Quieter Than Killing

by Sarah Hilary

  On the third day, he realised what Brady had done. Kidnapped him. Taken him off the streets where he’d been with a bunch of mates just hanging out, smoking, some cans maybe. Nothing serious. Not like a gang or not really. Just kids, they were all just kids. But only Finn got lifted. One of the others must’ve seen something. Okay, so they’d been drinking but they weren’t falling down. Someone must’ve seen something and known it wasn’t right. One of them must have told someone, not the police obviously but someone. On the third day he cried because he knew what it was and he was scared Brady was going to hurt him, cut him up, kill him. Brady sat and watched him cry and didn’t try and stop him, didn’t say stuff to make him feel better. Finn had thought he’d try that, lies to keep him quiet. Or else threats, to make him shut up. Instead he just sat and watched Finn with snot coming out of his nose, wiping at himself, begging—

  ‘Get the washing-up done,’ at the table now, drinking wine, ‘then you can go to bed.’

  Finn jerked his head in a nod, keeping his back to Brady.

  He wasn’t scared of being jumped, not any longer.

  He was scared of Brady’s eyes, the way they watched.

  Like those men on the beach who’d waited for the whale to die.

  Watching for hours and hours.

  Waiting to dig out its teeth as trophies.

  15

  Valerie Rawling had olive eyes and a pale mouth, sleek black hair cut close to her jaw, feathered over her ears. From what they knew of her husband’s cruelty, Noah guessed it was a wig. In the photograph taken for her firm’s website, she was smiling, lips pressed shut.

  ‘She’s a marketing manager now,’ Debbie said. ‘For a beauty company. Lives in Lincoln, I’ve got an address and phone number. So that’s Stuart’s victim, eight years on.’

  She moved to the next photograph, of a good-looking young African man.

  ‘Mazi Yeboah was fourteen when Kyle set fire to his blazer. He suffered second-degree burns to his back and shoulders, needed a skin graft. He’s twenty-four now, living in Barnet with his girlfriend and working for a local charity.’

  The photo showed Mazi at a fund-raiser, grinning broadly. He wore a red tracksuit zipped to the neck, hiding the damage done a decade earlier by Kyle, and Jack Goodrich.

  ‘That leaves Ollie Tomlinson.’ Ron nodded at the third photo. ‘Did we ever find out the full extent of what Carole did to him?’

  Debbie glanced at Marnie who nodded. ‘Go on. You know as much as any of us.’

  ‘Ollie was taken ten days before his fourth birthday from a supermarket car park in Harrow. His mum had strapped him into the child seat while she was returning the trolley. She only glanced away for a second, but when she looked back he was gone. She doesn’t remember seeing anyone near the car, or following them in the supermarket. She was sure Ollie would’ve shouted if it was a stranger, because she’d taught him to do that. But he didn’t make a sound, not even when she called his name. He’d have shouted back if he’d heard her. Unless someone had a hand over his mouth.’ Debbie stopped, blinking at the board. ‘So she thought it must’ve been someone he knew, or someone who’d planned it. He was a strong little boy; she had trouble getting him into the car seat if he didn’t want to go. He’d kick and shout at her. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t kicked and shouted at Carole.’

  Fifteen-year-old Ollie glared at them from the board, crop-headed, sloe-eyed. High cheekbones and a Viking nose, mouth thinned to a dark, contemptuous line. Nothing like the cherubic toddler whose face had been shown to the public eleven years earlier.

  ‘He was with Carole for four weeks before the police traced him. She’d fed him on raw pasta and tissues. He was malnourished, dehydrated, anaemic. Bruises around his wrists and ankles where she’d tied him down. No sexual assault. Paramedics described him as spacey but not obviously traumatised. He wasn’t crying or shaking. He let them check him for injuries and evidence of abuse. Thorough checks. The medical report called him a very passive, pliant little boy, keen to do as he was told. Wanting to be told what to do.’

  Debbie studied the picture of Ollie. ‘As if she’d trained him, that’s what his mum said. As if Carole had taken her kicky little boy and trained him to be obedient, the way you’d train a dog.’

  ‘He grew out of it.’ Ron folded his arms. ‘The obedience. He’s been in trouble of one kind or another for the last four years. Excluded from school for chucking chairs at staff. Nicked for shoplifting, kick and run, you name it. I can see him setting fire to Carole’s skirt, no trouble.’

  ‘And he’s in Islington,’ Debbie said. ‘The Jonas House estate, not too far from where Carole was attacked. How he knew she was Carole is another matter. From what the psychiatrists said he’d no memory of those four weeks. She’d moved away, altered her appearance. Ollie’s off the rails right now but there’s no sign he’s capable of that kind of detective work, or even motivated to do it.’

  ‘Jonas House’s a ghetto, full of thug life. Any one of them could’ve attacked a single woman walking alone at that time of night.’ Ron pointed a trio of fingers at the board. ‘This’s my problem with the whole thing. These three were all in dodgy parts of town after dark, alone. Harder not to get attacked when you treat London like some massive after-hours playpen.’

  ‘Page Street isn’t dodgy,’ Noah said. ‘And the way our victims were hurt? Burning, piercing . . . We’ve got a better reason now for seeing a link to a vigilante, or a group of vigilantes.’

  ‘Arseholes R Us?’ Ron wasn’t convinced.

  None of them were, except Noah. Marnie was going to have to fight to keep the team together on this, especially with Welland out of the picture. He might not have agreed with her vigilante theory, but he’d have backed her to the hilt.

  ‘Can we have an update on Kyle’s smartphones?’ she said. ‘The ones his parents threw out?’

  ‘Some interesting texts.’ Colin took a set of print-offs from his desk. ‘About meeting up, partying. I’ve printed what I could get.’ He handed out the copies. ‘Nothing that’s jumping out as a motive for his murder, or even a solid reason for him to be in Page Street last night.’

  Marnie scanned the data in silence. They all did.

  ‘I’ve put a list of numbers on the same page,’ Colin said. ‘Some names there, but not many. No surnames. An Adam and a Tina, couple of Jacks. Nothing that’s lighting any databases yet. I’m cross-checking with the other victims, and everything else we’ve got.’

  ‘Wasn’t Jack the other kid who set fire to Mazi’s blazer?’ Ron looked up from the list. ‘The one Kyle’s dad called a thug?’

  ‘Jack Goodrich.’ Debbie nodded. ‘Did they keep in touch? His parents said not.’

  ‘If he was running with Goodrich he’d have kept it a secret, at least from his mum and dad.’ Ron picked up the pen and wrote Jack Goodrich on the whiteboard. ‘Gerry was sure he’d learnt his lesson, but maybe Kyle liked being in a bad crowd. We know he was travelling, clubbing.’ He nodded at Colin’s list. ‘That fits with what you’ve found on the phones.’

  ‘I’m assuming he had apps on the phones,’ Noah said. ‘Can you print me a list? And match it to the phones and texts, so I can see which apps he was using on which phone?’

  Colin nodded. ‘I can do that, easily.’

  ‘Any idea why he had so many handsets?’ Marnie asked. ‘I can see he might’ve wanted a number his parents didn’t know, but seven phones? Eight, counting the one we found on him.’

  ‘Overkill,’ Colin agreed. ‘And the style of the texts is different. On one phone he’s using emoticons, on another he’s not even using text speak – spelling everything out very precisely. It makes me wonder if the phones belong to other people, and Kyle was just holding them.’

  ‘Or he nicked them,’ Ron said. ‘That’d be our first thought, bagging a stash like this. The only reason we’ve not thought it’s because Kyle’s dead and we’re coming at it from the victim angle. But maybe he was sending threats, blackmailin
g people.’

  It was becoming harder and harder to like Kyle Stratton. Stuart had been bad enough, a bully and a wife beater. And Carole, who’d kidnapped a child and treated him like an animal. So much easier to work on cases where you had sympathy for the victims.

  ‘Any luck making sense of the letters?’ Marnie asked.

  ‘His dad did a good job of shredding them.’ Colin polished his spectacles with his tie. ‘All in the same handwriting, though. I’m still piecing them together.’

  ‘Blackmail,’ Ron said, ‘maybe.’

  ‘Or love letters?’ Debbie suggested. ‘Wouldn’t his dad have said if letters kept turning up for him? And if they were threatening letters, he’d have handed them to the police, not torn them up.’

  ‘Ask them. I’d like to know whether we’re digging at a dead end.’ Marnie nodded at Debbie and Colin. ‘Good work. Text me the photos and addresses for Ollie and the others. DS Jake and I are going to talk with Kyle’s workmates about what happened at the pub last night.’

  Outside, the cars were frozen shut. Noah couldn’t remember a winter as hard as this one. He scraped the windscreen while Marnie tackled the locks with a cigarette lighter. The cold clutched at everything. Behind them, the police station twinkled madly, a penitential ice palace.

  Noah’s breath hung in the air, like Marnie’s. He watched her work the lock free from ice, alert for signs of stress, given what was happening at her house. She hadn’t talked about Harry Kennedy and whatever he’d wanted from her last night. Noah hoped she was talking to Ed, not keeping the stress to herself. This case was tough enough without that. The team fractious, unsure which direction to take. Marnie would keep them on track, he knew, but it wouldn’t be easy.

  ‘The texts,’ he said when they were seated in the car, waiting for the heaters to clear the windscreen. ‘Those names. Adam, Tina, even Jack—’ He stopped.

  ‘I wondered about Tina. Street name for methamphetamine, isn’t it?’

  ‘And Adam’s MDMA. Jack could be heroin.’

  ‘Captain Jack,’ she murmured. ‘What Colin would call pre-Torchwood appropriation.’ She turned to look at Noah. ‘You think Kyle was a drug dealer?’

  ‘Not necessarily. But we should get a full tox screen from Fran.’ He rubbed the cold from his hands. ‘In a couple of the texts he spelt parTy with a capital T. I’m guessing . . . PnP. Party and play. Kyle might have been into the gay scene. Chemsex, even.’

  ‘Educate me?’ Marnie negotiated the thinly salted tarmac to exit the car park.

  ‘The short version? Two or more of you hook up on a dating app for a party involving a lot of drugs, usually crystal meth or mephedrone or GHB, and a lot of sex.’

  ‘That’s why you asked Colin for the list of apps,’ Marnie deduced. ‘Is there a particular app we should be looking into?’

  ‘That’d be nice and simple, wouldn’t it?’ Noah shook his head. ‘I can name six, without trying too hard. And I don’t keep up to speed with this stuff.’ Having Dan, he meant, being monogamous. It was a long time since Noah had been on the dating scene. ‘Clubs are closing all the time, with everything moving online. Dating, drugs . . . Chemsex can be risky. Health officials woke up to it late, but there’s been a lot of alarm in the last year or so. Some of it’s unwarranted, but not all. The argument veers between hedonism and disinhibition. I’ve got friends who think it’s set gay rights back by half a century; a lot of homophobia’s built into the hardcore dating apps, boxes you can tick to set the levels you find acceptable, and the ones you won’t tolerate. Still . . . there’s no evidence Kyle was partying like that.’

  ‘Except the texts.’ A frown hollowed Marnie’s cheek.

  The traffic was painfully slow, an ice-bound creep towards Westminster. Pedestrians in extra layers picked their way up gritted pavements, looking stunned by this long spell of winter.

  ‘When you were with his parents,’ Marnie said, ‘did you get any sense they might’ve known he was taking the partying too far? You said his dad insisted he’d learnt his lesson after Mazi.’

  Noah thought back to the conversation in Kyle’s bedroom. Gerry’s anger just below the surface, the strange tension in the house, resisting their questions. ‘It could be as simple as them not liking the fact Kyle was gay. Not wanting us to see his phone records, or read his letters.’

  ‘Could it explain eight smartphones?’

  ‘Not unless he was hooking up with people he couldn’t shake off, and that’s not PnP as I understand it. It’s more a question of being lucky if you see the same face twice, or if anyone remembers your name. Assuming you gave it out in the first place. Plenty of people like the freedom of that anonymity. Eight smartphones might mean Kyle was playing at being eight different people, for eight strangers. Not necessarily sinister.’

  ‘No other clues at the house?’ Marnie flexed her fingers at the wheel. ‘In the light of the texts?’

  ‘Nothing. But he wasn’t living there, just using it as a hotel.’

  ‘Let’s see what his workmates have to say. Even if he wasn’t over-sharing, they may’ve picked up on something. I’d like to know how closely our vigilante was watching him.’

  ‘Ron was right about one thing,’ Noah said. ‘All our victims behaved recklessly. With Stuart, we could put that down to arrogance. But Carole? You’d think she’d know better.’

  ‘That could be the legacy of her time inside.’ Marnie’s cheek hollowed again. ‘Everyone imagines prisoners are hyper-alert, but emotional disconnection is a decent survival strategy.’

  ‘And our victims weren’t exactly made of human kindness to begin with . . .’ Noah watched a couple of kids march past, hooded heads down, phones clutched in gloved hands. The cold made everyone move faster in a bid to keep warm. ‘We’re assuming our vigilante was a victim at some point, but perhaps he’s emotionally disconnected too. Someone who wants to lash out, choosing ex-cons because that’s how he justifies the violence to himself.’

  ‘Perhaps. But let’s rule out the obvious candidates. Anyone with a personal grudge against our victims.’ She parked up outside the sleek plate-glass office block. ‘Starting with Kyle.’

  Kyle had worked in an office designed, Marnie imagined, for optimum productivity. Windows sealed shut and tinted to keep out distracting views. Ambient air, colourless, odourless, tasteless. Desks in a complicated configuration which a consultant had doubtless prescribed for a happier, more engaged workforce. Posters added slabs of colour. Pot plants were a concession to nature negated somewhat by the sheen of furniture polish on their leaves.

  Kyle’s manager was thirty-something in a Hugo Boss suit, comb tracks in his gelled hair. He’d set aside a meeting room for the interviews. ‘Such a shock, for us,’ glancing at his wristwatch, an Omega Seamaster as modelled by James Bond. If only everyone were as easy to read.

  The meeting room smelt of stale coffee and stale air. Pop art prints of Battersea Power Station prompted memories of the crime scene which she and Noah had investigated eight months ago, back when London was thin rain and sunshine. It was nearly impossible to remember a time before this crippling cold. The sleek silver coffee machine was patchy with fingerprints. A clutch of remote controls – for lights, for sound, for air? – lay alongside. Everything adjustable, controllable.

  The first person through the door was a carbon copy of the manager. Same gelled hair, same suit and watch (a fake, surely?), same words out of his mouth, ‘Such a shock.’

  Marnie had the sinking feeling that they were going to learn nothing here, other than how to clone a management consultant. Her phone buzzed before they’d reached the first question.

  ‘Boss?’ It was Ron, sounding urgent. ‘Carole Linton.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She’s missing. Not answering her phone, not home. Neighbours haven’t seen her in days, but they remember someone hanging around her place last week. Creepy, a couple of them said.’

  ‘Description?’

  ‘Yep. And guess what?’
He wanted a prompt.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The creep’s an absolute dead ringer for Ollie Tomlinson.’

  Ron sucked a breath. ‘I’d say we’ve found our vigilante.’

  16

  Finn couldn’t stop shivering. His head was swimmy, making the room rock like he was in the haunted house at a funfair, one of those with the girls painted up the sides, big tits in tight bikinis, rocket launchers on their hips. ‘Bacon butties,’ Dad had said. ‘Come on.’

  The whole fair was lit blue and orange, stinking of fried fat and sugar, electricity burning so fast it made the ground buzz under Finn’s feet. The noise was amazing and so were the butties, hot and greasy. They sat on the grass and saw a ride called the Sledgehammer smashing up and down with all the people caged inside screaming. Finn propped his elbows on the grass, skin stained blue, head pounding in time to the Sledgehammer. He was so happy. Itching all over from the grass and the colours that kept hitting him, but happy.

  The ride brought the cages down, screaming faces right next to his, before scooping them back up, away. ‘We should move,’ Dad said. ‘If they puke, it’ll land right on us. Come on, I’ll win you one of those big cats.’

  Finn followed him through the crowd, towards the arcade. Three men at the rifle range, inked fingers, cropped heads. Soldiers. Arms slung around each other’s necks, beer bottles hanging from their fingers. Finn felt clumsy, watching them. The noise of the fair rattled from his teeth to his feet, making the rack of prizes bounce, plastic eyes jiggling in the stuffed toys.

  Dad won him the blue cat he wanted. ‘Ghost train,’ he decided next, passing Finn the prize by the scruff of its neck, googly eyes turned up like it’d died.

  The ghost train was brilliant. ‘What’s red and green and silver?’ Dad said. ‘Zombie with forks in its eyes.’