Promises to Keep

  Elizabeth Haynes worked for many years as a police analyst. Her debut novel, Into the Darkest Corner, won Amazon's Book of the Year in 2011 and Amazon's Rising Star Award for debut novels.

  Elizabeth grew up in Sussex and studied English, German and Art History at Leicester University. She is currently taking a career break having worked for the past seven years as a police intelligence analyst. Elizabeth now lives in Kent with her husband and son, and writes in coffee shops and a shed-office which takes up most of the garden. She is a regular participant in, and a Municipal Liaison for National Novel Writing Month - an annual challenge to write 50,000 words in the month of November.

  Also by Elizabeth Haynes

  Into the Darkest Corner

  Revenge of the Tide

  Human Remains

  Under a Silent Moon

  Copyright

  Published by Sphere

  ISBN: 978-0-7515-5573-8

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Elizabeth Haynes 2014

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  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, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Sphere

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Elizabeth Haynes

  Copyright

  Jo

  Sam

  Jo

  Sam

  Jo

  Sam

  Author’s Note

  JO

  It usually takes her ten minutes to find her stride. By that time, she’s run the length of the field and has been in the woods for a quarter of a mile. Her breath evens out, her pace becomes hypnotic. Nothing but the smell of the damp, compacted earth pounding under her trainers. Even Dixie has found his rhythm; he’s given up the sniffing and the scampering from bush to tree, it’s all about the run for him now, just as it is for her.

  When she gets to this point, her mind wanders. Everywhere else in her life her mind is like a city rush hour: exhausting, hot, intense, sometimes it’s like nothing can get through. Here, in the woods, it all unravels like a knotted rope into a single zen-like thread. Patterns become clear. Conversations play out the way they should have done, there is clarity, calm. Hope.

  Conversations like the one this morning, for instance, Jo sitting at the table in the kitchen, hands wrapped around a mug of mint tea. Sam comes in dressed for work, freshly showered, grey trousers, navy blouse. Her heavy blonde hair is still damp at the ends.

  ‘You’re up early,’ she says, kissing the top of Jo’s head. She drops bread into the toaster.

  ‘Yes. I’m going to the library.’ Jo can feel Sam gazing at her.

  ‘It’s only six. I’m fairly sure the library won’t be open for a while.’

  Her voice is gentle but even so, Jo bristles at it. ‘I wanted to see you off to work.’

  ‘You’re not going for a run, are you?’

  The toast pops up in the seconds before Jo thinks of her reply. In the end, she settles for the basic lie: ‘No.’

  If Sam thinks she’s lying, she manages not to say. ‘That’s good. We can go out together when I get home from work, then.’

  The truth is, Sam won’t be home until late, because that’s just the way it is. It’s getting dark by five, and Sam hasn’t been home that early since this job started a week ago. It’s a murder investigation, that’s all Jo knows about it. It’s usually either that, or a kidnapping, or a rape. She’ll be lucky if Sam’s home before bedtime. There will be no run this evening.

  Sam eats her toast and Jo sips her tea, trying to think of something to say. Trying to be bright and happy and positive. She can’t even manage to pretend. The cloud is big today, big and black and overwhelming. For a moment she thinks twice about going for a run, despite Dixie twisting himself around her legs, his tail thumping against the table. She thinks about going back to bed, pulling the duvet over herself and waiting.

  ‘I wish I could stay home with you today,’ Sam says.

  She’s noticed, then. She usually does.

  ‘I’ll be fine, it’s okay. I’ll be better when I’m out.’ Jo gets up from the table and washes her mug at the sink, even though it was still a quarter full, to hide the tears that are brimming.

  Sam comes up behind her, slips her arm around her waist, nuzzles into her neck. Jo tries not to flinch. She has no reason to, but intimacy doesn’t seem to help when it feels this bad.

  ‘I’ll call you later,’ Sam says. And then, when she’s pulling on her jacket: ‘Promise me you’re not going to the woods?’

  But the woods are the only place Jo can run. The roads are too busy, too many people, even in the middle of the day when they should be at work. Jo doesn’t like to see people. She doesn’t like to stop and chat and pass the time of day. She has a plan when she’s running: it takes her eight minutes to reach the post in the woods, seven minutes to get to the clearing in the centre. Any longer than this and she’s slacking.

  She rarely sees anyone in the woods, but today there’s someone up ahead. She considers running past but the path is narrow; she’ll need to stand to one side. She pulls an ear bud out of one ear, calls the dog: ‘Dixie!’

  The dog is ahead of her now, trotting up to the stranger. It’s a man, scruffy-looking, an unkempt beard and long hair – a rough sleeper? But his clothes are clean. He’s carrying a rucksack over his shoulder, which he drops to the floor as if it’s heavy. He’s patting Dixie, who’s wagging his tail. Jo has slowed to a walk, annoyed that her rhythm has been interrupted.

  ‘Morning,’ the man says brightly. ‘Nice dog.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jo says in reply, taking deep breaths. ‘He’s a good runner.’

  ‘Likes the rabbits, does he?’

  Jo’s wary now, because she knows people use dogs for lamping in the fields around here. She doesn’t want Dixie to be nabbed. ‘He’s not fast enough to catch anything,’ she says.

  Dixie’s lead is around her neck. She wears it like this when she’s running, the ends clipped together, so she doesn’t lose it. But right now it makes her feel vulnerable. She clutches the lead clip and fiddles with it. The man looks at her fingers, and the smile drops from his face.

  Jo is aware of the strands of hair sticking to the sides of her face, a trickle of sweat running between her shoulder blades. He’s looking at her chest. She feels a sudden clutch of fear, takes a small step back into the nettles.

  He chuckles at her reaction, nods to himself. ‘Right,’ he says, and then he moves to pass her.

  She feels relief, stands to one side to let him through. Dixie decides to let out a low growl, despite his friendliness just a few moments ago. Jo takes hold of his collar.

  When he’s past her she prepares to run again, putting the earbud back into her ear, and then she hears something. She removes it again, turns: the man is facing her on the track. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘did you say something?’

  ‘I said, you should be careful, running out here, all on your own.’

  He turns and heads off down the path.

  Her rhythm has been disrupted by this encounter. Her heart is thumping with it, her breathing shallow and not helping her recovery. From somewhere quite close com
es an animal sound, a low, throaty growl – so deep that it feels as if the ground itself is vibrating under her feet. The sound increases in volume and then fades. The first time she heard this noise, Jo had been terrified, imagining an earthquake or something, but a little investigation had revealed it to be nothing more sinister than the Eurostar trains thundering their way to France and Belgium, somewhere deep beneath her feet. Now she likes the predictability of the sound. She’s learned to time her run so that at some point between the beginning of the woods and the end, she will hear and feel the train. The continental dragon, growling at her from its underground lair.

  The train makes her think of Mohammed. It always does. He didn’t come on the Eurostar, of course: he crossed the Channel on the top of the driver’s cab of an articulated lorry. He and his younger brother Hassan were hiding behind the windbreaker, holding on to each other and whatever else they could. ‘He says he was very afraid,’ the interpreter had told her. ‘He says he was worried his brother was going to fall.’

  Nevertheless, something about the journey, the crossing, whether made by sea or rail, reminds her of him. Every time.

  Dixie has seen a rabbit, his bat-like Podenco ears pointing forwards. He regards it and then gives Jo a look, as if to point out that he could easily catch it if he chose to; it’s just that right now, he’s busy with other things. The rabbit watches from the path ahead, assessing the risk, pushing its luck to the limit before skittering off into the bushes.

  Within a minute, she’s back in her rhythm, and it feels good. Despite the cold air, the damp ground underfoot soaking through her trainers, she feels good. Her breath sounds heavy but even in her ears, rising above the hiphop beat she runs to. The clearing is ahead. Beyond it, she can see the path snaking through the trees towards the industrial units. At that point the path turns left, runs alongside the chainlink fence at the back of the warehouses. It’s a wide, open track, fresh tyre marks across the potholed concrete. If only she felt this good all the time! For a moment she feels almost euphoric and she can believe that she’s better, she’s fixed, the events of the past few months and the way she’s dealt with them – badly – are all behind her. Her thighs are burning – this bit’s uphill.

  But now she’s started thinking about Mohammed, she can’t stop. He was fifteen. And she could have saved him.

  The tears are making it difficult to see the path, so for a moment she stops, hands on hips, breathing hard. This is the highest point on her run, where the industrial estate ends and the fields start. From here, she will run on the footpath beside the field, back down to the woods and then home. She doesn’t normally stop, but since her rhythm was disrupted by that man, she has no reason to push the pace. Jo wonders briefly where he was coming from, with his heavy rucksack. There are no houses up here, just the buildings behind the chainlink fence, half of them unoccupied.

  You should be careful, running out here on your own.

  Jo wipes her eyes. She is ready to run again. And then she realises something is missing. She pulls her earbuds from her ears, listens. ‘Dixie!’ There is no sound, no answering bark, no crashing through the foliage, no tick-tick of his claws on the concrete. She turns around, her eyes searching the path. ‘Dixie!’

  And just when she’s about to panic, the dog comes galloping up the path towards her, tail high, coated from ears to rump in something dark brown and noxious.

  Transcript of Interview in relation to Op Jasmine, the death in police custody of Mohammed Reza on 27 August 2010

  Officers interviewing:

  William HOLMES

  Christine HENRY

  Witness:

  PSE Joanna LARTER

  Interview commences at 09:42

  William HOLMES (WH): Can you confirm your name, date of birth and occupation for me, please?

  Joanna LARTER (JL): Joanna Larter, fourteenth of November 1982. I’m a civilian detention officer based in Briarstone custody suite.

  WH: How long have you been working there?

  JL: Nearly nine months. I transferred from the Met.

  WH: Can you tell us how you first encountered Mohammed Reza?

  JL: He was brought in to custody in June. He’d been arrested for stealing food from the bins behind Iceland. They wanted to press charges, despite the circumstances.

  WH: The circumstances?

  JL: He was starving hungry, he had no way of getting anything to eat.

  WH: And what happened when he was brought into custody?

  JL: We contacted Language Line when he was brought in, to assist with the processing. When it was explained to him that he was being detained he started worrying about his brother. He said he’d left his brother with some men while he went to get food, that his brother would be afraid if he didn’t come back. He told me his brother was eleven years old. I asked him to tell me where his brother was, so we could go and make sure he was okay. He didn’t want to tell me. I kept asking, and eventually he tried to describe where they were staying. But he didn’t know the area, of course, he just knew they were behind a building in a shed.

  WH: All this was through an interpreter?

  JL: That was through Language Line. Once we’d booked him in we had to wait for the official interpreter so that he could be interviewed. That took hours.

  WH: And what happened then?

  JL: Between us we contacted all the partner agencies, the Border Agency, social services. The hard thing is, we never know how old they are, the asylum seekers. The older ones lie about their age so they get more help, so they don’t get sent to an adult detention centre. He said he was fifteen but he could have been older. The next morning when I went off duty, they were waiting for UKBA to come and get him.

  WH: And what happened after that?

  JL: A few weeks later, I saw he’d been arrested again in Charlmere, this time for criminal damage. I saw his image and the custody record related to a Mohammed Rezam, with an ‘M’ on the end of his name – and they’d created a duplicate record for it. Or maybe he’d deliberately given them another spelling, they do that sometimes, especially if they’ve got outstanding warrants. So I rang up Charlmere nick and told them we’d had him in custody before. I had to go down there that afternoon to cover for someone, so I got to see him again.

  WH: You spoke to him?

  JL: Yes. His English had improved – it wasn’t perfect, but we could have a conversation. He remembered me. He said I was kind to him. [INDISTINCT]

  WH: Take your time.

  JL: I’m sorry, I just … I find it difficult.

  WH: Do you need to take a break?

  JL: No, no. I’m all right.

  WH: Can you remember anything else he said?

  JL: He’d been put in a hostel in Charlmere. He said his brother had been taken into foster care, but after a few days he had absconded so they could be together. He said he had spent some time in a hostel for young people but there were older men in there too, who made him afraid. I asked him about the criminal damage. He told me he’d been cutting a wire fence to try and find a way into an abandoned building. At least, I think that’s what he was trying to do. It was quite hard to follow. He and his brother were living on the streets again. I promised him I was going to do my best to get them some help. I promised.

  WH: Was there anything else?

  JL: He was trying so hard. All he wanted to do was keep his little brother safe. He was just a child himself, really.

  WH: I understand you have strong feelings about this case, Joanna, but I’d advise you to try and remain objective.

  JL: That’s just the trouble. Everybody’s so objective. Nobody understands that these are vulnerable children, no matter where they’ve come from, or how they got here. The last time I saw him, you know what he said to me? I was trying get someone to take them in, somewhere they’d be safe, and he said to me, ‘you are kind like a mother.’

  WH: I think we’ll take a break there, thank you.

  SAM

  ‘Mind if I join
you?’

  Sam looks up from her mobile phone. ‘Of course not! Sorry, I was miles away.’

  Lou Smith takes the seat opposite Sam’s, moving the tray out of the way. She has two coffees on hers. ‘I thought you might be ready for another,’ she says, pushing one of them across the table towards Sam.

  ‘That’s kind of you. Thank you.’

  Lou is Sam’s closest friend here, the only real friend she has made since moving to Briarstone a year ago. Lou is on the official fast-track development scheme, has already made it to Detective Inspector. At first Sam – a Detective Sergeant, and not accustomed to socialising above her rank – was suspicious of Lou’s friendship, wondering what it was she’d got that Lou wanted, but her suspicions have been unfounded.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Lou says, indicating the phone.

  ‘I can’t get hold of Jo,’ Sam answers. ‘Been trying for a while.’

  Sam has been thinking about how she and Jo first met, nearly five years ago. Jo had just started working in custody in Kentish Town. Sam was a DC then, working towards her Sergeant’s exams. She had been comfortably single for a while, but there was something about Jo, the way she smiled, her glossy dark hair that looked as if it would be silky to touch. In the end, after months of inappropriate flirting over the custody desk, to her delight and surprise, Jo had asked her out for a drink. She had moved in with Sam the following weekend. And for three years it had been amazing. They’d been on holidays to Vietnam, toured Eastern Europe, the USA and Ireland, bought and renovated a house together, laughed and cried. From the start, Sam could see nothing beyond this gorgeous girl. Jo had been her Forever.

  Lou sips her coffee, watching Sam over the rim of the white mug. Then she says, ‘Want to take a drive over there? I’m sure I can think of a good reason why you need to head over that way.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ Sam says, putting her mobile phone into her bag. She stares at the coffee for a little while, wondering when everything became so overwhelming.