All the Hidden Truths

by Claire Askew

  Two days later

  Moira Anne Summers

  date: Thursday, 16 May

  time: 14:06

  PART 2 OF RECORDED INTERVIEW

  duration: 54 minutes

  location: Interview Room 4, office #20188

  present: Moira Anne Summers (interviewee), Anjan Chaudhry (legal counsel) Det Inspector Helen Birch C#4138E, Det Chief Inspector James McLeod C#1666E, Police Family Liaison Officer Amy Kato C#901E

  pages: 8

  McLeod: This interview is being recorded; the time is 14:06 hours. I am DCI McLeod, resuming our interview with Moira Anne Summers. Also present are DI Birch and Amy Kato, Mrs Summers’ FLO. Mrs Summers’ legal counsel is Mr Anjan Chaudhry, and Mrs Summers, in the first part of this interview you stated that you would like to be called Moira throughout. Can you confirm that this is still the case?

  Summers: Yes, that’s right.

  McLeod: And Mr Chaudhry, I am led to believe that you wish to make a statement for the record before we proceed with the interview?

  Chaudhry: Yes.

  McLeod: You may do so.

  Chaudhry: Thank you. I would just like to put it on record that Mrs Summers has been under considerable emotional strain over the past two days. Not only is she coming to terms with the death of her son, but she has also been bombarded with attention from the press and from members of the public, most of which has been negative. I know, DCI McLeod, that at present you and members of your team here are investigating several anonymous death threats and threats of bodily harm that have been made against Mrs Summers. I know that local police are also monitoring the behaviour of those members of the press who are currently camped outside Mrs Summers’ house. As I am sure you can appreciate, this set of circumstances is extremely difficult and highly unpredictable. Therefore I’d like to ask that all efforts are made over the course of this interview, and in any subsequent interviews, to take into account the circumstances under which Mrs Summers comes to speak with you. I’d also like to take this opportunity to recognise, and to praise, the work done these past two days by Ms Kato. Mrs Summers has led me to believe that your presence has been invaluable, and a great comfort.

  McLeod: Let the record show that this last remark was made directly to Officer Kato.

  Summers: Yes, thank you Amy. Amy really has been wonderful.

  McLeod: Thank you, Mr Chaudhry, for your statement. I assure you that we are fully aware of the wider circumstances surrounding Mrs Summers’ presence here today.

  Summers: Thank you, Anjan.

  McLeod: Unless there are any further pre-emptive statements, I would like to proceed with questioning. Let the record show that Mr Chaudhry nodded his head indicating that the interview may proceed. Are you happy for us to proceed, Mrs Summers?

  Summers: Moira. Yes.

  McLeod: Moira, my apologies. Okay then. We’ve already spoken about your movements on the morning of the shooting. Today I’d like to ask you some questions that are focused on your son, Ryan. We’d like to get a better picture of the last few days and weeks of his life.

  Summers: Okay. Okay. I will do my best.

  ‘I don’t know how you work with him.’

  The lawyer was standing in a stripe of afternoon light, a floodlight aimed at the corridor’s waxed floor. His shoes gleamed. Beside him, the bulb of the water cooler gargled air.

  ‘Hello, Anjan.’

  Birch approached him with caution: she felt rumpled and scruffy next to this man. At sternum height, a gold tie-pin winked, its small ruby matching his wine-red tie, cufflinks, even his socks.

  ‘You look tired, DI Birch,’ he said. ‘Congrats on the promotion, by the way.’

  She reached down for a plastic cup. They were the cheap, ribbed kind: the kind that crackle and split under the slightest pressure.

  ‘That feels like years ago,’ she said. ‘So much for thinking I’d ease in gently. I’ve had, what, about six hours’ sleep since the shooting? And an hour of that was in my car this morning. You’ll have to forgive my appearance.’

  The water cooler chugged.

  ‘Well, you’re the chosen one.’ His tone was not warm. ‘He says jump, and you say—’

  ‘And I say, “Yes, guv.” It’s my job, Anjan. He’s my boss.’

  ‘He’s a pig.’

  ‘Come on, don’t make me do this. And keep your voice down.’

  Birch dipped two fingertips into her cup of cold water. She lifted them to her right eyelid, closed her eyes and daubed the water across the thin skin. She repeated the gesture for her left eye, then looked up at the lawyer, water beginning to run down her face like tears.

  ‘Feel better?’ he asked. He was smiling now.

  ‘Not really.’ With her free hand, she patted herself down for a tissue, and wiped her face. ‘I’d feel better if I knew what it is your client isn’t telling us.’

  ‘You mean Moira?’

  Birch closed her eyes for a moment. In spite of the water, they felt sticky, hard to keep open.

  ‘Who else would I mean, Anjan? I mean, I feel for her, but – she’s just being a little too co-operative. There’s something she’s hoping we won’t find out about . . . and I suspect that you know what it is.’

  The lawyer arranged his face into a neat mask of neutrality.

  ‘I can’t say that I know what you’re referring to.’

  Birch rolled her eyes.

  ‘Of course. Oh well. I suppose we’ll just have to keep on keeping on.’

  Anjan flashed her a smile.

  ‘I suppose you will.’

  There was a pause. Around them, the station ticked and hummed. Birch frowned, and felt the frown deepen until she had to speak.

  ‘I just – I just want to know why. Ryan Summers, I mean. Why do that? Why the hell would anyone do that? Did he not think about what he’d leave behind? I mean, look at his mother. Two full days she’s been in here getting questions fired at her. She’s got death threats, she’s got rape threats, she’s got paparazzi in her garden hedge, she’s got nutters on the doorstep. Didn’t he realise that would happen to her? Didn’t he give a shit? She’s his mother. And I’m not even letting myself think about the girls. The victims. What about their mothers? What about the journos in their hedges, nutters on their doorsteps? He unleashed all of that, and that’s just the fall-out we know about. Why – why do that? Or perhaps the more pressing question is – what can any of us do in the face of an act like that?’

  When she finished speaking, a thick quiet seemed to ebb into the corridor like smoke. There was no one else around, just Birch and the lawyer – not just any lawyer, but the best lawyer, Anjan Chaudhry – the guy they used to call The Brain at her old station. She’d always liked him. He was tough, but he wasn’t an arsehole. He was loaded, but he hadn’t gone into the law to get rich. He cared about what happened to people. He rarely defended anyone who was truly guilty. One of life’s good guys, Anjan, she thought. And, as if to prove it, he took one step towards her, and put his free hand onto her shoulder.

  ‘You’re doing okay, Helen,’ he said. He jiggled his elbow a little, shaking her, to make her look him in the eye. ‘I mean it.’

  She looked at him for a second, then past him, into that stripe of light. Dust specks swirled, pulled in the small slipstream of their movements.

  ‘What do we do, though?’ She looked down at the tie-pin, its ruby like a point of blood, shining. ‘When the crime is so huge, but we already know who did it? We know how he did it. I guess we’ll never really know why he did it. So what do we do? What is it for, all this? The questioning. The not sleeping. The bitching about my boss. What is it for?’

  Anjan was looking at her face, but his eyes became unfocused: he’d gone inside himself somewhere for a moment, to think. He shook her again, less urgently, and his voice was quiet and certain.

  ‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that you – that the police – give people hope. That’s not true in many countries – it’s not true where I come from. But
it’s true here. Everyone’s scared. More scared than you, Helen, because remember, you have information that they’ll never be given. Everyone’s wondering why this happened, what makes a person turn into a monster. They’re scared because they look at a kid like Ryan Summers and think, what if, actually, he was normal? What if what happened inside him happens inside me, and I become capable of something like that? But through that fear, they also see that you’re doing something – you, the police. Someone’s doing something. Something’s being done. That helps. That isn’t a small thing.’

  Birch nodded, slowly, then shook her head as if trying to dislodge something. She nudged his hand away, straightened up.

  ‘You’re right, Anjan. Thank you, you’re right. I’m just tired. I need to pull myself together.’

  She downed the water – tinged blue-green by its plastic cup –

  a little lukewarm now.

  ‘No problem.’ Anjan stooped to fix the line of his jacket. ‘Oh, incidentally: my office has been receiving some phone calls from a Mr Grant Lockley. I believe you two know each other?’

  Birch felt her shoulders crumple inwards.

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake. Yes. We’ve had some previous, Grant and I. Some . . . less than pleasant personal dealings, from before I joined the force. It’s a long time ago. What’s he after?’

  Anjan extended an elegant hand, studied the nails.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly tell you,’ he said. ‘For the simple reason that I haven’t returned any of his calls – and nor do I intend to.’

  ‘Good,’ Birch said. ‘I’m glad to hear it. It’s not you he wants, anyway – he’s just trying to get to Moira.’

  Anjan put his hand back in his pocket, and looked up at her.

  ‘I gathered that, Helen,’ he said. The smile was returning to his face. ‘I’ve been in this game a little while now, you know.’

  Birch summoned a weak smile. Her empty cup rang against the side of the metal bin.

  ‘See you in there, Mr Chaudhry.’

  McLeod: Moira, you said in your first statement – I am referring to the statement you gave on the day of the shooting – that you liked the fact that Ryan had shown an interest in restoring your husband’s old starting pistols.

  Summers: Yes.

  McLeod: Can you say why that is?

  Summers: Well, I know it sounds terrible now, but I was just relieved. That he was telling me about things again. That he was asking me things.

  McLeod: I’m sorry – when you say ‘he was telling me about things again’, what exactly do you mean?

  Summers: Oh, sorry. I mean again, since his father died.

  McLeod: You’re referring to your husband, Jackie.

  Summers: Yes. He died a little over two years ago. He’d been ill for some time.

  McLeod: And Ryan didn’t react well to his father’s death?

  Chaudhry: DCI McLeod, I wonder if you can bring this questioning back to the matter at hand? It seems mildly insulting to suggest that a son ever would react well to the death of his father.

  McLeod: I apologise, Moira, if that was the impression my question gave.

  Summers: That’s all right, I knew what you meant. And you’re right. Ryan reacted very badly to Jackie’s death. He became very withdrawn around me – especially around me. After a while he went back to his job, and then his employers said they’d pay for his college course and he went off to college. But when he was at home he was very . . . subdued, I think, is the word.

  McLeod: Can you give some examples of what you mean, Moira?

  Summers: Just small things, I suppose. But things that felt big to me. Like, he didn’t like to eat with me, he liked to eat in his room. I let that go on for too long after Jackie died, I suppose. And when he did come down to sit with me he’d just look at his phone all the time. It got so he barely spoke to me.

  McLeod: But things improved, in your opinion, when Ryan started to show an interest in the starting pistols?

  Summers: Yes. He was down out of his room more often. He’d be out in that shed a lot more often, and sometimes when he came in for a cup of tea he’d stand in the kitchen and drink it with me. And we ate together a little more. I thought it was progress I was seeing.

  McLeod: And this progress – it seemed to continue right up until the day of the shooting?

  Summers: Yes.

  McLeod: So you didn’t see any further changes in Ryan’s behaviour in just, say, the past couple of weeks? Or the past few days?

  McLeod: Moira, I’d really like you to answer that question.

  Chaudhry: Take your time, Moira.

  Summers: No. No changes in behaviour that I can put my finger on.

  McLeod: What about conversations the two of you had just recently. Did Ryan say anything to you that made you anxious or worried in any way?

  McLeod: Moira, I know this is upsetting, but I do need you to answer that question.

  Chaudry: DCI McLeod . . .

  Kato: DCI McLeod, I think Moira could do with a wee break quite soon. Don’t get upset Moira, you’re doing great here.

  Birch: You’re being very helpful, Mrs Summers. We greatly appreciate your co-operation.

  Summers: I can’t believe myself, honestly.

  McLeod: What can’t you believe, Moira?

  Summers: That I didn’t see it coming.

  McLeod: Which you didn’t? You genuinely didn’t have any concerns prior to the shooting?

  Chaudhry: I think she’s just answered that question.

  Summers: No, I didn’t. I thought this was just what boys Ryan’s age were like. I thought he was like any other boy. I used to talk to my friends about their sons, like you do. You know, asking how they were. And they’d tell me, they’d reassure me, their sons were just the same. Always in their rooms, on their computers. Always with their mobile phone out at the dinner table.

  McLeod: So you must have had some concerns, because you asked friends for reassurance.

  Chaudhry: Moira, that’s not something you have to answer if you don’t want to. Once again, that wasn’t a question, DCI McLeod.

  Summers: No, it’s all right, Anjan. Thank you. I suppose I asked my friends for advice about how sullen Ryan could be because sometimes I did get frustrated about his behaviour and I told a few of them how I felt about that. Then we’d end up talking about how much time our sons spent in their rooms playing these video games, or whatever. But that was it really. You know the kinds of conversations mothers have. Or maybe you don’t, I don’t know.

  McLeod: And you never had any conversation with Ryan about guns, with the exception of the starting pistols? He never spoke about guns with you?

  Summers: Never.

  McLeod: And you never spoke about guns with anyone else?

  Summers: No. It’s not something you really talk about, is it?

  McLeod: Not even the starting pistols? You didn’t tell anyone else that Ryan was interested in them?

  Summers: No, I didn’t. I wish I had now. They might have warned me that that wasn’t right.

  McLeod: But you never yourself felt that it wasn’t right, that Ryan was doing something with these starting pistols?

  Chaudhry: My client has already answered that.

  McLeod: Very well. Moira, did you have any idea why Ryan was so interested in the starting pistols? Did you never wonder what he intended to do with them?

  Summers: He said he wanted to see how they worked. We had one conversation about it, Ryan and me. Ryan asked me about the old guns in the shed. Like I say, we called them ‘guns’; that’s how we referred to them. Before that point I actually didn’t know they existed, I had no idea Jackie had kept them and I hadn’t been out to that shed since before he died. I never realised they were illegal – I didn’t know starting pistols could be. I did want reassurance from Ryan that they weren’t dangerous, and I said he could only work on them as long as he never took them out of the shed. I was worried that someone might see him carrying one and mistake it for a
real gun. So Ryan asked could he take them apart to look at the parts, and I said yes. Ryan told me that if he took them apart, he’d probably never be able to put them together again properly. And I believed that. I felt okay about it because he’d said that, and I never really gave it much thought after that. I’m so ashamed of myself. I’m sorry, Detective Chief Inspector. I really am sorry.

  16 May, 4.45 p.m.

  Birch was the only woman in the staff canteen. No one else had come to sit at her table. The canteen was badly lit, bland and weird, an old-fashioned space with ceiling tiles and a kitchen hatch. Efforts to modernise it seemed only half done: new lino, dated already; colourful moulded chairs that looked like Play-Doh; felt-backed pinboards tacked with posters for PolFed and UNISON meetings. Birch felt like she was back in school again – alone at the lunch table with her head stuck in a book, like she was surrounded by some force field that other people could all see. Especially boys, she thought: they’d always given her an extra-wide berth.

  Except instead of a book, her head was stuck in the mounting pile of case notes for Three Rivers, and her colleagues were avoiding her because they didn’t want to be given something to do. That was what she hoped, anyway. No one had slept much – everyone looked grey-faced and stretched. There was nobody here who’d ever worked a case like this, and all the boring police-work of a regular day didn’t just go away in the event of a mass shooting. Birch was the one who was adding extra work to just about everyone’s desk. If no one would meet her eye, it was totally understandable – right?

  Birch forced herself to look back down at her notes. Now she had FLOs in place, she’d been able to organise a gathering for the families of the victims – or as many as they could bring in by tonight. One of the victims was an international student, her parents thousands of miles away in Korea. Sorting out the release and transport of her remains was going to be a real headache, later on down the line – involving paperwork and consulates and overseas funeral directors, none of which Birch wanted to think about right now. She hoped that girl’s parents were being adequately supported. She could only imagine how vast that distance must feel.