'Your mother?' prompts Harris.
'Yeah, she died. Cancer. We weren't close. Once she'd gone I came into some money and lit out for Europe. Nothing unusual.'
'How about your father?' Harris's voice is all concern now. Maybe she should try acting too, thinks Frank.
'My father? He's gone.'
'Dead?'
A flicker of annoyance passes across Noone's face like a digital jump on a screen.
'Not that I know. He wasn't part of my life. Never knew him.'
Before he can pick up on Noone's reply, Frank's phone vibrates in his pocket. He fishes it out and reads the text, holding the phone below the edge of the table. 'Got something,' the text reads. It's from Saif Magsi.
'Carry on without me,' says Frank. 'I'll be back in two minutes.'
Noone's expression is open as Frank gets up and leaves. As the door closes behind him he sees Noone turning towards Harris and smiling. He starts to say something but Frank doesn't catch it.
Magsi's outside in the corridor.
'Didn't want to come in and show you this in front of Noone,' says Magsi. Frank nods approvingly as Magsi hands him a sheet of paper. 'Just came through and I thought it might be relevant.'
On the sheet of paper is a credit card number and a list of monthly statement balances for the past year in the name of Benjamin Noone. The logo at the top reads 'Wells Fargo'.
'It's a prepaid,' Magsi says. 'A Visa card, but topped up before it's used. Wells Fargo's a US bank.' Magsi's immaculate nail traces the statement balances. 'These are just cash payments made inwards by Noone. He can do that at almost any bank without leaving an electronic trail.'
'So how did you get this?'
Magsi looks a little uncomfortable. 'I know someone who can look up that kind of thing. Sort of a freelancer. My brother.'
'Stop,' says Frank, 'I don't want to know.' He rattles the sheet of paper. 'So this is inadmissible?' His voice is level.
'Yeah, sorry, boss. I thought . . . well, it was just pissing me off not finding anything on Noone, and my brother, well . . .'
Frank pats Magsi on the shoulder. 'No, it's fine, Magsi. It's useful. But don't mention this to anyone else, got that? I don't want it coming back to bite us later.'
Magsi nods, relieved.
'And next time, if there is a next time, ask me first, got that?' Without waiting for a reply, Frank tucks the credit card details into his jacket and turns back to the interview room. Inside, Harris is laughing at something Noone has said.
'Cosy.'
Frank sits down and looks at Noone.
'How do you manage for money, Ben?' he says. 'Can't be too much in acting, even in the movies. Not for a newbie like you. What have you been using?'
'There's no mystery. I came into money after my mother died.'
'You're rich?' says Harris. 'River Towers is a pretty swanky address.'
'I do OK.' Noone pauses and smiles again. 'And River Towers is overrated. Mostly dodgy property developers and criminals, if you ask me.'
Frank doesn't return the smile. 'Is that where you met Danny Lomax?'
Noone shakes his head. 'Still talking about Danny? You're barking up the wrong tree there.'
'What tree should I be barking up, Ben?'
'I can't tell you how to do your job, DCI Keane, but drugs have nothing to do with this.'
Now the atmosphere is unmistakeable. Harris picks it up too.
'How would you know what is relevant in this case, Mr Noone?' she says. 'Do you have any information for us?'
Noone sits back in the uncomfortable interview room chair and folds his hands in his lap. 'No,' he says. 'I don't think I do.'
To Harris's surprise, Frank doesn't respond to this.
'Let's turn to Dean Quinner.' Frank gives Noone a long look. 'You don't seem too upset about Dean's death.'
'Is that a question?' Noone taps a finger on the edge of the table. 'We weren't buddies, but I liked him OK. I'm not that upset because that's not who I am. I don't get upset very easily. Aren't the English supposed to understand that?'
'Even we manage to squeeze out the odd tear now and again, Mr Noone,' says Harris. 'At the very least Mr Quinner's murder must mean trouble for the movie. You'll be out of a job if it folds.'
'I don't want the production to stop,' Noone replies, 'but it's only a movie. I was brought up in Los Angeles. Movies don't impress me the same way they do most other people. And I don't need the gig. Besides, isn't that an argument for me not being involved in whatever happened to Quinner?'
Harris leans across to Frank and points to a small statement on the initial data collection sheet. This was largely gleaned from phone calls made by MIT to the movie people following the discovery of Dean Quinner's body. It's something from Alix Turner, one of the make-up team.
'Someone said that you and Dean were having an "intense" discussion on set. What was that about?'
There.
Noone's nostrils flare and his eyes narrow. Frank registers the corners of Noone's mouth turning down. In a split second the expression is wiped clean and replaced by one of Noone's sardonic smiles. Noone brushes some specks of dust from his sleeve.
But Frank saw.
He saw Noone's true face for a fleeting instant. Even an actor's mask slips from time to time.
And in that instant, every atom in Frank screams one visceral, unalterable fact: this is the guy. Locking eyes with him now, Frank just knows, boom, that the affable American across the desk is the killer of the Peters family and Dean Quinner. Frank's not remotely religious, but it is as if the devil has come into J7 in that electrically charged split second and, for Frank at least, the entire investigation shifts emphasis.
This is the guy.
What's more, thinks Frank as Noone regards him with a bland indifference, I'm pretty sure he knows that I know. And he doesn't care.
After twenty years on the force, and coming into contact with some of the worst scum to breathe air, there have been many times when Frank gets this basic, neanderthal reaction. Useless in court, of course, but highly useful when it comes to focusing effort. Frank glances at Harris to see if she's read it the same way but he can't tell.
'What was it?' Frank points at Noone. 'He saw something, didn't he? Or said something you didn't like. What was it? Did he catch you with your pants down?'
'Did Alix tell you that we were having this "intense" discussion?' Noone shakes his head. 'He's the fucking writer, man! And I'm the fucking lead! If the two of us can't have a fucking discussion on set then I don't know who can. She's pissed because I didn't want to fuck her. Ask around. This is getting ridiculous.'
Under the table Harris taps her foot against Frank's, their prearranged signal that they should speak.
'We're going to take a break, Mr Noone.' Frank leans forward and presses a button on the digital voice recorder. 'DCI Keane and DC Harris suspending interview with Benjamin Noone.'
As Keane and Harris push back their chairs, Noone does the same. Frank holds out a hand, palm up, gesturing for Noone to stay.
'We'd like you to stay a little longer, Mr Noone. If that's all right with you.'
Noone sinks back onto the chair and nods to himself as if Keane has confirmed something. 'I'm all yours, DCI Keane.'
Outside, Harris moves a little way along the corridor before speaking.
'I just want to check where you're going with this. You're pushing him hard.'
'He's the one, Em. Can't you feel that?'
Harris steps back and looks at Frank as if he's mental.
'What is this, the fucking Matrix? The "one"? What the hell does that mean, Frank?'
Frank grimaces and holds up his hands in a placatory gesture. 'I know, I know. It's weird, it's flaky. And I know that there's pretty much nothing solid we can put against him yet.' Frank pauses. 'But I also know I'm right about him. You must have had that kind of reaction before? He's guilty.'
'I agree he's not making me ready to strike his name off, but I'm not
picking up the same vibrations as you.'
'We sit on him,' says Frank. 'Give the cocky fucker a couple of hours and see how he likes being messed around.'
'That won't do anything,' says Harris to Frank's back. He is already heading for his office.
'Perhaps not,' he replies as he reaches the stairs. He stops and looks back at Harris. 'But it'll make me feel a lot better. Who knows, perhaps he'll have a fit of remorse and confess to everything?'
'I wouldn't hold my breath,' says Harris, but Frank isn't listening.
Forty-One
It's not the first time Ben Noone's found himself waiting in a police interview room. If Frank Keane thinks this shit's going to knock him off his stride, he's mistaken.
If he's honest, this is what he's been looking forward to since Monday.
Once Dean was dead there was no doubt in Ben Noone's mind that the cops would make the connection to The Tunnels.
That hadn't stopped him killing the writer.
Ferguson's autopsy won't show it, but as with many before in Liverpool, in the final reckoning it had been drink that killed Dean Quinner.
The vodka he'd been sculling most of Monday afternoon up at The Pilgrim and then at a succession of increasingly blurry bars on the way down to the river ensured his wits were gone when the time came. Maybe, thinks Noone, it might still have happened the way it did, but the condition he was in didn't help.
Sitting in J7, Noone replays the night.
It's past eleven when Quinner, as fried as an egg on a hot skillet, stumbles out of the last bar on Slater Street and heads for home through a dizzying maze of midweek drinkers. Noone watches him bump into a small knot of young lads, all white shirts and gelled hair. They laugh and part for him, pushing him away as if leprous, not yet pissed enough themselves to take offence. That might come later on the two o'clock exodus.
On the pavement Quinner straightens himself with the exaggerated care of the terminally blitzed.
'You can do this, feller,' he mutters, loud enough for a passing girl to hear. She cackles and grabs the arm of her friend. Trailed by Noone, Quinner heads slowly down Slater Street and picks up a kebab, most of which ends up on his jacket, but he makes it to the Albert Dock without incident. His route takes him past the front of Canning Place Police Headquarters.
Noone is careful to stay out of range of the CCTV cameras as best he can. He's dressed in a high-necked black jacket and a dark baseball cap. He stays on the side streets as much as possible and, because he guesses where Quinner is headed – to his flat on the docks – he is able to tail him from the front. The CCTV footage from in front of Canning Place is the clearest the MIT investigators will find of Quinner. He'd be picked up again on a camera overlooking the Maritime Museum and once more on one belonging to his block of apartments. The twenty-two-second clip shows him stopping and answering his phone. After a few moments he walks out of shot and it's the last time Dean Quinner's seen alive. Later, when Frank's going over the flickering blue and white images on the monitor at MIT, he'll peer closely at Quinner's image again and again as if, by concentrating hard, the end result will change.
Noone, standing in the shadows across the dock from the flats, makes the call as Quinner is reaching for his keys. He fumbles before answering.
'Dean? I need to explain something to you.'
Noone keeps his voice hesitant. He sounds vulnerable, contrite. He is convincing.
'I'm embarrassed about what happened. That thing with the wallet? I don't know what I was doing. Maybe pressure, I don't know. Do you have time to talk?'
Relief floods Quinner. This man couldn't have hurt Niall. He wants to talk. Suddenly Quinner sees what he's been doing: dramatising a small incident into something larger than it is.
'I'm down by the arena,' says Noone. 'Meet me there?'
In his befuddled state, Quinner doesn't click how Noone knows where he is.
He just goes.
The wind's picking up a little as Quinner starts to walk along the river on Kings Parade. For the first time Quinner's aware he's only wearing a thin jacket. To his left is the curving hulk of the Echo Arena, masking the city from view. At this time of night there's no one there.
Quinner walks carefully, mindful of the river racing past to his right. He's never liked staring at the waters of the Mersey. Here, black as treacle, it slides along the thick stone walls of the river walk without a sound. Quinner sits on a concrete bollard and waits for Noone.
Noone watches him all the way. After Quinner sits down, he checks that there is no one in sight before emerging. The taser is in the pocket of his black zip-up. He folds a gloved hand round it and walks swiftly across to Quinner.
There's no conversation. With a final look up and down the windswept promenade, Noone lifts out the taser and applies it to the writer's exposed neck. Quinner jerks and is still. Noone sits down next to him, supporting Quinner's unconscious form – someone helping a friend a little the worse for wear.
Noone finds Quinner's phone and throws it into the river. Standing, he drags Quinner upright and pulls him towards the low fence next to the water. Noone's much bigger than Quinner and has little problem tipping him over and onto the stone ledge. He hops over the fence and pushes the writer into the water. The tide is high and Quinner's body slips under and is gone. Noone vaults back over the fence and walks towards the city, his cap pulled down low. Less than a minute after Dean Quinner's been put in the Mersey, Noone is gone.
Forty-Two
Theresa Cooper isn't the sort of woman who takes setbacks well, and being deprived of the lead in the Peters case at the Tuesday briefing comes high on the scale of things that seriously piss her off. After the meeting she had driven to the largely deserted car park at a nearby Asda, stopped in the furthest corner and screamed out her frustration for five minutes. Then, checking that not a trace of it showed on her face, she drove back to Stanley Road and continued working.
By two on Thursday afternoon the fire's still burning.
If it kills her, she is going to find out one important thing to help this case along.
Cooper's been detailed to dig around into Terry Peters. The brief has been for background on all the Peters family but, after being brought up to speed by DI Harris about Terry Peters' affair with Maddy, it's Terry she's concentrating her efforts on.
The trouble is that there's virtually nothing. Everyone who comes into contact with him seems to say the same thing: he's basically a good guy.
His only obvious brush with the law has been the case brought by his ex. Cooper reads and re-reads the details and is forced to concur with the version of events that Peters had given in the interview with Harris and Keane: in frustration he'd broken a window and his ex had sustained a minor injury. From this she'd made maximum trouble, bringing charges against Terry Peters and making sure that the case didn't run out of steam. In the end, the punishment reflected what the court believed: that Peters was in the wrong but not dangerous.
After some more digging, Cooper finds the details of the divorce five years ago. The grounds are irreconcilable differences, no mention of cruelty. The wife got the house, custody of the only child and what looks to Cooper's eyes like a decent result. She's about to abandon that line of enquiry when a thought occurs to her. If Terry's ex-wife came out of the deal with pretty much everything, why was there so much bitterness? It could, of course, simply be the residue left when so many marriages collapse, but Cooper wonders if there might be something else.
It's probably worth a trip to Ainsdale to find out what Terry Peters had done to piss off the ex so much.
'Mrs Peters?'
The small dark-haired woman standing in the doorway of her house has her arms folded. 'No,' she says flatly. 'It was. Now it's Ms Flynn. My maiden name. You're DS Cooper?' Her voice inclines to the Lancashire rather than the Liverpool side of things. It can go either way in Southport.
Cooper nods and Flynn invites her inside with a movement of her head.
Th
e house on a middle-class estate in Ainsdale is modern, clean and completely absent of any character. The rooms look like they've been cleaned that morning.
In the living room, the woman offers a hand. 'Stella,' she says. Cooper can't tell if the staccato style is natural or simply the result of nerves. Some people just can't operate normally around the police, although if she had to bet, Theresa is pretty sure that Stella Flynn doesn't come into that category.
Cooper looks at a photo of a serious-looking teenager – was there any other kind? – in a frame above the fireplace.
'Your son?'
Stella Flynn's face blooms into a glorious smile. It transforms her, and it's easy to see the impact she'd have had in her youth.
'Jacob. He's eighteen this year. Hard to believe.'
'He looks like his father.'
As rapidly as it had arrived, the smile vanishes from Stella Flynn's face.
'I can't see it.'
Cooper doesn't say anything.
'Tea?' says Stella and Cooper nods. When Stella heads for the kitchen, Cooper follows her.
'What school does your son go to?'
'College,' corrects Stella, filling the kettle. 'KGV. He wants to be an engineer. Loves making things work properly, does Jacob. Always has done.' She presses the on switch and lifts two mugs from a cupboard. 'Milk?'
Cooper nods. 'No sugar.'
'How has he coped since the divorce? It can be hard for boys.'
Stella bangs the mugs onto the kitchen counter with a little more force than Cooper believes is strictly necessary.
'It was a while ago. He's fine.'
Stella turns as the kettle begins to hiss. 'Look, what's all this about? The divorce? I heard about . . . what happened. But we don't see any of Terry's family since we split up.' Her ex-husband's name is spoken with venom. Stella lifts out the milk from the fridge. 'Obviously I'm sad about it. Nicky's a nice boy.' She glances up at Cooper.
'Were he and Jacob close at any stage?'
'No.' The word is spat out. 'Like I said, we haven't seen anything of them for five years. I spoke to Maddy in the shops once but that's about it.' She faces Cooper square on. 'What's this about? I want to help, but I can't see what I can do.'
Down Among the Dead Men Page 17