Quieter Than Killing

by Sarah Hilary

  ‘You were concussed. We were looking for Ollie. You were at Carole’s flat because of her connection to him. We’d found a baseball bat in his flat. Everything pointed to it being Ollie.’

  ‘So I saw what I wanted to see—’

  ‘You didn’t want to see anything,’ Marnie said in her steady way. ‘You didn’t want to be concussed and knocked down those steps.’

  ‘If it wasn’t Ollie, who was it? Bevan?’

  That didn’t fit with the memory in his head. He tried to force the memory to fit but it wouldn’t, another piece of the puzzle in the wrong place.

  Marnie was saying, ‘We don’t know that it wasn’t Ollie. Not for sure.’

  But Noah was sure. He’d been uneasy ever since he’d seen Ollie shivering in a T-shirt because he’d given his hoodie to Finn. ‘If Ollie didn’t attack me, how do we know he was responsible for any of it? We’ve only got Bevan’s word that he was an accomplice.’

  The tabloids would destroy what was left of Ollie’s story. Noah could see the headlines now: Thug Life; Violent Teen was Caged as a Kid. He’d played a part in that, naming Ollie as his attacker when he hadn’t been sure, not a hundred per cent, because of the concussion. He should have kept his mouth shut, erred on the side of reasonable doubt.

  ‘I need to get this out of my head.’ Marnie’s voice was very low. ‘And I need you to debunk it. If that’s what it deserves.’

  A fresh jolt of adrenalin—

  Noah turned on his heel.

  She was standing so still and looking so serious that it unnerved him.

  ‘The missing child.’

  ‘You know who it is,’ he realised. ‘You’ve got a theory.’

  He looked at the child’s face on the evidence board then back at Marnie.

  ‘You know who this is.’

  54

  ‘She was in the room with me when you called to say that Sol had seen Bevan. She could have heard me talking, and warned Huell to clear out.’

  ‘Who?’

  Marnie circled her wrist with her fingers. ‘Everything we had on Ollie at the outset? The lists he kept, the knife he was carrying, Lisa’s tiger instinct to protect him no matter what – she gave us all of it. The stolen golf clubs, and the stolen baseball bat. Not to mention the story of Huell’s obsession with justice. It all came from her.’

  ‘Zoe—?’ Noah blinked. ‘Zoe Marshall?’

  ‘I want to talk it through. I need it out of my head.’ She met Noah’s eyes, the shadow of an apology in her stare. ‘Cynical, I know. Cruel, even. So tell me why I’m wrong. You talked with her more than I did. I trust your judgement. Tell me about Zoe.’

  ‘She’s . . . tough. She doesn’t look it or sound it, but it’s there.’ He fought his first instinct to defend Zoe because he liked her. ‘She hated talking about the knife, you saw that. Said she didn’t believe Ollie had it in him to murder anyone, and she didn’t sugarcoat it. No evangelising, she kept it on the level.’ He frowned. ‘Say she lied about the lists Ollie kept. There’s no easy way we can confirm that unless Mr Singh saw something back when he and Ollie were friends. Or unless we find the lists. But the knife was real. Ollie’s prints were on it, under Finn’s.’

  Noah had watched Ollie bleeding out under the frantic hands of the firearms officer who’d shot him. Trigger-happy, the press had said, but Noah had seen the misery on the man’s face as he tried to save Ollie’s life. Meanwhile Huell was howling for help, both hands clutching his groin. Finn was on the ground, his head on Marnie’s shoulder, her arms around him. He’d given up the knife when she’d pleaded for it. She’d brought him back from the brink. A result, Ferguson was calling it. Now Marnie was saying it wasn’t over. That Zoe Marshall might be—

  ‘The other child.’ Noah blinked at the board. ‘You think she’s the other child.’

  Pale eyes, strawberry hair. He looked more closely, trying to see past the blank mask which captivity and God knows what other cruelty had pinned to the child’s face. The small nose and ears could be Zoe’s. The curve of the jaw, maybe. Or was he seeing what he wanted to see, again?

  ‘She told us she grew up in Hillingdon,’ Marnie was saying. ‘That’s half an hour from Harrow. And she told me she had a nephew in Kent. At the trial, Carole’s brother gave a statement in her defence. His address is in Orpington. He has two sons.’

  ‘She’s Zoe Marshall, not Linton. Did she change her name?’

  ‘Carole wasn’t married to this child’s father. Perhaps he’s Marshall. I tried to find out the names of Zoe’s parents, but I hit a dead end. Missing paperwork.’ She raised her eyebrows, but only for a second. ‘It might mean nothing.’

  ‘The assault she told us about, the scars . . .’

  ‘They’re real. She was stabbed and it was every bit as nasty as she said it was. She was treated at the Royal Free in Camden, where it’s possible Bevan accessed her medical records.’

  ‘She brought us the break in the case,’ Noah said. ‘Gave us a motive for Huell. You think all that was misdirection? Smoke.’

  Marnie waited, not speaking.

  ‘She’s small,’ Noah said reluctantly. ‘Like Carole. Stuart said two kids, one big, one small. The eyewitness from Page Street said the same. We’ve been assuming Bevan was the small one, because Ollie’s so much bigger. But Zoe could pass as a kid.’

  Coming down those steps—

  Bulked up by layers and layers of clothing.

  A balaclava, a baseball bat.

  Was that her? Was it Zoe?

  ‘We should slow down,’ Marnie warned. ‘We need evidence.’

  Noah nodded. ‘What else do you have?’

  ‘That’s it. Not nearly enough to take to DCS Ferguson.’ Her mouth crooked. ‘Especially not mid-celebration. Huell confessed to killing Kyle, and to conspiring with Ollie to kill Carole. He confessed to Stuart’s assault, gave no indication that anyone else was involved. We’ve charged him. It’s doubtful he’ll get bail. He’ll be in prison as soon as he’s out of hospital.’

  ‘Let’s say his confession’s a fantasy. He met Zoe, but not the way she told it. She seduced him, he’s in her thrall. That’s speculation on our part . . . We know he was at your place. Forensics have linked him to the other envelopes. No additional DNA at any of the scenes, nothing to say a third person was involved. And if he’s prepared to take the blame . . .’

  ‘Well, exactly.’

  A phone rang at Debbie’s desk. Voicemail caught it.

  ‘Finn,’ Noah said. ‘I know he’s not well enough yet, but might he give us more? If there is anything, I mean.’

  ‘He said something, outside the house.’ Marnie straightened. ‘When they were trying to save Ollie’s life. “Ollie did it for her.” I asked him what he meant but he didn’t know. Only that Ollie had said it back in the house. He wouldn’t be able to go home like Finn when it was over because he’d killed someone and he did it “for her”. Finn was close to collapse; it won’t stand unless he repeats it when he’s stronger. And possibly not then.’

  ‘Ollie could’ve meant Carole. Or his mum. We still don’t know where Lisa is, do we?’

  ‘You’re right. It’s too thin to take to Ferguson. But there are two things I can’t get out of my head. The first is the way Tobias deferred to Zoe throughout the interview about the shoebox, as if he was taking cues from her. He didn’t say a word which she didn’t prompt out of him. Maybe it was trust but the way she used her voice, this rhythm to it . . . She’d made a point of befriending the Crasmere Boys, and Ollie. Of course that’s her job. We can hardly accuse her of doing her job.’

  ‘What’s the other thing? You said two things you can’t get out of your head.’

  ‘This one’s even less Ferguson-proof. Just . . . a bad feeling. An itch. When Harry Kennedy talked about her at Lancaster Road, the night before the pair of them came to the station . . .’

  Marnie’s eyes burned. ‘He said she was young and smart, and that she took no prisoners.’

  Noah
looked at the child’s face on the board.

  If Marnie was right, if this was Zoe—

  Young, smart, takes no prisoners.

  But she had. She’d taken Finn.

  55

  The hospital smelt squeaky, not clean. Light crawled in under the door and between the slats of the blinds. When Finn shut his eyes it pressed at his lids like thumbs.

  The bed creaked when he moved. He wasn’t supposed to move because of the tube in the back of his hand and the fat bag of fluids to fix all the puking and fever that’d dehydrated him. His head was banging, but not as bad as it had in the house. He didn’t care about the banging or the burning in the back of his hand, or even about the nurses who’d stripped him and washed him with sponges. None of it was as bad as what’d happened to Ollie.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, but that was no good because the pictures were on the inside. So he stared into the bar of light coming from under the door in a straight line like a yellow ruler. It was good because it was so straight, like someone drew a line under the mess even though they didn’t, even though it was just a lie left by the light. He could pretend for a bit that everything was ended.

  ‘Fucking Brady,’ he whispered at the yellow line. ‘He’s finished.’

  Bevan, not Brady. But he’d always be Brady, for Finn.

  His hand still itched with Brady’s blood, the mess that came out of him when he’d shoved Ollie’s knife into Brady’s balls, hearing Dad’s voice cheering in his head.

  The way Brady’d rolled around on the floor crying like when Ollie’d kicked a kid who called him a freak. Brady made the exact same sound as that kid and maybe it wasn’t Dad cheering in Finn’s head, maybe it was Ollie. Who’d given Finn his hoodie and pressed a hard thing into Finn’s hand which he hadn’t known was a knife not until they were outside and the police were shouting and the whole street was shaking. Up and down, angry with ice that ate up Finn’s fever enough for him to see straight, once he knew it was a knife in his hand and that Brady was hiding behind him, like Finn was huge and Brady was tiny.

  Then—

  ‘Get on the ground!’

  Not actual gameplay footage.

  That’s what’s going through Finn’s head.

  Not actual gameplay footage.

  Puck-puck from the gun and Ollie goes down.

  They all do.

  ‘Get on the ground!’

  They’re all down. Brady with his balls in both hands, crying. Ollie with his T-shirt in red ribbons, like guts.

  Not actual gameplay footage.

  Finn’s got his head on her shoulder. Detective Inspector Marnie Rome. She got him to drop the knife even when it was stuck to his hand with blood and it was like trying to drop his own fingers.

  Everything was shaking, but she wasn’t. She was a straight line like that yellow ruler under the door. She had her arms round him and he knew he stank of Brady and pissy jeans and whatever bits of Ollie got sprayed on him, but she didn’t care about any of that. She kept hold of him the whole time they were making sure Ollie was dead, and Brady wasn’t.

  Trying to save Ollie’s life – Finn knew that’s what they were doing. But it’d looked like they were trying to kill him, to keep him down and dead. Even now, when he squeezed his eyes shut, that’s what Finn saw. Two of them pushing at Ollie’s chest until he stopped moving.

  The hospital hissed and rattled. If he made the effort to hear past the banging in his head, he heard trolleys being wheeled and doors swinging shut and shoes on the shiny floors that weren’t clean, not really, just shiny. So shiny they scared him. Weird, the stuff he was scared of now. It wouldn’t last, they said.

  Stress and trauma, all that shit.

  He’d stop being scared soon. Of shiny floors and light squeezing through the slits in the blinds, fat bags of fluids and nurses coming out of nowhere, his own blood bumping in his body.

  Finn was sick of being scared.

  At least in the house there’d been a good reason for it. He’d been snatched, held prisoner, made to follow orders. In the street there’d been Brady and guns and Ollie dying right in front of him; only an idiot wouldn’t’ve been scared. But in here— He was shitting himself at his own shadow, at all those little bits of him squirming in the steel pole that held up the fluids, and in the handles on the drawers.

  Everywhere, he was everywhere. He couldn’t get away from him. What would Dad say if he saw Finn now? Or if he’d seen the way he’d cried snot all over DI Rome, rubbing his head on her shoulder, not letting go even when the paramedics wanted to check him over, sobbing when they tried to take Ollie’s hoodie off him because it was all he had left and it stank of cigarettes – of Ollie – and if they took it off there’d be nothing underneath, no skin or bones or blood. No Finn.

  So, yeah.

  He tried to imagine Dad hearing about that and not being disgusted, ashamed of his own son. In prison where he was probably a thousand times tougher than he’d been at home, where you had to be tough to survive, and then someone says, ‘Heard your son pissed himself three times in one day,’ and okay maybe Dad could say, ‘Yeah, but he made a ball-kebab of Brady,’ but it wasn’t any good. It wasn’t ever going to be any good.

  Finn was crying again. He cried at anything now, his face opening like a leaky jar. Snot and tears and shaking like a little kid, wanting his blue cat to cuddle, wanting his dad, even his mum— No, not his mum because she hated him. Finn wanted her— ‘Detective Inspector Marnie Rome.’

  He liked the round sound of the words, like pebbles, like those from the beach where his dad carried him down to the sea. He whispered the pebbles to the room, ‘Detective Inspector Marnie Rome,’ and stared at the light under the door until the yellow line came back.

  When it opened—

  When the door opened, he heard its hinges at the back of his head because that’s where he’d sorted all the sounds, into order, with the oldest ones – puck-puck of the gun, red bubbles bursting on Ollie’s lips – on top. He had to reach underneath all of that for the sound of the hinges telling him the door was coming open.

  ‘Finn?’

  He knew the voice. He’d heard it before.

  Not a nurse, or a doctor, but he knew it.

  ‘Finn?’ Like singing, like she was singing his name.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. The yellow line was breaking up, cold air coming with her into the room, wiping it away. He squeezed his eyes so hard they leaked, balling his fists in the bed until the needle in the back of his hand burned blue as a match.

  ‘Go away go away go away—’

  ‘Ssh. Finn. It’s okay. It is.’

  Rocking him with her voice.

  ‘It’s going to be okay.’

  56

  Harry Kennedy was warming his long hands around a cup of coffee when Noah reached the café.

  Behind the bar, Kim’s face flickered when he saw Noah was alone. Marnie had headed to the hospital in the hope of finding either Huell or Finn well enough to be questioned.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ Harry said. ‘Not that you need an incentive when the coffee’s this good.’

  ‘True.’ Noah slid into the seat opposite, returning the smile. ‘And in any case I should be the one saying thanks. If you’ve got what I think you have.’

  Names for the gang Sol was trying to escape, the people who’d threatened Dan.

  Harry nodded. ‘Your brother’s smart to be getting out.’

  Or stupid, to have ever been part of it in the first place. They waited for Noah’s coffee to arrive. If Harry thought less of him because of his brother’s connections, he didn’t let it show as he laid out the facts. Names, places, charge sheets.

  The gang was armed and organised. No flossing, or strutting. These people were deadly serious. Knives. Guns. Noah’s scalp bristled as he listened to the list.

  ‘You know what I’m going to say.’ Harry drank a mouthful of coffee. ‘We could really use Sol’s help. Inside information, anything he’s got, would b
e invaluable.’

  ‘It’s why he didn’t want to come home. He knew I’d tell him the best way out was to come in.’ To Trident, he meant. But Sol had made it clear that he would starve on the streets before he turned police informant. ‘I wish it was that simple.’

  ‘He’s scared, I get it. This isn’t some blinged-up crowd dealing drugs out of their back pockets.’ Harry scratched his cheek. ‘The top boys are wearing Moschino and driving Mercs, holding down city jobs.’

  ‘And they’re running guns.’

  ‘Yes. We’ve had eyes on them for months but they don’t put a foot wrong. No recruitment going on, or none that we can see. Usually that’s our way in, when the fresh blood starts spilling. Kids cock up and if we’re lucky they help us move it up the ranks. But this lot have it all locked down.’

  Noah tried to imagine Sol as part of the gang that Harry was describing. Good suits, expensive cars, city jobs. Smart enough to outwit Trident’s best team. Sol had too much money sometimes, but he spent it in Superdry, not on Bond Street. Whenever Noah and Dan took him clubbing, Sol drank beer and danced like a goofball before falling asleep, face-first, on their sofa.

  ‘You’re sure about this?’ He shook his head at Harry. ‘I’m not in denial. I do know Sol’s up to his neck in something. I just can’t believe it’s guns, or even knives.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Harry said. ‘And I’m sorry.’ He looked it.

  ‘Are you going to arrest him?’

  ‘Not until we’ve something solid enough to take to the CPS.’

  ‘So you’re sure, but you’re not certain? Okay, scratch that. I hear what you’re saying, and I get it. I do get it.’

  Dan, he thought, I need to warn Dan.

  Harry was giving him a heads-up, from professional courtesy perhaps, but Noah needed to warn Dan that there might be a knock on the door, armed police calling for his little brother.