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The Runaway
Ali Harper
She has nowhere left to turn… A twisty, compelling, thought-provoking new crime thriller from a major new talent. ‘Outstanding, gritty and hard-hitting, yet woven with humour’ Jo Jakeman, author of Sticks and Stones ‘Edgy and fast moving’ Danuta Kot, author of Life Ruins A body without a name…One night, the body of a young woman is found, naked but for a necklace, tied to a statue outside a block of luxury flats. There should be an outcry. But the police rule it a suicide, and move on. A case where nothing is as it seems…Private investigators Lee and Jo, owners of No Stone Unturned detective agency in Leeds, are tasked with looking into the case. Who was the woman? Did she really kill herself? A world where danger lurks around every corner…As they investigate, Lee and Jo uncover shocking secrets. And when they see links between this case and another they are working on, they are forced to question – is any woman ever truly safe in this world? And are they risking their own lives by delving too deep? Praise for Ali Harper: “I adored this rollicking crime caper” Rachel Sargeant, author of The Perfect Neighbours ‘I loved the humour that Harper imbued every page with’ Liz Mistry, author of Unquiet Souls ‘This book is a brilliant high-wire of a novel’ SJ Bradley, author of Guest
The Runaway
ALI HARPER
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
KillerReads
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Copyright © Ali Harper 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Ali Harper asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008354305
Version: 2019-06-21
This one is for my netball team.
We’ve never lost a game – we just occasionally run out of time.
Table of Contents
Cover (#uf8fb9226-6591-5bf7-9c42-21067311c98a)
Title Page (#u69fc3274-07ed-5292-9d59-eac2cb51eacc)
Copyright (#u6543f71b-ca7d-5b0f-a883-d053264c8d7a)
Dedication (#u6cfd8413-98ea-5a5e-bf13-f1d949186130)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Keep Reading …
Acknowledgements
Also by Ali Harper
About the Author
About the Publisher
Chapter One (#ud7c14415-832b-5bc3-b3fb-7c2ec38c1dd8)
I was bent double when she pushed open the office door, my sides aching so much I thought I was going to wet myself. A moment before, Aunt Edie had been up the set of stepladders, brushing away the cobwebs in the cornices with a bright blue and purple plastic feather duster. Jo had made some joke about how it was fortunate we didn’t have any men in the office as the sight of Aunt Edie’s pop socks would drive them wild, and Aunt Edie had swiped at her with the feather duster. The steps had toppled, Aunt Edie grabbed hold of the filing cabinet and the pot plant on top of it got knocked over, landing on Jo’s Afro. Jo was spitting out polystyrene balls and dry compost when the bell chimed and this young woman, with dreads and a silver cannabis leaf nose stud, marched into our office.
Aunt Edie was the first to recover. ‘Welcome to No Stone Unturned,’ she said, clambering down from the filing cabinet. ‘The,’ – she rhymed the word with bee – ‘the most successful private investigation bureau in the north of England.’ She pushed past me, stuffing the feather duster behind Jo’s chair as she bustled across the room. ‘Edith Caudwell, Office Manager.’
Aunt Edie had been installed as receptionist only the week before, having swapped her terraced house in Accrington for a housing association flat down the road from our offices in Royal Park. ‘Are you missing someone, pet?’
‘My boyfriend,’ the woman said, her eyes settling on Aunt Edie. ‘I don’t know where he is and I need to find him. Like now.’
She held the left sleeve of her rainbow-coloured top in her right hand, twisting the material. I glanced across at Jo and noticed a polystyrene ball clinging to her eyebrow. I was about to point it out when our visitor’s face crumpled and her shoulders sagged, like someone had let the wind out of her.
‘Oh, now. Don’t you go getting yourself worked up,’ said Aunt Edie, putting her arm around the woman’s shoulders. They were almost the same height, which is no height at all. ‘Come on, take a seat and tell us all about it. Did you read about these two,’ – she turned and pushed Jo’s DMs off the desk – ‘in the papers? If anyone can find your missing fella, they can.’
I pulled a face at Aunt Edie. Our first case had gone well, but if this woman hired us to find her missing boyfriend, it would make her only our second client. My lungs buzzed at the thought, although it was early days and she didn’t look like she could afford shoes, let alone private investigators. However, if I’ve learned one thing from living in this part of Leeds, it’s not to judge a book by its cover. Trustafarians, Jo calls them. Kids that get off on looking poverty-stricken while their parents run Barclays.
‘We’ll go through to the back room,’ I said, having finally got control of my vocal cords. ‘Tea would be great, Aun— er, Edie. Would you mind?’
Aunt Edie pouted. I knew she itched to get the details, but she was the receptionist, something Jo and I had gone to great lengths to explain when we agreed to let her work here. Tea-making went with the territory.
‘I’m Lee and this is Jo,’ I said to the woman. ‘What’s your name?’
She held her hand over her eyes, like we might not notice her crying. ‘Nikki.’
She didn’t volunteer a surname and I didn’t push it. Jo grabbed a new client file and I led the way to our interview room. It’s tiny, the proportions not helped by the dark laminate panelling that lines the walls. We’ve got a card table with a green felt top, three wooden chairs and a punch bag strapped to the ceiling in the far corner. ‘Take a seat, Nikki,’ I said. ‘And take a minute. We’ve plenty of time.’
She sank into a chair and held her head in her hands.
‘Fag?’ asked Jo, tugging a pack of Marlboro Lights from the front pocket of her dungarees and taking her own seat at the table.
‘Please.’ A hand snaked out, with silver rings on every finger, even her thumbs. ‘Oh, shit, no. I can’t. I’ve given up.’ Her head bowed. ‘Why the fuck anyone …?’
Her voice trailed off, or maybe I just didn’t hear the end of her sentence. I swallowed and took the last seat, the one across from Nikki. I dragged it a little to one side, set it at an angle. Jo opened the file, glanced at me and cleared her throat.
‘So, probably best to start by taking some details. Nikki what?’
‘Cooper-Clarke,’ she said. She put her hands on the table and sat up a little. ‘With an e.’
‘With an e.’ Jo raised an eyebrow as she wrote on the form. ‘And your boyfriend’s missing?’
Nikki nodded, and I heard the sound of tinkling bells. It took me a moment to trace the source – Nikki wore silver rings in her dreads. I scooped my hair back off my face and tied it up with a spare band I had round my wrist.
‘Let’s start with the easy ones,’ said Jo. ‘What’s his name?’
Nikki wiped her eyes on the hem of her top. Questions are good. We’re trained from childhood to want to provide answers. ‘Matt,’ she said. ‘Matt Williams.’
‘That’s great,’ I said, in what I hoped was an encouraging voice. Jo frowned at me. I interlaced my fingers, let my hands rest on the table. It felt weird, like I was praying. I unlaced them and folded my arms across my chest.
Jo kept a stream of easy to answer questions coming – occupation, phone number, height, weight, next of kin, date of birth, star sign – until Nikki’s shoulders had fallen an inch or so and she’d lifted her gaze to meet Jo’s. ‘Pisces,’ she said and tried to smile. ‘Creative genius.’
‘Frustrated alcoholics,’ said Jo as she glanced at me and shifted in her chair.
‘I’m Virgo,’ I said.
‘When,’ said Jo, ignoring me and speaking to Nikki, ‘did you last see him?’
‘Saturday.’
Jo checked the calendar we had tacked to the wall. ‘The eighth?’
Nikki shrugged.
‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘When you last saw him?’
