A DCI Anna Tate Crime Thriller

‘He doesn’t need to. I’ll be OK by myself.’

There was an edge to her voice, but there always was when the conversation turned to Anna’s boyfriend, Tom Bannerman. Chloe had convinced herself he wasn’t happy that she had entered their lives because it made it less likely that he would be allowed to move into the house in the near future.

For her part, Anna wasn’t sure what to believe, although it was undoubtedly true that it had placed a strain on their relationship. Tom had only stayed overnight on two occasions during the past month and in that time they hadn’t had sex or gone on a date.

‘There’s no way I’m leaving you here by yourself,’ Anna said. ‘A lot of bad things are going on out there and I want to be sure you’re safe.’

Chloe responded with a shrug, so Anna reached out and placed a hand on her knee.

‘I love you so much, sweetheart. You know that don’t you?’

Chloe hesitated, and for a fleeting moment Anna thought she was going to say that she loved her back for the first time. But instead, Chloe nodded and said, ‘I know you do, Mum.’

Anna was disappointed, but took comfort in the fact that at least her daughter was now calling her Mum. It was something Chloe had struggled with in the beginning. That was because the only mother she had ever really known had plunged to her death from a warehouse roof only four weeks ago.

‘I’ll get Tom to make you some dinner and I promise to come home as soon as I can,’ Anna said.

As Chloe shifted her gaze back to the photo album, Anna’s breath caught in her throat. She still found it hard to look at her daughter without feeling the swell of emotion. They’d been apart for so long and there had been times over the years when she thought she would never see Chloe again. There was still so much they didn’t know about each other, so many unresolved issues.

One of those issues was that her daughter did not like to be called Chloe. After her father ran off with her, he changed her name to Alice. Alice Miller. She said she preferred that name, which was why Anna referred to her as sweetheart most of the time. She didn’t want to make a big deal of it at this early stage because it was one less thing for her daughter to have to wrap her young mind around.

Anna knew she had to be patient. Indeed, the child counsellor appointed by social services had warned her that it would be a long, mentally challenging process. Not only was Chloe still shell-shocked from what had happened to her, she was also only weeks away from her thirteenth birthday, so hormones were flooding her developing body and she was facing a storm of social, physical and emotional pressures.

Not for the first time Anna found herself staring intently at Chloe’s face, mesmerised by the button nose, dimpled chin and bright blue eyes. She had retained most of her baby features and it was amazing how accurate the age progression image of her had turned out to be. Anna had commissioned it on the tenth anniversary of her disappearance and it had been instrumental in bringing her home. The only difference was her hair, which her adoptive mother had recently allowed her to have cut short and dyed blonde.

‘You’re doing it again,’ Chloe said, without moving her eyes from the album. ‘I told you I don’t like it when you stare at me.’

Anna laughed. ‘I know and I’m sorry. I just can’t get over the fact that I’ve got you back. And I’m terrified of losing you again.’

Chloe turned to face her. ‘I don’t want to lose you either,’ she said. ‘You’re all I’ve got.’

Anna stood up quickly to stop herself crying. Tears came easily these days, usually triggered by something Chloe said or did, or just because she was finding it increasingly difficult to control her feelings.

‘I’ll go and ring Tom and then get ready,’ she said. ‘Is there anything you want?’

‘No, thank you.’

Anna leaned over and kissed her daughter on the forehead.

‘I’m going to take good care of you, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘You’re my world now, and I promise I won’t let any more harm come to you.’

As she stepped back out of the room, Chloe was still turning the pages of her album, no doubt reliving some of the memories it contained of the times she’d spent with her father and the woman who’d brought her up from the age of two.

CHAPTER FOUR

Tom was a social worker who always stayed in his office on Fridays to deal with the paperwork he had accumulated during the week. In the seventeen months they’d been dating he had often skived off early to meet Anna for a drink or to come to the house to cook her dinner, and she was pretty confident that she could rely on him to help her out even though it was such short notice.

‘No problem,’ he said after she explained the situation over the phone. ‘I’ll have to pop home first but I can probably be there in under an hour.’

His flat was just over a mile away in Nine Elms, so Anna could live with that. Tom was Mr Reliable, after all. She had never known him to let her down or disappoint her. It was one of the reasons she had fallen in love with him – he was the exact opposite of her ex-husband.

Matthew had been selfish, short-tempered, egotistical and controlling. Tom, on the other hand, was kind, calm and generous.

The pair were also miles apart physically. Tom was a six-foot hunky black man with tight curly hair and the most amazing come-to-bed eyes. At forty-seven he was four years older than she was.

Matthew had been five foot six and pale-skinned, with severely receding fair hair. If he hadn’t been murdered three years ago he would now be forty-four.

‘Are you sure Chloe won’t mind me babysitting?’ Tom asked. ‘I always get the impression she doesn’t like having me around.’

‘It’s your imagination, Tom. I’ve told you that. She’s just finding it hard to relate to anyone right now, including me.’

‘Well I hope you’re right. For both our sakes I need her to like me.’

‘I can assure you she does. We have to give her time to settle in to her new life. It’s all so overwhelming for her. And scary.’

‘I can appreciate that, Anna. And I have to say that I think she’s coping really well, considering she’s only twelve. She’s a remarkable girl … You must be so proud of her.’

‘I am. I only wish I could wave a magic wand and take away all the pain that’s still eating her up inside.’

‘You will,’ Tom said. ‘It’s early days, and it’s clear you’re doing a good job. It’s such a shame your compassionate leave is being cut short.’

Anna sighed. ‘I know, but it can’t be helped. It’s really kicking off out there, and no way can I just sit back and watch it on the telly.’

She told him then what Nash had said about the homes of some police officers coming under attack.

‘Well don’t you worry about Chloe,’ he said. ‘If anyone comes to your house to cause trouble I’ll make sure they regret it.’

Anna was comforted by his words, and as she started to get herself ready, she reflected once again on how lucky she was to have him in her life. But an unwelcome thought had crept into her mind: Would he stick around?

Even before Chloe came back into her life, Tom had begun to feel insecure. He had wanted to move in with her, but she had resisted, telling him, truthfully, that she wasn’t ready. She was content with the arrangement they had because it gave her a degree of independence. It meant she’d been able to spend much of her spare time searching for clues to Chloe’s whereabouts, mainly through social media appeals, the FindChloe Facebook page she’d set up, and interviews with newspapers and magazines.

She took the view that cohabiting would not only have made things more difficult, but that it wouldn’t have been fair on Tom either.

However, in recent months she had begun to fear that unless she agreed to move their relationship forward, there was a chance Tom would get fed up waiting and end it. In fact she had almost reached the point where she was going to invite him to move in.

But as soon as she got Chloe back she knew she couldn’t do it. At least not yet.

Her daughter took priority over everything else. Including the love of her life.

*

It didn’t take Anna long to get ready. She kept the make-up to a minimum and changed into a black polo sweater and navy trousers. She dragged her long dark hair back into a ponytail and put on her three-quarter-length overcoat. October had arrived with a vengeance and she wanted to be prepared for what was almost certainly going to be a long, cold night.

She went back into the living room to pick up her shoulder bag, and caught the tail-end of an interview with Gary Trimble, London’s Police Commissioner, who was appealing for calm.

‘The death of Grace Fuller was an unfortunate accident,’ he was saying. ‘It in no way justifies this mindless criminality. I would urge those responsible to think what they’re doing to this great city and to community relations.’

Anna was in no doubt that his words would fall on deaf ears. The blue touch-paper had been lit and the riots were not going to end any time soon.

She knew she had to try to view them as a distraction and to focus on the boy who had died in the pub cellar, but it wasn’t going to be easy – that much was obvious.

She was on her way out the front door, having told Chloe that Tom was on his way over, when her phone rang. She smiled when she noted the caller ID: it was DI Max Walker, her most trusted wingman, who was already at the crime scene.

‘Hello, guv,’ he said. ‘The boss told me he’d called you in. I’m sorry you’re having to cut short your leave.’

‘Can’t be helped. I’m just leaving the house. Should be there within fifteen minutes, traffic and rioters permitting.’

‘OK. I’m just ringing to let you know that we’re pretty sure who the boy is.’

‘That was quick.’

‘Well it wasn’t difficult because I recognised him from the photographs that were plastered all over the papers on Tuesday morning. I reckon he’d still be front-page news if it wasn’t for the riots.’

Anna felt a pang of dread. ‘You’re not talking about Jacob Rossi? Son of Mark Rossi?’

‘I am.’

‘Oh shit. I was hoping that story would have a happy bloody ending.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Anna checked with central control before setting off. Camberwell was only about two miles away, but she wanted advice on the safest route to take.

She felt a shiver grab hold of her spine when she was told that rioting had broken out around Vauxhall tube station and along South Lambeth Road, both within walking distance of the house.

She sent this information to Tom in a text and urged him to take care. He responded instantly:

I won’t bother going home. Will go straight there xx

Anna let out a breath. She didn’t want Chloe to be alone in the house for too long. That wouldn’t be fair, or sensible bearing in mind what Nash had said.

Control’s advice was to approach Camberwell from the north, but to nevertheless expect some trouble along the way.

She drove with the radio on and listened to continuous news coverage. But at times it was a struggle to hear what was being said because of the urgent screams of police sirens and the roar of helicopters circling overhead.

The rush hour was already well underway and the roads were busy. It seemed incongruous to Anna that life carried on as normal in those parts of the city that hadn’t so far been affected by the rioting.

The impression she got from the news was that some neighbourhoods were effectively lawless. There were reports of several buildings being razed to the ground in Peckham, police officers being attacked in Deptford, and a Sainsbury’s supermarket being looted in Clapham. And a mob of masked youths was now gathering outside MIT headquarters in Wandsworth where Anna and her team were based. The unrest had also reignited racial tensions in the city with white and black gangs fighting each other, and a black shopkeeper had been beaten up in Lewisham in what was being described as a racist attack.

The more Anna heard the more her heart rate increased and her breathing deepened. Something in her gut told her that these riots were going to be more widespread and destructive than those of 2011. There weren’t enough police officers to cope, and social media would almost certainly play a more effective role in fanning the flames of anarchy.

Only one death had so far been confirmed – the boy in the cellar. But Anna found it impossible to believe there wouldn’t be more over the coming hours and days. The media hadn’t yet been told about this first fatality, but the news would soon be out there, and Anna would have to do her best to hold back the details until the parents had been informed.

If DI Walker was right about the identity of the lad – and she had no reason to doubt him – then they would later be heading over to Bromley and the home of Mark Rossi and his wife. Anna had never met Rossi, but like millions of other people she knew quite a lot about him from his appearances on the television.

The man was a Celebrity with a capital C, one of the most popular and versatile TV presenters in the UK. He’d hosted game shows, a travel series and a number of one-off light entertainment programmes on various channels. His last screen appearance had been on Tuesday morning when Anna had watched him make an emotional appeal on BBC news for information on the whereabouts of his ten-year-old son, Jacob.

The boy had disappeared on the Monday while walking home from school. It was feared he’d been abducted because his mobile phone had been switched off and he had never given his parents cause for concern before.

Anna would have to talk to the team who were on the case to find out how far they’d got. But she strongly suspected that the investigation would have been hampered by the riots. After all, there was only so much the Met could cope with at any one time.

The closer Anna got to Camberwell the more uncomfortable the journey became. She saw groups of hooded youths who were clearly roaming around looking for trouble. Roads and pavements were littered with rocks, broken glass, shopping trolleys and wheelie bins, and she counted no less than four fire-damaged cars, one of which was still smouldering.

She got her first glimpse of actual rioting as she passed through Kennington. Traffic came to a sudden standstill because a building was ablaze up ahead, flames and smoke billowing into the sky.

Two squad cars were blocking the road and vehicles were being directed down a side street. As Anna followed the traffic she looked to her left and saw a mob clashing with police in front of the burning building. The officers, who looked to be greatly outnumbered, were using their shields to protect themselves against a barrage of missiles.

Anna got the impression that the rioters were relishing the thrill while at the same time showing a breathtaking sense of impunity. It was scary to think that such havoc was being unleashed all over the capital. On the radio they were now saying that it had spread across the river into East and North London. Shops were being ransacked in Tottenham, which was where the riots of 2011 began.

Anna suppressed a shudder and told herself that however bad it got on the streets she must not lose sight of the fact that she had been given a specific task: to find the bastard – or bastards – who had imprisoned a young boy in a derelict pub cellar where he met a cruel death.

CHAPTER SIX

Five minutes after her mother had left the house, Chloe was still lying on the bed looking through her photographs.

It was something she never got tired of doing. Some of the photos made her smile while others made her want to cry. As usual she flicked to her favourites, including the one that showed her taking her first paddle in the sea, and the one where she was sitting on her father’s shoulders and pulling at his hair. She touched his face with her finger and a ball of sadness grew in her chest. Despite what he had done she still missed him. A part of her wished she had never found out the truth. At least the memories of her years in Spain would not have been so bittersweet.

As always it was like a trip down memory lane, each picture a precious moment from her previous life as Alice Miller.

She now knew that her father gave her that name when she was two years old. He changed his own name as well from Matthew to James so that when he ran away with her nobody would ever be able to find them.

She didn’t discover the truth until just over a month ago. That was when everything changed and she learned that she wasn’t – and never had been – the person she thought she was.

She had always believed what her dad had told her – that her biological mother had died of cancer shortly after her second birthday. But it was a lie that carried on for ten years. And now she had to live with that. To put the past behind her and move on. A new name. A new mum. A new home.

It was proving difficult, though, and there’d been times when she had wanted to run away from everything. From the pain, the memories, the lingering grief, the pressure to adapt to this new life.

There were so many questions, so much that she didn’t know about her past, so much that scared her about the future.

For one thing she didn’t want to have to go to a new school in a few weeks, but she didn’t have any choice. She wanted to go back to the school in Shoreditch where she’d spent the past three years. Most of her friends were there, including Rhona, Charlotte and Sue. But her mum had told her it was on the other side of London so it would take too long to get there and back every day.

It wasn’t her mum’s fault. She knew that. Her mum only wanted what was best for her and she couldn’t blame her for what had happened. Her dad should never have done what he did. It was wrong and cruel, and she wished that he was still alive so that she could tell him so.

His face stared up at her now from the album and she felt the swell of tears in her eyes. It was one of the many photos taken during those seven years they lived in Spain. He was standing in front of the bar he ran, squinting against the bright Spanish sunshine. Chloe knew it would have been Sophie who took the picture – she was always snapping shots on her phone and then had the best ones printed so that they could go into the album.

Chloe turned the page and there was Sophie, the woman who became her adoptive mother. Black hair; kind face; wide, familiar smile. This one was taken just over three years ago during the last day they all spent on the beach together. They’d had a picnic, swum in the sea, and played ball games.

It was a few days before Dad brought them to England, and just several weeks before he was killed.

Her mobile phone rang, jarring her out of her reverie. It came as no surprise to see that it was her mum. Who else could it be?

She wanted to check that Chloe was all right and to reassure her that Tom would soon be there.

‘I’m still fine,’ Chloe said off the back of an audible sigh. ‘You’ve only been gone about ten minutes.’

‘I know, but I’m almost where I need to be, and once I’m there it’ll be more difficult for me to ring you.’

‘There’s no need to worry. I was just about to go downstairs and make myself a cup of tea.’

‘Well I bought you a packet of your favourite chocolate biscuits. They’re in the jar.’

‘I know. I had some this morning.’

‘Of course you did. I forgot. Well enjoy your evening and please be nice to Tom. He really does think the world of you.’

Chloe wasn’t so sure about that. Tom seemed nice enough, but she sensed that he wished it was still just the pair of them. Him and her mum. Two grown-ups without any kids around to spoil their fun.

She had overheard them speaking in the kitchen just a week after she came to live here. Her mum was telling him that he wouldn’t be able to move in because she wanted her daughter to settle in first. He said he understood, but it had sounded to Chloe like he wasn’t too happy about it.

She returned her attention to the album. The last photo on the last page. It was one of her at the age of nine. She was standing in front of the marina in Puerto de Mazarron and she was eating an ice cream.

Minutes after it was taken, the man she now had nightmares about turned up. After that nothing was ever the same again.

Chloe put the album back on the bedside table because she didn’t want to upset herself if Tom was going to turn up at any minute.

She got off the bed, checked her reflection in the wardrobe mirror, and decided that she didn’t need to change her clothes. She was wearing faded dungarees over a tight, red sweater, one of the outfits that she was convinced made her look a couple of years older than she was.

The noises outside were getting louder, and it wasn’t just the sirens she could hear. There was shouting too now and it sounded close by.

She peered through the window. Her room was at the front of the house with a view of the road. She could see some of the neighbours huddled outside their homes talking amongst themselves – they all seemed to be looking up the street at something that Chloe couldn’t see.

She wondered if the vandals who had been causing all the trouble across London had turned up here. She hoped not. She’d seen them on the telly doing damage to shops and throwing things at the police who were trying to calm them down. It was truly frightening.

She gathered it was happening because a woman had been shot and this had made a lot of people very angry. But it didn’t justify what they were doing. That was what her mum had said and she agreed. Innocent people were bound to get hurt and that wasn’t fair.

She knew that she’d be safe so long as she stayed in the house. Even so she couldn’t help feeling a bit nervous. She swallowed down the butterflies that rose in her tummy. She’d learned from bitter experience that if bad men were determined to get at you then it was hard to stop them.

She consoled herself with the thought that she wouldn’t be alone much longer. Despite her reservations about Tom she knew he wouldn’t let any harm come to her. Her mum would never forgive him.

Downstairs in the kitchen she put the kettle on. It was the first time she’d had the house to herself and it felt really strange. It still didn’t feel like home and she wondered if it ever would.

When the kettle boiled, she poured the hot water over a tea bag and carried the mug into the living room. Her mum hadn’t switched the TV off and on the screen there was a car on fire and lots of hooded men standing around it cheering.

But Chloe was more interested in the glossy magazine she spotted lying on the coffee table. It was one she hadn’t seen before and she guessed it had been delivered with the shopping that morning.

There was a photo of her and her mum on the cover below a headline that read:

REUNITED AT LAST

THE FULL STORY BEHIND A MOTHER’S TEN-YEAR NIGHTMARE

Chloe picked up the magazine and sat on the sofa to read it. Soon she was oblivious to the sounds out of the street that were growing louder by the minute.

CHAPTER SEVEN

By the time Anna reached Camberwell the neighbourhood was relatively quiet. The rioters had either moved on to other areas of South London or were lying in wait somewhere until darkness descended.

They had left a trail of destruction in their wake. Rows of shops had been damaged and looted, walls had been daubed with slogans, and bins had been emptied across roads and pavements.

Some people had begun to clean up while others stood around in groups looking shocked and bemused.

Anna was relieved to finally arrive at her destination – a street close to Camberwell bus station that was mostly residential.

Two police patrol cars and a forensics van were parked in front of the derelict building that used to be The Falconer’s Arms pub. It was set back from the road with a large forecourt that was littered with ash and puddles left by the firefighters.