Tastes Like Fear (D.I. Marnie Rome 3) (6 page)

Marnie’s teeth tapped together. ‘DS Carling, would you like to do the washing-up?’

Emma chuckled. ‘You’re for it now, Loose Lips.’

Ron collected the mugs in silence.

‘Did you see where the girl went?’ Marnie asked.

‘She was coming this way, but when they get near the entrance I lose them. Angle’s wrong.’

‘So she was coming
into
the flats?’

‘Maybe. She doesn’t live here, not that I’ve seen. And I’ve seen them all, one time or another.’

‘Did you notice anything else about her?’

‘Just that she was drunk, and half-dressed. She’ll fit right in round here.’

Noah checked the angle of the view from the window. He calculated the girl had been eight feet from the main entrance when Emma lost sight of her. Almost certainly coming into the block.

Marnie was at his side, also looking, but not down at the dead space under the window. Across to where the kids had kicked the wheelie bin on to its side, spilling its contents on to the concrete. She’d seen something; her attention was fixed on the bin. Noah could only see crushed boxes, the broken ribs of an old shelving unit, flashes of white from empty carrier bags.

‘Would you recognise this girl,’ Marnie asked Emma, ‘if you saw her again?’

‘Oh yes. I’ve got a memory for faces.’ A stony smile for Noah. ‘You don’t need to be a pin-up for me to remember you.’

‘Re-brief the team,’ Marnie said, when they were back in the open air.

‘You think she’s here?’ Ron asked. ‘In one of the flats?’

‘I know she’s changed her clothes.’ Marnie walked towards the wheelie bin. She was pulling on crime-scene gloves. ‘Unless that’s a coincidence.’ She pointed.

In the spill of litter from the capsized bin was a white shirt. Noah had mistaken it for a carrier bag.

Marnie extracted it from the wreckage of the shelving unit, shaking it loose from plastic bottles, crisp packets and pizza boxes.

A man’s shirt.

Stained on the inside with what looked like blood.

8

Aimee

Someone was knocking at the door. Downstairs, the
front
door. Someone out there, trying to get in.

I sat up in bed, listening until my ears ached. Nothing. I was going crazy. No one ever came; why would they? On the streets you think the
next
person will notice you, the
next
one will help, but you’re kidding yourself. No one ever helps, no one ever comes. Except Harm.

‘I’m pregnant.’ May held her head up when she said it, as if he couldn’t touch her now. As if
pregnant
made a difference. She had a little sister she loved more than anything, and she’d always wanted a baby. I’d hoped I’d meet her sister one day. But right that minute all I could see was him, the way he buried her with his stare.

‘Go to your room.’

After all his lectures, his rules …

I’m pregnant.

What had she done?

May’s room was directly under mine. She shared it with Ashleigh and with the plastic water barrels, crates of toilet rolls, cleaning products, batteries. Self-sufficiency, Harm said, survival. Everything was right there. No need to worry ever again about being cold or wet or hungry. No need to leave, ever. We were all we needed, Harm said, and I’d thought we were safe.

Go to your room.

No one was knocking at the door. Even if they were, Harm would get rid of them; securing the perimeter wasn’t something you did once and then forgot about. You had to stay on your guard, on your toes, frosty and alert.

I’m pregnant.

I saw his face, when he sent us to our rooms. He looked in pain. As if there was a storm inside his head and he heard it crying, like a baby. May’s baby. Standing by the blacked-out window, his fingers touching the glass, and it was like I could see inside him, hot and red. He
hurt
. I thought …

We were like pain to him. Pushing our noise through the walls, needing to be held, having to be fed. If he was a woman, he’d be leaking, his whole body pulled by the pain, unable to resist. But he was a man and so he held the pain at bay, hoping it would settle, fearing what would happen if it didn’t. Christie and Ashleigh and May …

All of us within reaching distance, grabbing distance.

Standing by the window, kissing the ends of his fingers to taste the grey of the glass.

It made me ache with fear.

When May said, ‘I’m pregnant,’ before I could stop myself, just for a second, I’d thought:

You’re dead.

9

At the station, OCU Commander Welland said, ‘Traffic called. They want their crime scene back. Something about a bloodstained shirt in a skip?’

‘It was in a wheelie bin.’

‘Well, it’s got their knickers in a twist. They want to know why our major incident team is investigating their skid marks.’ Welland eyed Marnie and Noah. His face had a toehold on his temper, his brow heavy. ‘They’ve got a point. Even if this turns fatal, it’s Traffic’s.’

‘We’re looking for the girl from the crash,’ Marnie said. ‘We think she’s at risk of harm.’

‘Because of the bloodstained shirt? Where’re you up to with it?’

‘Fran Lennox has the shirt. We’re searching the estate where we found it. This girl’s not the first teenager to go missing in that part of London in the last twelve weeks. She might even
be
May Beswick. If there’s the slightest chance of that …’

Welland gave a slow nod. ‘This is the Garrett estate. DS Carling’s favourite vacation spot, the arsonist’s Algarve. But someone was sober enough to see this girl last night?’

‘Emma Tarvin,’ Noah said. ‘She confirmed what Joe Eaton told us about the girl looking like she’s in trouble, probably traumatised.’

‘Tarvin.’ Welland pulled at his upper lip. ‘She’s the nosy neighbour?’

‘She keeps a record,’ Marnie said, ‘of everyone who comes within eight feet of her front door.’

‘That’s a lot of wasted paper.’

‘Faster than processing CCTV.’

‘So’s a striking snail, but I wouldn’t put one forward as a witness for the CPS. You’re doing house-to-house?’

Marnie nodded. ‘But not everyone’s as keen to talk to us as Mrs Tarvin.’

‘You astound me.’ Welland snorted. ‘Communal living at its finest. Last time I was on the Garrett, I’d have lit a fire just to keep the chill away. No one knows anyone else, or cares. Security’s a joke. Don’t bother checking the CCTV. It packed up years ago. No expense spent … From what DS Carling tells me, it’s got worse recently.’

‘Mrs Tarvin agrees. She has a particular problem with a group of teenage girls.’

‘Kids,’ Welland said disgustedly. ‘They lowered the age of criminal responsibility for a reason, but most of the time we can’t arrest them, never mind prosecute. They know it, too. I’ve seen six- and seven-year-olds working their patch, popping out to pick up Mum’s prescription from whichever lowlife’s dealing her a day’s oblivion. If this girl’s gone to ground on the Garrett, good luck finding her.’ He tapped his teeth with his thumbnail, shaking his head. ‘May Beswick has more sense than to set foot in that shithole.’

‘As far as we know,’ Noah said.

Welland cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘Your pessimism does you credit, Detective.’ He nodded at Marnie. ‘Buy DS Jake a large coffee to go with that.’

Marnie did as she was told, standing in the street outside the police station to drink coffee with Noah. ‘We should speak with the Beswicks.’

‘It’s been weeks since we had any news for them.’ Noah shielded his eyes from the glare coming off the station’s windows. ‘What if we’re raising their hopes for nothing?’

Marnie worked the lid off her coffee. ‘When the press get hold of the story from last night, May’s parents will be on the phone wanting news. I’d rather call them before they do that.’

‘You still think it might be May? Mrs Tarvin mistook her for a prostitute, or a drunk.’ Noah frowned. ‘Assuming she
was
mistaken. Without a proper ID, how much can we tell them?’

Marnie drank a mouthful of coffee before she answered. ‘They’ll see a connection because that’s what they need.
This
girl is alive. They’ll want to believe she’s May. I would, in their place.’

‘I wonder how Loz is coping.’ Noah felt a pang for the Beswicks’ younger daughter. ‘Poor kid.’

Loz was thirteen, prickly with intelligence. Living in a house that was cracking apart under the stress of her sister’s disappearance. May was sixteen, with no good reason to leave home, or none Marnie and Noah had uncovered. Fearing the worst was easy. The hard part was hoping for the best.

‘Any news from the hospital about Logan Marsh or Ruth Eaton?’ he asked.

‘Logan’s condition remains critical. Ruth’s stable, for now.’

‘If we find this girl … will Traffic want to charge her?’

‘With what? A public order offence?’ Marnie’s blue eyes were dark, serious. ‘They’ll go after Joe Eaton if they can. They’ll want to know why he swerved instead of braking, how he ended up on the wrong side of the road while going fast enough for a smash on that scale. He said she wasn’t running, so why wasn’t there time to brake, or slow down? He’ll have to answer some hard questions, especially if no one else witnessed what happened.’

‘Do you think Mrs Tarvin was right about her being drunk, or drugged?’

‘Trouble, that was the word she used. New, and trouble. I don’t think Mrs Tarvin has much time for kids of any description.’

‘No family photos. Odd for someone of her generation not to have kids, or grandkids.’

‘Families fall out. And split up.’

‘She’s living alone up there. I wouldn’t want that for my gran, would you?’

‘I think she’s making a decent fist of it.’ A dry tinge to her voice. ‘But no, I wouldn’t.’

‘We did house-to-house on the Garrett after May first went missing. Same part of Lambeth. No one saw anything, not even Mrs Tarvin.’

‘No,’ Marnie agreed. ‘This girl’s found a change of clothes from somewhere. It’s possible she lives on the Garrett, or knows someone who does.’

Not May Beswick, in other words.

‘D’you think she knows Natalie Filton or Abi Gull, our friendly neighbourhood arsonists?’

‘Let’s not take Mrs Tarvin’s word for everything.’ Marnie dropped her empty coffee cup into a litter bin. ‘And let’s see the Beswicks before this story breaks.’

Sean and Katrina Beswick lived in a terraced house on Taybridge Road, not far from Clapham Common. The house was bay-windowed, clinging to its original features the way a pensioner clung to her handbag on pension day. The neighbours had put up a pierced cement wall, but the Beswicks had a privet hedge that until recently had been kept trim. In the last three months, it had grown a shaggy fringe.

May’s father opened the door, face falling when he saw Noah and Marnie.

‘No news,’ Marnie said, knowing the news he feared. ‘We’re still looking for May.’

‘Come through.’ He held the door wide.

They followed him to the sitting room. At six foot four, Sean was the only one on eye-level with the pictures he’d hung too high up the walls. Inoffensive landscapes, the kind Dan described as middle-class graffiti. A rack of wine bottles filled the gutted fireplace. No books. Flat-screen TV and shelves of glassware, sticky with dust. White walls, lots of empty space. An estate agent would’ve called the house bright and sunny. But it wasn’t, bent double under the weight of its missing child.

‘How’s Katrina?’ Marnie asked. ‘And Loz?’

‘On their way back from work, and school.’ Sean pushed his fists into the pockets of his jeans. He had a tall man’s stoop, fair head down, broad shoulders hunching. Not dressed for work, and he hadn’t shaved. A laptop was open on the low table by the sofa. He flicked a glance in its direction. ‘I’ve been registering with websites that search for missing kids, forums where kids can leave messages. Not that May was into computers, didn’t even use the phone we got her. Well, you know that … Loz is different, she lives on the internet.’ He flinched, backtracked. ‘We’re careful, of course. We have parental controls on the worst of the websites.’

‘She’s at school.’ Marnie gave the man her steady smile. ‘How’s that going?’

‘Questions, sympathy, you know. Some of the kids are cruel, maybe they mean to be, maybe they don’t, speculating as to whether May’s alive or dead, if she ran off or someone snatched her. The school deals with it, then they start up again. I wish we could keep Loz home, but we can’t. We agreed to try and carry on as usual.’ He blinked across the room at nothing, his brown eyes like May’s but fidgety with pain. ‘To try to be normal.’

Marnie said, ‘Shall we sit down?’

‘Of course, sorry.’ He stooped to shut the laptop. ‘I’ll make coffee. Would you like coffee?’ He moved in the direction of the kitchen, carrying his hurt as a limp in his left leg.

‘Just water would be fine.’ Marnie let him go. Noah stayed with her, taking in the small changes since the last time they were here. Each visit a little more dust, another layer of neglect. One of the landscapes was crooked on the wall. It stood out like a handprint.

Sean returned from the kitchen with two glasses of water. ‘Here.’

‘Thanks.’ Marnie sat on the sofa. ‘We wanted to give you advance warning about a story that might be in the papers tomorrow, or tonight.’ She waited until Sean was seated, his hands propped between his knees. ‘You might have heard about the traffic accident last night.’

‘York Road was closed.’ Sean smelt of stale sweat and cigarettes. No ashtrays in the house. Maybe he smoked in the garden. ‘Kat had to find another route to work.’

‘One of the drivers saw a girl leaving the scene of the crash. We’re looking for her. We’ll need to make an appeal to the public if we don’t find her soon.’

‘You think it’s May?’ His shoulders creaked as he leaned forward. ‘The driver saw May?’

‘We showed him a photo. He doesn’t think it was her. We’re looking for other witnesses, but we didn’t want you to see the news and assume it was May. The press are bound to speculate, since it happened nearby and everyone’s looking for May, hoping for news of her.’