Quieter Than Killing

by Sarah Hilary

  Brenda searched inside the sleeve of her jumper for a trio of gold bangles, bringing them into the light with a look of relief, as if she’d retrieved her dignity in some small measure.

  ‘A lot of shouting,’ Gerry said. ‘But you need to stop and look at the facts, quietly and squarely.’

  ‘Even when it’s awful.’ Brenda turned her bangles, appealing to Marnie with a sudden desperate stare. ‘Even when it’s the last thing you want to hear.’

  ‘He hated me at school.’ Mazi moved his shoulders as if the skin graft was too tight, or the memory too vivid, of what Kyle and Jack Goodrich had done. ‘That’s what everyone thought. That’s what I thought, for a bit. He hated me.’ He looked down at his hands then up at Noah. ‘He didn’t, though.’

  The light hummed over their heads, not liking the cold. Nothing in the station did. The heating had come back, but reluctantly. The station stank of stewed tea, packet soup and wet sheep – from the jumpers they were all wearing under their suits.

  Mazi hadn’t worn a coat to visit Kyle’s parents. He hadn’t planned the trip or he’d have dressed for it. Reigate wasn’t any warmer than Barnet. He’d run to keep warm.

  Noah passed him a bottle of mineral water.

  Mazi held the bottle between his hands. It set blue shadows on the table. ‘His mum and dad are pissed off, I get that. But they had to know. His dad thought he’d screwed up. Kyle said he was getting grief for it even after ten years. They thought he was a thug. And they were embarrassed. They’re decent people, I didn’t want them thinking—’

  Noah waited.

  ‘What happened to Kyle?’ Mazi touched his fingers to the blue shadows. ‘I didn’t want them thinking that was justice. Karma. That he’d run into trouble again, the way he did before. He said his dad never stopped watching him for signs that he was still a bully. That’s what they thought, that he was a thug and a bully. Yeah, and a racist. But that was the least of it, you know?’

  He looked up at Noah. His eyes were huge, hot.

  ‘I didn’t want them thinking that he got what he deserved.’

  ‘These facts,’ Marnie said, ‘that you want us to look at squarely and quietly. Are they connected to the letters and phones you threw away?’

  Gerry’s stare swivelled from the wall to his wife.

  Marnie would’ve preferred to interview them separately, but for now they were a team. DCS Ferguson had put them in here. Victims, not suspects.

  ‘Seven phones, in working order. That was an odd thing to throw out.’

  Brenda shook her head. ‘We don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’m afraid in that case we will need to make this a formal interview.’

  ‘God’s sake!’ Gerry rolled his neck. ‘We didn’t want you chasing up the wrong road, all right? There’s nothing on those phones or in those letters that explains why he was killed. Brutally. By a maniac. Not some smutty date he’d fixed up out of curiosity or boredom – whatever it was. Did you see the mags he was reading?’ Lifting his chin. ‘If you found the phones, you found the mags. It was all an adventure. A game. He didn’t travel, not like us, but he explored all right. Oh he was a first-class explorer was Kyle! No stone left unturned. Experimenting all over the place.’

  ‘With people? Or did you mean some other kind of experimenting?’

  Gerry wouldn’t answer.

  ‘He was twenty-six,’ Brenda said. ‘He wasn’t a child any more, but it was our home. We didn’t kick him out, or even ask him to leave. Lots of parents would’ve done that. While he was under our roof, he played by our rules.’

  She stiffened in response to an angry movement from her husband. ‘He did. That trouble at school . . . He’d put us through enough. He wasn’t going to put us through any more.’

  Her eyes were pale in the tanned skin of her face. ‘Enough’s enough. He knew that.’

  ‘It wasn’t exclusive,’ Mazi said. ‘Kyle wasn’t— That wasn’t his thing. He said he got enough domestic bliss at home. A whole world out there, that’s what he said, waiting to be explored.’

  He held onto the bottled water, blinking. ‘He liked parties. New people, different. Strangers he’d never see again. I said I thought it was fucked up, but he didn’t care. “Of course it is,” that’s what he said. “Of course it’s fucked up. That’s the point.” I learnt to keep my mouth shut.’

  He linked his fingers around the neck of the bottle. ‘Chemsex. You know what that is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mazi raised his eyes, scanning Noah’s face in recognition. ‘You’d think Kay invented it, the way he went on.’

  Kay. Kyle.

  ‘I asked him once if he wanted me to go with him. If that’s what he wanted, the pair of us at a party somewhere, maybe a different party every night. He had a good laugh about that. “Like an old married couple? Fuck off.” So I did.’ Blinking. ‘I fucked off.’

  Noah waited, holding in the questions he needed to ask. Whether Mazi knew why Kyle had gone to Page Street that night. Whether there was anyone in particular he was worried about, strangers Kyle had screwed around with, or who hadn’t wanted to back off. Enemies he’d made while he was popping pills in houses he’d never been inside before, or since.

  ‘Shit.’ Mazi wiped his nose with the heel of his hand. ‘This isn’t— Not why I came here.’

  ‘That’s okay. Take your time.’

  ‘Take my time?’ Opening his eyes wide. ‘He’s dead. We don’t have any time. I wasted it writing letters when I could’ve gone round there. Being pissed off because of the pills and the girls and the stag parties in search of his missing—’ He stopped, kicking a foot at the table leg. ‘Shit, man. Don’t talk to me about time. Okay? Just don’t.’

  ‘All right, I won’t do that. Tell me why he was in Page Street. Tell me why you think he died.’

  Mazi bent over the water bottle, picking at its paper label with his thumbnail. His shoulders shook. The pink thread of the skin graft ran deep into the neck of his vest, to a river of welts where Kyle had burned the skin from his back. ‘Me . . .’ He wept, raw in his chest.

  His hands opened, fingers dancing with distress.

  ‘What do you mean – me?’

  ‘It was me.’

  He lifted his head, face streaming tears.

  ‘Because of— It was me. I killed him.’

  29

  Marnie closed the door to her office, nodding at Noah to sit down. She moved her chair so that they were shoulder to shoulder, looking at the newspaper clippings.

  ‘These.’ Mazi had dug the clippings from his pocket, pressing them to the table in the interview room. ‘That’s how I know it was me.’

  Yesterday’s date and a photo of Kyle taken just after he’d been found guilty of racially aggravated assault. He was fifteen, all scared eyes and cheekbones, about to spend three months in a secure unit. An old photo, but the story was up to date: Kyle’s assault in Westminster, the fatal injuries from which he’d died.

  ‘It was me.’ Mazi had covered the clippings with his hands. ‘He died because of me.’

  The second clipping was the report from eleven years ago, of Kyle’s conviction. Two faces, side by side. Kyle and Mazi, just boys. One white, the other black. Fifteen and fourteen years old, in the same school uniform. Of the two, it was Kyle who looked scared. Mazi was smiling, pre-assault; the reporter had failed to get a photo of him on the burns ward of the local hospital.

  ‘These came in yesterday’s post,’ Noah told Marnie. ‘To Mazi’s home address. He worked late, didn’t find the envelope until he got home around ten p.m. Couldn’t sleep, went for a run, ended up getting the first train out to Reigate to see Kyle’s parents. He was scared they might’ve got the same post. That they’d be thinking the same thing he was, that Kyle was killed because of what he did to Mazi, eleven years ago. Even though Mazi had forgiven him, and Kyle knew that.’

  ‘How recently did he forgive him?’ Marnie asked.

  ‘Three years
ago. Kyle saw his name in the paper after a fund-raiser, got in touch via the charity Mazi works for. They went for a drink, then back to Mazi’s place.’

  Noah rubbed at his temple. ‘He’d figured out that Kyle liked him, back in school. And he’d liked Kyle. But it was impossible. The kind of school they were at, the mates they had . . . He wasn’t surprised when Kyle went the other way, started hanging out with Jack Goodrich who did hate Mazi. Then there were Kyle’s parents . . . How’re they coping?’

  ‘With their son’s death? Better than you might expect. With his boyfriend turning up on their doorstep with these clippings? Not so much. His dad’s refusing to believe it. Two sides to every story, he says. He thinks Mazi meant something else when he began blaming himself.’

  Marnie’s eyes darkened to ink-blue. ‘And I quote: “That sort are always only one step away from doing something dangerous.” He thinks Mazi was confessing to killing Kyle.’

  ‘Mazi loved him,’ Noah said. ‘That’s what makes it tricky. Gerry could understand the experiments, even the sex. It was the love he couldn’t get his head around.’

  ‘Define experiments.’

  ‘What we thought when we looked at the phones. Chemsex, pills, strangers. Not just men. Women too. Kyle liked to keep his options open. Gerry approved of the women, and Kyle liked his dad’s approval, that was a big part of the problem. Gerry stood by him when he went to prison, even when the neighbours got snotty. A lot of it was Gerry wanting to lecture him about his mistakes, but not all of it. Mazi says Kyle couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted to rub his dad’s nose in it, or keep his promise to reform.’

  ‘Does Mazi have any ideas about who killed him?’

  ‘Beyond blaming himself? No. I asked about the phones. That was Kyle compartmentalising – different phones for the different people he was trying to be. Worried about the data trail once he’d used the apps too often, for sex or pills. And paranoid about getting calls from people he didn’t want to see again.’ He shook his head. ‘Everything was a one-night stand with Kyle. Mazi said a new phone meant a clean leaf when he started to feel too dirty. He wasn’t surprised Kyle kept the phones rather than throwing them away, but he was surprised Kyle kept his letters.’

  ‘Brenda found them,’ Marnie said, ‘inside one of the magazines they threw out. She thought they were from a girl because of where she found them. Then she read Mazi’s name. They couldn’t make sense of it. The forgiveness shocked them as much as the love. “After what Kyle did to him,” that’s what they kept saying. The idea of Mazi wanting revenge makes sense, but not the idea that he was able to forgive Kyle.’

  She touched a hand to her neck, nursing an old ache there. ‘There’s nobody in Page Street that Mazi thinks Kyle might’ve known?’

  ‘They broke up three weeks ago,’ Noah said. ‘Mazi’d had enough of worrying where Kyle was, or whether he was coming home.’

  ‘Explain that to me. We thought Mazi lived with his girlfriend in Barnet. And Kyle was in Reigate with Gerry and Brenda. So where was home?’

  ‘Barnet. Mazi shares the flat with a friend, but she isn’t his girlfriend. Kyle had slept over so often he had clothes there, and books. He didn’t want any of it back when they broke up. Mazi thought that meant they’d probably get together again. It’d happened that way before. He’d given up on ultimatums, but he hoped Kyle would get tired of the parties and pills, and pretending to his parents that he was getting something out of his system before he settled down.’ Noah crooked his mouth, not smiling. ‘No one expects grandkids these days, and Gerry and Brenda are too wedded to their lifestyle. Holidays, cruise ships. They wouldn’t want to give that up for babysitting duties. But they wanted Kyle to bring home a nice girl. Proof that he’d calmed down. Made good.’

  He put his thumb on the newspaper clippings. ‘I gave the envelope to Ron for Forensics. Same handwriting, though. And the same trick with white wax to cheat the postmark.’

  ‘Our vigilante wanted Mazi to know why Kyle was killed. Unless this is about more than justice then whoever’s doing it didn’t know that Mazi and Kyle were in a relationship.’

  ‘They didn’t care.’ Anger altered Noah’s voice. ‘Kyle or Carole or Mazi – they’re all faceless. Not human enough to matter. Our vigilantes are pretending this is about punishment, setting the record straight, evening the score. But they’ve hurt Mazi in ways Kyle never did. This?’ Pushing his thumb at the clippings. ‘Is just an excuse for what they want to do, which is hurt people. Break their faces, their legs. Set fire to their skulls. Kill—’

  He looked at Marnie, fierce-eyed. ‘Gerry’s right. We’re looking for a maniac. Not a vigilante. Not anyone who cares about justice, not really. Someone who loves violence and hates people.’

  He pushed back from the desk. ‘A killer. We’re looking for a stone-cold killer.’

  30

  Duct tape tastes like its colour. Not silver, not sharp enough for that. Dull and grey like having a mouse pressed into your mouth, a dead mouse with glue and blood in its fur.

  Finn’s lips were bleeding where he’d tried to tear them free from the tape. The tip of his tongue had swelled up and he was scared to swallow. People died from swallowing their tongues, plus it felt like his throat was full of fingers but he couldn’t cry because his nose would fill with snot and he could hardly breathe already because of the fingers and the way his tongue was swollen.

  The tape was wound right around his head.

  Ollie had wrapped it tight, stretching it before he tore it with his teeth and pushed two fingers at Finn’s forehead, shoving him back into the corner between the bog and the bath. ‘He’s done.’

  He’d looked up as he said it, and Finn had seen fear in his eyes. Ollie’s eyes were purple and he’d never seen any special look in them other than pissed-off or fuck-off, but just for a second—

  Ollie looked scared.

  ‘He’s done.’ He knelt on the towel that Finn’d been shivering under until they made him move.

  Ollie’s hood was down, letting the light all over his head, his lashes long as a girl’s. He spat a piece of duct tape into his hand, looking at it then looking at Finn. ‘Now what?’

  Purple eyes. Scared, like Finn. Or just pissed off that he was being made to do this – wrap duct tape around Finn’s face, and whatever else he was about to do.

  ‘His hands and feet.’ Brady, in the doorway. ‘Do it.’

  Ollie reached for the roll of tape.

  Finn shook his head, making it spin. He was going to puke, he was going to drown in his own puke. This was it, where they raped him and killed him and cut him up in the bath—

  He kicked out, catching Ollie’s hand.

  ‘Come here, you little shit.’

  Ollie grabbed him by an ankle and one wrist, hauling Finn into his lap until his spine was up against Ollie’s chest and Ollie’s arm was across his shoulders. He let go of Finn’s ankle, reaching for his wrists and crushing them together with a single hand.

  Finn kept kicking even though there was nothing to kick except the bath and the bog, but he didn’t stop, twisting like a fish in Ollie’s lap.

  ‘Fuck’s sake.’ Ollie used his chin to catch Finn’s forehead, holding hard until Finn’s hair tore from struggling. ‘Let me do it,’ he hissed. ‘Just – let me do it.’

  His arm was across the front of Finn’s shoulders and there was a different pain to the bones in his wrists being ground together and the hair being torn out of his head—

  Ollie’s fingers were squeezing his left arm just below the shoulder.

  Squeezing him tight, the way you’d hold onto something to keep from drowning or falling.

  Like Ollie was the one about to die, and Finn—

  Finn was the only thing keeping him safe.

  31

  ‘Mazi Yeboah was sent clippings, just like Valerie Rawling. Two clippings each, linking these assaults to the earlier crimes. Our vigilantes want the original victims to know what they’ve done.’ Marn
ie indicated the photocopies on the evidence board. ‘Forensics are looking at the envelopes.’

  ‘What’s with the C?’ Ron pointed at the letter written in the corner of each clipping. ‘It’s on everything, like a copyright symbol. Their way of owning what they’ve done? Or a clue? It’s pretty arty, the way they’ve done it. The Cs on the envelope don’t look like that.’

  The tips of the C were squared off, shaped into short vertical lines.

  ‘Could be a gang sign.’ Noah picked up a pen and replicated the C on the whiteboard. ‘Crasmere Boys are one of the newer gangs. I asked Trident for a list after Rawling said it was kids that attacked him. Crasmere Street’s only a quarter of a mile from Jonas House. We need to find out whether Ollie has any connections to the gang. I’ve put in a call to Zoe Marshall.’

  ‘Pat Hammond said kids too. He’s our eyewitness at Page Street, but he couldn’t ID either of them. Hoodies and trainers, he thinks. Couldn’t even give me colours.’ Ron looked disgusted. ‘I’m crossing him off the list. CPS won’t touch him with the sharp end of a shitty stick.’

  Debbie said, ‘The sports centre confirmed they had a break-in two months ago. They said it was kids from Jonas House, sent a list of what was lifted. It’s basically our vigilantes’ shopping list. Golf clubs, baseball bats and a croquet mallet.’

  ‘Play a lot of croquet in Camden, do they?’ Ron scoffed.

  ‘A promotional gift from a local business, apparently.’

  ‘Ollie and co found a better use for it . . .’

  ‘Do we know that for certain?’ Noah asked. ‘That it was Ollie who broke into the sports centre?’

  ‘They didn’t press charges,’ Debbie said, ‘because their security was on the blink and they’d no proof but yes, they’re certain it was him. Officially he was banned for anti-social behaviour.’

  ‘Where are we up to with CCTV at Page Street?’ Marnie asked Colin.

  ‘Last sighting is Kyle crossing Victoria Street just after he left the pub. He’s looking at his phone. Call log says he got a text alert from an app. A hook-up. The app was using relative distance info so there’s a chance Kyle’s location was flagged for our killer to see.’