The Night Hawks

by Griffiths, Elly

  ‘Did Paul know that you killed Alan?’

  ‘No,’ says Mark. ‘He never knows what’s going on. Chloe’s always had to look after him. He’s just an idiot. I mean, look what he did today, getting Nelson’s wife and mistress over to the farm, trying to force Nelson to let Chloe go. But Chloe wasn’t even under arrest, for God’s sake.’

  He sounds genuinely exasperated.

  In Interview Room B, Tanya and DC Bradley Linwood are questioning Paul Noakes.

  ‘Did you shoot DCI Nelson with intent to kill?’ asks Tanya, getting to the nitty-gritty.

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ says Paul. ‘It was only a shotgun, pellets not bullets. I just wanted him to agree to let Chloe go. I knew DCI Nelson would come if he heard there was a break-in at the farm. He doesn’t seem to be able to keep away from the place. I got the incident sign from Mark’s car.’

  Tanya, who often resents the boss’s hands-on attitude, now feels offended on his behalf. And how was shooting him meant to change Nelson’s mind? She hopes that Paul won’t get off with an insanity plea.

  ‘What happened after you shot him?’ asks Tanya.

  ‘I put him in the back of the van and drove him up to the house. I cleaned up the wound and dressed it. I looked after him,’ he says, with a pleading look. ‘My dad taught me about first aid.’

  It seems his dad taught Paul more than he originally let on, thinks Tanya. It strikes her that Paul has been seeking approval all his life, from his parents, his teachers and now from the police. Well, that might work to their advantage.

  ‘You must have a lot of medical knowledge,’ she says. ‘Did you help your father with the drugs trials?’ Bradley looks at her admiringly.

  ‘Yes,’ says Paul. ‘I helped him administer the drugs and I sat with the volunteers afterwards, monitoring their reactions.’

  Volunteers. It’s technically true but it seems a loose way to describe people putting their lives in the hands of doctor and son.

  ‘What happened to Jem Taylor?’ she asks.

  ‘He had an allergic reaction,’ says Paul. ‘It couldn’t have been predicted. He died before I could use the EpiPen.’

  ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘We couldn’t leave him at the farm. I took his body out in the boat and put it in the sea. After all, he had that sea serpent tattoo. I thought it was quite fitting.’ Again, that hangdog look.

  ‘What happened at Black Dog Farm tonight?’ asks Tanya.

  ‘I took DCI Nelson’s phone and I texted his wife and Dr Galloway. I knew she and the DCI were having an affair. Mark told me. Apparently, everyone in the police force knows.’

  Tanya and Bradley avoid looking at each other.

  ‘I thought they could persuade him to let Chloe go,’ says Paul. ‘But things just got out of hand.’

  ‘What about the dog?’ says Tanya. ‘Did you set the dog on them?’

  ‘Dexter? No. I just told him to guard them. That’s what he was trained to do. He was Dad’s guard dog.’

  ‘I thought your dad didn’t like animals,’ says Tanya. ‘That’s what you told us.’

  ‘He liked working dogs,’ says Paul, as if this is obvious. ‘He just didn’t have time for pets.’

  ‘Did he keep the dog to stop anyone coming too close to the house?’ asks Bradley. ‘So that they wouldn’t find out about the illegal drugs trials?’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Paul. ‘He picked a black dog because of the legend. That’s why he changed the name of the farm too.’

  ‘You said that your dad used to frighten you with stories about a body buried in the garden,’ says Tanya.

  ‘That’s right,’ says Paul. ‘Chloe must have told Mark and he put it in the note. Dad liked to scare us.’

  ‘I’m not sorry,’ says Chloe, in Interview Room C. ‘I’d do it again.’

  She looks at Judy, chin raised, half smiling. Judy wonders if this is the first time that she’s seeing the real Chloe, the woman who obeyed her bullying father by becoming a doctor and then calmly set about arranging his death.

  Chloe has explained that, on 19 September, she visited her parents ‘to discuss finances’. ‘I’d had to remortgage my flat and Dad, predictably, told me what a mess I was making of my life. How I should be financially independent at my age.’ Chloe had walked from Sheringham so that her car wouldn’t be seen outside the house. She pretended to leave at ten but had doubled back and hidden upstairs until Mark arrived at midnight. Apparently her parents kept late hours so she knew they would still be in the kitchen ‘putting on the dishwasher and preparing to go to bed’. She’d given the gun to Mark and he had used it to kill her parents.

  ‘Mark would do anything for me,’ she says now. ‘When I was young, I thought it was a pain how possessive he was. He would go mad if he thought any other man was looking at me. He even got into a fight with Paul at school because he thought that Paul should protect me more at home. Mark knew about the abuse. Well, some of it. He says that’s why he became a policemen, to protect children like me.’

  ‘But you split up with Mark and went out with Neil Topham,’ says Judy.

  ‘Yes,’ says Chloe. ‘At the time Neil seemed so much more exciting. An older man, married and all that. Mark was devastated. He hated Neil. That’s why he left that badge in Dad’s office. To try and frame Neil. It was Alan’s badge but they all had them, all the Night Hawks. That was stupid. I told him. No need to complicate things with break-ins and cryptic clues. We’d nearly got away with it. If it hadn’t been for Paul going off the rails like that, shooting DCI Nelson, kidnapping his wife and mistress.’

  Would they have got away with it? Judy isn’t so sure. She thinks that Mark, at least, would have cracked eventually.

  ‘When did you get back together with Mark?’ she asks.

  ‘About a year ago. I finished with Neil when I went to university. I left it all behind me, boyfriends, family, everything. They were the happiest years of my life. But then I came back. God knows why. And it all started again with my parents – not the physical abuse but the mental bullying. Dad going on at me about being a GP. He thought I should be a hospital doctor at the very least. Mum not sticking up for me. She never did. I think she loved her pupils at school more than she did us. She was in thrall to him. I met Mark in Lynn one day and it started again.’

  ‘The affair?’

  ‘Yes. Mark was still in love with me.’ Chloe even allows herself a smile of self-satisfaction at this. ‘I was fond of him too. It was nice to be with someone who adored me like that. But then I started to realise that Mark was the perfect weapon. He still hated my parents because of what they did to me. He could handle a gun, he was used to acting under pressure. At first he was reluctant but, when Nathan died, he suddenly agreed. He loved Nathan. They were best friends from school.’

  The perfect weapon, thinks Judy. Was that all Mark had been to Chloe?

  ‘I’m not sorry,’ Chloe says again. Judy wonders if this can really be true. She thinks of Chloe describing her parents ‘putting on the dishwasher and preparing to go to bed’. Did she not feel a pang when outlining this familiar domestic routine? But then Chloe says, ‘My dad sexually abused me for years. My mum knew. Or at least she suspected. And she never did anything. He used to say that, if I said anything, the body in the garden would come and get me. That’s why Mark put it in the note. When I told him about the abuse he said, “shooting’s too good for them”. And I think he was right.’

  Tony Zhang looks as if he almost agrees with this. Judy, too, feels that any sympathy she might have had for the dead couple has evaporated in the light of this information. She thinks of Paul saying to Tanya: ‘It was worse for Chloe.’ But Chloe is still an accessory to murder. Judy can only hope that the jury will be sympathetic too.

  Chapter 37

  Ruth walks slowly back to the waiting area with the nailed-
down chairs and defeated-looking people. She wonders whether she should ask someone to look at her head, which still aches where she was hit, but she doesn’t have the energy. She’ll just sit quietly and text goodnight to Kate. It’s only when she sinks into an uncomfortable plastic seat and reaches for her phone that she realises that she doesn’t have it. Paul took it when she was unconscious and she has no idea where it is now. Then the full force of this hits Ruth. She has no phone. She can’t contact Kate and send her a cheery ‘Good night xx’. Kate could be hurt or in danger and Tasha’s mum would have no way of contacting Ruth. Her lungs start to contract and suddenly she doesn’t know how to breathe any more. She gulps at the air but it’s as if her throat has closed up. The room tilts and starts to fragment. Wash your hands. Smoking is hazardous to your health. Protective clothing required in this area. X-ray do not enter.

  ‘Ruth! Ruth. Are you OK?’

  Ruth opens her eyes. A face is on a level with hers but she has trouble assembling it into someone she knows. Glasses, dark hair, large nose, angry expression.

  ‘David?’ she gasps.

  ‘Breathe,’ says David. ‘Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. In, out. In, out.’ Someone else said this to her once. Cathbad. Just thinking of Cathbad’s name makes her relax slightly. She manages one breath, then another.

  ‘That’s it. Say this to yourself. Total calm. In, total. Out, calm. My therapist taught me that once.’

  The room slowly rights itself. Total calm. But she isn’t calm. Nelson is seriously injured and she can’t contact Kate. She can feel herself hyperventilating again.

  ‘Here.’ David is holding out two phones to her. One is in a sparkly pink case, the other has a cracked screen.

  She takes the cracked phone.

  ‘Thank you! How did you find it?’

  ‘It was in the house. In the kitchen. The place was swarming with police but, in all the confusion, no one noticed me take them. I recognised yours because your case has a picture of a cat on it.’

  It’s Flint, of course. The case was a present from Kate. Laura helped her design and order it. A wave of love for her daughter and her half-sister sweeps over her.

  Ruth keys in her passcode. 011108. Kate’s birthday. It’s so obvious, she should really change it. There are no messages, nothing to worry about. She texts good night to Kate although, as it’s nearly ten o’clock, she hopes that she’s not still awake. The clock over the reception desk is stuck at ten to five. Ruth wonders if she should ring Laura but she doesn’t have her mobile number. Kate has it but Ruth doesn’t. The sparkly phone must be Michelle’s. Should she try to open it, to try to ring Nelson’s daughters? She stabs at it but the phone is password protected, of course. What is Michelle’s password? Harry? One of the girls’ birthdays? Their wedding anniversary? Ruth doesn’t attempt to unlock the phone.

  She turns to David. ‘Thank you for bringing my phone. I’m afraid I was panicking a bit.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ says David. ‘I know I’d be lost without mine.’

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘I knew this is where they’d bring DCI Nelson. Are you still in a relationship with him?’

  Ruth closes her eyes. She’s grateful to David but she really doesn’t want to have this conversation with him. Besides, is she in a relationship with Nelson? The tense implies something ongoing and active. He’s the love of her life but that’s not the same thing.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ she says at last.

  ‘Most things are,’ says David, stretching out his long legs in front of him. ‘You know,’ he says, in a different tone, ‘I used to live at Black Dog Farm.’

  Ruth turns to look at him. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I was born and brought up there. Then, when I was eight, my mum was killed in an accident. A really horrific accident. She was clearing a blockage in the machine and she was dragged into it. She hadn’t set the safe stop system properly. I only found that out later.’

  ‘How awful,’ says Ruth. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It was horrendous,’ says David. ‘My dad just didn’t talk about it. Never mentioned her name again. Then, two months after Mum died, he announced that he was sending me to West Runton Prep School. They were the worst years of my life.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Ruth again.

  ‘I had nightmares for years,’ says David. ‘The blood. There was so much blood. The ambulance. My father in the sitting room reading the paper. Reading the paper. As if nothing had happened. In my dreams the house became a mansion with thousands of rooms, or a tiny cell with barred windows. I went to therapy as an adult and they said I was suffering from PTSD. I learnt techniques to cope with it, but I wondered what would happen when I saw the place again. Would I collapse? Have some sort of fit? But, when I went back there, when you were excavating the garden, it was a shock to see that it was just a house. Bricks and mortar.’

  He thought he’d seen someone in the window, Ruth remembers. She wonders who it was that David thought he saw.

  ‘The dog,’ she says. ‘The dog in the garden . . .’

  ‘That was Rex, our Doberman,’ says David. ‘My dad loved that dog. I was always a bit scared of him but, that day, when I was watching Mum’s body being taken away, Rex came to me and comforted me. I’ve never forgotten it. He died a few years later and Dad buried him in the garden. I was away at boarding school at the time.’

  ‘So you knew what the bones were,’ says Ruth. ‘You could have told me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says David. ‘I just felt so emotional when I saw Rex’s remains. And then we saw that dog running into the barn. I thought I was seeing things. I couldn’t tell you then. You would have thought I was mad.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought that,’ says Ruth. ‘But I think I can understand why you didn’t say anything.’

  ‘I didn’t want anyone to know. I spent years being The Boy from the House of Death. People saying that Dad killed Mum. Some people even saying that I’d done it. I didn’t want all that again. I didn’t tell anyone at school. Even Alan didn’t know. I almost didn’t apply for the job at UNN but, I don’t know, the lure of Norfolk was too strong.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ says Ruth. ‘I almost got away once but now I’m back. Was that what you were talking to Troy about? The fact that you used to live at Black Dog Farm?’

  ‘Yes. Troy knew because his uncle was one of the policemen who attended the scene.’

  The scene. It’s very much a police word. Just for a second Ruth tries to imagine exactly what the scene was like. So much blood, David had said.

  ‘It must have been hard going back,’ she says.

  ‘I feel better for it,’ says David. ‘As if I’ve laid the ghost. And I’m glad that I was there today because I was able to tell DI Johnson how to get into the house.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw her,’ says Ruth. ‘I thought I was dreaming.’

  ‘That was the house,’ says David. ‘It does things to your head.’

  Maybe this is true, thinks Ruth. She thinks of Paul today, pointing the gun at them and rambling about Chloe and his parents. Did the policeman – Mark – really kill them? Whatever happened, it’s easy to imagine the farmhouse casting a malign spell over them.

  ‘I thought I saw the Black Shuck today,’ she says to David.

  ‘Maybe you did,’ he replies.

  Has he seen it? Ruth wonders. Has she seen it? She remembers the creature loping across the path, the flash of red eyes. Then she thinks of Nelson and nothing else seems to matter. She sits, gripping her phone with its picture of Flint. David stays silently beside her.

  It’s nearly midnight by the time Judy gets to the hospital. Mark Hammond has been charged with the murders of Douglas Noakes, Linda Noakes and Alan White; Chloe Noakes with conspiracy to murder, and Paul Noakes with attempted murder a
nd false imprisonment. Judy has arranged for Jan Adams to take care of Dexter but there’s still a lot of paperwork to get through in the morning, to say nothing of the furore when it gets out that a police officer was involved. But that’s for another day. Right now, Judy is thinking about Nelson, her mentor, friend and, though he would hate to hear this, father figure. As she parks in the car park, she’s not surprised to see a smart jeep in the space next to hers. When she gets to the main entrance, there he is, checking his phone.

  ‘Hallo, Clough.’

  ‘Judy! I just heard about the boss.’

  If Nelson is the father, then Judy and Clough are the siblings, vying for his attention. When they worked together, this often used to annoy Judy. She felt that Clough was always trying to play the bloke card with Nelson, talking about football and drinking (both things Judy also enjoys, incidentally), excluding her. But now, seeing the concern on Clough’s face, Judy feels suddenly very close to him. They are family, after all.

  ‘I rang just now,’ she says. ‘He’s out of surgery and they say he’s stable.’

  ‘Was he shot?’ says Clough. ‘That’s what I heard.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Judy. ‘He just can’t seem to stay out of trouble.’

  ‘I saved his life once,’ says Clough as they go in through the double doors.

  This is one of Clough’s favourite stories, starring himself in an impossibly heroic role, pulling Nelson out of the sea, giving him the kiss of life.

  ‘You saved mine once too,’ says Judy. ‘Remember the mad horse that tried to kill me?’

  ‘Necromancer,’ says Clough. ‘He won the Grand National the next year.’

  The waiting area is almost deserted, but Judy is not surprised to see that Ruth is still there. She is surprised, though, to see that Ruth is asleep with her head on a man’s shoulder and that the man is David Brown.