No One Will Hear

by Joel Hames

  The pounding in my chest was so loud I was surprised no one else could hear it. Or maybe they could. Maybe they were all as transfixed as I was.

  “They will get away with it, Miss Tully.” He pronounced Miss as Meess. “They are animals. What they did, to my poor Yelena. Nobody should be treated like that.”

  It was clear. Everything was clear.

  I’d been looking in the wrong places. It was Serena Hawkes, all over again. Only this time, it was a lot closer to home.

  Four names.

  Trawden

  Connor.

  FatherMac.

  Viktor.

  What had he said to Claire? What had he done to her?

  “We are the same, Miss Tully.” It was Trawden’s face, but the accent and the tone had changed the man. “We fight for those who have no voice. For the silent. We fight against those who silence them. They are animals. And now they are protected. Who will speak for my daughter, Miss Tully? They must be avenged. They must be heard, Miss Tully. I am in Ukraine. I can do nothing. It must be you. You must speak for them. You must speak for them and avenge them, Miss Tully. And then, perhaps, you will finally speak for your cousin.”

  Trawden stopped, his eyes fixed on me, and without warning burst into peals of laughter, waves rolling in on me while I tried to take everything in. I stood. Brooks-Powell and Colman wore identical expressions of bewilderment. I didn’t have time to explain. I strode through the room and out of the door and I didn’t look back.

  25: Sig

  I WAS THREE miles down the M1 before I realised where I was and what I was doing. I kept one eye on the road and rang Claire’s number again, not caring who saw me. It didn’t matter. Anyone watching would have been hard-pressed to make out the phone, given I was topping a hundred miles an hour and the Fiat was shaking uncomfortably. I’d had one close shave already, on the way out of the village, eyes on the phone, veering round a corner on the wrong side of the road and only jerking back a foot or two away from an enormous black coffin of a car heading right for me.

  No answer.

  I tried again, with similar results. I had no idea where Claire was or what she was doing, but I knew whatever it was, it was happening now. Trawden wouldn’t have told me if I wasn’t already too late to stop it. And wherever she was, she wasn’t bleeding out her last in Redbourn – Trawden was too clever for that. The M25 was coming up and I had a decision to make. Round London, or into it.

  Into it. I veered back into the right-hand lane and kept going. The sun was up, now, flashes of bright gold reflecting off the remains of an overnight downpour I hadn’t noticed. It was half past eight.

  I needed something to keep me going. Something to keep me from panicking. I turned on the radio in time for the news bulletin.

  Martins had finally caved. The murders were the top story; the police were linking four killings over a twenty-four-hour period in four different parts of London. The locations were revealed, but not the names. Not the details, either, but I could see why Martins had chosen to keep those cards close to her chest. Let the public digest the deaths, first – the “horrific murders”, as the newsreader referred to them – and drip-feed the rest later, if later was needed. It wouldn’t be. We knew who’d killed those four people. We knew who’d killed Elizabeth Maurier. Who’d killed Paul Simmons. Who’d killed Alina Singh. Who’d killed Marcy Granger. Who’d removed ears, eyes, nose, fingers. Who’d left messages on walls and sent the police scurrying hither and yon like mice in a maze, drugged and heading the wrong way. We knew who’d done it, and I knew that for all that, we’d never put him back behind bars. Trawden wasn’t one step ahead of me. I’d been arrogant to presume it. He was playing a completely different game.

  Martins was on the radio now, the woman herself, those same sharp vowels, that same false depth. Appealing to the public. Opening the floodgates. She must be hating this, I thought, and found myself smiling. I held the smile in place a second longer than I felt it. Another thing to keep my mind occupied.

  After Martins and the murders, the people-smugglers. The trial, the one Claire had been obsessing over. They’d overfilled their boat, to make a little more money. They hadn’t bothered maintaining it, to save a little more money. And as a result, nearly three hundred refugees had drowned, and that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it was that this or something like it was happening almost every day somewhere in the Mediterranean, and every time the bastards running the show got away with it.

  Only this time, those bastards weren’t operating out of the back of a market stall in Beirut or Cairo or Mogadishu or Khartoum. This time they were operating out of the back of a pizza joint in Leicester, and a low-rent shipping business in Toulouse, and a courier company in Rome. This time they were caught, the six who hadn’t slipped the net in time, and they were on trial in London’s Central Criminal Court, and half the world was watching. Claire wasn’t alone, at least. It seemed like I was the only person who wasn’t obsessed with the case.

  That thought comforted me, for a moment. She wasn’t mad. Anyone with an ounce of compassion and an interest in current affairs would have been following the trial. The newsreader was still on the same story – it was a big story, and today was a big day for it, because the star witness for the prosecution would be appearing this morning. His evidence was expected to be little short of sensational. His name was Jonas Wolf.

  I managed to keep control of the car, and that was no mean feat given that my first reaction, when I heard the name, was to let go of the steering wheel and close my eyes. I felt the drag of the wheels on the strip that told me I was heading for the central reservation, the strip that separated an everyday drive from a fiery death, and heard the hum that went with it, and I opened my eyes and grabbed the steering wheel again, and hit the brakes, too, because the traffic was slowing in front of me as I neared the city and the end of the motorway.

  Jonas Wolf.

  It explained everything. Finally. It was as if someone had just switched on a light, and suddenly all those mysteries that had been plaguing me for close to a fortnight were gone.

  Claire had implicated Jonas Wolf in her own story. He’d been involved, she didn’t know how, but she knew he’d been involved. He’d helped import those girls, the five of them, and he’d helped distribute them to people who’d raped them and killed them and not given them a second thought.

  And the police hadn’t been interested. “Oh yes,” they’d said, every last one of them, every detective sergeant and detective inspector and police constable and even the superintendent she’d eventually hounded into returning her calls. “Oh yes. Leave it with us. We’ll get back to you.” And they hadn’t got back to her, or if they had, it had been with apologies and excuses. They couldn’t go after Wolf. No one could tell her why.

  And now I knew. Wolf was the star witness in an A-list trial. No doubt he’d been promised immunity. I wondered how long Claire had known, and the answer was there as soon as the question had crossed my mind. Since the beginning. Since I’d come back from Manchester and she’d been different, somehow, distracted and obsessed and angry and sad. The man talking on the radio was Sergeant Paul Jenson of the Metropolitan Police Immigration Enforcement Liaison Unit. I’d seen him on the television. I’d watched her watching him and not saying a word. He’d phoned her – the name suddenly struck home. He’d phoned the day Elizabeth’s will had been read, the day everything had started, he’d phoned and I’d answered and passed him onto Claire and she’d been shouting at him as I left for Willoughby’s office.

  He’d been telling her Wolf was off-limits.

  She hadn’t told me any of this. I’d asked, and she’d come up with words that seemed to explain it all, but it had never really made sense. Why wouldn’t the police take on Wolf? What was Thorwell so afraid of that he wouldn’t publish? I’d listen to her half-explanations, I’d waited for her to say more, and – I remembered it now, I could see her as if she were sitting beside me in the car – sh
e’d been about to say something, about to say everything, maybe, but I’d told her not to get too close. Don’t make it personal.

  So she hadn’t. She hadn’t told me Wolf was about more than the girls he’d helped kill. She hadn’t told me Wolf was her cousin’s last word, a different man from the one who’d driven that cousin to take her own life, but still the final stop on a fifteen year journey she’d been determined to keep to herself. She hadn’t told me how Wolf had got away.

  I knew where I was heading, at least. The traffic was slowing, but I’d spent many a long day at the Old Bailey and I knew some back roads. I’d be there by nine. What I’d do when I got there was another question entirely.

  My phone rang. It wouldn’t be Claire. I knew it wouldn’t be Claire. I just hoped it wasn’t Martins.

  It wasn’t.

  “Sam,” said Maloney. There was something in his voice I didn’t recognise. Urgency. Fear, even. Fear wasn’t a word I associated with Maloney.

  “Can’t talk now,” I said. “I’ve got a problem.”

  “I know,” he replied, and I nearly dropped the phone. “Look, don’t blame me, OK?”

  I felt something in my gut, a lead weight, a sense of dread almost physical it was so solid and unambiguous.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s Claire. She’s been round. I took her to the pub on Saturday and we had a blast, she opened up, you know, all about Mandy. She’d already told me about that, when we spoke the other day, but I got the full story on Saturday. She’s been hurting, Sam. She’s been really hurting.”

  I didn’t say anything. Everyone knew about her cousin. Even Trawden knew. He’d tracked down her obsession through Twitter and milked her for more by playing Viktor. Maloney knew. Everyone knew except me. And all this – Trawden was right. It had happened under my nose, and I’d ignored it, or thought it was something else, I’d followed the noise and looked for the obvious and all the time it had been right in front of me, and at the very moment it was about to reveal itself I’d said don’t make it personal, and it had scuttled back under its rock. It was my fault. All of it. I cried out, in frustration or anger or self-loathing or fear, or a mixture of all four, but Maloney was still talking. I stopped cursing myself long enough to listen.

  “Yesterday she came over. I wasn’t expecting her, but I made her welcome and we drank some good scotch and she let it all out again, Mandy, but also that trial and that bastard Wolf. We had a good session, you know, hit the pub in the middle and came back to mine for more scotch afterwards.”

  Maloney had finally wound down his operation, but he’d held onto his base. Half a dozen ex-council flats in a block in the back end of Tottenham. Over the years, he’d turned them into the centre of a crime ring that dominated half of North London, and when he’d had enough of that, he’d simply turned them into a nice place to live. Claire would have been comfortable, at least.

  “Thing is,” he continued, “we drank a lot and I don’t remember everything.”

  He paused, and I waited for what was coming. If he’d had sex with my girlfriend I’d be angry, sure, but I’d also be relieved. If she wanted to take out her anger by screwing my friend, I could live with that. It could be worse. The Claire I knew wouldn’t have done anything like that. But I was starting to realise that the Claire I knew wasn’t even half the picture.

  “So I checked around this morning and I realised one of my pieces was missing.”

  He paused, again, and I tried to figure out what he was talking about. He clarified things a moment later.

  “It’s an old Sig. She took a couple of magazines, too. She took the right ones, so I think she knew what she was doing. I think she planned this. And I think I know where she’s going.”

  “The Old Bailey?” I said. “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll meet you outside the courts.”

  “OK.”

  “And I’m sorry, Sam.”

  “Don’t be. She’d have figured out a way, somehow or other.”

  “We’ll stop her, Sam. We’ll make it.”

  I killed the call and swerved down a side road as I noticed a line of brake lights blinking on in front. I’d ignored all the bus lanes and the odd red light already. I’d be lucky to keep my driving licence when all this was over.

  I was driving past the court nineteen minutes later and remembering the one thing I’d always hated about the Old Bailey.

  Nowhere to park.

  I cruised around the side streets for a couple of minutes, wondering whether I should just ditch the car somewhere and run. But I didn’t want to attract attention. There were police outside the courts, more than usual, and a television news crew or two. A car where it shouldn’t be would have them swarming all over it within seconds.

  Part of me thought that would be a good thing. The police would have more luck getting to Claire than I would. Maybe they’d get to her before she did anything stupid, like putting a bullet in Jonas Wolf in front of half the world’s media. But if they did, they’d have her with a gun and intent and motive and a whole lot more, and I was still hoping I could get to her myself. Stop her. Reset everything from zero.

  Maloney had called, twice. He’d managed to get himself driven to the spot and dropped off, and he was running around like a crazy man trying to pick out one woman among fifty thousand commuters, every one of them anxious to be where they were heading and not interested in getting out of his way.

  I drove around three times. The news came on. Martins and the murders. The trial – the day’s proceedings were due to start in an hour, which meant witnesses could be arriving any time now. It was a handgun. It was small, she could be anywhere. Not inside, though. She wouldn’t have got a gun into the court. The trial story was interrupted by some breaking news. A shooting, in a village. I half-listened, still keeping an eye on the road and an eye on the pedestrians and a fraction of each of those eyes on the lookout for somewhere I could ditch the car and join Maloney in his fruitless search. Half the village had been sealed off, said the radio. There were reports of casualties. Locals had never experienced anything like it. I was driving past the court again, the fourth time, still no sign of her. The village was on the outskirts of London. It was called Redbourn.

  I flashed back, suddenly, to the car that had almost run me off the road as I drove away. The enormous black coffin of a car.

  It was a Bentley, I thought.

  I stopped the car, right there, right outside the court, and I felt my head drop until it hit the steering wheel, and the noise went right through me, the drone of the horn as my forehead pressed into the panel, the drone climbing through the mess outside and all the rest of the noise, obliterating everything in a single blaring note. I didn’t move. They’d be edging towards me, I thought, armed police, there would be cameras aimed at the car and commuters stopping and pointing at me and wondering what had happened to the man in the Fiat, whether he’d had a heart attack or a mental breakdown or any of those terrible things that happen to other people.

  I didn’t care. Let them come, I thought. It was over. Everything was over.

  The passenger door opened and someone slid in beside me and closed it behind them. I lifted my head from the steering wheel, but I didn’t look round.

  “You can’t stop me,” she said, softly.

  I looked up. People were pointing. A gaggle of police officers, five or six of them, were staring in our direction, but they hadn’t yet made a move towards us. I didn’t dare turn to look at her.

  “I know why you’re here, Sam. I appreciate it. It’s kind of you. But it’s too late. I have to do this.”

  I put the car into gear and started moving off, slowly, because I didn’t want to frighten her into jumping out. The police officers turned away and went about their business. I turned a corner and pulled up on a double yellow line. And finally, I turned to look at her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. She opened her mouth to reply, but I put a fin
ger to her lips and went on.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I’m sorry about all the noise. I’m sorry I didn’t understand what you were trying to say. I’m sorry.”

  She nodded.

  “You know what this is all about, Sam?”

  I nodded back.

  “You know about Mandy?”

  “Yes. Your mother told me.”

  She paused, her face wrinkled into a frown, that look I’d grown to love in her.

  “There are so many of them, Sam. So many people who never get heard. So many silences. Mandy was silenced. Those girls, all of them, they were silenced. Xenia. Aurelia. Marine. Eboni. Yelena. Nobody would listen. Even Thorwell wouldn’t listen. He’s supposed to be my editor. He came in and told us all he’d help, everyone would get to write what they wanted to write, it was a new world under Jonathan Thorwell, but when it came down to it that everyone didn’t include me. Not while there was a trial going on. We couldn’t interfere. Things had to take their course, apparently. It wasn’t important, apparently. Not next to this bloody trial. I couldn’t bring them back to life. That’s what they said. That’s what Jenson said. You see? They even tried to silence me. Somebody has to cut through it all. Somebody has to break the silence, Sam.”

  “And you couldn’t tell me,” I said. It wasn’t a question. She looked away and spoke.

  “No. It was the past, my past, Mandy and everything, and I’d never wanted it to turn up here, now, with you, I’d never wanted any of it. But it was here and I was trying to deal with it and then you said don’t make it personal, and that was just what Thorwell had said, you know that? The same words. The exact words he’d used.”

  She turned back towards me, and I shook my head, and suddenly she was crying, sobbing, great fat tears rolling down her cheeks, and she was in my arms, and there were people pointing at the car again, but they were just pointing and moving on, a curiosity, nothing more. She shook and buried her head in my chest and cried some more.