I Know You

Also by Louise Mullins

Kiss Me, Kill Me

I Know You

I KNOW YOU

Louise Mullins

AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

www.ariafiction.com

First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright © Louise Mullins, 2020

The moral right of Louise Mullins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 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, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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

ISBN 9781838938062

Cover design © Charlotte Abrams Simpson

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Contents

Welcome Page

Copyright

HONOUR: Croydon, London

DS MAGUIRE: Croydon, London

SINEAD: Newport, Wales

HONOUR: Croydon, London

DS MAGUIRE: Croydon, London

SINEAD: Newport, Wales

HONOUR: Croydon, London

DS MAGUIRE: Croydon, London

SINEAD: Newport, Wales

DI LOCKE: Newport, Wales

HONOUR: Croydon, London

DS MAGUIRE: Croydon, London

SINEAD: Newport, Wales

DI LOCKE: Newport, Wales

HONOUR: Croydon, London

DS MAGUIRE: Croydon, London

SINEAD: Newport, Wales

DI LOCKE: Newport, Wales

HONOUR: Croydon, London

DS MAGUIRE: Croydon, London

SINEAD: Newport, Wales

DI LOCKE: Newport, Wales

HONOUR: Croydon, London

DS MAGUIRE: Croydon, London

SINEAD: Newport, Wales

DI LOCKE: Newport, Wales

HONOUR: Croydon, London

DS MAGUIRE: Croydon, London

SINEAD: Newport, Wales

DI LOCKE: Newport, Wales

HONOUR: Croydon, London

DS MAGUIRE: Croydon, London

SINEAD: Newport, Wales

DI LOCKE: Newport, Wales

HONOUR: Croydon, London

DS MAGUIRE: Croydon, London

SINEAD: Newport, Wales

DI LOCKE: Newport, Wales

HONOUR: Croydon, London

DS MAGUIRE: Croydon, London

SINEAD: Newport, Wales

DI LOCKE: Newport, Wales

HONOUR: Croydon, London

DS MAGUIRE: Croydon, London

SINEAD: Newport, Wales

DI LOCKE: Newport, Wales

HONOUR: Croydon, London

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Become an Aria Addict

HONOUR

Croydon, London

While everyone, it seemed, was celebrating England’s penalty shoot-out win in their World Cup game against Colombia, I learned that my son had been stabbed to death in the street outside a fried chicken shop. I wasn’t there with him when the incident occurred. I was sat in my sister’s muggy high-rise flat braiding my niece Kanesha’s hair and singing along to the radio. We were still grieving our mother’s long-drawn out cancerous death when I was informed of Steven’s murder. She was the reason I wasn’t at home when my son was killed. Instead I was toasting my mother’s birthday. The one she never lived long enough to enjoy. She would have been seventy. It was her last wish: for her family to eat, drink, and dance together in the living room of her small but comfortable flat before god took her away.

She never made it so we were celebrating for her.

The flags fluttered in the warm breeze. The sirens came late through gridlocked roads caused by partygoers and pub queues that snaked out onto the streets, slowing down the ambulance and two police vehicles in convoy which strained against the crowds to reach him. Thick puddles of blood arced Steven’s lifeless body sprawled on the pavement beneath a July moon. I don’t know this, of course. These are the images I’ve since invented by piecing together the fragments of information I’ve gleaned from the police and the newspaper article that appeared on the front page of the London Evening Standard the day after his ‘tragic demise’. They said his ‘life was cut short’. That he ‘died too soon’. And he was ‘killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time’. An ‘innocent boy murdered without motive’. But you don’t have to be a detective to understand there is always a reason, even if you don’t yet know what it is.

There are moments of awareness and there are memory blanks when I try to piece everything that happened that day together. It’s like trying to fit a jigsaw puzzle together with several pieces missing.

I spent the morning trying to coax Steven into wearing his new school shoes instead of the trainers I knew would result in him getting a detention because of the large bold logo printed in white across their sides. I reminded him to meet me at his grandmother’s multi-storey flat for dinner. And I said, ‘Goodbye, work hard, enjoy your day, love you,’ which he responded to with a grunt that said, ‘I’m too old to reciprocate the sentiment.’ As I watched him leave, I didn’t get a sixth sense that something awful was going to happen. I didn’t get the motherly tug of strangled fear as I stared at his retreating back, trousers too low, shoulders slack – that was just the way he walked. I drove to the hair salon, flipped round the ‘open’ sign on the door, and got to work. I stopped for lunch around 1 p.m. and ate an egg and potato salad on a bench facing the road a few buildings down, people-watching. I returned to work forty minutes later feeling re-energised and set about washing, cutting, dyeing, and styling my regular and some new clients’ hair in between boiling the kettle, sipping tea, and putting the world to rights. I left the salon at 5.30 p.m., met my sister at the door of Mum’s – it would be the final time before we packed up her things, so the council could reclaim the property – and sat and waited for Steven to arrive.

When he hadn’t shown up an hour later, I tried his mobile phone, but it rang out twice, so I sighed and took a glass of rum from Faith’s hand to toast Mum’s life. I returned home to our two-bedroom terrace in South East London three hours later. I shrugged off my shoes, boiled the kettle, and waited impatiently for my fifteen-year-old son to barge through the front door, apologising for not calling me as he promised he would if he was going to be late to attend his deceased grandmother’s birthday party. He was close to her, so I presumed he felt too upset to attend. But it hurt a little that he hadn’t sent a text message to tell me not to wait for his arrival, that for whatever reason he wouldn’t make it. I switched on the television and lay on the sofa with a cup of hot sweet tea in hand. Swigging back the last few drops, then unable to keep the tiredness away, I fell into a light doze. It would be the last time I slept without a medicinal aid.

I was awoken by the loud thud of someone knocking on the door, their pounding increasing in urgency. The cup fell from my forefinger where it had rested and hit the floor with a ding. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, tread down the hallway, and opened the door to two solemn looking police officers. ‘Miss Bennet?’

I knew before they asked to come in, before they entered the living room sharing a solemn look, before the tall white man with the large framed torso pointed to the sofa and asked if I’d like to sit, that the bad news they brought involved Steven. And I knew without having to be told that he was dead.

‘… deliberate attack… I’m sorry to have to bring you this news…’

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, only the feeling of the hard floor beneath my legs, the howling noise I later realised came from my own mouth, and the knowledge that my heart was breaking as my palms slapped against the tiled entryway. ‘No!’ I screamed, over and over until my throat hurt and all I was capable of was a croaking yowl. This cannot be happening. I must still be asleep, trapped in a nightmare.

I felt two solid hands on my shoulders. The acknowledgement of my distress, the female constable’s empathic response forced me upright. I dragged myself off the floor and ran to the kitchen sink to splash ice cold water on my face, unfeeling as it dripped down my thin cotton dress and puddled at my feet. My hands shook with anger, fear, and I couldn’t catch my breath.

Steven cannot be dead. He’s going to school tomorrow. He’s got football practice on Saturday. It’s strange the things that come to mind when you hear your only son has been murdered, but I’d lost control of my brain and my body. I couldn’t quite assemble the news that I would never again get to hold my son against me nor look into his deep chocolate-coloured eyes.

Images came then, thick and fast. I imagined what he must have looked like when the paramedics arrived, pronouncing him dead at the scene, then delivering him in an ambulance to the mortuary at the South London & Maudsley Hospital. And I moved my numb limbs towards the police officers and stood there swaying, unrooted and unsure what I was supposed to do.

The female constable looked me in the eye and said, ‘We need to formally identify him.’

His mobile phone is what led them to me. My number saved in his contacts list beside the salon’s. The business address under my name registered on the electoral roll. If he hadn’t charged it before leaving the house, I’ve no doubt it would have taken them far longer to notify me of his death. And I wonder if while I was calling him, he failed to answer because his assailant had chosen that moment to end his life. Had I rung earlier and told him to get his arse over to the flat, could I have prevented the event that had irreparably changed our lives?

She explained that as he didn’t have a debit card or any other formal means of identification – being under eighteen – other than a birth certificate, they needed to take his fingerprints and a mouth swab from me. ‘The saliva will prove mitochondrial DNA. But the results take time. Did he have anything on him we could use to make comparisons?’

I tasted salty tears and between frozen lips somehow mouthed, ‘gold ring.’

He never took it off. It would be visible in one of his Instagram photos.

‘Would you mind coming to look at the items we have in the deposit box?’

‘Fine.’ I shrugged.

Her male colleague said, ‘Why don’t you grab your purse and keys?’

‘We’re going now?’ My voice quivered, body trembling as I tried to remain upright.

‘If you feel up to it. It will help us to move things along.’

I don’t remember calling my sister, Faith, who arrived in her 4x4 with a screech of tyres, barging into the house and squeezing me into her embrace. She made tea no one drank and cried for me. My tears had dried by then and the shock and tight knot of pain that had ripped through my chest earlier had been replaced with a deep sorrow that sat at my core. She drove to the station while I sat mutely on the passenger seat beside her. As soon as we entered the building, I asked what state he was in but was told I wouldn’t be able to see him today.

‘We just need you to identify his belongings. We’re conducting a DNA test from his razor but that’ll take time. You can see him as soon as we return him to your care.’

I couldn’t concede that my son was lying on a bed of steel in a mortuary somewhere while I fingered bagged items inside a plastic box that had once belonged to him.

I had wondered if he’d been punched in the head, hoped his loss of consciousness had been quick and relatively painless. But when I asked what had happened to him, I was told, ‘multiple stab wounds to the chest and stomach.’

‘Will an open casket be possible?’ It’s a British-Caribbean tradition, one our family have never deviated from.

‘I can’t see that it would be a problem. But the coroner needs to examine him to help us to develop a forensic profile. The tests could take some time so please don’t arrange anything yet.’

‘He needs a change of clothes. I’ll bring them in tomorrow.’

DS Maguire smiled sadly and said, ‘That’s a good idea. I’ll take them in for you.’

Preparing his funeral was the last thing on my mind, and I never thought I’d be discussing dressing my deceased son with anyone, least of all with two police officers present. I hadn’t envisaged outliving him. I was just trying to think of practical things I could do to make him more comfortable and to prevent myself from collapsing in defeat.

A family liaison officer replaced the police constables after they’d dropped me home sometime after dawn, and she sat opposite me, informing me they’d assigned detectives to the murder enquiry. I was in the living room staring at the blank television screen, not listening to my sister’s reassurances but somehow absorbing the meaning of her words while the FLO interceded with callers and visitors. Faith was adamant the police would find the unknown suspect responsible. The witness, who they were convinced saw his murder, would come forward with the vital information they needed to pursue the unknown suspect. But none of those things had occurred.

It’s been three months since that night. Some days it feels like three minutes ago. Other times I feel as though I’ve been trapped in this limbo for three years, with no hope of escape. It took the coroner conducting the post-mortem just three hours to substantiate Steven’s cause of death: an eight-inch blade puncturing nine areas of his torso. The fatal wound was through his left lung, piercing the pulmonary artery, preventing oxygenated blood from entering the vessels into his heart, his brain.

I shuffle in my seat and try to recall that day in its entirety, but it’s difficult because I have memory blanks. The grief counsellor told me it was normal for my conscious mind to shut down because of the trauma I’d experienced; that my memories of the event might be triggered by the familiar smell of deodorant Steven used, or a lad wearing similar clothes to the ones he wore the night he died. But though I don’t remember a lot about those first few weeks after his death, I can’t forget the frightening realisation I was now alone. Nor the knowledge that someone had wanted to harm my child.

Steven was kind, compassionate, confident, and clever. What could he possibly have done to provoke such a brutal attack? And who would stab to death a teenager, on a busy street, outside a fast food restaurant, in view of anyone nearby? Then the question even the police cannot answer, and which refuses to lie dormant as I lie in bed sleepless each night. Why had the only witness – a young black female according to a passer-by – done nothing to help when she’d been standing just metres from that fried chicken shop, watching him bleed to death? How was it possible she could walk away from that scene so unaffected she could not find the decency within herself to inform the police what she’d seen that evening?

As I leave the crematorium, where thirteen weeks ago Steven’s funeral was held, with Faith and Kanesha supporting me at either side, I come face to face with Detective Sergeant Maguire – assuming she’s here for the same reason she attended the funeral: to see if the culprit attends the memorial – whose heels sink in the gritty car park, and I’m suddenly overcome with a fury I’m helpless to contain. Because there are answers I need that she hasn’t yet been able to impart, and I feel like punching someone.

I lean in close, jabbing my trembling finger at her face. ‘You should be out there looking for the bastard who murdered my son, instead of wasting your time here, offering your condolences. The justice my Steven deserves depends on you!’

I think for a moment DS Maguire is going to cry, but then her face hardens and her shoulders stiffen. ‘We’re going to follow you home. We need to speak to you in private.’ Her gaze briefly scores the cemetery that’s almost void of human traffic before settling back on me.

‘Whatever you have to say you can do so here. You’re not stepping foot back inside my house unless you have news that the person responsible for my son’s murder has been caught. Until then—’

‘We have a lead.’

My breath catches in my throat and I feel Faith’s hand grip my shoulder tighter. ‘Has the witness come forward?’

Kanesha, defiantly rigid, turns away and stares at the ground to her right where Steven’s granite headstone is going to be placed now that his ashes have been buried in the hollow earth below the rosewood cross. A temporary plaque with a brass namesake is attached to its centre.

‘We’re unable to disclose the individual’s identity as they have procured an investigation anonymity order.’

‘What the hell is that?’

‘If a witness is considered vulnerable or the investigation involves murder by a weapon, they are entitled to request their name is not disclosed to the public.’

I don’t realise I’m narrowing my eyes at her until my sister pulls me aside and says, ‘It’ll be okay. I’m with you.’

‘Actually…’ DS Maguire starts, but pauses, thinking better of it. ‘It can wait.’ I imagine she was going to say. DS Maguire would prefer to divulge whatever news she’s brought to me without Faith or Kanesha present but that’s not going to happen.

My sister drives and DS Maguire’s unmarked gunmetal-grey Ford Edge follows. The moment we arrive to the place that without Steven no longer feels like my home, DC Pierce, her sidekick ushers Faith and my niece into the kitchen and closes the door behind them. DS Maguire continues into the lounge, stopping abruptly beside the sofa, waiting for me to invite her to take a seat. I nod and we sit down together. I’m impatient to learn why the witness has requested anonymity.

‘Our protocol for vulnerable witnesses is to ensure their safety which is why I cannot name the person who claims to have seen the incident.’

‘Look, if you don’t really have anything more to say to me, then what did you come back with us for?’

‘I need to request you do not speak to anyone who we’ve already interviewed, including Steven’s friends. In case they’re called to court to testify.’

So the female witness the passer-by saw is a female friend of Steven’s, of which there is only one. Natalie’s cautious, slightly mischievous smile, her long false eyelashes, and sleek oiled hair come to mind. ‘Natalie.’ Steven’s friend Jerome’s sister. ‘She’s the witness?’

DS Maguire doesn’t reply, but I take her silence as a yes. Natalie saw the person who killed my son.

‘She denied knowing anything when you questioned all his friends then tells you she was the unknown girl stood on the pavement watching it all happen before running off into the night. Aren’t you going to charge Natalie for obstructing the course of justice?’ I hiss, voice filled with spite.

‘We have no credible evidence at this stage to reasonably suspect that Natalie has failed to provide a testimony relating to your son’s murder.’

‘Why has she only decided to come forward now?’ Just when they’d reported they were going to begin scaling down the investigation.

‘I can’t answer that. But rest assured we will be questioning the person regarding their motive for withholding information for so long if it proves valuable.’

If Natalie is the witness, and she wishes to protect her identity then she must have kept quiet in order to protect someone she cares about. I think then of her brother, Jerome. Steven’s school friend. And immediately decide he must be the culprit.

‘Have you arrested him?’

She gives me a slight frown then says, ‘Who?’

‘Jerome.’

‘We have no reason to believe Jerome had anything to do with Steven’s death, Miss Bennet.’

I suddenly feel deflated. After three excruciatingly long months that have produced no forensic proof or voluntary admissions as to who would have done this to my son, to me, to my family, or what’s left of it, finally DS Maguire has acquired a useful lead to act on. And though it should please me, my already hardened heart feels as stone-cold as it felt fragile thirteen weeks ago when I first heard the words: your son has been the victim of a serious attack. I’m sorry to have to tell you that he died as a result.

Who would do that to him?

My suspicious mind has already gone into overdrive a million and one times, convinced anyone could be the culprit, but when DS Maguire leaves the room to collect her colleague from the kitchen, they both exchange a sad smile and I feel a tug of intuition.

I sense the detectives suspect whoever took Steven’s life is someone I know. It’s in the way that DS Maguire’s eyes search mine before she turns and steps out the front door, as though afraid to leave me there, in the house, with my sister and niece. And once again, I fear I can’t trust my friends, neighbours, or colleagues. But worse of all is being unsure if I can depend on my own judgement. Am I being paranoid to think my son’s killer could be someone close to home? Is it unrealistic to think I may have sat beside this person in church, watched them play with Steven when he was small, took their money in the salon I haven’t been able to open in ninety days, or fed a freshly prepared meal to?

What drew the female witness to come forward now? Why had she kept quiet about what she saw all this time? What was she afraid of? Who was she protecting?

I watch DS Maguire and DC Pierce exit the road in their car and close the door on the sound of a child’s laughter from a nearby garden, the smell of woodsmoke and barbequed chicken in the air. I wonder if my son had ordered food, or been inside the restaurant when his assailant had decided to strike, would he still be alive? Or would the offender have killed him anyway because Steven was his target?

DS MAGUIRE

Croydon, London

Natalie is seated in front of me, her eyes roaming the interview room with suspicion. I can tell she’s nervous, afraid. But whether that is of being here in such a formal space, because I am about to ask her some tough questions, or because she is scared to reveal what she saw the night of Steven’s murder, I cannot say.

Natalie’s whispered phone call in the early hours of this morning, just half an hour before we were due to leave the station to attend Steven’s memorial, caught me off-guard, I must admit. Just when I’d become resigned to the possibility that I’d never get the breakthrough I needed to move the case forward a notch she approached me, troubled, and demanded I invite her in for questioning. ‘I saw him. I know who did it. I lied to you. You need to arrest me.’

‘It doesn’t work like that. There are protocols to follow.’

‘I won’t help you if you don’t lock me up.’

‘Is someone threatening you?’

‘No one yet. But they will. The moment I speak out. You have got to keep me safe. Please?’

She sounded desperate. I knew her history, had already discovered she’d been excluded from mainstream school, referred to an educational unit, and transferred to temporary foster care for several months a year prior, and had secured a couple of minor convictions for what was now considered ‘petty crime’. She was vulnerable, and I had nothing else to go on.

There are ninety-six CCTV cameras installed throughout Croydon. The final two had been mounted in the town after a teenage boy had been stabbed beneath the underpass and a woman had been raped on the Tube. There are a further twenty-six owned by Transport for London covering the train station and bus station. They were all in operation on the night. We were hoping one of them would have picked up Steven’s assailant, but none of them have as far as we know. If we can establish what she says holds any weight, then we’re relying on Natalie’s witness testimony to identify the individual. ‘Okay, we’ll come and speak to you but once you’re with us we’ve only got twenty-four hours. You need to tell us everything you know, or we won’t be able to help you.’

‘Who’s us?’

‘Myself, and Detective Constable Pierce. We’ll have to interview you formally with a responsible adult present. Is there someone you’d like us to contact to sit with you? It’s to ensure procedure is followed as you’re only sixteen.’

‘My social worker. But only if she doesn’t tell my mum.’

‘We’ll have to notify her that you’re here.’

Detective Inspector Rawlings signed the consent form allowing us to bring her in. To create an authentic ‘arrest’ I didn’t tell her when we’d arrive to collect her. If she was hungry, tired, or hanging out with her friends she’d probably react with annoyance or hostility. Our approach would appear genuinely unwanted, her resistance realistic. Though we didn’t know who we were supposed to be performing the act for. And as far as she was concerned that’s what it was: a scene. Nothing more.

She entered the building dragging her feet and complaining that her mother would ‘go mad when she finds out’ which she would because we brought her into the station conspicuously. She’d demanded we conduct her arrest with as little discretion as was legally possible. And word got around the area fast. Plus, with a little phone call to a local crime news reporter I was hoping some press attention might reignite public interest in the investigation and invite some new lines of enquiry. I’m not used to such a heinous act eliciting not one false lead.

I switch on the audio and hit record, noting her eyes