Tastes Like Fear (D.I. Marnie Rome 3) Read online

  Copyright © 2016 Sarah Hilary

  The right of Sarah Hilary to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2016

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library.

  eISBN: 978 1 4722 2640 2

  Cover photographs © Silas Manhood (figure), Vulture Labs/Getty Images; man © grynold/Shutterstock.com

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

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  50 Victoria Embankment

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  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About Sarah Hilary

  Also by Sarah Hilary

  About the Book

  Praise

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About Sarah Hilary

  Author photograph © Linda Nylind

  Sarah Hilary has worked as a bookseller, and with the Royal Navy. Her debut novel SOMEONE ELSE’S SKIN won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2015. It was the Observer’s Book of the Month (‘superbly disturbing’), a Richard & Judy Book Club bestseller, and has been published worldwide. Her follow up NO OTHER DARKNESS was published to great acclaim (‘Unsettling and complete absorbing’ Sun). TASTES LIKE FEAR is the third in the DI Marnie Rome series. Sarah lives in Bath.

  Follow Sarah on Twitter at @Sarah_Hilary

  By Sarah Hilary and available from Headline

  Someone Else’s Skin

  No Other Darkness

  Tastes Like Fear

  About the Book

  You’ll never be out of Harm’s way

  The young girl who causes the fatal car crash disappears from the scene.

  A runaway who doesn’t want to be found, she only wants to go home.

  To the one man who understands her.

  Gives her shelter.

  Just as he gives shelter to the other lost girls who live in his house.

  He’s the head of her new family.

  He’s Harm.

  DI Marnie Rome has faced many dangerous criminals but she has never come up against a man like Harm. She thinks that she knows families, their secrets and their fault lines. But as she begins investigating the girl’s disappearance nothing can prepare her for what she’s about to face.

  Because when Harm’s family is threatened, everything tastes like fear …

  Praise

  Praise for Tastes Like Fear:

  ‘Brilliant. I put everything else aside when I have one of her books in the house’ Alex Marwood

  ‘A tense, terrifying tale of obsession and possession … a writer at the top of her game’ Alison Graham, Radio Times

  ‘A truly chilling exploration of control, submission and the desire to step out of a normal life’ Eva Dolan

  ‘It is devious, dark, deliciously chilling. A formidable addition to an accomplished series that just keeps getting better and better’ Never Imitate Blog

  Praise for No Other Darkness:

  ‘Riveting … Sarah Hilary delivers in this enthralling tale of a haunted detective, terrible crime, and the secrets all of us try to keep’ Lisa Gardner

  ‘At the centre is a queasily equivocal moral tone that forces the reader into a constant rejigging of their attitude to the characters. And did I mention the plotting? Hilary’s ace in the hole – as it is in the best crime thrillers’ Financial Times

  ‘Sarah Hilary cements her position as one of Britain’s most exciting and accomplished new writers. Complex, polished and utterly gripping, this is a book to make your heart pound’ Eva Dolan

  ‘The skill of the prose produces a deft and disturbing thriller’ Sunday Mirror

  ‘Truly mesmerising from its opening page to its thunderous denouement. A haunting, potent novel from a bleakly sublime new voice’ David Mark

  ‘Heart-breaking … I can’t recommend this highly enough’ SJI Holliday

  ‘DI Marnie Rome is a three-dimensional character of an emotional depth rarely encountered in the world of fictional cops’ The Times

  ‘Hilary’s attention to detail is scrupulous, and she is at her absolute best when it comes to marshalling a cast of characters’ Crime Review

  ‘Marnie Rome is back and Sarah Hilary has knocked it out of the park for us yet again’ Grab This Book

  ‘Sarah Hilary explores her characters with forensic insight and serious skill’ Live and Deadly

  ‘A genius at sending the reader in one direction, while pointing clues in another … Totally and utterly recommended’ Northern Crime

  ‘A masterclass in developing crime fiction series characters’ Crime Reader Blog

  Praise for Someone Else’s Skin:

  ‘An exceptional new talent. Hilary writes with a beguiling immediacy that pulls you straight into her world on the first page and leaves you bereft when you finish’ Alex Marwood

  ‘I absolutely loved it’ Martyn Waites

  ‘An intelligent, assured and very promising debut’ Guardian (Best Spring Crime Novel)

  ‘So brilliantly put together, unflinching without ever being gratuitous … it’s the best crime debut I’ve ever read’ Erin Kelly

&
nbsp; ‘A slick, stylish debut’ Sharon Bolton

  ‘Hilary maintains all her characters with depth and feeling’ Independent

  ‘It’s meaty, dark and terrifying … And Sarah’s writing is glorious’ Julia Crouch

  ‘There is a moment when it is almost impossible to keep reading, the scene Hilary has created is so upsetting, but almost impossible not to, the story is so hell-for-leather compelling’ Observer

  ‘It’s written with the verve and assurance of a future star’ Steven Dunne

  ‘It’s a simply superb read – dark and thrilling’ Sun

  ‘Detective Inspector Marnie Rome – secretive, brilliant and haunted by a whole host of demons … excellent novel’ Literary Review

  ‘I think it must be one of the debut novels of next year, if not THE debut novel …’ Caro Ramsay

  ‘Intelligently and fluently written with a clever plot and an energetic pace … I think Sarah’s onto a winning series and I really look forward to reading the next instalment’ Cath Staincliffe

  ‘A thinking woman’s whodunit’ Irish Examiner

  ‘The parallels with Lynda La Plante’s DCI Jane Tennison are plain to see but there is also a bleakness and sense of evil in the novel that sets Rome apart … richly deserves to succeed’ Daily Mail

  ‘It has such pace and force’ Helen Dunmore

  ‘A talented new writer who deserves every accolade for such a breath-taking crime novel’ crimesquad.com (Fresh Blood Pick of the Month)

  For Francis,

  for being one of the brave ones

  Two years ago

  Rain had blunted all of London’s spires, flattened her high-rises, buried her tower blocks in puddles of mud. Even the chimneys at Battersea Power Station were laid low, their long reflections boiling in the water. Not just days, weeks of rain. Pillars of it coming down, stirring up a stink, shifting the ground under your feet, not letting you forget that this city was built on burial pits.

  The rain found its way into everything, bleeding through brickwork, shaking the glass from broken windows, filling the empty can Christie put out for the rush hour. She ran her finger around its ragged lip, inviting blood – proof that she was still here. A Guinness can, its top taken off with a blunt knife, stones weighting the bottom. Coins did the same trick, but it’d been days since anyone dropped coins. She sucked at her finger, tasting meat and copper. Raw inside, an empty ache, but I’m still here, she thought. She wished she had better proof than a bloody finger in her mouth.

  The world was a wall of umbrellas. She knew the commuters on this route, had seen them sweating in their summer dresses and shirtsleeves. Scowling now, heads down, shoulders up. Angry at her for taking up space on their pavement, sticking her dirty feet in the half-shut door of their conscience. The rain was an excuse to hate her more than they already did.

  When she was new to this game – how long ago? Months? – she’d searched the crowd for kind faces. But she’d quickly learned it wasn’t kindness that gave coin. People threw change at her the way they’d toss it at a toll-gate basket. To get past, away. Soon, they wouldn’t have to pretend not to notice her. She’d be see-through. The rain was washing her away.

  ‘Do you mind?’ a woman demanded, meaning Christie’s feet, which were in her way apparently, even though they weren’t. She’d made herself so small, no part of her was in anyone’s way. ‘For God’s sake find yourself somewhere to go.’ Thin and furious, her fist fierce with rings, clenched around the handle of a yellow umbrella.

  Christie had tucked herself into a doorway where it was almost dry, but the rain still found her. Pricking through old bricks, a trickle and then a stream. She felt its fingers tickling her neck.

  ‘There are places, you know.’

  She didn’t know. She wished she did. She was scared of the rain, the way it ruined everything, her clothes, her sleeping bag – everything she had. Rain scared her worse than fire.

  When she was new to this, a young couple would come with leaflets. They’d stop and crouch, faces working hard. Talking about Our Lord and what was coming and ‘Are you ready?’ Christie expected it from old people, though most shook their heads as if beggars hadn’t existed back in their day. Only once did anyone over the age of sixty give her a second glance. The young couple had pamphlets with pictures of grinning people. The colours ran, making her hands dirtier. When she asked for money, they got mad. They pretended they weren’t – ‘We’re on your side’ – but she saw it under the surface of their skin like a swallowing of snakes.

  Worse than the snakes was the little man who came and sat beside her. He never spoke, just sat dropping change into her can, one penny at a time, so she couldn’t get up and go or tell him to piss off even though he was freaking her out. He smelt funny. Not poor-funny. Rich-funny. Being rich didn’t help, the young couple said, it was about being ready for what was coming. Death or Jesus, she didn’t know, but there was a whole moment when she thought she could do it – pretend to be religious so they’d save her from this. Being nobody, nothing, invisible.

  When the rain started, they stopped coming.

  Everyone stopped, except the little man. In a plastic cape that ran the wet off him into her doorway. Splashing coppers into her can, and she knew she couldn’t afford to be picky but when he went, she shoved her hand in and scooped out his coins, flinging them away from her, sucking rusty blood from her knuckles. He’d be back for more tomorrow. She should move, somewhere he couldn’t find her. Her whole body hurt like it was being squeezed.

  Where would she go?

  Who should she be?

  She could make herself smaller for the woman with the rings, pretend to believe in Jesus for the religious couple. Go with the creep in the cape and be … whatever he wanted her to be. Just to get out of the rain for a day, an hour. It was washing her away, all her colours, everything. She wasn’t her any more. Empty inside, scraped out. Missing.

  That was when he found her, where he found her …

  Right on the brink of being lost.

  He wasn’t like the little man. He was tall and fair and he smelt of the rain that was bluing the shoulders of his shirt. He didn’t have pamphlets, or questions. He wasn’t angry with her.

  His hands were empty and open, like his face.

  When he stood in her doorway, he blocked the umbrellas and the hiss and spit of tyres in the street. His shoulders stopped the rain from reaching her.

  Strong fingers, wet like hers, but his palms were dry and warm.

  Safe, he was safe.

  There are places, you know.

  She hadn’t believed it, until then.

  1

  Now

  Noah Jake was running late. He grabbed a bagel for breakfast, leaving the house with it held between his teeth, hands free to search for his Oyster card and keys and his phone, which was playing the theme tune from The Sweeney …

  ‘Jake.’ Remove the bagel, try again. ‘DS Jake.’

  ‘Shit, mate.’ Ron Carling laughed. ‘You sound like a dirty phone call. What’ve I interrupted?’

  ‘Breakfast. What’s up?’

  ‘Not you, by the sound of it. Late night?’

  ‘The late nights I can handle. It’s the early mornings that’re killing me.’ No luck finding the Oyster card. He had a nasty feeling his kid brother Sol had swiped it. ‘I’m on my way.’

  ‘The boss wants you in Battersea.’

  ‘Where, exactly?’

  Ron supplied an address Noah recognised. ‘When?’

  ‘Ten minutes ago. Better get your roller-disco skates on.’

  Forty minutes later, the traffic on York Road was being diverted by police accident signs. A snarl of cars ate the streets to either side of Battersea Power Station. Noah walked in its wide shadow, the tilt of its chimneys like stained fingers flipped at a blue sky. Out of commission for years, the power station was sometimes home to film shoots or exhibitions, but empty for the most part. Dan had worked here when it was an art venue, said it m
ade the Tate look like a maiden aunt’s curio cabinet. Now it was being hauled into a new shape, one chimney gone, hobbling the building like an upturned table. Penthouses were on sale at six million, and there was talk of private clubs and restaurants. Noah was going to miss the old power station. Sunset Boulevard with a savage facelift, still slyly smoking sixty a day …

  He heard the police tape before he saw it, switching back and forth.

  Black smell of scorch marks from the smash site. An SUV had hit an Audi, the impact piling both cars into a concrete wall, taking a lamp post along for good measure.

  DI Marnie Rome was with a traffic officer, her red hair tied back from her face, her neat suit the same shade as the gunmetal Audi, bits of which were still being removed. The SUV was gone, just the shape of its shoulder in the wall. ‘DS Jake. Good morning.’

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  ‘Everyone’s late,’ the traffic officer said, ‘because of this.’

  ‘How bad is it?’ Noah asked Marnie. ‘Ron said no one died.’

  ‘Not yet. Four in hospital, two critical. Our eyewitness says a girl walked out into the road.’

  No mention of a girl in the early reports online. ‘She’s one of the critical ones?’

  ‘She walked away. Not a scratch on her, or not from this. The driver of the Audi was lucky. His wife wasn’t. Nor was the passenger in the SUV.’

  ‘Which two are critical?’

  ‘Ruth Eaton from the Audi. Logan Marsh from the SUV. He’s eighteen. His dad was driving him home from a friend’s house. Head injuries. It doesn’t look good.’

  ‘But the girl doesn’t have a scratch? Where is she?’

  ‘I wish I knew.’

  ‘So when you said she walked away …’

  ‘I meant it literally. We need to find her. From the description, she’s at risk of harm. Half-dressed, covered in scratches. In shock.’ Marnie was studying the scars left by the crash. ‘The Audi’s driver is our only eyewitness. Joe Eaton. He’s at St Thomas’s with his wife.’

  ‘How old was the girl?’

  ‘Sixteen, seventeen?’ She pre-empted Noah’s next question. ‘Red hair, not blonde. It doesn’t sound like May Beswick.’