Don't Make a Sound

by David Jackson

  She flashes him the briefest of smiles.

  ‘There,’ says Teller. ‘Didn’t hurt, did it? Beautiful smile, too. Top left incisor a little crooked, but otherwise immaculate.’

  She thinks, Crooked? What the hell does he mean, crooked?

  She runs her tongue over her top teeth. They’re not frigging crooked.

  ‘Thank you for the appraisal, Mr Teller, but if you don’t mind—’

  ‘Simon,’ he smarms. ‘Call me Simon.’

  ‘Right. Simon. The reason I’ve come to see you today is Cody.’

  ‘Cody? You work with him?’

  ‘Yes. We’re on the Major Incident Team together.’

  ‘Really? I can’t believe he’s never mentioned you.’

  She thinks, Cody hasn’t mentioned me. Great. Why has he never mentioned me?

  ‘The point is, I was . . . we were wondering if you’d seen him lately.’

  ‘Oh, not for days. To be honest, our paths rarely cross. He tends to be out before I get here, and back home after I’ve finished up. Why do you ask?’

  ‘It’s just that he hasn’t been in work today, and we can’t get hold of him.’

  Teller raises an eyebrow. ‘That doesn’t sound like Cody.’

  ‘No. That’s what I – we thought. In fact, we’re starting to get more than a little concerned about him. So we were wondering . . .’

  ‘If you could take a look in his flat?’

  ‘Is that okay?’

  Teller shows his pearly whites again. ‘I don’t see why not. You’ve got a trustworthy face. Come on.’

  He leads her back out to reception.

  ‘Helen, can you dig out a key to Cody’s flat upstairs, please?’

  The key gets handed to Teller, who in turn passes it to Webley. ‘All yours,’ he says.

  ‘You can come along too, if you like. It’s your property.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I’ve got patients to see. You know where it is, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

  He winks. ‘Thought as much.’

  As Teller heads back to his surgery, Webley wonders what he’s thinking about her and Cody. She opens her mouth to say something, but changes her mind.

  Let him believe what he likes.

  She starts up the wide staircase. It feels weird coming up here in the daytime, when the place is bustling. On the few prior occasions she has visited Cody here, they have been the only two in the building.

  She can hear chatter, the whine of a drill, the clatter of metal instruments on trays. The air is thick with the odour of sterility.

  On the first floor she pauses at the door to Cody’s flat. To the left is a gloomy passage leading to the dental practice’s kitchen. She can smell coffee and hear the rattling of mugs and a kettle on the boil.

  She tries knocking but gets no response. She tests the door. It’s locked, and there is no sign of forced entry. She inserts the key, unlocks the door.

  When she opens it, she sees that there is a small alarm box screwed to its other side. She doesn’t recall seeing it there before. No bells or sirens go off, so for some reason Cody must have left it disabled.

  The only thing in front of her is another staircase. She ascends it slowly, cautiously, wondering what she will find here. Hoping that it is not what she fears most.

  At the top of the stairs is a large hall, dotted with doors. Cody gave her a short guided tour once, so she has a vague memory of the layout.

  She does a quick search to begin with, just to reassure herself that the flat isn’t occupied, by the living or the dead. She works her way through the living room, the bedrooms, the bathroom. On each occasion she holds her breath as she flings open the door.

  But the rooms are all empty.

  Only the kitchen left now.

  She opens the door. Finds this room empty, too.

  Except . . .

  There are signs here. Signs of his last visit.

  On the counter, a full mug of tea, the spoon and teabag still in it. Further along, Cody’s belongings: tissues, pens, notebook, cash, wallet, and other miscellaneous items. Even his mobile phone. No keys, though, to either the flat or Cody’s car.

  And then, slung over the back of a chair, Cody’s suit jacket and tie.

  So . . . Cody comes home, empties his pockets, starts to get out of his work clothes, makes a brew, and then . . .

  What?

  He leaves? Why?

  What was so urgent that he couldn’t even drink his tea?

  And why did he only take his keys?

  Clearly he wasn’t expecting to be out for very long. He took neither his wallet nor his mobile phone.

  The phone. He must have received a call. That’s it. An emergency of some kind – perhaps in the family, or affecting his ex-fiancée.

  But wouldn’t you take your phone with you if that were the case?

  Of course: he was too flustered, too upset. He wasn’t thinking straight.

  Webley grabs the phone, checks the log of incoming calls. Works her way past all the calls she made herself to this number.

  She finds nothing. No calls were made to Cody’s phone any time between Cody leaving work and Webley calling him today.

  She goes back into the hall. Picks up the house phone and checks its own history. Even fewer calls have been made to his landline.

  This is insane, she thinks. It doesn’t make any sense.

  She goes back through all the rooms, checking more carefully this time. There is no sign of a disturbance, no evidence of a crime or a struggle. It appears that Cody simply went out on an errand that was supposed to last minutes . . .

  . . . and never came back.

  59

  ‘Well?’ says Blunt.

  Webley tells her all she knows, which isn’t much, but which isn’t easily explained either.

  Blunt can’t dismiss this, she thinks. She’ll have to do something now.

  ‘All right, Megan,’ says Blunt. ‘Thank you. That’ll be all.’

  Webley can’t believe her ears. She stays rooted to the spot in front of Blunt’s desk.

  ‘Ma’am? I’m not sure you’ve understood what I’ve just told you. I—’

  ‘I heard every word, Megan. Cody has gone AWOL. What are you suggesting I’ve missed in your report?’

  ‘That . . . that we need to do something. He hasn’t just gone on holiday. He’s disappeared.’

  ‘And what are you suggesting we do about it?’

  ‘Well, we contact the people who know him – his family and his ex-fiancée. We put in a request for information on recent fatalities of unidentified males. We ring the hospitals. We check for ANPR pings of Cody’s car registration. We—’

  ‘Megan, Megan. Who are we?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Us. This unit. Who are we?’

  ‘We’re MIT.’

  ‘Which stands for?’

  ‘Major Incident Team.’

  ‘Exactly. Regrettable though Cody’s disappearance is, it is not yet a major incident. When it is, we’ll investigate it. Until that time arises, we hand it over to Missing Persons, whose job it is to deal with such matters.’

  ‘But ma’am—’

  ‘DC Webley! You’re not listening to me. We’ve got two abducted children on our books – three if you count Daisy Agnew – plus a double homicide. We are stretched enough as it is. We have neither the time nor the resources to go chasing after a member of staff who has been absent for less than a day. Bring home those missing children, lock up the man who killed two of their parents, and I’ll reconsider your duties. Until then, sort your priorities out.’

  ‘And if the two are connected?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The children and Cody. What if Cody has been taken by the same man who abducted the girls?’

  Blunt stares for a few seconds. ‘I’ll make you a deal, Megan. Give me one piece of evidence, however slender, that connect
s the abductions with the disappearance of Cody, and I will reclassify Cody’s case. In fact, to hell with solid evidence. Give me any piece of logical reasoning that suggests they’re linked. Anything at all.’

  Webley says nothing. Intuition doesn’t count as logical reasoning, and she’s not even sure she’s got that.

  ‘I thought not,’ says Blunt. ‘Now get back to what you should be doing.’

  Webley remains tight-lipped. She wants to call Blunt a heartless bitch, but that won’t help matters.

  Instead, she turns on her heel and leaves.

  *

  When Webley has gone, DCI Stella Blunt takes several deep breaths.

  Poor girl, she thinks. I was tough on her, but sometimes these things are necessary. Hopefully she will realise that when she’s calmer. She’s a good copper. A lot to learn still, but a good copper.

  Like Cody. One of the best detectives she has ever had on her squad.

  Life goes on, though. She can’t have favourites. There’s a job to be done, cases to be solved. It’s her responsibility to make sure that the team functions properly and efficiently, even when individual members go astray. To do otherwise wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be fair on the missing girls, and it wouldn’t be fair on their families. They have to be put first.

  So, she thinks, where was I? What was next on my list?

  She remembers. Reaches for the drawer containing the file she wanted. She opens it, starts to rifle through the tightly packed contents, checking the handwritten tags on top of each folder.

  But she’s not seeing them. Her mind is too preoccupied with a name, a face, a voice. She slams the drawer shut.

  Damn you, Nathan Cody, she thinks. Why the hell do you keep doing this to me?

  60

  The hours pass.

  Cody listens to the girls whispering to each other. Occasionally he hears his name mentioned. They are scared, but the simple knowledge that they are still alive keeps him from losing all hope.

  But each time the bolts are withdrawn and one of the Bensons comes into the bedroom, his heart sinks. He expects the worst. He expects the end.

  So far, they have always come for the girls. They bring them food. They talk to them. They read to them. They play games with them. They try to make them laugh, without success.

  It is almost as if the Bensons have forgotten about the man secreted behind the curtain. Out of sight, out of mind.

  But he knows it won’t last.

  And it doesn’t.

  He realises his time has come when he hears Malcolm Benson entering the room and instructing the girls to put their headphones back on.

  Cody wonders if he’ll still be alive when the closing credits of Frozen roll by.

  When the curtain is pulled back, he sees that Malcolm looks a new man – as though he’s taken a normality pill. He seems almost like someone who could be reasoned with, someone who might entertain an alternative point of view.

  Cody realises he will have to capitalise on this brief opportunity before the rot sets in again.

  As before, Malcolm brings fresh cotton wool, duct tape and scissors. He places the items on a shelf to his right. Then, with a smile and a flourish, he reaches forward and rips Cody’s gag from his face.

  Tears in his eyes, Cody spits out the cotton wool. Again he tastes the foulness in his mouth.

  ‘How are we feeling now, Detective Cody? Ready for another little discussion? One without lies this time?’

  ‘Water,’ says Cody, his voice hoarse. ‘Drink.’

  This time, Malcolm doesn’t reject the request out of hand. Instead, he walks across to a small basin, fills up a plastic beaker with water, and brings it back. He puts it to Cody’s lips and allows him a few small sips.

  ‘Better?’ says Malcolm. ‘Are we good to go now?’

  ‘Toilet,’ says Cody. ‘I need the toilet.’

  This is his plan. The only course of action he has managed to concoct during his long hours behind the curtain. Not much of a plan, admittedly, but it’s all he’s got.

  Malcolm scowls. It’s clear he is already losing his relatively cheery demeanour.

  Come on, thinks Cody. Undo the ties. Surely even you wouldn’t let me sit here wallowing in my own piss.

  But then Cody discovers that Malcolm is a step ahead of him. As his belt is unbuckled, and his trousers and underwear are pulled halfway down his thighs, Cody wants to cry with his indignity and the disappointment of seeing his plan in tatters.

  While Cody relieves himself through the hole in his chair, Malcolm partly closes the curtain again. It seems paradoxical to Cody that Malcolm feels the need to spare the girls’ blushes at the sight of a man with his trousers down, when he seemed to have no problem subjecting one of them to a ringside view of her parents being slaughtered.

  When he is done, and Malcolm has refastened his clothes, Cody feels defeated before his interrogation has even begun.

  ‘So where are they?’ says Malcolm, spreading his arms.

  ‘Where’s what?’

  ‘Your cop friends. The ones who know you’re here.’

  ‘It doesn’t work that quickly,’ Cody says, although he’s not quite sure how many hours he has been here. ‘They probably think I’m just out of the station while I follow some other leads.’

  He knows that won’t be the case. They will be fully aware of his absence by now, and they’ll be trying to trace him. Hopefully, at least one of them will be worried enough to instigate an active search.

  That’s the good news. The bad news is that they probably don’t have a cat in hell’s chance of finding him.

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ says Malcolm. ‘There’s time yet.’

  Cody would like to know what that means. Does Malcolm have a deadline in mind?

  Malcolm places his small blue chair in front of Cody again. Lowers his bulk onto it.

  ‘Why did you come back to our house?’ he asks.

  ‘To get my warrant card. I left it here.’

  Malcolm shakes his head. ‘See, you’re lying already. Digging yourself a deeper hole.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘No. It’s not. I searched you when you were unconscious. Your card was in your pocket the whole time. It’s a lie now, and it was a lie then. Why? Why did you make it all up?’

  Cody passes his tongue over dry, cracked lips. The few sips of water have done little to replace the moisture he has lost. Again, something tells him not to let Malcolm know he found the warrant card here. Let him believe that the police are using clandestine methods of investigation. Allow him to assume their intelligence data is more substantial than it is.

  ‘I had a feeling about you,’ he says.

  ‘A feeling? What kind of feeling?’

  ‘Intuition, based on experience. When you spend enough time in this job, you develop a radar for these things. Something about you didn’t seem right.’

  ‘No,’ says Malcolm. ‘Not good enough. You wouldn’t sneak back here based on a feeling. You wouldn’t wait till I’d gone out so you could harass my wife while she was alone.’

  ‘I didn’t harass her.’

  ‘Harriet is not a well woman. She has problems dealing with people. You upset her. You frightened her.’

  ‘She didn’t seem that frightened when she sneaked up behind me and cracked my skull open.’

  ‘You’re lucky I didn’t finish the job when I got home. I love the bones of that woman. Anyone who hurts Harriet has me to deal with.’

  Cody can see Malcolm’s chest rising and falling. This is clearly a touchy subject for him.

  ‘I had some questions I needed to ask, that’s all. I had no intention of causing your wife any distress.’

  ‘You didn’t ask any questions. Not proper ones. You got into the house under false pretences so that you could sniff around. You already knew what you were looking for.’

  ‘No. No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Then why did you come upstairs?’

  Cody has to resi
st the reflex to glance at the girls. Malcolm mustn’t be given an excuse to take his anger out on them.

  ‘I needed the toilet.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I asked Harriet about it.’

  Oh, shit, thinks Cody. She told him. She told him about the noise the girls made.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said you were fine one minute, and then about to piss yourself the next. That doesn’t add up to me. You came here knowing you needed to find a way to get upstairs. That was your aim all along, wasn’t it?’

  Cody wants to sigh with relief. Harriet has kept it from her husband. She has put the safety of the girls first.

  Well, at least that’s something. One of them still has some humanity left.

  ‘You’re right,’ Cody says. ‘I lied. I didn’t need the toilet.’

  Malcolm’s anger subsides a little, to be replaced by sheer surprise at Cody’s confession.

  ‘Then why did you come up here?’

  ‘I was told to.’

  Surprise turns to alarm now. ‘What do you mean? Who told you to?’

  ‘It’s like I said earlier. At my level of the police, we do what we’re told, and we don’t question it. It was suggested to me that I should check out your house again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. New intelligence, I guess.’

  Cody accepts he is taking a huge gamble here. Anyone who knows anything about how the police operate will realise he is talking complete bollocks. His hope is that he can deliver his story with enough authority to sound convincing.

  Malcolm stands up. Takes two paces one way and two the other, all the while rubbing his head. To Cody’s right, the girls remain rooted to their chairs in front of the television.

  Cody would so like to have a conversation with those children.

  ‘No,’ says Malcolm. ‘That can’t be right. Why would they ask you to lie and sneak around like you did? Why didn’t you just come here with your police mates and search the place properly?’

  ‘Believe it or not, we can’t just waltz into anyone’s house and search it whenever we feel like it. We need a search warrant.’

  ‘So why didn’t you get one?’

  ‘We need a good reason to get one issued to us. It could be that the intelligence we had wasn’t compelling enough, or maybe we couldn’t reveal that intel for other reasons.’