Because She Looked Away

Book 1: Ronnie Blake

by Alison Bruce

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

After the sudden death of her sister, devastated detective DS Ronnie Blake relocates to Cambridge to help her brother Alex raise their sister's young son, Noah. She reports for her first day but instead finds herself being questioned by a special investigations unit, nicknamed the DEAD Team.
With a small group of six, led by DI Butterworth, the once-successful DEAD team has a single outstanding case, Operation Byron, and the failure to resolve it threatens the unit's existence. Their most promising lead is an anonymous note linking three seemingly unconnected people: a convicted fraudster, a dead academic... and Ronnie's sister Jodie.
When Ronnie is denied information about Operation Byron, she follows a lead slipped to her by Malachi, the youngest member of the team, and makes a discovery which links Operation Byron to a disturbing unsolved murder. She is rapidly drawn into an intricate web of deceit, buried secrets and tragedy and the discovery that her connection to Cambridge is far darker than she could ever have guessed.

Praise for Alison Bruce

'Alison Bruce always delivers. Her latest is tense, twisty, terrific' Ian Rankin

' [Alison Bruce] has written a superior thriller, full of suppressed menace' The Times Crime Club

'A powerful and absorbing story that stayed with me long after I'd finished reading. A writer at the top of her game' Elly Griffiths

'Unpredictable, challenging and compelling' Sophie Hannah

'Alison Bruce has long been one of the most adroit crime fiction practitioners in the UK. The Moment Before Impact is . . . her most accomplished outing yet' Barry Forshaw, Financial Time

'As always, Bruce produces a rewarding read' The Times

'I Did It For Us held me from the off. It's compelling, slickly plotted and brilliantly written' Amanda Jennings

'One of our most interesting crime writers' Daily Mail

Release date: July 31, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 100000

Sample

Twenty-four years ago

There were snippets, fragments too small to mean anything. A pause before her mother had answered that was a moment too long and a flash of a mismatch between expression and reply. And then her ever-warm hands, which had become cold and restless. They didn’t clasp properly. They didn’t wrap around in a comforting way. Instead, they gripped, claw-like, mechanical, as though the wiring had too much electricity flowing through it.

Her sentences grew shorter and more frequently ended with a question mark.

Ronnie supposed when she looked back on that morning and overlaid those little signs, that they had been enough to sharpen her wits. That together they had made the difference.

The memory of that day was pieced together. It had been fragments, little snippets of the picture that had been accumulated and assembled after countless hours of therapy.

Children’s minds could be open to suggestion. False memories could be implanted. But she was confident that none of these images were anything but the real thing.

October the fourteenth had been cold, dismal, wet. A dirty north London day and their mother had bundled them in coats and scarves, thick layers that made their arms sit wide of their sides. Ronnie remembered the scarf, close to her mouth, getting dewy with the dampness of her breath. And the urgency as they walked, one on either side of their mother who towed them along, at not quite a run, but faster than a walk. Every few yards, Ronnie remembered scuttling forward a little, working hard to keep up, and it must have been worse for her brother George. He was three and she was five and that much taller.

It was the route they went on when they occasionally visited their grandmother in central London. Ronnie hated visiting her grandmother. She was frail and angry and never remembered who either of them was. And the visit there was always preceded with false excitement. Lots of build-up, lots of reluctance on her part. There had been none of that on this particular day. But she had known they were headed somewhere.

As an adult Ronnie had gone back many times and had retraced the steps she’d taken in the few hundred yards up to Highgate Station. The road was straight, lined with a variety of shops. Busy pavement, busy road, grubby everything and perpetually noisy.

She’d never understood what she’d expected from those visits but once, maybe twice a year for years she’d felt compelled to walk along that pavement in the hope of non-existent answers.

Her brother had begun to cry, somewhere in the last hundred yards she guessed.

Half sob, half whine. She remembered being miserably silent and wanting him just to shut up. She’d said nothing, though, and when they reached the station, her mother had maintained her tight grip on each of them. And she’d still wanted her brother to be quiet but at the same time, she’d recognised that he’d been voicing the misery that she had felt, the drudge that the day was to become.

He wailed that he wanted to go home. She stood wondering where they were going but said nothing. Apparently, they weren’t long like that. The way she remembered it, they could have been standing there for hours, but apparently it was three minutes and twenty-six seconds.

Three minutes and twenty-six seconds between stepping onto the platform and their mum hauling them across it and trying to fling all three of them into the path of the 10.26 through-train.

And that final part she didn’t remember. Could never and would never remember, she was sure of that. She only knew the outcome. That in those seconds, her little brain pieced everything together, and that she’d squirmed and fought her way from her mother’s grasp.

A single sound stuck in her head.

A certain frequency that occasionally she would hear, even now, and it would send her cold. Whether it was the scream of the train, the scream of her mother, her brother, bystanders even. Or all of them rolled together. A dirty, heavy, deafening, all-encompassing squeal of something that marked the end of everything.

Her mum had called her Veronica that day. The name she used when she was angry or tense or brewing up to one of her tempers. She had never been Veronica since. Would never be. From that day onwards, she was Ronnie. And she was on her own.

Ronnie hauled her oversized suitcase from the luggage bay of the coach. It had pulled to the kerb on a treelined road bordering a large green. She stepped back, out of the way of the other passengers as the driver reunited them with their luggage. She needed a minute to catch her breath.

Light was rapidly fading, and the pavement was damp and the grass glossy under the streetlamps. The smell of wet mud rose to meet her; fresh, natural and nothing like the air in London, which hung heavy with a cocktail of traffic and people, and their daily lives. Here the air seemed clear and empty as though she could take a deep breath and have time just to focus on her own life. The thought of it terrified her; she had never run her life that way.

Instead, she had kept her head down and worked her way through eight years of investigating serious crime with her personal life trailing behind like a tatty rag. She’d liked it like that, hadn’t wanted it any other way. She had never expected to be snatched up and thrown on a different path, landing in Cambridge to live with her half-brother and their sister’s child, Noah.

This was the first time she’d set foot in the place despite opportunities to visit her brother in the past. She knew no more about the city than the next person. Less in fact. Until this morning, she had thought it the home of the dreaming spires, only to discover that the title belonged to its closest rival.

She didn’t have high expectations; as far as she could work out Cambridge was a bunch of medieval buildings sitting in a pancake of land, probably packed with rich and entitled students, little crime and a Neanderthal police force.

The passengers dispersed and the coach’s hydraulics hissed as its doors shut and it pulled into the traffic. It had been obscuring her view of the opposite side of the road, and it was only then that she realised she was facing Parkside Police Station. It was a coal-coloured lump of a building which looked as though it had been prefabricated and dumped as a single block. It managed to look both out of place among the other buildings and, at the same time, completely forgettable.

I’ll see you tomorrow, she thought and gave the building the smallest nod, also saying goodbye in that instant to everything she’d left in London; her hard-won career with the Met, her compact but well-ordered flat, her uncomplicated single life which allowed her to come and go as she pleased. She hoped it was all going to be worth it, not for her, but for her nephew Noah.

Noah was her half-sister Jodie’s son and Jodie was dead. It would have been far harder to let him down than to give up all those other things.

There was a short line of taxis further along the road. She wheeled her case towards the nearest, stooped to speak to the driver through his open window, ‘Victoria Park?’

He nodded and the journey began.

Ronnie’s half-brother Alex had bought the property in Victoria Park about two years earlier. He’d moved from north London for a new job and a new relationship – only one had worked out and he’d been saddled with a succession of lodgers as he hung on to a house he could barely afford.

Ronnie knew she should have visited before and had felt a tug of guilt about it. Now she realised, it was coming back to bite her because it meant she was moving into a house she’d never seen, not in bricks and mortar anyway.

She’d looked on Google Earth.

The road was tear-shaped, splitting part way down to make room for trees on a small green. Or maybe it had been the other way round and the trees had been there all along, and the houses had been built around them.

Either way, the bay-fronted properties at that end of the road didn’t stare into each other’s windows but looked out on to the grass. The houses were similar to one another, brick built, Edwardian she guessed. A few were detached, most semi-detached and Alex had one of those, the left-hand one of a pair.

She recognised the house as the taxi drove up to it. She had seen it from the inside too, on Rightmove before Alex and his ex had bought it. It had looked airy, neutral, ‘modernised with original features’. Probably smelling of fresh bread and newly brewed coffee, just as the property shows recommended.

Alex opened the door before she reached it. Although neither of them took after their father with any physical characteristics, they had ended up with a similar, skinny frame and the same, easy-to-tan complexion. He leaned towards her, they briefly hugged, and she used the moment to look over his shoulder and down the hallway. It was cluttered with coats and shoes, and a couple of bikes. The only decor was a 1977 Star Wars poster facing the front door, with Luke Skywalker looking as though he was taking aim at her. She knew then that she might as well forget anything she’d seen on Rightmove.

‘Did my stuff arrive?’ she asked.

‘It’s all in your room.’

‘And Noah?’

‘Believe it or not, he went to bed.’

‘So early?’ It was only a few minutes past seven. Ronnie wasn’t sure what time eight-year-olds went to bed but had the impression that refusing to sleep was a major childhood skill.

‘Long day at school, I guess.’ Alex shrugged. ‘He does that sometimes. He asked if you would say goodnight to him when you arrived, but don’t worry, he’s already asleep.’

Alex led the way, weaving past the bikes and stepping round a couple of boxes and piles of papers that were stacked on the stairs. There were four bedrooms although the fourth was barely big enough to accommodate more than a cot. That one was going to be Ronnie’s office.

Her room contained a bed, a wardrobe, and a pile of uniformly sized removal boxes filled with anything she’d thought worth keeping from her flat. She stood in the centre of the floor, momentarily feeling adrift. ‘How many bathrooms?’

‘Just the one and a toilet downstairs.’

She frowned, too tired to muster even a weary smile.

He folded his arms, but not in a defensive way, more as though he needed a hug. ‘So, what’s up?’

She answered carefully; she knew he was apprehensive about the challenges of looking after Noah. ‘It’s a big adjustment, I guess, after living alone I mean. Is this going to work?’ she asked.

‘It’s a start.’ He sobered as he processed her question properly. ‘Beyond that, all we seem to have in common is that we’re two anti-social people, living with a kid who’s dumb enough to actually like us.’

Ronnie felt herself uncoil a little and managed that smile. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Me too.’ He left her without saying more. The door closed behind him, and she stood for several minutes, adjusting to the room and the silence of the house, then she slipped across the landing and into Noah’s room. He was, as Alex had said, asleep. She stopped short of the bed. ‘Goodnight, Noah,’ she whispered, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

She returned to her room and sat heavily on her unmade bed. More than anything she needed a few hours of restful sleep before she had to report for work. Sleep was the cure-all that settled her thoughts and added perspective but too often it eluded her. She stripped down to her T-shirt and didn’t bother looking for her pyjamas, toothbrush or even clean bedding.

She lay flat on her back and stared up at the ceiling. Closing her eyes wouldn’t make any difference; some kind of sleep would come in the end. But first, just like on every other night, memories flooded over her. Through her. She had tried sleeping tablets. Alcohol. Staying busy until she dropped.

It was inescapable.

She had to replay the words. See the reaction. Ride the sick feeling in her gut.

And all over again, night after night, she watched Jodie die.

Ronnie was on edge when she woke; bad sleep often had that effect. When she’d lived alone, it hadn’t mattered, she could stumble around half awake until her mood settled. But now she had other people to consider.

She was up and dressed before either Alex or Noah had come down for breakfast and was waiting for the toast to pop up when Alex walked into the kitchen.

‘Is Noah still asleep?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Alex checked his watch; ‘I’ll give him a first call in half an hour.’

‘I was hoping to see him before school. Later then.’

‘You could hang around for a bit or I could wake him up?’

‘No, I’ll see him when I’m back.’ She grabbed her single slice of toast as it popped up. She left it plain and gestured towards the door, ‘I want to get there early.’

‘Keeping first-day nerves at bay?’

‘Something like that.’ She pressed her lips into a smile, ‘I’m sure it will be fine.’

‘But you’re not looking forward to it?’ he added.

She gave him a maybe-yes, maybe-no nod. ‘Does anything interesting ever happen on a first day?’ She folded the toast and promised to let him know how it went. She hadn’t felt hungry but going to work on an empty stomach would turn the tension to irritability or a migraine by mid-morning, so it was not worth the risk.

The morning was dry and bright, the sky vast, not seen in little strips the way it was in London, glimpsed between high-rise blocks or tightly packed streets. It looked as though the weather might manage a full day without changing its mind.

She typed ‘Parkside Police Station’ into the maps app on her phone and listened to the walking directions through headphones. The route was a zigzag, crossing busy roads, walking the length of the quiet ones. The houses she passed were mostly bay-fronted with red and black chequerboard tiled pathways leading a few steps up to traditional panelled front doors and tiny front gardens just large enough to accommodate a small tree or leafy shrub. Not a single property looked in need of attention, and many seemed to have been extended upwards into their uniformly tiled roofs. No doubt most had been modernised but in that low-key moneyed way that didn’t show. It was all so tranquil and … She fished for a word for the kind of people who probably lived there and realised that any description would be based on the crimes she’d dealt with where the victims lived in these kinds of homes. And in her part of London, neighbourhoods like this had been few and far between.

She turned a corner on to a busier road. Guest houses faced out across the Cam, brightly painted canal boats were moored by the towpath. She crossed the river using a narrow metal footbridge and turned along an avenue of large, evenly spaced trees. Tourist territory. Somewhere to come for a day out or even a weekend.

Feeling irritable suddenly made sense; it wasn’t just the result of poor sleep. Yes, Cambridge was picturesque, but if transferring here was going to drive her career into a backwater she’d probably know by the end of the day.

It was a police officer’s default position to hate the idea of change, to resist it when it arrived. She had to give it a chance, she reminded herself.

She lowered her head and increased her pace. She’d planned to arrive at Parkside station with twenty minutes to spare. In the end, she’d left the house early and walked faster than the satnav had predicted, making her a full forty-five minutes early.

There was a single officer on duty at the front desk, dealing with a student’s stolen bicycle. She took the nearest seat, closed her eyes, and listened to the requests for almost endless detail.

‘What was the frame size?’

‘How was it locked?’

‘How long have you owned it?’

‘Where did you leave it?’

‘What time was that?’

‘Give it a chance Ronnie,’ she muttered under her breath.

Ronnie’s father, who was about as empathetic as he was patient, had told her the meaning of life on many occasions. ‘Life,’ he would say, ‘is nothing but a series of goodbyes.’ The wording changed over time, and he hadn’t used those words when she’d first been thrust upon him and his other family. She clearly remembered feeling tiny and miserable and broken. And the closest to empathy he had been able to muster had been to deliver a simpler version of the same message, ‘Nothing lasts forever, Ronnie. Everyone loses people.’

She had been five years old, and the weight of the words had crushed her.

Maybe life really was just a series of goodbyes. Goodbye to childhood. Goodbye to innocence. Goodbye to youth, to friends who drift away and every iteration of daily life that is overwritten by the next. But she hadn’t needed to know that then. And by telling her, her father proved that he shouldn’t have had his first child, never mind four; his ability to nurture was close to zero.

His vacillation in choosing between his first wife and family, and his eventual second wife and their two children, had been about nothing but satisfying his own inconsistent needs. Apart from endowing all the children with the last name of Blake, he had done little to encourage any closeness between her and her half-siblings.

Because of him, she had developed her own theory about life. She had no plans to share it with Noah, but she was reminded of it as she faced Superintendent Cooper.

She’d been met in reception and wordlessly taken to his office by a police constable so young that her uniform looked more like dress-up day than a career move.

Cooper’s office was small, crammed with an oversized desk, one bulbous swivel chair and two steel-framed visitor chairs, circa 1990. ‘Take a seat.’ He gestured at the chair in front of his desk, not the one next to it. A shaft of sunlight fell directly into her eyes, so she shifted her chair by about twenty degrees so that the rays hit her cheek instead. The adjustment took no time at all, but she sensed his impatience.

He was around the fifty mark. Neat featured with his beard fresh from the barber’s trim. She’d seen officers maintain that look day in and day out, as though they had a micro-trim every night. She pegged Cooper as someone who would take pleasure in patrolling the corridors and checking that junior officers met his exacting standards. She wasn’t prejudging anything; perhaps she would like the man, perhaps she wouldn’t and perhaps it was irrelevant to the job she had to do, but everything in this first meeting from the formal seating to his flat smile and half-hearted handshake told her it was not going to be the first day she had hoped for.

‘So, it’s Ronnie, not Veronica. Is that correct?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Welcome to Cambridge. You come highly recommended. New resource is always a plus, especially when they are both experienced and competent.’ He tilted his head back and jutted his chin as he spoke, meaning that he was looking at her through partially closed eyes. He paused for a few seconds before adding anything further. ‘But.’ The word came out like a sharp jab on the brakes, the kind that makes eyes snap open and all attention fully refocus on the road. ‘Occupational health doesn’t say no, but they say not yet.’

It took a second for her to register what he was saying. ‘I have been back at work for the last two weeks.’

‘Completing paperwork, as I understand?’

‘I was handing over some cases because I was leaving, but there was no question about my fitness to work.’

‘Well, we are not the Met, and you will find we have a different set of standards here.’

She bristled; it was too soon for her loyalty to the Met to fade.

His expression had switched from cool politeness to immovability. ‘I spoke to our occupational health, and we agreed that without a full assessment, you are not returning to work.’ There were times when negotiation with senior officers was possible, and others when any attempt would only piss them off and lead to moving one step backwards. ‘They have your contact details and will be in touch to arrange an appointment. Once you have been assessed as fit to work, we can meet and start over. Right now, though, I suggest you take the opportunity to familiarise yourself with our lovely city.’ He made a point of turning his gaze towards the window, although she was sure from where he was sitting that the view was of nothing but sky. ‘There are twenty-five museums and galleries around Cambridge, you could start there.’

Ronnie gave a small nod but didn’t reply. She didn’t trust herself to open her mouth and be able to come out with anything that didn’t sound either heavily sarcastic or downright rude.

He waited a few beats to see whether there was anything she did want to add and she thought the conversation was over. Without explanation he turned to his laptop, he flicked through a couple of screens and took a few seconds to read. He looked back at her. ‘Have you been contacted by DI John Fenton yet?’

‘I don’t recognise the name. Who is he?’

‘He leads the Special Investigations Team for the Eastern Region – SITfER. They’re based here, they cover this region and, at times, beyond. They’d like to interview you as a witness.’

‘To what?’

He ignored the question. ‘Asked me to send you over as soon as we had spoken. I wasn’t sure that would be appropriate, but you seem as though you would be up to it.’

‘With respect, sir, I believe I am fit to work so would certainly be fit to make a statement.’ She glared; she couldn’t help it. She tried again, ‘What does it relate to?’

‘I don’t have that information, but you can go up there right away. The DEAD team’s on the third.’

‘The DEAD team?’

‘Sorry, local nickname. We all enjoy a good acronym, don’t we?’ A smile flashed on and off again. ‘Shall I find someone to take you up there?’

Ronnie shook her head and stood as she spoke. ‘Don’t worry, I will find my way, thank you.’

She stepped into the corridor where the air was slightly fresher.

Life, from her expe. . .