Quieter Than Killing

by Sarah Hilary

  The heel of her boot caught a patch of ice and the shoebox in its carrier bag swung, striking her shin. She’d brought the box with her, not wanting it in her desk drawer. She’d hide it at the back of the wardrobe, a place she knew Ed wouldn’t look.

  He was heating chicken soup in the kitchen, wearing decimated cords and a red fisherman’s jumper, odd socks on his feet, bed-head brown curls in his eyes. She shed her coat and scarf, resting her eyes on him because it felt good to be this far from dead bodies and DCS Ferguson, and stolen salvage from her childhood.

  ‘Good timing.’ Ed turned from the stove to smile at her. ‘This’s ready.’

  His eyes flickered to the carrier bag, only briefly, but she’d lost her chance to hide it. She set it on the floor beside the sofa as Ed brought the soup bowls with bread hot from the oven. A good meal, exactly what she needed to get the day’s cold out of her bones.

  After they’d eaten, Ed made coffee and they sat together, her head on his shoulder, his hand at her hip. Six years ago, she’d thought herself unfit for intimacy of any kind. But here she was sharing his tiny flat with the Buffy DVDs and the David Lynch posters, fitting right in.

  ‘What’s in the box,’ he said, ‘new shoes?’

  ‘It’s from the house in Lancaster Road.’ She leaned down and scooped it up. ‘They found it when they were clearing up after a breakin last night.’

  Ed didn’t move, but his hand lifted a fraction as if her words had slid a sheet of paper between his touch and her skin. An onlooker wouldn’t have noticed, but she ached for the loss of contact between them. Ed didn’t judge and he didn’t pry but her secrets scared him, she knew. He’d defend her right to them with his last breath. Perhaps that was why they scared him.

  She felt it again – ice breaking away; a change coming.

  Police sirens swept up the street, pulling the night into the flat. Just for a second, she was Detective Inspector Rome and Ed was Victim Support Officer Belloc. London leaking through the walls, bringing the baseball bat and cigarette lighter in here when she’d needed a moment to explain how much (and how little) the contents of the shoebox mattered. She wanted Ed to be the one to take the lid off the box, as if he might cancel out the fact of its having been handled by Harry Kennedy. But Ed wouldn’t do that, invade her space, so it was up to her to take the lid off for the second time in the same day, letting the light in to stir at the mean little litter of Stephen’s stealing.

  ‘Can you imagine me wearing this?’ The charm bracelet.

  She intended it as a joke, to defuse the static which was making her conscious of the chaos around them – the curling edges of Ed’s posters, slippery towers of his CDs – but her hand fitted inside the bracelet as if she was still eight years old and in love with the ridiculous rattle of its silver charms. She found the horseshoe by instinct, its cool curve slipping like a ring around the tip of her little finger. Ed’s eyes were in the shoebox, on the notebooks. The camera.

  She lifted out the photograph of her and Stephen. ‘I was so proud of that uniform . . .’

  Ed took the print when she held it out for him. ‘How old are you here?’

  ‘Twenty-two? Twenty-three.’

  Stephen’s smile, his hands holding her arms around his neck. He looked happy. Eight years old, newly fostered, still learning to call her sister.

  ‘It’s funny, I don’t remember him smiling. Not then.’ She forced herself to concentrate on the moment captured in the photograph, not what came later, not what’d been said between them earlier today. That moment, in the garden. She reached a finger and touched Stephen’s smile. To show Ed that she wasn’t afraid of hearing her skin sizzle. ‘He must’ve been happy, back then.’

  Ed kept hold of the photograph. She wanted him to speak, but he didn’t. Stephen’s hands around her wrists, holding her tight to his back. It’d been chilly that summer, the heat coming and going with the sun behind the clouds. She’d been glad of the uniform. Goosebumps—

  Stephen had goosebumps on his bare arms. If she concentrated, she could feel the way they’d caught at her wrists, pricking. He’d shivered and pulled her close like a coat. She felt the small bones in his fingers, sharp blades of his back like folded wings. A pang of pity for him . . . Was that what made her shiver? A skinny, silent child trying to keep warm in a strange house. He’d liked her uniform. Her parents had worried that it might make him nervous, in case he’d seen too much of the police back at the foster home or in his real home. He’d been sitting on the stairs when she’d opened the front door with her key, wanting to surprise her parents with the new uniform. She’d put her finger to her lips when she saw him and he’d stared intently for a second before his smile came, lifting his left index finger to his lips, copying her. Sharing her secret.

  ‘The notebooks should be fun.’ She reached into the shoebox, blinking heat from her eyes. ‘God knows what teenage angst is scribbled here.’

  Ed put the photo aside, reaching for her free hand, taking some of the chill away with the warmth of his fingers.

  ‘You’d better not read them.’ She wasn’t ready to be comforted. ‘I’m serious. There are song lyrics in here, maybe even poetry. Angry teenage poetry. You’re not ready for that, Belloc.’

  ‘I’ll raise you. Romantic teenage poetry.’

  ‘You aren’t serious.’

  ‘Does it look as if I throw anything away, ever?’ He nodded at the insulating wall of books and boxes. ‘My first set of dental braces is hiding somewhere in this lot.’

  ‘All right, you win.’ She smiled, returning the notebooks to the box.

  The charm bracelet wouldn’t slip off her hand the way it’d slipped on. She surrendered her wrist to Ed who released the clasp, pooling the bracelet in his palm before placing it inside the box.

  Marnie lidded the thing, and set it aside. ‘More coffee? And tell me about your day.’

  They talked for a while, Ed keeping it light with a story about a broken kettle bringing his office to a standstill. Too much of the day’s noise was hammering in her head, a hot spot at her feet where she’d placed the box. Not just bad lyrics in the notebooks. Lists. As a teenager, she’d kept lists of everything. Music she liked, food she wouldn’t eat, places she’d rather live than at home. Ollie kept lists too. A way of taking back control in a life that felt chaotic, or claustrophobic, or both.

  ‘We’re looking for a fifteen-year-old,’ she told Ed when it was her turn to talk about her day. ‘Ollie Tomlinson, the boy who was snatched as a toddler. He looks like being a suspect in the attack on Carole Linton. And the others, maybe. Kyle Stratton died. Ollie’s a murder suspect.’

  It sounded cut and dried, but it wasn’t.

  ‘How’s his mum coping?’ Ed asked.

  ‘She’s missing too.’

  ‘With Ollie?’

  ‘It looks that way. She cleared out his stuff just like Kyle’s parents did, except Ollie’s stuff included a weapon.’ Marnie drank a mouthful of coffee. ‘Something interrupted her. She left the evidence in the kitchen, as if she had to go in a hurry.’

  ‘D’you think she’s hiding him?’

  ‘Honestly? I don’t know. It would make sense, given their shared history. She lost him once before, which would make any mother over-protective. But Ollie’s running with a gang. He’s been drifting away for a long time. She’s up to her eyes in debt, working all hours just to pay the bills, and the fines for his truancy. That must have changed the dynamic between them.’

  ‘What else?’ Ed asked, seeing her frown.

  ‘We can’t find Carole. She’s not answering her phone, and she’s not been home in at least three days. The same three days that Lisa’s been missing.’

  ‘You think—’

  ‘This is about revenge. Not just punishment or vigilantism. Revenge. We don’t know how many others are caught up in it. Ollie kept lists. We searched the flat, but didn’t find them. A baseball bat, newspaper clippings about the recent assaults, but no lists. Ollie must’ve take
n them with him, which might mean he’s not done yet.’ She shook her head. ‘Their neighbour tried to help. They weren’t alone, not in the usual way. But they’re gone. They must’ve been really scared . . .’

  ‘You’re tired.’ Ed kissed the corner of her mouth. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  Bed was good, but it was a mistake to fall asleep.

  The dream came instantly, as if it’d been waiting behind the lids of her eyes. She recognised its colours, pink and grey, like the glimpse of something softly living inside a hard shell.

  She was lying in a narrow airless space, black on all sides, the dimensions of a coffin.

  It wasn’t a coffin. It was a crate, like the ones used by the firm which put her parents’ belongings into storage so that she could rent the house to the Kettridges. Everything put away except the few boxes she’d stored in the attic where Tobias and his gang had climbed, finding the shoebox stashed by Stephen six years ago. Stealing it away, as if it was the only thing they came for. As if the house was theirs and they could take what they wanted, and leave the rest burning behind them. Not with fire, with rage.

  In the dream, Marnie felt the fever of their loathing. She was wearing her father’s wristwatch, tacky with his blood. Desperate to get out, wake up. Dead air eating her lungs, panic crowding her head, her body fighting the cramped angles of the crate. Stephen—

  Stephen was packed next to her. Their bodies crushed together, the bones in his shoulder and ribs, hip and thigh, slotted into hers, all the way down to where their ankles were pressed so tightly she couldn’t tell where he ended and she began.

  The whites of his eyes shone at her in bursts, like stars blinking, dying. He smelt of bleached grass and creosote and the cold metal links of the swing where she’d lifted him, still in her police uniform, that day Dad took the photograph.

  Stephen’s breath at her cheek, sweet and pink, smelt of candy shrimps, childhood.

  Under the press of their bodies, a smaller sensation stabbed the base of her spine where the charm bracelet was buried, its little knots of silver sharp as pins. She tried to reach it, but it was buried too deep between them.

  She kept fighting although there was no room, all the space and air crowded out by her and Stephen, and the bracelet’s bright stabbing in her back.

  Cold scent of metal and his eyes sparking, breath heating her cheek.

  Tears running into her ears, the way they do when you weep lying down.

  Every cell in her body fighting to get out – wake up – but she wasn’t moving and nor was he, crushed up against her, all sharp bones and body heat and sweet pink breath.

  He had a hand on her wrist, holding her when she tried to fight her way out.

  ‘Not yet,’ he was saying, kept saying.

  ‘It’s not time yet.’

  26

  Noah woke early from a confused dream where he was dancing on stage in a confederate uniform to a frantic hip hop soundtrack. He rolled sideways, to kiss Dan’s shoulder, before remembering Dan was stuck in Manchester after missing the last train home. He stretched in the too-empty bed, blinking at the mean pinch of light behind the curtains. Today was the day they’d find out whether the baseball bat in Ollie’s flat had been used to kill Kyle Stratton.

  He was showered, shaved and dressed by 7 a.m. Breakfast was toast eaten in the kitchen while reading Dan’s good morning texts. He was smiling by the time he left the house.

  In the street, his phone buzzed with a fresh text and he opened it, expecting another message from Dan but getting, Where’s your brother?

  Number unknown. Dad, most likely, using a work phone. Before Noah could respond, a second text came through—

  Where’s your fucking brother?

  Okay, not Dad. Noah held the phone the way you’d hold a lit candle, sheltering the screen with his free hand as if the day’s cold might snuff it out. Shrugging his coat up around his ears, his breath coming in clouds. The phone fizzed in his fingers a third time, making him flinch.

  Fancy a lift? I’m 2 mins away. The new text was from Marnie.

  Noah looked up the street, thumbing back, Great, seeing ranks of parked cars each with its windscreen glinting under the street lights. The day tasted of grit and salt, burning the back of his throat. He scrolled through the texts before checking his call log for anything which might tell him who was after Sol. It had to be someone Sol felt safe giving Noah’s number to. Five calls in the log belonged to different phones Sol had used over the last few months. Noah rang the most recent number, getting the familiar message: ‘The person you are trying to reach is not accepting calls.’

  Where’s your fucking brother?

  He shivered, pocketing the phone and rubbing his hands to get the warmth back into his fingers.

  Tyres picked at the road’s grit as Marnie pulled up, double-parking alongside a frozen Lexus. She’d scraped her windscreen clear of ice, but it clung to the roof and doors. Noah struggled with the passenger door until she reached across and popped it from the inside.

  ‘Good morning.’ She smiled. ‘I was hoping you’d be up early.’

  ‘Strange dreams . . .’

  ‘You too?’ She glanced in the wing mirror, a new thinness in her face. ‘Fancy a coffee before we get started?’

  A week ago they’d have grabbed takeaway coffees on their way into the station but the prospect of DCS Ferguson, surely also an early riser, made a café stop not only tempting but essential.

  Marnie parked at the side of her favourite place in a space marked ‘Private’ which the owner let her use because, Noah suspected, he was a little in love with her.

  Kim was a big blond Dane with a square chin and stormy eyes, hands the size of side plates. Dressed today in khakis and a white wool jumper that smelt of oil lamps, he led them to Marnie’s favourite table, clicking on a couple of lights to take the dark from the back of the café. He didn’t smile at Marnie but his eyes softened as he drew back her chair, waiting for her to be seated. She turned her head to thank him and Noah saw that thinness in her face again, marking out the cleanly vulnerable angles of her cheek and jaw.

  ‘How’s Ed?’ Noah wanted to ask if she was okay, but this was an easier question.

  ‘He’s good, thanks. How’s Dan?’

  ‘In Manchester. He got stranded overnight. It’s even colder up there.’

  Warm in the café, though. Wood-lined, with a gentle pulse of heat from old school radiators. The tables smelt of soap and beeswax. Kim kept the place spotless.

  ‘When’s he back?’ Marnie asked.

  ‘Today, I hope. Trains keep getting cancelled. Frozen tracks. It’s all a bit post-apocalyptic . . .’

  Noah watched Kim behind the bar, frothing milk, steam curling around his wrist. ‘Do you think he’d let us hole up here if the world ends?’

  ‘Worse places to be stranded,’ she agreed.

  The coffee came, bruised black in big blue cups. No fancy barista art, just hot milk in a separate jug, lidded. At the side of Marnie’s saucer, a tiny meringue-topped biscuit which Kim called ingenting and translated as ‘nothing’. She thanked him, smiling until he responded with a rare smile of his own before leaving them alone. Noah wrapped his hands around the cup, letting Marnie add the milk as she had the knack of smoothing the bitter edge from the coffee.

  ‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘last night. About Mr Singh.’

  ‘I liked him.’ Noah nodded. ‘Such a good man.’

  She replaced the lid on the milk jug, propping her elbows on the table. ‘How many Londoners have a neighbour like that? Someone close by, who wants to help.’ She sipped at her coffee. ‘Who does help. Cooking meals, looking out for Ollie.’

  ‘Not many. I’d say he’s one in about four million.’

  ‘And yet Lisa didn’t tell him about Ollie, about what happened when he was four.’

  ‘It was a long time ago. Bad memories.’

  ‘She works shifts, places she can get to on foot.’ Marnie rested the blue cup on the
back of her wrist, holding it steady. ‘Carole’s the same. And they live less than half an hour apart. What are the chances they’ve met?’

  ‘In London? Slim.’

  But she was sitting too still, looking too serious.

  ‘Shit,’ Noah said. ‘You think Lisa’s our vigilante?’

  ‘She’d have recognised Carole if they’d met in the street. I’m not sure that’s true of Ollie.’

  ‘So the baseball bat and the lighter are Lisa’s.’ Noah frowned at the window where steam had painted patterns in the frost. ‘Not Ollie’s?’

  ‘It’s possible, don’t you think? Or she could be cleaning up after him, protecting him.’

  ‘Tiger mum, that’s what Zoe called her. She said Lisa stuck up for Ollie when he got into trouble, no matter how serious.’

  ‘That’s understandable after what they went through eleven years ago.’

  ‘It doesn’t explain Rawling, or Kyle.’ Noah put the span of his hand across his mouth, pressing his thumb and fingers to the ache in his cheekbones. ‘Lisa, I mean. If it’s Lisa doing this.’

  ‘No.’ The cup had left a red mark on the back of Marnie’s wrist. ‘I don’t want my nasty mind leading us up a blind alley. And Rawling said kids. Let’s look in the logical directions.’

  ‘Carole,’ Noah said. ‘If Ollie attacked her, he’d have let her know why. I don’t see a fifteen-year-old doing something as savage as that in silence. He’d want her to know why he was doing it. But if Lisa met Carole and recognised her, despite the new hair colour . . . I’d recognise someone who’d put me through that. And with Ollie heading off the rails, getting into trouble?’

  They paused for Kim to bring a refill of coffee, before he retreated to the kitchen.

  ‘The gang,’ Noah continued. ‘The way Ollie changed. Swaggering about, staying away. That must’ve felt like he’d been stolen all over again. If it touched a nerve and if Lisa saw Carole—?’

  Walking to whatever low-paid work she could get, worrying about her son all over again, then seeing the woman who’d put her through weeks of hell, forced them to move from Harrow, caused her marriage to break up, fuelled her son’s fantasies about punishment. Tiger mum, knowing her son had spent weeks in Carole’s cage.