It’s still early.’

‘Keep trying. Where’s Noah?’

‘Waiting for Mr Walton to come home. He was out first thing. Shopping, the neighbours think. Noah’s on the estate, waiting for him to get back.’

‘Right. I’ll call him.’

Marnie put the phone in her pocket, walking in the direction of her car. Her hands were making fists, twitchy with the need to hit Adam, unsatisfied.

What game was he playing? She wished she knew, but she’d never known with Adam. Not even when they were so close her skin carried his scent, like an animal’s, repelling all other advances. She’d been glad of it back then, the closeness as well as the repulsion, a sure way of escaping stares in the street when she first started attracting attention, snagging glances from strangers. She’d resented the loss of her anonymity, been grateful for the disguise Adam lent her, his scent worn like armour on her skin.

She stopped by the side of the pavement memorial, reduced to trodden petals and patches of wax, everything else in an
evidence tray at Fran’s lab. She couldn’t get the image of the peaches out of her head. Who did that? Crouched, in woollen gloves, and slid the tin of peaches between the candles and the cards? With what purpose, other than to make her look at her team with suspicion, turning in circles, tying herself in knots . . .

She dug out her phone and called Ed’s number, expecting his voicemail.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘I was hoping you’d call. Meetings were cancelled; I’ve got the afternoon off, if you fancy lunch . . .’

‘Sorry. I need to go to Bristol. I was calling to say I might be late.’

‘Stephen?’ Ed always knew.

‘Yes. Nothing like last time, just . . . questions I need to ask him.’

‘You sound pissed off.’

‘I
am
pissed off.’ She sucked a breath. ‘If I’m lucky with the traffic, I might be back for supper.’

‘Or I could keep you company. We could stop somewhere on the way back to eat.’

Relief made her shut her eyes for a second. ‘Company sounds good. I need to make some calls, then I’ll swing by and pick you up. Thanks, Ed.’