No Place to Die
Authors: Clare Donoghue
No Place to Die
DI Mike Lockyer [2]
Clare Donoghue
(2015)
Jane Bennett, senior Detective Sergeant for the murder squad at her
London police precinct, is having a terrible day. Her boss, Detective
Inspector Mike Lockyer, has just returned to work after two weeks on
"leave," though Jane knows it was really more like a suspension. He's
still shaken by the loss of a victim in their last murder case, and Jane
is still stung that Lockyer didn't trust her enough to confide in her
about the case before it was too late.
But neither of them has the
luxury of time to dwell on past grievances. Jane has just received a
phone call from a good friend saying that her husband Mark Leech, a
retired policeman, has disappeared. When Jane finds dramatic blood
splatters in the laundry room, she knows Mark is seriously injured at
best, and they don't have any time to waste. And then the body of a
young girl is discovered in a tomb under a London greenway, and police
resources are stretched even thinner…until it starts to look like the
two cases might be related.
To my family and friends.
Your support means everything.
I thrust my arms wildly above and around me in all directions. I felt nothing: yet dreaded to move a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls of a tomb.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’
17th April
–
Thursday
Maggie tried to run, but she couldn’t feel her feet. Her breath felt warm against her cheeks as each step pushed air out of her lungs. He was behind her. She could smell him: an earthy, feral scent chasing her through a labyrinth of hedges, trees and bare brick. She saw a door up ahead, its red paint peeling away from the doorknob, as if repulsed. As she reached out, it shook, shivered and vanished. She screamed herself awake until she lay panting, her lungs burning.
She arched her back and let out a low groan, expelling the nightmare. Not even a street light penetrated the inky blackness of her room. Her tongue felt swollen and heavy in her mouth. Memories of the previous evening began to flit through her mind like a magic-lantern display. Had she had a lot to drink? She didn’t think so. She had been to his house. They had eaten dinner. He had been angry. They had fought. Then nothing: a void. She allowed her muscles to retract and draw her body back into a foetal position as she felt around for the duvet. Her hands felt heavy. Sleep was pulling at her, dragging her back under. She wanted to give in, but she was cold and yet she was sweating, her skin clammy beneath her cotton pyjamas. As she ran her hands over the freezing bed sheet she became conscious of a familiar odour. It was earthy – the smell of her parents’ front lawn after the rain. Her heart began to beat faster, a pain spreading and gripping her throat.
This wasn’t her bed.
She sat up, staring into the darkness. She reached up and touched her face. Her skin felt cool, slick, alien. ‘What?’ She turned her head from side to side, but there was no light to soften the darkness. ‘I can’t see. Please, help me.’ She stopped, her chest heaving. Her words sounded muted, almost lost by her leaden tongue. She listened. ‘What’s happening to me?’ Maggie tasted bile. It filled her mouth as adrenaline flooded her system. She tried to stand, but her head struck something solid above her. Her whole body was shaking, her teeth biting down on her tongue. She sat back and reached up, inching her hands higher and higher until they rested against a flat, marble-like surface. She pushed against it: no movement. She snatched her hands down and began rocking back and forth. ‘It’s all right. It’s okay.’ She drew her knees up to her chin, put her arms around her shins and held herself. Her head ached as she tried to pull her thoughts into focus. This wasn’t real. She was still dreaming. She began to count, slowing her breathing with each number, ignoring the aching in her bones and the slur in her voice.
When her shivering body had settled enough for her to move again, she turned, until she was on her hands and knees in the empty space. God, she hoped it was empty. The counting was helping, but she needed more – she needed to break the silence. She began to sing as she crawled, crab-like, to her right. ‘One little elephant came out one day, upon a spider’s web to play,’ her voice trembled. She closed her eyes and forced out the words, ‘He – he had such tremendous fun that he called upon another elephant to come. Two . . . two little elephants came out one day, upon a spider’s web to—’
She stopped, her head pulsing in rhythm with her voice as her hip struck something solid. With her palm flat, she crawled forward, running her fingers along the cool surface until she came to one corner, then another, and another, until she reached the fourth: the final wall enclosing her. She leaned closer, her nose pressed against the freezing surface. She took a deep breath. Soil, mud – it was earth, compacted earth, smoothed to a slick finish. ‘No, no . . . ’ Panic silenced her, like a shard of glass in her throat, tearing at the delicate tissue. An image of a grave flashed into her mind. She began to scream, all rational thought lost.
She screamed until she didn’t know if she was screaming at all.
22nd April
–
Tuesday
‘I know,’ she said, waiting for the next line in what was a well-rehearsed piece. ‘Yes, Mother, I’m aware of that.’ Jane looked at the clock on the bottom right-hand side of her computer screen. ‘I agree. I’ll call as soon as I leave.’ The seconds ticked by. ‘Yes, clean ones are in his room.’ She resisted the temptation to drum her fingers on the desk. ‘That’s right, where they’re always kept.’ Jane could sense other people in the office beginning to tune into her conversation. ‘Nothing. There was no tone. Sorry – yes, you’re right. I’ll be home soon.’ Almost there. She hoped. ‘Before eight. Yes. Okay. Yes. Good. Thanks, Mum. Bye.’
Detective Sergeant Jane Bennett put the phone back in its cradle, closed her eyes and let her head drop onto her desk with a thud.
Her mother didn’t object to looking after Peter. Far from it. She was ‘happy to help’. Jane would have the words engraved on her mother’s tombstone: ‘Celia Bennett, beloved wife, mother and grandmother. “Happy to help”.’ The image relaxed Jane’s shoulders and she smiled. The ten-minute ear-bashing she had just endured was routine. The caveat to her mother’s favourite phrase was full entitlement to bitch and moan whenever the mood struck. Jane didn’t mind. Her working life didn’t allow for routine, something that her son craved. She couldn’t be there all the time. So every pick, veiled dig, subtle criticism or direct assault that her mother levelled against her was worth it.
She lifted her head off the desk, using her fingertips to pull her fringe back into place. The heat of the day had all but gone. She turned and pulled her jacket off the back of her chair and slipped it on. Peter would be eight in June. When Jane looked at him she still saw the chubby, red-faced baby who was always hungry. That was before his autism had been diagnosed, before the invisible barrier separating mother and son had been explained. Eight years old. She couldn’t believe it. She would have to organize a party, get his friends over. Her mother would help. Jane rolled her eyes. It was an involuntary action, or rather a pre-emptive reaction to what her mother would say. She pushed the power button on her laptop and waited for it to shut down.
One quick meeting with department heads, a briefing with the team and then she should be able to head home. She slipped her laptop into her bag, surveying the files on her desk, deciding what she needed to take home with her. She wanted to be ready the second the briefing was over. Peter had already picked out a book for tonight’s bedtime story. A bedtime story that Jane had promised to read to him. Her eyes settled on the most current file on the Stevens case. She shook her head. A serial killer in Lewisham. Five women dead. She couldn’t get her head round it. The man responsible was behind bars, had been for two months, but it wasn’t over. Not yet.
She still had one girl to find.
The young woman’s face had been a shadow, following Jane wherever she went. She picked up the file and two memory sticks and pushed them into her bag. It would take months – years – to erase the images that she and the rest of the team had witnessed. The killer’s two-bedroom semi could have been wallpapered with all the photographs found in his home-made darkroom. The majority were shots of his victims, names and faces Jane knew well, but there were a handful of pictures showing girls that no one knew. It was her job to identify and find them, to make sure they had been photographed – and nothing more. Two girls had been found safe and well, but the third? Only time would tell. Jane looked up and spotted her boss, DI Mike Lockyer, walking towards her. He returned her smile, but his pale skin and shadowed eyes didn’t match his expression.
‘Jane,’ he said, resting his arms on the partition that separated her desk from the rest of the open-plan office. ‘How are you getting on with the Schofield case?’
‘We’re pretty much there, sir,’ she said, reaching for the corresponding case file on her desk. ‘The husband’s with the custody sergeant downstairs. I don’t think it’ll take much to get him to talk.’ She watched Lockyer nod, rubbing his eyebrow, his fingers tugging at the skin around his eye. He had lost weight. He had the look of a sheet that had been left in the dryer too long: crumpled.
‘Are you leaving him for the morning then?’ he asked, no longer looking at her, his eyes no longer engaged.
‘Yes, in fact I was going to suggest Chris ran the interview,’ she said, putting the file back in its place, straightening the edges with her palms. She could see that he wasn’t really interested. In fact he had just about got by doing the bare minimum, since his return to the office three weeks ago.
He was shaking his head, staring across the office. ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate, Jane, do you?’ he said. ‘Once Schofield’s admitted it, maybe; but to send Chris in at this stage – before we know we’ve got enough evidence to convict, with or without a confession – is just a risk. A risk I’m surprised you’re prepared to take, considering the mess the guy made of the wife. Have you even looked at the crime-scene images?’