Quieter Than Killing

by Sarah Hilary

  ‘Tell me what laws you’ve broken, and I’ll do that. Arrest you.’

  ‘Yeah? Then what – phone Mum and tell her you did it?’ Daring him. ‘Tell Dad?’

  ‘They don’t like what you’re doing any more than I do.’

  ‘They don’t know, any more than you do.’

  Stand-off. Like they were kids again, squabbling over sweets stolen from their mum’s secret jar. But Sol had a point; Noah knew what their parents would say. He’d grown up being lectured on the value of family. You always always put family first, no matter how rotten. A bad family’s better than an empty sty. You don’t cut off a stinking finger.

  Sol was remembering the lectures too. He locked his hands loosely, showing their shape to Noah. ‘This’s family, man. You ain’t breaking this.’ He dragged his hands apart, a knuckle at a time, before laying them palm-down on the table. ‘No way.’

  ‘You’d be good,’ Noah said. ‘You’ve got the eye. I wasn’t kidding about that e-fit. It wouldn’t all be snitching. There could be a future in it. No future in what you’re doing right now.’

  His phone rang, before Sol could respond.

  Noah stood up to take the call. ‘DS Jake.’

  ‘Bevan was working every night there was an attack.’ It was Ron Carling. ‘His shifts match the assaults and their locations. At the time of the first two, he was in or around Holloway. Then he moved across town. Best of all? He was in St Thomas’s the night Kyle was taken there.’

  Sol stayed at the table, pushing crumbs around his plate with the ball of his thumb.

  Noah walked the call into the sitting room. ‘Does the boss know?’

  ‘Her line’s busy. I’m going to try again in a bit. But Bevan’s our vigilante, got to be. Just wish we knew where he was.’

  ‘He didn’t turn up for work?’ Noah checked the time: 9.50 p.m. ‘He has a shift at ten.’

  ‘No sign of him or the Astra. The boss was right, we should’ve busted his flat.’

  ‘If he’s taken Finn . . . We don’t want to panic him.’

  Ron sieved a sound of frustration through his teeth. ‘All this hanging around’s getting on my tits. I’d thought the DCS’d be packing her own Enforcer, what with coming from Manchester.’

  ‘I wouldn’t rule that out as a possibility . . . Still no sign of Carole?’

  ‘Nothing. If she’s pulling Bevan’s strings, she’s doing it from a distance.’

  ‘I wouldn’t rule that out either,’ Noah said. ‘Would you?’

  48

  ‘I ask you to find my boy.’ Aidan Duffy looked Lorna Ferguson over from her dagger heels to her polished hair. ‘And this is what you bring me? An ego in a shiny shirt.’

  ‘I’m here to draw a line,’ Ferguson said, ‘under the game-playing, Aidan.’

  He opened his throat at the ceiling, laughing loud and long. When he brought his eyes down, he didn’t look at Ferguson. ‘Oh Marnie Jane Rome! Has it come to this? This cunt telling you how to do your job.’

  ‘We’re looking for Finn,’ Marnie told him. ‘But we haven’t found him yet.’

  ‘Tell us about Huell Bevan.’

  Duffy ignored Ferguson’s question, his eyes fixed on Marnie. It wasn’t forty-eight hours since she’d seen him but he’d lost weight; it showed in the bones of his face.

  She said, as gently as she could, ‘We’re looking, but we need your help.’

  Ferguson nodded. ‘Huell Bevan—’

  Aidan mimicked her nod, before turning it into a snarling shake of his head. ‘Piss off, DCS Cunt, whoever you are. Make this girl’s life hell on your own time. I need her right now.’ He locked his eyes to Marnie’s. ‘My boy needs her.’

  ‘That,’ Ferguson folded her arms, showcasing a gold watch, ‘is exactly why you’ll cooperate.’

  Aidan leaned back, also folding his arms, giving her a full voltage blast of the Irish charm, black curls, stormy eyes, mouth softly smiling. ‘Nice shoes. Did you pick them out yourself?’

  Ferguson blinked. ‘Why’re you asking? Because you miss getting to pick your own clothes in here? A shame you didn’t consider that before you embezzled close on a million pounds.’

  He heard her out, his head tipped to catch every word. Then, ‘I only ask because they make your feet look fat.’ Each syllable smooth and round. ‘Little piggy feet. Trotters.’

  ‘I thought you wanted our help, Aidan. This is a funny way to go about getting that.’

  He mirrored her body language but carelessly, as if it was an insult to his skill. To Marnie he said, ‘You put up with this every day? How’re you not reaching for the knives?’

  Ferguson opened her mouth to speak but he cut her short, sitting forward with his teeth bared. ‘What? WHAT?’ Flinging the last word until it hit the walls and bounced.

  Ferguson recoiled. Marnie willed her to be quiet, to let him burn through the anger and fear for his child. When he’d done that, he’d be able to talk to them.

  But Ferguson wasn’t seeing a frightened father. She could only see a con man and convict, her enemy. ‘Was that a threat against a serving officer—’

  There was a second when Marnie thought Aidan would lunge across the table.

  Instead he pushed both hands into his hair and tilted his head back as if it was someone else’s. ‘I wouldn’t threaten you. You’d like it too much. You’d take it home and pet it, all night long. My threat . . .’ Drawing out the sting from the honey in his words but slowly, slowly. ‘You’d lie in your bed with it, making it last, making it my silver Irish tongue between your legs. Moaning your fucking lungs up.’ He gave a laugh; he’d made her blush. ‘You like men like me, dirty curls and white teeth, blood on our hands. You stupid, stupid cunt.’ He brought his hands down to the table, folding them there. The weight loss was in his fingers too. His eyes shone with sleeplessness.

  ‘This is what you’re going to do,’ he told Ferguson, ‘and not because I say so, but because this girl’s the best chance you have of making this madness stop. You’re going to shut up. You’re going to stand up, in those tottering tart’s shoes of yours and walk out of here with your head held high for the guards who’re pretending they didn’t just hear me making you wet. You’re going to stop driving this girl into the ground with your passive-aggressive bollocks, because this—? Is the detective.’ Pointing his eyes at Marnie. ‘She’s going to solve this case because it’s what she does, it’s who she is. God help anyone, cunt or otherwise, who gets in her way.’

  ‘You have a funny understanding of how a police interview works.’ Ferguson’s voice was clenched. ‘However, in the interests of moving this along . . .’

  She got to her feet, not looking at Marnie or Aidan. ‘I’ll be outside.’ Her heels snagged at the floor as she walked from the room.

  ‘Thanks be to fuck.’ Aidan leaned back in his chair, loosening the fist he’d made of his hands. It hadn’t registered with Ferguson, but he was frantic for news. ‘Now tell me.’

  ‘We think Huell Bevan has Finn. Bevan is a friend of Jacob’s. He’s the man who brought the message into here. The threat.’

  ‘Huell Bevan.’ Aidan tasted the name in his mouth. ‘That’s a Welshman?’

  ‘He didn’t turn up for work yesterday. We have a warrant for his arrest, and we think he knows it. We don’t know how he knows it.’

  ‘Oh no now, wait.’ Lining his thumbs up on the table. ‘Wait. You’ve not given him a reason to panic. You’ve not done that.’

  ‘No reason we’re aware of. We want Finn safe. We want him found, and safe.’ She paused, to give him space to calm down. ‘Bevan was seen yesterday, leaving newspaper clippings. For me.’

  He let out a long breath, turning his head until it clicked. ‘Saying that Stephen Keele was found hanged in his cell.’

  That pain again, everywhere at once. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Because those were my orders.’ A muscle lengthened in his cheek. ‘It’s what I was told to do to keep my son alive. Your boy for mine, tha
t was the deal. Only I broke it and now you’re saying this bastard’s gone to ground, under your radar.’

  ‘We’ll find him. I’ll find him.’

  ‘You will,’ he agreed. ‘Because no matter what words I said to get rid of that?’ Nodding towards the door. ‘If the stakes get any higher, I’ll be improvising rope from whatever I can find.’

  ‘That might be tricky.’ She didn’t flinch from his stare. ‘DCS Ferguson’s arranging for Stephen to be moved to another cell.’

  ‘Don’t tell me she’s after interviewing him as well? How many bad boy fantasies does that bitch need?’ He showed his teeth in a savage smile. ‘I’m not enough for her?’

  ‘You’d think.’

  He laughed. ‘I like you, Marnie Jane. That’s the trouble. I wish I didn’t. It’s just going to make what comes next really, really hard.’

  More ultimatums. More fear masquerading as machismo.

  ‘You’re not going to kill anyone. Because you want to be able to look your son in the eye when I bring him to you. You don’t want to be wasting precious visiting hours talking to your lawyer about extenuating circumstances.’ She held his gaze, unsmiling. ‘And in any case, you’d have killed him by now if you’d figured out a way to do that and still be a father to Finn.’

  His face flickered, his eyes closing for a full second. ‘I’m not good with threats, it’s true. But you bring me my boy?’ In his softest voice. ‘I’ll do it for you, as a gift.’

  Marnie was silent, studying him.

  ‘What? Oh you’re thinking you should record that. Threatening behaviour.’ He lifted an arm, draping it over the back of his chair, hanging his wrist. ‘Maybe even charge me. Offences against the person, making threats to kill. You can’t just accept it as a gift from me to you?’

  ‘How is it a gift?’

  ‘How’s it not?’ He wrinkled his straight nose. ‘You’re not telling me you’re sorry for him after that story about his ma and da.’

  ‘Was it a story? It sounded like the truth.’

  ‘My Irish charm. We can weave a tale from a wisp of cloud.’ He straightened in the chair. ‘But say it’s the truth, even so. He murdered your parents. Unless you’re saving him for yourself, you should want him dead for that.’

  ‘Should I? I want answers. I won’t get them if he’s hanging at the end of an improvised rope.’

  ‘My boy’s in pain. He’s scared. For that alone I’d kill the bastard with my bare teeth.’ He widened his eyes on her face. ‘But you’re better than me, Marnie Jane. Or you’re harder. You can live with what he did. I couldn’t. I can’t.’

  Because she was doing her job instead of lying curled in a corner somewhere, keening for her loss? He thought it made her hard. He had no idea.

  ‘Help me to find Finn. I’m not interested in threatening Stephen, or anyone else. But I’m interested in your friendship with Jacob Collins, and his with Huell Bevan.’

  Aidan scrubbed a hand at his head. ‘Jacob said the message came through the healthcare lot, someone he’d never seen before.’

  ‘Bevan works as a paramedic. He’s on Jacob’s visitor list.’ Was she setting up Collins for another assault? More broken bones, or worse? ‘You said you were given orders to put Jacob in hospital two days ago. Was that true?’

  He looked at her, obliquely.

  ‘Given what you’ve said about threats, I imagine it was a lie. You knew Jacob was connected to the blackmailer and you wanted to send a message back. Is that closer to the truth?’

  ‘The only truth that matters is where my boy is. Jacob doesn’t know. You can question him so you’re blue in the face and you’ll be no further forward. I was after saving you time.’

  ‘Did Jacob give you Bevan’s name?’

  Aidan shut his eyes.

  ‘He gave you Bevan’s name,’ she deduced. ‘But you didn’t give it to me. We could’ve arrested him two days ago. He could be in a police cell right now, telling us where Finn is.’

  It explained Aidan’s fury when Ferguson kept saying Bevan’s name.

  He’d known the identity of his son’s kidnapper, and he’d kept it from the police.

  ‘You thought you’d deal with this yourself, is that it? Friends of yours on the outside. The chance to flex your muscle, remind everyone not to mess with Aidan Duffy. For all we know that’s what sent Bevan into hiding – your need to be in control.’

  He moved his mouth tenderly but didn’t open his eyes, or speak.

  ‘Do you know what violence is?’ Marnie waited for him to look at her. ‘It’s not broken bones or a face full of fist marks, or showing them who’s boss. It’s sitting in here keeping secrets to make yourself feel big and brave, while your child is out there alone.’ She let him see her anger for the first time. ‘Violence is me bringing you the news of what your secrets did to your son.’

  Aidan propped the heels of both hands to the sockets of his eyes. When he spoke, his voice shook. ‘Jacob doesn’t know how to find Huell, no one does. God help me, they looked. They did. And that’s on me.’ He wiped at his eyes. ‘He’s a fucking ghost. No one—’

  ‘He lives in Feltham and drives a stolen Astra.’ Marnie stood up. ‘You need better friends, or more faith in the police.’

  ‘I’ve faith in you.’ He looked up at her. ‘I do.’

  ‘Stay away from Jacob, and from Stephen.’ She pulled on her coat. ‘When was the last time you got a message from Bevan?’

  ‘Two days ago. The hanging.’

  So Huell had faked the newspaper clipping and delivered it before he knew whether or not Aidan had carried out the kill order. He’d been sure of himself, confident he had Aidan in a corner, and that Aidan was a killer. He hadn’t bothered waiting for the news to be published, in a hurry to let Marnie know what’d been done. Why? He’d taken his time to avenge Valerie Rawling, and Mazi Yeboah. What was making him panic now?

  ‘Does he know Stephen’s still alive?’ she asked Aidan.

  ‘I don’t know, but Jacob won’t have told him otherwise. I made sure of that.’

  Threats, again. His one-time friend warned off.

  ‘You’re assuming Jacob is Bevan’s only contact, that there’s no one else passing information in or out.’

  ‘There’s no one.’ Aidan blanked his eyes at the idea.

  He stayed seated, looking up at her in her coat, ready to leave. He didn’t want her to go, but he wouldn’t ask her to stay. Out there, she could be looking for his son.

  ‘So it was Jacob who gave you the details of the vigilante assaults?’

  ‘Bevan, via Jacob.’

  ‘And the shoebox,’ Marnie said.

  ‘The shoebox . . .’ He shook his head. ‘That was Stephen.’

  ‘He told you where to look for it, or he told you what was in it?’

  ‘Told me he’d hidden something in the house. A box’s all he said. And where he’d put it.’

  ‘And you passed that information to Huell Bevan.’

  ‘He needed feeding,’ Aidan said, ‘have you never owned a dog? You have to feed them scraps between meals, to keep their jaws busy.’

  Stephen hadn’t hired Tobias Midori’s gang to steal the shoebox. That was down to Huell Bevan.

  ‘You thought you could fob him off with scraps, even after he’d told you what he was doing, and what he wanted.’

  ‘He wanted your boy in a corner. Like mine. The hanging . . . All that talk came later.’ Aidan clenched his hands. ‘I thought it was a game like any other. This place’s made of the games you play to stay safe, get through. That’s what I thought I was doing – all I thought I was doing, and I’m an arsehole, I know, an arrogant arsehole who can’t keep his own child safe.’

  Marnie looked down at him, feeling the hard pull of his pain. ‘Tell me about Finn.’

  ‘He’s a fish. He’s my little fish. Loves the sea, loves the sand and the waves, and the funfair. Fearless with it. Hates cruelty. Not— He’s not like me. He’s better than that, but it hurts him. The w
ay he is, the way the world is. Like a layer’s missing off him. I was after teaching him to toughen up, get his fists between him and the world, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.’ He pushed a hand deep into his pocket and even like this, grieving for his son, he knew how to pick his moment, conning the guards into looking the other way as he took out a scrap of neon-blue fur fabric so man-made it crackled with static. Stuck to the fur: two white discs with black dots inside. ‘Googly eyes . . . This’s how I knew they had him. I won this cat for Finn at the fair one year. He took it everywhere. Those bastards ripped it up.’ He smoothed the fur between his fingers. ‘They ripped it up.’

  ‘Are you absolutely certain that Jacob doesn’t know how to find Huell Bevan?’

  ‘As certain as I am that you’re standing there. He didn’t know the bastard, only met him because he’s asthmatic and has to see the healthcare team every once in a while. If I’d been short of breath then Bevan could’ve told me to my face what he’d done.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have done that,’ Marnie said automatically. ‘Too risky. He likes to keep things at arm’s length. He’s been very careful not to be caught, up until this point.’

  ‘And now he’s gone to ground. To wherever he’s keeping Finn.’

  She saw the heat of tears in his eyes. ‘We’ll find him. He wants attention, that’s why he started this. He’s not going to end it quietly.’

  ‘You’ve got to give him hope.’ Aidan returned the scrap of blue fur to his pocket. ‘If he thinks it’s over, he’ll cut his losses. You have to let him hope that he can get what he wants.’

  Marnie said nothing. She’d shared enough, to get the answers she needed, but she wasn’t going to over-share. Not when a child’s life was at stake.

  ‘What’re you going to do?’ Aidan asked her.

  ‘My job.’ She looked down at him. ‘You need to do yours.’

  She didn’t have to spell it out.

  ‘Finn’s dad,’ he said softly. ‘The only job worth a damn.’

  Lorna Ferguson was waiting at the far end of the corridor. She looked Marnie in the eye and if her ego was demolished or even only bruised, she didn’t let it show. ‘One down.’