'Dripping with authenticity. Packed full of characters you genuinely care about . . . I didn't read the last few chapters, I devoured them. An absolute triumph' M. W. CRAVEN
_____________________
Three can keep a secret. If two of them are dead...
Two women are snatched off the streets of London in one weekend.
DI Charlie George and his team get to work. The lives of these young women - one of them a mother - are on the line, and the clock is ticking.
When they catch a lucky break from a CCTV camera, Charlie is sure they have their man. And that's when he gets his first surprise. Because nothing about this case is simple and not everyone is quite what they seem.
Charlie's job is to find the missing women and get to the truth.
But some people would rather the truth stays hidden - even when the bodies start to pile up...
_____________________ Praise for Colin Falconer
'A compelling piece of crime fiction . . . An entertaining and gritty read' 4 stars, Netgalley reader
'This one doesn't disappoint!' 5 stars, Netgalley reader
'It held my attention from start to finish . . . I have no hesitation in recommending' 4 stars, Netgalley reader
'Once you read [a] Colin Falconer [book], you'll want to read everything he's ever written' Crystal Book Reviews
'Falconer's grasp of period and places is almost flawless ... He's my kind of writer' Peter Corris, The Australian
'You are in for a real roller-coaster ride of never ending intrigue'History and Women
Charlie parked the car and looked at his watch: three in the morning, as good a time as any to slip into God’s waiting room. No other cars in the car park, just his and the nurses’. He dragged himself out from behind the wheel, way past tired, made his way towards the splash of light from the foyer. He punched the security code into the keypad and went in.
If you had a dead body, the job would keep, you could close your eyes for a few hours at least. But when you knew your victim might still be alive, there was no way you could rest, even for a minute. Nothing to reasonably achieve before the rest of the crew gets back in, but you keep worrying and worrying at it anyway, can’t sleep for thinking about the one thing you might have missed.
The foyer was the size of a football pitch. The nurse at the reception desk peered at him over the top of her glasses. She looked calm, but that expression on her face, he knew her finger was hovering over the alarm button.
‘Can I help you?’ she said, when he was still only halfway there.
What was her name again? Anna, that was it.
‘Morning, Anna,’ he said.
‘It’s Hannah,’ with a frown.
‘Right. I’m here to see Mrs George. I’m her son. You rang me earlier.’
She looked at her screen. ‘That was at one o’clock.’
‘I couldn’t get away.’
‘She’s asleep now. We managed to get her settled.’
‘Well, I’m here now. Can I see her?’
‘Don’t wake her up.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘She’s in Room …’
‘Two oh three. Yeah, I know.’
The door to her room was half open; almost seventy and she still couldn’t sleep alone in the dark. He remembered all the beltings he got as a kid for asking to have a light on. There’s no such thing as monsters.
Oh yes there is.
She had a night light; Ben had bought it for her. Charlie stood in the doorway and looked around. Christ, looks like the London Dungeon in here, he thought, all her holy martyr pictures on the walls. Michael must have brought her a few more since the last time he’d been in. No wonder she needed a night light.
Ma lay on her back, her mouth open, her teeth out. Her hair was getting thin. When did she get so ancient? She wasn’t really all that old. The doctors reckoned it was the Alzheimer’s.
He’d asked them how people got it; they said it was just one of those things. But was it, was it one of those things? Or was it getting slapped upside the head every Saturday night from the old man? He’d read in the papers about old soccer players having a greater incidence of dementia because of those big leather footballs they used to head all the time. If you could get Old Timer’s from that, then what were her chances? His old man’s fists were a lot harder than a wet football; he knew that from personal experience.
He kissed her on the forehead. ‘Hello, Ma. It’s me. How are you then, all right?’
She was well away. He undid his coat and sat down on the chair by the bed. It was nice to get some peace and quiet at last. This was the proper business. First minute all day he’d had to himself.
‘Sorry I didn’t get in earlier. I had a Gold Group meeting with the brass about this missing girl. Then I was staring at the computer all night, mostly witness statements, trying to figure out if I’ve missed something. It’s like trying to do the Times crossword, only a lot bleedin’ harder, know what I mean? Time got away from me.’
He stroked a wisp of white hair off her face. He supposed she wasn’t so much old as worn out, poor old thing. It did that to you, living in fear twenty-four hours a day. Funny, this, her losing her memory. Well, ironic, more like. She’d spent most of her life trying hard not to remember, just to stay sane.
‘They reckon the first forty-eight hours is when you have to find them,’ he said aloud. ‘If they’re still alive, that is. They call it the golden hour. I don’t know why; it should be the golden weekend.’ He checked his watch. ‘I’ve got till midnight.’
He leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes. Twenty-one hours. Not a chance in hell.
No, can’t start thinking like that, must stay positive.
‘See, thing is with this job, you’re always second-guessing yourself. If it all goes pear-shaped, I’ll be thinking about this later, wondering if I could have done things different. And I know I’ll think of something. Only I want to think of it now, not when it’s too late. Or maybe that’s the Mick in me, always feeling guilty, even when it’s not my fault.’
There was a Daily Mirror lying on the bedside table. He picked it up. The girl’s picture was there on the front page, smiling at him. ‘Looks like a nice young girl, don’t she? Not Mother Teresa, I don’t suppose, but just out having a good time, and now look. Only nineteen years old. It’s not right. Her car broke down the other side of Wandsworth Common. She called her boyfriend to come and get her, and while she was waiting, some bloke in a white van got out and grabbed her. She shouldn’t have got out of her car, should she? But that’s hindsight, we can all be clever with hindsight. Someone saw it, saw the whole thing, got the rego and everything. But here’s the thing: the number plate he reckoned he saw belongs to a vicar in Dumfries. Easy to make a mistake, I suppose; it was dark, and the van had its lights off. But Jesus Christ.’
Would have got a belt round the ear for blaspheming, once. He still wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d opened one eye and given him a swift backhander. But she was right out of it. She looked so peaceful when she was asleep, not agitated any more.
‘Done everything right, I know I have. But it’ll be down to me if we find her wrapped in plastic in a skip. No one will say it, but they’ll think it. I’ll think it.’
He stood up and went to the window. Pitch black out there, he couldn’t see a thing. He went back to his chair, then got up again, couldn’t help himself.
‘We checked all the sex offenders in a two-mile radius of where she was grabbed. You wouldn’t believe how many we found. Reckon half of London’s criminally deviant. We think the van is a Ford Transit. What we do, see, is we check all the roads that lead to where she was taken, then all the roads out. There’s cameras everywhere now, not like in your day. But you can’t find a vehicle if you don’t have a registration, unless it’s a pink and white Batmobile. You want to know how many Ford Transits there are in London? Still, you don’t want to hear my troubles. What was it you used to say? Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.’
He turned away from the window. ‘It’s bloody murder, this. Because I can’t stop thinking: she’s out there somewhere. What is he doing to her right now? And her poor parents. I bet they’re not sleeping. So why should I? I know that doesn’t make any sense, because my guv’nor expects me to be wide awake and ready to do my job when I get into the office in the morning.’
He stood over the bed, stroked her arm.
‘By the way, Ben’s organising a surprise party for you next Sunday. He said not to tell you. I said, what’s the point of not telling you, how is she going to remember a surprise birthday party when she doesn’t even remember who she is? I said to him, Ma could organise the party herself and it’d still be a surprise. No disrespect.’
He looked at his watch. He should go home and try to get some sleep. No point hanging around here.
‘They rang me up earlier, reckoned you lost your purse again. Always losing your purse, aren’t you, you silly bugger. I keep telling you, you don’t need your purse in here, it’s like one of those cruises you always wanted to go on, everything’s paid for. But I suppose I’d better find it, seeing as how I’m here.’
He started going through her drawers, looking in all the usual places, under her unmentionables, as she called them, behind the ancient portable television she had on a stand in the corner.
Next he pulled open all the drawers in her dresser. It was full of old photograph albums. Quaint. Some of the old ducks in here showed off their grandchildren by flicking through the gallery on their iPhones. Not his mum. She still preferred the old-fashioned way; on the good days, anyway, when she remembered she had kids.
He found Michael’s baby book. There was a lock of his hair and a record of his first word. Mum. Well, Michael was always a traditionalist. The fact that there even was such a book surprised him. Perhaps their family had been normal once.
He looked for a baby book with ‘Charlie’ written on the front, but there wasn’t one. No prizes for seconds, he supposed. He found a handful of Kodak wallets with negatives and prints, held together with an elastic band.
There was a photo of him in his soccer kit, the Arsenal shirt his old man had bought him. He’d never forget that shirt, it had ‘O’Leary’ printed on the back. Who was he kidding? O’Leary had been a proper player back in the day. Charlie had been more like Tony Adams, shouting at the referee and kicking lumps out of the other team’s centre forward.
The big surprise was finding Mr Rocastle, the teddy bear he’d had as a kid. It was fair tatty now, had lost an ear and an eye, looked more like a robber’s dog than anyone’s teddy. Bit like its original owner. He used to carry that thing around with him everywhere when he was a kid, until his old man told him only nancy boys had teddy bears.
He couldn’t believe she’d kept it.
He tossed it back in the drawer. No sign of the purse. Where had she put it last time? He opened the freezer compartment of the little refrigerator in the corner, where she kept the milk.
Bingo.
He put it on her bedside table and flopped back into the chair next to the bed. Mustn’t think about the girl any more, he thought. She would wait until morning, which by the way was only three and a half hours away. He should be getting off in a minute.
He didn’t remember falling asleep. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t. He dreamed he was watching CCTV on his laptop and the driver of a white van got out and started strangling a young woman right there in front of him. He tried to stop him, but his legs were too heavy and he couldn’t move.
A nurse woke him at a few minutes after six, shaking him by the shoulder, said he’d been shouting in his sleep and frightened his mother. He apologised and left. He had to get back to the office. He looked at his watch as he ran across the car park.
Eighteen hours of his golden hour left.
Daniel Howlett came down the stairs, his hair still wet from the shower. He looked like a model, she thought, with his long dark hair and brooding eyes. Funny how Ollie was the spitting image. He was a real heartbreaker, was Danny, until he opened his mouth. Then it was your soul he more or less tore apart.
He leaned over her, took a bite of her toast, put the car key fob in his pocket. He was wearing his Hugo Boss shirt and chinos, immaculate as always. He looked her up and down. ‘Is that what you’re wearing?’
‘What do you want me to wear round the house?’
‘Not that. You know what I like. Something a bit more feminine.’
‘I’ll go and change.’
‘No point, I’m going out now.’
She cut up some more toast for Ollie and put it on his plate. ‘You were late home last night.’
‘Was I?’
He checked his look in the hall mirror.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m playing golf with Taj and a couple of other blokes from the office. Taj has got us in at Walton Heath. Always wanted to play there.’
‘What time will you be home?’
‘I don’t know. I won’t be late. Ania will be here at seven.’
‘Ania? Tonight?’
He checked the weather app on his phone, fetched his rain jacket from the hall cupboard. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.’
‘I’ve got a lot on my mind.’
‘Like what?’
‘Everything. What are we going to do with Ollie?’
‘Ines can look after him, can’t she?’
‘It’s her day off.’
‘Call her, tell her you need her tonight. She won’t be doing anything anyway.’
‘She said she’s going into London. With her boyfriend.’
‘She’s got a boyfriend? She looks like Ozzy Osbourne.’
‘She’s going to one of her meetings or rallies or something.’
‘What is it this time, Save the Shark?’
‘I don’t know. Climate change, I think.’
‘Climate change. Another name for the weather.’
Sarah wiped Ollie’s face with a damp cloth, poured some apple juice into his sip cup and clipped on the lid. She put it down in front of him. ‘So, you want me to ring her?’
‘If you can make time in your busy day.’
‘What shall I say?’
‘She’s always complaining she doesn’t have enough money.’
‘Can’t we just put Ania off for tonight?’
‘Worst comes to the worst, we’ll leave Oliver in his room, give him something to help him sleep. What’s that stuff you use on the plane? Phenergan or something. He’ll be all right.’
‘The doctor said the Phenergan is only for when he’s sick.’
‘Giving him drugs is good training. Get him used to living in London.’
Ollie knocked his sip cup over and the lid came off. The juice spilled and dribbled off the table onto the tiles. He started bawling. Sarah tore off a strip of paper towel and got down onto her knees to clean it up.
‘I’ll be home before seven,’ Danny said and walked out.
The plasma TV was turned on in the other room, on mute, the breakfast news; more about the poor young woman who had been abducted in Wandsworth. There was shaky video of a car skewed across the road with the driver’s door wide open, police patrol cars with flashing lights, blue and white tape. The vision changed to a police conference room, a tough-looking man in a sharp suit reading from a script while news cameras flashed, a ticker scrolling across the bottom with numbers for the police incident room and Crimestoppers.
Somewhere, the detective said, a woman was being held prisoner.
Ollie started to cry.
Nice out here in the country. When she turned off the A12, there were lanes with hedges and fields and animals, white sign-posts with pretty names like Ingatestone and Margaretting. Sometimes Sarah thought she’d like to just drive, not to go anywhere, just stay in the car and never have to stop and talk to anyone, or do anything.
She reached his turn-off, but she didn’t want to see him yet, it was too soon, so she pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. She wound down the window. She could hear birds and a tractor in a field, the sound of insects in the hedgerow.
She looked in the rear-view mirror. Ollie was asleep in his car seat behind her. Easy to pretend he was normal when he was like that; he looked so peaceful, like any other little boy.
She closed her eyes, the sun on her face, dappled through the oak trees. A car went past and sounded its horn. She only had two wheels on the road, what was their problem? People, she thought. No one gives an inch any more.
Better go, he was expecting her.
She started the engine; the radio was playing the end of a Bruce Springsteen song, about a man with a wife and kids who went out for a drive and never went home again. Almost two hundred thousand people went missing every year in Britain, or that was what she’d read in a magazine she’d picked up in the doctor’s surgery. I wonder how many of them never want to be found?
She liked the last verse best.
Ain't nobody like to be alone.
The gravel crunched under her tyres as she pulled into her father’s drive. Liked living out here, he did, playing the country squire. Back when they lived in Hackney and he was out driving cabs every day, he always said he’d like to live in the country one day. She never thought he’d actually do it.
Danny had raised his eyebrows when he first saw it: two storeys, big stone fireplace, love seat round the back and a new Range Rover Sport parked out front. Nice bit of garden too, almost half an acre, a gazebo with a weeping willow, fruit trees, even some old raspberry cages. Mum would die if she saw it; well, she would have if she hadn’t already passed.
He came out in a cardigan. Look at him, it’d be wellies and a flat cap next, start gobbing on about Brexit and Pakis.
‘Hello, sweetheart, haven’t seen you for ages, thought maybe you’d gone abroad and hadn’t told me.’ He held out his arms as she got out. ‘Doesn’t your old man get a proper hello, then?’
She hugged him, leaning in but making it quick, before she could get caught up, then pushed away again.
‘Where’s my little Ollie?’
‘He’s in the back. He’s asleep, don’t wake him up.’
He leaned in and ruffled Ollie’s hair. It woke him up. ‘Ollie, look who it is. It’s your grandpa.’ He unbuckled his seat belt and lifted him out. ‘I think he recognised me. He smiled.’ He tossed him up in the air. ‘Hello, Ollie!’
‘Careful, you know he gets car sick. He’ll throw up all over you.’
‘Come on in, I’ll put the telly on for him.’
There was a hall table inside the front door with half a dozen framed photographs, all of her: her first day at school; playing teddy bear’s picnic in the garden of their two-up, two-down in Hackney; in a school hockey uniform with braces on her teeth; blowing out the candles on her sixteenth birthday. Danny had called it her shrine. He’d only been here once; her dad had never invited him back.
I don’t want that bastard ever setting foot in my house again.
She followed him into the kitchen.
‘How’s Daniel?’ he said.
‘Same.’
‘You two been fighting again?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘It’s written all over your face.’
‘Wasn’t anything.’
‘Doesn’t hit you, does he? If he ever hurts you, I’ll be round there so fast it will make his head spin.’
‘He won’t hurt me, Dad.’
‘What was it about this time?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Just marriage stuff.’
‘Where was Ollie when all this was happening?’
‘Dad, Ollie’s fine. He wouldn’t understand anyway.’
‘Whatever you say. Do you want coffee? I just got one of those machines with pods.’
‘For God’s sake, you didn’t?’
‘What?’
‘They’re crap for the environment. The pods end up in landfill.’
‘Well, that’s why we have land. What about a cup of tea, then? I’ve got special tea bags, guaranteed not to make the ice caps melt, it says so on the packet. I’ll put the kettle on.’
She checked on Ollie. He was sitting cross-legged on the carpet in the living room, watching Small Potatoes on CBeebies. Dad had done it nice, she’d give him that; restored the timber fireplace, bought himself some black leather sofas, real expensive ones, a view of the gazebo through the French windows.
When she looked up, he was standing in the doorway, smiling. ‘Lovely, eh?’
‘Yeah, it’s proper nice.’
‘Better than living in Clapham.’
‘Bit far out is all.’
‘You don’t have to live there. Honest, I don’t know why you’re wasting your time with that … prat.’
‘Stuck with him now. Sometimes I wish I’d been more like Jackie.’
‘Come off it. You want to live in a grotty little flat in Romford?’
‘At least she’s got a career.’
‘A career! She’s a bloody nurse.’
‘And no one tells her what to do.’
‘Why don’t you leave him?’
‘How can I?’
‘People get divorced all the time, sweetheart. You could walk away with half, you’ll be all right.’
‘Half of what? You know how much the mortgage is on our place in Clapham? Danny is up to his eyeballs.’
‘That’s what he tells you. I’ll bet he has enough squirrelled away somewhere.’
‘He’ll never let me go, Dad.’
‘You’re not scared of him, are you?’
‘Maybe. A bit.’
‘You don’t have to be. Come home. I’ll look after you till you get yourself sorted.’
‘No, Dad.’
‘Your room’s just like you left it.’
‘I’m not a little girl any more. Anyway, you know I can’t.’
‘Don’t say that. Look, I know you and me, we had some problems when you were a teenager and that, but I’ve changed now, I’m different. Everything will be all right.’
‘I’m not coming home. I know you mean well, but it’ll only start up again, you know it will.’
‘Oh sweetheart,’ he said. He put his arms around her. ‘Don’t cry. Everything’s going to be all right. I’ll look after you.’
‘I don’t want you to look after me!’ She untangled herself. ‘Don’t.’
‘No one will ever love you like I do, you know that. Ever since you were a little girl, I’ve only wanted the best for you. Your uncle Joe, he’d say to me sometimes, “Tone, you’re a soft touch when it comes to that girl. Twists you right round her little finger.” Remember we used to sit down and have a tea party with all your teddy bears on the living-room rug. Remember?’
‘Yeah, I remember, Dad.’
‘“Grown man,” Joey used to say, “playing tea parties. Who’d have thought? If your mates down the pub could see you now.”’ The kettle whistled in the kitchen. ‘I’d better get that,’ he said.
Sarah picked Ollie up off the floor. Christ, he was heavy. She walked out with him and put him in his booster seat in the back of the car. She fastened his seat belt and jumped in the driver’s seat, flicked on the central locking.
Her dad came rushing out. ‘Love, where are you going?’
She felt herself choking up. Don’t cry, she thought, don’t give him the satisfaction.
‘Love?’ He banged on the window, ran after her as she was driving away. She caught a glimpse of his face in the rear-view mirror. She dug her nails into the palm of her hand. She shouldn’t have come today, it was a mistake.
Everything was just one big fucking mistake.
Sarah had Ollie in a sling. He was way too big for it, but it was the only way she could carry him around these days; he screamed if she left him in the pushchair too long. She sat down on a bench to wait for the bears to come out. There was only one of them today, playing on the tyre swing.
Ollie reached out a hand.
‘She looks cuddly, doesn’t she, Ollie? But you wouldn’t want to go down there. She’s really fierce.’ Sarah made a growling noise and curled her hand into a claw. ‘They’ll eat you all up.’
He thought that was funny.
She liked it here: no one to stare at her, no one to worry her or touch her. Just her and Ollie. It was the best time, during the week. There were not so many people.
She still felt a bit shaken up. There had been a woman with a little girl in the souvenir shop when she was buying their tickets. The girl wasn’t much older than Ollie and she was staring and staring.
Then she said: ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Nothing.’ Sarah had taken her tickets from the woman at the desk and hurried out. She. . .
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