The Final Silence (3 page)

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR JACK
Lennon coughed and wiped his nose with an already damp tissue. The tail end of another cold, his third in as many months. The surgeon had warned Lennon he’d be prone to infections now that he was without a spleen. She’d been right.

His buttocks ached from the thin cushion on the plastic chair, the year-old injuries to his shoulder and side nagging at him. The boardroom’s storage heater wheezed and clanked. The yellowed vertical blinds over the windows swayed in the air currents.

The lawyer the Police Federation had retained on his behalf sat across the table, running the tip of a pen down the page, his lips moving as he read. Fluorescent light reflected in bright spots on his scalp. Adrian Orr, his name was, and Lennon had seen far too much of him over the last year.

Orr had made a decent fist of things, but still Lennon found the heat of anger building every time he saw him. He knew he was lucky to have held onto his job this long, that if not for Orr he would have been cut adrift from the force months ago, but still.

For the first few meetings, Lennon had made an effort, tidied himself up, put on a suit. Now he didn’t bother. Jeans and a shirt were fine for these dull encounters. He hadn’t visited a barber for almost nine months, his dirty-fair hair hanging below his collar and over his eyes. Grey strands had worked their way in. Susan had given up telling him to get it cut. Besides, his daughter Ellen said she liked it.

‘Aren’t we done yet?’ Lennon asked.

‘Mm?’ Orr looked up from the page.

‘Are we nearly finished?’

‘Give me a couple more minutes. Just going over these last few notes from the Ombudsman.’

A heavy ache climbed from the back of Lennon’s neck into his skull. The back pain would follow soon. He rolled his dry tongue around his mouth, thought of the bottle of water on the passenger seat of his car, and the strip of painkillers in the glovebox. He exhaled, an ostentatious sigh he regretted even before his chest had emptied.

Orr looked up again.

‘Please, Jack, settle yourself and let me read. The sooner I get through this the sooner you can go home.’

The thought of apologising flitted through Lennon’s mind, but the ugly balloon of pride that remained at his core wouldn’t allow it. He shifted in the chair, buttock-to-buttock, then suppressed a grimace at the pain.

Orr set his pen down, folded his hands atop the page, and readied himself to speak as if he were delivering a speech to the Assembly up in Stormont.

‘You’re not going to get a medical pension, I can tell you that now.’

‘Fuck,’ Lennon said.

Orr bristled. ‘I told you before, Jack, I don’t like that kind of language. There’s no call for it.’

‘Yes there bloody is,’ Lennon said.

‘You shot and killed a fellow officer—’

‘Who was shooting at me. He’d have killed me and the girl if I hadn’t—’

‘You shot a cop.’ Orr’s cheeks reddened when he realised his voice had risen to a near shout. He took a breath before continuing. ‘You helped a murder suspect flee the country. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances were. Gandhi and Mother Teresa couldn’t talk them into giving you a pension now.’

For the last year and three months, the Ombudsman, the Policing Board and Lennon’s own superiors had been trying to find some way to sweep away the mess he’d made. Three times he’d been up in front of the misconduct panel at the PSNI headquarters on Knock Road, going over the events again and again for the Assistant Chief Constable. Orr and the Police Federation had done their best to fight his corner, but their best had achieved little.

The incident had been over a Ukrainian girl called Galya Petrova. She’d been trafficked in to work in a brothel west of the city, but she’d escaped, killing one of her captors in the process. She wouldn’t have lived another day if Lennon hadn’t got her to the airport that cold morning. She almost didn’t make it. He had taken three bullets for her while she fled.

A young sergeant named Connolly had pulled the trigger after ten thousand pounds had been transferred into his bank account. Lennon had left his colleague’s wife a widow and his twin babies fatherless. He tried not to think about them, reminding himself it was self-defence, but they crept into his consciousness anyway. Every single day.

At first, Lennon had argued that the case also revealed and brought about the capture of a killer named Edwin Payntor. Surely that counted for something? But Payntor had committed suicide in custody, and the bodies buried in his cellar could never be formally linked to him.

The cache of dirty secrets Lennon kept was the only thing that had saved him from being slung out of the force a year ago. He could avoid formal charges if he accepted demotion and the resulting pay cut, they’d said, and serve out the remainder of his thirty-year contract behind a desk. That way, he could be seen to have been punished for his transgressions, keeping the republican politicians on the Policing Board at bay, but not so severely that it would have the unionists shaking their fists.

But Lennon couldn’t afford a drop in his wage. Not now. And he certainly didn’t want to spend the best part of the next decade doing paperwork. He’d offered them a choice: give him a medical pension and all the attendant benefits, or fight the case through whatever channels were available. And he’d promised them he’d spill every filthy thing he knew.

Lennon pulled open the driver’s door of the eight-year-old Seat Ibiza, slumped down into the seat, and reached for the glovebox. The headache had swollen inside his skull. It pressed behind his eyes, pulsing with his heartbeat, a sickly rhythm he couldn’t shake. Not without the pills.

It would be his third dose today, one more than he should have had by this time, but the session with Orr had taken it out of him. No harm in going over his self-imposed limit. Just this once.

As his hand closed on the small box, a voice said, ‘What happened to the Audi?’

He turned to the still-open door.

Detective Chief Inspector Dan Hewitt, hands in his pockets, his well-pressed suit jacket buttoned. To anyone else in the police station’s car park, it would appear he had stopped for a friendly chat with an old colleague. Both Lennon and Hewitt knew different.

‘I got rid of it,’ Lennon said, closing the glovebox.

He could have said it was because he couldn’t afford the repairs after it was rammed by an SUV while he tried to get Galya Petrova to safety, that he’d been forced to sell, pay off the remaining balance on the finance, and buy an ageing hatchback instead. But Hewitt already knew all of that. Lennon wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing it said out loud.

‘Audis are for posers, anyway,’ Hewitt said. ‘How’ve you been? You’re still limping a bit.’

‘I don’t limp,’ Lennon said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my legs.’

The bullet that had passed through his flank, above his hip, and the other wound to his shoulder had left him stiff on that side, taking his balance. His gait was visibly off kilter. But it was not a limp.

‘Course not,’ Hewitt said.

‘What do you want?’

‘Just to say hello.’

‘Then say it and fuck off.’

Hewitt laughed. ‘Friendly as ever. You used to be good crack at Garnerville. I don’t really know you any more, do I?’

‘I could say the same about you.’

Hewitt leaned against the car. ‘You could say a lot of things about me, I suppose.’

Lennon watched the other man’s eyes. ‘If I took the notion, yes, I could.’

‘If you took the notion. But you won’t.’ Hewitt leaned closer. ‘Will you, Jack?’

‘Depends.’

‘I know you’ve been snooping around,’ Hewitt said. ‘I know you’ve been digging out old records, making copies. You can’t get up to that sort of thing without someone noticing. What are you planning on doing with them?’

‘Let’s hope you never have to find out.’

‘I can make things go easier for you,’ Hewitt said.

Lennon went to pull the door closed, but Hewitt blocked it.

‘Or I can make things harder for you. Your choice, Jack.’

Lennon looked up at him, asked, ‘Can you get me out of here with a medical pension?’

‘No,’ Hewitt said, stepping back.

‘Then you’re no bloody use to me.’

Lennon closed the door and put the key in the ignition.

THE DOOR FITTED
its frame so tight that when Rea ran her fingertips along the edge she could barely press a nail into the gap. She pushed the door with her palm. No give at all.

Even though she knew it was pointless, she tried the handle. It was a lever type, rather than the knobs on every other door in the house, a keyhole in its plate. Rea knelt down and peered through. Nothing but black.

‘Dust and air,’ she whispered.

Should she call out the locksmith again? His bill for opening the front door had been steep. Rea thought about her bank account. Could she spare that much? Not if she wanted to pay the rent this month.

The only option was to prise the door open with something. That would damage the frame, and the door, but if she took the house she’d want to change this door anyway. Get one fitted to match the others.

That decided it. She remembered she’d seen an old toolbox in the garage. She went downstairs. The back door that led from the kitchen to the rear garden remained locked with no key to be found, so Rea exited through the front and walked around the house.

Her uncle’s battered car was still parked on the driveway, the tax and MOT discs in the window months out of date. It would likely have to be towed and scrapped.

The garage stood well back from the road, a rusted metal gate between it and the house. She slid back the bolt on the doors and allowed the light in. She looked around its walls. Asbestos cement. Having it pulled down and replaced would be another expense.

Never mind, she thought, find something to open that bedroom with.

The rusted metal toolbox lay on the floor at the back of the garage, old paint tins stacked on top. Spiderwebs skimmed Rea’s skin as she went deeper into the dark. She lifted the first couple of tins from the top of the stack – almost empty, going by their weight – and set them aside.

Rea grabbed the handle of a third and pulled, but its base had been glued to the tin beneath by drying paint, and the remainder of the pile toppled to the floor. She danced back, first to save her toes from the falling tins, then to spare her shoes from the puddle of white emulsion that spread across the concrete.

‘Bollocks,’ Rea said.

The puddle turned to a small lake.

‘Shit,’ Rea said.

She pictured her father seeing the mess, giving her that withering stare, as if he wondered where he’d got a daughter like her from.

‘Tits and arse and fuck,’ Rea said.

No point in worrying about it now. She edged along the rear wall to avoid the paint and hunkered down by the toolbox. Her balance wavered, and she put a hand out to keep from falling into the white puddle. The paint chilled her palm. She cursed again.

With her free hand, Rea pushed the toolbox lid up and back. Inside lay a collection of red-mottled metal and cracked plastic. Pliers and screwdrivers. A socket wrench – what her grandfather used to call a rickety – and a few loose bundles of steel wool. She pushed the smaller tools aside, digging deeper into the box.

Her fingers gripped something harder, colder, more solid. She pulled it, the screwdrivers and pliers clattering aside. It was heavy, a little more than a foot and a half long, curved at each end with fissures in its flattened blades. A crowbar. She had never used one in her life, but it looked like the right tool for the job.

She skirted the paint and headed back outside.

Across the road, a young man in a dark navy suit stood on the garden wall of the house opposite. He smoothed a sticker over the estate agent’s sign, covering the words ‘To Let’ with ‘Let By’. He spotted her as she headed for the front door of her uncle’s home.

‘Excuse me,’ he called.

Rea paused on the doorstep and looked across.

He waved, hopped down from the wall, and jogged towards her. The garden gate creaked as he let himself through. Even younger than she’d thought, early- to mid-twenties at most. Probably just out of university. He extended his hand as he approached.

‘Mark Jarvis,’ he said. ‘Mason and Higgs Estate Agents.’

Rea showed him her paint-coated palm.

‘Ah,’ he said, lowering his hand. ‘One of the neighbours told me your bad news. I’m sorry for your trouble.’

Rea blinked at him, confused for a moment, before she said, ‘Oh. Thank you.’

She knew what was coming, braced, instructed herself to be polite.

He gave her a broad, deferential smile. ‘I just wondered if you’d decided what to do with the property yet?’

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Look, I’ve got a lot to—’

‘I understand,’ he said, holding his hands up. ‘But I wanted to make you aware that sales are picking up in the area if the houses are priced right, and of course the rental market is very healthy right now.’

He waved a hand at the house across the street.

Rea swallowed the urge to swear at him, to slap his smug face. Or to leave a white emulsion handprint on the back of his nice clean suit.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but this really isn’t a good time to—’

‘I understand,’ he said again. ‘But I just want to make sure you’re aware of the services we can offer—’

Before she knew what she was doing, Rea silenced him with her palm pressed against his mouth. He stepped back, white paint dripping from his lips onto his tie.

‘I told you it’s not a good time.’ She showed him the crowbar. ‘Now I’d be obliged if you’d piss off and leave me alone.’

He retreated along the garden path, spitting paint, fishing a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Sorry for your trouble,’ he mumbled.

Rea stepped into the house and pushed the front door closed with her hip. She stood there for a time, her back against the wood and glass, cursing herself for being foolish enough to let the little prick annoy her. He was just doing his job, being as pushy as he was trained to be.