Splinter the Silence (43 page)

And then Carol was there, strong arms reaching past his to lock around Matthew Martin’s neck and shoulder. ‘Oh no you fucking don’t,’ she snarled. ‘You don’t get out of here without paying.’

60

M
uch later, Carol and Tony sat on a bench near the all-night coffee stall at Central Station, a black-and-white collie at their feet, steaming cardboard cups in their hands. It was neutral territory they’d established a long time before. ‘You did a good job up there,’ Carol said.

‘I felt sorry for him. He was always going to be damaged, given what happened to his mum. It was just a question of how the damage would manifest itself. If things had worked out differently with his girlfriend…’

‘She’d still be alive,’ Carol said, not an ounce of concession in her voice. ‘I don’t have your gift for compassion.’

They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. Then Carol spoke. ‘You don’t think I’m a bitch, do you?’

‘You were listening?’

She nodded. ‘Paula and I were practically climbing over each other to get closest to the corner. You said it with such conviction,’ she added, a little sadly.

‘Of course I don’t think you’re a bitch. I was trying to save a man’s life. I’d have said you were a people trafficker or a Tory if that had been what it took.’

Carol snorted with laughter. ‘Don’t do that when I’ve got a mouthful of coffee,’ she protested. ‘And it hurts my shoulder when I laugh.’

‘You did well to hang on till the Fire Brigade got their ladder up. He was wriggling like a toddler.’

‘Turns out being a builder did make me a better cop.’

More silence. The dog shifted, leaning her weight against Carol’s shins. An infinitely long goods train grumbled its way across the bridge. ‘I’ve been thinking…’ Carol said.

‘Mm hmm?’

‘The barn’s nearly finished.’

‘It is. You’ve done an amazing job. I didn’t think you could do it, but I was wrong.’

She sighed. ‘There’s plenty of room, you know. I’ve plumbed in the second bathroom and the screens are coming this week to separate off the sleeping area.’

‘So that means it’s more or less completed?’

Carol ran a hand through her thick blonde hair. ‘Unless I wanted to run bookshelves along one wall.’

‘I don’t want to sound rude, but I didn’t think you had that many books.’

‘No, but you have. And it would be so much more convenient than a shipping container.’

Tony frowned. There was no solid ground under his feet and he was certain that one misstep would be something he’d pay for forever. ‘You’re offering me a home for my books?’

Carol cleared her throat. ‘More than the books, if you wanted. I kind of liked having you around. No strings, obviously. I wouldn’t expect you to give up
Steeler
, you’d probably want to spend time there too.’

On the other side of the city, Sam Evans walked out of a nightclub, only slightly unsteady. He’d had a good night with a bunch of lads he sometimes played five-a-side football with. He’d been on the town every night since he’d walked away from Stacey, enjoying the life of a single man without a care in the world. But now it was time to knock all that on the head. To his surprise, he missed her.

Tomorrow, he’d text her. Suggest dinner somewhere smart. Somewhere that would show her he cared, in spite of her dissing him by not standing up for him with that bitch Jordan.

Sam yawned. There was a faint dampness in the air, as if rain was waiting to pounce on the unwary. He reckoned he’d avoid the risk by jumping in a cab. He was out of cash, but there was an ATM halfway down the next block.

He leaned into the blue light of the cashpoint and let the machine suck his card into its maw. He tapped in his PIN and waited.
PIN not recognised
, the screen said. Sam decided he must be more pissed than he thought. He keyed in the number again, and again it was declined. He shook his head as if to clear an internal fog and gave it one more try.
Your card has been confiscated on the orders of the issuing bank. Please visit your local branch to resolve the problem.

‘What the fuck?’ It made no sense. Had he suffered a bout of amnesia and changed his PIN? Oh well, at least he had another card that would allow him to withdraw cash without it costing an arm and a leg. He inserted the card and this time, it accepted his PIN. The only trouble was that it wouldn’t give him any money. He accessed his balance on screen and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His account balance stood at zero. Two days after payday. It was impossible. Somehow he’d been robbed. Robbed by his own bank.

He thought about using one of his credit cards to withdraw cash. It infuriated him to pay their charges, but on the other hand, he didn’t want to walk home in the cold and probably the rain. But something was wrong with the credit cards too. They both claimed the card was at its limit and nothing more could be withdrawn. ‘I don’t fucking believe it,’ he shouted at the machine. ‘I’m a fucking police officer, by the way. I’m going to have you.’

Defeated by the technology, Sam decided he had no choice but to walk home. He turned up the collar of his jacket and hunched into it, taking the first steps of his new, electronically destroyed life.

DCI John Franklin hadn’t been called out to the road traffic accident; he’d been on his way back to the station after a meal break when he’d seen the three cars twisted and shattered and obscenely amalgamated with the crash barrier where the road curved down the steep hill from the motorway into Halifax.

But he was the kind of copper who was always ready and willing to help out. So he pulled over and headed for the scene of the triple pile-up. ‘What’s the score?’ he asked one of the traffic cops, a man he’d seen around in his own station many times.

‘Carnage,’ he said. ‘Tearaway in the Vauxhall came round the bend on the wrong side of the road doing way over the limit. Went head on into the Mini and the two careered into the Ford Galaxy. Two dead in the Vauxhall, the Mini driver’s off to casualty in a bad way. Two dead in the Galaxy. One died while the firemen were cutting her out.’ He shook his head vehemently. ‘I’m going to hear her screaming for a long time.’

Franklin looked across at the Vauxhall with its distinctive spoiler and flared wheel arches. He’d seen that not so long ago in the police compound. He walked over to the car, where the driver and passenger were still trapped in their seats. He recognised the driver at once and felt the heartburn of rage swell in his chest.

He couldn’t recall the boy’s name but the circumstances were burned into his memory. A week past Saturday. A clutch of drunk drivers righteously arrested then cut loose after a breathalyser was deemed to be unreliable.

The boy in the Vauxhall who had taken at least three other lives to oblivion with him had been one of those liberated by the overarching need for Carol Jordan to be clean. Franklin turned away in disgust. He looked forward with a kind of savage delight to making the phone call that would inform Jordan of the true price of her new squad. Whatever they achieved, they’d be doing it stained with the blood of innocent people. ‘I fucking hope she’s worth it,’ he said to no one, knowing it was an impossible equivalence.

‘You think it would be OK?’ Tony asked.

Carol swallowed a mouthful of coffee. A gaggle of slightly drunk young men rolled up to the coffee stall, jostling and joshing as they ordered coffees and hot chocolates. Carol watched and Tony waited. Finally she said, ‘You’d be doing me a favour. It’s a lot easier to stay off the sauce when you’re around. Plus it would be helpful with the dog.’

He tried not to show his delight. He failed. ‘As long as your pal George doesn’t come after me with a shotgun.’ He looked into his coffee and smiled. A couple of weeks ago, he couldn’t have imagined this outcome. It would have seemed impossible that he and Carol could move so far along the road of reconciliation. It was the next step on a journey that had started a long time ago, a journey waymarked in blood and hardship, a journey he wouldn’t have missed for anything. ‘Thanks for asking.’

His words were drowned out by the ringing of Carol’s phone. Their eyes met; they shared a rueful smile. ‘And so it begins again,’ Tony said.

Acknowledgements

The great thing about inventing a police unit is that nobody can tell you you’ve got the procedure all wrong.

But of course there are plenty of other opportunities for that. And to help me avoid the pitfalls, I’m grateful to digital forensics guru Angus Marshall and to fire and explosives expert Naimh nic Daeid. I’m grateful to Simon Veit-Wilson for the novel use of a shipping container.

There is a whole squad of people out there who worked hard to put this book in your hands, among them Jane Gregory and her team; David Shelley, Lucy Malagoni, Thalia Proctor and everyone else at Little, Brown who supports me with such enthusiasm; Anne O’Brien, to whom I am eternally grateful that she gave up a promising career as a Jedi knight to be my copy-editor; and to my long suffering family who make everything possible.