No Other Darkness (26 page)

You’re crying. It’s pathetic.

You did what you had to do. You didn’t want to, but there wasn’t any other way. You’d tried everything else. Patience. Questions.

There comes a point, doesn’t there, when you have to stop waiting and hoping and biting your tongue. You did enough of that with her, and look where it got you.

Everyone said you should have been able to stop it.

You were in charge, you should have been in charge.

You were trying too hard to be gentle, considerate.

That’s not what a man is. You needed to take charge.

Man up
.

You did what you had to do.

You shouldn’t be snivelling about it.

You should be glad.

It’s done.

‘Your mum thinks you need to see a doctor.’ Marnie sat across from Connie’s daughter. ‘Is that something you want?’ She waited for a response. ‘Alison?’

‘It’s Esther.’ The same cracked, thirsty voice as before, but now it came from deep inside the woman’s chest. ‘My name’s Esther. Let’s bypass the bullshit, shall we?’

‘Do you want to see a doctor?’

‘No.’ She stared at the wall as if she believed she could break it with her stare. Or burn it. Burn a hole right through the station wall, into the world outside.

Marnie had told one of the desk officers to take Connie to get some fresh air. She’d wanted time alone with Esther Reid.

‘We found Carmen and Thomas. Terry’s children. They’re safe and well.’

Esther turned her head at that, dragging her stare to Marnie’s face. ‘You’re lying.’

‘Why would I lie?’

‘To make me feel better.’ Her lips thinned. ‘Or to make me feel worse.’

‘It’s impressive,’ Marnie told her.

‘What?’

‘Your self-loathing. Your determination to be a monster. It’s impressive, but it’s getting on my nerves. You could be helping, if you weren’t so busy chasing after punishment.’

‘How could I help? You said you found them.’

‘I said we found Carmen and Thomas. Matt’s missing, and so is Clancy, who was living with the family. He’s fourteen years old. We don’t think he and Matt got on very well. We think it was Clancy who took the children and hid them, because he was scared of Matt. He saw a side of Matt that no one else saw. And it scared him.’

She stopped, holding Esther still with her stare. The woman’s eyes wouldn’t keep quiet. It was like trying to hold a boulder in one hand.

‘You can understand that, can’t you? How Matt might be frightening to a teenage boy. You were right when you said they looked alike. Matt said Clancy reminded him of himself at that age.
Irresponsible
. That’s the word he used. He was trying to teach Clancy to be less irresponsible. He’d made it a mission.’

Esther pressed her lips together, not speaking.

‘Every window in the house was nailed shut. Every one. Matt nailed the windows shut and he ripped out the locks in all the doors inside the house. Even the bathroom door. There was nowhere in the house where anyone could be private, or alone.

‘You think you belong in a prison. Matt was living in one. He
built
one, to keep his new family safe. To make sure nothing terrible could happen to them. But it had already happened, hadn’t it? They weren’t living with Terry Doyle, they were living with Matt Reid.

‘I think Clancy saw Matt. I think he’s Matt’s mirror, the way you say Matt is yours. And Matt saw himself in Clancy. It scared the pair of them, to death.’

Esther said, ‘No.’

‘No?’ Marnie echoed. ‘No what? No, he didn’t build a prison? He didn’t rip out the locks and nail the windows shut? No, he wasn’t Matt when he was trying to be Terry? He wasn’t scared to death? No what?’

‘No, I can’t help you.’ Her voice was buried behind her teeth. ‘I can’t.’

‘You can tell me what you think Terry would do to a teenage boy who took his children and hid them.’

‘He’d kill him. I think . . . he’d kill him.’ She clenched her face. ‘It’s what he should’ve done to me.’

‘Murder’s not that easy,’ Marnie said. ‘Not for most people. You, for instance. You’d never have been capable of it if you hadn’t fallen sick.’

‘I . . .’

Marnie leaned closer to the woman. ‘You would
never
,’ she repeated, ‘have been capable of it if you hadn’t been sick.’

Esther shut her eyes. Her shoulders shook. ‘I want to tell him,’ she said. ‘Matt. I want to tell him about the boys. How it happened, what their last days were like . . .’

‘You said you didn’t remember.’

‘I don’t remember
enough
. But I can give him something. Not the nightmares. The stories I read to them, the games we played in the dark, how they laughed when I tickled them . . . the way they looked sleeping. Their
courage
. I want to give him that.’

‘You can,’ Marnie said. ‘You just have to help me find him.’

‘This boy . . .’

‘Clancy.’

‘Clancy. He took the children. Carmen, and Thomas.’

‘That’s what we think.’

‘He didn’t hurt them.’ Esther’s eyes searched Marnie’s face. ‘They were safe and well when you found them.’

‘Yes, but we’ve not had the chance to tell Matt. He ran before we could let him know.’

‘Did he have any reason to think the boy would hurt them? To see him as a threat?’

‘Everyone we’ve spoken with says Clancy was careful with the children. He took care of them, and they loved him . . .’

Not everyone, Marnie realised as she said it.

Adam Fletcher had insisted that Clancy was a risk to the children.

She’d asked him why he hadn’t warned Beth and Terry if he was so sure their family was at risk. Had he done that?

Had Adam warned Terry about Clancy?

Because Marnie had guilt-tripped him into it?

Esther was saying, ‘If he had no reason to see the boy as a threat—’

‘Hold that thought.’ Marnie stood up. ‘I’ll be right back.’ She paused, looking down at the woman’s drawn face. ‘With a doctor.’

‘Who are you trying to save?’ Esther asked. ‘Matt, or Clancy?’

‘Both,’ Marnie said. ‘I want to save them both.’

 • • • 

Adam was still kicking his heels in the other interview room. Marnie didn’t bother switching on the tape. ‘Did you warn Terry about Clancy?’

‘Did I . . .?’

‘You think he’s a predator, a danger to small children. Did you warn Terry about him?’

‘It’s what you said I should do. If I thought those kids were at risk.’

‘So you did.’ Fear put its fist into her stomach. ‘You told a grieving father that his new family was at risk from a teenage boy.’

‘Grieving? What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘Terry Doyle. Those were
his
boys, in the bunker. Buried by his first wife when she lost her mind to post-partum psychosis.’

Adam moved his jaw as if she’d hit him. ‘No.’

‘Yes. You told a grieving dad that his children were at risk from Clancy Brand. You put a kid in the firing line because it made a good story. Predatory teenage boy with security-obsessed parents . . . God forbid the truth should be allowed to get in the way of your
scoop
.’

The skin under Adam’s eyes thinned to nothing. ‘Have you found them? Carmen and Thomas. Jesus. Are they . . .?’

‘Alive. Thanks to Clancy. He took them out of range of Terry’s fear and pain and whatever else he’s going through. Your
evil little shit
saved those children. And now he’s missing, and so’s Terry. Who thanks to you thinks that boy was a threat to his children.’

‘You haven’t met his parents,’ Adam said, ‘or talked with anyone at the schools he got kicked out of. He was a psycho, everyone said so. Sooner or later he’d have snapped—’

‘You’re out of your mind . . .’ Marnie drew a short breath. ‘I get it. I do. She died. Tia died and everything else is just a long shadow thrown from that loss.
Your
loss. But you can’t live like that. Not usefully. Not in any way she would have wanted. You have to—’

‘What?’ Adam demanded. ‘Let it go? Move on? Let’s hear it, Detective Inspector, your platitude of the day. What is it I
have
to do?’

‘Stop,’ Marnie said. ‘You have to stop. Stop being scared of the shadows. Stop chasing, stop digging. He’s a fourteen-year-old boy, for pity’s sake.’

‘Yeah?’ Adam shoved his stare at her so hard the floor tilted under her feet, the last sixteen years stripped away, all of her past here and now, in his eyes.

‘So was Stephen Keele.’

Noah wasn’t a fan of caves, or any enclosed space for that matter. The fact that this cave was man-made and had been used to teach young offenders about controlled environments didn’t make it any less of a dank, dark hole in the ground.

What kind of man looked at an abandoned hole in the ground and saw money?

Ian Merrick.

Merrick raided London’s catacombs, exploiting the city’s secret subterranea for profit. Concrete tomb raider in a hard hat.

Unconscious from a suspected skull fracture.

Paramedics were doing what they could to stabilise him, but by their best estimate, Merrick had been unconscious for some hours. In the cave, in the cold. It didn’t look hopeful.

‘Attempted murder?’ Ron said. ‘Or GBH?’ He was looking at Merrick’s wrists, at the way they’d been tied and with what. ‘Someone put him into the recovery position . . .’

Merrick was wearing steel-toe-capped boots, and a business suit.

‘He knew he was coming on-site,’ Ron said. ‘When he
set off here, I mean. Why wear the boots otherwise? He wasn’t snatched, in other words.’

Noah looked around the cave. It had a hard clay floor and cemented walls, one of which had been made into a climbing wall, painted orange and plugged with hand grips. A vertical ladder, sunk into a concrete base, climbed to the ground level above.

The paramedics were going to have to try and get Merrick up the ladder, once he was stabilised. Far easier if he was in a body bag, but they had to hope it wouldn’t come to that.

‘If Terry did this,’ Ron stepped out of the way of a paramedic, ‘he’s dangerous. That doesn’t look good for Belloc . . .’

‘I’m going back up,’ Noah said. ‘No phone signal down here.’

Ron nodded. ‘What’re you going to tell the boss?’

‘That someone attacked Ian Merrick,’ Noah said, ‘and he might not make it.’

 • • • 

In the dead space above the cave, he dialled Marnie’s number.

Funny how these sites all felt the same. Restless, wrapped in litter, as if they’d sucked in all the debris from the surrounding area . . .

‘Noah.’ Marnie’s voice was crisp. He could hear traffic in the background and guessed she was in the car, on her way to the site. ‘What’ve you got?’

‘Ian Merrick with a suspected skull fracture. Someone tied him up and hit him and left him in the cave. He’s alive, just. Paramedics are trying to keep him that way.’

After a beat, Marnie said, ‘Tied him up how, and hit him with what?’

‘No weapon on the scene. Whoever did it took whatever they used away with them. Paramedics think it was something
blunt, maybe a rubber torch. One blow, a lot of force behind it. Not a frenzy, in other words. But his wrists were tied. With a wire coat hanger.’

‘A wire coat hanger,’ Marnie repeated. ‘Do you think he was meant to die down there?’

‘Hard to say. He was in the recovery position and his wrists were tied in front of him. If he’d come round, he could have climbed back up. It wouldn’t have been easy, though.’

‘I’m assuming no sign of Clancy, or Terry.’

‘Or Ed. Sorry, no. Nothing that Ron or I could see. We’ve put a call through to Forensics.’

‘Stay where you are. I’m taking Esther to St Thomas’s. Lyn Birch has contacted the psychiatric team there, in case she needs a prescription. I’ll meet you at the cave site.’

‘She’s Esther again now, not Alison?’

Marnie said, ‘She was always Esther.’

 • • • 

‘A coat hanger,’ Esther said. She was sitting next to her mother in the back of Marnie’s car.

The traffic lights were red, again. At this rate it would take them an hour just to cross the river. Marnie turned in her seat to look at the two women. ‘I’m going to drop you at St Thomas’s, where a female police officer is waiting. She’ll stay with you while I’m gone.’

‘Someone’s been tied up and hit,’ Connie said. ‘Was it Ian Merrick, or is that wishful thinking on my part?’

‘You said a wire coat hanger,’ Esther repeated. ‘What was it used for?’

The traffic lights changed to green.

Marnie turned on to Westminster Bridge Road. She didn’t answer either woman’s question, watching them in the rear-view mirror from the corner of her eye.

‘It was Matt,’ Esther said. ‘If he used a coat hanger . . .
it was Matt. And he’s dangerous.’ She stared out of the window at the passing traffic. ‘Very dangerous.’

Connie clicked her tongue, holding her daughter’s hand in her lap.

Esther said, ‘I hope he’s dead.’

‘Matthew?’ Connie sounded shocked.

‘Ian,’ Esther said. ‘I hope he’s dead. I hope Matt killed him.’

‘He’d go to prison,’ her mother said.

Esther watched the traffic through the window. ‘He’s there already.’

Marnie’s phone buzzed. She used hands-free to take the call. ‘DI Rome.’

‘Marnie . . .’ Ed.

Ed.

‘Where are you?’ Marnie slowed the car, watching the traffic.

‘Merrick . . .’

‘We found Merrick. Where’re you?’

‘Isle . . . of Dogs.’ Ed’s voice was fractured, uneven. ‘Sorry . . .’

‘Isle of Dogs. Merrick’s site?’

‘Y-yes . . .’

‘You’re hurt. How bad is it?’

‘Just . . . N-no. I’m okay. My fault. Is Merrick . . .?’

‘He’s alive. Carmen and Tommy are safe. Is Terry with you?’

‘He’s . . . somewhere. Here. Yes . . .’

‘Are you safe?’ A frenzy of static. ‘
Ed
. Are you safe?’

‘I’m . . .’ Struggling to breathe, in shock, hurt. ‘Okay . . . I’m okay.’

‘Leave your phone on. We’re coming.’

Ed’s hair was grey with dust, his clothes filthy and full of creases, but he was in one piece. Thin-faced, hollow-eyed, but alive.

Paramedics had found him soon after Marnie’s emergency call. By the time she reached the Isle of Dogs, Ed was sitting in the back of an ambulance with a foil shock blanket around his shoulders, answering questions from a uniformed officer. From the way he was holding himself, his whole body hurt. ‘I’ll take it from here,’ Marnie told the PC.

She sat facing Ed until he held out a hand for hers. ‘Sorry . . .’

‘Don’t.’ She moved to his side. ‘Where’s Terry?’

‘He was here.’ Ed turned his head to look out of the back of the ambulance. His pupils were shot wide, but responsive. He was badly shaken up, a bit bruised and dehydrated, but the paramedics had given him the all-clear.

Wind whipped at the site, with enough force to rock the ambulance in the shallow trench where it was parked. ‘Clancy,’ Marnie asked. ‘Is he with Terry?’

Ed nodded. ‘Yes, I think so. He . . . ran.’

‘You didn’t see him?’

‘I was in the boot of the car.’ He tried for a smile. ‘My choice, more or less. He’s . . . panicking.’

‘Terry.’

‘He’s . . . not Terry, is he?’ Ed’s hand was cold under hers. ‘He wouldn’t tell me . . . enough of it. But those boys . . . were his?’

‘Yes.’

‘Damn . . .’ Ed looked at her. ‘You need to find them. He’s . . . You need to find them.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He gave me a choice, to stay at the house with Beth. I said I wanted to go with him, to try and find the children. That’s what I thought he was going to do. He wasn’t thinking straight and I thought if I stayed with him, I could help. Stupid of me. Next thing I know, I’m in the boot of the car. He took my phone. You must’ve been . . . I’m sorry.’

She smoothed a thumb at his cold fingers. ‘You said Clancy ran?’

‘When we got here . . . He was in the back of the car. He’d been with Merrick, I think.’

‘Clancy was with Merrick?’

‘I think so. I couldn’t follow much of it.’ Ed rolled his shoulders. ‘Boot of the car’s a rotten way to travel. He had his gardening kit in there. I’ve got spade-shaped bruises . . .’

‘How did you get out?’

‘Through the back seat. He’d left my phone in the glove compartment.’ Ed managed a proper smile. ‘You said Carmen and Tommy are okay?’

‘Safe and well. Thanks to Clancy, we think. Any idea which way he ran?’

‘Into the site,’ Ed said. ‘I could hear gravel . . . He ran into the site, and Terry went after him. You need to find them. Terry was . . . out of his mind. Clancy wouldn’t tell
him where he took the children and Terry was shouting about Merrick . . .’

‘What was he shouting?’

‘That Merrick was dead, and they were next.’

‘They?’

Ed rubbed brick dust from his eyes. ‘He meant the two of them, him and Clancy.’