The Blame E-Book

Charlotte Langley

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 454

Beschreibung

'Searingly topical.' THE TELEGRAPH 'Shocking.' HEAT A fresh and topical debut thriller where two detectives on a chilling murder case begin a love affair, only for one of them to become a prime suspect. Detective Erin Crane is investigating sixteen-year-old Sophie Madson's murder along with detective Tom Radley. They have a close professional bond built on mutual trust and a shared contempt for the head of the anti-corruption team, Walker. During the investigation, Tom discovers Erin's biggest secret, but to her surprise, the revelation brings them closer together, and Tom and Erin embark on a love affair - despite all the risks. Then Erin discovers dashcam footage showing Sophie getting into Tom's car barely an hour before she died. Tom becomes the prime suspect and everything Erin thought she could trust begins to crumble... Reader reviews 'If I could rate it higher than five stars, I would do!' 'So many twists and turns that kept me guessing all the way through!'

Leseprobe

Prologue

‘There she is!’

Erin watched through the glass doors, her stomach sinking, as newspaper reporters and TV crews swarmed the entrance of Wakestead police station. She’d dealt with the press more times than she could count, but never a mob like this. This was rage; the real thing. As soon as the automatic doors slid open, and she stepped out into the cold September air, the reporters’ questions descended on her in a relentless tirade:

‘Do you blame yourself, DI Crane?’

‘Is there anything you’d like to say to Sophie Madson’s parents?’

Camera flashes pierced her vision. Overwhelmed, and half-blinded, she followed two officers into the crowd, already imagining the pictures in tomorrow’s paper, of her, fleeing from the station with her head bowed – see, here it is, the proof: she’s out of her depth…

The two officers in front cleared an escape route through the throngs of people. At last, one of them reached her car and wrenched the door open. Erin clambered inside. Even once the door was shut, the reporters surged forwards, crashing into the side of the vehicle like a wave against the face of a cliff.

OK, you’re out. Now just get home.

The crowd spilled onto the road behind her as she drove away. Only when watching the crowd grow smaller and smaller in the wing mirror did Erin realise how fast her heart was beating. She waited for the relief to sink in. But even after driving down a quiet, open road, past the familiar corner shops and cafés that signposted her route home, that relief never came. Instead, the noise and the flashes and the shouting faces, twisted with contempt, stayed fixed in her mind.

She ran a hand through her hair, tugging at the roots. She’d thought she’d known what she was doing. She’d thought she’d done the right thing.

1

Two weeks earlier

Erin looked at the time on her phone. Nearly 6 p.m. Five hours since Sophie Madson was reported missing. Together with DS Lewis Jennings, Erin had been put in charge of a vehicle checkpoint near the outskirts of Wakestead, where it was their job to take the names of every driver that came this way to search the woods for the missing girl. In other words, a job for constables. The biggest case Wakestead had seen in years, and instead of going door-to-door with the other detectives, interviewing possible leads, or planning the investigation from the office, here they were, shining torches in car boots like glorified border security.

Just when she thought she’d finally been accepted. Just when she thought she could put it all behind her.

Lewis was making short work of the sandwiches they’d picked up from the corner shop. ‘It’s getting dark. What do you think the chances are we’re going to find her before night comes?’ he said through mouthfuls. 

‘Low,’ said Erin, studying the woods at the bottom of the hill. Lewis’s chirpy demeanour had been annoying her all afternoon. ‘He’s probably dumped the body by now.’ 

She took the can of full-fat Coke he was holding out to her, snapped it open and chugged the lukewarm fizzy liquid. Lewis had fallen into an uneasy silence. 

‘Isn’t that a bit pessimistic?’

She arched an eyebrow at him. ‘Did that phone call sound good to you?’ 

Missing persons were categorised into one of three risk levels – low, medium or high. Sophie Madson was high risk. All because of a single ten-second phone call to the emergency services, which she had made just after 1 p.m. that day.

The Major Crime Unit was already all over the case by the time they summoned in every detective and PC in Wakestead to listen to the recording, received by the emergency services not an hour earlier. There’d been a map of the town projected onto the whiteboard in the main office. Next to it was a photograph pulled from Sophie’s Instagram, showing the sixteen-year-old on holiday, with sunburn on her cheeks and a coppery tint in her dark hair. Under the buzzing florescent lights, the police force had listened to the sound of the dial tone ringing out four times. ‘Which service do you require?’ the operator had asked. But another sound had almost drowned them out. Rustling. Loud and distorted. As though the call was being made from inside a wind tunnel. Then they had heard a young woman’s voice. ‘I’m Sophie Madson,’ she had yelled, ‘I’m—’ But her screaming had quickly become muffled. Erin had felt her blood go cold. After a few moments, the recording had cut out.

‘Maybe it was just a struggle,’ suggested Lewis.

Erin lit a cigarette and leant against the car. ‘Maybe,’ she said, before taking a drag and slowly releasing the smoke. ‘But say you kidnapped a girl and she started screaming her head off down the phone to the police.’ She looked at him. ‘What would you do?’

‘Well, make a run for it, obviously.’ 

‘Sure, but not before finishing her off first. Knowing every officer in a twenty-mile radius would be out looking for you.’ She noticed how defeated she sounded and added, ‘Sorry. We should hold out hope. I’m just grumpy because we’re stuck here doing vehicle checks.’

His brows knitted together. ‘Yeah, why is that, by the way? Shafting me, I get. But you’ve been here for years.’

Erin felt her ears burn red. She shrugged and took another quick drag of her cigarette. Lewis had only recently made DS – he hadn’t been here long enough to know where she stood in the pecking order, or that there even was one. She didn’t fancy being the one to break it to him.

She forced herself to focus on the positive. Thanks to that 999 phone call, the police had been able to trace her location to a field beside the local woodlands, which were now swarming with uniforms and local people who’d come out to help. All day their cars had arrived in a steady stream. Just when she thought everyone in Wakestead must be out by now, another car would pull up with a tired-looking family bundled inside, teenagers in wellies, mums and dads in puffer jackets, usually with the sound of the radio bleating out through the rolled-down window: ‘police are requesting anyone with information to come forward’. 

The next car to roll up to the checkpoint made her stomach turn. A flash silver Mercedes she’d recognise anywhere. The window rolled down and DSU Walker stuck his head out, manoeuvring carefully so his coif didn’t scrape the car frame. Walker had gone grey years ago but that hadn’t stopped him from gelling up his hair like a teenager. 

‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘You two look… chilly.’

‘Piss off,’ said Erin.

‘Anything to report?’

‘Nothing. Just delivery men and search parties.’ 

‘Hmm. Shame –’ he checked his oversized watch ‘– anyway, as much as I’d love to stay and chat, we’ve had a lead. Someone rang in to say they saw Sophie Madson with a man near her school, Wakestead Academy.’

Erin’s heart leapt. ‘What? Really?’

‘We’re redirecting the investigation. I’m heading up there now. We need to clear these woods – get constables over there now.’

‘We can go,’ said Erin.

‘Oh no, I wouldn’t want to distract you from –’ he looked around pointedly at the empty country road ‘– all the great work you’re doing here.’

Erin gritted her teeth. ‘Walker—’

‘Should be quite a nice evening for you two, just sitting around watching the cars go by.’

‘Your knees gonna be alright? It gets quite hilly up there.’

Walker ignored her. ‘Honestly, you look freezing though. Remember you can always snuggle up for warmth.’

Lewis’s ears were red as they watched the Mercedes glide past. 

‘He’s a laugh,’ he said weakly.

Erin stamped out her cigarette on the gravel. This was Walker all over. He probably fancied himself making an appearance on the national news, one hand sweeping through his hair as he assured a pretty reporter that everything was under control. 

‘For Christ’s sake. When this is over, I’m complaining to Peters.’

Lewis fidgeted against the side of the car. ‘I don’t want to seem like we’re kicking up a fuss though.’ 

‘We’re being messed about. You think it’s an accident we’ve been pushed to the sidelines?’

He still looked uncomfortable. She straightened up.

‘Listen. Now you’re a DS I can tell you this. Most detectives here are solid. They work hard and, if you need help, they’ll give it to you. But there’s a couple of people who’ll try and palm stuff off on you because you’re new, OK? Say someone rings in late one night with a case that looks like it’ll drag on for months. Some dickheads will pretend they didn’t hear it and leave it for someone else in the morning because they can’t be bothered. Or, in Walker’s case, because they enjoy watching other people shovel the shit. But that doesn’t mean you have to, alright?’ 

She’d been trying to reassure him. But, if anything, Lewis looked even more nervous than before.

‘I’m not trying to scare you. It’s nothing personal; they do it to everyone. I’m just saying it so you know you can push back.’

Lewis did a lot of nodding. ‘That’s useful to know. Thanks.’ He stared straight ahead, processing this, like he’d just been told Santa wasn’t real.

Green turned to grey as night approached. About twenty minutes after Walker passed through, a wall of officers in high-vis jackets emerged from the trees, an army of neon advancing onto the field. There was no barking from the sniffer dogs, no chatter among the police. Just a deep, searching silence. 

The civilian searchers were giving up the ghost. More and more of them who’d passed through the checkpoint earlier now returned, looking exhausted.

It was getting cold. Lewis started rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet for warmth, hands tucked into his armpits. Most people would be searching til the early hours. That was fine with Erin. She functioned well on little sleep. After enough all-nighters and 3 a.m. calls to miserable domestic cases, she’d learnt how to jumpstart her body like an engine, running on nothing but adrenaline, cigarettes and shitty filter coffee from police HQ’s tragically under-stocked kitchen.

She looked at her phone. The time glowed at her in the darkness, making her tired eyes hurt: 10:23 a.m. Over nine hours now since Sophie made that phone call. You really didn’t want that number to hit twelve. The first twelve hours were the best for gathering evidence. Miss something now and the case could drag on for years and years.

And the cases that did, those were a detective’s worst nightmare. Like Annie Dodds’ case. Reopening that investigation last year – seven years after Annie’s death – Erin had been painfully aware of the stretch of time that had passed just from the contents of the evidence bags. A Mars bar wrapper pressed flat, its wrinkles ironed out. A bus ticket with the colour almost faded away. A pot of cherry-flavoured lip balm, now discontinued, still indented with the fingerprint of its owner. Like all that was left of Annie’s life was a museum of odds and ends.

And the reason her case had taken so long to solve? The murder weapon. In the post-mortem, the pathologist had said the precision of the bruising on Annie’s neck suggested she’d been strangled with a long, thin strip of fabric pulled tight. It matched the description of the long piece of ribbon her mum had used to tie Annie’s hair up that morning, but at the crime scene it was nowhere to be found.

Erin would never forget when she’d showed a photo of that ribbon to Alan Vogel – their main suspect after the case was reopened – sitting there in the interrogation room. He’d had a dusting of dandruff over the shoulders of his dark-grey jumper and an eyebrow hair almost an inch long that curled down over one eye. He’d given the photograph a single contemptuous look. 

‘Never seen it in my life,’ he’d said. 

She hadn’t been there when they’d found it. But despite that, she could picture the scene with total clarity. She still remembered Alan Vogel’s house; how it had smelt of dog food and how one of the windows was blocked by the tendrils of an overgrown rose bush. There had been so much dust in the air you could see it hovering in the shafts of light like a small galaxy. She could imagine the forensics in their white plastic coverings, wiping down banisters and swabbing surfaces. Two of them entering Alan Vogel’s bedroom. A gloved hand reaching into his bedside drawer and pulling out the slither of silky fabric.

‘No one can hide forever,’ Tom, her partner, had said afterwards.

In the darkness next to her, Lewis jumped.

‘Christ. What?’ she said.

‘Do you see that?’

He was pointing towards the woods. By now, it was cleared of searchers. But deep in the trees, a silver light was fluttering – someone’s torch beam, dancing across the forest floor. For a moment it stuttered out. Then it reappeared again, moving through the woods in strange looping arcs.

‘Why are they moving so weirdly? Wait. Are they—’

Erin finished his sentence for him:

‘Carrying something.’

The whites of Lewis’s eyes glowed pale blue.

‘Oh shit. Oh shit shit shit.’

When was he going to grow up? Ignoring him, she stepped away from the car, eyes fixed on the flickering beam of light.

‘Call it in just in case. Maybe don’t go all out and get an armed response unit. But flag this to HQ.’

‘What, you’re going by yourself? Come on—’

‘Someone needs to stay at the checkpoint. And I’m the DI here.’ She started walking down the hill. ‘Anything happens, call me,’ she said over her shoulder. 

‘OK. Likewise.’ 

She waded through the thick grass towards the wood. Only now, approaching it, could she feel the threatening atmosphere radiating off that seemingly endless row of dark trees, like a veil into another world. The darkness closed overhead as she stepped inside. A twig snapped beneath her foot. She paused, worried the torchbearer could have heard. But the beam continued to shrink into the wood. She set off after them.

Soon she was close enough that she could hear the undergrowth crunching beneath their feet. They were wading forwards, heavy-footed. She and Lewis had been right: this person was carrying something.

Erin tripped over a fallen branch and quickly righted herself. She could barely see anything. But she definitely couldn’t afford to turn her torch on.

She shivered. It was cold now. That cold deep in your bones that couldn’t be solved by just adding another layer. 

Then something happened. Up ahead, the torchlight went out.

She froze.

Her eyes had adjusted to that silver light in the distance – without it, everything went pitch black. She waited, heart pounding.

Should she keep going?

Then she heard someone crashing through the undergrowth. To the right of her. She turned around sharply and caught sight of the torch beam slicing through the woods, flashing across the tree trunks. She couldn’t see the person holding it. She just watched the light swing away into the distance. They were moving faster now, much faster. As if they’d suddenly become lighter.

Did that mean…?

Erin’s pulse rocketed. Pulling the torch out of her pocket, she turned it on and fired the beam in all directions. Silver trees reared up around her. Then something else appeared, about ten metres ahead, that made her hand holding the torch freeze.

A bright shape on the forest floor. Trainers; white ones. A leg bundled on top of another.

Oh no.

Holding her breath, Erin crept forward.

They’d folded her over at the base of a tree, beneath a thicket of brambles. Half her face was in the dirt. On the side that was visible, there was blood furred around her nostril, turned black in the harsh glare of the torch light. She had a bruise around her eye socket. Part of Erin almost expected her to start groaning and trying to lift herself up. But touching her cold neck she found no pulse; she was gone. Someone’s baby, never coming home. A family facing a lifetime of anguish. Erin looked up at the dark-blue sky and had to take a few moments just to breathe deeply.

Within five minutes of her putting the call in – requesting cordons at every access point; he was on foot; they might still catch him – the place was swarming with Forensics. Other torches bobbed through the trees, a fire-lit procession of officers marching in the darkness.

Among them was Walker, who came striding over.

‘You think it was them who dumped the body, Crane?’

‘Sounded like it to me.’

‘Did you see them?’

‘No.’

‘So no description you can give us? Height? Clothing?’

Erin’s chest tightened as she realised the killer had been right there, and she’d seen nothing that could help them identify him. She shook her head.

Walker left a very deliberate, excruciating pause before saying, ‘Right. I’ll take it from here, Crane.’

‘I was first on scene.’

‘Exactly. First witness. Go sit down; have a cup of tea.’

Erin opened her mouth to retort but Walker was already turning away from her, barking orders at SOCOs: ‘Come on, people. Let’s get fingerprints, snagged clothing fibres, shoeprints.’

Sophie’s body had vanished behind the white tent set up by forensics. Thoughts of the girl’s peaceful, almost-sleeping face shuddered through her. She’d missed him. He’d been right there, just metres away, and she’d missed him.

One of the detectives skidded across the forest floor towards her. She felt a wave of relief when she recognised Tom Radley, her partner.

‘Are you alright?’ he said.

‘I should have just – you know, run after him. I didn’t—’

‘It’s not your fault,’ he assured her. But he was stone-faced. ‘I don’t get it. We’ve been searching these woods all day, and now he dumps her body here? What happened? Why weren’t there more officers out?’

‘It was this lead at the school. Most officers left to search the grounds. Do you know what the intelligence was there? Why did we trust it so much?’

He shrugged. ‘I know as much as you do.’

‘So we don’t know if it was legit?’

She watched the forensics traipse in and out of the white tent. The school tip-off – could that have been the killer? Were they trying to divert them, so they could dump the body without getting caught?

After they left the scene, Erin took a lift in Tom’s car. The forest stretched out to their right, invisible.

‘He took a risk moving during the manhunt,’ Tom was saying. ‘He went out of his way to put the body here. He wanted us to find her.’

Erin was grateful for the darkness. It hid her. She made sounds of agreement so Tom would know she was listening, but really her mind was elsewhere.

You can’t afford to make mistakes like this, a voice in her head told her. Not after what happened.

When she got home, she hauled her exhausted body up the stairs, pulled the curtains closed and crawled into bed, waiting for sleep to come at any moment. Instead she lay awake for another hour, with a whirring brain and a horrible tightness in her chest that wouldn’t go away.

2

It wasn’t yet 8:30 a.m. when Erin and Tom entered the main office the next day, and already constables were heads down, clacking away at their keyboards with caffeine-fuelled intensity, while the senior detectives marched in and out of meeting rooms, hurling questions at their bowed heads: where’s that neighbour’s statement; how long til the fingerprints come through; any update yet on the transport system’s CCTV footage? When a case this big came in, it was like your first day all over again. Only once in their careers might any of them get the chance to investigate a murder that was dominating the front page of every national newspaper, and Erin could practically feel the excitement crackling in the air that morning.

The chief superintendent, Peters, never came looking for you himself. He’d always send the last person he’d spoken to on a mission to find you. He was still having his morning latte, bought from the deli round the corner, when she and Tom were summoned in. 

One of that day’s papers dominated the available space that Peters’ monstrous house plant had left on the table. He pointed at the two-page spread, as though showing them a plot of land he was vaguely interested in buying, and took a sip of his coffee. ‘The back of your head’s in this one, Radley.’ 

When Erin had first heard Peters speak, she’d thought she’d gone deaf. He had such a low, quiet voice he was practically murmuring to himself. She’d soon worked out it was deliberate. He wanted to have you leaning in, focusing all your attention on him to try and catch what he was saying. 

He wasn’t about to turn the newspaper the right way up for them so she tried to make sense of the photo from her upside-down perspective. There were splashes of white and bright yellow – the forensic investigators in their plastic coverings. She was looking at the site where they’d found the body. In the background, a man in a dark coat was facing the other way; Tom, potentially. She must have been there next to him, but she was out of sight.

Peters looked at them. ‘I’m giving this to you two.’

Even though she’d seen it coming, Erin felt the ice-cold rush of adrenaline. It was just the feeling of being picked. Childish and immediate like having your name called out while stood up against the wall in PE. Even six years in, it hadn’t gotten old yet. 

‘You did well,’ he said. ‘Both of you. Things have been said.’

That was the useful thing about having Tom as a partner; there was never any shortage of people singing his praises.

‘I don’t need to tell you how much is riding on this one,’ Peters continued. ‘We were all there. Almost the entire force. And the bastard dumped the body right in front of us. I’d be surprised if we’re not a complete pissing laughing stock, wouldn’t you?’

Erin was glad he wasn’t looking at her, so he couldn’t see her wincing. But Tom nodded, sincere and understanding, just what Peters wanted. 

The super’s eyes roved back to the page in front of him again. ‘So all the more reason to throw everything at this one. You’ve got free rein on resources. Anyone specific you want me to assign on this with you?’

Tom looked into the plant, and then back at Peters. ‘Lewis Jennings,’ he said.

Peters’ owlish eyebrow lifted slightly. ‘Jennings who only just made DS?’

‘He’s ready for a case like this.’ 

For a moment Peters looked like he might say no. Then he nodded. ‘Alright. Use as many people as you need. Find who did this.’

*

When police had searched the Madson family’s house the day before, nothing was missing apart from Sophie’s keys, phone, wallet and a yellow handbag. This wasn’t a runaway case: Sophie had planned on coming back that day. 

The handbag wasn’t found on the body, and nor was her phone. That was a pain – they could find out who she’d texted from her phone company, but without the mobile the actual messages were lost.

A conversation with the digital forensics team revealed she’d been captured on the transport system’s CCTV, getting the 133 bus into town at 11:12 a.m. The staccato images showed a girl in a white top sat on the lower floor of the bus who got up and left when the bus stopped at the high street. That put her in the centre of town just under two hours before she called 999 from the field. 

A team of forensics had combed that field from top to bottom. They’d found nothing. So far, the only crime scene they had was in the woods. According to the CSI, the blood patterns at the base of the tree confirmed Sophie hadn’t died there; she’d been moved and repositioned. When Erin had asked the CSI what that said about the killer, he’d replied: ‘Considering the risk they took to hide the body there, and the publicity of the place, an exhibitionist. Someone who wanted her to be found.’

Something else supported the theory that this killer enjoyed the limelight: they’d picked a fairly high-profile victim. ‘Sophie appears in a Google search more than your average sixteen-year-old,’ said Tom, on the drive to the Madsons’ house. ‘Looks like the gymnastics was more than just a hobby. Bronze in last year’s regional championships. She’s pictured in a lot of blogs that follow these things. I think they’re mostly run by people’s mums.’

He held out his phone. Erin, who was driving, glanced away from the road to register the photos of Sophie in a spangly uniform, body bending into bizarre, zero-gravity movements. Without knowing it was Sophie in them, she wouldn’t have recognised her. She had her hair scraped off her face in a tight ponytail and her expression was one of morbid concentration. 

‘So it wouldn’t have been hard for someone to find her,’ she said grimly.

‘Exactly.’ 

‘One of the researchers – Joel—’

‘The one who downs Lucozade like he’s not sitting around on his arse all day?’

‘Him. He said most of the girls in that team were all double-barrelled names and grammar schools. Sophie was the only one at that level who came from a lower-income family.’

‘You think that had anything to do with it?’

Erin shrugged. ‘Maybe she felt isolated there. Or it could have made her seem more vulnerable to someone who was targeting gymnasts.’

She stopped at a red light and Tom ran a hand over his mouth, thinking. Watching him, a glow of warmth spread through Erin. Times like this, when it was just the two of them, embarking on another case, reminded her how lucky she was to have Tom as a partner. Out of training, she could have been lumped with any one of the officers who’d joined at the same time. Instead, by sheer luck, she’d landed the high-flying homicide detective several years’ her senior, adored by every probationer. She’d never forget the case that had brought them together. Close her eyes and she was there: only a few months into the job, with no homicide experience, speed-reading the incident report as she followed Tom into the interview room where the suspect was waiting for them. For three gruelling hours they were in there. At a few points Erin thought they should pack it in. But they kept going, her and Tom, rallying back and forth, sticking with the strategy they’d planned outside, then – when that didn’t work – relying on their own intuition, and on each little signal from the other.

That was the first time Erin appreciated the importance of the partner-to-partner relationship. It was like a marriage, really. You learnt how to read the other. Sense their discomfort. Anticipate their next move. Except, unlike a marriage, it was built on grim foundations, not candlelit dinners and cinema trips, but traumas. Shared experiences of the stuff no one should have to see. 

Wakestead was still littered with reminders of last night’s search, missing posters of Sophie trodden into the pavement, disintegrating into blue sludge after the early morning shower. The sight was made all the more disorientating by the swarm of TV crews. Everywhere they looked there seemed to be at least one white van parked up with tired-looking cameramen crowded around outside, drinking from Thermoses. 

About six of these vans were parked right outside the Madsons’ house. As soon as Tom and Erin left the car, the reporters who’d arrived in them surged forwards in a wave of noise and lights that flooded the road in front of this otherwise dreary row of suburban houses.

Inside, the house had a horrible nether zone feeling. They’d shut the curtains to get some privacy from the cameras but turned none of the lights on, casting the room in a thin, dusty light. 

Sophie’s parents were called Richard and Andrea. They were sat on the sofa together, holding hands tightly, when Erin and Tom entered the living room. Erin got the impression they’d been sat here all day and all night, braced against the endless stream of forensic investigators who trampled back and forth through the house, arms piled up with Sophie’s belongings.

‘We know you’ve already given a statement to the family liaison officer who was here with you yesterday,’ said Tom. ‘That will really help us try and narrow down where she was going and who she was meeting. But there’s still a few things we need to ask you.’ 

Richard nodded. ‘Go ahead.’

‘The first thing it would be good to hear is what Sophie was like as a person,’ said Erin. 

He looked at the wall. ‘Just… a wonderful kid. Loved the outdoors. Loved gymnastics. Stubborn as anything, but you never met a kid more determined, more hard-working…’ All through this, Andrea stayed silent. Her dark fringe hid her eyes as she looked at the carpet. 

‘You said in your statement that you’re not aware of any boyfriend in the picture,’ said Tom. 

Andrea cleared her throat. A brittle sound. ‘Nothing like that.’

As soon as she said it though, she looked sceptically at Richard, who was still staring at the wall. When he looked back at them, his eyes were hard.

‘The truth is, we have been feeling like something’s been going on,’ he said. ‘We put it down to her growing up. You know, our friends say their daughters are going through the same thing.’

‘And what was that?’

‘We used to joke that she lived with one foot in the virtual world. You know, on her phone all the time.’

‘I think that’s definitely normal at that age.’

‘I know. But she’s been distant the whole of the past year. Locking herself in her room. Getting grumpy at dinner. Plastering herself in make-up and going off to meet friends all the time.’ He paused, looking stony. ‘And then obviously the stuff with the gym just made it worse.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Sophie was kicked off the team about six weeks ago,’ said Andrea.

‘What for?’

‘They said she was slacking off. Ridiculous.’

Andrea added, ‘We didn’t think it was fair. But her coach wouldn’t take her back.’

‘How often was she there?’ asked Tom.

‘Gymnastics practice was generally four or five times a week. Two hours each time.’ 

Christ. Poor bugger, Erin thought to herself. 

‘What’s your opinion of her coach, Fraser Jones?’

There was silence, and then Richard gave a huff of bitter laughter through his nose. ‘That’s a hard question to answer right now, isn’t it?’ 

They gave it a few moments before he continued, ‘We’ve never had a problem with him before. He was really committed to Sophie. She was like his star pupil. When she was seven, he said she might even make Olympic level, if she stuck it out.’ His knuckles clenched on the sofa’s arm. ‘But the whole drama with him kicking her off the team… he wouldn’t even speak to me, would he, Andrea? I turned up to ask for a proper explanation and he just mumbled through it. Could barely keep eye contact with me.’

Erin glanced at Tom; he had that look he got when he could see the start of the trail in front of him. 

It was misting with rain when they dashed back to the car and the cameras flashed at them through the windows as they drove away. Erin shivered, relieved to be out of there. The intensity of the last twenty-four hours had worn her down. Sophie’s blue body in the darkness shot through her mind. 

Tom swept the damp hair off his forehead. ‘Slacking off,’ he said. ‘I wonder if that’s really true.’

‘Sounds like something happened between her and this coach, doesn’t it?’

‘If they’re right about how seriously Sophie took gymnastics,’ said Tom, ‘then it would have been quite easy for an older man to take advantage of that.’ 

‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘if she’d been meeting her coach the day she went missing, wouldn’t she have told her parents?’

‘Not if she was in some kind of relationship with him.’

The rain blurred the suburban houses outside. ‘Any chance Richard’s trying to take the attention off himself?’ she asked. She found it hard to imagine either Andrea or Richard had been involved, but you could never rule out the parents.

‘We know he didn’t move the body,’ said Tom. ‘He and Andrea were with the family liaison officers in the evening and then they were out with the other searchers all night. So if it was them, they’d have had to get help.’ 

‘Which would be weird in a domestic killing,’ Erin concluded. ‘“Hey, do you mind helping me move my daughter’s dead body?”’

‘Exactly. Right now, Fraser’s the one we need to speak to.’

3

Erin’s shoes squeaked on the linoleum flooring of the gymnasium, which was so vast it felt almost like entering a cathedral. To Sophie, the significance of this place was probably borderline religious. Right here was where she focused all her time and energy. Where her hopes and dreams would either come toppling down or spring miraculously to life. For the first time, Erin felt like she could envisage Sophie padding over the training mats, lifting up her gym kit and swinging it over her shoulder before heading to the showers. She saw her clamber up onto the balance beam and stand with her arms elegantly outstretched; perfect poise, perfect command over her body. 

A lot of detectives would tell you to put up a wall between yourself and the victim, not just for the case but for your own sanity. Erin disagreed. If nothing else, you owed it to them to remember they were once flesh and blood, not just a headshot on an incident report.

A line of teenage girls were queued up in front of the balance beam, waiting their turn. This was a far cry from the gym classes Erin remembered. No messing about; no sick notes and fake period pains. Each girl studied the performance of the one before them with complete focus, stretching out a leg or rolling their shoulders in silence.

There was still silence when Tom and Erin spoke to them. They explained that they needed to know if anyone had seen Sophie on the fifth and whether, in the days leading up to her death, she’d acted strangely. The gymnasts stared back at them with a kind of morbid fascination. 

The coach – Fraser – watched from the benches. His eyes looked red.

‘You started training with her when she was seven, is that right? You must have known her pretty well.’

Like the rest of the centre, Fraser’s office carried the strong smell of chlorine from the indoor pool. Although his gymnastics days were over, he took care of himself. Erin noted the clearly defined muscle in his forearms.

‘You’re always hoping you’re going to get someone who really has the passion for the sport,’ he said. ‘A lot of parents, they enrol their children just because they’re looking for an extracurricular activity. It’s rare to find someone who genuinely cares. Sophie… she cared alright. She had the perfectionism you need to have. The desire to finesse everything til you get it right. She could have gone professional, if things had been different.’

‘When did you hear she was missing?’

‘When it made the news. Must have been 3 p.m.? I was at home.’

‘Do you have anyone who can verify that?’

‘Not as such. I live by myself.’ 

‘And what time did you start searching for her?’ asked Tom.

‘Not long after.’

‘And where was this?’

‘In the woods.’ 

‘I’m assuming you drove there? Can you show me where you parked?’

Tom got out a map on his phone. Fraser squinted at it and pointed to a section of the screen. ‘It must have been around there. It was one of these car parks they have for walkers. You should be able to see it on a map of the footpaths.’ 

His car should have been stopped by one of the officers. They’d check later if his name was written down. 

‘What about between 8 and 11 p.m.? Where were you searching?’

He pointed at another section of the map. Erin could see just enough to know that it was a long distance from where Sophie’s body had been found.

Looking back up at him, Erin said, ‘It surprises me, to hear that she had so much potential, but you kicked her off the squad at the end of July?’

‘That was really hard to do. She cared so much about gymnastics. But the truth is her performance had been worsening. She was making more and more mistakes. I wanted to keep her on, but I had to be honest with myself.’

‘Do you know if anything caused it? Her losing focus like that?’

‘I don’t know exactly. Maybe there was some boyfriend in the picture who was distracting her. But I can’t say for sure.’

Erin couldn’t help noticing that, as he said this, his right knee started juddering silently up and down, like he suddenly couldn’t wait to get up and start moving.

They held the next interview in an empty squash court opposite the main sports hall. Alisha Iqbal, fresh off the balance beam, sat on the bench in front of them – zipped up in a bright-orange sports jacket with the sweat still curling her dark hair. She gripped the edge of the bench like it was the lip of a pool and she was about to plunge herself down.

‘Sophie told her parents she was going to yours on the day she went missing. But she never mentioned any plan like that to you?’

‘No.’

‘Did she speak at all about what she planned on doing that day?’

Alisha shook her head.

‘Any theories?’

‘Maybe seeing a guy.’

‘Which guy?’

‘It was a bit hard to keep track with her. For a while there was this guy two years above us. Then there was Theo in our year.’

‘Any of these serious?’

‘Just fun.’

Sounded like she could have gotten on someone’s bad side, in that case.

‘Did she do that a lot? Use you as an excuse.’

‘I don’t know. She never told me she did.’

Teenagers could be like this – put a detective in front of them and suddenly they were twelve years old again.

Erin tried to soften her tone. ‘Really? I would’ve thought she’d tell you she was using you as an alibi. In case her parents checked in.’

Alisha’s hands clenched and unclenched on the edge of the bench. ‘Yeah, I guess that would’ve made sense. But she wasn’t really speaking to me…’

‘You had a falling out?’

She nodded, looking relieved Erin had said it for her.

‘What happened?’

‘Gymnastics was everything to her. Getting kicked out, she got really, really upset. I think she thought maybe I should leave too, you know, in solidarity, because it was unfair. We had a big argument about it.’

‘Was it unfair?’

Alisha looked at the squash net behind Erin. Then her gaze darted back, apprehensive.

‘I don’t want to get someone in trouble if they didn’t do it,’ she said.

‘If they didn’t do anything, we’ll find that out.’

‘She said Mr Jones kicked her out because he fancied her.’ The words tumbled out of her – as if by saying them quickly she couldn’t be held responsible for them.

‘Did he?’

‘I didn’t think so. She was his favourite student, definitely. But he’s not like that. I didn’t think he would ever – with a student—’

‘So what did she tell you had happened?’

‘That he’d kicked her out because he was angry he couldn’t have her.’

‘But you think it was something else?’

Alisha fidgeted.

‘She had been getting distracted. She’d slipped up a few times. To be honest, I thought it was unfair, him letting her go, but I thought he just expected better from her. I thought he might take her back on.’

Alisha’s chest lifted up and down as she breathed out heavily.

‘I didn’t say that to her. But she could tell that was what I thought. We never really spoke about it after that. Which is why…’

‘What?’

Her eyes – filled with distress – flashed up to meet Erin’s.

‘Which is why I don’t want it to be him. Because if it is him, then I didn’t believe her.’ 

Alisha’s words stayed with Erin as she made her way back to the car with Tom. Before she’d joined the force, she would have assumed that murder made people paranoid of everyone around them. Surely you viewed anyone as a potential suspect. Your dad could have done it; your teacher, your friend, your husband. But people didn’t usually think that way. People were surprisingly unwilling to let go of their preconceptions of others: ‘Oh no, he couldn’t have raped her – he’s a really nice guy’; ‘He’s not violent. It doesn’t make sense’. Alisha didn’t owe this coach anything; why was she so certain he couldn’t have done it? But Erin knew why, because she’d seen the same pattern in others so many times before. It was easier, even for the friends and relatives, to face a hopeless scenario with very few suspects, if any, than it was to admit that there’d been something so profoundly wrong with another person, and you’d missed it. 

Walker was waiting for them in the corridor outside the main office when they got back to HQ. He made it look like he was minding his own business, leaning against the wall with one hand in his pocket, scrolling through his phone. But Erin knew that this was premeditated. As they approached, he put his phone away and looked at them, smiling demurely.

‘Afternoon, you two. I want to know what lines of inquiry you plan on making.’ 

‘We’ll explain in the briefing tomorrow.’ 

‘Bad idea, hiding your ideas right up until curtain call. Back in my day, you ran every little detail past your gaffer. So come on, what have you got?’

Tom and Erin exchanged a look. 

‘Sophie told Alisha Iqbal that Fraser was interested in her,’ Tom said.

Walker’s eyes lit up. ‘Does he have an alibi?’

‘A flimsy one,’ said Erin. ‘He was alone at home most of the day. Then he joined the search. We’re going to check if his car was searched before he parked up.’

‘And after that? Are you bringing him in?’

‘Not yet. We need more.’

Walker smiled incredulously. ‘Really? What are you waiting for? You think he’s just going to swing by, knock on the door, and say, “yeah, you’re right, I did it”?’

Erin resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

‘Just a little warning,’ he continued, ‘it’s important you tackle this as quickly as possible. Before patience runs out. Because spending months trying to be dead certain about the suspect, only to have it blow up in your face, that’s just the worst thing in the world. So no cut corners. No hiding.’ 

His smiling eyes settled very deliberately on Erin. She tried to keep her face impassive even though her heart rate had just leapt. 

‘Anyway. Everyone’s very excited to see what you turn up,’ he said. His coiffed head bobbed back into the main office.

Slowly, she and Tom looked at each other. She was relieved to see her own exasperation mirrored in his expression.

‘Notice how he managed to sneak in a reference to the good old days?’

Erin scoffed. ‘Back in my day…’

‘Back in my day they made you swim through a river of shit in the physicals. Shawshank-style.’

‘Back in my day you had to arrest your own mother just to prove you were hard enough.’

‘My mother’s been in prison for twenty-four years now and I don’t regret a thing…’ Tom opened the door to the main office and held it there for her. ‘He won’t get off our backs with this one, will he?’ he said. ‘No hiding? What was that supposed to mean?’

Erin felt a twinge of panic shoot through her. She managed not to show it; instead she shrugged. ‘You know what he’s like. He’s just micromanaging.’

For a moment Erin thought he was going to say something, but then he shook his head to himself. ‘Ridiculous.’

A wave of nausea crept over her as they re-entered the office. Walker felt like a walking contagion zone. Alone, she could handle him. It was the creeping influence he could exert on other people – on Peters, on Tom – that scared her.

If she’d known Walker would suspect something, she might never have done what she did.

4

In Erin’s six years as a detective, so far no feeling had compared to the unbridled relief that had washed over her the moment a judge had stood up in Oxford Crown Court and sentenced Alan Vogel to life in prison for the murder of Annie Dodds.

As the judge’s words had echoed around the courtroom, eliciting a harsh, animal cry from Annie’s mother on the bench behind her, Erin had felt every knot of tension that had built up during the investigation, in her shoulders and neck and around her spine, slowly start to unwind. She’d left that court high as a kite, knowing that as soon as she got home, she’d have the best sleep she’d had in months. 

Right up to the end, Erin had been terrified Vogel might get away with it. Now it was certain he’d be locked up for what he’d done, every tiny pleasure had been amplified. The cigarette she’d had by the side of the car afterwards had been heavenly. On the way to the station, she and Tom had stopped off to get fish and chips, which they’d eaten in his car with the doors open. She couldn’t remember what they’d talked about but she remembered Tom’s easy grin in the sunlight, and how he had his takeaway box elegantly outstretched in one hand while the other wiped traces of salt from his best suit trousers. If only the sentencing had been later in the day, they could have gone for a pint straight after. 

And the whole time, the words of Annie’s mum had kept ringing in her ears: ‘You have no idea what you’ve done for me. This is the first time I’ve felt peace since she died.’

Hearing that had made her glow with pride. But the feeling hadn’t lasted for long.

Because then they’d returned to the station, and once the round of applause to welcome them back had died down and the team had returned to their seats, one person had remained standing.

Walker, head bowed, hands clasped behind his back, had slowly woven his way round to where Erin had stood at her desk, filing the court documents.

Immediately she’d looked around for Tom, but he was off accepting praise from Peters. She was alone.

She’d made a point of not looking at Walker as he’d come close. But out of the corner of her eye, she’d seen him staring out of the window. He could have been in deep concentration, except there’d been a mean smirk on his face.

‘What luck, eh?’ His voice had been low. ‘Years pass by without any progress. Then you get the case. And the forensics just so happen to find that ribbon right there. In your only suspect’s bedside table.’

Fear had shivered up her skin like an electric current. But she’d shrugged, still gathering up the papers into Vogel’s file. ‘Makes sense to me. Vogel wasn’t exactly a criminal mastermind.’ 

The high she’d experienced moments before had already become a distant memory. Instead she’d felt cold.

Walker still hadn’t moved. ‘Lucky.’

He’d turned around then and left, but she’d hardly noticed.

Because she hadn’t been in the office anymore. Instead, she’d been back there, in Vogel’s house, the dust circling around her and the floorboards creaking beneath her feet. Climbing up to the bedroom. It hadn’t taken her long to find a virtually identical ribbon online. She had contaminated it with one of Annie’s hairs taken from one of the evidence bags. And now the ribbon, laced with the murdered girl’s DNA, was coiled up inside Vogel’s beside drawer where it would remain, untouched, until Erin called in the search.

*

Just to get to her front door, Erin had to squeeze past an old wardrobe and step over several bin bags packed full of baby clothes when she got home after the first day leading the Madson case with Tom. The family who lived next door to her were moving, so they’d turned their house inside out on the pavement. It was late and the glow from the security alarm inside cast her hallway in a bright green light through the frosted glass as she turned her key in the lock, like she was about to step into an evil lab.

At times like this she wondered if she should have moved to London like most of her school friends had, instead of staying here in her hometown. But she always tried to shut out thoughts like that. She’d stayed for the job, not the place. A sleepy, post-1950s housing estate in Wakestead was the trade-off.

She dropped her bag next to the door and kicked off her boots, wondering what she was going to have for dinner. Fancying something comforting, she made toast and scrambled eggs and took the plate through to the sitting room, where she ate while streaming the evening news on the TV.

A reporter was stood in Wakestead’s old town centre in the dreary, lightless morning. ‘Yesterday, this town in Oxfordshire became the scene of a huge manhunt, as dozens of officers were taken off ongoing cases to search for the missing girl.’ Overhead shots showed bodies weaving through the wood like trails of ants. The elderly couple who ran the post office were interviewed against the backdrop of postcodes and envelopes and Haribo sweets. Erin frowned as she chewed. This news report made Wakestead sound idyllic. Maybe that was how it seemed to a London news reporter who’d been helicoptered in for the day. In reality, Wakestead’s relatively high crime rate had tarnished its reputation, making it one of the least desirable towns in the area.

A photo of Sophie at age five or six, clutching a rubber ring round her middle at the poolside, came up on screen. As more and more photos appeared, Erin felt her appetite drain away.

The reporter said, ‘Sophie’s death is bound to restart the debate about the safety of young girls in Wakestead, where Annie Dodds was found dead eight years ago—’

A school photo of Annie. One she’d seen a million times before. Round cheeks and uneven teeth. And long dark hair tied up in a ribbon.

Erin had to put the plate to one side and put her face in her hands and breathe deeply through her nose.

5

The team crowded in for the morning briefing. While the more senior detectives stood arms-folded at the back of the room, the new DCs sat up front, watching Erin and Tom take the floor with hungry eyes. She always enjoyed this bit; the rare chance to actually perform in front of the team, and to do it with Tom.

‘Sophie was last seen getting the one-three-three bus into town at 11:12 a.m. Wearing these clothes.’ She clicked through the photos on the screen. ‘Let’s get these images circulated on social media – find out if anyone saw her after this footage was captured.’ 

Tom said, ‘We haven’t found her bag or her smartphone, but she left her laptop at home. Tech is going through her social media now. That will tell us if she was actually speaking to anyone in the lead-up to the murder. But, at the moment, our focus is on Fraser Jones. Sophie’s gymnastics coach.’

A photo of Fraser appeared on screen. ‘We have it from another gymnast, Alisha Iqbal, that he may have propositioned Sophie sometime in July. He claims he drove to the woods at just after 3 p.m. to join the search party and parked in this area. Have we been able to confirm this yet?’ 

One of the probationers who’d been stopping cars that day sat bolt upright, like this piece of information could make or break the case. ‘We’ve got him driving past the checkpoint on Kings Road at 3:30 p.m., on his way to join the search. Nothing suspicious in his car.’

‘And there’s no record of him coming back the same route?’

The probationer shook his head.

‘That still leaves about seven hours between him arriving in the woods and the body turning up,’ said Tom. ‘Maybe he had the body somewhere else. When DI Crane found Sophie, it was about 10:40 p.m. So we need to know: where was Fraser between 8 and 11 p.m.? Did anyone see him go back to his car at any point? Let’s go through those drivers’ names and narrow down a list of people who might have seen Fraser, then approach them for interview.’ 

Heads ducking down. Scribbling in notepads and clacking keyboards.