The Silent Room

by Mari Hannah

  Sensitive to the movement, Caroline grabbed it before he could stop the video. ‘Let it run on a few seconds after the Audi pulls away.’

  Taking his hand away, Ryan did as she asked. Still he couldn’t hear anything. In the end, he turned the volume up as high as it would go and, sure enough, he heard a very faint purring sound. Indistinct. Nothing he could identify or use in evidence. He certainly didn’t hear what his clever twin was insisting was a second vehicle. He’d have to wait and hope that the enhancement he’d commissioned privately would throw light on her theory, one way or the other.

  Even without it, Caroline was adamant. ‘It sounds like an old diesel to me,’ she said.

  39

  Eloise O’Neil hadn’t slept well. With no food in her apartment, she’d breakfasted at a cafe on her way to work, a simple poached egg on toast and coffee. The news headlines were depressing: more bushfires in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. Strong winds making matters worse. A state of emergency declared.

  With problems closer to home occupying her thoughts, she tuned out the radio. All night, she’d stewed over her angry encounter with DC King and his refusal to share information vital to her case. She’d emailed his guv’nor a formal request for full disclosure of files relating to the surveillance operation on Jack Fenwick, including the names of individuals he was accused of associating with. Ryan too. She wanted the lot.

  So far Organized Crime hadn’t responded.

  The Express Quest packaging she’d retrieved from Ryan’s cottage had also kept her awake. She didn’t want to believe there was anything sinister in it. Despite the trouble he was in, she rather liked Ryan. Felt sorry for him even. Everyone in the force knew that his father had died a hero, fallen in the line of duty, a memorial stone erected in his name at force HQ. Although Ryan didn’t know it, she’d seen him paying his respects on more than one occasion. Now he was in disgrace, suspended without charge, the case against him as weak as any she’d handled since she’d joined Professional Standards almost three years ago – and all because of Maguire. Ryan had lost both parents, his best friend, his sister was blind and, according to O’Neil’s source, he wasn’t having any luck in the love department either.

  The guy deserved a break.

  Secretly, she wanted to clear him of any wrongdoing – taking time off mid-shift was hardly a hanging offence – but first she had to be sure that he was telling the truth. She’d collected every scrap of shredded paper from Ryan’s bin, raising an action to have it weighed in the box to see if the postage was correct. As soon as she got to work, she sent the package off for forensic examination, hoping that scientists might prove whether or not it had ever contained anything, other than the shredded paper Ryan had insisted was in it when it arrived. Someone’s idea of a joke, he suggested, as they said their goodbyes – an attempt to frame him and throw doubt on his credibility.

  Well, it had certainly done that.

  Drawing her eyes away from a rain-lashed window, O’Neil scanned the room, finding Maguire. She hadn’t shared her recent find with him. He’d be sure to twist it to suit his particular point of view, spreading malicious gossip around the station about Ryan. What, she wondered, was behind their mutual dislike? She hadn’t given either officer the satisfaction of knowing that she was interested in the reason behind it. She couldn’t deny she was. The issue had bugged her during the small hours. No one in her immediate team seemed any the wiser. If she had to take a punt on it, she’d bet on Maguire being the one at fault.

  He had his feet up as usual, his head in the back pages of the Sun. Thoroughly sick of his underhand methods, she was anxious to write his next appraisal. When she marked him down, he’d be shifted from her department. If by chance he wasn’t, she intended to request a sideways move, perhaps to the Murder Investigation Team. Two SIOs were retiring in the next few months and she had her eye on a transfer.

  Sensing her gaze, Maguire lifted his head from his crossword puzzle. Taking in the clock above the door, he ignored her in favour of the paper.

  God forbid that he’d do any work before nine.

  Wind and rain rattled the windows. O’Neil shivered. Drawing her cardigan around her shoulders, she sat up straight. Time to do some meaningful work. ‘Any news on Nicholas Wardle?’ she asked.

  ‘Some.’

  The rude bugger didn’t even look up. All O’Neil could see of him were hands gripping the newspaper and the front-page headline, a revelation she assumed had come from Alex Ferguson: I GAVE BECKS PUSH OVER POSH.

  Lucky him – she was desperate to do the same to Maguire.

  ‘Would you mind sharing it?’ she asked.

  ‘I got his employment details from the Tax Office. The neighbours were spot on. He is an oilman working out of Aberdeen.’ The rest of his response came out through a gaping yawn. ‘I spoke to some arsey cow in HR. She insisted on ringing me back to verify who I was before she’d put me through to his PA.’

  ‘And that surprises you? It shouldn’t. Nigeria is a lucrative but perilous place to work. That means tight security in anyone’s book.’

  ‘Yeah, s’pose.’

  ‘And did she?’

  ‘Guv?’ He lowered the newspaper.

  ‘Did she call you back?’ O’Neil was beginning to lose her temper. ‘In your own time, John. Don’t let me hurry you.’

  ‘Eventually she did.’ Another glance at the clock. The long hand clicked forward a notch and was pointing straight up. Taking his feet off his desk, Maguire made a meal of folding his newspaper. Opening his desk drawer, he stuffed it inside and took a notepad out, reeling off the details. ‘Wardle caught a British Airways flight on the sixteenth of October.’ Another yawn. ‘Departed London Heathrow at 11.45, arrived Lagos at 18.15.’

  ‘Did you verify that he was actually on the plane?’

  He gave her a hacky look.

  ‘When’s he back?’ she asked.

  ‘Whenever his work is done, so his office reckons. Despite the fact that he’s from Blunderland, I gather he’s management. Which means a fat salary and large expense account, hence the high-end Audi. He only ever travels business class. Those tickets don’t come cheap but it means he can swap flights whenever the mood takes him. Sorry I can’t be more specific.’

  His put-down of Sunderland was designed to annoy her.

  That’s where her folks were from.

  O’Neil didn’t bite. ‘You have no idea when he’s due to return?’

  ‘No, but he won’t hang around any longer than he needs to. According to his assistant, he’s in and out in a week, ten days tops.’

  So … potentially four more days.

  O’Neil sighed. She’d have to wait.

  40

  Ryan lucked out chasing up his enhancement job on the video shot at the scene. Roz’s memory stick was faulty. Accessing its data was proving more difficult than he’d hoped. He swore under his breath. ‘Please tell me by faulty you don’t mean irretrievable.’

  ‘No,’ his contact said. ‘We’ll get there.’

  ‘When?’

  Ryan rolled his eyes at Grace as she looked up from her computer, hands hovering over the keyboard. He could see from the monitor that she was searching the HOLMES database, trying to match their unofficial investigation with the official one. In his ear, Ryan’s contact was apologizing, offering no assurances whatsoever. The guy was being noncommittal rather than evasive.

  ‘C’mon,’ Ryan pushed. ‘You must have some idea.’

  ‘It’s difficult to say. I can’t give you a timescale.’

  Ryan sighed: a further delay was not what he needed. Six days in and he was nowhere. Urging his contact to do his best, he hung up, swearing as he threw his mobile on the table.

  ‘Problem?’ Grace asked.

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘It’s not going too well this end either.’ She pointed at her monitor. ‘I can’t be certain that what is in here corresponds with the original statements and house-to-house forms.’
She pushed a few keys, her eyes on the screen. ‘The only way to be absolutely sure is to look at one and read the other.’

  Ryan groaned.

  Grace sat back, her face set in a scowl. ‘Indexers are fallible, Ryan. They may be skilled at inputting data but they’re human. We can’t afford to take it as read. There’s a shedload of difference between “he didn’t hit him” and “he didn’t hit him very hard”. All it takes is for someone to be interrupted, miss a couple of words, and you end up with something else entirely.’

  ‘Reminds me of the Derek Bentley case.’

  ‘Yeah, although that was an argument about the meaning of the spoken word rather than a simple typo.’ She paused. ‘Aren’t you a bit young to know about that?’

  Ryan didn’t answer. He could see from her expression that she’d realized how daft the question was. From a very young age, he’d held a deep – some would say, unhealthy – fascination with the murder of British police officers. It was an old case that had received massive media attention. The interpretation of ‘Let him have it’ as in, Let him have it with both barrels or, as Bentley’s defence argued, Hand over the gun, were fought over for decades. Bentley received a posthumous pardon in 1998.

  ‘Aren’t statements scanned in nowadays?’ Ryan asked, changing the subject.

  ‘Not according to my source at MIT. It’s manual input only, I’m afraid.’

  Ryan made a derogatory comment about the police force moving at a snail’s pace. ‘On the plus side,’ he said, ‘there are very few witnesses to the abduction. It’s a tight scene, the offence carried out in broad daylight. Minimal house-to-house, given its location—’

  ‘What we need is access to O’Neil’s data,’ Grace interrupted.

  Ryan pulled a face. ‘You want to ask her for that? Because I don’t.’

  ‘There is another way.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  Grace was grinning.

  The penny dropped: she meant Roz.

  ‘I don’t want to involve her,’ Ryan said. ‘It’s unfair to ask just because we were once an item.’

  ‘You’re history?’

  ‘Yes, nosy.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘It might if we need her.’

  ‘No, Grace. She has too much to lose. She may only be a DC but that doesn’t mean she’s not going places.’

  ‘True …’ Grace paused. ‘Her looks will help.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘C’mon, she won’t think twice about flashing her eyelashes if it means she’ll rise through the ranks before the officer standing next to her. She’ll stand on their necks if she has to.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh.’

  ‘But true, sadly.’ Grace looked up. ‘Her charm certainly worked on you. I never liked her.’

  ‘You never said—’

  ‘What on earth do you take me for? I may be plain-speaking but I’m not callous. Besides, you can’t believe in that old fairy tale, otherwise known as a meritocracy. Ugly birds like me don’t count, but looks like hers mean stripes on sleeves and pips on shoulders. She’ll outrank you in a couple of years, matey. Mark my words.’

  ‘She sat and passed her sergeant’s exam.’

  ‘Mentored by you, as I recall.’

  ‘That’s what partners are for.’

  ‘Pity she didn’t see offering support as a two-way street. I wonder who marked her paper.’

  Ryan laughed. He couldn’t argue with a thing she’d said. If only she’d warned him earlier. The sad thing was, Roz didn’t need to abuse her femininity. She was intuitive and clever, even though she’d acted like a spoilt child, stamping her feet over his refusal to put his parents’ home up for sale, prepared to turf Caroline out on her ear without a second thought. It was time she thought about someone other than herself: Jack’s wife, his kids, would do for starters.

  To hell with it!

  Grace’s point was valid. Without access to the right data, they were screwed, forced to rely on the accuracy of unchecked information. That really wouldn’t do. HOLMES was a wonderful invention if left alone by humans. He needed to get his hands on those house-to-house forms, and tapping Roz was the only way.

  41

  Ryan chose a rendezvous point far from the city. The Rat Inn was tucked away in the tiny hamlet of Anick, high above the Tyne Valley. It was busy when he arrived, the smell of lunch hitting his senses as he walked in out of the cold, closing the door quietly behind him. It was like stepping into the thirteenth century. The room had low-beamed ceilings and stone walls a metre thick. Karen Errington – landlady and friend of a friend he’d known for years – was serving behind a bar fashioned from a great oak sideboard. Taking an order for food from a regular, a family man Ryan thought lived along the road, she acknowledged him with a nod as he formed his hand round an imaginary beer glass and waggled it in front of his face.

  She already knew his poison.

  As she pulled his pint, Ryan scanned the room. Roz was nowhere to be seen. He poked his head into the conservatory – she wasn’t there either – so he wandered back to the bar and took a seat beside the fire blazing away in the cast-iron range. With his back to the deep-sill window, he’d spot her the moment she stepped through the door.

  If she stepped through the door.

  It was twelve forty-five when he glanced at his watch, fearing she might have bottled it. As he sat waiting, he wondered how his enhancement job was coming along, whether those working on the memory stick had managed to extract any data from it. If anyone could, they could. He’d worked with the firm before. Assuming there had been another vehicle at the scene, as Caroline suggested, they were sure to reveal it. It would explain so much. He already knew the Clio had been stolen and that the driver wouldn’t be coming forward. If he was involved, it was likely that the mystery vehicle had been parked up in the woods ready for him to make good his escape. It needed tracing.

  Ryan lifted his left arm – another check on the time.

  Roz was selfish, but never late. He worried that she might have changed her mind. Maybe, like him, she was dreading the encounter, their first in a while. When they first got together, things had been so good between them. He’d thought she was a keeper. Someone he’d settle down with. Sadly, that wasn’t the case.

  The words ‘familiarity’ and ‘contempt’ sprung to mind. At first he hadn’t noticed her making demands, messing with his head. It crept up on him gradually, taking him by surprise, until nothing he said or did was to her liking. Their final row had gone on and on. He’d waited patiently for the noise to die down, but she kept on pushing, winding him up until he snapped. Not a pretty sight.

  ‘You look like you need this.’ Karen was standing beside him, his pint in her hand. Setting it down on the table, she asked how he was doing. ‘Want anything solid to go with it?’

  Ryan declined, even though he was hungry.

  ‘Let me know if you change your mind.’

  The pub door opened as she moved away.

  Roz had nothing with her, Ryan noticed. No sign of the file he hoped she might be carrying. At the bar, she ordered a large glass of Pinot, telling Karen to put it on his tab, bringing a wry smile to his face – same old Roz.

  Turning away from the bar, she approached his table and sat down beside him. For a moment there was an awkward silence. They were both tense. Uncommunicative. Neither knowing what to say or even where to begin. They had hardly spoken since he’d packed her in – a decision he didn’t regret.

  When her drink came, she waited for Karen to return to the bar before shifting her attention to him. ‘How are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve been better. You?’

  ‘So-so.’

  She examined him closely, her eyes reaching deep inside him. She had that knack of putting him on edge, making him feel both nervous and excited at the same time. He’d never tell her, but he missed those lips on his when he woke in the mornings, her soft skin and incredible sme
ll. It took a lot of resolve on his part to fend off the overture he was sure she was about to make.

  It didn’t take long to arrive …

  ‘I laughed when they told me you were dodgy,’ she said. ‘You’re probably the most decent man I know.’

  Ryan forced a smile. He didn’t want or need her endorsement.

  ‘I’ve been daft,’ she said. ‘Behaved badly.’

  Sure had. He wasn’t about to rub it in.

  At least she had the decency to look repentant.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance—’

  ‘No.’ Ryan got in quick. ‘I know the risks you’re taking and I appreciate that, but I’ll be straight with you, there’s no reconciliation on the cards. This is purely business for Jack’s sake. No strings. I thought I’d made that clear on the phone. You and I are history—’

  ‘Do you always have to be so damned honest?’ She glared at him, revealing her true personality, the one he’d learned to live without.

  ‘You know me, Roz. I can’t operate in any other way.’

  ‘Except where Jack Fenwick is concerned?’

  He didn’t rise to her unkind remark.

  ‘O’Neil’s all over it,’ she said. ‘Why not leave her to it?’

  ‘Because she’s not listening.’ Ryan lowered his voice. ‘Even if she was, she’s not moving fast enough. I’m not doing this for me. I promised Hilary and the kids I’d find …’ He choked on the words, recovered quickly. ‘I told her I’d find the bastards who killed Jack, and that’s exactly what I intend to do. You do know he wasn’t the victim of a hit-and-run?’

  ‘You sure we’re finished, you and I?’ She couldn’t help herself.

  She always did this. Twisted everything to her advantage, putting herself first, turning the screw when she had the upper hand. He’d finally found the courage to tell her he’d drawn a line under their relationship and yet she still wasn’t listening. Unbelievable. Her expression was more angry than upset. Leaving her drink untouched, she stood up and walked away. Ryan’s head went down. As she reached the door, she turned, looked at him one last time and disappeared.