No Other Darkness by Sarah Hilary Page B

could do this.’ He lifted Dan’s scalded hand and sucked the burnt thumb between his lips.
    ‘You’re meant to use butter . . .’ Dan turned under his touch, until the small of his back was against the edge of the stove. His eyes were a dazed blue.
    Noah leaned in to kiss him, for a long time, before he reached for the freezer door. ‘Butter leaves a scar.’ He found a tray of ice. ‘Better use this.’
    Dan watched him crack the tray over the sink. ‘How was your day?’
    ‘Over.’ Noah filled a mug with ice and held it out. ‘How was yours?’
    ‘Quiet.’ Dan buried his burnt thumb in the ice. ‘Until now . . .’
    Noah picked up the spatula to stir at the paella. ‘What’re we having with this? Beer?’
    ‘In the fridge.’ Dan took the spatula back. ‘You had a phone call earlier.’ He started serving the paella on to plates. ‘Sol.’
    Noah took two bottles of Beck’s from the fridge. ‘What’d he want?’
    ‘He didn’t say. I told him he could come to supper. He said he might do that.’
    Noah took the tops from the bottles. ‘I don’t see a third plate.’
    ‘This is Sol we’re talking about. I didn’t take him seriously.’
    ‘That probably means he’ll turn up just to be awkward.’
    ‘Good. I made enough paella for three. And that’s why we have a sofa bed, so your jailbait brother can crash here whenever he needs to.’
    ‘My jailbait brother . . .’ Noah tossed the bottle-opener back into its drawer. ‘That makes me so proud.’
    ‘You can’t blame him,’ Dan said. ‘You stole all the big brother brownie points when you joined the police. He had to go off the rails, just to get a look-in.’
    They sat at the table and started eating.
    ‘You like him,’ Noah accused, with a smile.
    ‘Like him?’ Dan repeated, with a mouthful of paella. ‘I bloody love him. He’s a wicked version of you. Without the great taste in men . . .’
    ‘Without any taste in men,’ Noah amended.
    ‘Yes. But is the West End ready for gorgeous gay gangsters?’
    Noah’s response was reflexive. ‘He’s not a gangster.’
    ‘Not yet.’ Dan speared a shrimp on his fork. ‘Give him time.’
    ‘Me and half the magistrates in Notting Hill,’ Noah agreed, ‘when his luck gives out.’
    Dan laughed. ‘Your jailbait brother,’ sketching a toast with his beer bottle. ‘Have you introduced him to your boss yet?’
    Noah shook his head. ‘She’d eat him for breakfast. Sol’s only a hard man in his imagination. DI Rome, on the other hand, is the real deal.’

14
    ‘Un-fucking-believable,’ Ron Carling said. ‘Two kids go missing for five years and no one reports it? No one looks for them? No one looks for whichever bastard took them?’
    ‘I agree it seems incredible,’ Marnie said. ‘But we’re looking now. And Missing Persons haven’t given up; they’ve only just got started. We know how many children go missing every year. One every three minutes, isn’t that the latest statistic? We know this sort of investigation is tough. Every aspect of it is tough. We need to focus on what we have.’
    Noah understood Ron’s frustration. The dead boys didn’t match anyone in the national missing persons’ database. It should have been impossible, but it wasn’t. There were all sorts of explanations, from illegal immigration to child trafficking. Officially, there were no circumstances under which children were allowed to vanish unreported or unnoticed. But it happened, more often than the public, or even the press, knew.
    Marnie waited until the room was quiet. ‘DS Jake and I are going to ask Ian Merrick how much he knew about the bunker. House-to-house are getting started this morning. We’re hoping someone on the housing estate will rememberBeech Rise before the houses went up. I’m going to handle house-to-house on Blackthorn Road, because I know some of the residents there: Carol and Nigel Fincher at number 10 and Douglas Cole at number 8.’
    She held up a hand.