Ask No Questions

by Hartley, Lisa

  * * *

  They emerged into choking fumes and drizzle. Four lanes of traffic halted while people scurried over a pedestrian crossing. Directly outside the station, a metal railing prevented people from crossing the road wherever they felt the need. There were bicycles padlocked to metal stands along the length of it. Ronnie Morgan was still standing in the entrance to the station, so Caelan walked past him. On the pavement outside, she joined a few other people who were milling around, mobile phones held to their ears, deep in conversation. She sent Ewan a text, telling him where she was, then called Nasenby to update him.

  ‘Wherever he goes, follow him,’ Nasenby instructed. ‘Northolt’s the arse end of nowhere. Why the hell has he gone there?’

  Caelan stuck her index finger in her ear, attempting to block out the traffic noise as vehicles thundered past her. ‘I’ve no idea.’ She turned, watching as Ronnie took out his own phone. ‘Looks like he might be receiving a call.’

  Nasenby grunted. ‘All right. Stay in touch, Caelan. And be careful.’

  * * *

  ‘You’re at Northolt?’ The same voice, distorted and metallic, as at the restaurant. Ronnie took a step back, moving inside the station. There was a tiny kiosk selling newspapers, cigarettes and sweets in one corner. He sidled behind a gang of kids who were hanging around the counter, loudly attempting to persuade the proprietor to sell them some fags.

  ‘Ronnie?’ He was becoming impatient, Ronnie could hear it.

  ‘Yeah, I’m here.’

  There was a pause, then, ‘Go out of the station, turn left. Keep walking.’

  Ronnie exhaled, suddenly exhausted. ‘No. I’m not moving until you tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘Then your father’s dead.’ He hadn’t missed a beat.

  ‘What … what did you say?’

  ‘He’s here with me. If you want to see him, start walking.’

  Panic seared Ronnie’s belly. This was the stuff of low-budget cop shows. ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Can’t take the risk, though, can you?’

  ‘All right, okay. I’m going.’ He clenched his jaw, furious.

  ‘You’ve made a sensible decision.’

  Ronnie swallowed as his throat tightened. This was not going to plan. He was certain the man was bluffing, but …

  He started walking.

  * * *

  Caelan began to move, having allowed Ronnie a thirty-second head start before following. There was only one man between herself and her quarry, and she couldn’t risk him seeing her. The road was long and straight. Letting him get a little way ahead was fine; she would be able to watch him from a distance.

  Except.

  Except Ronnie had disappeared. Caelan hesitated, her eyes scanning the scene ahead of her. Across the road, a red double-decker was chugging at a bus stop. Adrenalin began to course through her as she searched the people crowding onto it.

  No Ronnie.

  He wouldn’t have had time to cross the road, would he? Caelan took a few deep breaths, attempting to stem the wave of panic. Shit. She’d lost him.

  Ronnie Morgan had vanished.

  13

  He couldn’t be on the bus, there had been no time. He wasn’t on the pavement in front of her. Maybe he’d climbed into a car … Caelan pushed the thought away. She would have seen it stop. Increasing her pace, she kept walking. She’d taken her eyes off him for a second, no more. She would not allow herself to give up.

  And then she saw it. Invisible until you were beside it, a gap between the end of the brick railway bridge she had just crossed, and the start of a metal fence. A narrow set of stairs, leading down to an underpass. Thumbing a text to Nasenby, Caelan plunged down the steps. The underpass yawned in front of her, the entrance dark and forbidding. The other end was visible, but the interior was gloomy. She couldn’t see Ronnie, couldn’t hear anything but the roar of traffic on the road above. She took a breath, refusing to believe she had lost her quarry. She was better than this.

  Wasn’t she?

  The underpass was chilly, dank and dark. There were lights set at regular intervals into the wall, but they had all been smashed. Caelan pulled out her phone, switched on its torch.

  Saw the body.

  He was lying at the far end of the underpass, blood leaking onto the damp tarmac. An involuntary noise escaped Caelan as she ran to throw herself down beside him. She attempted to find a pulse, gave up, pressed her cheek close to his lips. Tiny wisps of air against her skin – he was breathing, but only just.

  ‘Ronnie? Ronnie, can you hear me?’

  No response.

  Footsteps behind her, quick and urgent. She lifted her head, knowing who was approaching.

  ‘What the hell …?’ Richard Adamson was beside her, his mouth working. Caelan pushed him away. Ronnie’s eyes were open but unfocused, a soft keening sound escaping his lips. Caelan leaned closer, muttering words of comfort.

  ‘Call an ambulance, Richard!’ she ordered.

  Adamson started, pulling his phone from his trouser pocket. ‘Jesus, Caelan. What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. I lost sight of him for a few seconds. I saw nothing, heard nothing. Did you?’

  He shot a glance at her. ‘How did you know I …?’

  ‘I saw you, Richard. Several times.’ She took Ronnie’s hand, feeling for the pulse in his wrist, furious with Adamson, with Nasenby – with the whole fucking lot of them.

  Adamson flushed, turning away. She heard him request an ambulance and police presence.

  ‘They want to know about his injuries.’

  ‘Tell them he’s leaking blood like a fucking tap.’ Caelan yanked Ronnie’s jacket and T-shirt up, her own blood thundering in her ears when she saw it. ‘Shit, it’s a gunshot wound.’

  She wrenched off her coat, folded it and laid it beneath Ronnie’s head. She needed to stem the flow of blood, but with what? She could use her hands, but they would be filthy from the train and Tube. It didn’t matter. If she didn’t staunch it soon, Ronnie would never have to worry about picking up an infection again.

  Adamson was relaying information about their exact location to the emergency services operator. Caelan looked up at him.

  ‘Give me your shirt.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your shirt, Richard.’ She glared at him. ‘Now would be good.’

  Adamson nodded his understanding and began to remove his coat one-handed, phone still at his ear. As he struggled with the tiny shirt buttons, Caelan lost patience and leapt to her feet. Frantically, she undid them herself and yanked the shirt away from Adamson’s body, wadding it as neatly as she could and pressing it to Ronnie’s stomach.

  ‘We’re applying pressure to the wound, but he’s lost a lot of blood,’ Adamson gabbled. Caelan stared at her hands, Adamson’s white cotton shirt already stained red, her mind alive with questions.

  ‘Ask them how long,’ she demanded.

  ‘She says a few minutes.’

  Caelan clenched her teeth. ‘Hang on, Ronnie.’

  Adamson squatted, placed a hand on Caelan’s shoulder.

  ‘Do you think you’re helping?’ He didn’t speak, but stood and took a pace away, turning towards the road. Caelan lifted her head. ‘I can hear sirens.’

  Her phone was ringing too. With both hands wet with blood, she had no way of answering. She could guess who it would be: Nasenby. Well, he could wait. The shitstorm was inevitable. This was a gift for Penrith, and anyone else who thought Caelan Small’s career should have ended after the Charlie Flynn case. She closed her eyes, knowing that if she had done her job properly, she would have seen the gunman, at least. By allowing Ronnie to disappear from her line of sight, she had provided an opportunity for his attacker.

  Ronnie shifted, his right hand flailing, trying to reach the wound in his abdomen. Caelan spoke gently to him again, knowing all too well the agony he would be in. She had the scar in her thigh to prove it.

  Above them, the traffic noise lessened as blue l
ights strobed. The thump of feet on the concrete steps, two paramedics jogging towards them. Caelan scrambled to her feet, a sense of relief flooding her as they took over.

  ‘Will he be okay?’ It would be a natural question for anyone to ask, whether they knew the victim or not. Caelan knew Richard hadn’t given his real name on the phone, and she would be using her Karen Devlin identity until told otherwise.

  ‘We’ll do our best,’ one of the paramedics said, his face grim.

  Caelan moved away, wiping her hands on her trousers, knowing it would take more than a few washes to rid herself of the sight and smell of Ronnie’s blood. Adamson held out a bottle of water and she took it gratefully, managing to swallow a few mouthfuls.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked, his voice hardly more than a whisper. She met his eyes, shook her head.

  ‘You?’

  ‘We’re in the shit. Nasenby’s on his way.’

  ‘He’s coming here? It’s a crime scene, needs securing as soon as possible.’

  ‘It will be.’

  Caelan turned her body away from the paramedics, though she doubted they were listening.

  ‘And who are we?’

  ‘As far as anyone else knows, two passers-by.’

  ‘Who don’t know each other?’

  Adamson nodded. ‘Fair point.’

  They moved apart. Richard pushed his hands into his trouser pockets, his eyes on the ground. Caelan wanted to leave, to put some distance between herself and this place. She couldn’t even move outside, take a few breaths of fresher air. The person who shot Ronnie must have made their escape through this end of the underpass, otherwise she would have seen them. It meant the whole area would be cordoned off and meticulously searched by scene-of-crime investigators.

  The underpass was illuminated suddenly by the beam of a powerful torch. Caelan straightened as four uniformed police officers marched towards her, closely followed by someone she recognised.

  DCI Tim Achebe.

  14

  ‘You’re telling me they didn’t find him?’ Caelan asked. Across the table, Michael Nasenby shook his head. ‘But he had nowhere to go.’

  ‘Like Ronnie Morgan when you lost sight of him?’ Ian Penrith sneered.

  Caelan lifted her chin. ‘Why don’t you ask Richard? He lost Ronnie too.’

  Penrith coloured slightly. ‘Richard was acting as an observer only, Caelan. He was there for your safety.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’

  ‘You weren’t supposed to be aware of him.’

  Caelan gave a scornful laugh. ‘I knew Richard was around before we left Lincoln. I saw him more than once.’

  ‘As I was saying,’ Nasenby cut in, ‘they didn’t find the gunman. Forensics are at the locus now. When you exit the underpass, you’re back on the road where the station is, but obviously on the other side of the street. There’s a lane by the exit leading to a water treatment facility. Disused.’

  ‘Did they check—’

  ‘There was no one hiding there,’ Nasenby confirmed.

  ‘On one side of the lane is overgrown waste ground – trees, bushes, junk. Then the railway line. On the other, houses. There’s a bus stop across the road – he could have started down the lane, jumped a fence and strolled off leaving no trace.’ Penrith pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. ‘The helicopter went up, we had an armed response unit sitting on their arses. He, or she, vanished.’

  ‘They’re doing a fingertip search of the underpass now, and will broaden the area to include the waste ground and lane. It could take days.’ Nasenby’s voice was flat. ‘Door-to-door enquiries have begun; appeals for witnesses will be included on the evening news.’

  ‘Has Ronnie’s mum been informed?’ Caelan asked.

  Nasenby sighed. ‘She has, and she’s understandably devastated. A family liaison officer is with her. There’s no way of telling Lambourne, of course.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll know,’ Penrith said. ‘Then more shit will start flying.’

  ‘Thank you, Ian.’

  Penrith stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘Come on, Michael. You think Lambourne will take this lying down? His son’s been murdered.’

  Caelan’s stomach somersaulted. ‘What did you say?’

  Nasenby shot Penrith a glare. ‘I’m sorry, Caelan. Ronnie died on the operating table. They did all they could to—’

  Caelan was on her feet before she knew what she was doing. Her voice shook. ‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’

  ‘Please sit down, Caelan. We—’

  ‘Neither of you had the decency to inform me that the boy whose blood I was covered in was dead? I sat there with him for fifteen minutes, trying to stop his blood leaking all over the pavement with my fucking hands …’ She held them up, scrubbed clean now but feeling filthy.

  ‘It was seven minutes, based on Richard’s emergency call.’ Penrith held her gaze. ‘Blood on your hands, Caelan. Who’d have thought it?’

  She lurched across the table towards him, Nasenby seizing her by the shoulders and pushing her back into her chair as Penrith began to laugh.

  ‘Go home, Caelan,’ Nasenby told her. ‘Get some rest.’

  She narrowed her eyes at him, hatred for Penrith coursing through her like poison. ‘I want to find whoever did this.’

  Penrith snorted. ‘You’re a witness. At least …’

  ‘Could you leave, please, Ian?’

  ‘Leave? We’re supposed to be debriefing her together.’

  ‘I can manage.’ Nasenby’s voice was as cold as Caelan had ever heard it. Penrith, breathing heavily, lumbered to his feet.

  ‘I’ll go and have a chat with Richard Adamson. See if he can enlighten me about what the fuck happened out there today.’

  Ramming his chair hard beneath the table, he bent towards Caelan. ‘Another boy’s dead because of you. Remember that.’

  As the door slammed behind him, Caelan muttered, ‘As if I’m going to forget.’

  Nasenby leant back in his chair, linking his fingers in his lap. ‘This is a disaster, Caelan.’ He was as calm as ever, not fazed in the slightest by another ugly scene with Penrith.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘With Lambourne involved, it’s catastrophic.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Ian suspects you of the shooting.’

  Caelan opened her mouth, blinking. ‘What?’

  Nasenby shrugged. ‘It’s ludicrous, of course, but there it is.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘I know. And Caelan, your clothes were covered in blood; no doubt gunshot residue will be found on them, and on your skin. Swabs were taken, weren’t they?’

  ‘I lifted Ronnie Morgan’s top to find the source of the blood, I touched his clothes, his skin. I was in the place where the gun was fired immediately after it happened. Finding gunshot residue on me is guaranteed. No doubt Richard’s covered in it too.’

  ‘How do you know where the gun was fired?’ Nasenby’s eyes were cold. ‘He could have been shot at the entrance to the underpass, staggered to the end and collapsed. It was too dark in there for you to see any traces of blood. We don’t know yet where the shot was fired.’

  ‘All right, I’m making assumptions. But I was there, Michael.’

  ‘So was I, but we both know better than to speculate.’

  ‘When …’ Caelan swallowed, her mouth dry. ‘When’s the post-mortem?’

  ‘Not until tomorrow. DCI Achebe is SIO.’ Nasenby cleared his throat. ‘Can’t say I envy him. We’ll be working closely with him, of course.’

  ‘Good. I want to—’

  He held up a finger. ‘Not you. You return to being retired.’ She knew that tone. He wouldn’t be persuaded, not about this. Nevertheless, she had to try.

  ‘Michael, please. Let me work with Achebe.’

  His expression changed, became fatherly again. ‘You made a mistake, Caelan. It happens to us all, but in our game, mistakes can cost lives.’

  She tipped her head to one s
ide, regarding him steadily. ‘Why are you talking as though you’re in a spy movie?’

  ‘Let me speak plainly then.’ His face hardened. ‘I need to mop up your mess. I can’t do that if you’re still here. Penrith thinks you shot Ronnie Morgan. The evidence will no doubt suggest it as a possibility. I know you didn’t, but if I’m to have a chance of saving you, you need to be nowhere near this investigation. Do I make myself clear?’

  Caelan pushed back her chair. ‘You do. I’ll be at home when you all come to your senses.’

  She walked away from her friend and mentor without looking back.

  15

  ‘Who’s in Battersea?’ Ewan asked, changing gear as they joined a queue of traffic at a red light. Caelan turned her head away from him, not wanting him to see how rattled she was. The events of the day were taking their toll, and she wanted to go home, take off the horrible sweatshirt and jogging bottoms she’d been given when her own clothes had been taken from her, and have a long shower. She should have trusted her instincts, resisted being persuaded to dance to their tune again.

  ‘A friend,’ she said, scrubbing at her eyes with her fingertips. ‘Someone I need to talk to.’ Whether he would be in any state to even answer his door this late in the day was another matter.

  * * *

  The area was grim, a block of flats amongst several others, huddling against the grey sky. Five floors, bright red doors looming out of the gloom on each level. Satellite dishes everywhere, the scent of onions frying. A group of children booting a football around a muddy patch of grass. ‘No Ball Games’ signs, litter. Teenagers grouping around a lad on a BMX. Money changing hands, packets concealed in pockets.

  ‘Aren’t they buying …?’ Ewan whispered.