Tastes Like Fear (D.I. Marnie Rome 3) (21 page)

Helen shook her head. ‘I don’t even know how to get hold of him. We lost contact years ago.’

‘Someone else Ashleigh didn’t want to know.’ Robin looked sad. ‘I suppose she felt rejected by him, but it was more than that. She was fiercely independent, as Helen says. Hated being a child, wanted to grow up and get away. We just couldn’t … connect to her.’

Marnie was quiet for a moment, waiting for one of the Colliers to say something more, but they just stood looking at the stranger who’d died after running from their home.

Eventually Helen said, ‘Can we go? It’s her, we can confirm it’s her. That’s all you needed, isn’t it?’ She glanced at her wristwatch. ‘We promised my mum we’d be back for Jolyon’s bed time.’

At the entrance to the mortuary, Marnie shook their hands. ‘Thank you again, and I’m sorry.’

‘For our loss,’ Helen said mechanically. ‘I don’t mean … It’s horrible, of course it is. I wish she wasn’t dead. I wish she could’ve been happy.’ She wiped at her dry eyes. ‘I hope you catch whoever did it. Ashleigh didn’t deserve this.’

‘One thing.’ Robin frowned. ‘She was a clever kid, street-smart. She didn’t trust anyone, let alone strangers. Whoever did this, you’re looking for someone very clever or very fast. I can’t believe she’d be taken in by just anyone. She was such a cynical kid, the last person in the world I’d have expected to find like this. But she
was
just a kid. She didn’t act like it, but she was.’ His eyes clouded and he put an arm around his wife again. ‘Poor kid.’

‘Thank you,’ Helen said to Marnie. ‘For making her look so nice. I was scared to see her. I’d thought she’d look much worse. Her skin was always so …
fiery.
She used too much make-up, which made it worse. In there, she looked like a little girl again.’ Her mouth made the messy shape of a smile. ‘Thank you for that.’

Marnie nodded, but she thought,
That wasn’t us.

It was the killer.

‘So Ashleigh was no May Beswick.’ Ron was studying the new sketches on the whiteboard, the ones Welland had called pornographic. ‘Not that May was such a nice girl as it turns out.’

‘Because she had talent?’ Noah said.

‘It’s not
how
she drew, it’s
what
she drew. I wouldn’t want my kids turning out pictures like that. Bet her mum and dad had a fit when they found these.’

‘Her sister found them,’ Noah said shortly. He had his hands in his pockets, shoulders up.

Marnie watched him, wondering what had happened to put him on edge. Or was he thinking about the Beswicks still, as she was? About grief and guilt, and the places in between.

‘Ashleigh had street smarts,’ she told the team. ‘May knew which places to avoid after dark. Neither girl was the kind to be taken in by strangers. So how did they end up with our killer? Fran’s found no evidence of restraint on either girl. All the signs say they went with him. Lived with him, ate his food, slept under his roof. Why? How did he seduce them?’

‘You think he’s good-looking?’ Ron sniffed. ‘Rich, maybe. If he had a flashy car …’

‘What was it about these girls that attracted
him
?’ Noah said. ‘They had nothing in common. Different upbringings, different personalities, physically different.’

‘They hung out in the same subway. Maybe it’s as simple as that. He saw them together so he took them together. And because there were two of them, they felt safe going with him … We need to find the subway. If it even exists.’

‘It exists. Rents
is a street artist from Stockwell. He’s used that tag all over south London. He’ll know where the subway is. We just need to find him.’

‘How’s that going?’ Marnie asked Noah.

‘Dan gave me a phone number. I’ve left a couple of messages. He hasn’t called back yet. BTP’s Graffiti Unit has him on a list, no name or address. He’s tagged a few of their trains in the last year. They’ve failed to catch him, seemed to think we’d fail too. I said we’d keep them posted.’

Marnie looked at Colin. ‘How soon until we finish with the lists of people with access to the power station?’

‘We’ve eliminated thirteen so far, wrong profile or with an alibi for the day May was killed. A couple look interesting, so we’re following up. One’s on the security crew, a shift worker like Jamie Ledger. Served time for an assault in Lithuania. He wasn’t working that day, but we’re looking at anyone who could’ve been bribed to turn a blind eye to security shortfalls.’

‘Put him on the board.’ Marnie handed him the pen.

Colin wrote,
Romek Malis
.

‘What kind of assault in Lithuania?’

‘Domestic. We’re getting details.’

‘No sign of restraint on either girl.’ Noah moved closer to the photographs of Ashleigh and May. ‘So this was … what? Capture bonding?’

‘Speak English,’ Ron said. He was tired. They all were.

‘Two bright girls went willingly with a maniac who ended up strangling them. He didn’t tie them up, they didn’t fight back. Why? They trusted him. Maybe they even liked him. Or they were scared of him, they knew they had to do as he said to survive. They went along with whatever he wanted. That’s capture bonding. Living in fear – actually
within
it – can feel safe. In that state, you reinvent what feels rational and irrational. Even if these girls are completely dominated by the source of their fear, the chances are they
feel
safe. Fearless, even. He didn’t snatch them, they
chose
to go with him. They’re in a different reality. It’s only when they step back across the line that it hits them. Maybe that’s why Traffic’s girl was so disorientated. She’d been surviving by submission.’

‘Ashleigh didn’t sound the submissive type,’ Marnie said. ‘Her stepdad thinks we should be looking for someone clever and fast. Three missing girls in three days, two of them dead. He’s certainly moving fast. So let’s up our game. Find the subway in May’s sketch, and our e-fit girl.’

She nodded at Noah. ‘DS Jake?’

Noah followed Marnie out to the station car park. The rain had cleared, sunshine lying like litter on the tarmac. ‘Something’s bothering you.’ Marnie unlocked the car. ‘What is it?’

‘Sol’s in trouble.’ Noah climbed in. ‘Dan says he had a bloody nose when he got home this morning. I’ll talk to him tonight.’ He fastened his seat belt. ‘Where’re we headed?’

‘Back to Battersea.’ Marnie fired the engine. ‘I want another look at the crime scene. And a chat with Romek Malis. What’s new on the Beswicks?’

‘Katrina’s car was on York Road half an hour before May’s body was found.’ A muscle stressed in his cheek. ‘It’s her route home, the same route every day. It could be nothing.’

Or it could be Sean Beswick’s hands around his daughter’s neck, his wife helping to clear up the mess. Marnie didn’t want those images in her head any more than Noah did. She drove in silence until they hit a snarl of traffic. ‘Sean nearly said something when he called to tell us about the sketches. He said, “We didn’t know, we really didn’t. Loz says … but
we
didn’t. Me and Kat.” I want to know what Loz said. I think she knew about the sketches. Maybe she hid the pad in her room to help May, or when May went missing, because she didn’t want us to find it.’

‘She wants to find May’s killer. She wouldn’t hold back anything that’d help us do that.’

‘Not intentionally, but it’s possible she doesn’t understand the significance of the sketches.’

Their fear for Loz was like a solid object in the car – a body on the back seat.

After a moment Noah said, ‘I can’t imagine them together. May and Ashleigh. Something doesn’t fit. But we know they were in the same place, from the food they ate as much as from May’s sketches. Salted fish and lentils, survival food. Highly preserved, Fran said. Maybe he’s got them holed up off the grid. Somewhere ultra-safe. No access to shops, no need to leave the house. The uniform’s weird. Ashleigh wasn’t attending school, so why was she dressed like that? We’re dealing with a control freak.’

‘Who attracts out-of-control girls. Something in our killer appealed to Ashleigh Jewell, and to May Beswick. To the missing girl, too. Maybe other girls …’

‘Maybe not just girls,’ Noah said. ‘Plenty of homeless teenage boys out there. We’re assuming he hasn’t taken any of them, but if there’s no sexual element to what he’s doing, if it’s just about control, he could’ve taken boys too.’

They’d reached the power station. Marnie showed her badge at the barrier, and parked up. When they climbed from the car, the river’s smell came up to meet them, the tide on the turn.

‘Ashleigh was left less than a mile from here.’ Marnie checked her phone. ‘I’m betting we find that subway within the same square mile.’

Noah tipped his head to look at the chimneys, feeling all of London packed into this square mile. Forget an off-grid prison where this man was keeping the girls. He was
here
. ‘He’s close. Can’t you feel him?’

‘The subway is close,’ Marnie said. ‘It must be. We know May wasn’t away from home for any length of time in the weeks before she disappeared. She was sketching at the subway on her way to and from school. That’s a narrow radius.’

‘I wonder what it’s like in that house for Loz. Even if our bad feeling’s wrong, Sean and Katrina are very … polite, professional. To us. I wonder what they’re like as parents.’

Marnie didn’t answer, going ahead of Noah into the heart of the site. She’d asked the same question about her own parents in the weeks after Stephen destroyed her family, wondering whether as foster-parents they’d been different, more patient perhaps. Less quick, surely, to see their faults magnified in him, since there was no blood between them. And Stephen – when had he first known he was going to kill them? Or hadn’t he known until the moment when it was happening, unfurling in him like an alien rush of hormones, of hate?

Battersea was full of shadows and the charred smell of cut stone, hot metal. The workmen were drilling to the left, the judder of it coming through the walls, getting into her bones. Noah looked up at the remaining chimneys. ‘You know they tried to demolish these once before? From the inside. They stripped out the lining, then they noticed the chimneys were spreading. The lining, all that poisonous black rot inside, was holding them together. It’s how they’d stayed standing so long.’

‘You said May loved this place but it scared her.’

He nodded. ‘It was in her sketches.’

‘If our killer saw the sketches, that could explain why he left her here. We’ve been assuming he’s obsessed with this place, but May was obsessed too. Perhaps he left her here because of the way
she
felt about the power station, not the way
he
did.’

‘Afraid?’

‘And in love. She loved it here, but it scared her.’

Like living,
Marnie thought,
like life for a teenage girl.

‘You have to make friends with fear.’ Noah stared up into the sightless eye of a CCTV camera. ‘That’s what my dad always said.’

‘In relation to what?’

‘Life in general. Growing up on an estate like the Garrett, staying on the straight and narrow. It was a good speech. About accepting our limitations, respecting our fault lines. Making peace with who we are, and who we’re not. I suppose it was a speech about identity.’

Had his brother Sol valued that speech? Two boys growing up on the same estate but going in different directions, Noah finding the police while Sol went the other way. Families were hard work. The killer had capitalised on that, picking off the ones who couldn’t live at home, making them into different people, into children. Unrecognisable, in Ashleigh’s case, to her own parents.

The penthouse was sealed off, forensic tags on the floor and bed.

‘Are you police?’ A woman in a tight blue suit had followed them. Late thirties, whip-thin, with a wide face, tired make-up, scuffed shoes, high heels frayed by the site’s gravel. ‘Is there any news?’

Marnie showed her badge. ‘And you are …?’

‘Toni Shepherd, senior marketing manager. Have there been any developments?’ Eyes busy on the bed, where the covers held track marks from the removal of May’s body. ‘Anything positive?’

‘We’d like to speak with your security team. Not everyone was on shift when we conducted the first interviews. Romek Malis, is he working today?’

‘You’d need to check with the site manager.’ Moving her feet away from a forensic tag, calf muscles clenching. ‘I was hoping you’d be able to tell me when we can let the cleaners in here to spruce the place up for viewings. We’ve got a backlog building up.’

Spruce the place up.

‘These are people who’ve booked a viewing since the body was found?’

‘I know what you’re thinking, but they’re not ghouls.’ She slapped out a smile. ‘We run very thorough checks before we let people in here.’

‘What sort of checks?’ Noah asked. ‘To see if they can afford the prices you’re charging? Or to be sure they’re not ghouls? How
do
you check for that?’

Toni switched her stare to him, smiling reflexively the way women always did when they saw Noah. ‘The former, as a matter of course. It doesn’t rule out any other motive, but I doubt anyone in the business of buying a flat like this one would waste their time or ours wanting to see a crime scene. There are plenty of cheaper places they could visit if that was their real interest.’

Marnie’s phone rang and she turned away to take the call. ‘DI Rome.’

‘Are you at Battersea?’ It was Colin Pitcher. ‘Ron said you wanted to speak with Romek Malis.’

‘We’re on site, yes. What’ve you got?’

‘I was speaking with someone from the media party, Marc Amos, events manager for a local charity. He was offered a guided tour by one of the security crew, behind-the-scenes stuff. He turned it down because the man wanted money and Amos didn’t have enough cash on him. But he was tempted, out of curiosity. The man said he could show him what corners were being cut, implied there were a lot of dodgy dealings on site. Amos says he’s surprised none of the journalists took the man up on his offer. Everyone was sick of the silver lining, looking for the cloud.’