The Death Knock Read online

  Also by Elodie Harper

  The Binding Song

  The Death Knock

  Elodie Harper

  www.mulhollandbooks.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Mulholland Books

  An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Elodie Harper 2018

  The right of Elodie Harper to be identified as the Author of the

  Work has been asserted by her in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 473 64218 8

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  To my husband Jason Farrington, harbour and tempest

  The Devil, that proud spirit, cannot abide to be mocked

  Thomas More

  Contents

  Ava

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Frankie

  Ava

  Frankie

  Ava

  One Year Later

  Acknowledgements

  The Binding Song

  Mulholland

  Ava

  My sight is the first to adjust. Bars of light, so faint they blend into the dark, are falling across my face. Drowsiness washes over me, a terrible heaviness, and I want to close my eyes, to fall asleep again, but somehow I know this is wrong.

  I don’t know where I am.

  I try to sit up, but seem to have been paralysed. The top of my forehead scrapes against something hard. I can see wooden slats in front of me. I breathe out, afraid, and dust puffs back, mouthfuls of it. Instinctively, I push my hands upwards, but there’s nowhere for them to go. I’m pushing against a solid barrier. My elbows scrape wood, rough and splintered. I’m hemmed in on all sides, trapped inside a wooden box.

  Panic seizes every joint in my body. I’m on fire with fear, twisting and hammering. It’s impossible to move to the side, to sit up, I’m pressed downwards, flat on my back. There’s no room to extend my legs, no room to kick, even though, frantically, I try. I’m not screaming but gasping, breathing in lungfuls of dirt, scraping the skin from my knuckles as I fight against the wooden ceiling too close to my face.

  Then, suddenly I stop. My heart is in agony, trapped against my ribs, like I’m trapped against the slats of this box. I feel it thumping. Panic will kill you, a voice says in my head. Breathe.

  So I breathe. I think of nothing but the breath, shallow and ragged at first, but getting slower. Someone put you in here, says the voice. I feel panic rising again, but the voice returns. Think. Who put you in here?

  And so I try to remember. But nothing comes. Terror rises again. I count the slats above my face to calm myself. Two, four, six, eight. I remember the bar. I remember Jon laughing, Laura leaning over, her blue boots tucked neatly underneath her. An ordinary Sunday night, surrounded by friends, people I know. Did we speak to anyone new? But the memory stops at Laura’s boots. I can see them so clearly in my mind’s eye, their heels resting on the metal bar of the stool, ankle cut, vintage, fake suede, powder blue. Almost luminous in the dark. I even remember the day we bought them, a bargain at a second-hand store, Laura’s glee as she found them in the basket, yanking them out from amongst the battered Dr. Scholls. This isn’t helping, I tell myself. Try to remember that night.

  Other fragments come back to me. Jon buying more drinks, though I stopped after two, switched to Coke, wanted to finish my coursework the next day. Not drunk then. I try to remember leaving the bar, try to picture Laura’s blue boots swinging off the stool, making their way out of the door, clacking onto Bedford Street. Then it hits me. I wouldn’t remember that, I went home early. Alone. I will myself into recalling the journey, but I can’t. There’s a vague sensation of smothering, something over my face. Or is that a false memory, a fantasy my mind has created to make sense of what’s happened?

  Perhaps it was a blow to the head. That might account for my confusion. I feel a stab of terror. What if there’s permanent damage? I reach up to feel my skull. It’s cramped in the box, and hard to manoeuvre, but I’m just about able to pat against the back of my head, tentatively feel my forehead. There’s nothing matted like dried blood, no lump I can feel.

  Nothing else comes back to me about the journey home, and I don’t try to force it. I know how it would have been. The walk to the bus stop. The journey to campus, the walk to halls. A trip in the dark, accomplished fearlessly a million times.

  I try to work out which was the riskiest stage in that mundane journey, soothing myself by playing detective in my own kidnap, when I hear the sound of footsteps. I brace myself, about to cry for help, but then another thought seizes me. What if this is the kidnapper? My heart speeds up and I stay silent. The footsteps seem to be going up or down stairs. I hear a bolt scrape back, the creak of a door.

  It’s hard to breathe I’m so afraid, and then the footsteps come closer. It’s a slow, heavy tread, deliberate. Somehow I know, I just know, that I mustn’t cry out, I mustn’t scream. Then a thud. Whoever it is has sat down on my box. They are sitting over my heart, blocking out the bars of light, strips of faded denim crushed between the slats by their weight. It makes me feel even more claustrophobic.

  Be still, I tell myself. But it’s no good, my breathing is fast and shallow, whistling through my teeth. Then I hear a sound that makes me want to cry. His voice.

  ‘I know you’re awake.’

  Frankie

  The phone rings just as she takes a mouthful of tuna sandwich.

  ‘Bollocks!’

  No prizes for guessing who it is. Frankie looks balefully at the screen, lit up with the familiar number. Briefly she imagines letting him wait, finishing her supermarket meal deal, snug in the front seat of the car. Instead she takes the call with a sigh.

  ‘What now? You know I’ve been filming all morning? I’ve literally just stopped for lunch.’

  ‘My heart bleeds,’ says Charlie, her news editor. ‘Well, eat up, I’ve got another job for you. I need you to go to Great Yarmouth. We’ve had a tip-off about police presence near Vauxhall rail bridge.’

  ‘Seriously? But that could be anything, maybe somebody’s dumped a bike in the Bure.’ It’s the second time this week Charlie has dispatched her to hang around the police on a punt. The first, a body on the
beach at Wells, turned out to be a suicide. ‘I mean, come off it,’ she says. ‘The bridge is two streets away from the police station, what self-respecting killer is going to leave someone there?’

  ‘Our caller said there was quite a lot of activity. Doesn’t sound like a bike.’

  There’s the familiar edge of steel in her news editor’s voice. Charlie is convinced that the recent discoveries of two murdered women could be the work of one killer – even though the police won’t confirm that – and he’s been sending reporters to check out every crime scene since. Frankie sighs again. She’s not going to win this. She never does. ‘OK, I’m on my way to Great Yarmouth. Who’s my cameraman?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. Given it is a punt, we thought you could film it yourself. Might just be a bike in the river.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  Charlie laughs. ‘Have fun.’

  Charlie’s postcode takes Frankie to North Quay just before the Bure meets the Yare. It’s Great Yarmouth’s old industrial heartland but many years have passed since any fortunes were made in fishing here; now it feels more like the outskirts of town than the centre. She drives slowly alongside a row of houses before they give way to a car rental company and a half-derelict industrial estate. Numerous wind-battered signs announce there are units to let. Frankie’s satnav orders her onto a track leading to the river. The car jounces as tarmac turns to cobbles and the buildings thin out, taken over by dirty scrubland that’s barely contained by mesh fencing.

  The track stops as she approaches the brown water of the Bure and she’s about to curse Charlie for a wasted journey when she spies a snapper, leaning his considerable bulk against the mesh to take a photo. Whatever he can see is obscured by a warehouse at the edge of the river. Frankie parks up and walks to the boot of her car, hauling out her camera. The brittle autumn sunshine doesn’t take the edge off the wind, which stings her cheeks as she hurries to join the photographer, tripod bumping against her thigh. As she gets closer she recognises him. It’s a man in his fifties, an acquaintance of her cameraman Gavin, who’s worked for years on the local paper. He’s not much of a talker.

  ‘Hi Dave,’ she calls. ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  Standing beside him, Frankie sees there are several police cars parked on the forecourt of the empty warehouse. Blue and white tape flutters in the breeze. She waits for Dave to elaborate but he continues snapping as if she isn’t there.

  ‘Not a shopping trolley in the river, then?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Dave doesn’t even turn in her direction. He clearly takes competition between news outlets very seriously, or else he’s a grumpy git. Frankie sets up her own camera. There are figures on the scrubland beyond the cars, uniformed officers and a couple of forensic suits, but they’re too far away for her to see much. She might get a better view if she zooms in. She presses her eye to the rubber ring of the viewfinder and turns the dial on the lens. The blur of sludgy brown and green coalesces into sharp lines. Frankie draws back as if the camera’s burned her.

  ‘Shit, is that a body?’

  The continued snapping tells her she’s correct. Frankie hesitates, then looks down the viewfinder again. White trouser legs and blue feet block most of the view, but she can see a hand, its pale fingers curved upwards, and the shape of a slender arm resting on the mud. She doesn’t press record. The person lying on the wasteland by the river will mean the world to somebody, and even if they don’t, even if they are utterly friendless, no self-respecting editor would show a dead body on the teatime news. Feeling queasy, she goes through the motions of her job. If it’s a murder, they’ll need pictures of the scene. She zooms out, taking a few shots at a wider angle, then some close-ups of the police tape and cars. Beside her, Dave is screwing his lens cap on, getting ready to leave.

  ‘Have you spoken to the police?’ Frankie asks. ‘Have they confirmed if the death is suspicious?’

  ‘Not my job,’ he says, walking off. ‘I just take the pictures.’

  Frankie leaves her camera – she can’t imagine anyone will steal it with half the East Anglian Constabulary a few yards away – and heads towards the water, looking for a way through the fence. As she approaches the Bure, it’s hard to believe this is the same river that tourists sail on through the Broads. It laps gently against the rusting corrugated metal shoring up the bank, sluggish and dark, the colour of stewed tea. The red ironwork of the pedestrianised Vauxhall rail bridge curves over the water to Frankie’s right and on the opposite bank there’s a supermarket car park. Nobody will be sending postcards of this spot home.

  She squeezes past the fence where it meets the water, ignoring the warning signs, resting one trainer on the concrete verge to shove her way through. Safe on the other side, she walks towards the panda cars, but doesn’t reach them. One of the officers, a brunette about her own age, has spotted her and heads her off.

  ‘This is a police investigation. Can you get back please.’

  ‘I’m really sorry to disturb you,’ she replies. ‘My name is Frances Latch, I’m with the Eastern Film Company.’ She reaches into her pocket for her press pass. ‘We were just wondering if the death is being treated as suspicious.’

  ‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to call the press office. I can’t talk to you.’

  In spite of herself, Frankie’s eyes have flicked over to the body lying in the mud, still some distance away but close enough now for her to see clearly. It’s a young girl, blonde highlighted hair blown over her face. She’s wearing a filthy short-sleeved pink top and jeans. For a moment, Frankie has an absurd worry she must be cold, she hasn’t even got shoes on, then the reality hits her. ‘Oh my God,’ she says, stepping backwards. ‘The poor girl. Her poor family. Who would do that?’

  The officer takes hold of Frankie’s arm, steadying her. ‘You shouldn’t be here, OK? Just let the police do their job. We’ll have updates for the media later.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ Frankie says, stricken. ‘Somebody killed her, didn’t they? Somebody killed her.’

  Perhaps the officer senses her horror, understands she isn’t only speaking as a journalist, because Frankie sees the closed look on her face waver, and reads the answer in her eyes. She releases Frankie’s arm. ‘Off you go now,’ she says, her voice hoarse. Stumbling slightly on the uneven ground, Frankie turns and heads back towards the fence. The police officer’s voice rings out as she reaches it. ‘And don’t fall in the bloody river!’

  Frankie is conscious of the memory stick as she walks into the newsroom. A small orange oblong with a metal edge, giving nothing away about what’s inside. It’s not as if she actually filmed the woman’s body, she reminds herself; those pictures aren’t in her hands, though they are certainly in her head. The pale arm, the pink top and, worse, the vulnerable, crumpled shape of her on the ground. How long had she been dead? Who is she? It feels wrong somehow that Frankie didn’t see her face, it’s one more aspect of her humanity erased, and yet she’s also relieved not to have that image playing over in her mind too.

  The newsroom is almost empty at this time of day; other reporters are still out filming, just one or two hunched over their edit machines, cutting packages for the evening show. She heads to the newsdesk, picking her way over the mess of bags and discarded newspapers, and taps Charlie on the shoulder.

  ‘You’re back,’ he says, spinning round on his chair to face her. As always, he’s wearing a headset with an earpiece and mic, to save him from picking up the constantly ringing phone. It makes him look like he works in telesales, though she can’t imagine anyone less suitable to flog double-glazing. ‘I’ve been on to the police,’ he continues. ‘They’re not identifying her yet, though they have confirmed they’ve found a woman’s body and the death’s being treated as suspicious. Are your rushes online?’

  ‘No, I thought I’d ask traffic to do it,’ she says, holding up the memory stick and nodding towards the central bank of desks where
production sits.

  Charlie looks embarrassed. ‘Of course. Sorry it ended up being so grim.’

  ‘All part of the job, I guess.’

  He nods, no doubt relieved she isn’t going to start weeping over him. ‘I think for today we’ll do a live from the scene, just give whatever information we have at that point, but I’d like you to start digging for more. See if anyone knows who she is.’ He reaches out and takes the memory stick from her. ‘Don’t worry about giving that to traffic,’ he says, putting it on the desk. ‘I’ll do it.’

  There’s still a half-drunk cup of tea on her desk from this morning. She shoves it aside to make room for the fresh one, and sits down, logging on to the East Anglian Police website She clicks through their news alerts, looking for any press releases about missing people. If Charlie is right, and there’s a link with the last two murder victims, Sandra Blakely and Lily Sidcup – who were both working as prostitutes – it’s possible nobody has declared this latest woman missing yet, but it’s still worth a try. All she finds is a pensioner with dementia who wandered off from his home on Sunday. No young woman has been recorded as missing in the last month.

  Frankie takes a sip of tea, and opens up Twitter. She types in ‘body Great Yarmouth’ and reads through the results. At the top there’s a short update from the Norfolk Times; the bare facts, which she already knows, plus one of Dave’s photos of the scene. She scrolls through the other tweets, most of them trite RIP messages in response to the newspaper article, before she notices an image that’s been retweeted multiple times. She opens it fully, then immediately wishes she hadn’t. It’s a photo of the young woman, lying on the mud, taken from horribly close up. The photographer must have been standing right over her. She can see the dead woman’s pink top has sequins sewn on it, and there’s livid bruising on her neck. Her face is still almost entirely obscured by hair. Frankie reads the text above it.