Tastes Like Fear (D.I. Marnie Rome 3) (18 page)

‘Yes, but she didn’t hang around. Two months after they took her in, she was gone. No clue as to where, no text messages to friends, no contact with anyone in the family or at school. Her social worker said that was unusual. Ashleigh was always texting someone or other.’

‘But they’re sure she ran, no reason to suspect she was snatched?’

‘She took her make-up and clothes. A suitcase job, not a stroll out.’ Noah pointed to the relevant page in the paperwork. ‘Police questioned the stepdad and mum. Interviews at the school, at the care home. All procedures followed to the letter. A couple of CCTV sightings, then nothing. No more text messages, her phone out of service. Just like May Beswick.’

Not quite like May, whose photogenic blondeness had made her headline news. Marnie couldn’t remember a single press story about Ashleigh’s disappearance.

‘What about her biological father?’

‘He was never married to her mum. Army man, posted overseas a lot. Ashleigh had no contact with him. The stepdad came on the scene when she was twelve. They never hit it off, although it looks like he tried to make it work. All the reports say he’s a decent guy doing his best. Children’s Services found no risk of harm in the home other than the pressure Ashleigh’s behaviour was putting on her mum at a vulnerable time in her pregnancy.’

‘Where were the CCTV sightings after she went missing from the care home?’

‘Liverpool Street station. Then Camden. Once they knew she was in London, Misper got pessimistic about the chances of finding her. She looked like a classic case, probably on the streets, one of tens of thousands of kids who run away from home every year … What did Fran say?’

‘Superficial similarities to May. The bruises, mostly. She’ll be in touch as soon as she knows more.’ Her phone buzzed: Sean Beswick.

‘Mr Beswick. How are you?’

‘We didn’t know.’ May’s father sounded shattered. ‘We
didn’t
. Everything we told you was the truth – what we thought was the truth.’

‘What’s happened?’ Marnie reached for her coat. ‘Mr Beswick?’

‘Drawings, we found more drawings. I can’t … Not over the phone. Can you come round? It’s not … We know you have to see these, but they’re not right. It’s not right. I’m sorry. We didn’t know, we really didn’t. Loz says … but
we
didn’t. Me and Kat. We didn’t know.’

Marnie nodded at Noah. ‘We’re on our way.’

26

The house in Taybridge Road was overexposed, a blaze of light from every window.

Marnie remembered burning electricity like this at her parents’ house, wanting to bleach the smell and stains left by Stephen. She climbed from the car with Noah, checking her phone for messages from Fran. Nothing yet.

Sean answered the door, his face crooked with grief and this fresh worry. ‘Thanks for getting here so quickly.’ Glancing across his shoulder at the stairs. ‘Come in.’

When they were standing in the hall, Marnie saw Loz sitting at the head of the stairs in her school uniform, elbows on her knees. ‘Hello.’

Loz looked through her, at Noah.

‘She should be in school,’ Sean said, ‘but we didn’t want to take her in, not today.’

Noah and Marnie followed him through to the kitchen, where Katrina was sitting, gripping a mug of tea between her hands. Like Sean’s, her face was redrawn with worry, the morning’s make-up in lines under her eyes. Dressed for work in a red jacket over a black dress, statement necklace, bracelets, heels. Lipstick on the mug, a scum of tannin on the surface of the cold tea. Her hands looked raw, a gold watch hanging at her left wrist. ‘You’d better sit down.’

On the table was a heavy wire-bound sketchpad with a yellow and black tiger on the cover. May’s parents looked at it fearfully. Marnie pulled out a chair and sat, Noah taking the seat at her side. She drew the pad towards them and opened it, turning the pages.

Thick paper, chalk-white, smudged with grey. May had used charcoals and pencils, filling the pad with sketches. Anatomical at first glance, but they weren’t just that. Graphic, certainly. Close-ups of mouths, breasts, male and female genitalia. Sex acts, almost too intimate to look at. May hadn’t meant these to be seen by just anyone, certainly not by her parents or the police.

‘Where did you find this?’

The silence in the kitchen was underscored by the sound of cracking from the freezer, ice breaking somewhere inside.

Marnie raised her gaze from the sketchpad to see Katrina covering her eyes with her hand. Sean shook his head, numbly. ‘Loz found it, in her room. Hidden, in her room.’

‘
I
didn’t hide it.’ Loz was in the doorway, scuffing her toes at the kitchen floor. ‘May did. But she never told me.’ Her voice was tight with tears.

‘Where in your room did she hide it?’ Noah asked.

‘Behind my plushies, on the top shelf.’

‘Toys she collected,’ her dad said, ‘when she was a kid.’ As if she was an adult now.

‘You say you didn’t know May had hidden it, but had you seen it before?’

Loz shook her head, biting at her lower lip where the skin was chapped and sore.

Under Marnie’s fingers, the thick wire of the sketchpad was furred by torn paper, discarded pages. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked, as gently as she could.

‘Duh. I’d remember seeing
that
.’ Keeping her eyes away from the table where the sketchpad was sitting open. She sounded, for the first time, like a child.

Noah turned another page. More of the same. And something new.

A tunnel, lit by rectangular boxes mounted along both walls. A subway? Bodies sleeping on the floor, faces turned to the wall, graffiti over their heads:
Fearz
in chroma yellow;
Rents
in neon pink. At the edge of the page, May had sketched a face inside a hoody, all eyes and mouth.

‘Is this a real place?’ Noah looked at May’s parents. ‘Do you recognise it?’

They shook their heads.

‘It could be anywhere, couldn’t it? Not somewhere we’d want the girls to go, obviously. We warned them about taking subways, and that’s … She’s drawn that after dark. She can’t have been in a place like that after dark.’ Sean kept his eyes away from the sketchpad. ‘But perhaps she was. We couldn’t believe the rest of it.
Can’t
believe it. She didn’t even have a boyfriend.’

‘We’ve had the first results from the post-mortem.’ Marnie waited, to give them the chance to say that Loz shouldn’t hear this. They didn’t speak, staring mutely at her. ‘May was seven weeks pregnant when she died.’

It visibly rocked Sean. Katrina dropped her hands to the table, studying her bracelets as if they were handcuffs. Her throat convulsed, soundlessly.

‘She was … raped?’ Fury under the shock in Sean’s voice. ‘He raped her?’

‘We don’t know the identity of the father. There was no evidence of assault.’

‘No
evidence
? You’ve just told us she was pregnant! What more evidence do you need?’

‘The father may not be the killer.’ Marnie put her hand on the sketchpad. ‘I know you’ve said May didn’t have a boyfriend, but in the light of these …’

‘She was an
artist
. Just because she could draw, you’re calling her a whore?’

‘No. Absolutely not.’ He’d chosen the same word May had written in the palms of her hands. ‘I’m just asking if it’s possible she was seeing someone you didn’t know about.’

Katrina twisted her wedding ring on her finger. ‘It’s possible.’ She looked at Marnie, then at her husband. Finally, blindly, at Loz. ‘It must be.’

Sean shook his head, white-lipped.

‘We knew something was wrong,’ Katrina said. ‘We just didn’t know what. She’d stopped talking to us. It was like having a ghost in the house. We thought … She was growing up. Of course she was growing up, but we thought … Friends. Outside interests, maybe a little teenage rebellion.
Yes
, it could’ve been that.’ Sean had made a sound of protest. ‘They grow up so suddenly. I don’t mean physically. Just … one day they’re
there
and the next they’re not. We lost her. Somehow.’ She turned her hands up empty on the table. ‘We lost hold of her.’ She covered her eyes again.

‘And you can’t think of anyone she might have been seeing? None of these faces is familiar?’ Marnie kept her hand on the pad. ‘Or anywhere she might have gone. To this subway, perhaps?’

They shook their heads.

‘Loz … do you know where this might be? Do you recognise it?’

‘No.’ Loz didn’t look at the sketch.

‘And you don’t recognise any of the people?’

Loz shook her head fiercely, still biting her lips. The face at the edge of the page was young. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. It was hard to look away from the stare. May had captured all the arrogance of a teenage runaway, a poster child for Shelter. In the larger sketch: ragged grass at the mouth of the subway, graffiti tags. ‘Did May talk about meeting homeless people in a place like this?’

‘She never talked to me about stuff like that.’

‘Why do you think she hid this in your room?’ Noah asked. ‘Rather than her room?’

‘You didn’t search my room when she went missing. I guess that’s why.’

‘That would mean she planned to leave.’

‘She didn’t.’ Katrina took her hands away from her face. ‘If she planned it, why didn’t she take more things? A bag, clothes –
anything.
It wasn’t planned, it can’t have been.’

Before Marnie could respond, Noah said, ‘Look at this.’

He’d turned to a new page in the pad.

Another face, in close-up.

Female, pouting.

Distinctive crook in her nose.

Gold hoops through the fleshy lobes of her ears.

Ashleigh Jewell.

27

Aimee

My fingers burned from working at the wire. I’d got it half free from the sketchpad, but it was taking too long. I had to work under the covers, in the bed.

Funny to think I’d been good at this shit once. Sneaking around, watching out for myself. Now I was no use to anyone. Harm didn’t want me to be good at anything except being sick. Just like my mum when I was little. Home sick home.

Christie was keeping an eye on me. Coming right up to the bed. I heard her breathing, watching me pretending to sleep. Just as I was starting to think she knew I was awake, she’d go away. But she waited longer and longer. I’d thought it was only him I had to worry about. Now it was her too, and she’d come from the streets so she knew all the tricks. Harm was never on the streets, not living on the streets. He’d grown up in a nice house with a nice family, not that it meant anything. It hadn’t meant anything to May. She’d been safe, she’d said, at home with her family. She’d loved her little sister. She just couldn’t live there. Sometimes you just can’t.

The wire bruised my fingers. I sucked them to get the feeling back.

I’d decided to try and take a knife, at supper.

It was just the three of us now. Me and them.

Ashleigh was gone.

I hadn’t thought I’d miss her, but I did. Missed the camouflage, the way she’d drawn Harm’s stare from me. I missed her tits. I’d been in awe of her tits. They’d been a big fuck-off to that make-believe crap, the game we were playing. Dressing like schoolgirls, swallowing his shit. Her tits had been a flag for the real world, whatever was going on out there, away from him.

I couldn’t steal a knife. He was too careful in the kitchen. May tried to steal food when she first had cravings, but he’d got it all locked down. He watched us, or Christie did.

More and more, it was Christie who watched. Harm went out, sometimes for hours, but she never left. I heard her creaking on the stairs and it used to be okay, but then she’d started coming inside my room. Right up to the bed. Her eyes on me, watching me pretending to sleep.

That’s what I’d go for, with the wire – her eyes.

Stop her spying for him, seeing something she shouldn’t. He didn’t look, not properly, but she did. She knew something wasn’t right with me. I could hear it in her breathing. She
saw
me. She was stronger, too. Bigger, taller, her hands like fucking trowels, but I’d have her.

I’d fucking
have
her.

I used to live on the streets, in the tunnels.

May knew …

That was where she’d found us, living like rats when the rain came, pretending it wasn’t a pit, pretending we were streetwise, free spirits, sharing stories about the fuckers we’d escaped from. Dancing in the rain, I remembered that. Dancing in the
fucking
rain.

Ashleigh had a story about her stepdad. Some shit about him watching when she got undressed. We all had a story like that, and she was lying, I could tell. She
wanted
him to watch, that was my guess. All she had were her tits and arse. If no one was looking at those, no one was seeing her, and we all wanted to be seen. We thought it’d be impossible to be ignored when we were sitting right
there
under your feet every day. But you managed it somehow, managed to make us invisible. Ashleigh couldn’t stand being invisible. She’d be out there right now, showing her tits to someone, getting noticed. Good luck to her. We were all just trying to stay alive. If she needed to get groped to feel that way, then good luck to her. I hoped she was getting groped right now.

May needed looking after with the baby coming, so I got that, too. Why she had to go back home to her little sister, who’d be an auntie soon. I didn’t blame her for running. I’d have done the same if I wasn’t being watched so well. By her now, as well as him.

The wire stabbed my finger, scratching blood from under a nail.

I sucked it, tasting salt.

I was thirsty, all the time. It was the food, everything salted, dried, preserved. Maybe that was what he was doing, preserving me from the inside out like an Egyptian mummy. He’d pull my brains through my nose and put my kidneys into jars. I’d have skin like leather and huge hollow eyes. He’d love me like that.

Footsteps on the stairs.

My heart skittered.

I curled on my side with the wire under me, tucking my hands away.