Sirens

by Joseph Knox

  ‘Then who can you trust?’

  The Bug was walking out of the service station, carrying his pink wig in one hand and a carrier bag in the other. A family of four stopped and watched him go by, the youngest child hiding behind his mother. The Bug got halfway past them, then turned and shouted:

  ‘Boo!’

  They all jumped and he carried on to the car, laughing to himself.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, and hung up the phone.

  7

  West Kensington. We arrived around two in the afternoon. It was like driving into another world. The buildings were sand-blasted, brilliant white, and the people were slim, tanned. Happy. The address took us off North End Road to a gated Victorian mansion block named Fitzgerald Avenue. The Bug pulled up and squinted down at the address. There was a six-foot gate operated by an intercom system. Between it and the ornate building there was a well-tended garden, and a driveway about the size of a tennis court.

  I examined the keys that Smithson had given me. The fob on the chain.

  ‘Coming?’

  The Bug twitched. ‘I’m all for ruining lives, Aidan, but I draw the line at my own.’

  ‘Keep the car running.’ I got out, crossed the road, and held the fob to the touchpad on the gate. The lock shot open. I crossed the courtyard to the building’s entrance. The larger key opened the front door. Into a quiet, neat hallway.

  I went up the stairs, on to the first-floor hallway and came to 1C. The address that Smithson had given me. I took a breath and unlocked the door. It opened to silence and stillness. I stepped inside, looked about me. I was standing in a small corridor, leading through to a good-sized lounge. I went straight on into the two bedrooms. There was no one there. It seemed like no one had been there for some time. I went back through to the lounge, to the one thing out of place, there, on the coffee table.

  It was a mobile phone.

  It was Isabelle Rossiter’s mobile phone.

  I picked it up, stunned, and then stopped.

  There was a note beneath it. Clear, looped handwriting.

  I’m sorry, it said.

  For a second I couldn’t move. Then I walked out, closing the door quietly behind me.

  The Bug started up smoothly and pulled out into the road. He weaved from block to block for a few minutes before parking up in an anonymous row of family cars and turning off the engine.

  ‘What was it?’ he said.

  I took out the phone, hardly believing it myself.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Belonged to Isabelle Rossiter. It went missing from her flat the night she died.’

  If the Bug’d had eyebrows, they might have shot up.

  Shaking, I examined the phone. Switched it on. It immediately began to vibrate with accumulated backlogged missed calls, texts, voicemails. I tried to ignore them. Accessed the messages. Sent items. I went straight to the message she’d sent me at gone midnight, one of the first times we ever spoke.

  Zain knows.

  I deleted it.

  Returned to the sent messages folder. I worked from the oldest through to the newest. The early ones were mundane. Where and whens.

  I reached the texts from the night she died. There’d been a rally, back and forth, after I left her flat. They made certain things very clear. I scrolled through them, reading and rereading. Sinking. I backed out of the messages.

  To the pictures folder. I had seen files there before. Throwaway, night-out stuff. Every shot of Glen, Catherine, Sarah Jane, Zain and Grip had been methodically erased. There was just one video file left. It had been recorded after I left her flat. Sunday, November fifteenth.

  The day she died.

  I opened it. A tab at the bottom of the screen showed it was twenty-three minutes long. A blurry, moving image of Isabelle’s flat appeared.

  Then, so did she.

  She was breathing quickly. She placed the phone down on a surface. The sofa, I thought. Then she adjusted it so the camera watched the other half of the room.

  The desk.

  There was the sound of the bolt. Isabelle unlocking the door. Then she crossed the room to the desk, still wearing her going-out clothes from the night before. She was shivering. Cold or scared or both.

  Then she waited for someone.

  We were two minutes in. There were three bleeps and the screen went blank. The battery had died. I could hear the Bug, breathing heavily next to me.

  ‘Now what?’ When I didn’t say anything, he went on: ‘You need a charger for that, you need—’

  ‘We can get one on the way.’

  ‘Why? Where are we going?’

  ‘Back,’ I said.

  8

  North.

  Milton Keynes. Birmingham. Stoke. We hit traffic on our way back into the city. People were getting off work, sluggish and beaten by four days of the week. Then the slow-drip, water-torture commute to and from it all. Personally, I was grateful to sit and wait for a change. For the first time in a long time, I gathered my thoughts.

  Looked around, watched the world, saw things and forgot myself.

  It had been dark for a couple of hours. When our headlights penetrated the gloomy interiors of surrounding cars, all kinds of characters were lit up like staged vignettes. Some looked back at us, blank-eyed, wondering what kind of couple the Bug and I were. Some stared vacantly straight ahead. I felt something lurch inside me when we started up again. A part of me could have sat in that traffic for ever. The end, I thought. It’s only the end.

  Once inside the city, we made our first stop. I bought a phone charger, looked up an address and got back in the car.

  The second stop was more difficult. The Bug made a face when I gave him the directions. We drove out there, that undisturbed suburban tension. There was only one car in the driveway.

  ‘Whatever happens, don’t come inside,’ I said to the Bug. ‘I mean it this time.’ He nodded, not sure what was happening.

  I went up the path, calm, cold, and rang the bell. There was nothing but the wide-open silent night around me. The girl opened the door. She was very pretty. Very young. She reminded me of Isabelle, and I had to force myself not to ask about her. The girl tilted her head when I didn’t say anything. The start of a smile. She didn’t feel any way about me. She was just nervous. I asked if I could speak to her mother.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news.’ She took a step back, hesitated, and called her mother.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

  It was almost an hour later when I went back down the path. Heavy. Low. The lump in my throat felt like a tumour.

  I got in the car and closed the door.

  ‘Everything OK?’ said the Bug, looking me over.

  ‘Beetham Tower,’ I said. He nodded and started up.

  I put a hand to my chest, felt my heart beating, then the bulk of Isabelle’s phone in my jacket pocket. I pressed, searching, until I found it. The smooth, firm outline of the wedding ring.

  9

  Detective Alan Kernick began his career as a police officer. He’d bounced around divisions. Serious Crime. Murder. Vice. Before landing protection detail in what was then called Special Branch but is now commonly referred to as Counter Terrorism Command. The role sits somewhere between the security services and police work. Although its officers aren’t part of the CID, they’re entitled to use the prefix ‘Detective’, and many of them do.

  I had no doubt he was an above-average operator, an intelligent man and a tough customer. Through the role, he had come into contact with a string of high-profile VIPs, MPs, their families and friends.

  Among them, David Rossiter.

  Unfortunately for him, I needed to exploit that connection. I needed to get back into David Rossiter’s penthouse on the forty-

  fifth floor.

  Detective Kernick walked briskly towards the BMW. All gleaming black paint and chrome. The same car that had picked me up off the
street a month before and transported me to Beetham.

  Out of the frying pan.

  He stood beside the car, clicked the automatic unlock button on his key and opened the door. He sat down with a satisfied sigh. I waited a moment, reached both hands over his head, drew the cord tight around his neck:

  Pulled.

  He jumped. Struggled for a second and then started to panic, banging his hands on the dashboard.

  ‘Stop,’ I said, relaxing the cord a little. He put both hands to his neck, trying to get his fingers beneath the noose. ‘Stop,’ I said again. ‘Hands on the wheel.’ He moved them immediately. Held them up to appease me. ‘On the wheel.’

  He grabbed it, gripped it tightly with both hands.

  I relaxed slightly. Let him breathe.

  Panting. ‘Wha-what do you want?’

  ‘I need to see David Rossiter.’

  ‘Waits ?’ He thought about it while he got his breath back. ‘Fuck you.’

  I sat back, pulled the cord tight and counted to five.

  He struggled again, hands straight to his neck, then waving in the air as a signal to me. Stop.

  I relaxed it again. ‘You get five seconds added every time.’

  ‘Fuck y—’ I sat back, pulled the cord tight and counted to ten. He made a desperate, hoarse shouting noise from the back of his throat, using up a lot of air. Afterwards, he slumped noticeably. When I relaxed the cord he went into a weak, dry coughing fit. I gave him a minute to get his breath back.

  ‘I need to see David Rossiter,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t just—’

  ‘Deep breath, Alan.’ I sat back, pulled the cord tight. About five seconds in he started panting, gulping. Trying to say:

  OK, OK, OK.

  I counted to fifteen. When I relaxed the cord again, he went slack with it. Took a couple of strong, deep breaths, in then out, in then out. Then he started to retch and I smelled sick. I relaxed the cord a little so he could dribble it down his front.

  ‘I need to see David Rossiter,’ I said. Then quietly, ‘The next time’s twenty seconds, Alan.’

  He waited a couple of minutes before he said anything.

  Playing for time while he got his breath back. Thinking of what he could do. In reality, there was nothing. Even if he could somehow get free, he was in such a weakened state that I could easily overpower him. He cleared his throat. He was finding it difficult to speak.

  ‘OK,’ he said finally. ‘OK, OK …’ He took another minute to breathe. ‘Whatever’s going on, we can talk about—’

  I sat back, pulled the cord tight and counted to twenty.

  He banged hysterically on the dashboard, the window, then planted both hands on the steering wheel, sounding the horn.

  It was a good sign.

  He must have known immediately it was his only chance of raising the alarm, and in the dark, subterranean car park it was deafeningly loud. If he was doing it now, he was at the end of his rope.

  Well that made two of us.

  I pulled back as hard as I could, almost garrotting him with the cord. He took both hands off the wheel, let out a blood-curdling sound, somewhere between a gurgle and a scream.

  Afterwards, he went slack. I finished counting and relaxed again. He went into another coughing fit but kept rocking, minimally, when it stopped. He was crying.

  ‘I need to see David Rossiter,’ I said.

  He didn’t say anything now. Just nodded his head slightly as he continued to cry. His hands were shaking and the car smelled of piss, sick and fear. It felt appropriate.

  10

  We avoided walking through the lobby, taking a grimy car park stairwell up four flights to a different lift entrance. I had taken Kernick’s key card. He was still struggling to breathe and walked heavily. There were tears in his eyes.

  ‘Have your fuckin’ job for this,’ he croaked.

  ‘What job would that be?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Look, you can come up or not, but I promise you’ll be interested in what I’ve got to say.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Isabelle.’

  ‘They’ve just buried her, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Zain Carver,’ I said.

  Kernick frowned.

  ‘I’m in trouble. I’m going away. I think I can put it all on him and give everyone some closure. But I need to see Rossiter first. I need to know that I’m walking from it.’

  He glared at me. ‘You could’ve just asked.’

  ‘You would have said no. If there’s still a problem between us in an hour’s time, you can do what you want. I know I’m through.’ I used his key card to call the lift and we waited for it in silence. When it arrived there was no one inside. We got in. Pressed for the forty-fifth floor. Kernick leaned on the handrail, never taking his eyes off me.

  His pupils had almost entirely absorbed his irises and it made him look black-eyed and hyper-aware. I didn’t look directly at him but watched his reflection in the mirrors and reflective steel that surrounded us. We went endlessly up.

  ‘You first,’ I said when we reached the forty-fifth floor. Kernick walked out of the lift, started down the hall. When he passed the last door before Rossiter’s, he banged on it, trying to raise the alarm.

  I pushed his face into the wall.

  His nose started bleeding.

  He looked around wildly, tears in his eyes. Then I slapped him, turned him, shoved him forward to his boss’s penthouse. He drew himself up and I took a step back.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘The day I’ve had, I’ll overdo it.’

  He wiped his nose and slumped down again. I went forward, put the key in Rossiter’s door and opened it. Kernick went ahead of me. David Rossiter was sitting in a chair with just the reading lamp on the coffee table for light. With the near-panoramic view and the glow of the city from outside, it made me feel like we were standing on thin air.

  ‘Forget somethi—’ he said, before he saw that I was standing beside Kernick.

  ‘Pour us all a drink, David. We need to talk.’

  ‘What’s the meaning of this?’

  ‘Pour us all a drink, David,’ I repeated. ‘We need to talk.’ Rossiter’s eyes went briefly to Kernick, absorbing his disarray.

  ‘Quite,’ he said, standing, moving to the bar and fixing us three strong ones. Using the opportunity to regain control of the room, the situation, he strode confidently towards us, handing both Kernick and me our drinks. Then he went back to his chair, the lamp illuminating his face, making him the focal point of the darkened room. ‘Won’t you take a seat?’ he said, with the practised semblance of a man unfazed.

  ‘You heard him.’ I pushed Kernick forward. He sat down with his back to me, facing his boss. The MP looked closely at his friend for the first time, then up at me.

  ‘Have you lost your mind?’

  I nodded. ‘I’ve found out a few things about your daughter as well.’

  ‘A few weeks too late,’ he said, stone-cold. He tried not to let his interest show. ‘Come on, then. Out with it.’

  Kernick cleared his throat, also eager to regain some lost ground. ‘Waits says Carver’s responsible. Says he can prove it.’

  Rossiter’s eyes flicked up to me. ‘Is this true?’

  ‘No.’

  Kernick half-turned. ‘You said—’

  I didn’t take my eyes off Rossiter. ‘I know what I said. Now I’m saying something else.’

  Rossiter stared at me until the bitter twist of a smile leaked out from his ego and on to his face. He couldn’t help himself. He gave a small, sardonic chuckle. Spoke to Kernick.

  ‘Don’t you see, Alan. The father did it. That’s what you’re driving at, isn’t it, Waits?’

  ‘You tell me, Mr Rossiter.’

  ‘I’ll tell you two things, Aidan. And I know you have a problem with listening, so pay attention. The first is that I had nothing to do with my daughter’s death. The second is a piece of advice.’

  I waited.

&nb
sp; ‘Get yourself out of my sight. Out of this room. Out of this building.’ His voice had steadily risen and he went on, pure venom. ‘Get yourself out of this town. Then fuck off this island and don’t come back. You’re finished.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Who do you think are? Beating people up, strong-arming your way into my home. Accusing me … You. Accusing me of harming my daughter?’ He stood up. ‘Get out. Now. I will not ask again.’

  ‘There aren’t any cameras here, Mr Rossiter. I can do without the theatrics.’

  ‘I assure you—’

  ‘Sit a minute, listen to what I have to say, and we can all walk out of here. If you want to fight about it, fine. It doesn’t matter to me if none of us leave.’ He looked at me as if in a new light. He frowned, strode to the bar and made himself another drink. The cognac that Sarah Jane had bought him. He held it up in a toast to me and sat down.

  ‘When Isabelle ran away, you didn’t report it for a month. Why?’

  ‘I’m not sure you’d understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘As I said before, a delicate situation. My wife’s an unwell woman. An unstable one. Isabelle had been gone for some time before it was noticed.’

  ‘Your wife seemed fine when I saw her.’

  ‘When you …?’

  ‘I was at Isabelle’s funeral. Only one of you looked unstable to me.’

  ‘Be that as it may.’

  ‘Kernick,’ I said to the detective’s back. ‘It’s your job to safeguard your boss. By extension, his family. Where were you during this month?’

  ‘Like he said, Alexa didn’t twig until Isabelle had been gone for a while.’

  ‘So it was nothing to do with Sarah Jane?’

  Rossiter’s expression hardened. His eyes drifted subtly to Kernick, still sitting with his back to me. It looked like they were trying to get their stories straight via telekinesis. A few seconds passed, then they both spoke at once.

  ‘It doesn’t—’

  ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘Let’s start from the beginning. The night we all met …’

  Kernick stretched his neck and sat up. ‘The night I found you pissed, passed out on the street?’