First One Missing (27 page)

‘Yeah. I can see you’ve been busy,’ she said. ‘Wanna see mine?’

She bent her left arm and made a straining face as if trying to flex her non-existent muscles. Just then there was the sound of a key in the lock followed by an explosion of high-pitched giggles.

‘Sounds like Emily is here as well,’ said Suzy, not moving from Jason’s lap. ‘Sometimes I’d swear that girl lives at our house. Her mum’s on her own, like me, and she’s got three other little ones. I think Em comes round here for a bit of peace and quiet. It’s not easy for her back home.’

Jason’s heart was pounding as the two girls came into the kitchen, looping the straps of their bags over the chairs.

‘Oh, all right, Jase,’ said Bethany, hardly registering his presence. ‘Mum, what’s there to eat? I’m starving.’

Jason waited for Suzy to tell them it was nearly dinner time, but she just reached over for the packet of chocolate digestives on the sideboard and tossed it at her daughter.

‘How did you get home?’ Jason asked, hoping his voice was steady. He directed the question at Bethany, not daring to look at Emily who was leaning awkwardly against the fridge.

‘Bus,’ she said airily, licking the chocolate off the top of her biscuit.

He got up, tipping Suzy off his lap.

‘They’re too young to be getting the bus on their own.’ He could feel the anger working its way up his body, through his arms all the way down to his fingertips. It felt good. ‘Do you know how many nutters there are out there? Anything could happen.’

Suzy stared at him, an ugly flush creeping over her chest and neck – red to match the kettle.

‘It’s fine. Loads of them get the bus together. I don’t want to fall out with you, Jason, but please don’t start telling me how to raise my own kid. Not when I’ve been doing it just fine on my own for three years, thank you very much.’

For a few seconds they stared at each other. He snatched a glance at Emily and saw she looked nervous, as if she was about to cry.

‘Course you have. I’m sorry, love.’ He reached out to take Suzy’s hand. ‘I’m just a bit over-anxious. It probably comes from having a daughter of my own I’m not allowed to see and lying awake at night thinking of all the terrible things that could be happening to her. Course you know what’s best.’

Suzy squeezed his hand and her body relaxed.

‘You’re missing your daughter. That’s natural. It still winds me up that your ex is keeping her from you. I haven’t always seen eye to eye with Bethany’s dad, but I’d never stop him seeing her. Children need their fathers.’

She raised her face up to his and touched his cheek with a yellow nail.

‘Our first row,’ she said softly.

‘This is getting serious.’

She was joking and yet not joking.

All the time, Jason was conscious of Emily standing to his left. He wanted to unhook Suzy’s arms and turn to look at her, but he worried his face might give him away.

‘We’ve been planning my birthday on Saturday,’ Bethany said, spraying biscuit crumbs all over the kitchen surfaces. ‘We were going to go bowling, but now I think we’ll just chill here with pizza and movies. We’re going to stay up all night. Aren’t we, Emily?’

Finally Jason turned to look. The girl had her long dark hair in a plait which she’d pulled forward over her shoulder so she could play with the end. Her narrow face looked paler than ever in contrast to the bright pink of the bread bin she was standing beside. Her strangely colourless eyes were fixed on her friend as if looking at either of the adults would be too scary. Jason noticed the individual hairs standing up on his arm and he felt curiously light-headed.

‘Mum’s giving me One Direction tickets for my present, aren’t you, Mummy, lovely beautiful Mummy?’

‘Just you wait and see, Miss Nosy.’

Suzy snuggled into Jason and he had to stop himself from pulling away. She was wearing some kind of cloying perfume that was catching in his throat.

‘How many you got coming to your sleepover, Bethany?’ he asked.

‘Dunno. Four? Five if I’m talking to Tasha by then but she was such a cow in maths. She told Mr Tenby that I’d told Josh Perriman the answer but I never did. I didn’t even know the answer.’

Jason stiffened at the word ‘cow’, waiting for Suzy to call her out on it, but she seemed to think the whole thing was funny. If that had been Keira … No, he mustn’t think about Keira. But now that the thought was in his mind, it was making him antsy. Anger was prickling at the soles of his feet, the palms of his hands, the soft flesh of his inner wrist. He glanced again at Emily and had a flash of another dark-haired girl, the smell of apple shampoo. Blood rushed to his head and he closed his eyes. Suzy, misinterpreting his actions, stood up on tiptoe to kiss him on the mouth.

‘I gotta go,’ he said, moving abruptly away. ‘Tell you what, though, Suzy, I’ll come back the day after tomorrow for the sleepover. Help you with sorting out food and all that stuff.’

Suzy’s expression now dissolved into the kind of look she might have given a kitten that had just done something unbearably cute.

‘Aw, that’s so sweet of you. But honestly, don’t worry. I can sort out the sleepover. I’m used to it. Better for you to come round when it’s just the two of us, if you know what I mean.’ She gave him an exaggerated wink.

‘Eww, gross!’ Bethany was grinning in a way that was all too knowing for an eleven-year-old, if you asked him.

‘No, I’d like to help. It’d make me feel, you know, part of your life.’

Suzy reached up and kissed him on the cheek.

‘You are a sweetheart. You know that? You look all hard on the outside, but you’re just a big softie underneath, aren’t you?’

He forced himself to look up and hold her gaze.

‘I’d love it if you helped,’ she said, then she gave him a playful pinch on the arm. ‘Just wanted to check you’re real.’

32

‘You a writer then?’

The man had sat himself down on the opposite side of the table before Sally had a chance to tell him she was waiting for someone. She took a deep breath in, then exhaled slowly until her flare of anger was under control.

‘The computer,’ the man went on, nodding towards Sally’s MacBook Pro. ‘I saw you were deep in thought, tapping away there. I write myself actually.’

Sally’s heart, which was already in free fall, plummeted further.

‘Yes,’ he continued as if she’d evinced the slightest interest, ‘I write fantasy mostly – only it’s a bit different, a bit cross-genre.’

‘Don’t tell me
. The Hobbit
meets
Fifty Shades of Grey
?’

‘Haha. That’s very funny. No, mine is about a group of Nazi-hunting vampires. It’s actually a bit of an allegory of the dichotomy at the heart of modern society between our opposing desires for justice and for retribution. It’s four hundred and fifteen thousand words long at the moment.’ He looked expectantly at Sally.

‘Well, you know what they say? Everyone has a book in them – and in most cases that’s exactly where it should stay.’

The man’s smile slipped and Sally went back to her computer screen where she was trying to force a new angle on to the Kenwood Killings, to disguise the fact she was actually just trotting out the same rehashed facts and conjectures. When she looked up again the man had gone and Leanne Miller was slipping into his recently vacated seat.

‘Thank you for coming.’ Sally smiled in what she hoped was a warm way.

She tried not to stare at the creases in Leanne’s pink top. What was it about plain-clothes policewomen and irons?

‘I haven’t got long,’ said Leanne, waving aside Sally’s offer of a latte. ‘I’ve already been out of the office much longer than I’d planned.’

‘Right. Well, the thing is, like I said before, I thought it would be a good thing for both of us if we pooled our resources on this case. I’m not suggesting you tell me official secrets or anything, just that we help each other a bit.’

Leanne looked like she was stifling a sigh, and Sally felt her hackles rising.

‘You mentioned Nemo this morning.’

‘Yes. But before we talk about that, I do need to know what might be in it for me, supposing I was to have information that might turn out to be useful to you.’

Leanne didn’t even try to stifle her sigh this time.

‘I’ve talked to my boss. He’d be prepared to offer you the first exclusive interview once the case is solved. Depending on what you have to say, of course.’

‘I want to be involved as the case unfolds. I want to be included in the investigation.’

Leanne started to gather her things together. ‘Uh-uh, not going to happen,’ she said, perching a pair of sunglasses on her head.

Sally put up her hand in a gesture of surrender. ‘OK, OK. But I want exclusive interviews with all the officers involved, not just DCI Desmond.’

Leanne nodded – just the slightest of movements.

‘And I want an interview with Emma Reid.’

‘You know perfectly well I can’t force Emma to talk to you.’

‘Not force.
Persuade
. She’ll listen to you. Especially if you tell her I’ve helped with finding Tilly’s killer.’

Leanne glared at her, and Sally forced herself to hold her gaze.

‘I’ll talk to her. That’s all I can do.’ Leanne looked pointedly at her watch. ‘Nemo?’

‘Right. So I have a contact, anonymous naturally, who is a member of this online paedophile chatroom which was formed basically to fantasize about the Kenwood Killings. Hideous, isn’t it, what turns some people on? One of them even used to be quite famous, my contact says, though he wouldn’t give me any details of who it was.’

‘Wait. This man you know is a member of this chatroom? He’s actually in it?’

‘Yes. Have you heard about it then?’

‘I’ll tell you at the end. Carry on.’

‘Well, like I say, the group was formed to swap fantasies and photographs. At least that’s what my contact thought when he joined, but then he went offline for a while. He has issues with his conscience, my contact. Keeps wanting to go straight, as it were, but then gets dragged back into it. It’s an addiction, you know. Child pornography. Anyway. When he went back to the chatroom he got the sense something big had happened, only no one was saying anything. But then, from little comments here and there, he realized the others were talking to each other privately, so no one else could see. They’d formed their own private group. When I spoke to him the first time, he didn’t know anything about it except they were calling it Nemo. But then somebody in the group sent round a photo by mistake.
Of the body
.’

Sally had lowered her voice for the last sentence.

‘Of which body?’ Leanne prompted urgently.

‘The last one. Poppy Glover. Apparently they used that app where the photo disappears after a few seconds, but he swears that’s what it was of.’

‘And where did they get the photo? Did he say?’

‘No. Apparently the others all got angry with the one who had sent the photo and they tried to tell the others that he’d got the picture from another case entirely. An American case. But my contact swears it was the Glover girl. He recognized the Heath Extension in the background and the description of the clothes she was wearing when she disappeared.’

‘So where does he think the photo came from?’

‘Well! He thinks they were there, obviously, when she died. And if that’s the case, maybe they were there when the others died too. Maybe the whole group thing wasn’t built around fantasies but is a way for them to relive something that actually happened. Maybe Nemo is the Kenwood Killer.’

Leanne leaned back in her chair and blew air out from her cheeks.

‘We’ll have to have your contact’s name, of course.’

Sally was already shaking her head. ‘No. He stays anonymous. That’s my deal with him. He hasn’t committed any crime. He’s just someone who has a compulsion he can’t help. He’s deeply ashamed of it. I’ve told you the name of this ring. It won’t take much for you to track them down, surely?’

Leanne pulled her mouth into a tight line. ‘No way. If this gang might be responsible for the murders, you are legally bound to tell us what you know and that means the identity of your source. If he’s really just an observer and a fantasist, he won’t have anything to worry about.’

‘The others will kill him. His life won’t be safe.’

‘We can try to sort out some protection. But obviously our main priority is the children out there who could be at risk from these people if what you say is true. You
have
to give up your source, Sally. Or else you might find you’re going down with him.’

33

‘Are you completely positive?’

Shock was causing Rory’s voice to come out several notches higher than normal.

‘Yeah, bro, I checked the number against your addy list in your phone. Her name’s Jemima Reid. She’s the one been sending you all that shit. You know this nutter? You gonna get the police involved?’

‘Nah, man. I’ll deal with it. Listen, how much do I owe you?’

‘It’s on the house, bro.’

For a horrible moment Rory thought he might cry at this simple act of generosity. Sanjeev looked a bit overcome too. He started scrolling intently through his phone which is exactly what Rory did whenever he was trying to avert a public display of emotion. Rory toyed with the idea of slapping him on the back, but in the end kept his hands firmly wedged in his pockets, while all around them in the playground kids in black blazers streamed past on their way back into the school building.

‘Nice one,’ he said.

‘Yeah, all right.’ Sanjeev didn’t look up.

Rory should by rights have been heading in for double geography but the thought of two hours revising flood plains and river basins was insupportable. A few weeks ago they’d been on a school trip to the Thames Barrier. Some schools got to go to Madagascar and the North Pole for their trips, but they went on the tube to see a great big concrete wall. He started towards the school doors, but at the last minute swung round and walked quickly in the opposite direction towards the gates. He’d never cut classes, not even in the worst time just after Megan died when he would have had an excellent excuse and no one would have made a fuss, but weirdly that was when he had most wanted to be in school, listening to stuff about recurring numbers and Shakespearean fatalism. Today, however, he just couldn’t stomach it.