The Scandal Read online

  Dedication

  For Anne O’Brien

  Praise for Mari Hannah

  ‘Nobody understands the many faces of cops better than Mari Hannah’Val McDermid

  ‘Mari Hannah writes with a sharp eye and a dark heart’

  Peter James

  ‘Truly absorbing’Peter Robinson

  ‘Thrilling, exciting and kept me on the edge of my seat. Expertly written and paced, pulling me from one chapter to the next, I couldn’t put it down!’Angela Marsons

  ‘Mari Hannah is a consummate storyteller and her books genuine must reads for any serious crime fan’Eva Dolan

  ‘Emotionally captivating’The Times

  ‘If you read only one police procedural this year, make it The Insider. It deserves it’Daily Mail

  ‘Original and modern, rooted in the fast-changing relationships between men and women’Sunday Times

  ‘A pacy, gritty and authentic read’Heat

  THE SCANDAL

  Mari Hannah

  Contents

  Dedication

  Praise for Mari Hannah

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Further Reading

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Mari Hannah

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Some fear is real, some imagined. Nancy fled the building, flinching as the door swung shut behind her with a solid thump. The feeling that she was under surveillance – even as she drove through the staff car park – was like a knife plunged deep into her back. She’d left her resignation on her desk with little explanation. Circumstances beyond her control wouldn’t cut it. Not a hope in hell. She’d been too vocal for her own good. Too vociferous in her defence of the defenceless. Hers was a just cause, one that had put her in danger more than once. This was not and never had been about her welfare.

  In one way, the assault had clarified matters, a backhander so violent it had thrown her clear across the room, clattering across the floor, propelling her into a solid wooden chest. No witnesses; they were too clever for that. That slap, delivered with such venom, was counterproductive. A signal – if one were needed – that she couldn’t change things from the inside. There was no other way . . .

  She had to go.

  It had taken months to make the decision. Using what she knew had ramifications. It would blow the lid off a situation that was out of control. To do it right meant meticulous planning, evidence collection and recording: photographic as well as the notes she’d scribbled frantically in her journal: names, dates and times. In the meantime, she’d sold up without telling a soul, moving to a place where no one knew her in order to distance herself from those seeking to silence her. Handing in her notice with immediate effect was only the beginning.

  She’d have to be careful now.

  As she drove teary-eyed from the estate, the faces of those she cared for scrolled before her eyes like movie credits: Bill, Edna, Molly, George and countless others who’d gone before. Unloved in a lot of cases. The forgotten ones, she called them: isolated, indecisive, plain weak. When they found out that she’d gone without saying goodbye, they’d feel abandoned. Telling them was out of the question. Taking them into her confidence was never an option. A slip of the tongue would tip off the very people Nancy was anxious to expose, leaving those under her care and protection vulnerable – or worse, robbing her of the ability to blow the whistle.

  She sighed.

  Her colleagues didn’t want to know. One by one, they had turned away, preserving their jobs, maintaining the status quo. Who could blame them? For years, they had been operating in a culture of fear. She wondered if they had been paid for their silence. Blood money.

  How could they?

  Nancy did blame them. Gutless, every one of them.

  A single drop of warm liquid fell from her eye, dribbled down her cheek, hot and salty as it crept into her mouth. There would be no tears from the victims. Some had passed away already, unable to cry or complain. The rest would have forgotten her by morning. And yet she could hear them weeping, baffled by a sudden and inexplicable change in circumstances, waiting, wondering if she was ever coming back. That gut-wrenching thought was more than Nancy could bear.

  If only it were possible to consign her own observations to oblivion. It wasn’t. She felt guilty then. There was nothing worse than memory loss, but right now she’d give anything to be able to wipe her own hard drive. A despicable thought. Cowardly. It lingered in the back of her mind as she passed through the iron gates and out on to the open road, the decision to go gnawing at her conscience. She worried that her actions would leave those she might never see again caught in a trap with no way out. At least not in the short-term . . .

  Tears stung her eyes: the short-term was all they had left.

  What Nancy did next would determine their fate and that of countless others; it was a responsibility that she alone seemed prepared to shoulder. Yet these were no isolated cases. There had been many prosecutions over the years, the accused lifted by police and put before a court of law, some sent to jail. And still it went on. Her actions weren’t an exercise in conscience cleansing. At every turn, she’d spoken up. On each occasion, she’d been told to shut the fuck up or face the consequences . . . And the consequence had just rounded the bend in her rear-view mirror.

  Oh God!

  He’d found the letter sooner than she’d anticipated. She imagined him skulking around her office, opening drawers, his dirty fingers all over her stuff. Curious to know what was inside an envelope addressed to her boss, he’d have broken his neck to get over there, a sneer developing as he was sent after her . . . Nancy didn’t want to think what his instructions had been.

  ‘Deal with it!’ most probably.

  And deal with it he would.

  Nancy’s stomach took a dive, the stress of what he had in mind bringing on arrhythmia, a condition she’d endured since her early twenties, a skipped heartbeat that seemed to last forever, followed by a thunderous shake of the vital organ struggling to right itself beneath her ribs, like a car battery spurred into life by jump leads. She’d never outrun the Land Rover on this remote stretch of road, though she’d do her damnedest to escape the man in the car behind . . .

  Or die trying.

  Up ahead, a beam of light across the road. A lucky break . . . An articulated lorry on its way out of a stone quarry, slow-moving with a heavy load. Braking, she flashed him out. The vehicle moved forward, a lumbering beast, its cab moving one way, the trailer seeming to disconnect as the driver turned the wheel. Nancy waited . . . the Land Rover gaining ground.

  She had one shot.

  Just one.

  Flooring the accelerator, she took her chance, pulling out, squeezing her Fiat Panda through the narrow gap between the lorry cab and trees lining the opposite carriageway. Blinded by headlights, Nancy pulled hard on the wheel, swerving to avoid oncoming traffic, missing the lead vehicle by a whisper, a long line of cars preventing the four-by-four from overtaking. An angry, elongated blast of a horn from behind.

  Nancy stared wide-eyed into the rear-view mirror.

  The lorry slowed in response to the maniac behind, frustrating the driver of the tailing vehicle. The Land Rover countered, poking its nose out to enable him to get a better v
iew, disappearing as quickly, repeating the process over and over again in an attempt to get by. Nancy drew her eyes away, struggling to concentrate. More horns. Flashing headlights. Road rage might save her skin.

  A clear image of the man chasing her arrived in her head: evil eyes like dark pools of hostility burned into her memory; callous hands gripping the wheel; foul mouth screaming abuse. He was not someone you messed with. Nancy glanced at the speedo; it was climbing – seventy, seventy-five, eighty – increasing the distance between them. She prayed that there would be no break in the oncoming traffic. If she could make it to Devil’s Bend, she could take the back roads, switch off her headlights and call for help. It wouldn’t be swift to arrive. This was rural Northumberland. No cops. Only robbers. She had more chance of dating Idris Elba than seeing a police car at this time of night.

  The sadistic pig in hot pursuit would show no pity, Nancy knew that. Inflicting pain was his thing; thinking about it, doing it, was like an aphrodisiac to him. Carrying out someone’s dirty work handed him the power and kept his employer’s hands clean; the meaner he was, the better he liked it. Distracted by that scary reality, Nancy miscalculated the angle of the bend. She took the corner too fast, tipping her vehicle on to two wheels momentarily.

  She opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out.

  The Fiat hung in the air, seemingly in slow motion, before righting itself, crashing to earth with a thud on a dark dirt road, glancing off a tree, shaking the chassis like a toy. She almost lost control of the steering wheel as the car bumped over uneven ground, rattling the interior and her along with it.

  Taking her foot off the brake, she killed the lights, her eyes stuck fast to the darkness where her wing mirror used to be, hoping that the lorry – and, crucially, the four-by-four – would coast by without seeing her. As it did, she blew out a breath, turned her lights back on and drove further into the wood.

  Cutting the engine, she wept, white noise filling her head, fists clenched so tightly her nails dug into the palms of her hands. She was struggling to get breath into her lungs as she squinted into the forest, the trees like malevolent figures standing guard. An owl hooted, irritated by the disturbance. Shivering in the dark, Nancy fumbled her phone from her pocket, losing it in the footwell as it slipped from a shaky hand. A fingertip-search failed to locate it.

  She tried again.

  Nothing.

  ‘Come on!’

  Another car flew by on the road behind, a streak of light, like a comet in the Northumberland sky. Turning the light on to find the phone wasn’t an option. It would act like a beacon in the pitch-dark forest, pinpointing her exact location in the event he doubled back. Stay calm. It has to be here somewhere. She tried again with her left hand, then her right, walking her fingers across rubber matting caked in dried mud. Her little finger nudged a solid object. The device had bounced, lodging itself on its edge under the door sill. Finally! Using her thumb to activate the screen illuminated the car. A waste of time. What the fuck? No signal.

  Nancy panicked.

  If she had to wait till morning with the engine off, she’d freeze to death. Tonight, minus five was forecast. The road lit up behind her: headlights that sent a shiver down her spine. The beams didn’t flicker or change as she stared at them. They were stationary . . .

  Weren’t they?

  Nancy held her breath . . . one, two, three seconds . . . four. Switching off her phone, she scanned the surrounding vegetation, imagination in overdrive. Had he parked his vehicle? Was he heading out on foot, stalking her with intent to do her harm? No . . . The lights were on the move, inching closer and closer to the junction where she’d left the road. Out of the car now, she legged it. Fifty yards, no more. Ducking down, she waited, praying that the open door of the Fiat would give the impression that she was long gone.

  From her position, she had a good view.

  The approaching vehicle slowed, turning in, illuminating the dense and eerie forest, her car along with it. Momentarily, Nancy froze, her face pressed against the rough bark of the tree she was clinging to, senses on high alert. She shut her eyes, the better to concentrate. Geoff always did that when she read to him.

  Blinded by headlights, she couldn’t see the shape of the car clearly and prayed that this was not the one she was hiding from, that it was someone else, a couple of lovers perhaps, a clandestine rendezvous. In seconds, she realised she was wrong. There was no disputing the clunk of the door of a high-end motor.

  The Land Rover.

  Opening her eyes, Nancy shuffling sideways. A dark, menacing shadow passed across the headlights of the four-by-four. A twig snapped behind her. Dry-heaving, she swung round to find the eyes of a stag staring back at her, ears pricked up, aware of the danger.

  That made two of them.

  As it bounded off into the forest, Nancy turned back. The figure was on the move, a torch in his hand, its beam sweeping left and right, left and right, like a searchlight looking for survivors in a deep and dangerous sea, except for Nancy there was no lifeboat crew to pull her to safety. The flashlight was now trained on her empty Fiat, then suddenly it changed direction.

  Move, MOVE!

  Nancy prayed that nature would provide enough cover. She crouched low, scrambling across rough terrain on her hands and knees, over the stumps of felled trees, snagging clothing, brambles lacerating her skin as she moved through the brush. In her rush to stand upright, her wedding ring caught on a branch as she propelled herself forward, dislocating her finger. The pain was excruciating, stopping her dead in her tracks.

  The thought of Geoff – gone six years – gave her strength. In spite of the crushing grief of losing him, she’d kept her side of the bargain to carry on. He was a good man, a kind man. Irreplaceable. A voice, weak and croaky, arrived in her head. ‘Without me around to hold you back, you can do anything you want.’ He’d winked at her. ‘You could go to law school, finish your degree, or take up the voluntary work you’re always banging on about. Fight the good fight, Nancy. It’s what you’ve always dreamed of. Whatever you choose, you’ll be brilliant at it. Give it your all . . . Not for me or the kids . . . Do it for yourself.’

  That conversation – the hospital ward in which it had taken place – was a memory so vivid, she could almost feel his bony hand attempting to squeeze hers. There was no strength in it. He was tired. Ready to say goodbye. She wasn’t. Somehow, she’d managed a smile, a lump forming in her throat, their plans in ruins, the idea of losing him breaking her heart.

  ‘Promise me you won’t dwell on what you can’t have,’ he’d said.

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘We’ve had a ball, haven’t we?’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘No tears?’

  God, how she’d wanted to bawl. A shake of the head was all she managed in reply.

  Geoff winked at her. ‘I’ll be with you every step of the way, Nancy.’

  ‘I know.’

  Two days later, he was gone.

  He’d known that, even as a kid, if she’d witnessed injustice, she felt compelled to confront it. Right now, she could be forgiven for thinking she’d picked a fight she couldn’t win. A sob left her throat as she stared ahead through pools of water, propelling herself further into the forest, inch by painful inch, aware that with every step forward, the only exit was behind her. She’d have to find a place to hide, a crawl space in the undergrowth. Later, when the coast was clear, she’d double back to the main road, flag down a car and get a ride. The only alternative was to make for high ground where she might find a signal.

  Might.

  With superhuman effort and Geoff’s encouragement urging her on, she hauled herself upright, prepared to do whatever was necessary to get out of there and finish what she’d started. Each time the flashlight reached her, she took cover, turning her body sideways to make herself invisible, setting off only when it moved away. She sprinted, arms like pistons, darting left and right. Better a moving target than a stationary one. The gunshot was a warning to stand still. In this part of ‘the Shire’ no one would hear, let alone question it: a poacher, gamekeeper, deerstalker – someone in for the kill on a lonely woodland track. Given her present predicament, the description was apt. The man with the firearm was a hunter, Nancy his prey.

  1

  One year later . . .