DS Nicola Freeman sat at her desk and looked at the clock above the door. She hated this. They were pretty sure that the dead girl was Emma Thorley – from what they could piece together the body appeared to be the right height and age. But there needed to be no doubt before she made an official statement. Before she confirmed things for Emma’s dad. It would’ve been so much easier to get a DNA comparison but Emma Thorley had no living blood relatives. Or at least no known ones. The only family that remained was her dad, Ray, but he’d adopted Emma. Nothing was ever simple.
The phone barely got out its first ring before she snatched it up. ‘Freeman,’ she said.
‘Hi, Nicky, it’s Tom.’ Tom Beckett, pathologist and the most laid-back man Freeman had ever met. She usually hated being called Nicky. Only her little brother, Darren, had ever called her that, purely because she hated it, but with Tom she let it slide. To be honest, he could call her whatever he liked. The man was wasted spending his days with dead people. He should’ve been made to come and work with the living, who’d appreciate him.
‘Tell me you’ve got something,’ she said.
‘I have, but you won’t like it. Our disorganised dentist definitely does not have Miss Thorley’s records any more.’
‘Brilliant,’ Freeman said.
‘Not that it would’ve mattered a great deal. There’s not a lot left to work with. But what I can say is that it looks like your mystery girl was attacked twice, possibly once post-mortem.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ Tom said, ‘it appears she was beaten. The injuries to the face suggest that someone really had a go, probably with their fists. And it’s likely whoever did it was left-handed. The injuries were predominantly on the right side of her face. But then there are marks on some of the teeth that appear to have been made with a weapon. Possibly a hammer.’
‘So someone was trying to prevent identification?’
‘Looks like,’ Tom said. ‘Only they didn’t quite manage to finish the job. We didn’t retrieve all of the teeth but a few were in the grave and there were a couple still intact. Looks like your killer was sloppy.’
Freeman sighed. ‘So there’s nothing that I can take to Ray Thorley?’
‘There’s not much else to work with in terms of identifiers. There’s the broken arm. I checked medical records and there was no match but that doesn’t mean to say she didn’t break it later on. If she did it during one of her disappearing acts then it’s possible she didn’t get it treated.’
‘And possible her dad didn’t know,’ Freeman said. ‘Okay. Thanks, Tom.’ She hung up. She wished she hadn’t been forced to involve Ray Thorley so soon. Wished she hadn’t had to go into his home and re-open old wounds without definitive proof that it was his daughter’s body out there. But the leak to the press about the ID in the pocket of the tracksuit top had forced her hand. At least they hadn’t mentioned the gold necklace. At least she still had something the rest of the world didn’t know. The papers were already suggesting the police had failed Emma Thorley and her father back in the day. She didn’t want to be accused of the same thing now.
Freeman looked at the clock again. Her stomach rumbled and she wished she’d grabbed something to eat before she left this morning, but at 6 a.m. she just hadn’t been able to face anything. She took out her mobile and found the number for her doctor, her finger hovering over the call button before she threw the phone down on the desk and went back to the information she’d pulled on Emma Thorley. Her own shit could wait.
Emma’s dad had filed three missing person reports in total. The first in February 1999, which was resolved when Emma returned of her own free will a month later. The second in April of the same year, which was quickly retracted by her father. And finally in July that year when she disappeared for good. Ray Thorley had told her that Emma’s problems had started after her mother died. Emma was fifteen and it hit her hard. She’d never been in trouble before then. She worked hard at school. Wasn’t an ‘A’ student but she tried. She was quiet. She had a group of friends but didn’t socialise with them outside of school very often. She dreamed of going to university. Ray had been saving for a long time. In the end he’d spent the money searching for his daughter and on posters saying ‘Have you seen this girl?’
Freeman sat back in her chair. It was funny how things, how people, could change, just like that. One minute they’re good, heading for a life of security and friends, marriage and kids. And the next they’re gone. The person they were, destroyed beyond all recognition. Suddenly they’re monsters.
She took a breath. She wasn’t going to go there. She couldn’t think about him any more. It was too hard. He’d chosen his path. And now there was nothing she could do. Nothing anyone could do. He was long gone. She hoped he was finally at peace.
DC Bob McIlroy stomped into the office, shouting across the room at the top of his voice. The man didn’t have any volume control. Ignoring his greeting of ‘Morning, Nana’ – his nickname for her on account of her glasses (which bore little to no resemblance to singer Nana Mouskouri’s) – she watched him as he passed her desk, shirt buttons straining against his gut. She felt nauseous and turned her attention back to Emma Thorley.
She skimmed through the reports until she found what she was after – the officer in charge of the investigation last time, a DC Michael Gardner.
‘Hey, Bob,’ she said and he turned around, clearly surprised she was talking to him.
‘What?’ he said and pulled a pack of gum from his pocket. Since someone had told him his breath stank like rotting eggs he’d been chewing gum constantly. It hadn’t helped.
‘You know a cop named Michael Gardner?’ She saw McIlroy’s face darken. ‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ she said. ‘Friend of yours, is he?’
McIlroy snorted. ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘Why? What’s it to you?’
‘I need to speak to him,’ she said. ‘Where can I find him?’
‘He left,’ McIlroy said.
‘Where did he go?’
‘Don’t know. Don’t care.’
‘What did he do to you? Make fun of your bald patch?’
She could see McIlroy’s chest rise and fall. He was pretty pissed off. This Gardner must’ve done something bad to warrant that; McIlroy usually couldn’t be bothered to get angry, it wasted energy he could’ve used eating.
‘He screwed over another copper,’ he said and then waved his hand in front of him. ‘No, scratch that. He killed another copper.’ He turned and walked away, shaking his head.
Freeman watched him go. He killed another cop? She saw McIlroy stop and say something to Fry, his drinking buddy. Fry turned to look at Freeman and then muttered something undoubtedly strewn with four-letter words.
What the hell had happened with Michael Gardner?
Chapter 10
13 December 2010
Gardner was on his way out to find something slightly more edible than the canteen sandwiches when Lawton found him. He’d been avoiding her all day. He’d already heard several members of the team discussing a drink on Friday night to celebrate her birthday. It didn’t seem like Lawton’s sort of thing. But apparently her invite for a quiet drink had turned into a full-blown thing, thanks to Harrington.
To be honest he wouldn’t mind a quiet drink with Lawton. He liked her. He’d have no problem buying her a drink or two and then getting home in time to watch one of the many DVDs he had piled up. He kept telling himself he was going to finally watch the Three Colours trilogy but in reality he knew he’d end up watching The Dark Knight. But now that the quiet drink was a thing, he couldn’t be arsed. He’d only ever been to four work things in the whole time he’d been in Middlesbrough. Two retirement parties he’d felt obliged to attend. One Christmas party, which had been the worst night of his life that didn’t involve a dead body. And the surprise fortieth birthday party his team had thrown him for which he’d never forgiven them.
Lawton stopped in front of him, her hands shoved into her pockets, fringe falling over her eyes. Gardner thought about feigning some kind of emergency but he couldn’t do it.
‘I don’t know if you’ve heard,’ she said, her eyes on the dirty carpet, ‘but a few of us are going to go for a drink on Friday for my birthday if you want to come.’ She glanced at him and then looked past him. ‘No big deal. Just let me know if you fancy it.’
‘Let me get back to you,’ Gardner said. Lawton walked away and Gardner felt like he’d just kicked a puppy. If he wasn’t going to go, he was going to have to come up with a pretty good excuse.
As he made his way downstairs he wondered if perhaps he should go. Ease himself back into a social life. A few drinks with his colleagues. Talking shop ’til the drink took effect. How hard could it be?
He kept wondering about DS Freeman. If she knew about him; his past. She’d seemed fairly polite on the phone.
He knew it was completely irrational. He was never going to speak to her again. What did it matter what she thought of him? And anyway, what’d happened was in the past. It was history. Everyone had moved on. It was possible most of the officers he’d known weren’t even there any more. Freeman was new. Maybe no one had told her.
It’d been eleven years since it happened. Eleven years since he’d left the place and tried to move on. And most of the time he managed it. He knew deep down what he’d done was right. He knew that he hadn’t forced Wallace to behave the way he did, to do what he did. None of that was Gardner’s fault. He knew that. He believed that. But he knew what other people thought, he knew that whatever their opinions on Wallace, they all felt the same about Gardner. You did it for revenge. You got what you wanted.
Gardner knew that wasn’t true. He was just doing his job. His personal feelings for Wallace had had nothing to do with it. He’d been saying that to himself for a decade. But sometimes, usually at night when he couldn’t sleep, he wondered. A little nagging voice asking if he actually believed it. If there hadn’t been an element of revenge in his actions. Usually he ignored it because, if he was being honest, he didn’t want to think about the answer.
True, it had started with Annie’s affair with Stuart Wallace, but would he have done what he did if the affair hadn’t happened? Would his colleagues have reacted in the same way if the affair hadn’t happened? It was impossible to say.
In the end the affair had happened and then Wallace was dead.
Chapter 100
23 December 2010
Gardner spotted her sitting in the corner, looking out of place amongst the Christmas revellers. She nodded in his direction and he noticed she’d already got the drinks in.
‘Got you a Coke,’ she said as he walked over.
‘I could do with something stronger,’ he said and sat down, throwing his coat on the seat beside him.
‘Well, unless you’re going to spend the night with me, you’ve still got to drive home.’ Gardner raised an eyebrow and Freeman shrugged and pushed the pint glass towards him. He raised it in a half-hearted toast. ‘So?’ she asked. ‘How did it go?’
‘About as well as could be expected,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have gone. Especially now. Christmas.’
‘So there was no goodwill towards men? It was worth a try.’
‘Was it? I feel worse than I did before. It’s the last time I take advice from you.’
Freeman tried to smile over her glass of Coke. ‘Well, I’m the last person to be handing out advice.’ She looked away, towards a group of men and women shrieking and giggling by the bar, probably on a work Christmas party.
‘Shit, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have come up here moaning about my own crap.’
Freeman shook her head. ‘It’s fine. It’s done now.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not,’ she said and started tearing up a beer mat.
‘Did the father go with you?’
Freeman laughed. ‘The father,’ she said. ‘Fat lot of good he’d be.’ She threw the bits of cardboard across the table. ‘Anyway, I didn’t tell him.’
‘He’s out of the picture?’
‘He is now. We broke up before I found out.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh, what? Don’t look at me like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘With that judgey face. Brian was a dick. He cheated on me.’
‘But still,’ Gardner said, then regretted getting into the conversation as Freeman sat up straight like she was ready to fight.
‘You think I was wrong. That I should’ve told him. That I’m a total bitch for not letting him have any input.’
‘Woah. How did we get to that?’ Gardner held up his hands. ‘Let’s just drop it. I don’t think anything. It’s none of my business.’
‘You’re right. It’s not.’
They sat in silence for a while and Gardner finished his drink. He wondered whether he should just go. His people skills had done him proud once more. He tapped the edge of the table and tried to judge whether it was safe to speak.
‘I’d already made up my mind and anything Brian said wasn’t going to change that. So what would have been the point?’
Gardner got the feeling she wasn’t arguing any more. From the time he’d spent with Freeman he gathered she wasn’t some shrinking violet. Didn’t need anyone to back her up, to validate her. But whatever front she was putting on now, clearly the decision hadn’t been easy. He knew that. He’d been there. Last year of university with the first girl he’d been in love with. Holly Hughes. She’d told him ten minutes before a lecture before bursting into tears and running off. He’d sat there listening to some drivel about Shakespeare and wondered what the hell he was going to do, whether his life was over. And more to the point, how the hell he was going to tell his mum that he’d knocked up some girl she’d never even met. By the end of the lecture he’d decided that it was going to be fine. Good, even. He didn’t have a clue what else he was going to do with his life after uni, so why not be a dad? Unfortunately, Holly had other plans. She did know what she was going to do with her life after uni, and it didn’t involve kids. She made all the arrangements herself. All he had to do was borrow a mate’s car to drive her to the hospital and that was it. She’d made her decision.
She kept asking him afterwards if he was angry with her. He wasn’t. Not really. It was the right decision. Just not his decision. She broke up with him three months later. But Freeman probably didn’t want to hear all this.
‘You’re right,’ he said and stood up. He dug in his pocket for some change. ‘Another drink?’
He came back with two more Cokes and his spilt across the table as he put it down.
‘I saw Ray Thorley yesterday,’ Freeman said. ‘Emma’s been staying there. He’s a new man. It’s nice.’
‘That’s good. What about Adam? Has he stuck around?’
Freeman nodded as she slurped the full glass. ‘Him and Emma are staying for Christmas. She’s also changed her story.’
‘Really?’
‘Yep. All lines up with Ben’s. She was on a bus out of town before the body was moved.’
‘But she was still involved. Still took on Jenny’s identity,’ Gardner said.
‘Yeah, she’s not quite out of the woods yet. So to speak.’
‘What about Ben Swales?’
Freeman shrugged. ‘He’s out of hospital. But he’s still waiting for all this to end. I think part of him wants to go to prison. He thinks he should be punished. I still can’t believe he smashed Jenny’s teeth in. Didn’t think he had that in him.’
‘So you think it’s really true? That he planted the ID and buried the body, but didn’t kill her?’
‘You don’t believe him?’ she asked.
Gardner blew out his cheeks. ‘Sounds far too convenient. Finding a dead girl just when you need one.’
‘I guess if you work with heroin addicts you’re bound to come across one eventually,’ Freeman said. ‘Especially if they know Lucas Yates.’
‘What’s happening with Yates?’ Gardner asked. ‘He’s still not talking?’
‘Nope. But I know it was him, I can feel it. But,’ she shrugged, ‘we don’t have enough. There’s Emma’s testimony about what he told her in the woods but she’s hardly a reliable witness. There’s the semen, but that means squat.’ She sighed. ‘I just wish I knew what’d happened. It’s pissing me off.’
Gardner’s phone beeped and he checked his message. An email from the dating site. Some woman from Guisborough had been in touch. Did he fancy meeting for a drink sometime? Gardner smiled.
‘What’s up?’ Freeman asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said and slid the phone back in his pocket.
They sat back in silence and listened as ‘Fairytale of New York’ came on the jukebox. In the corner the office workers started singing along and Freeman and Gardner finished their drinks.
Chapter 11
14 July 1999
Gardner walked in and almost tripped over a suitcase in the hallway, the cerise one he’d been embarrassed carrying around on their honeymoon.
He could hear her moving around upstairs. Drawers slamming, the wardrobe door banging against the wall, no doubt making even more of a dent in the paintwork. She didn’t even know he was there and she was still slamming things. She was all about the drama.
He knew he should go up and face the music but instead he walked through into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. There was a bottle of vodka on the worktop, holding a lot less than it had two days ago, but he ignored it.
There were dishes in the sink. Looked like she’d got her appetite back. And nice of her to leave him the washing-up.
‘Michael.’
He hadn’t heard her come down the stairs. Hadn’t had time to put his game face on. Hadn’t had time to work out what his game face was.
‘I was worried about you,’ she said, leaning against the door frame, her red hair falling in front of her eyes. ‘Where’ve you been?’
Gardner ignored her. He didn’t want her to know he’d been staying in a crappy B&B. The thought of knocking on someone’s door and asking for refuge on their sofa-bed was too depressing. A single bed in a damp room was far more appealing.
‘You’re going, then?’ he said. Annie crossed her arms and sighed. ‘You’re not even going to bother talking about it? You don’t even care what I’ve got to say?’
‘I assumed you didn’t have anything to say, Michael. You ran away from it. I haven’t seen or heard from you for two days. What was I supposed to think?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe that you told me you were cheating on me and I needed to let it sink in?’
‘You could’ve at least called me and told me that,’ Annie said and turned to walk away.
‘Wait a minute. I’m not the one in the wrong here. You’re the one fucking someone else.’
Annie shoved the cerise suitcase out of the way and stomped back upstairs. Gardner followed, dodging the luggage.
‘And if we’re talking about people running away from things, how about you announcing you’re seeing that prick and that’s it. End of conversation. No explanation or anything.’
Annie spun around, halfway up the stairs. ‘What do you need me to explain? I’d say it was pretty self-explanatory.’
‘Oh, sure. Fucking someone else needs no explanation at all. It was bound to happen about now. I must’ve forgotten to check the calendar.’
‘Fuck off, Michael,’ she said and ran up the rest of the stairs and into the bedroom.
‘All I want to know is why,’ Gardner said, following her in, taking in the mess. The room looked like a bomb had hit it. ‘Why is that too much to ask for?’
Annie picked up her make-up bag, clinging to it like it was a life raft. ‘Why do you think?’
Gardner shrugged. He honestly didn’t know. Things weren’t perfect. They were hardly romantic novel material, but they were all right. They were married. They shared a bed. They had sex when it hadn’t been a long week. They ate in front of the telly most nights when he was home. They talked about crap they’d seen on the news. Occasionally they went out. They were married. They were like his parents, her parents. Like everyone who’s married.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘How about the fact you’re never here. Or that everything is about your job or this stupid fucking exam. Or that you come home and barely speak to me because you’re too busy thinking about some poor bastard’s family who’ve just buried their son.’
Gardner laughed. ‘Is that why you’re fucking another copper, then?’
‘He’s different.’
‘Is he? I’ll give you six months and you’ll change your tune.’
Annie looked away from him, lips pursed.
‘It’s been going on for more than six months?’ Gardner asked. He could feel the familiar burning in the back of his throat, behind his eyes. ‘How long?’ Annie’s eyes filled up. ‘How long?’ he said again, slowly.
‘Almost a year,’ she said.
Gardner looked at his wife. His chest was tight. She’d been lying to him for a year. Stuart Wallace had been laughing at him for a year. Who else knew? He sat down on the bed amongst the detritus of their marriage.
‘I’m sorry,’ Annie said and sat beside him. She put her hand on his. He wanted her to move it but it was probably the last time he’d touch her.
They sat there for a long time. The light changed outside. Next door’s cat was on their fence. He hated that cat. He’d always wanted a dog but Annie didn’t like them and she’d only end up looking after it while he worked day and night.
The cat jumped down and slunk away until he couldn’t see it any more in the rapidly dimming light. Annie stood up and carefully folded her work clothes into a holdall.
‘Stay,’ he said.
Annie stopped. She bit her bottom lip and shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Please,’ Gardner said and took the holdall from her. ‘Please. We can talk it through. We can get through this. Please.’
Annie shook her head again. ‘I’ve already made my decision. I decided weeks ago.’
‘That’s why you told me?’
Annie nodded.
‘Where are you going to go?’
‘Where do you think?’ Annie said.
‘What, Wallace’s wife and daughter are going to put you up in their fancy fucking house?’
Annie’s fist clenched. ‘We’ve got a flat. He’s already there,’ she said.
Gardner tried to keep the quiver from his voice but failed. ‘I don’t understand why you’re choosing him over me.’
Annie picked up her holdall and took one last look around the debris of the wardrobe.
‘Because I love him,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back for the rest later.’
Gardner watched as she hauled her bags out of the room. He wanted to call out to her, to stop her. But what was the point? She didn’t love him. She didn’t love him.
The front door slammed shut and Gardner slid off the bed onto the floor. He let the tears come for the first time, let them come until he was sitting in the dark, exhausted.
He thought about Ray Thorley. He wondered how the man had felt when his wife had gone, taken by cancer rather than by some fat, fucking bastard coppe. . .
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