The Silent Ones (13 page)

Darren sat still, considering. ‘Was Isla like her father? What were Carly and her like together?’

She sat back. ‘Inseparable. Carly adored Isla.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Isla seemed much older than Carly. She was like her father, opinionated, willful.’

‘You sound like you thought she was a bad influence.’

She shook her head. ‘Not at all. I don’t mean to sound negative. Isla was great fun, the life and soul of the party, so to speak. She was very bright, very focused, not into boys at all. She was – I don’t know how to say it – political isn’t the right word, but she was angry. Rebelling against her father, his money, his success. She was contemptuous of it. It was as if she wanted a different kind of life. She was a romantic, an idealist. She hated anything run of the mill. I thought I was lucky, lucky that Carly had found a friend who was above the usual boys and make-up trivia. That’s why I let them go off on their own a lot, they were growing up.’

‘Where were they going all the time?’

She smiled sadly. ‘To the skate park, the pier, Isla’s house, the usual places fourteen-year-olds go. Carly was always back on time, her homework was always done. She was never any bother to me. She was a good girl.’ She paused, staring out of the window, and sighed. ‘I really believe she loved Isla. Teenage friendships can be as strong a bond as women ever know.’

She reached forward and picked up a letter from the coffee table, obviously keen to change the subject. ‘I’ve got a date for my mastectomy. It’s next Wednesday at St George’s Hospital.’

Darren reached over and hugged her. ‘Dad and I will both be there, don’t worry.’

She rubbed her hands together. ‘Assuming he hasn’t left me by then.’ It was a weak joke and neither of them could raise a smile.

‘I’ll make you a tea, Mum.’

She followed him into the kitchen.

‘What’s that knocking sound in there?’ Mum was staring at the washing machine. Darren stood in front of it, scared the Roehampton logo might twist into view.

‘Something of CJ’s that he wanted cleaned.’

‘Something he doesn’t want his mum to see,’ she tutted. ‘Why’s it on boil?’

‘Oh, yeah, silly me.’

‘Honestly, Darren, you’ll shrink it.’

Darren stood in front of the machine, feeling the heat burn through his trousers. He didn’t move away but stayed with the pain. This was how it felt having seen Olivia, as though he was out of his depth and he was going to get burned.

‘Where’s the car key? I have to go out later.’

The knocking sound got louder.

Mum saw his stricken face.

‘Tell me it’s not in the washing machine, Darren!’

Later that evening Darren repaired his bike puncture and then looked up John Sears on the internet. There were hundreds of people called that on Facebook and Twitter, and after a long search he had still found no one who matched this befriender. Google turned up nothing useful either. The charity premises John lived above helped refugees in London fleeing the former Yugoslavia. Even twenty years after the civil war, the upheaval was still being felt, communities still shattered, money still needed. He read about befrienders; they were part of organisations that helped offenders adapt to release back into the community, a sounding board for long-term prisoners or lifers to talk about their problems. Their meetings with offenders were one-on-one.

Next Darren went to work on the spot where Molly had been buried. He printed out a map of the site and cross-referenced it with every detail he could find or knew about Olivia’s former life. He marked Olivia’s house at the top corner. Molly had been buried less than ten miles from where she grew up. He looked at the roads snaking away across the Downs, traced a finger along the most obvious route from her house in Brighton.

Why did she bury Molly there? If he could answer that, he was nearer to finding where the other girls were. Were they nearby?

What his mum had said about Orin Bukowski came back to him. Orin knows more than anyone. He knows as much as the police, if not more. Darren needed to meet Orin Bukowski, and he needed to go back to Roehampton. He gazed again at the map. After only a few visits he had unlocked this much of the case; he would continue to go to Roehampton until he was chased from the place by the threat of imminent discovery.

T
he man was parked behind a Renault 16 estate in a street with concreted-over gardens, weeds straining up through the cement desert. He was in the hinterland near Heathrow, planes punctuating the milky sky every four and a half minutes. Old habits were hard to break; he’d started counting the intervals between them as soon as he’d stopped the car.

It had been a strange day; the body of a young girl had been found and his speculations about the case had brought on the itch, the crazy itch that stopped him sleeping and sent him mad. The itch had got so bad he couldn’t contain it any longer.

Gert Becker had fobbed him off and he had been driven to other sources, which he had to check out thoroughly. The house had blinds that looked as if they were permanently drawn, upstairs and down. He had checked the licence plates of the cars parked outside already, having driven past here earlier in the day in a different vehicle. There was nothing flagged up on them in the computer system at work.

He had done the usual scan of the road and the house – checking for cameras, marks on concrete or the sides of buildings that showed where things had been moved, vans that didn’t look right – and had driven away.

He had come back at ten thirty, in a different car, wearing a baseball cap. He walked up between the cars, rang the bell, saw the dark shadow pass in front of the spyhole. The door opened a crack, a chain hanging under the Bulgarian’s face like a noose round a neck. Every cultural group had a speciality in something, and the Bulgarians were cornering the market in this type of fresh produce.

The Bulgarian didn’t talk, just scanned the street, and he was let in.

He was in a shabby suburban semi with a narrow hall table covered in fast food leaflets, a stained carpet on the stairs, gold strips of something cheap from one celebration or another hanging in a living room that was crowded with a grey leather sofa and recliner.

The Bulgarian made him take off his shoes before he led him up the stairs. Being a stickler for dirt was ironic considering the smell from the bathroom and the faint tang of something sweet, heroin probably, that hung around the top corridor.

The Bulgarian opened the door to the main bedroom at the front of the house. There were five products sat on the bed, all in sparkly miniskirts, their bare arms and legs sticking out at awkward and defeated angles.

The Bulgarian shouted something sharp and they looked up, allowing him to see the glazed and vacant eyes on two of them. A third had a livid bruise on half of her face; someone’s fist had cost the Bulgarian a lot of money or two more weeks in this bedroom to get it to heal.

There was one at the end of the bed, her dark eyes huge in the dim light, her hair long and dark. He walked over and took a cursory glance at her forearms. She flinched with fear, which he liked. He picked up her foot, pulled her toes apart to check for hidden track marks. She was clean. ‘This one.’

The Bulgarian smiled. ‘It’s very good. We’ve turned down many offers for it. Been here three weeks. We wait for the right price.’

‘How old is it?’

‘Fourteen,’ he said proudly.

The Bulgarian was a liar of course, but it was a lie that missed by only a couple of years. ‘I’ll give you three and a half thousand.’

The Bulgarian made a scoffing noise. ‘You’re way out of line.’

He shrugged and turned his back, began to leave the room. Buying and selling was the same the world over, and had changed little over the centuries. A slave trader in ancient Rome would have immediately understood the haggling going on in Hounslow.

The Bulgarian called after him. ‘Four thousand and it’s yours.’

He had him now, keen to have the cash rather than the responsibility. Food and drugs were a cost they were always trying to cut back. ‘Three-six is my final offer.’

‘Done.’

He pulled the pack of notes out of his back pocket and handed them over. The Bulgarian flicked through the thick wad in a practised way, nodded and pulled the product up by her thin arm. She was shaking with fear but compliant; by the time they reached this place, both geographical and mental, they had learned to be.

They walked out of the bedroom. The remaining products on the bed either looked away or gazed at the floor.

She followed him in her bare feet down the stairs. Those feet were beginning to bother him. ‘You have something to cover those?’ he asked.

The Bulgarian barked into the kitchen at the back. A small boy came running out and saw the problem. He disappeared into the back again, emerging a few moments later with a pair of wellington boots.

The man frowned, causing the Bulgarian to shrug defensively. ‘It never came with packaging.’ The boy dropped the boots to the carpet and the girl put them on.

The Bulgarian opened the door and the man and the girl walked across the weedy front yard to the man’s car. He opened the passenger door for her and she got in. He walked round to the driver’s seat, got in and locked the doors. He took a careful look up and down the street as he adjusted the cuffs on his blue shirt. Then he drove his new toy away.

W
hen Darren arrived at Roehampton the next morning he felt scared, more scared than he would have thought possible. What had happened to Linda in here couldn’t be undone: the building appeared forbidding and ripe with danger. The lockers in the changing room seemed to clang extra loudly, the wheels on the creaking cleaning trolleys squeaked more intensely. Lining up with the assembled cleaners by the first security door he had an attack of claustrophobia, and wondered if he could cope with being shut up in there all day. It was only when Yassir patted him on the shoulder and said how sorry he was about what had happened, shaking his head in disbelief and resignation, that Darren felt better.

The promotion that Helen had given him at first seemed to mean little, but then Kamal took pity on him and gave him the offices on the first floor to clean. He took the cleaning trolley up in the lift and poked his head into the security room, but Sonny was on the phone and Corey had been replaced today by a man Darren didn’t recognise, so he began to dust the windowsills.

He cleaned in and out of several empty offices, shut up and stale as if no one ever worked there. Helen’s door was partly open and he walked in, but she was at her desk, pen in hand. She looked up and saw him and put the pen down. ‘Darren, come in, come in. I’m so glad you’ve decided to come back and to carry on. How are you feeling today?’

He nodded sheepishly, not sure what to say.

‘You might feel a little strange for a couple of days, that’s entirely normal.’ She smiled warmly. ‘Has the counselling service phoned you yet?’ He nodded. ‘Good. They can help you a lot, there’s a really good team there.’

Darren realised this was his opportunity to gain some information. ‘What did Linda do to be in here?’

Helen sat back in her chair, holding the silver pen. She remained silent, weighing her options. She put the pen carefully back on the table. ‘Linda forced drain cleaner down her daughter’s throat until she died.’ She swallowed. ‘You see the dark side of life in here, Darren. You can’t get away from that, I’m afraid.’

‘Did Linda do anything else?’

Helen stared at him. ‘Are you referring to the sexual abuse rumours concerning Linda and her daughter?’ Darren shrugged. Helen’s voice was calm and even. ‘Did Olivia refer to these allegations during your meeting?’ Darren said nothing, unsure how to proceed. ‘I hope I don’t need to remind you that Olivia Duvall is a very clever, manipulative individual with an inflated sense of her own self-worth. She cannot accept responsibility for what she has done and this manifests itself in all sorts of ways here at Roehampton.’

‘But is it true?’

Helen sat back. ‘You’re very persistent, Darren Smith.’ She said it like she was impressed. ‘Nothing was ever proved in court. We are professionals, and we can’t get distracted by innuendo and rumour.’

Darren had the uncomfortable sensation that Olivia had been telling the truth. He pressed on. ‘It was pretty amazing that Olivia revealed where that girl’s body was. Does that mean … I mean, is she likely to say where any of the others are?’

‘That’s impossible to predict. Clear-cut successes are rare, however much we would like it to be otherwise. My job is to treat my patients, not speculate.’ She was unforthcoming, but she was being kind, he thought. She had the self-awareness to know that after what had happened he was entitled to ask these questions. She smiled. ‘Come back in a little while to clean, I won’t be here long.’

Darren was about to leave when a woman appeared behind him in the doorway.

‘Helen? I hoped you’d be here.’

‘Milly! How wonderful to see you!’ Helen got out of her chair and came out into the corridor.

‘I was here doing an assessment and I heard you were in. I wanted to come and catch up …’ They walked off up the corridor together.

‘Shall I just do your office quickly?’ Darren called after Helen.

She turned back, distracted. ‘Yes, fine.’

There was a neat pile of files on Helen’s desk, and two coffee cups, both half drained. He picked up the cups and put them outside the door to take to the kitchen down the hall. The women were still further up the corridor, whispering now, Helen probably relaying the pain of a relationship lost.

Darren picked up the dustcloth and moved across to the desk. He glanced through the files; they were as he had hoped – patient records – but Olivia’s wasn’t there. He wiped the top of the lamp, sending a faint smell of burning dust across the room.

‘Such a cliché!’ Milly shrieked at something Helen said. Their voices were raised now, their conversation at an end. ‘We should have a drink, Helen, have a proper catch-up.’