Lying Beside You (Cyrus Haven #3)(96)

‘Where’s he been staying?’ asks Lenny.

‘Until two weeks ago, he was sleeping in a mate’s spare room in Carrington but packed his bags after he almost set fire to the place. A towel fell onto a bar heater. I’m checking local Airbnbs.’

Dave Curran is pulling a page from the printer. ‘Thompson manages a three-bedroom cottage near Newstead Abbey. Grade II listed. It’s been empty for six weeks.’

‘That’s good enough for me,’ says Lenny, grabbing her jacket. ‘We leave in five.’ She turns to me. ‘Where is Lilah Hooper?’

‘I’m trying to find her.’

‘Should we be worried?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Call me.’

Making my way downstairs, I pass through the custody suite and control room before reaching the holding cells. I deposit my phone in a plastic bag, along with my keys and credit cards. A sergeant unlocks the cell door. Mitch gets to his feet, with his hands against the wall, legs braced apart. He knows the routine.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I tell the sergeant, who leaves us alone.

Mitch returns to the bench, without looking at me. Lying down, he covers his eyes with his forearm.

‘You know what’s funny,’ he says. ‘How you reach a point, when you say the same thing over and over and nobody believes you and eventually you start to wonder if maybe you’re the one who’s crazy.’

‘You’re not crazy. I’ve talked to Lilah. She’s not sure any more.’

‘Not sure?’ he laughs, bitterly. ‘How does that help?’

He’s right. Even if Lilah changed her statement, it wouldn’t be enough for a judge to overturn the conviction. And any appeal would take years, by which time Mitch would have served the rest of his sentence.

‘Facts don’t matter any more,’ he says. ‘I think they’re like runners in a horse race. Some are favourites, others are even-money, or rank outsiders, but all of them can be beaten if someone manipulates the information or convinces the audience that everything is fake news.’

I can understand his pessimism. Mitch is living proof that luck doesn’t even itself out, any more than it can be forced or predicted. It’s like the old joke: How do you make God laugh? Tell Him you have a plan.

Mitch sits up, offering me half of the bench.

‘So why are you here?’ he asks.

‘Checking up on you.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

I lean my head against the bricks. ‘On the night that Lilah was attacked, did you notice anything unusual?’

‘I was asleep.’

‘What about earlier?’

‘Lilah went to work mid-afternoon. I took Trevor for a walk before it got dark. He was still a puppy back then.’

‘Where did you walk?’

‘The Arboretum – at the end of the road. On the way home, I bought a taco from a food truck and gave half to Trevor. He didn’t like the jalape?os.’

The information vibrates inside me. It’s like someone has hit a tuning fork and held it close to my ear.

‘This food truck – had you seen it there before?’

‘No.’

My mind reaches back, searching for other details. A neighbour saw a food truck parked on Beaconsfield Street on the night Maya disappeared. Patrice Rennie is a chef who set up a catering business that went bust during the pandemic.

‘What’s wrong?’ asks Mitch.

I hammer on the cell door, yelling to be let out. As the door opens, I push past the sergeant and grab my phone from the counter before jogging up the internal stairs to the incident room. Many of the task force are with Lenny or knocking on doors, but a dozen detectives remain, searching databases, and studying footage from traffic cameras and private CCTV.

‘Who is looking for the Rennie family?’ I shout.

Prime Time raises his hand without looking up from his computer.

‘Their home was sold in January.’ He points to the screen. ‘This is the last information I can find.’

It’s an online news story from the Daily Mail.

The family of a desperately ill young woman hopes to raise ?200,000 to help get her alternative treatment abroad. Jolene Rennie, from Nottingham, was just thirty-three when she was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer.

Doctors advised her to start palliative care, but Jolene underwent twenty cycles of chemotherapy over the next four years. The disease went into remission but last October she received the devastating news that her cancer had returned and spread to the lining of her abdomen, her pelvis and her ovaries.

Specialist surgeons at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London decided that Jolene was unsuitable for surgery, but the family say there are multiple different treatment options abroad, which are not covered by the NHS.

Jolene’s husband Patrice, a chef, has already sold the family’s home in Lenton and hopes to raise the rest of the money by donations.

‘In America, they are twenty years ahead when it comes to stopping this cancer,’ he said. ‘We’re going to make every penny count and make Jolene well again.’



I look at the date on the article. It was published on 8 February.

‘When did they leave the country?’ I ask.

‘In April.’