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Copyright
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Copyright © Nell Pattison 2020
Cover design by whittakerbookdesign.com © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com
Nell Pattison asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008361785
Ebook Edition © November 2020 ISBN: 9780008361792
Version: 2020-08-26
Dedication
For Stuart
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1: Saturday 24th November
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Sixteen hours before the murder
Chapter 6: Sunday 25th November
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Fifteen hours before the murder
Chapter 9: Monday 26th November
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Thirteen hours before the murder
Chapter 12: Tuesday 27th November
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Twelve hours before the murder
Chapter 15: Wednesday 28th November
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Eleven hours before the murder
Chapter 19: Thursday 29th November
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Ten hours before the murder
Chapter 22: Friday 30th November
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Nine hours before the murder
Chapter 25: Saturday 1st December
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Eight hours before the murder
Chapter 28: Sunday 2nd December
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Five hours before the murder
Chapter 31: Monday 3rd December
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Forty-five minutes before the murder
Chapter 34: Tuesday 4th December
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Fifteen minutes before the murder
Chapter 37: Wednesday 5th December
Chapter 38
After
Chapter 39
Chapter 40: Thursday 6th December
Keep Reading …
Acknowledgements
About the Author
By the same author
About the Publisher
Prologue
As he stared at the body on the ground, a snowflake fell on the back of his neck, making him flinch. A moment ago, anger had been boiling in his veins, but now it had frozen into fear. The knife in his hand looked dull in the half-light. It suddenly felt scalding in his palm, and he dropped it. He took a step back, feeling the snow crunch beneath his heel.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a movement. Was there someone in the bushes? What if they’d seen him? He waited for a minute, his breath fogging in front of him, but he saw nothing moving amongst the snow-laden trees surrounding the clearing. Maybe he’d imagined it.
He bent down and felt for a pulse, his fingers trembling as they touched skin, slick with blood. A feeble flutter greeted his fingertips, and he stepped back in shock. The eyelids flickered and the mouth moved slightly, as if the person in front of him was trying to speak, but then the movement faded. Holding his breath, he felt for the pulse again. Nothing. They were gone.
As the realisation hit him that he had just watched someone die, he stood up and stumbled backwards, coming up against a tree trunk. His breath came in short gasps and he looked around feverishly. He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d been seen. Why didn’t they show themselves?
Should he go back to the cabin and pretend he’d never left; that he had been safely asleep with the others? That seemed to be the safest option.
As he turned to leave, he jumped, a hand flying to his mouth. Someone had been in the bushes all along, and now they stepped out onto the path, a look of horror on their face. He had to do something, explain himself, but he couldn’t think through the pressure of the blood pounding in his head. They looked from him to the body, then back again.
What have you done? they signed.
He ran.
Chapter 1
Saturday 24th November
The boy had been missing for at least three hours before I arrived.
Snow had fallen heavily overnight, and it lent an eerie quality to the park surrounding Normanby Hall. I knew it well and I regularly came here in nicer weather; my sister and I would often bring a picnic and sit under the trees in the summer. It looked completely different in the snow. Tree branches sagged under the weight of it, and all sound was muffled as if everything had been covered in a layer of felt. The sun was weak, fighting through the sickly yellow sky. I was sure there would be more snow soon and I worried about getting home later – it had been a precarious drive up here.
Police officers greeted me on my way through the gates and directed me to a part of the car park that had been cleared of snow. It seemed no cars were being allowed in that morning other than those who were there on official business. Once I had found a spot, I pulled on my walking boots and trudged through the courtyard into the main part of the park, where a PC directed me towards the hall, from where the search was being coordinated.
‘Stay close to the tape, please,’ the PC said, indicating a line of blue and white police tape that had been strung up along the path. I didn’t know if it was there to keep footprints to a confined area, or simply to stop anyone getting lost in the woods. With everything covered by a blanket of white it would be easy for me to lose my bearings.
As I approached the huddle of people ahead of me, one familiar figure stepped away from the group and walked towards me. There was no mistaking the broad shoulders and dark skin of Rav Singh, and I felt a little flutter of happiness that he was here too.
‘Paige,’ Singh said, the smile on his face brief in deference to the seriousness of the situation. But there was warmth in his deep brown eyes and I couldn’t help but smile in return.
‘DC Singh,’ I replied, pulling off one of my gloves to shake the hand that was offered. I hadn’t seen him since February, when I had interpreted for the police who were investigating the murder of my sister’s goddaughter, Lexi. It had been a harrowing case that left the Deaf community reeling, and my life had been in danger more than once. That experience had made me reluctant to work with the police ever again, especially after my sister had suffered a life-threatening brain injury when the murderer attacked her, but I’d told myself that this time would be different.
‘It’s DS now,’ he said, turning and leading me back towards the group. ‘I took my exam months ago, but a position only just became available. So, this is my first case since my promotion.’
‘Congratulations,’ I told him, feeling genuinely pleased for him. In my experience he was an excellent detective, compassionate and dedicated.
‘You remember DI Forest,’ he said, nodding at the tall woman in front of us, her dark hair pulled into a severe knot at the nape of her neck, which was covered by a dark blue ski tube. I wondered if he was teasing me; DI Forest and I had locked horns several times when I’d first been asked to interpret for the police. She nodded at me, and I returned the gesture.
‘I’m really pleased you’re here,’ Singh said with a smile, then blushed. ‘I mean because we need you. To interpret. We’ve been working with a member of staff until now,’ he continued, his words coming out in a rush, ‘but he’s not a qualified interpreter.’
‘What happened?’ I asked. Any information they could give me would help when I was interpreting, so I understood the context of the situation and who I would be interpreting for.
‘There’s a group here from Lincoln School for the Deaf,’ Singh replied. ‘Five students and three staff members. They’re staying in one of the cabins in the woods, for the weekend. When they got up at seven thirty this morning, one of the students was missing. The head teacher went out to look for him around eight but hasn’t come back. There’s been no sign of either of them since.’
I checked my watch: 10:45. It seemed strange for the head teacher to be gone for so long without contact.
‘Two people missing? I was only told about the boy,’ I said.
‘Technically we can’t treat the teacher as a missing person yet,’ Forest replied, ‘because he’s only been gone for a few hours, so right now we’re focusing on finding the boy. The staff discovered he was missing when they woke up this morning, but nobody has seen him since half past ten last night.’
I nodded, understanding the seriousness of the situation. A missing deaf teenager would be considered to be at risk, whether he’d disappeared of his own accord or someone had taken him. The communication barrier might make it harder for him to get help in an emergency, and he could be confused and isolated.
‘His name is Leon and he’s fifteen,’ Singh told me. ‘According to the staff, he’s a nice lad and nothing out of the ordinary has happened recently that might precipitate him running away.’
‘What about his family? Are they deaf or hearing?’ I asked, wondering if the police would need me to liaise with them.
Forest shook her head. ‘He’s in care. The five students on the trip are permanent residents at the school. Leon’s mother died when he was eleven, then his father went to prison a year later, so he was taken into the care of the school, which is registered as a children’s home.’
‘As you can see, he’s particularly vulnerable, which is why we’ve brought CID in straight away,’ Singh told me, his face grave.
‘Okay. What do you want me to do?’
‘The staff and students are all waiting in the cabin. We’ve cleared it as a crime scene, so we thought it best to contain them there until you arrived to help us take statements,’ Forest replied. ‘The pastoral support assistant called the deputy head when he realised both Leon and the head were missing, and she told him to call us while she drove up here.’
‘Who’s searching for the boy at the moment?’ I asked.
‘There were some staff from the park, but we’ve asked them to team up with uniformed officers,’ Singh explained. ‘We don’t want anyone getting lost in the woods, so we need people who know the grounds. And I’ve asked them for the CCTV from the gates, but there are several different ways in and out of the park that aren’t covered by cameras.’
‘There’s an awful lot of land to cover,’ Forest said with a frown. ‘There are parts of the park we don’t think have been searched yet, and we have no idea which direction Leon might have gone in. But now you’re here, Paige, we’d better go and see if there’s anything else the school group can tell us.’
The DI strode off through the snow, not waiting to see if we were following. Singh held out his hand to indicate I should go first, and the two of us set off down the path through the woods.
‘No sign of the head teacher where you’ve been searching?’
He shook his head. ‘No. It does seem very strange that he hasn’t turned up yet, but we’re keeping an open mind at the moment.’
We walked in silence through the trees for a few minutes, the sounds of our footsteps eerily muffled by the snow, then Singh stopped short and turned to face me.
‘How are you doing? You know, after …’ His voice tailed off. I knew he was referring to when we’d worked together in February, when my sister and I were both attacked by the person who’d murdered a little girl.
I shrugged. ‘I’m okay. I had a couple of sessions with a counsellor but I wasn’t comfortable talking to her. It’s …’ I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘No, tell me,’ he said, and I could see genuine concern in his eyes. ‘I’ve been worried about you, not having any sort of debrief afterwards. If you’d been a police officer there would have been support we could put in place. As it was, you were just left, really.’
I scuffed my toe and thought about what to say before I replied. ‘The problem with counselling was that she didn’t just want to go over what happened the night I was attacked, but everything that led up to Lexi dying, and before that. There’s too much in my past that I don’t want to be raking over again. So, I didn’t go back after the second session.’
Singh moved as if about to put a hand on my shoulder, but then let his arm drop back to his side, and I realised how close we were standing to each other. ‘Do you mean about the deaths of your parents?’
I had told him about that back in February. My parents and my younger sister, Anna, were all profoundly deaf, and I grew up as part of the Deaf community. Our dad died suddenly when I was in my first year of a textiles design degree at university, and I dropped out in order to support Mum and to try to get Anna through her exams. Then Mum developed cancer, and all the responsibility fell on me. I became an interpreter to help pay the bills, using the British Sign Language that had been my first language, and somehow never found my way into a different career. But that wasn’t what the counsellor had been trying to delve into. I could have coped with that; I felt like I’d come to terms with the loss of my parents, still being so close to my sister.
‘No. Other stuff,’ I said, running my hand over the trunk of the tree I was standing next to, a dusting of frost clinging to my glove. I could sense that he wanted to ask more, but I wasn’t prepared to talk about it, so we stood in an awkward silence for a moment.
‘How’s work at the moment?’ he eventually asked. ‘Getting plenty of jobs?’
I winced slightly. He’d managed to touch another nerve, but I didn’t feel I could ignore this question.
‘Not really. The agencies have a lot of influence, and it’s difficult working as a freelance interpreter and building up a decent reputation.’ I looked up at him, finally, and gave him a quick smile. ‘Max has been really supportive, though.’
Singh nodded. ‘Max?’ His tone of voice was hard to decipher. ‘Max Barron?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re still in touch, then?’ he asked, glancing at me then looking away again, towards the dense line of trees along the side of the path. Singh had met Max at the same time I did, during the investigation into Lexi’s death, because Max was connected to her family.
‘Yeah, we’re …’ I cleared my throat, suddenly feeling embarrassed. ‘We’re seeing each other.’
‘Oh. Well, that’s good,’ Singh said, though his face didn’t match his words.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. I mean … nothing.’
‘Seriously, Rav. What’s wrong?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I just didn’t think he’d be your type, I suppose.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked with a short laugh, but my stomach was starting to churn with annoyance at his tone.
‘Nothing. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘You and I don’t exactly know each other very well outside of work,’ I pointed out. ‘I don’t think you’d really know what my type is.’
‘You’re right. Forget I said it.’
He turned and continued walking away from me, and I paused for a moment before I followed him. When we’d worked together before, Rav Singh and I had got on well, and I thought we could have become friends, perhaps even closer than that, but then I didn’t hear from him after the investigation was over. Then again, I hadn’t got in touch either, so I couldn’t really blame him.
We continued in silence for a moment, being careful where we stepped. There was a slushy line of footprints where several people had obviously walked before us, and we stuck to it.
‘So, who are the staff members that were on the trip with these kids?’
‘The head teacher, a support assistant as well as a social worker,’ Singh replied, referring to a notebook he’d pulled out of his pocket. ‘The social worker isn’t technically school staff, but she joined them on the trip. They last saw Leon around half past ten last night, when the kids went to bed. He was sharing a room with two other boys, but they didn’t notice him leaving the room at any point. When they woke up this morning and realised Leon wasn’t in the cabin, they checked his belongings, but his bag had gone.’
He looked up at the branches above us, which were dipping ominously with the weight of the snow on them. ‘It was still snowing when they got up, so any tracks away from the cabin had been covered and they couldn’t tell which way Leon had gone. The head teacher, Steve Wilkinson, went out to look for Leon, but he hasn’t been seen since either, and he’s not answering his phone. The support assistant went out to try and see where he’d gone, but when he couldn’t find them he called the deputy head, and she told him to call the police.’
‘Were there any witnesses?’ I asked, keeping my eyes on the path so I didn’t fall over in the snow.
Singh shook his head. ‘Nobody we’ve found yet, but there’s already an appeal out on social media and there’ll be something on the local news, so if Leon left the grounds, hopefully we’ll find someone who saw him. If he’s still in the park, though, I think it’s unlikely anyone can help. Theirs was the only occupied cabin, and it’s not exactly the sort of day for people to go for an early morning run through the park.’
‘There’s more snow forecast,’ I said, throwing another glance at the heavy sky above us.
‘All the more reason to search as much of the area as we can now,’ Singh replied. ‘If Leon’s out there somewhere and the weather gets worse, it’s going to make our job even harder.’
As we rounded a corner, I could see a wooden cabin ahead of us. I didn’t often come into this part of the park, and looking around me I could see how easy it would be for anyone to lose their bearings without the paths as landmarks.
‘For now, we’ll interview the staff and discuss the best way to take statements from the pupils.’
‘Do all of the students use BSL?’ I asked. Just because they went to a school for the deaf didn’t necessarily mean their first mode of communication was sign language. Some deaf people sign, some speak, and many use a combination of both.
‘As far as I know, yes. The staff member who was interpreting for us before you arrived certainly signed to all four of the students,’ Singh replied. I was pleased he’d paid attention, but he’d probably learnt from last time not to make any assumptions about the deaf students, and that I would ask questions like that.
‘Are the staff hearing or deaf?’
‘The pastoral support assistant and the missing head teacher are both hearing. The social worker is deaf, and so is the deputy head, but we haven’t had much chance to talk to her yet.’
Forest was standing in the doorway of the cabin, and she gestured at us to join her. We walked into a large communal area with some sofas and a log burner, the seats occupied by a couple of uniformed officers, four teenagers and three adults. One of the women was slim with dark hair, sitting very primly on the sofa, whilst the other was dressed in a brightly patterned jumper that looked hand-knitted, her mass of strawberry-blonde curls making her look a little wild. As I looked over at the third staff member, a churning sensation began to build in the pit of my stomach. I must be mistaken. I blinked a couple of times, but the man who was half turned away from me still looked the same. He had the build of someone who used to play rugby but had spent more time in the pub than on the field recently, with dark blond hair cut close to his head. I took a step backwards, out into the freezing air, and took a deep breath. How the hell could it be him?
‘Paige, are you okay?’ Singh appeared next to me and I swallowed deeply. There was no way I could let my emotions show.
‘I’m fine,’ I replied, taking another deep breath and stepping over the threshold again. The man had his back to me, so I thought he probably hadn’t seen me yet. One of the uniformed officers directed the staff members towards us. I clenched my hands into fists and pushed my shoulders back, preparing to come face to face with him. The three of them got up and crossed the room to speak to DI Forest and DS Singh.
Forest introduced the dark-haired woman as Liz Marcek, the deputy head, and the one with all the curls as Sasha Thomas, a social worker, before turning to the man. He needed no introduction, but the detectives didn’t know that. Mike Lowther, my ex-boyfriend, who I had last seen over three years ago in my hospital room.
Chapter 2
‘Hi Paige.’
I didn’t trust myself to speak and just nodded in response. Singh looked between the two of us, confused, but I didn’t fill him in.
‘How are you?’ Mike asked.
‘Er, busy,’ I replied as I turned to Singh. ‘What do you need me to do?’ I signed as I spoke for the benefit of the two women. Liz Marcek, the deputy head, signed a question to the detectives.
What’s happening? They’ve told us to wait here but we haven’t been given any other information. Have you found Leon? Is he okay? And where the hell is Steve?
I interpreted this for Singh and Forest, who glanced over at the students. Some of them were watching us, and I knew they’d be able to see anything I interpreted for the staff.
‘Do you want to speak to everyone together?’ I asked Singh, nodding at the teenagers who were watching our conversation eagerly, and he understood my meaning. Sign language can be easy to ‘overhear’ even from a distance, so he might as well include them in the conversation.
Singh explained that he’d talk to them all together, and the deputy head moved over to where the students were sitting. I could feel Mike’s eyes on me, but I avoided his gaze. If I’d had time to prepare myself for seeing him, perhaps I could have kept my cool and looked at him with dignity, but as it was I didn’t know how to react. He’d always had his own version of events, so his perception of our break-up might be very different from mine.