Lying Beside You (Cyrus Haven #3)(99)

‘But she didn’t complain. She didn’t want the nurses charged. She didn’t want to sue the hospital. All she wanted was another chance to be a mother. They tried everything. IVF. Homeopathy. Prayer. Acupuncture. Folk remedies. She slept on a hill in Dorset. She ate bird’s-nest soup. Nothing worked. And then the cancer came. It was horrible. She disappeared, piece by piece, eaten away from the inside. What sort of God could be so utterly, utterly evil?’

She looks at me, wanting an explanation. I don’t have one.

‘Did you plant evidence to frame Mitchell Coates?’ I ask.

‘No. Never. Check the dates. I was still at university.’

‘Who, then?’

‘Hoyle.’

I take my eyes off the road for a moment to look at her face.

‘Craig told me that Hoyle had done it before – taken material from a crime scene and planted it at the suspect’s address, or in his car.’

‘Why didn’t Dyson say anything?’

‘Hoyle was too clever to get caught. And nobody was going to question a senior officer without serious evidence. It would have been career suicide.’

‘Dyson told you this?’

She nods. ‘Hoyle thinks he’s streamlining the process, not corrupting it. When he’s sure of someone’s guilt, he finds the evidence to convict them.’

‘Mitchell Coates has spent six years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.’

Cassie goes quiet.

‘The manslaughter prosecution against Lilah Hooper collapsed and two weeks later she was attacked. You must have suspected Patrice.’

‘No. Never. He and Jolene were trying to have another baby. It didn’t even enter my head.’

‘Where is he? There must be someone who knows. Friends. Family.’

‘Some of his old army buddies came to the funeral, but I don’t know how to contact them.’

‘You’re covering for him.’

‘No.’

‘Voigt asked you to compare the rope used in the attacks on Maya and Lilah. Did you purposely avoid doing it?’

Cassie hesitates, as though debating how much to say.

‘It’s soft hemp,’ she whispers. ‘The same organic make-up and weave.’

‘Did it come from the same source?’

‘Yes.’

‘When we met at the Little Drummer, you saw the CCTV footage from the camera above the bar. You recognised Patrice’s reflection in the mirrors.’

Again, she doesn’t answer. I can’t tell if it’s defiance or self-pity or embarrassment. Finally, she speaks. ‘There’s something else you should know. Ten days ago, there was a break-in at a pharmacy in Lenton. It looked like an addict, stealing metha-done or opioids, but something else was taken. Heparin.’

‘The blood thinner.’

‘It’s the same drug that killed Oliver.’

‘How long have you known about the robbery?’

‘Only since this morning.’

We’re almost at the police station. My phone rings. I answer, hoping it might be Evie, but a perky-sounding voice with a Scouse accent introduces himself as Gary from EMS (Electronic Monitoring Services).

‘You’re looking for information about E645,’ he says, tapping on a keyboard. I can imagine him holed up in some office block in Manchester, staring at a computer screen. ‘The ankle monitor showed he left his designated address in Parkside at 11.26 this morning. Given the speed he was travelling, he was most likely in a vehicle. He drove north for twenty minutes and has been stationary for the past hour. Beech Avenue in Basford. The nearest cross street is Albany Road. His file has a red flag. I’m supposed to notify the police. Who is he?’

‘My brother.’

‘Is he dangerous?’

‘Yes.’





68


Evie


I turn my face into the light, blinking at the brightness. The silhouette is the wrong size. The wrong shape. Not Elias.

He takes a metal folding chair from the opposite side of the room and spins it in his fist, setting it down backwards, so he can straddle the sides. Why do men do that – act like their balls are so big they need a chair to hold them up?

I remember what happened now. My memories float together to form a storyline, a three-act play, but it’s not Shakespeare. Elias was leaning over me, breathing into my mouth. I thought he was trying to kiss me or kill me. I pushed him away and spat out the taste of him and called him a pervert and told him to take his filthy family-killing hands off me.

‘Where is your friend?’ he asked.

I remember Lilah screaming. ‘What did you do to her?’

‘Nothing. She ran away.’

The food truck was still parked on the corner, but now the awning was hinged up, the side door open. Gaping. Dark. I couldn’t see a driver. I crossed the road and approached from the front. Crouching down, I looked beneath the chassis, between the wheels, but nobody was standing on the other side.

I suddenly remembered where I’d seen the truck before. The painted doors. The sombrero. The cactus. It was outside Lilah’s flat on the day I met her. I was hungry and the driver said he wasn’t open. I didn’t look closely at his face because it wasn’t important. I was looking for a taco, not a lie.