Sound

by Catherine Fearns

  ‘Mersey Road Litherland, that’s the petrol station next to the docks. There’s nothing there at all. Apart from… The Griffin.’

  Dave looked up at Darren and they both raised their eyebrows. The Griffin was an infamous joint; theoretically a table-dancing pub, in practice a fully-functioning brothel which also provided cheap rooms for illicit encounters, both sex- and drug-related. Darren knew it well from his days on Vice, when they had raided and closed down the place on several occasions. The Griffin had been part of crime boss Max Killy’s empire until his fiery death, on the same fateful day that Matt had died.

  ‘Who owns it now?’ asked Dave.

  ‘Would you believe, our young friend Stuart Killy. He inherited it from his uncle.’

  ‘You’re messing. How is that bloke not in prison after the truck fire?’

  ‘He got off with diminished responsibility. Come on, let’s go and pay The Griffin a visit. Hopefully it’s early enough in the day that there won’t be too many seedy characters in there.’

  Eighteen

  The Griffin had seen better days. Occupying the whole of a once-proud Edwardian corner house, it bore the hallmarks of former grandeur, with crumbling rococo cornices and a tower folly. It also retained the original pub sign from an early eighteenth century incarnation. But the windows were plastered in faded fluorescent posters advertising various tacky themed nights. They were also fronted with protective metal grilles. By the time they pulled up outside, Dave had managed to snap himself temporarily out of his stupor, having spent the whole car journey driving Darren mad with his incessantly tapping.

  ‘I’ve always wondered what it was like in here,’ said Dave as they approached the door.

  ‘Have you, now?’

  ‘I mean, not to actually go in. You know what I mean. You go past it every day of your life without really noticing what goes on inside.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m only messing. Trust me, you’ve not been missing much.’

  They entered the gloomy pub, which was decorated with red velour booths and flock wallpaper that hadn’t been updated in decades. On a raised stage to the left of the bar were two of the least enthusiastic pole-dancers Darren had ever seen. The handful of clientele looked utterly bored, nursing pre-lunchtime pints. One man looked as if he might be masturbating under his coat, but Darren couldn’t be sure. There was a noticeable shift in the atmosphere when the plain-clothed officers entered. They all knew Darren from past investigations. People shuffled into straightened positions, trying to look innocent.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Darren, raising his hands in a gesture of calm. ‘We’re not interested in you. We’re just looking for someone.’

  They approached the bar, where a woman was cleaning glasses. Stuart Killy was seated on a stool in front of it, with a newspaper in front of him. He was peering at the football pages through thick glasses. His buttocks bulged over the top of his jeans. He looked up suddenly as Darren and Dave approached.

  ‘Using your inheritance wisely, Stuart?’ asked Darren, gesturing to the dancers behind him.

  ‘Is this about the trial? I thought I had a meeting about it with the CPS next week?’

  ‘Nope. Something else. Have you ever seen this man?’ Dave held up the picture of Ian Springer from the university website.

  Stuart studied it, squinting through his thick glasses. ‘No, can’t say that I have.’

  ‘You can’t say that you have. But you have?’

  ‘No, no, I mean, I haven’t.’ Stuart became flustered. Darren smiled and shook his head; Stuart had been well trained by his family in how to speak to the police, but he did not have the quick-wittedness of the rest of the Killys and was easy to catch out.

  ‘How about you?’ Darren asked the barmaid. She approached, beginning to shake her head before she even saw the photo, but she did look at it.

  ‘No, he’s never been in here.’

  ‘What about on 22nd August?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘What about 29th August?’

  ‘That was a Bank Holiday,’ she said triumphantly, looking at Stuart for approval. ‘We were closed that day.’

  She was right, it had been a Bank Holiday. This was proving fruitless, and Darren noticed that Dave had started tapping incessantly against his thighs and nodding involuntarily to the beat of the bland pop music that played on the juke box. They stepped out, blinking in the light, onto the street where traffic roared onto the flyover. Across the road was the entrance to the docks, next door to them the petrol station, further down the road on the same side a row of industrial units. And behind them, row after row of residential streets. Springer could have been doing anything, visiting anyone. What was he doing in this area? An affair? Darren was keenly aware that this could be a complete waste of time.

  And then something clicked, a fragment of memory, an impressionistic image imprinted on his retinas through thousands of childhood bus journeys down this street towards his church. You go past it every day of your life without really noticing what goes on inside. That row of industrial units which began a hundred metres down – there was a car hire firm, a builders’ yard, a glass window supplier, and a place called Mersey Acoustics. It had been there since he was a child, a place his imagination had always glossed over as utterly uninteresting. Acoustics had always seemed so dull and uninspiring – stereo speakers, insulation, soundproofing, hearing aids – until now.

  ‘Look at that,’ he pointed. ‘Mersey Acoustics. There’s that word acoustics again. Let’s go and check it out before we head back.’

  The bell rang as they entered Mersey Acoustics. It was bright and hot inside, the afternoon sun having a greenhouse effect on floor-to-ceiling glass. Although there was a shop front, footfall was minimal in this industrial enclave, so there was no-one manning the desk. They used the wait as an opportunity to take in their surroundings. The shop area sold a variety of products, from loudspeakers, to headphones, to foam wedges similar to the ones they had seen at the university. There were also several product catalogues on the desk, behind which there was a large, partially-hidden workshop and storage areas.

  Finally two men appeared behind the desk, one older and wearing a shirt and tie, the other a young apprentice in a polo shirt with the company’s logo.

  Darren held out his ID. ‘Detective Inspector Darren Swift and Detective Sergeant Dave Briggs, Merseyside Police Major Incident Team. We believe this man may have been a visitor here,’ he said, showing the photo of Ian Springer. ‘Can you tell us who he is?’

  Darren watched the man intently as he examined the photo. There was a slight moment of hesitation before he confirmed, ‘Yes, that’s Dr Ian Springer. He teaches acoustics at the university. He’s been here a few times over the years.’

  ‘For what purpose?’

  ‘Research. He works on sonic deterrents, so he’s interested in what products are on the market, what people are buying. He has sent a couple of students here over the years as well.’

  The apprentice was looking over his employer’s shoulder at the photo.

  ‘Ah yeah, he’s a nice bloke. I’ve read some of his academic papers as well, dead interesting.’

  The employer bristled slightly at the boy’s enthusiasm.

  ‘Has Springer ever purchased anything from here himself?’ asked Darren.

  The boy answered first. ‘Yeah, he buys bits and bobs. He likes to take them apart, doesn’t he?’ He laughed at his boss, who didn’t join in.

  ‘When he visited in August of this year, what was he doing?’

  ‘I can’t recall,’ said the employer emphatically, making it clear that the boy was not to answer. At that point, the slightly prickly atmosphere was broken by Dave, who had been flicking through the catalogues on the counter.

  ‘Boss, look at this.’ He beckoned Darren over and pointed to a double page spread entitled Sonic Deterrents.

  ‘Some of these look like guns, don’t they?’

  Darren pored over the products dis
played on the page. They ranged from small devices that resembled alarms or stereo speakers, to hand-held weapons that were indeed gun-shaped. ‘Ultrasound Pain Field Gun’, ‘Sonic Shock Wave Generator’, ‘Invisible Pain Generator.’

  The shop owner moved towards them, saying ‘These are used for pest control, or as burglar alarms or anti-loitering devices. All very standard. Increasingly popular as well, nowadays, even for domestic use. You can buy them here, or online.’ But he was unable to stop them turning the page.

  ‘Look at these bad boys,’ said Dave. The next double-page spread was entitled Military Issue, and displayed an ‘Infrasonic Blaster’, a ‘Sound Cannon’ and a ‘Long Range Acoustic Device’. These were large contraptions that resembled rocket-launchers or cannons, and in the photos were being operated by soldiers. One, called a ‘Directed Stick Radiator’, was being held precariously on a soldier’s shoulder, like a large machine gun or rocket-launcher… and exactly fitting the profile of the weapon that had been described in Aigburth.

  ‘Do you sell any of these?’ asked Darren.

  ‘No, those are military grade. Unfortunately for us we don’t have any contracts to supply the police or the military. We’d make a lot more money if we did.’

  ‘When you say ‘military’,’ said Dave, ‘what sort of damage could you do with one of these? Could you actually kill someone?’

  The man shook his head, smiling. ‘No, no, these are non-lethal weapons. That’s the whole point. It’s really a new frontier in security.’

  ‘In theory, though,’ the apprentice piped up, causing his employer to take a sharp intake of breath. ‘You could beef them up. With a powerful enough frequency, you could do more than burst someone’s eardrums.’

  ‘How would you do that?’ asked Darren.

  The earnest young man was in his element now, having fun. ‘Well, if you extend the tube length of the device, you greatly intensify the far field, projecting a narrower beam onto a smaller area.’ He moved his hands around to demonstrate. ‘And if you’ve got a special issue transducer unit – I mean with more electric disks and a faster sweep adjustment – basically an electric signal is sent to the first disk in the rear, which sends a pressure pulse to the next disk, which amplifies the pulse, then passes it along to be amplified by the next disk. The process of amplification continues until the pulse exits the weapon, so the longer the tube… well, it’s like a bullet. I mean, you can blow a hole in metal, you can cavitate water without contact… there’s really no limit to what you could do, with the right engineering.’

  ‘Very enthusiastic, is Craig,’ said the owner, rolling his eyes.

  ‘I am, yeah. Just need to get my maths A-level then I’m hoping to go to uni. Maybe Dr Springer could be my tutor one day!’

  ‘Are you investigating Ian Springer?’ interjected the owner.

  ‘In a manner of speaking. He’s dead.’

  This wasn’t public knowledge yet, but Darren wanted to observe their expressions on hearing the news. They both looked suitably shocked. He would need to obtain a warrant to see their sales records, but for now, at least, he had what he needed. Springer had been up to something.

  Nineteen

  That night Darren was tossing and turning in bed, plagued by his usual nightmares. His last conversations with Matt played over and over. Sometimes he dreamt that they hadn’t fought, that Matt hadn’t gone on his shift that weekend, hadn’t been first on the scene at the Lumina II fire. And then waking up was even more painful, when the truth hit him again. His dreams were filled with fire, and every internet search he had ever done for ‘Adramelech’ came back to haunt him at night. All those illustrations of fire demons, so ridiculous in their comic horror during daytime, were beyond terrifying in his dreams. They roared out of flaming buildings at him, crumbling structures around them, hurling bodies into space. And babies, so ubiquitous in his dreams since the Shepherd case, babies were there too. Crawling down tunnels, alone and crying. Crawling towards fires or tumbling out of the motionless arms of golden statues, and he couldn’t stop them, couldn’t get there in time.

  Suddenly the mobile phone on his bedside table rang. He propped himself up, in a cold sweat. As he answered, he saw that it was 2am.

  ‘DI Swift speaking.’

  ‘Darren. It’s me.’ Darren sat up straighter in bed as he realised it was Superintendent Canter.

  ‘Listen, I’m sorry to wake you, but I thought you’d want to know. Your boy Dave has been arrested. He’s in the cells over here. You might want to come and help me fix this.’

  ‘Arrested? What for?’

  ‘There’s been a big to-do at Lumina. I was called in just before midnight. It’s a bit of a crisis to be honest. Come down and I’ll fill you in.’

  Lumina. From the outer circumference of his thoughts, from the outer edges of this investigation, Forrest was beginning to move closer, drawing him in like a magnet.

  Nursing coffees, Canter and Darren watched, dumbfounded, as the events that had taken place two hours previously outside the Lumina nightclub unfurled before them on the laptop screen. The action had been captured by police at the scene.

  First, there was the long queue waiting at the entrance to the nightclub. There was no sound to accompany the video, but they could see, from the bouncers’ body language, that they were announcing the club was full. They tried to close the doors. But the people in the queue were having none of it. They pushed, begged, cajoled. Some seemed to be trying to give the bouncers cash. With apologetic gestures the bouncers carried on closing the doors, or tried to. Then a surge of people pushed their way in. More aggressively this time, the bouncers forced the doors shut, barricading the doors with their bodies. And then people swarmed upon them like insects. Men and women, pounding and shouldering the doors, falling over each other. Some peeled off to try and find other entrances.

  ‘Apparently a few people found a way in through the back and broke in,’ said Canter. ‘And some broke into the hotel upstairs as well, to try and find an entrance.’

  Two uniformed police arrived on the scene immediately but were pushed aside. They were forced to call for back-up. Within minutes, a full team of riot police was there and people began to be hauled away. Now Canning Place was in chaos. When he’d arrived, Darren had had to push past scores of confused clubbers and relatives of clubgoers, some crying, a general sense of desperation hanging in the air.

  Darren was mystified. ‘It’s a Wednesday night. Even if it was New Years’ Eve and Beyoncé was playing, I can’t imagine people being that crazy to get in. What’s going on?’

  Canter shook her head as she clicked between the different camera viewpoints.

  ‘They’re like a hoard of zombies, aren’t they? They just keep coming. The cells are full of them, and they’re all on drugs, there’s no doubt.’

  ‘What was happening inside the club while all this was going on?’

  ‘We haven’t been provided with CCTV from inside the club yet. But I imagine it will just be a pack of bodies writhing about dancing – no reports of any injuries inside. Darren, I’m afraid Dave’s career might be in serious trouble. He wasn’t involved in any explicit violence, but he refused to step away when ordered to by an officer. And anyway, if he’s taken something, he’s finished.’

  ‘Let me talk to him. I know Dave, he’s not a drugs person. There’s something going on.’

  ‘All right. His girlfriend, Lacey Collins, is here as well. She’s been called in as a witness.’

  Dave was pacing around his holding cell, from wall to wall, his head in his hands, searching the ceiling for answers. When he saw Darren, he fell into his arms, sobbing. ‘I’m sorry, boss. I’m sorry. But I just need to get into the club.’ Darren looked into his eyes and saw desperation. ‘I need to get in there.’

  ‘Dave, why? What’s going on?’ He held him by the shoulders, bizarre as it felt to be touching a colleague in this way, and tried to get him to focus. But Dave just shook his head in despair.

&
nbsp; ‘I don’t know. I just need the music. Is it possible to be addicted to… music?’

  ‘I don’t know, mate. What’s going through your head?’

  ‘It’s like… there’s a voice in there. I can’t hear it, but I can hear it. It… doesn’t have a sound. Except it’s the only sound. It’s the sound of my own head.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It just tells me to go to the club. It tells me to dance. I don’t know.’

  ‘What does Lacey think about all this?’

  ‘She doesn’t get it. She thinks I’m going mad.’

  The last time Darren had interviewed Lacey Collins, she had been a witness to the fire in Crosby village. Her hair had been in rollers and her make-up and nails had been half-done. Tonight she sat in the same state of fidgety anguish, with a similarly striking appearance. She wore silver hotpants, silver boots and a bikini top that showed her tanned skin and gently rounded tummy. Her blonde hair was slicked back into a high bouncy ponytail, to make way for the DJ headphones that she was still wearing around her neck.

  Darren sat opposite her at the table. ‘People really seem to love your music, Lacey.’

  They were silent for a moment, before he continued.

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve only been DJ-ing for a few months. And yet you’ve got this gig as resident DJ in the biggest club in the city. Liverpool is full of good DJs who would give their right arm to play at Lumina even once, never mind every night of the week.’

  Lacey was still silent, looking at the table.

  ‘I know you’ve got the contacts.’ At this, she looked up and opened her mouth, but still didn’t speak. ‘Obviously you’re mates with Justine Kuper. And yes, I know that you know she’s having an affair with the club owner, Shawn Forrest.’