Without Trace: An edge of your seat psychological thriller (A Morgan Vine Thriller) Read online

  WITHOUT TRACE

  SIMON BOOKER

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Tweleve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For Mel

  One

  Nine days before her daughter disappeared, Morgan Vine paid her twenty-third visit to HMP Dungeness. She knew the prison officers mocked her naïvety (Start a book group! Heal the world!) but she didn’t care, nor did she mention her real reason for staying in touch with a man convicted of murder.

  ‘You don’t look like a do-gooder.’

  Morgan decided to take the screw’s jibe as a compliment. She watched him cast a wary eye over her scuffed leather jacket, skinny-fit jeans and high tops.

  ‘I’m planning a mass breakout,’ she said. ‘The reading group’s a front.’

  A frown.

  ‘You realise aiding and abetting an escape is a criminal offence?’

  ‘Now you tell me.’

  The man sniffed and exchanged her keys and iPhone for a plastic tag. He placed her belongings in a locker then buzzed her into the holding area where another officer, her escort, was leaning against an out-of-order vending machine. The man folded a tattered Daily Express and unlocked the first of many gates. Morgan followed him across the exercise yard, glancing at the loops of razor wire, the barred windows of the cells.

  Top floor, third from the left.

  His cell.

  Did he get any sleep last night or lie awake until dawn?

  Fretting.

  Hoping.

  Planning.

  The officer unlocked the side gate to C-Wing. Morgan paused, savouring a last taste of autumnal fresh air before entering the dingy corridor that reeked of stale sweat, bad food and low-level fear. More clanging gates. More jangling keys. Down a flight of concrete steps, along another fetid corridor and into the recreation room. The ten men were seated in a circle, legs splayed, staking out their personal space.

  Feeling his eyes on her, she was glad she’d risen early to wash her hair. More blonde-ish than blonde, she would have opted for a shorter cut years ago had he not had a ‘thing’ for long hair. Still the right side of forty, her slimness was the result of regular swimming combined with a surfeit of nervous energy, and her eyes had kept their youthful sparkle.

  Aside from Danny himself, no one in the room was aware of the history that bound Morgan to Prisoner FF7836 and that was how it would stay. She’d started the group as a pretext to rekindle regular contact but even if tomorrow went well – even if his appeal were successful – she wouldn’t abandon ‘her boys’. They had come to trust her. There was no question of bailing out simply because Danny might get his life back.

  As usual, he was sitting opposite Gary Pascoe, a bull-necked cage fighter serving a lengthy sentence for garroting the pregnant mother of his five children with a bicycle chain. The man had commemorated the event by having a teardrop tattooed under his eye.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous.’

  Pascoe was always first to speak, jousting for control from the moment Morgan arrived.

  ‘Morning, Gary.’

  ‘Not got a smile for me?’

  ‘Make me laugh and we’ll see.’

  ‘I only know dirty jokes.’

  ‘Then let’s stick to the book.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’ The man cracked his knuckles, reached into the waistband of his trackies and produced a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. ‘But I’ve got a question about the lawyer in the story. What sort of stupid name is Atticus Finch?’

  Morgan said nothing. Taking her seat, she flipped open her dog-eared paperback. The book fell open at a page that bore minute traces of chocolate, a smear of Cadbury’s Flake from twenty-five years ago. Traces of the past.

  ‘If you ask me, he’s a twat,’ said Pascoe, ‘but teacher’s pet says I’m wrong.’

  He glared at the man opposite, giving Morgan an excuse to look directly into Danny’s grey-green eyes. She saw bruising on his cheek and a grubby bandage around his left hand. Another shank in the shower?

  ‘Want to tell us how you see Atticus, Danny?’

  Kilcannon leaned back in his chair and considered the question with what seemed to Morgan a Zen-like calm. She’d never understood where this inner stillness came from but even at school he’d exuded quiet authority.

  ‘He’s the archetypal hero. Always does the right thing.’ Danny raked the fingers of his good hand through his thick, blue-black hair. ‘People turn on him because he’s defending someone they’re prejudiced against but he sticks to his principles, whatever it takes.’

  Pascoe revealed a gap-toothed grin.

  ‘He’s a twat and the book’s shite.’ He winked at Morgan. ‘Kilcannon only chose it because you like the film and he wants to get in your knickers.’ His grin became a leer. ‘Which is a shocker ’cause we all know he likes ’em barely legal.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘Still, tomorrow goes his way, he’s on a dead cert with you, right?’

  Morgan felt her cheeks burn.

  ‘Not cool, Gary.’

  ‘See?’ said Pascoe, looking around the room. ‘They’ll be at it the moment he gets out.’ He winked at Morgan. ‘I’m up for parole. Wanna wait for a real man?’

  Danny’s jaw tightened as he leaned towards Pascoe.

  ‘Show some respect.’

  ‘Relax, Danny boy.’ Pascoe waved airily towards the bandage. ‘Something wrong with your hand?’

  The men stared at each other. Undisguised loathing. Morgan knew the next few seconds would decide if the session continued peaceably or ended in a brawl. The trick was to assert her authority without humiliating the cage fighter.

  ‘Play nice, lads,’ she said, ‘or I’m cancelling Disneyland.’

  Pascoe threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘Disneyland?’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t go there for all the hooch on C-Wing.’

  Laughter all round. Morgan felt a flicker of relief. Most of these men were on medication. You never knew if a joke would backfire. And when something big was brewing – like Danny Kilcannon’s appeal – you could feel the tension.

  The papers had revived the st
ory over the last few days. The Post ran a readers’ poll. Danny Kilcannon: wrongly convicted or guilty as sin? Eighty-two per cent had voted ‘guilty’ but the case still had the power to trigger debate.

  –He’s guilty.

  –He’s innocent. Whoever killed Zoe was a stranger, a burglar.

  –Most murder victims are killed by someone they know.

  –Doesn’t prove Danny did it.

  –What about the missing wife? He killed her too. Dumped the body at sea.

  –No way. Rowena had a breakdown, like he told the jury, then topped herself.

  –You just fancy him.

  –Who doesn’t?

  Morgan had chaired the book group for two and a half years but had no idea why most of ‘her boys’ were behind bars. Prison etiquette was strict – don’t ask, don’t tell – but nobody needed to enquire why Danny Kilcannon was serving a life sentence. Although never a household name, his face was vaguely familiar even before the trial. A carpenter by trade, he’d earned a few quid as a TV extra, graduating to a single speaking part as a murderous priest in a BBC drama. During his trial, the role had been a gift to tabloid editors casting around for a nickname. To the world at large, Danny was now ‘Killer-cannon’. Except in here. Here he was ‘The Luvvie’, or ‘Filthy Murdering Bastard’, depending on your point of view.

  Although popular with some of his fellow inmates, he was loathed by those who believed that four summers ago he tried to rape his fifteen-year-old stepdaughter before cracking open her skull with a thirty-two-ounce claw hammer.

  Ninety minutes later, Morgan leaned against the door of her Mini and put a roll-up between her lips. A stiff wind was blowing in from the sea, buffeting the vast expanse of shingle surrounding the network of buildings that made up HMP Dungeness.

  ‘Morgan!’

  Getting into the car, she tried to pretend she hadn’t heard the man’s reedy voice but it was too late; he was hurrying across the car park, bicycle clips hooped around corduroy-clad ankles, paperwork flapping in the wind. She glimpsed his name on a pamphlet.

  The Psychology of Socialisation into Criminality by Nigel Cundy.

  She lit her cigarette and rolled down the window.

  ‘Hi, Nigel.’

  The sandy-haired man made an attempt to smooth his comb-over.

  ‘Wondered if you fancy a drink tomorrow.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m busy,’ she said. ‘Maybe another time?’

  He was struggling to keep his smile in place.

  ‘Will you still be “busy” if his appeal fails?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I assume you’re hoping to see Kilcannon on the outside,’ said Nigel. ‘Candlelight, champagne, violins.’

  She felt a flicker of annoyance.

  ‘Not sure what you mean.’

  ‘You’ll need cheering up when his appeal gets thrown out,’ said Cundy. ‘Especially after all that blogging and tweeting, keeping his case in the public eye.’ A sniff. ‘Pity a hack like you couldn’t get a proper article into a proper paper.’ Morgan could feel her jaw clench as he continued. ‘Plus it’s his second attempt at an appeal. Doesn’t bode well.’

  ‘Maybe you’re forgetting the fact that he’s innocent.’

  ‘Maybe you’re confusing fact with opinion.’

  ‘A major miscarriage of justice right under your nose, Nigel. Doesn’t that bother you?’

  ‘If it was a miscarriage, yes. But if you look at all the evidence—’

  Morgan felt her face flushing with anger.

  ‘Don’t you ever get tired?’ she said.

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Defending the system, no matter how much it screws up.’

  ‘He’s guilty.’

  ‘I know Danny,’ said Morgan.

  ‘Knew. When you were a kid. Now you’re in your forties—’

  ‘I’m thirty-seven.’

  ‘Old enough not to allow the good old days to cloud your judgement and get in the way of facts.’

  The man’s smile was growing more glacial. He handed her a copy of the Daily Telegraph.

  ‘Souvenir,’ he said.

  That photo – the one snatched at the window of the meat wagon just after Danny’s conviction – appeared alongside a headline posing the question that cut to the heart of the matter.

  Innocent or Guilty? Killer-cannon faces appeal court tomorrow.

  ‘The Daily Telegraph?’ she said. ‘Seriously?’

  He sniffed. ‘We’re not all Guardianistas.’

  She sighed.

  ‘Ever wonder if you’re in the wrong job, Nigel?’

  ‘Beats writing about fourth-rate celebs.’

  Morgan knew her smile didn’t reach her eyes. She sucked on her roll-up, plucking a strand of tobacco from her tongue.

  ‘Is this really your idea of how to chat up women?’

  Nigel’s grin vanished as Morgan started the car. He raised his voice to make himself heard above the engine.

  ‘One last time: Danny Kilcannon is not the man you want him to be.’

  But his words were lost on the wind.

  The place Morgan called home, one of a scattering of converted railway carriages that had housed fishermen and railway workers in the 1920s, was five minutes’ drive from the prison, three hundred yards from where the shoreline met the shingle beach. A succession of owners had extended the structure, cladding the walls and erecting a clapboard lean-to on the side facing the old lighthouse.

  There were two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen-cum-living room that gave on to a timbered deck festooned with hanging baskets of red geraniums. The splash of colour always raised Morgan’s spirits, especially on those graveyard-grey days when the sea spray assaulted the windows like machine-gun fire and the wind howled like a ghost train.

  With its huge power station, gravel pits and heaps of rusting scrap, Dungeness Nature Reserve was nobody’s idea of a resort but Morgan loved every scrap of shingle, every spear thistle, every clump of sea kale. She got a thrill from sharing her habitat with pipistrelle bats, foxes, stoats, badgers, hares and weasels, not to mention dragonflies, a hundred species of beetle, and, according to the RSPB Reserve, enough birds to enthral the most passionate twitcher – from peregrine falcons to avocets, wheatears to corn buntings.

  Stepping out of her car, she scanned the windswept beach, deserted except for three teenage boys in the distance. One was kicking a can, another hurled stones at an abandoned fishing boat. She could hear the tinkle of breaking glass. As the boys chased after the can, heading for the Dalek-like pylons that pointed their death rays at the power station, Morgan stepped onto the deck bordering her house.

  She heard the seashells before she saw them. Felt them crunching underfoot. For a second, she wondered if they’d been scattered by the wind or left by the boys – some kind of game – but on closer examination she saw they’d been arranged, neatly and deliberately, to spell out three words.

  Don’t trust him

  She turned to scan the beach. The lads had disappeared. The shoreline was deserted, as was the single-track road that ran parallel with the railway line snaking towards Romney Marsh.

  Without making a conscious decision, Morgan lashed out, kicking the shells onto the beach, scattering them far and wide. Then she let herself into her house and poured a glass of wine, trying to ignore the trembling of her hands and the hammering of her heart.

  Two

  Waking before five, Morgan tried in vain to push the message from her mind. The obvious culprit was Nigel Cundy – petty, jealous – but maybe the warning had nothing to do with her. Just a teenage prank.

  As dawn broke she gave up on sleep, took a shower then spent half an hour deciding what to wear. With a knot of apprehension curling in her stomach, she got into her car and headed for London. She’d had the Mini serviced last week. Today had been a long time coming. Her car breaking down was out of the question.

  After parking in an underground NCP, Morgan walked through the bustling streets, taking u
p position on the south side of the Strand, opposite the Gothic extravaganza that housed the Royal Courts of Justice. She’d decided not to sit in the public gallery, knowing she would struggle to control her reaction if the wrong verdict were announced. Time to keep a low profile. Every TV in HMP Dungeness would be standing-room-only tonight. Even on a red-letter day for Prisoner FF7836, she couldn’t risk compromising her relationship with the other members of the book group.

  The chilly October sunshine seemed to have triggered a burst of bonhomie among the reporters milling around the Court of Appeal. Surveying the satellite vans – Sky News, BBC, ITV – she couldn’t help wondering what had happened to her own journalistic career. The plan had been simple: a first at Oxford then important work as a fearless investigative reporter combined with appearances on Question Time, pronouncing wisely and wittily on the issues of the day.

  The reality had been bewilderingly different: pregnancy; redbrick dropout; single motherhood. Not one editor had accepted her impassioned, forensically researched articles putting the case for Danny’s innocence. Far from being hailed as champion of the wrongly convicted, she’d been dismissed as a crank, a member of the green ink brigade.

  The start of her career had coincided with the acceleration in the decline of the newspaper industry, so she survived by hacking out articles on C-list celebs, topping up her income by scrubbing seaside bolt holes belonging to smug second-homers and their floppy-haired children with names like Sholto, Candida and, for all she knew, Chlamydia.

  Feeling a vibration in her jeans pocket, Morgan fished out her phone and checked her email. Most waking hours were spent in a state of low-level anxiety, hoping editors would deign to respond to pitches where her breezy tone fooled no one.

  Hi! Ever wondered what happened to (name of ex-soap star/disgraced footballer/long-forgotten boy band member)? Wonder no more. He/she is in rehab/panto/flipping burgers. Thought I’d give you first dibs.

  Her weekly column, Me and My Fridge, had been a surprise hit for Plus One, a lowbrow glossy. For three years, micro-celebs had lined up to exclusively reveal! their favourite recipes and, inadvertently, their eating disorders, but a new-broom editor had arrived and Morgan’s only regular source of income had been swept away.

  Even now, awaiting the verdict from the Court of Appeal, the freelancer part of her brain was keeping an eye out for responses to a pitch for a piece on pets that resembled their celebrity owners. But instead of a message that might put food on the table (OK, 1500 words by Monday) the email proved to be from her daughter’s father.