The Silent Room

by Mari Hannah

  O’Neil cut him dead. ‘You’ve made your point, DS Ryan.’

  The formality was back – not a good sign.

  She was off again. ‘I specifically told you to stay the hell away from my enquiry. It seems you didn’t listen. Is that why you commandeered the help of Grace Ellis?’ She didn’t wait for an answer and Ryan didn’t give one. ‘An exceptional detective, I must say. You chose well. I not only rate her, I like her too. What exactly is her involvement in all this?’

  ‘I’m not prepared to discuss it. I’ll never discuss it.’

  ‘You’re not making this easy for me.’

  Ryan looked at her, inscrutable, neither admitting nor denying that he or Grace had been involved in anything underhand. His eyes found first one coat pocket, then the other.

  ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘I’m not wearing a wire. Are you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You sure about that?’

  They were both being cagey. It was like a game of poker – and she was winning.

  Those eyes.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘What do you suggest? Do we strip off to our underwear and have this discussion on the beach?’

  ‘I will if you will,’ he said.

  ‘I’m in no mood for your jokes, much less your paranoia.’

  Ryan shrugged. He’d been trained not to trust a soul, but then so had she.

  ‘You want me to admit that Maguire was too quick to suspend you, is that it?’ She sighed. ‘OK, consider it done. I’m meeting you halfway here, Ryan. It’s high time we started trusting each other and pooling resources. Please tell me you’ve stopped your covert enquiries.’

  She knew …

  But could he trust her?

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘You’ve had your say. Now it’s my turn. I did an audit trail yesterday. I found a young detective Ryan in the system. Are you going to tell me how you have administrator status in HOLMES without ever having taken an official course? On its own it’s grounds for dismissal.’

  He remained silent.

  O’Neil knew more than he’d given her credit for. Her hackles were up and it showed. ‘Answer me. This is a serious matter and I’m sick of you playing ring-a-ring o’ roses with Grace Ellis. I have a lot of respect for her—’

  ‘So do I – more than you might think – which is why I want her kept out of this.’

  ‘That could be arranged … if you talk to me.’

  What did he have to lose? Grace and Newman were long gone. They had left before seven. With no idea where they were heading, Ryan hoped they would stay away long enough for him to talk some sense into O’Neil. Opening his haversack, he took out a few items and placed them on the table between them: two small ring binders containing photocopies of Jack’s notes in one easy-to-read format, chronological volumes that replicated the originals, a transcript of his interview with Hilary at the Grand Hotel and his digital recorder.

  He pointed at the binders. ‘They’re photocopies of Jack’s notebooks.’

  ‘Notebooks?’ O’Neil opened one up, flicked through a few pages. ‘Is this the reason they trashed your home?’

  ‘And Jack’s,’ he reminded her.

  ‘How long have you had them?’

  ‘That’s not important.’

  ‘It is to me!’ Her eyes flashed a warning. She was an SIO in Professional Standards and he’d do well to remember that. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. But I want the whole story, not half. If you play your cards right, who knows? It might even make a difference to the outcome of this discussion.’

  Ryan backed off. ‘I found them yesterday. I have the originals in a safe place.’

  ‘You knew of their existence and didn’t tell me?’

  ‘You know what your trouble is, guv? You knew nothing about the man beyond the crap Maguire was feeding you. If you’d asked me about Jack, I’d have told you he was a systematic and scrupulous gatherer of intelligence. If he were choosing bloody breakfast cereal he’d make a list. He wrote everything down. Might I remind you that I offered my assistance and was turned down.’

  She tapped the binder. ‘Where did you find these notes?’

  ‘Concealed at my sister’s home in a place he knew I’d find them eventually. Sadly, not quick enough for either of us to save his life.’

  O’Neil listened carefully as he explained exactly where they were hidden, giving a brief summary of what they contained – not that the information made much sense – including the fact that he had physical and photographic evidence to back up his claim.

  She was impressed.

  ‘You need me on board, guv. Believe me, I’m a lot further down the road than you are. I’m not asking for any favours. I know I’m well out of order. No doubt I’ll pay the price for that. But know this: I was only ever interested in finding the truth, not saving Jack’s reputation. You have my word on that.’

  Ryan held his breath.

  O’Neil looked away, her eyes travelling across what was left of his home, digesting his proposal. It seemed to take forever for her to come to a decision.

  54

  The kettle was lying on its side. Ryan picked it up and put it on, hoping it still worked. O’Neil had followed him into the narrow kitchen, was standing behind him, so close he could smell her perfume. She had her back against the wall, contemplating. He’d already decided to hand over the evidence he’d gathered – no matter what punishment she had in mind.

  It was the only option available.

  With the silent room decommissioned, Newman and Grace gone, there was no point carrying on his private crusade. More than anything, he wanted to bring about a prosecution, get justice for his friend and mentor. If the case were weak when it got to court, a good defence barrister would demolish it in seconds. With O’Neil on board, he could build a solid argument. Right now it was full of holes. Going it alone might jeopardize the outcome. Evidence gathered illegally would be inadmissible. Jack’s killers could get bail, flee the country and disappear. Ryan couldn’t bear the thought of that.

  ‘We need to put these people behind bars,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ O’Neil was confused.

  He blushed. She had no clue what he was on about.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Thinking out loud, guv.’

  ‘OK,’ she said finally. ‘If you can stand the sight of me, you’re in.’ Her head was in the file again. She turned the pages, taking her time.

  ‘By the way …’ He met her gaze as she looked up. ‘I’m not working with Maguire. Just so you know, that’s nonnegotiable.’

  ‘Don’t push it.’

  ‘I mean it, I won’t work with him.’

  ‘Are you always this difficult, or are you trying extra hard? Loosen up, Ryan. Maguire is on other duties until I say different.’ O’Neil pointed at the kettle. ‘You’re wasting your time with that,’ she said. ‘C’mon, I’ll buy you breakfast at the golf club.’

  It was dark and stormy outside but it had stopped raining, so they walked towards the beach and golf course. O’Neil was quiet on the way down the lane, her attention drawn to the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle. Ryan’s focus was altogether different. It was on her. More specifically on wisps of red hair escaping the clasp at the back of her head, brushing the delicate contours of her face. He wished they had got off on a different footing and were off duty walking Caroline’s dog. Instinctively, he knew O’Neil loved the coast.

  At the edge of the fairway, he opened the gate. A sign warned of the danger from flying golf balls. Resisting a growing desire to show her the magnificent stretch of shoreline, he guided her left, taking the footpath that ran alongside the course, rather than crossing to the beach. They would catch a glimpse of the sea through the dunes as they walked on, or maybe on the way home if the rain stayed off.

  ‘Are you keeping the case, even though it’s gone beyond your remit?’ Ryan asked.

  ‘It seems sensible. The Chief thinks so too. It’ll avoid a time-consuming handover to the Murder Investiga
tion Team. Manpower is stretched, apparently. Anyway, I might be joining them soon. Or not. There’s something even more exciting on the horizon.’

  He looked at her, a question in his eyes.

  ‘I’ve done my stint in Complaints,’ she said. ‘I’m ready to move on.’

  In spite of their differences, Ryan thought she’d make an excellent SIO on the murder squad. He thought she’d make an excellent anything once she got rid of the bagman from hell. Maguire was a liability an officer of her calibre could well do without. He suspected that was the reason for a sideways move.

  They turned left across the car park. He pulled open the clubhouse door. She entered first. Ryan was well known there, it being the nearest watering hole to his home, a place to grab a bite to eat if he couldn’t bother cooking or fancied company. They served good coffee and a fabulous breakfast. Noticing a few odd stares as they walked in, he assumed it was because he had a different woman in tow, until he remembered his shaven head, the row of neat stitches that had been pinching and itching as the skin began to knit together.

  Shit! He checked his watch.

  ‘Am I keeping you from something?’ O’Neil asked.

  ‘I was supposed to be at the hospital for ten thirty. Check-up. I forgot.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. If you keel over, I’m a first-aider.’

  Ryan grinned. It was almost worth a try.

  Ordering coffees and bacon rolls, he took a seat with his back to the bar, hoping no one would disturb them. Away from her office and the chaos of his home, she relaxed. The neutral territory seemed to have done the trick. Gone was the awkwardness between them. They were on the same side now – a tour de force.

  Slipping a hand into her pocket, O’Neil pulled out his warrant card and handed it to him. Torn by mixed emotions, he stared at it for a long time. She’d made him sweat, yes. She’d also come prepared to give him a chance to prove himself. Providing Maguire didn’t look too hard, Ryan hoped he might get away with his short secondment to the silent room.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t make me regret it. We’ll eat, then talk.’

  A lingering doubt over his tenuous position was quickly dispelled as their breakfast arrived. The rolls went down well. When they had finished eating, the waitress came over and replenished their coffee free of charge.

  ‘That was great.’ O’Neil licked her fingers. ‘Who’s going first then, you or me?’

  Ryan hesitated.

  ‘What? You don’t have all the answers.’ She was teasing him. ‘Then I suggest you start at the very beginning and give me what you do have. I mean the lot, no keepy-backs. In return for taking you under my wing, I require your full cooperation.’

  Ryan told her she had it. ‘Jack’s solicitor, Godfrey, did he call you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you’ll know that Jack was desperate to speak to me when his bail was refused and that he had no clue he wouldn’t make it back to jail. He thought he was on to something big, guv. I now have reason to believe that it might involve Norway, which is, in all probability, our first link to the hijackers.’

  ‘You’ve lost me already.’

  ‘I thought I might have. One of them had a Scandinavian accent.’

  ‘What? Maguire said it was Eastern European.’

  ‘He was wrong.’ Ryan felt sorry for her. This case could blow up in her face. She was staking her reputation on him. The last thing he wanted was to row with her. But she deserved the truth. ‘Maguire’s an incompetent moron. He questioned Irwin about the hijacker’s foreign accent but not his co-driver, Storey. Fortunately, I did. The kid was so much more switched on. He said Irwin was mistaken. The shooter was Scandinavian, not European.’

  ‘Jack went to Norway,’ O’Neil remembered. ‘We talked about it.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Bear with me, guv.’ Ryan stroked his eyebrow. ‘At the time, I thought it was odd that he arranged to visit the country in the middle of summer when Hilary had begged him for years to take her in the wintertime, a chance to catch the Northern Lights. I thought they must’ve changed their minds. But I now have reason to believe that he had an ulterior motive for going there.’

  Her shoulders dropped.

  He could tell she was seething. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I’m wondering what else Maguire got wrong. He’s made me look like a complete idiot.’ Her face was flushed at the thought. ‘You know as well as I do where the buck stops—’

  ‘No one will think badly of you.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘Jack used to say, “You’re only as good as your subordinates.”‘

  ‘Yeah, well, that won’t count for much when the Chief gets wind of this. It’s not Maguire with his head on the block.’

  Ryan’s mobile rang.

  She nodded that he should answer. His private video enhancement commission had come back positive. There was a second car driving away from the scene just as Caroline had intimated, a heavy diesel engine. Spot on. A report was on its way to his private email address, the tape itself would arrive by private courier. Hanging up, he shared the intelligence with O’Neil. Her reaction wasn’t what he expected. She was already looking for the second car. If they could get a handle on that, they might stand a chance of progressing the enquiry.

  ‘Without it, we’re screwed,’ Ryan said. ‘Have you re-interviewed the witnesses?’

  ‘Maguire has.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘In view of the cock-up you just outlined, I’m not sure I can trust anything he told me.’

  ‘Even he can’t get everything wrong.’

  ‘Hmm … coming from you, that’s pretty generous.’

  ‘I’m a nice guy.’ Ryan smiled at her. ‘I’ve been trying to tell you that for a week.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Are you flirting with me, DS Ryan?’

  ‘Just stating the truth.’

  Amused by the exchange, she moved on. ‘There were only two witnesses from the three terraced properties at the scene. Maguire said one guy had taken the day off. Don’t get too excited. He’s a family man. His two eldest were at school. His youngest was off with earache – a frequent occurrence, since borne out by their doctor.’

  ‘They saw nothing?’

  O’Neil shook her head. ‘The old man in the next house down doesn’t count. He’s as deaf as a post. Didn’t hear a thing. Doesn’t like wearing his hearing aid. He has a kip on the sofa every afternoon.’ She chuckled. ‘Sleeps well too, I gather. The uniforms saw him through the window and couldn’t raise him. They practically broke his door down thinking he was dead. Suffice to say, he noticed nothing untoward.’

  Maguire was doing OK so far.

  Everything O’Neil fed back replicated Grace’s fleeting house-to-house and matched the information contained in the official files that Roz had risked copying for them, a fact that he failed to mention because doing so would drop them both in it. He wondered where Grace was, what Newman’s intentions were. He hoped they had a future together.

  ‘What about the third property on the block?’ he asked.

  ‘A couple of female students live there. One is a friend of the young woman who took the video at the scene. I have no idea who took the other, by the way. Do you?’ Ryan shook his head and she continued. ‘Our witness is young and loving the media attention. According to her mates, she’s still full of it. She’s the one whose parents called the Control Room. To hear her tell it, you’d think she’d saved those prison guards single-handedly. She took a video. Big deal. She wouldn’t have been so up herself if the hijackers had shot her, would she? Silly bitch could have got herself killed.’

  ‘Did she see a second vehicle?’

  ‘If she did, Maguire never mentioned it.’

  ‘What about the Audi? You spoken to the owner yet?’

  ‘No. He’s due in from Nigeria any day.’

  ‘You think he might be involved?’

  ‘
Who knows? I don’t think so.’ She paused. ‘It’s more likely that someone got wind of the fact that he’s out of the country so they could play with his vehicle for a few days without raising suspicion. A professional could’ve entered his premises and stolen the keys, I suppose.’

  ‘Why bother when they could nick one? They were planning to dump it anyway.’

  ‘Search me.’ She shrugged her bemusement. ‘It does seem nonsense to steal from someone they were acquainted with, however slightly.’

  ‘The Audi is probably in the drink where they know we’ll never find it.’

  O’Neil sighed. ‘These guys seem to have no fear. They fit Jack up. They visit Hilary minutes after he’s lifted. They attack a prison van in broad daylight, kill and torture him. They have the gall to whack you in a busy Newcastle suburb. They’re ruthless, Ryan. Willing to go to any lengths to get what they want. The question is, what do they want?’

  55

  Convinced that the answer lay within the pages of Jack’s notebooks, Ryan suggested they head off, pick up a car and return to work to examine them in closer detail.

  A fifteen-minute stroll along the windswept beach saw them back at his cottage. Had it not been for the urgency of the case they were dealing with, he could so easily have kept on walking all the way to Craster under a vast Northumberland sky, maybe treated O’Neil to a pub lunch at the Jolly Fisherman, his all-time favourite pub and restaurant. Instead, they were ensconced in her office within the hour, tossing around ideas, generally getting up to speed on what their dead colleague had been up to.

  Ryan studied her closely: her nails were neatly trimmed – no varnish – no rings either, nor an indentation where one used to be. Like him, she kept her personal and private lives separate. There was nothing in her office that was superfluous to her job, no clue to who she really was.

  This woman intrigued him.

  After a quarter of an hour, she looked up, flipping the notebook closed. She’d given up trying to decipher Jack’s shorthand. Ryan suspected that she was no further forward now than on the opening page. He had felt much the same on the first run-through. Defeat was written all over her.