Leave no trace, p.1
Leave No Trace, page 1
Leave No Trace
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
THE CLUB
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
THE CLUB
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
THE CLUB
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
THE CLUB
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
THE CLUB
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
THE CLUB
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
THE CLUB
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
THE CLUB
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
THE CLUB
Fifty-Five
Fifty-Six
Fifty-Seven
Fifty-Eight
Book Soundtrack Playlist
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by MJ White
Copyright
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
To my lovely Bob
For listening, supporting and cheerleading
And always believing in me
xx
‘Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.’
Macbeth Act 1, Scene 4
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Prologue
(Extract from transcript of The Missing Son true crime documentary, a Quaesitor Co. production ©2013 All Rights Reserved)
Interviewer: Your son has been missing for five years. No word, no sign. And then the messages began. One a year, on the anniversary of the date he went missing. Tell me, as Ewan Stokes’ mother, how does that feel?
Olwyn Stokes-Norton: It’s hard. The messages aren’t for my family. They aren’t for me. But it’s a spark of hope. And that can be cruel, because it constantly reminds me what I’ve lost. But it’s a comfort to know that Ewan isn’t forgotten.
Interviewer: Do you believe he’s the one sending them?
Olwyn Stokes-Norton: Absolutely.
Interviewer: The messages have been found across Europe, on sheets of white paper, left in prominent places where eagle-eyed watchers have photographed them to share online. How are you so certain your son has written them?
Olwyn Stokes-Norton: It’s his handwriting. I would know it anywhere.
Interviewer: After all you’ve gone through – the indifference of the police, the radio silence for five years, the lack of evidence of where Ewan could be now – do you feel in some way justified that there are people around the world sharing these messages? And talking about him?
Olwyn Stokes-Norton: I’m grateful to everyone for keeping his name alive. As a family, we’ve been stunned by the response. All these people knowing about Ewan makes me feel we’re not alone in our fight to find him. I don’t know how to thank everyone for their support.
Interviewer: And what about his rumoured return?
Olwyn Stokes-Norton: [pause] I’m sorry, what?
Interviewer: How do you feel about the Fifteen Year Return? It’s been widely shared amongst the Stokesy fan community.
Olwyn Stokes-Norton: [pause] I don’t know… What are you talking about?
Interviewer: The community of Stokesy-watchers believe that your son will return home on the fifteenth anniversary of the night he went missing. To exact revenge on those who forced him to run?
Olwyn Stokes-Norton: How do they…? How can you ask me…? I’m sorry, can you stop filming, please? [She tugs at her lapel microphone as the camera quickly pans away.]
THE CLUB
I saw him.
No you didn’t.
I’m telling you, man. It was Stokesy.
Okay, where?
Webcam. Suffolk.
Suffolk UK?
Yes.
Couldn’t have been him. Last sighting was Paris.
So?
No way would he come home. It wasn’t him.
If he’s home this is it. The 15-Year Return.
We don’t even know he said that. It’s all a myth.
Check the date. It has to be him. The Club said we’d get a sign…
It’s got out of hand with the Club. This whole thing is messed up.
He said, ‘When it’s time…’
He didn’t write that. Stokesy’s gone.
I saw him. It’s time. It’s finally happening.
Typing… … …
Then we need to warn people. Now.
One
CORA
‘You’re just sore you lost.’
Dr Cora Lael shot her companion a look. DS Rob Minshull was impossible when he won. It was only a Sunday evening quiz in a small Suffolk village pub and it really didn’t matter, but the prospect of a week of Minshull’s crowing was not something she was willing to endure without a fight.
‘If it weren’t for you stealing my answers in the music round we would’ve won,’ she returned with a smile.
Minshull clamped a hand to his heart. ‘You’re accusing me of stealing?’
‘I am, officer. Tris saw you telling your team seconds after I told ours, several times. You reckon he was lip-reading, don’t you, Tris?’
‘You were staring over at our table a lot,’ Dr Tris Noakes agreed, his wink proof that he bore no ill will.
‘I’m insulted, frankly, Dr Noakes. And Dr Lael.’ Minshull’s grin was as unapologetic as his humour. ‘It just goes to show what happens when psychologists take on coppers. It’s all mind games to psych us out of our victory.’
‘Don’t you listen to him,’ DC Dave Wheeler interrupted, elbowing his colleague out of the way. ‘He loved every minute, didn’t you, Minsh?’
‘Yes, Dave,’ Minshull conceded, holding open the pub door for his colleagues to pass through. ‘Because we won…’
It was a perfect summer night out on St Just’s Church Street as the party walked away from the pub. Just the right amount of warmth to forgo a jacket, with a gentle, cooling breeze that was a gift after the heat of the packed pub. Cora loved the easy sense of belonging within the group and the other locals spilling out on to the street beside them. So much had happened in St Just that could have made it a place too heavy with ghosts. But everything this group had been through together had only brought them closer. She liked that. Walking beside people she now counted as friends was the greatest reward for all they had endured lately.
‘I told you it was a mistake doing two teams rather than one,’ PC Steph Lanehan said, her usual dry humour on form tonight. ‘Next time we need a combined team to save the post-quiz angst.’
‘That’s not a bad idea, actually.’
‘Admit it, Cora, you love the drama.’ Minshull gave Cora’s arm a surreptitious nudge as Wheeler stepped back to chat to DC Kate Bennett, who was a few paces behind them.
She shook her head, enjoying the game. ‘If I admitted that I’d never hear the end of it.’
‘Too right. I never…’
‘Look out!’
Bennett’s yell made the group turn back, just as a blaze of white light blinded them.
‘What the…?’
‘Get back!’
Suddenly, the street exploded in a shock of sound and movement – a sharp blast of a car horn, squealing brakes, shouts, screams, the ear-splitting screech of metal on metal – too close, too fast, too real…
Someone grabbed Cora’s arm and then she was falling, bracing herself for an impact that came with sickening suddenness. She raised her hands over her head and felt knocks and kicks from the heels, elbows and bodies of her colleagues as they landed around her. Above the whirr of stress in her ears and the panicked cries of her friends and the other locals caught in the mêlée, she heard a slam that seemed to shake the ground beneath their tangle of bodies. Somewhere to her left, a woman was sobbing. Cora had no time to think, to process what was happening or prepare for what may yet come, instead focusing on the single source of warmth coming from a hand gripping hers. She held on to it, its presence an anchor as she wrestled her mind back under control.
Around her the noise swelled again, the terrified squeal of an engine and the shouts of more voices. Was that Dave Wheeler?
Lifting her head, she dared to open her eyes – in time to see a heavily damaged white van skidding away down the road, the wing on the driver’s side smas
‘I got the reg!’ he yelled back, clasping a hand to his lower back as he paused for breath.
‘Is everyone okay?’ a red-faced man Cora recognised from one of the other quiz teams in The Miller’s Arms puffed, jogging over to them.
Moans sounded from the pile of bodies around her as Cora tried to sit up. Everyone had fallen into the darkened doorway of a closed newsagent’s shop; the small gap between its two bay-style display windows providing shelter from whatever had narrowly missed them. More people arrived from the pub, helping those involved shakily to their feet. Loud chatter and protestations of disgust merged together, too muddled to make any sense of. Cora leaned her head back against the shop’s door, the shock of cold glass a sharp focus to calm her mind.
‘Idiot just came out of nowhere,’ the red-faced man was saying, helping Kate Bennett to her feet.
‘I know…’
‘Are you hurt?’ Minshull’s concerned expression swam into Cora’s view.
‘I don’t think so. You?’
‘I think you broke my fall.’ His gentle smile didn’t mask his shock. ‘Sorry.’
Cora risked a smile. Every muscle in her face protested. ‘We’re quits then.’
He helped her to stand, then reached a hand down to Tris Noakes, who had a large scratch on one side of his brow.
‘What the hell was that?’ he asked, pulling himself upright.
‘Old van drove at you,’ the man from the pub answered. ‘Right at you, like it was trying to mow you down. Never seen anything like it. Bloody idiot, driving that fast. We should call the police.’
‘We are the police,’ Bennett grimaced. ‘Some of us anyway.’
‘I called it in,’ Wheeler said, jogging back to them. ‘Control have had five other reports of a white van driving like a bastard…’ He blanched and raised his hand. ‘Forgive my language, girls.’
‘No worse than usual, Dave,’ Steph Lanehan managed, the moment of humour a balm as all around her shock set in.
‘You okay, Minsh?’
Minshull nodded, all trace of his earlier joviality gone. ‘We need to locate the car. Are they sending a patrol?’
‘Sarge. And there’s an all-vehicle alert out on the van’s reg. We’ll get him.’
‘Okay, good.’ He turned to Cora. ‘Are you okay to get a lift home with Tris? I need to be at the station…’
‘No, you bloody well don’t,’ Tris cut in. ‘We need to get everyone back to the pub and wait for your colleagues to arrive. Doctor’s orders.’
‘He’s right, Rob…’
‘With respect, Dr Noakes, you aren’t that kind of doctor and neither is Cora.’
Tris laid a gentle hand on Minshull’s shoulder. ‘Until your colleagues get here, consider that I am. You’re in shock, mate, same as the rest of us. You aren’t getting in a car, let alone driving, until you’ve been checked by one of my colleagues.’
A chill set itself across Cora’s shoulders and she saw Minshull tense as if he felt it, too. ‘We need to get inside,’ she urged.
Minshull glared back at the damaged bollard on the side of the pavement that had taken the brunt of the impact with the van, the block paving around its base lifted as if it had been pulled up with ease. Shards of rubber, metal and shattered glass surrounded dark skid lines veering from the centre of the road, a large curved piece of wheel arch that had been shorn off the van still rocking by the kerb.
‘Fine. But as soon as we’re done, we find who did this. And we stop them.’
Two
MINSHULL
Everything ached. Minshull winced as he left his car in South Suffolk Police HQ’s car park and made his way inside. He hadn’t noticed it last night, adrenaline and fury powering him home from St Just and forcing him to sit up, blankly channel-surfing into the early hours. But this morning the damage from the van’s near miss yelled from every muscle.
‘You’re in early.’ DI Joel Anderson frowned, looking up from the kettle in the CID office’s tiny kitchen.
‘Could say the same for you.’ Minshull handed over a large takeaway cup, enjoying his superior’s woeful attempt to discard whatever snide comeback he’d been about to unleash before realising one of the cups was for him.
‘This is outright bribery,’ Anderson growled, his smirk ruining the effect.
‘It’s also the best coffee in Ipswich. Your choice whether to accept it, Guv.’ He edged stiffly across the office to his desk, aware of Anderson’s stare hot on his back.
‘Reckon I’ll take my chances. It would be more of a crime to waste good coffee.’ He eyed him from beneath lowered brows. ‘I heard about last night.’
Minshull nodded, easing himself into his chair.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Nothing broken.’
‘And the others?’
The panic and confusion of last night flashed into Minshull’s mind. He’d been quick to grab Cora’s hand but hadn’t been able to prevent himself landing heavily on her when they fell. Was she in pain this morning, too?
‘Paramedics came and checked us all. Minor cuts and bruises, mostly. A woman from one of the other quiz teams sprained her wrist, we think. She went off to hospital; the rest of us didn’t need to. It shook everyone up, though. We need to bear that in mind with the team this morning.’
‘Are we getting statements?’
‘Yes, Guv. The lady who hurt her wrist will be in sometime this afternoon. Cora and her boss Dr Noakes are due in this morning to give theirs. Steph Lanehan did hers first thing when she started her shift. Dave, Kate and I will get ours done by lunchtime.’
‘That’s good. Have you heard from Cora?’
‘I’ll see her this morning.’ His answer was curter than he’d intended, but discussing Cora Lael with his superior put him on edge. She was his sometime colleague, his friend – and whatever else might be in the wings. If he couldn’t define that for himself, there was no way he was ready to explain it to anyone else, least of all Anderson.
Anderson gave a brief nod. ‘Understood. Traffic are out looking for the van. I’ve requested road-cam and CCTV footage from possible routes in and around St Just. We’ll find it.’
‘Guv.’
Minshull almost said more, pulling the words back before they could fly. But Anderson’s wits were quicker than he expected.
‘And? Out with it.’
‘With what?’
‘With whatever it is you were about to say.’
Minshull bristled. Why had his superior chosen this morning to be not only unusually early but also uncharacteristically perceptive? ‘It felt deliberate.’
‘Deliberate to harm people, or deliberate to target off-duty coppers?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, we weren’t the only ones caught up in it. And it doesn’t seem likely that they did it because some of us were police. But as for intent – I thought about it all last night and… I can’t shake the feeling that whoever drove that van into us knew exactly what they were doing.’
‘They intended to hurt people.’
‘Yes.’
‘And themselves?’
That was harder to answer. In truth, Minshull had spared little thought for the driver of the van, his anger at the blatant attack on his colleagues and friends blinding him to all else. Had the van driver intended to injure themselves when they drove at the group on the pavement? Or were they wanting to hit and run?
Why would anyone deliberately drive at pedestrians? At that late hour? Were they drunk? Or did they have an agenda?
The possibility troubled Minshull as he watched his team arrive for work. It had only been two months since South Suffolk officers had come under violent attack from a vigilante group. The horror of that had left an indelible mark on everyone. Deliberate attack or not, last night’s near miss was a worrying development.
The scratch down DC Dave Wheeler’s left cheek looked worse this morning than it had last night. Angry red now, flexing painfully with every word Wheeler spoke. It didn’t stop his attempts to lighten the mood, of course, but its presence was a constant mockery of his good nature. DC Kate Bennett appeared to be making the best of it, but Minshull saw her smile fade the moment she turned from the team. When DC Drew Ellis arrived and was regaled with the details by Wheeler, his shock was palpable, the barrage of questions from him that followed proof of his concern.
