Wish You Were Here

By Nicola Monaghan

DNA doesn't lie. But what if the truth is dangerous?

Former police officer and DNA expert Dr Sian Love has settled into running her own detective agency and cohabiting with her partner, Kris. Her life is thrown into chaos once again when a teenage girl shows up at her office, claiming to be Courtney Johnson - a child who went missing in Nottingham over fifteen years ago - but refusing to allow Sian to test her DNA.

Wary but intrigued, Sian reluctantly revives the undercover skills she learned in her days in the police force and begins investigating. But revisiting the past has consequences...

Wish You Were Here is an intriguing, multi-layered crime thriller, perfect for fans of Kate Atkinson's Case Histories and British crime dramas The Bay and Unforgotten.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Verve Books
• Release date: Jul 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9780857308092

Book preview

PRAISE FOR NICOLA MONAGHAN

‘Tension builds slowly but surely in this dark gripper’ – Sunday Sport

‘This is an intriguing murder mystery… Monaghan has a flair for leading the reader in a certain direction only to shift path further along’ – NB Magazine

‘I’m reading Dead Flowers and absolutely loving it. Great characters and I’m particularly enjoying the 1970s storyline. And Elvis the dog is great!’ – Harriet Tyce

‘Old murders, family secrets and long-told lies are the ingredients of this splendid, gripping crime novel’ – William Ryan

For Richard

The Truth is Out There

Mandy Johnson blinks into the camera, her face inscrutable. She is smartly dressed, and sits straight and wide-eyed, taking a breath before she talks like someone who has had media training.

‘I know that Courtney’s still alive. My sister was adamant, right up until the day she died, and I believe her. I know she was telling the truth. I just want to find Courtney, tell her… tell her how much her mother loved her.’ An emotion flashes across her face but it’s gone in an instant, and her features clear and smooth over.

The interviewer leans towards Mandy, her eyes narrow and serious. ‘And the police have released a computer-generated image of how Courtney would look today, haven’t they?’

‘Yes, yes, they have.’

The women both nod and then the screen cuts to the picture of a young woman. It doesn’t look like a photograph; it is more like a painting, and slightly blurred at the edges. It looks unsure, as if it’s hedging its bets, not like something you imagine a computer creating at all. The camera pans across the image, giving the impression of movement. Of life.

The presenter continues. ‘It was Courtney’s eighteenth birthday last week. Based on pictures and medical records from when she was abducted, experts say she’d be around average height, perhaps five foot five or six. Her hair is likely to have darkened and her features lengthened, her cheekbones will have become more prominent. If you think you’ve seen Courtney, or might know her, it’s important that you contact the police, rather than take matters into your own hands.’

A phone number flashes up in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and the presenter reads it out, noting the variations for certain regions or for phoning from abroad. Then they cut back to the studio.

For a moment, the camera returns to Mandy, who is taking a drink of water and swallowing. She nervously touches her hair and skirt, then blinks into the studio lights, looking like she doesn’t know the camera is back on her. She seems slightly confused, her skin glittering with tiny prickles of sweat under the studio lights. Then she catches the camera’s eye and it’s as if a light turns on inside her.

‘Do you have any last words for us about Courtney? Any messages for members of the public who might have information about Courtney’s whereabouts or what happened to her?’ The presenter’s voice is calm and level. The exact same voice she uses for news reports on the stock market crash or current trends in house prices.

Mandy clears her throat. She looks right into the camera like she is talking to someone specific. Like she is talking to everyone the other side of it, each one of them, individually. She begins to speak, her voice breaking. ‘She’s our baby,’ she says, ‘and someone out there knows the truth.’ Her eyes widen as if something she’s just said has startled her. ‘We just want to know where she is,’ she says then, but this time her voice sounds rehearsed.

ONE

They had only just finished talking about Brexit when somebody brought up the war in Ukraine. It wasn’t that Sian didn’t care, it was that how much she cared was too much sometimes; she couldn’t cope with the feelings that injustice brought out in her. She couldn’t bear to even think about all the politicians and their lies. She got up from the table and fanned her face with a hand. ‘I’m going to get some air,’ she said. She walked out into the garden. She heard steps behind her and turned; her boyfriend, Kris. She smiled at him. ‘See, this is why I don’t go to dinner parties. All these bloody opinions. It’s worse than Facebook.’ She wished she still smoked. It would have given her something to do with her hands and a reason to stay outside for a while. ‘I should never have let Tom persuade me to come.’

‘Well, you certainly put that Ellen one in her place about the nurses, Love,’ he said. Kris had this affectation of calling her by her surname, which she complained about sometimes but secretly liked.

Sian was shaking her head. ‘Same people standing outside applauding a few months back but now, no, the nurses need to deal with staffing issues and pay so low that some of them need to use food banks because the pandemic cost so much.’ She paused for breath, full of righteous anger, and jabbed a finger towards the back wall of the house. ‘I can promise that woman that the pandemic cost NHS workers a damned sight more than it cost her.’

Kris laughed at this, lightly and affectionately. ‘I love it when you get all passionate.’

‘Don’t be condescending,’ she said, but she couldn’t help but catch his mood and smiled through her annoyance. ‘Where does my brother dig these people up from?’

Kris took her question at face value. ‘Well, Ginny works with Ellen, apparently.’

Sian shook her head. ‘That’s not really what I meant.’

He put his arms around her and pulled her close, kissing her forehead. ‘Can I persuade you to come back in?’ he said. ‘I promise we don’t have to stay for dessert if it gets too bad.’

Sian breathed in and held Kris tight. It felt nice to be wrapped up in him and she wished she didn’t have to let him go and be sociable again. But she had promised to Make An Effort. ‘Sure,’ she said, but this was a word she used when she couldn’t quite bring herself to say yes.

Everyone was laughing as they went back inside and Sian noticed the strong smell of alcohol in a way that she hadn’t when she’d been within it. Ginny was mopping up some spilled wine as Ellen leaned across the table with a wide, thrilled smile, as if she were thirteen and playing ‘truth or dare’.

‘They did it, though. I mean, it’s obvious.’ Her voice was lowered and quavering with excitement.

‘Who did what?’ Kris asked, taking a seat and picking up his refilled glass.

‘The McCanns.’

‘Really?’ Sian said, rolling her eyes. She sat down at the table, disturbed by the turn the conversation had taken in her absence. She never should have left it unattended.

Kris sat down too, shaking his head. ‘Motive? Opportunity? There are, like, a dozen witnesses who saw them at dinner. What are you saying, they nipped away, quickly killed their child, got rid of the body, then ran back to their friends at the tapas bar and faked an abduction?’ He picked up his wine glass and tipped it in their direction. ‘That makes no sense.’

‘Oh, I don’t think they did it on purpose.’ Ellen’s cheeks were slightly pink, probably from the wine combined with the ambient temperature of the dining room. ‘They drugged the babies. All the reports say that the little twins were really sleepy. They drugged them and got it wrong then hid what had happened.’

‘It was the middle of the night, of course the children were tired. They should have been asleep,’ Sian said, trying to keep her voice even. Tom was making eyes at her across the table – a warning, she supposed. She’d never been particularly good at reading or responding to these things but had learned over the years when her brother wanted her to shut up. She stopped talking and stared into her wine.

Ellen’s wife, Morgan, got up and started clearing plates away. ‘That documentary did make me wonder,’ Morgan said. The sound of pots hitting against one another made Sian grit her teeth. ‘It showed both sides but I dunno. I think the McCanns are well connected at the BBC. And the police case in Portugal seemed pretty compelling.’

‘Yeah,’ Ellen said. ‘They weren’t made official suspects over there for no reason!’

‘Yeah, that’s true. They were made suspects there, and the reason was that the guy in charge was nuts.’ Kris’s voice was getting higher, and Sian knew this meant he was getting wound up too.

‘Listen, Kris works in MisPer, Elle,’ Tom said, ever the peace maker.

‘Misper. What’s that?’ Ellen said, but she was quick to continue on with her theory without waiting for an answer. ‘Just look at the evidence, though,’ she said, dumping her wine glass down on the table so that she could gesticulate. ‘It’s overwhelming.’

‘MisPer means Missing Persons. Kris basically does this for a job.’ Sian tried to control her voice, to not sound harsh, and her heart was racing. ‘There really isn’t anything I’d call evidence that I’ve seen. Which particular things were you convinced by?’

‘Did you see the documentary?’ Ellen weaved slightly as she spoke and spilled some of her drink. Sian could see Ginny eyeing up the droplets of red wine, desperate to wipe the table, and she tried not to smile. Ellen took another sip from her glass and fixed Sian with a level gaze. ‘Those dogs, and the DNA? It was damning.’

Sian couldn’t help but let out a little laugh. ‘That wasn’t damning,’ she said, making it sound so very obvious. She knew this was the kind of behaviour that made people think she found them stupid, but she couldn’t help it. Everyone had so much faith in DNA, which was weird considering, in general, they neither saw nor understood it. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘my dog’s a cadaver dog, like the ones on that show. You know, trained to find dead bodies? But sometimes he scratches and barks because he can smell one of his toys. And he barks at the postman, and at leaves blowing in the wind, and occasionally at things I can’t see or smell or hear but he can. Yeah, sure, he knows when there’s a dead body hidden behind a tree, but he will also scent and react to lots of things that are far more innocent.’

Ellen stared at Sian like she was some kind of unnatural object. ‘A cadaver dog?’

Sian shrugged. ‘I adopted him when he retired,’ she said. ‘And, yes, he probably can smell a piece of ground where a body was buried fifty years ago. He’s good, believe me. But when he barks to tell me about something, I have to guess what he’s trying to say because we don’t have Google Translate for that yet.’ Ginny reached to pour her more wine, raising both eyebrows but with a wide, amused smile. Sian couldn’t tell if this gesture from her sister-in-law was encouragement to continue or to wrap up the dead body talk. ‘You can’t use this stuff as evidence in court,’ Sian said. ‘And that’s for a reason. These dogs don’t provide proof of anything, they just sometimes lead us in the right direction when we’re already looking for something.’

‘Or sometimes to places we don’t particularly wanna go when we’re not,’ Kris said. They shared the tiniest of smiles, and Kris placed a hand on her back, subtly, as if he were merely leaning against the chair.

‘Well, what about the DNA, then?’ It was Morgan who said this, her face screwed into a frown. ‘The matches were compelling.’

Sian took a drink and thought about how to be nice. Morgan didn’t seem to be nearly as unreasonable as her wife, but Sian was getting fed up now. She’d come off Facebook because she’d had enough of all the armchair experts. She used to try to educate them but realised, over time, this had no effect beyond making her incredibly frustrated because it was nearly impossible to change anyone’s mind these days, even when you truly knew more about a subject than they did.

‘It wasn’t at all compelling,’ she said, ‘which is why they dropped the case. Yeah, sure, they found matches. But, come on.’ She caught her breath, suddenly really annoyed at having to explain this when it was so obvious. ‘Between them, the twins would have shared a lot of DNA with Maddie – the DNA of siblings averages about fifty per cent the same. And Kate and Gerry supplied all the DNA for the lot of them. They were a family, for god’s sake. Closely related! DNA matches weren’t evidence of anything.’

‘Well,’ Ellen said. ‘I think you’re wrong.’

Sian choked on her wine and started to cough. Kris laughed out loud but then patted her briskly on the back until she could breathe again.

Tom and Ginny were staring at Sian with some concern. When she stopped choking and smiled, Ginny grinned and Tom leaned back in his chair and laughed, holding on to his stomach as if he could hardly bear it.

Ellen’s gaze flicked from one of them to the other, and then rested on her wife, looking for backup. ‘What?’ she said.

Tom smiled and picked up the bottle of wine to top up everyone’s glasses again. ‘We used to have a saying about Sian always being right when we were both little.’

Sian pulled a face; she hated this old family nonsense, it was so annoying and very, very unfair. It was pointless saying that, though, because that only made her look like the teenager they were refusing to leave in the past.

‘Rule one: Sian is always right. Rule two: if Sian is wrong, see rule one,’ Kris said. ‘One of the first things Tom told me when I got together with Sian and, honestly, those are good rules to live by if you want a peaceful life.’

Sian aimed a mock slap in his general direction and he play-acted ducking away, grinning and holding up both hands with a squeaky ‘What?’

Tom shrugged and placed the bottle back in the centre of the table. ‘But to be fair, she is almost always right. She’s the cleverest person I know.’ He gave her the sweetest smile and winked. ‘On this one, I think she has the jump on you, I’m afraid. DNA is what Sian does.’

‘You’re in Forensics?’ Ellen said. ‘A police officer too?’ She sounded annoyed, like Sian had somehow conned her by not revealing this sooner.

‘Actually, no.’ Sian cleared her throat. She wasn’t quite sure how to explain what she did these days without sounding like she was making it up. ‘I have a kind of agency,’ she said. Which was the truth. She reached for the small backpack she used as a handbag and took out a business card, handing it to Ellen, who held it in the palm of her hand before passing it on to Morgan. Double twists of colour shot through a black heart at the centre of the logo, the design work kindly done for free by a friend of Sian’s from uni. The agency name, Love DNA, was centred in red text above the logo. She’d been resistant, but her marketer friend had told her it would be stupid not to use what was ‘a gift of a name’ in her ‘branding’. Her contact details were listed below the picture and then, right at the bottom, in lower-case italics, find out who you really are.

‘What, now? Like a detective?’ Morgan’s voice was incredulous, as if Sian couldn’t possibly be telling the truth. Exactly the reaction Sian had worried about.

Sian shook her head. ‘No, not a detective. Not really.’ Although, actually, she kind of was. ‘I help people find out where they’ve come from. Investigate their DNA.’

‘That’s so interesting!’ Morgan’s voice had changed now, and she sounded like she meant what she’d said. Ellen shot her wife a mean glance, but Morgan didn’t notice and leaned forward to listen to whatever Sian might say next. Ellen flicked her pink hair and pursed her lips.

‘I assure you, it’s not,’ Sian said. This was the truth, and there were days when she wondered why she’d set up the agency and longed for her old, simple job in research. ‘I spend most of my time helping men prove that they’re not someone’s father or checking whether or not they really are because they’re having doubts. And the rest of it goes to helping adoptees find out where their real parents are hiding – and those people are mostly hiding for a reason. There aren’t that many happy endings.’

The room went a little quiet and sombre then. Ginny looked at Tom, and Sian could almost see her cuing him into action to save the party from this mood. He cleared his throat. ‘What about Alexander Boris De Piffle then? Reckon he’s got long left at the top?’

Sian hoped not but she didn’t want to talk about him out loud. She was worried she’d get angry again and start to demonstrate the need for the ‘Sian is always right’ rules. Ellen was waxing lyrical about how he had done a good job in bad circumstances, voicing a million other apologist clichés Sian had heard too many times before. She drifted off into her own world and let the conversation become white noise, staring deeply into her red wine.

Kris squeezed the top of her arm and she turned towards him. Smiled.

‘You OK?’ he asked her.

She nodded. It wasn’t a lie if you didn’t say it out loud.

Sian scrubbed at her hair with the towel and her head pounded. She should not have let Ginny persuade her to have that final cocktail. She stared at her face in the mirror. The remains of last night’s mascara were still there, smudged and grey around her eyelids. It made her look old. Older than usual, anyway. She rubbed at it with a finger and considered getting out some cotton buds and removing it properly, but the idea made her feel faint. She pulled on her dressing gown and hugged it to her body.

Kris was whistling in the kitchen, sounding full of the joys of something as she came downstairs. Elvis was sitting like a very good boy where the open-plan dining area met the edge of the kitchen; she caught a whiff of the reason why. Bacon and eggs. The smell made her queasy and she gripped the dining table to steady herself as she sat down.

‘Coffee?’ Kris said with a cheeky grin.

‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘Definitely coffee. And can you breathe and exist just a little less loudly, please?’

His grin grew wider. ‘Bit rough around the edges, Love?’

Sian didn’t answer, letting her head fall into her hands. Her memories of the end of the evening before were vague at best. She didn’t really remember getting home. She had a vague recollection of showing off her business card like a total dick.

Moments later, Kris placed a cup on the table in front of her, followed shortly by a plate with an egg sandwich on it. The thought of food turned Sian’s stomach, but she took a sip of coffee, then a bite of the sandwich, and felt a bit better. Kris had a habit of doing this: giving her the things she hadn’t even realised she needed. She wasn’t about to tell him that, though. ‘Thanks,’ she said instead, taking another big sip of coffee.

He sat down opposite her and tucked into his own sandwich. ‘So’ – he swallowed – ‘it’s today, right? Your appointment.’

Sian nodded, chewing, glad of the excuse not to say anything out loud. She had done everything he’d wanted her to do. Seen her doctor, got referred for help. The psychiatrist who had done her assessment interview said that trauma had great outcomes with treatment and had booked her in for a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. She wished she could share this medical professional’s confidence in the idea but she really couldn’t imagine getting better. The issues the doctor had diagnosed as ‘Complex PTSD’ felt as much a part of who she was as her eye colour.

‘You are going to go, right?’

Sian nearly choked on the sandwich. ‘Course!’ she said, annoyed. But the truth was that she wasn’t so sure. She had wasted her time with things like this before. The educational psychologist at school who had made no bloody difference at all and just led to her being teased about visiting the ‘mad’ doctor or being sent to ‘Mapperley’. Funnily enough, Mapperley was exactly where she lived these days, although the famous psychiatric hospital her schoolmates were referring to had been closed for several decades. So, no, she wasn’t sure that she would go to the clinic this afternoon. She might go for a run instead or take Elvis out on the country park. She might go down to the gym and hit people, or at least a bag, for a few hours. Running and organised violence had always been her chosen therapies, so why change that now?

Kris was staring at her. ‘You are going to go, right?’ More intent and serious this time.

She was annoyed. Why did he have to have this skill where he saw right through her? This was the problem with letting someone get close to you; she could barely get away with anything. ‘I told you I’d go,’ she said. She knew she was lucky to have Kris in her life, that he was good for her, but it wasn’t always easy. A year ago, the way he was clucking around her right now would have been enough to send her head off on a spin to the point where she’d have needed to get away from him. At least there had been progress.

Sian looked away, focusing on her sandwich. She pulled the crispy egg white out and threw it to Elvis, who caught it briskly and munched down, overjoyed. Kris had stopped eating and reached for her hand. ‘Sian,’ he said, ‘c’mon.’ He was using her first name, which meant things had taken a turn for the serious. She let him take her hand and she looked across the table at him. ‘You’ll go, right?’ he said. ‘Promise me?’

Sian nodded and pulled more egg white from the sandwich for Elvis.

‘Out loud!’ he said.

Sian rolled her eyes. He knew her far, far too well and was far, far too good for her. ‘I promise,’ she said. Her stomach roiled again. She’d made another promise a few months before, to herself, an important one: that she wouldn’t lie to Kris. She would definitely need to find a time today to punch people because now she had to go to the clinic. Damn him. And even though this annoyed her, she found those words wavering on her lips again. Why was it so hard to say three simple words out loud?

Tearing at the bread and eating a few bites, Sian fed the crust to Elvis. ‘You are a good boy,’ she said, ruffling the dog’s coat.

‘Thanks!’ Kris replied, smiling and sounding pleased with his own joke.

Sian shivered; a disturbance in the force. She had kind of been talking to Kris, but he wasn’t supposed to know that. ‘I should get dressed,’ she said. She stood up too quickly and, for a moment, thought she might faint. Why did she always have to overdo it when they met up with other people? It wasn’t like she was a heavy drinker generally but ‘being sociable’ was impossible without alcohol.

‘You wait right there,’ Kris said, crossing the dining area in two strides. ‘C’m’ere.’ He reached for her and pulled her close. She felt sick and faint again but, at the same time, warm in his arms. She let him hold her and didn’t say a word. Yup, definitely progress, then. No doubt her shiny new therapist would call it that, anyway.

*

The walk into the centre of Nottingham from Sian’s house took nearly forty minutes but it was a good way to clear her head and, anyway, she hadn’t been able to face the bus. There was a light drizzle that seemed to hang in the air rather than fall and it wasn’t at all unpleasant. Sian breathed in deeply and enjoyed the coolness against her face. She wondered how many years on this planet it would take for her to learn that drinking was bad for her; not so much physically, but emotionally. More than fifty, apparently.

Walking up Mansfield Road and past the big shopping centre, Sian felt her mobile phone vibrate. She pulled it from her pocket. Her mum. She rejected the call and put the phone away. She’d made the mistake of telling her mother about the therapy session and Ruth seemed to be keen to talk about it with her. Probably more concerned about family secrets getting spilled than Sian’s wellbeing. She really wasn’t in the mood for mother-wrangling this morning and she needed a coffee before she’d be ready to talk to anyone. There was a shop across the road, a chain, and although she knew she should support the indies,