Quieter Than Killing

by Sarah Hilary

  ‘Kids would take phones if they were in plain view. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Something’s off,’ he agreed. ‘I’ve seen this sort of break-in before, but usually? It’s a warning. And it’s always personal. Blood, mess, fear. Marking their territory. If the Kettridges were rival gang members it might make sense. But they work in finance, and marketing. They’re upwardly mobile thirty-somethings . . .’ He stopped.

  Blood, mess, fear.

  Like a summing-up of her life. She felt his stare on her face and turned towards the ladder, remembering her father’s advice to always wear gloves in case it trapped your fingers. The gang hadn’t worn gloves. They hadn’t come here to steal.

  Usually a warning. Always personal.

  Like the damage done to Kyle, and Stuart, and to Carole. Nasty. Private warnings whispered just for them, pierced through cartilage, burnt into eye sockets—

  The ladder was sixteen steps of shiny aluminium, reaching into the dark.

  What was up there? Nothing of value. Things only she cared about. Personal belongings. Why had the kids gone into the attic? Beating her tenants unconscious, defacing the walls, soiling the bedroom. For what? For her—?

  ‘Talk to me.’ Kennedy’s voice was taut. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I need to see up there.’ She set her teeth. ‘I need to see what they took.’

  ‘Okay.’ He pulled two pairs of crime scene gloves from his pocket. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  12

  Dan was in the kitchen, taking steaks from the fridge, a cold bottle of Becks in one hand.

  Noah watched him drink a mouthful, feeling thirsty. ‘I hope there’s another of those.’

  ‘Here.’ Dan snapped the cap on a second bottle. When Noah crossed the kitchen to take it, Dan caught his arm and pulled him close enough to kiss.

  Noah held him off with his elbows. ‘Eau d’morgue. I need a shower.’

  ‘Hard day?’

  ‘I’ve had better.’ He’d had worse too, but the burn inside Kyle’s eye had got to him. Torture. He knew how that felt, how scared Kyle must’ve been, how easy it was to fear for your life when a madman, or woman, had you trapped with no intention of letting you go. Did Kyle know he was going to die? Did the vigilante say as much when he struck the flint of the lighter?

  Evan Lowry, the cabbie, hadn’t been able to give them anything new. Kyle was bleeding when he’d found him. In shock, incapable of speaking and Evan didn’t ask questions, busy calling for an ambulance and trying to keep Kyle alive. He’d cried when Noah told him that Kyle had died. ‘Poor sod, he was no older than my youngest. Thank God he didn’t have kids . . . Tell his mum and dad I’m sorry, yeah?’ A hard day, for everyone.

  Dan was propped against the kitchen counter, one hand holding his blond fringe from his forehead, worry in his blue eyes. Wearing his favourite red T-shirt, faded to pink at the shoulders, tattered Levis slouching at his hips. ‘We’re going out later, yes? Only you look—’

  ‘Bad day.’ Noah put the Becks down, and smiled. ‘Help me wash it off?’

  Afterwards, as Dan was frying the steaks, Noah asked, ‘No Sol tonight?’

  Dan shook his head. ‘I tried to get hold of him, but guess what? He’s got another new phone. Old number’s dead. Are you sure your little brother doesn’t have shares in Sony?’

  Noah cut lemon wedges for their plates.

  Sol’s sixth phone in a month. Upgrades, or something worse? Gang members changed their phones daily, afraid of surveillance. Eight months ago, Sol had said he was getting out, shaking off the last ties to the gang he’d run with since they were kids. What would Trident’s DS Kennedy make of Noah’s brother? Was Sol on his radar? He’d been close to any number of crimes, always swearing he stood wide of the serious stuff. Thank God he’d never served a custodial sentence, since their vigilante appeared to be targeting Londoners with violent pasts.

  ‘Eat,’ Dan instructed. ‘You look wiped out.’

  Noah did as he was told, reminding himself that he didn’t do this – bring his work home with him. Except this was different. This was Sol.

  ‘D’you want to talk about it?’ Dan asked.

  ‘Sorry.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll be better after I’ve eaten.’

  ‘Okay.’ Dan spun a sprig of watercress between his fingers. ‘But you can talk. I do listening as well as cooking.’

  ‘I know you do. You’re a man of many talents. I noticed that in the shower.’

  ‘Nice detective work.’

  The gleam in Dan’s eyes lifted a weight from Noah’s shoulders.

  ‘This?’ He held up a forkful of steak. ‘Is amazing. Sol doesn’t know what he’s missing.’

  Scarfing a burger somewhere, probably. The finer things in life had never held much sway over Sol. Still, as long as he was safe and staying out of trouble.

  ‘How was your day?’ Noah asked. ‘Still heading off early tomorrow?’

  ‘Train’s at six-twenty.’ Dan was curating an art exhibition in Manchester. ‘I’ll bike it to the station.’

  ‘I can give you a lift.’

  ‘Thanks, but I need the bike at the other end. And I wouldn’t want you to be late for DI Rome.’

  ‘Marnie,’ Noah amended. ‘Seriously. If we’re going drinking with her and Ed, it’s Marnie.’

  The four of them had a long-standing drinks date. Marnie’s idea but the date kept changing, not easy to find a chink in their wall of work for letting off steam.

  ‘You wouldn’t rather have them round for dinner?’ Dan drank a mouthful of beer. ‘I could cook us something so amazing she’ll want to promote you.’

  ‘I know you could. But then she’d have to return the favour, and she doesn’t cook. I don’t think Ed does either. They live off Kettle Chips as far as I can tell.’

  ‘Maybe we should get them together with Sol.’

  ‘If we knew how to get hold of him.’

  ‘DI— Marnie could trace his latest phone.’

  Noah shook his head. ‘Not her style.’

  ‘Bet she knows someone who could, though.’

  True. Harry Kennedy would be all over that. He’d wanted Marnie in Lancaster Road. Was she there now? Noah steered his thoughts in another direction.

  ‘I’ll wash, you dry.’

  ‘Like the shower?’ Dan shone a smile at him. ‘You’re on.’

  13

  ‘Nothing?’ Kennedy stood with his head bowed under the pitch of the roof. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘No, I’m not sure.’ Marnie looked again at the boxes stacked in a barricade around the opening to the attic. ‘It was a long time ago, and I had a lot on my plate.’

  ‘At least they didn’t make a mess up here.’ Kennedy waited a beat before adding, ‘I wouldn’t have put you through that.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have had a choice. This is a crime scene. It was then, and it is now.’ She turned before he could answer, climbing back down to the landing.

  Kennedy followed, peeling off the gloves when he was at her side. Marnie kept hers on, moving past him, towards the back bedroom. This time, he didn’t try and stop her. She knew she was giving out a spiky vibe. The boxes in the attic— Smelt of her mother’s perfume, her father’s books.

  She wanted to see what the gang had done here last night. Focus on the new crime, one which might be solved with or without her help. She wanted the past back in its box where it belonged. This wasn’t her parents’ home any longer. It was Alan and Louise’s.

  The back bedroom was in chaos, glass on the floor from a ruined dressing table, wardrobe tipped and spilling clothes onto the stained floor. Ripped curtains at the windows, holes kicked in the bedside cabinets, stains on the walls. A light icing of forensic powder over everything. Her pulse slowed, seeing the mess. It made sense, in a way the attic’s untouched boxes did not. Burglary. Brutal, mindless. It followed a pattern she recognised, and understood.

  ‘You said you found two phones in here.’

  ‘Y
es.’ Kennedy came to stand at her shoulder. ‘One on each night stand.’

  ‘Did they smash the phones?’

  ‘No. They were on the floor, but the screens were intact.’

  ‘They smashed everything else.’

  ‘Yes, they did.’

  Like Marnie and Noah’s vigilante. Smashing bones and faces but taking nothing, making it easy for the police to identify the victims. Wanting the victims known.

  ‘How many kids were involved, do you know?’

  ‘Five separate sets of prints.’

  ‘And you’re sure they were kids?’

  ‘Small prints. Five sets of trainers, the biggest a size six. That’s small, unless they were girls.’ Kennedy brushed dust from his dark hair. ‘I don’t think girls did this.’ He meant the smell, the spray pattern. ‘It explains why there was no sexual assault, if the boys were pre-pubescent; older kids would’ve done more damage. In that sense, your tenants were lucky. They took a battering but it’s nothing that won’t mend. In time.’

  ‘May I see their medical reports?’

  ‘If you think it’d be useful.’

  ‘It’s your investigation,’ Marnie said. ‘I’m just curious about the motive here. No theft but a warning, you said. Personal.’

  ‘That’s how it looks.’

  ‘Show me the other rooms. Or is all the mess up here?’

  ‘They wrecked the kitchen, and the living room. Smashed the mirrors in the bathroom. The only room they didn’t touch was the front bedroom.’

  Her room. And Stephen’s. Pain tugged its long leash, making her fingers twitch. So much for the past staying in its box. The house had put its ears back when she’d entered, the way it had always done. She’d always hated this house, and the feeling had been mutual. Even her bedroom with the wall she’d painted red one winter, making a bad job of it because she was angry—

  ‘Let’s start there.’

  The red wall had been whitewashed, the shadow of her bad paint job sitting stubbornly under the new topcoat. A shelf still ran above the bed. The tenants had put up a trio of canvases printed with yellow sunflowers. The bed was a sofa now. A desk by the window, with a lamp and a square vase filled with red beads. Perhaps it was the beads making the wall glow pink.

  ‘Spare room,’ Kennedy said. ‘Not much here worth wrecking. Or they ran out of time.’

  Or they were told not to touch this room.

  Whole days when she’d not moved from the bed, watching time come and go on the other side of the window. Rigid with wanting to get up, get out. Numb with misery. Tracking the shadows across the ceiling, waiting for the moment when the light hit the crack in the window and dazzled a kaleidoscope of colour into the room. Stephen had slept here, opposite the wall she’d painted in a fury. Under the shelf with her books and boxes, the things she left behind when she got away.

  They were told not to touch this room.

  She switched off the thought, going ahead of Kennedy, back down the stairs.

  The sitting room was a jumble of overturned furniture, books thrown from shelves, framed prints pulled from the walls, a leather sofa ripped open by a knife. In here, the vases had been smashed, glass beads flung to the far corners of the room.

  The kitchen—

  She had to summon anger to get herself through the door. Into the room where their bodies had been found. Soapsuds on Dad’s clothes, his sleeves rolled up from washing the car. The base of a saucepan burnt out on the stove; Mum’s supper a charred, sticky mass.

  Nothing as terrible as that, now. Just glass and china, a microwave heaped full of its own broken door. Food pulled from the fridge, a low tide of sour yoghurt and milk. She’d expected to see the back door reinforced with metal sheeting, but its glass panels were intact. Of course, Kennedy had said the gang crowbarred it.

  Standing under the bright ceiling lights – too many, too hot – she felt her pulse slowing again. Because it was possible to stand here without breaking down? Because she’d survived as something other than a victim? As a detective. No, it was more than that.

  No one was dead. Alan and Louise had taken a battering but they’d heal, in time. If they were lucky, even the nightmares would fade. The house—

  A lot of the furniture would need replacing. New paint, new carpets. The place looked mugged. Ugly. That brought its own relief, bittersweet and sharp. Six years ago, she’d wanted to take a hammer to the walls to uncover the reason for what Stephen had done. Last night’s gang had done what she could not. Their destruction, their hate was how she’d felt six years ago and it felt good, now, to see the house so injured. Evidence everywhere of the violence committed. No mockery of order, no sneering tidiness. She preferred it like this, stinking and ruined. It was honest. A truth she’d always felt but could never see, until now. Growing up—

  How often had she wanted to wreck the place? Kick holes in its walls, break the smug lines of its face. Her gaoler, her enemy. The gang’s radical makeover was like a lost puzzle piece, the bit that made sense of all those years of misery, rage, impotence.

  As if the house was showing her its true face, finally.

  Walking back to their cars, Marnie asked, ‘The gang you’re after. Do they have a name?’

  ‘The Crasmere Boys.’ Kennedy shivered. ‘If I’m right. We’re hoping for some help from Zoe Marshall’s lot on that front.’

  ‘Zoe Marshall?’ Marnie didn’t recognise the name.

  ‘She works for Ground Up. Private mediation company with strong links to local communities, open lines of communication . . . They pitch in when the people we need to talk to don’t trust us. Which is all the time. Zoe’s great. Young, smart, takes no prisoners. Bags of compassion, too. Kids love her, even the bad ones.’ He shivered again. ‘Especially the bad ones.’

  ‘You think she’ll know who did this?’

  ‘It’s a long shot. Fingerprints gave us nothing. Another reason the gangs use young kids. No criminal record, first offence.’ He didn’t shrug, looking serious. ‘We’ve got about two hundred gangs active in London right now, with around four thousand members. Plenty of them flossing – showing off their Rolexes to recruit new blood.’

  ‘You’ve got a job for life.’

  He acknowledged her irony with a quirk of his mouth. ‘Thirteen hundred arrests in under two years. Less than a hundred firearms, not even a quarter of a million in cash. Tip of the Titanic stuff. On the other hand, don’t ask me for statistics on teenagers killed in knife attacks.’

  ‘No need, I know them by heart.’ She paused. ‘I want to visit Alan and Louise, tell them how sorry I am this happened. Would you have a problem with that?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She nodded. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  They scraped ice from their windscreens, the house standing in darkness at their backs, its empty eyes watching as they drove in opposite directions, away.

  14

  Finn scraped the plates into the bin, shaking sticky red tubes of pasta from the fork. His stomach heaved, but he kept it down. He’d puke later, when Brady was sleeping. He was at the table now, finishing off the wine. Finn had to keep his glass topped up. A test, to see if he’d make a mess. Then Brady’d have an excuse to punish him. He liked an excuse to do that, pretending it was Finn’s fault, that he’d brought it on himself. Twisted, but that’s who Brady was.

  Finn tried to think what Dad would do, right this minute. It was a game he’d played at home: ‘What would Dad do?’ Usually, Finn ended up arguing, shouting. That helped for a bit, felt like he was filling the hole in the house. Loads of times he’d covered his ears and hidden under the duvet when Dad was kicking off. But after he’d gone, Finn was the one shouting, because the house felt wrong. Too quiet, too normal. Because it was up to him to fill the Dad-sized hole.

  No point doing what Dad would do here, with Brady. He’d get the belt again – and who hit anyone with a belt? When Dad hit, he used his fist. Quick and hard and then it was over and ever
yone was sorry, could say sorry, and get on.

  Brady taking the belt out of his trousers? Went on forever. Unbuckling, pulling it out a loop at a time, doubling it over in his hands, tugging it flat. And looking at Finn all the while, pointing him at the floor, to his knees. That wasn’t normal. That wasn’t losing-your-temper. It was slow and cold and a million times worse than Dad who only ever did it when he wasn’t thinking and who’d always been sorry after. Brady wasn’t sorry. Brady wanted to do it again.

  Watching Finn refill his glass, waiting to see if he’d mess up. He didn’t, even though his hands were sweaty like his armpits. He hated the hard stink of the wine. Kept his eyes off Brady’s face. Thinking of the sea, that time Dad took him down for the day, ‘That’s where we used to park our bikes,’ showing him the pier and the new paint for the cycle lane that hurt Finn’s feet because he’d taken his sandals off too soon, couldn’t wait to get down onto the beach where the pebbles hurt worse but then Dad scooped him under one arm and ran with him, bellowing, down to the sea, ‘Sink or swim!’ launching him in, saltwater burning Finn’s nose until he laughed it back out again, Dad’s hands slapping the water and Finn slapping back so the whole sea was rocking around them before they started to swim, smoothing it flat with their arms. The dull grey roll of it like the whale that got stranded and couldn’t turn itself in time so those men came and tore out its teeth for trophies. ‘Dirty bastards,’ Dad said, and they were. The sea wide and grey and rolling but never quite far enough, always back for more the next day. Finn with his blue bucket and spade, Dad in his tennis cap with the green visor. Sun behind the clouds but hot enough to burn, his legs too tight inside their skin, freckles all over Dad’s nose.

  ‘Close the bin.’ Brady, at the table, drinking wine. ‘It stinks.’

  Watching Finn, hoping he’d cry. He’d cried on the third day. Not the first, or the second. He’d been too weirded out, and stupid from the stuff Brady gave him to make him sleep. Thinking it was a game, even thinking it was a foster home. He didn’t ask any questions, not the right ones, just stuff like, ‘Where’s the toilet?’ and, ‘Can I call my mum?’