Hold Your Tongue

by Deborah Masson

  ‘Nothing like making yourself at home. No gifts? Not even a takeaway?’ Feeble, but an attempt at least.

  Elliott scowled.

  ‘Fair play. I’ve already eaten.’

  Elliott didn’t smile. ‘Giving Ryan’s name to the Rottweiler? What were you thinking going direct instead of through me?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. She was getting in my face after we found Lexie. I didn’t want her sniffing around. Wasn’t going to take her long to find out about Ryan; call it throwing her a free titbit to keep her distracted.’

  Elliott was glaring at Eve. ‘How about you run these bloody titbits past me first in future?’

  Eve felt that same stab of guilt as when she’d given the name to Jenkins, and again when they’d spoken about it at Cooper’s. ‘You’re right.’

  Elliott shifted in his seat, softening a little. ‘Too right. After everything I’ve done to make crap easier for you this past year, you go and make my job harder than it has to be.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ Eve meant it. Elliott had been there for her both professionally and as a friend during the press chaos after the night she’d found the rape victim a year ago, the same night Johnny Jnr had crashed his car while she was in pursuit. He’d been there for her again when her life imploded with what happened to Sanders. Her face reddened as she remembered sitting outside the pub with him on that summer night. Out the front of the Queen Vic at the end of her street.

  They’d crossed paths as they finished shift, decided to go for a drink, same thing they’d done as a team before, Eve usually having one or two at most. In control. At the pub, Elliott had managed to winkle it out of her that it was her birthday. A date she usually tried to forget. They’d ordered steak, agreeing to share a bottle of red. A break from reality.

  She hadn’t known then what was ahead that night, or the effect just half a bottle of wine would have. But she hadn’t taken into account the stress of the last few months and the fact that, apart from the steak, she hadn’t eaten that day. Even when she took the call from Sanders, she didn’t think she was anything but relaxed. A house call. Routine domestic disturbance. The other officers on duty were involved in a stabbing on Union Street, and Sanders was asking for some back-up on the off-chance Eve could make it, even though she’d finished for the day. Easy. She would accompany Sanders as the secondary officer and then get home. Eve closed her eyes, wishing that was how it had panned out.

  She looked at Elliott, the anger about her betrayal today still clear on his face. ‘Coffee?’ It was the best she could do.

  Elliott waited a beat, as if weighing whether to make it that easy for Eve. ‘Fine. As long as it comes with a bacon roll.’

  Eve tutted but went to make it anyway.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Elliott’s voice echoed through from the living room.

  ‘Let me get the bloody grill on first.’

  ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’

  Eve looked up from the cooker, Elliott standing in the doorway of the kitchen. She shrugged. ‘OK.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘I’m doing OK.’ Eve didn’t make eye contact. ‘Have you had any luck with the article about Lexie and her dancing?’

  ‘Yeah, a small piece that appeared in the entertainment section of the local rag. Moved over from the States, was really something in the theatre over there. Retired and came here because of her husband’s work. She was hoping to start teaching kids dance, give her something to do.’ Elliott paused. ‘Anyway.’

  Eve said nothing, carried on pretending to fuss over the bacon.

  ‘You don’t have to lie to me like Hastings and all the rest of them.’

  And there lay the problem: Elliott knew. About the drink the night Sanders was injured. About what had happened all those years ago to Eve’s mother.

  Eve closed her eyes. Elliott had come to see her at the hospital two days after she and Sanders were attacked by MacNeill and his men. She’d been off her face on meds, but she needed to talk. Wanted to talk.

  Photos had emerged of her and Elliott drinking outside the Queen Vic before she was called to the scene with Sanders – Christ knew who had sold them, but by then they were splashed all over the papers. Everything being dredged up from the past about MacNeill’s son’s injuries from the car crash and her part in that too.

  Eve had talked. Told Elliott things she feared the press would uncover if it turned into a witch hunt for what she’d let happen to a fellow officer. Her mother. Her father. How she came into the world. Why what MacNeill’s son had done to his victim had hit her so hard. Her fear of letting anyone in. The terror that her father’s blood ran through her veins. After she’d finished, Elliott had left and had never breathed a word of it to anyone. They’d never spoken about it again.

  She opened her eyes and felt Elliott staring at her. She looked down at the grill, busied herself with the bacon, ignoring him. He sighed, taking the hint and going back through to the living room.

  Eve stood in the silence, trying to ground herself in the present but thinking of the past. Hard to believe her mother had been dead over two years.

  Eve was ten when her mother told her the truth. Younger than her mother had planned, but the answers she had given Eve about who her father was, where he was, hadn’t stopped Eve’s questions. She remembered everything about that day: sitting on the sofa by her mother’s side, her small hands cupped in hers, her mother speaking in soothing tones. Soft. Gentle, as always. Her grandparents fluttering by the sitting-room door, anxious. Those three adults and their love her world. Her mother’s thumbs had rubbed constantly against hers. Her voice quivering as she spoke, but her eyes never shedding a tear.

  ‘I was on my way home from work when a man appeared in front of me. He smelled bad, looked drunk. It was dark and there was no one else around. I was five minutes from home, living with Grandma and Granda like we do now, but it might as well’ve been five miles away. I was in trouble. He pulled out a knife, dragged me down an alley that I used to play in often as a child, and he attacked me. Did things I didn’t want to do.’

  In the years that followed, that day became the one that separated ‘before’ from ‘after’. Until then she’d always felt the good in her, even when her temper flared. And it did, quickly and often. Different from her mother and grandparents, who were soft, gentle. She couldn’t remember a time she’d ever heard them shout.

  Her mother had explained it away, told her she was a kid finding her way in the world and that could be hard sometimes. But after, after realizing the violence that ran through her blood, her world had turned on its head. She’d known then why everyone commented on her hazel eyes. Unusual, nothing like her grandparents’ and mother’s. Eyes she’d once loved but had hated every day since. Everything out of order, not normal. She wasn’t normal. Questioning more than she ever had. Was her father’s evil imbedded in her genes? Could people tell she was created from violence? Was her temper his? The fear sent her off the rails.

  She was fifteen when her grandfather died. It hit her hard. Her grandmother died a year later. Eve was headed towards no qualifications, known at school and in the neighbourhood only for causing trouble – feeling none of that was her fault. She was her father’s daughter. Terrified to get close to anyone. Scared of men and what they could do. She remained wary of men, preferred to be alone. As her mother had been all her life after giving birth to Eve.

  It was standing by her grandmother’s grave, her mother weeping beside her, when the sacrifices that her mother and grandparents had made for her smacked her in the face. How brave her mother had been, how she had never given up, never made her feel unwanted, had begged her parents to accept her. And they had, unconditionally. Eve had reached across and clasped her mother’s hand, and remembered now the look of surprise on her face, the void that had existed between them for the past five years closing in that single moment.

  Eve had made her mother proud when she joined the police. Determined to do goo
d, to put people like her father behind bars where they belonged. Her mother never told Eve her father’s name. Eve didn’t know if her mother had ever known it. Eve didn’t need to know. She wanted to believe that her genes were her mother’s. But there was no escaping her eyes. His eyes. Feeling like every time her family looked at her, they were seeing him. Like she did when she looked in the mirror. And there was no escaping the rage inside her that she battled every day.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Eve jumped as Elliott appeared at the door again. She nodded. ‘I’m keeping on top of it.’

  Elliott looked unconvinced. ‘The minute you feel you’re not, you let me know. I still feel responsible for that night, Eve. You already had enough on your plate, and then that. Now this. Let me be there. We both know it’s a thin line between being on top and falling.’

  Eve pulled out the grill to check the bacon. She knew. She’d been there before.

  Chapter 19

  Then

  He waits in the darkness. Heart thundering, unsure what he heard. Wanting something to tell him. And then he hears it. The voice of his father. Talking in hushed tones, the irritation not dampened any. His father’s anger a regular visitor to their home these days.

  The blue wall’s cold against his ear as he leans to listen, pulling the rockets, moons and stars around him, snow swirling in the wind outside, whipping against the window.

  He hears his mother. Crying again. He can’t hear what they’re saying to one another, only the rise and fall of the notes in their voices, like a song playing, stuck on repeat – one that he’s not allowed to listen to.

  The bang makes him jump. Not loud, not like the guns he hears on TV. More a dull thud. Like a fist slamming against wood. He unfurls himself from the duvet. Sticks a toe out into the cold, then a foot and a leg, shunting himself across the mattress until he can feel the floor with the sole of his foot.

  They’re still arguing. He wants to hear what about but is always too scared to leave his room and creep along the hallway to stand listening outside their door. Or maybe he’s too scared to hear. He takes a deep breath, puts two feet on to the carpeted floor, stands, pulling the duvet around him, his protection blanket.

  He pulls the door open wider, enough to step out into the hall. His breathing is loud in his ears, but he’s not worried they’ll hear, as their voices are getting louder. He steps along the hallway. Big over-the-top steps. Trying to creep, like the burglars in cartoons. Finding it hard to be light on his feet with the weight that he carries.

  Their door is closed, a thin line of light escaping from beneath, shining on his toes that stand closest. He clutches the duvet at his throat, wearing it like an invisibility cloak, feeling his pulse against his fist. Thinking that since what happened, they don’t see him anyway – no need for the cloak.

  ‘You can’t think like that. What you said was wrong.’ His father, interrupting whatever his mother said.

  ‘Don’t you think there’s a chance? Am I terrible to think it?’ His mother, desperation in her voice.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, woman, stop it. Before you drive us all mad.’

  ‘Why are you angry? Because of what I said or because, somewhere, you think it too?’

  ‘You will go and say sorry. Tomorrow. Like you should’ve done the day you said it.’

  His mother sobbing. ‘Why has this happened? To me? To us?’

  He hears the springs in their bed. His father moving to comfort his mother. His voice softer. ‘It’s happening to all of us. We need to stay together. Not let it rip apart what we have left.’

  ‘What if what I said was true?’

  His father, his voice stern again. ‘It’s the loss. Of what could’ve been. You’re not thinking straight. None of us are. It’s not his fault. I can’t allow it to be. He’s our son.’

  Chapter 20

  Monday, 18 November

  Newspapers from the last three days were spread out across the table that dominated the incident room.

  They all carried stories about the murders, but it was Jenkins who got the exclusive, a day before the nationals even heard a whisper about the suspect’s identity. Eve didn’t doubt she’d be basking in the glory.

  She leaned forward in the plastic chair, black sludge trying to pass for coffee in her hand, the first of many in what promised to be yet another long day. The office was dead at such an early hour.

  Eve’s eyes skimmed the papers. Words she’d read a hundred times. Quotes from folk who had worked with Ryan, others who claimed to have socialized with him. The usual shocked neighbours, adamant he’d seemed such a nice guy.

  There was little from Melanie’s parents or Lexie’s husband, other than desperate pleas for anyone with information to come forward. And then there was Michael Forbes, who had capitalized on the harrowing tale of life living with a killer.

  None of it had led to Ryan. They’d failed to establish a link between Ryan and Lexie, or Melanie and Lexie. The cord used to tie both girls proved to be bog standard, available in most DIY stores. The only hope came from forensics. A partial fingerprint, hidden amongst many more in the hotel suite, placed Ryan at the scene. Nothing else. But something about this niggled at Eve.

  It didn’t sit that Ryan would’ve been careless when nothing else was found. But facts were facts, and it had allowed Eve to pacify her bosses, both of the victim’s families and the media, that Ryan had been there and they were hunting the right man.

  Eve drummed the edge of the desk with her free hand. Ryan’s face stared at her again and again from the same photo splashed across all the papers; different from the one pinned to the incident-room wall. She hadn’t asked Jenkins where she got it.

  The only other break they’d been given was the car Ryan had been driving. A titbit gleaned from Forbes’s newspaper interview. A fact he’d failed to mention when they’d paid a visit to his home. The car was a beat-up Corsa, registered to another unsavoury acquaintance of Ryan’s. All forces were on the lookout for the vehicle.

  Eve sat back, the cheap seat creaking as she did. She leaned her head over the back of the chair, the thick lip of its back digging into her neck, and stared at the stained ceiling tiles.

  What they had was nothing.

  The room went from empty to cramped without Eve realizing when it had happened. She looked around, took a mental count of the officers milling about, Mearns and Ferguson coming through the door together as she did – to wolf whistles from most of the other officers, even Cooper joining in.

  Mearns tutted as she found a spare seat, pink spreading across her cheeks. ‘Yeah, yeah, guys, it’s a car share. Get over it.’

  Eve didn’t miss the smile on Ferguson’s face or the sly winks he gave in the direction of some of the other officers when Mearns wasn’t looking.

  Mearns had seemed different over the past couple of days. Maybe it was to do with her chat about Sanders at Cooper’s house, the first time Eve had broached the past in front of her new colleague. Perhaps hearing it from her had put some of Mearns’ doubts about her to bed, even though she was probably right to have them. But given the amount of time Mearns had been spending on her phone since that night, Eve was betting something, or rather someone, else was responsible for the change in her mood.

  Eve stood and rapped on the desk. Chairs scraped against the floor, the majority of bodies seated within seconds and only a couple of stragglers standing. She launched into the familiar daily run-down, doing her best to show enthusiasm, something she most definitely wasn’t feeling. It was getting harder by the day to fire up the team with so little to go on.

  She was aware she sounded as unconvinced as the faces in front of her looked. No wonder. How the hell did someone drop off the radar like Ryan had? No sightings, no contact, no bank trace. Nada.

  She was kidding herself. People chose to disappear every day. Except Ryan didn’t want to disappear. What he was leaving in his wake was a cry to be seen. To be heard. But it had to be on his terms.


  Eve was nearing the end of her spiel when she heard feet pounding along the corridor outside. The door to the incident room burst open. An older guy she recognized from the force control room. Out of breath and bright red.

  ‘They’ve … found … the … car.’

  All heads turned. Mearns jumped up, Cooper alongside her. Ferguson not far behind them. Adrenaline coursed through Eve’s veins. Was this it? The break she’d been waiting for? She was already moving towards the door.

  ‘Where? Tell me where we can find the bastard.’

  The barrel-shaped call handler was shaking his head, trying to catch his breath. ‘You won’t have to.’

  Eve stopped moving. ‘What do you mea—’

  ‘He was in the car. There’s no chance of him trying to make a run for it.’

  The journey was slow, parts of the snow-packed, narrow, winding country road threatening to send Eve’s car skidding over the side, the sheer drop in places meaning she’d probably meet her end. Strangely tempting with Ferguson sat in the passenger seat.

  The news that Ryan had been found dead at the crash site had forced her to re-evaluate everything. She could only hope that Ryan was responsible for Melanie and Lexie, and that this was a freak accident. One that would put a stop to the murders. But she had to be ready if that wasn’t the case.

  She’d put Cooper and Mearns on to scouring the Scottish Intelligence Database for any cases similar to what they were dealing with, at a loss as to what to do until she found out more about Ryan. And she’d taken the opportunity of taking Ferguson along for the ride: eighty miles and no escape for either of them when there were things that needed to be said. But so far there had been nothing but stilted small talk. She took a deep breath.

  ‘You decided to stay.’

  Ferguson’s left arm was upright, his hand holding on to the handle above the door. Eve glanced over, saw his grasp tightening as he shrugged.