No Other Darkness (4 page)

The ghosts are out in force today. I can smell them. Sweet and biscuity, like just-washed hair before bedtime. I want to tuck them in and lie down beside them, breathe their sweet smell, bury my nose in their little necks and whisper through the dark.

I daren’t, of course.

For one thing, Esther would hear.

The ghosts are scared of Esther. They won’t come close when she’s here, no matter how wide I spread my arms. It’s as if she’s still killing them, over and over.

She can’t stop. I don’t think she ever will.

It’s who she is.

Everyone is scared of Esther, even grown men, policemen.

She’s a special kind of monster.

My kind.

OCU Commander Tim Welland looked like an avalanche waiting to land, his big face fisted in a frown. ‘Where’re we up to, detectives? And don’t sugar-coat it.’

‘Two small children,’ Marnie said, ‘dead and down there at least four years. Fran’s doing the post-mortems as a priority.’

Welland looked the length of Blackthorn Road. ‘Who found them?’

‘Terry Doyle. It’s his garden, but four years ago there weren’t any gardens, only fields. We’re looking for someone who knew this place before the houses went up.’

‘Missing Persons haven’t turned up any names, is that right?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Four years ago . . .’ Welland pulled at his lower lip.

‘At least four years.’ Marnie glanced at her watch. ‘Fran should have some answers for us soon. Nothing definitive perhaps, but she’ll have something. And Missing Persons; two small children can’t have vanished without someone reporting it. Not even in London.’

‘Right . . .’ Welland leaned on the word until it buckled.
He sniffed. ‘I smell scumbag . . . The media’s en route. You’ll want to field that, detective.’

‘I’ve got it.’ Marnie nodded. ‘Press briefing at the station in a couple of hours.’

‘Have you spoken with the Finchers?’ Welland said next.

‘Not yet.’

‘And that neighbour of theirs, what was his name? Dougal . . .?’

‘Douglas. Doug Cole.’

‘Right, gutless Douglas . . .’ Welland curled his lip. ‘Have you spoken with him?’

‘Not yet. I don’t want to waste time. We’re looking for someone who was here four or five years ago. Cole and the Finchers have lived here less than two years.’

‘You’re not looking for someone who was
living
here, just someone who knew about the bunker down there.’

‘And you think Mr Cole might have known that?’

Welland tipped his face to the sky. ‘What do I think about Mr Cole?’ He brought his stare down to Marnie’s face. ‘I think gutless Douglas is exactly the kind of freak who’d buy a house close to where he buried bodies years ago.’

Marnie was silent for a second. Then she said, ‘Okay. I’ll look into that.’ She made it sound like a dead end. ‘Maybe someone will remember the bunker being built.’

Welland sniffed again. ‘And find the bastard who put houses over it. We’ll hit him with a planning violation, if nothing else.’

Noah said, ‘There’s a housing estate a couple of streets away, built in the sixties by the look of it. Someone there should remember any building that went on.’

Marnie nodded. ‘We could use some extra hands,’ she told Welland.

‘Let’s hear how loud the press yelp first. That usually gets us attention in high places.’

‘You don’t want to try for a pre-emptive strike?’

‘On this budget? The only thing I’m pre-empting is an overdraft. You’ve got a good team.’ He nodded at Noah. ‘Stretch it.’

Movement at the upstairs window of number 14 made him frown in that direction.

‘Who’s the ghoul?’

Same curtain as before. It fell back into place when they looked up.

‘Clancy Brand,’ Marnie said. ‘The Doyles are fostering him.’

‘How old?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘Terrific.’ Welland wiped his nose with his fingers. ‘Try and keep his teenage hormones clear of our crime scene.’

 • • • 

After Welland had left in his car, Marnie and Noah walked up to number 8.

Douglas Cole’s house was a mid-terrace with the same unsmiling face as number 14. Marnie knocked on the door and they waited, but there was no answer. No car parked in the resident’s space. Empty bins outside; Noah checked.

‘Bin day,’ Marnie said. ‘I asked the Doyles. He’s probably on his way home. Come on.’

They headed back to her car.

‘Did you speak with Clancy?’ she asked Noah. ‘When you saw him at the house?’

‘Not really. I asked if he was okay and he grunted at me. I’d say he’s a typical teenage boy. Not that I’m an expert on typical teenage boys . . .’

‘You’ve got a younger brother,’ she remembered.

‘Sol.’ Noah nodded. ‘He’s more typical than me, I guess.’

‘Typical is overrated . . . So you asked Clancy if he was okay.’

‘I tried to. He wasn’t exactly communicative. I’d say he’s not a fan of the police.’

‘You think he’s been in trouble with us?’

‘Possibly. Could just be an authority thing. You said he was off school.’

‘Beth says he’s sick, but I wonder if he’s been excluded.’

Marnie put the wellingtons into a forensic bag in the boot of the car. ‘There’s something going on with him, something they didn’t want to talk to me about.’

‘I’ll check,’ Noah said again. ‘Clancy Brand, right?’

‘Yes.’ Marnie worked a crick from her neck with the heel of her hand, smelling the bunker in her clothes. ‘I met Carmen, their three-year-old. She looks like hard work. Tommy’s a toddler, and Beth’s pregnant again. We’ll need to be careful.’

They got into the car.

‘Four kids . . . That’s not a family,’ Noah objected as he fastened his seat belt, ‘it’s a recruitment drive.’

‘You don’t believe in too much love?’

‘Not without a lot of alcohol involved. But what do I know?’

‘The Doyles must be doing something right for the system to let them foster.’ Marnie pulled out into the traffic headed back into town. ‘I like them, him especially. He was kind about the kids, didn’t want to leave them alone down there . . .’

‘Someone did,’ Noah said. ‘Otherwise how did it happen?’ He looked grim.

Marnie knew he was trying hard to treat this case like any other. Knew, too, how impossible that was. Dead children changed everything.

‘Do you think they’re brothers?’ Noah asked.

‘Perhaps . . .’

Hard to detect any physical resemblance between the
children. Nearly impossible to detect any resemblance to anyone who’d once lived or laughed, or kicked a ball around a yard, or called for his mum when he fell and scraped a knee, fought with his brother at bedtime. Only the way they’d looked when they died, so tightly curled together, hinted at how they might have been, alive. The older child protecting the smaller one, or simply sharing body heat, trying to keep warm.

‘Ron wants to look at child sex offenders in the area,’ Noah said. ‘I told him to go ahead.’

‘Make sure he understands we’re talking at least four years ago.’

Noah nodded. After a moment, he said, ‘Who
is
gutless Douglas?’

‘He’s an accountant, a friend of the Finchers.’

‘Commander Welland likes him for this . . .’

‘We’d all like a short cut to finding whoever put those children down there.’ Marnie didn’t want to raise Noah’s hopes. ‘Mr Cole rubbed Welland up the wrong way, it’s true. But you and I know how easily that’s done.’

‘You don’t fancy Cole for this?’

‘Not remotely.’ She paused. ‘But I’ve been known to get things wrong. I’ve got his number. We’ll talk with him as soon as he’s home. And we’ll talk with the Finchers.’

‘The family with the missing child . . . But that ended happily, you said.’

‘People have long memories, and it was messy for a while. I’ll brief the team about it. We should lean on Missing Persons. The sooner we have names, the better.’

‘Ron’s on it,’ Noah said.

Someone was missing the dead children, whether or not they were siblings. Perhaps Marnie should hope for brothers; only one set of parents to be broken by the news. Assuming they didn’t already know what had happened. Assuming they
weren’t responsible for making, or letting, it happen. Sooner or later, they were going to have to entertain that possibility.

‘They looked like brothers,’ Noah said. ‘The way they were sleeping . . .’ Sadness thinned his face. ‘I think they were brothers.’

 • • • 

As they reached the station, Marnie’s phone played Fran Lennox’s tune.

She swung into the car park and picked up. ‘Fran, you’ve got something for me?’ Her eyes went to Noah. ‘For us?’

‘You’re not going to like it,’ Fran said, ‘but yes. Not much, not yet, but something.’

‘I’ll be right over.’ Marnie ended the call.

‘News?’ Noah asked. An edge in his voice; on his guard against this case.

Marnie wondered in what way Sol, Noah’s brother, had been a more typical teenage boy. Less sensitive, perhaps, or more content with easy answers to life’s worst questions.

‘Stay here. Organise the house-to-house at the flats, and keep an eye on the team.’ She could sense their frustration already, like too much static. ‘I’ll get back as soon as I can.’

‘What about the press briefing?’ Noah asked.

‘Stall it. Tell them we’re doing real police work and remind them it takes time. If we’re lucky, some of them might even appreciate that.’

Fran said, ‘They’re boys. Neither is older than eight. It’s not infallible, but going by the length of the molars and the chin span, I’d say we have two boys, one about eight years old, the other between four and five. I’ll know more when I’ve done the proper tests.’

Marnie pulled out a chair and sat the other side of Fran’s desk. The office was tiny, barely enough room for one person, let alone two. ‘What else?’

Fran had a plate of toast, and two big mugs of tea. Marnie had never seen her eat proper food. It explained how ravenous she always looked, a starving pixie with a spiky blond crop. ‘I think they’re brothers. I can’t confirm it without tests, but you saw the shape of their skulls. Too similar for it to be a coincidence. And the short shin bones, narrow shoulders . . .’ She folded a slice of toast and took a bite. ‘Of course some of it’s due to malnutrition, and light deprivation. I’d say they were down there a good few weeks before they died.’

‘And how long afterwards, how long since they died?’

‘At least four years, maybe as many as five.’ Fran folded a second slice of toast, still eating the first. ‘No wounds on
their bodies, nothing obvious in the airways and no evidence they were constrained. No sign of a struggle, all bones intact.’

Marnie processed this in silence. ‘So . . . how did they die?’

‘I’ll know more after the autopsy, but if you’re pressing me for a gut feeling, I’d say they slowly starved.’

Marnie’s throat griped in protest. ‘There was food in the bunker. Tins . . .’

‘Maybe they’d got too weak to open them. Maybe it was the cold, exposure. Lack of light, rotten air . . . They were down there a good while. It’s possible they just . . . got sleepy, cuddled together for warmth and didn’t wake up.’ From the way she said it, it was clear Fran meant this to sound peaceful, a gentle death.

To Marnie, it sounded monstrous. ‘Who would do that, leave them down there to die?’

Fran dusted crumbs from her shirt. ‘That’s your territory. The only way it would be mine is if I find the bastard’s DNA on their bodies, or
in
their bodies, which I sincerely hope I don’t. Sorry not to be more optimistic.’

‘We’ve swabbed everything we could down there. One thing . . . do you think the bunker stayed shut the whole time after they died?’

‘I’d be guessing, but yes. If it was airtight, that would be different.’ Fran chewed for a minute, thinking it over. ‘They were pretty well preserved. If the manhole was disturbed, I’d have expected more evidence of decay. And bugs, rodents. You name it. Forensic fauna, as we’re encouraged to call it. There was nothing like that.’

Forensic fauna . . .
Rats, she meant. And flies, like the one that had gone down into the dark with Marnie. ‘So the chances are, whoever put them down there left them and didn’t come back? Not even to check whether they were dead.’

‘You wouldn’t need to check. Whoever left our boys down there knew exactly what they were doing.’

Our boys.

‘Except that they left food and water, blankets . . . Maybe they meant to come back.’

‘And what – got distracted?’ Fran shook her head. ‘We’re not talking about a dog in a hot car. These were little boys, buried underground without daylight, getting weak and sick.’

‘Maybe they
couldn’t
go back for them,’ Marnie said, ‘because something happened.’

‘You think the murderer’s dead?’

‘Not dead, necessarily. But he or she could’ve been arrested. If our boys weren’t the first children they’d taken . . .’

‘Or our boys
were
the first, but he or she went after more?’ Fran wiped her mouth on a piece of paper towel. ‘It’s possible. But if we’re talking about an arrest, why didn’t they tell the police about the bunker? These boys didn’t die quickly. There might’ve been time to save them, which might have meant leniency.’

‘True.’ Marnie had only half believed in the idea of an arrest or an accident. It was too neat, and much too convenient. ‘You say they didn’t die quickly . . . Is there any way of knowing how long they were
alone
down there? We’re assuming they had company to begin with.’

‘The food, and the bucket.’ Fran nodded. ‘Traces of bleach in the bucket suggests it was cleaned not long before it was last used. If they’d been down there a long time, unsupervised, I’d have expected more waste, and more mess. Two small children in an enclosed space . . . I’d say days, rather than weeks. Not long, in the scheme of things.’

She reached for her mug. ‘Of course, we don’t know for sure that they died alone. Whoever did it might’ve stayed down there to watch.’ She sipped at the tea. ‘Perhaps they only left when it was obvious the boys were dead, or dying.’

‘Stayed to watch?’ Marnie shivered. ‘Jesus. That’s cold.’

‘A whole new level of nasty, but I wouldn’t discount it, at least not quickly. Whoever did this, however it was done, it was wicked. You can’t always slice that into degrees.’

A photo cube on Fran’s desk was filled with Polaroids of her and her brothers. She came from a big family: seven brothers; Fran was the only girl. The boys doted on their little sister, the police pathologist.

‘You’re ruling out poison?’ Marnie said. ‘And smothering?’

‘Smothering, yes, unless the post-mortem throws up any surprises, but plenty of poisons are hard to trace after even a day or two. We’re talking four or five years, maybe a bit longer than that. I can’t rule it out. In any case,’ Fran picked crumbs from the desk, one by one, dropping each crumb into the plastic bin at her side, ‘our boys wouldn’t have needed a serious dose of anything dangerous. Too much Night Nurse would’ve done the trick, sent them to sleep with no chance of waking up, given how weak and malnourished they were.’

She cleaned the ends of her fingers with a tissue. ‘I can’t be sure, but I think . . . I
hope 
. . . it would have been a quiet death.’

A quiet death.

Marnie didn’t believe that. She could see and taste and
hear
the noise of their dying, alone and scared. Her ears rang with outrage at the noise. ‘So I’m looking for brothers who went missing up to five years ago. Any other clues to where they might’ve come from?’

‘Not yet. The clothes and the torch batteries were from Asda; hundreds of those all over the country. The books were UK editions, in English. The jigsaw was printed in China. The tins of food are odd . . .’ Fran pulled a notepad towards her. ‘Peaches and sweetcorn, but not a brand I’ve seen on sale in any supermarket where I shop. There might be something in that.’

Marnie made a note. ‘British?’

‘The boys? Not necessarily. We might need bone chemistry to narrow it down.’

‘I’ll look at the labels from the tins, see what we can turn up.’

Fran held a mug of tea between her hands. Long hands, their bony fingers delicately strung. Gentle hands. She’d be careful with the boys.

‘I’m guessing there’s nothing from Missing Persons yet,’ she said.

‘Not yet. Soon, I hope, especially now you’ve given us something to work with.’

Someone had been missing two small boys for four years, maybe longer.

It was time to take them home.