The Silent Room (8 page)

‘I’ve got feelers out. For what it’s worth, I think Irwin’s on the level. He was kissing the tarmac when the hijackers opened up the security van. He didn’t look round so can’t say what actually took place. He claims there was a loud smash as the comms were disabled. It was all over in a matter of minutes.’

‘Did Jack say anything when they took him?’

Ryan shook his head. ‘Not a whisper.’

‘
No
words exchanged – you sure?’

‘The co-driver told it the same way.’

Grace wasn’t happy. Keen to see the footage for herself, she suggested reconvening at her place. The introduction of news programmes 24/7 ensured that the video taken at the scene would be replayed over and over, hyping up the intrigue, making Jack look like a dangerous fugitive. As she carried on talking, Ryan stopped listening. His thoughts were still on Irwin. The security guard had proved to be more intuitive than Ryan had given him credit for, specifically in his observations of Eloise O’Neil.

‘Ryan?’ Grace said. ‘Are you even listening to me?’

He looked up. ‘Sorry, I was miles away. What did you say?’

‘Nothing. Where were you – if I’m allowed to ask?’

‘According to Irwin, O’Neil has her doubts about Jack’s guilt. I asked Godfrey to contact her and tell her what he told me. I was wondering if he’d done so. You think I should call her and repeat my offer to assist her enquiry? I know Jack better than anyone. I have a lot to give, expertise Maguire stupidly dismissed out of hand.’

Grace was shaking her head. ‘That’s a really dumb idea. Eloise is a fine officer. I respect her but she’s not like you and I. She plays by the book or she doesn’t play. We can’t afford to tip her off that you’re not on a golf course practising your putting. She’d lock you up as soon as look at you.’

‘For . . . ?’

A raised eyebrow screamed:
Wanna list?
She proceeded to give him one. ‘How about, disobeying a lawful order? Or maybe neglect of duty? Or, because you’ve been stripped of your warrant card, she might prefer impersonating a police officer.’

‘Why should I be any different? Maguire’s been doing it for years.’

Grace laughed. ‘I’m not joking, Ryan. You’ve seen her. Any magistrate would melt if she asked for a remand in custody to keep you out of her hair. Besides, you said yourself it was a feeling Irwin had, nothing she actually said. She’s very deep and therefore not easy to read. He could’ve picked her up wrong. I’ve done it myself on numerous occasions. No, we need more information before tackling her again.’

Ryan had only met O’Neil the once but she fascinated him. In other circumstances he was sure they would get along. He didn’t know her well enough to make a judgement call. Grace knew her better. If she was wary of pooling information, it was probably wise to hold back. They had the opportunity to work incognito, to do a rubber heeler’ of their own with no one looking over their shoulder. It made sense to keep it that way. When they had positive intelligence to share, Grace would facilitate a meeting.

‘Did Irwin say anything about the hijackers?’ she asked.

‘Big bastards. Foreign. That’s it.’

‘Foreign?’

‘Well, one of them is. Irwin’s no linguist. He told me that only one of them spoke, that he was probably Eastern European. Storey disagrees strongly. He thinks Scandinavian – definitely not European, Eastern or any other kind. His best guess was Icelandic or Norwegian. The voice was muffled through a balaclava. He couldn’t be sure. There wasn’t a lot of conversation going on. The hijackers let their weapons do the talking.’

Ryan checked his watch: two thirty.

Catching the eye of a waitress, he signed an imaginary bill on his hand. As she hurried off to sort it, he turned to Grace, rubbing his chin with the palm of his hand, a smile playing round his lips.

‘Something amusing you?’ she asked.

‘Maybe.’

‘Care to tell me what?’

‘Maguire never asked Storey about accents, only Irwin.’

‘You’re kidding me!’

Ryan shook his head. ‘I didn’t push it in case the lad got suspicious.’

‘And who do you believe?’

‘My money’s on the graduate, which means O’Neil and Maguire might be looking in the wrong direction.’ He met her gaze across the table, the smile gone. ‘Actually, it’s not so funny. We should be sharing this with Professional Standards. They could be wasting precious resources on misinformation—’

‘Tough. You offered your services. They weren’t bloody interested. It suits us that their eyes will be elsewhere. Let’s play that to our advantage. Make our own enquiries. If we uncover anything they have to be told about, I’ll do it. Eloise knows I plan to write a book. I’ll tell her I’ve decided on real-life cases, that interviewing witnesses is part of my research.’ She grinned. ‘There’s no law against it.’

Ryan liked her style. It wasn’t a bad ploy, either. It meant she could also talk to police. Not that the latter would be forthcoming. O’Neil was nobody’s fool. She’d have gone through Jack’s personnel file a million times. She’d know that he and Grace had once enjoyed a close working relationship and had probably kept in touch. It wouldn’t take a genius to work out what was going on.

Then again, she’d have to prove it.

14

They left the Quayside in separate cars, Grace giving Ryan her key so he could let himself into her place. She had a quick errand to run and would swing by on her way home. The minute he opened her front door he sensed there was someone in the house, a feeling confirmed by the smell of a freshly lit cigarette.

Leaving the door ajar, he crept inside, looking for a weapon. On the hall table, a marble figurine stood out as the most weighty object with which to defend himself. Lifting it gently, keeping his back against the wall, he took one step closer to the living room, peering through the narrow gap between the door and the jamb.

A man stepped into view.

He was lean, not skinny. About five ten. Casually dressed, smoke drifting from the cigarette in his mouth. A small holdall lay at his feet with wires hanging out: mobiles, chargers and cameras.

Thieving bastard.

As the focus of his attention switched to the rear of the television, something snapped in Ryan’s head, white noise taking away his power to concentrate, the association of the lean man and the TV bringing bile to his throat. Blood drained from his face as the intruder morphed into a killer, a druggie hiding his stash inside a TV shell, the internal workings having been removed.

Like a loose-leafed calendar being blown in the wind, his mind raced backwards – ten years, fifteen, twenty . . . and stopped in 1988. The eighteenth of July. The day his boyhood hero, twenty-one-year-old midfielder Paul Gascoigne, left Newcastle United and joined Spurs – and the last day of another hero’s life:
his father’s.

Out of curiosity, and against Jacks advice, Ryan had read the case papers of the incident – and wished he hadn’t, even before he’d closed the file. The photographic evidence alone gave him nightmares, woke him sweating and calling out to his dad in the middle of the night.

Told you, mate. But would you listen?

Ryan should have listened. Having lost a sibling in tragic circumstances, Jack had spoken from experience. Also prey to sleepless nights and bad dreams, he knew only too well that the younger detective would live to regret his actions – and so it proved. Despite his best efforts to bury the past, horrendous images Ryan would rather not know about were embedded in his memory, ready to loom up in his internal rear-view mirror at every opportunity. It was something that he and Jack had talked about often over a pint, the glue that bound the two men together. But it wasn’t helping now . . .

Ryan’s heart was kicking a hole in his chest from the inside. In his head, he saw his father and another drug squad officer enter a house on the say-so of a snout, an everyday drugs bust that went horribly wrong. Having discovered the cache of drugs hidden inside the TV, DS Ryan Senior had placed them in a pile on the coffee table, pointing out to the offender that it was too great a quantity to pass off for personal use. Realizing he was facing a long term of imprisonment, the dealer had charged like a bull at the arresting officers, a flick-knife leaving its casing as he took them on.

Pulling at the neck of his T-shirt, Ryan tried to calm down and deal with the here and now, but the documentation and crime scene photos were still with him: his father lying dead on the floor of a stinking fleapit in the city’s East End, deep puncture wounds to his chest, his colleague calling for backup, trying to stem the flow of blood with his bare hands as his partner’s life ebbed away.

Ryan’s left hand felt the repair patch of leather on the jacket he was wearing. Despite several attempts to remove it, the silk lining was still stained with traces of his father’s blood, the knife having gone straight through. Looking down at his right hand, Ryan saw that his knuckles had turned white from gripping the marble figurine so tightly. Lifting it in the air, he drew in a deep breath, flashes of his father continuing to scroll through his head: his lifeless body, the TV, the drugs, the knife.

The front door creaked as it was pushed open.

Fearing assault from behind, Ryan swung round. Grace was standing there, bewildered. Another noise . . . this one from over his shoulder. Ryan swung round again to find the lean man standing in the doorway, a wide grin on his face, his eyes on Grace. He studied her for a moment before turning his attention to Ryan, still poised to strike, beads of sweat on his forehead, his face drained of colour.

‘Heard you arrive, pal. Figured you’d gone to make tea.’ The lean man turned to Grace. ‘You never told me you had a new toy boy.’

Ryan exhaled. ‘Who the hell—?’

‘An old friend.’ Grace realized instantly why he was so spooked. ‘It’s okay, Ryan. Put the weapon down. I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was here, I swear.’

Feeling stupid, Ryan did as she asked, eyes on the man he’d believed to be an intruder. ‘You have a name,
pal
?’

‘Frank . . . Newman.’ He stuck a hand out. ‘I hear you have a problem. I’m here to help.’

Newman was around fifty-five years old, give or take, in good shape, with ice-blue eyes that gave nothing away. He wore jeans and a black polo shirt. Good shoes. No wedding ring. He had straight shoulders and, despite the lack of bulk, an air of confidence that would scare those who got on the wrong side of him. Ryan took a punt at ex-military.

‘Thanks . . .’ He accepted the proffered hand. ‘But no thanks. We don’t need your help.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Newman said. ‘Wouldn’t want to butt in—’

‘Guys, give it up.’

The two men conformed.

Grace moved through to the living room, giving Newman a black look as he stepped aside to let her pass. Ryan followed her in. She slung her bag on the sofa, picked up her cigarettes and lit one.

‘I have a few house rules,’ she said. ‘One: this is a testosterone-free environment. Two: this is a testosterone-free environment. There’s no room for egos here. Ryan, you want to find Jack? Frank is how we do it. Trust me. We need his help. There’s no one better.’

15

O’Neil was as mad as hell. Her efforts to get a handle on the hijackers had come to nothing. She’d looked at CCTV along the route, checked house-to-house forms until her eyes bled, tried to find Clio Man without success. Organized Crime Command hadn’t fared any better. And, to add to her woes, Maguire was getting on her tits.

He was a useless bagman.

Senior officers of her rank on the Serious Incident Squad or the Murder Investigation Team got to choose their own staff. She didn’t have that luxury. Maguire had come to her under a cloud, forced upon her almost, a case of take it or leave it. She’d long since made up her mind that she’d be better off without him. Practically horizontal, with his size tens on her desk, he was bleating on about the case, bemoaning the fact that Fenwick had nothing to lose and everything to gain in making good his escape.

She sighed. ‘You don’t say.’

Taking in her glare, Maguire sat up straight. ‘C’mon, guv! He was looking at a long stretch he couldn’t face. Once bail was refused, he saw the writing on the wall, if you ask me. I’m not convinced Ryan isn’t in on it either. He thinks he’s so cool. We should get him in here. Pile on the pressure. Give the cocky git something more than a suspension to worry about. I don’t buy his alibi—’

‘Will you shut up and let me think!’ O’Neil rubbed at her temples. Her head was bursting with competing actions. On top of that, Fenwick’s solicitor had called. He’d told her that following an unsuccessful bail hearing his client had specifically asked him to make urgent contact with DS Ryan, news she shared with Maguire. ‘Which begs the question of why he’d do that if he was involved in his own escape—’

‘Don’t doubt yourself, guv. That’s what Fenwick wants you to do. I said he was dodgy. I never said he wasn’t clever. Ryan’s no slouch either when it comes to covering his back. Slimy bastard.’

‘We have no evidence whatsoever on Ryan. We know it and so does he.’

‘Doesn’t mean there isn’t any.’

‘Doesn’t mean there is.’ Her second-in-command’s tunnel vision was more than O’Neil could stomach most days. She was about to rein him in again when her phone rang. Picking up, she covered the speaker with her free hand, ordering Maguire to chase up Nicholas Wardle, the Audi owner.

‘You’re having a laugh,’ he said. ‘It’s no easy task finding someone in Nigeria.’

‘If you can’t find someone when you have a copy of their passport, I can’t see you being much use to me in detecting this offence, can you?’ She glared at him. ‘Shut the door on your way out.’

For once, Maguire did as he was asked without argument. He stomped off in a strop, rattling paper-thin walls as he shut the door behind him. O’Neil went back to the phone. A BBC newsroom editor was returning her call – and not before time. He sounded defensive when she said she wanted to see him. He had a ‘window’ in approximately half an hour, he told her. Well, bully for him. Hanging up, she set off to meet him alone. Maguire could bore someone else while she was out.