Under a Silent Moon

by Elizabeth Haynes

  From the backseat of the car, a high-pitched shout. “You have no idea, no idea how much fucking trouble you lot are in! How dare you!”

  “Fortunately I had my radio to hand,” Sam carried on—as calmly as she would be a year or so later, reciting from her contemporaneous notes in the witness box: “As while attempting to arrest her she resisted and bit me, so during the assault I was able to call for emergency assistance. PC Steve Johnson here has been particularly helpful.”

  PC Johnson was still standing beside the car in case the occupant decided to kick off again.

  “Good job we’re handy for the hospital,” Lou said. “As soon as we’re done here you’re going to get that wound cleaned up. You might need jabs.”

  “I’m assuming she hasn’t got rabies,” Sam said. She hadn’t lost her sense of humor. “I’m up to date with my tetanus and hep C.”

  “You bit yourself, you crazy bitch!”

  “That’s enough,” Johnson said. “You need to calm down now.”

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  Lou looked down at the woman through the car window. Her face was red and contorted with rage, her blond hair messed.

  “Would you stay there, a moment?” Lou asked Steve Johnson. “I’d like to have a quiet word with our suspect.”

  “Ma’am? You sure?”

  Lou opened the front passenger door and climbed in, shutting it behind her. She turned in the seat and faced the woman, whose hands were cuffed awkwardly behind her. She looked like she was calming down, her skin returning to a more normal color. She was breathing hard, her eyes a cold, pale blue.

  “You’re Suzanne Martin?” Lou asked.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she responded.

  “My name is Detective Chief Inspector Louisa Smith, and before you get carted off to the nick and we start the long and arduous process of making sure you’re safe and comfortable while we interview you, I wanted to tell you something.”

  “I know who you are,” Suzanne said. “You’re his boss, aren’t you? Well, no wonder he has a problem with following simple instructions.”

  “I’m usually a very fair person,” Lou said, her voice even. “But let me tell you that in this case what I’d really, really like to do is drive this car somewhere isolated with you inside it, and rip you apart with my bare hands for what you’ve done to my officers. I will do everything that’s in my power to make sure we get you convicted and put in prison for a long, long time, and when that happens I will crack open a bottle of something and look forward to you getting everything you deserve while you’re in there. Do you understand?”

  Suzanne’s lips were a thin, tight line.

  Lou had expected some sort of a response but when none came she opened the car door and climbed out, shutting the door behind her. Sam was chatting with Steve Johnson and the other patrol officer who’d arrived in the car, a young woman who obviously knew Sam by the way they were laughing together.

  “Are you two able to book her into custody?” Lou asked.

  “I’ll go with them,” Sam said. “I made the arrest.”

  “Only if you go to the hospital straight afterwards,” Lou said.

  “I will, I promise. How’s Andy?”

  “He’s going to be okay,” Lou said. It would only be a matter of time before details of Andy’s rescue would filter out—no doubt distorted into a far more amusing and humiliating version of the truth—but she would not be the one to start that particular ball rolling.

  She watched as the car pulled out and turned back to Andy’s family wagon, noticing for the first time the child seats in the back, the grubby-looking pink fluffy rabbit in the footwell. She picked it up and nestled it into the smaller of the two car seats, debating whether to strap it in and realizing that she wouldn’t have the first clue how to do it.

  Epilogue

  Thursday 8 November 2012

  09:56

  Lou had been sitting outside DCI Neal Farrar’s office for twenty-five minutes and it wasn’t as though she didn’t have other stuff to do. She looked at her watch—again—and was considering maybe coming back later just as the door opened and he beckoned her in.

  “Neal,” she said, shaking his hand. “I appreciate this. Thank you.”

  “How’s the hand?” he asked.

  “Twelve stitches. Pinches a bit, otherwise fine. Thanks for asking.”

  “I don’t think there’s much I can tell you, Lou, you know that.”

  “I still don’t understand. He’s my DI. He was completely pivotal to the investigation.”

  “The suspect’s been charged, I understand?”

  “Yes, she’s been charged. The search team went back in there yesterday and found Polly’s DNA. Not much of it. Flakes of blood on the hallway carpet. And they found what was left of Polly’s phone in the dustbin. Smashed to pieces, even the SIM. And there’s plenty on her laptop about her particular kink.”

  “Suffocating people?”

  “They call it breathplay. Every possible way to almost kill someone by cutting off their air supply. Of course, she thought she could always bring them round again, thanks to her medical knowledge. Taryn Lewis told us that her father said Polly seemed to think Suzanne had killed people before, overseas. That might be why she felt the need to come back to the U.K. We think she met Polly while she was traveling, and came here to find her. We’re looking into the time she spent traveling, now. She was working as a private nurse in Dubai just before she came back to the U.K.—in a bit of a hurry. I’m hoping I might get a trip in the sunshine out of it at least.”

  “Well, you know where to come if you need backup.”

  “Funny, you’re about the fifteenth person who’s said that.”

  “What about Fletcher-Norman?”

  “He’s still saying nothing to us about Suzanne. Maybe now she’s in custody, he will feel more comfortable talking about her.”

  “Interesting case, isn’t it? Have you ever come across someone like that before?” Farrar leaned back in his chair, swiveling gently from side to side.

  “Never. Neal, she’s unbelievable. She hasn’t shown any sign of remorse, at all. She seems to find the whole thing slightly amusing. Scares the shit out of me, if I’m honest. Andy was lucky to get out of there alive.”

  “You do realize that Andy Hamilton’s behavior all through this investigation was a major cause for concern, Lou? It needs to be looked at thoroughly, and while that happens he has to be suspended.”

  “It will have a positive outcome, though, won’t it? Please tell me he’s not going to lose his job over this. He’s a good officer, even though he might come across like a right fuckwit sometimes.”

  He managed a smile. “I know. But there are plenty of officers out there who are good at their jobs without compromising matters with witnesses. It was unnecessary, wasn’t it?”

  Lou felt like telling him about it all, about the affair she’d had with him herself. How he’d lied to her. How when he’d turned up on the first day of Op Nettle, her heart had sunk because she didn’t want to be anywhere near him. And so she didn’t trust him—her own DI—didn’t listen to him, didn’t give him anything decent to work on. Therefore anything that had happened to him, his decision to take risks, go it alone—surely that had been her fault as much as his? And if he was suspended for a lapse of judgment, then surely she should be, too?

  She stood up then and said her goodbyes. “You’ll call me if there’s anything you need? A statement? Anything?”

  “We’ll get round to that soon enough, don’t you worry.”

  Lou found an empty office and used it to call Hamilton’s mobile.

  “Hello?”

  “Andy, it’s me. How are you?”

  There was a long pause. “All right, I guess. How are you?”

  “I’m not supposed to call you. I’ve just been to see Neal Farrar in Professional Standards.”

  “Ah. Was that a good idea?”

  “I’m trying to help, you big tw
at.”

  “Thanks. Appreciate it.”

  “Don’t know what good it will do, though.”

  “Look, Lou. Everything works out for the best, right? It’s going to be a pain in the backside but you know what? I’m at home, spending time with Karen and the kids. She’s not stupid, she knows full well that my job’s on the line.”

  “Have you told her what happened?”

  “Some of it. It wasn’t easy, put it that way. But for the time being, strange as it sounds, we’re getting on all right. It’s like I—oh, I don’t know—like I forgot that I like being with them. No, I love being with them.”

  “That’s good, Andy, that’s good to hear.”

  “You take care of yourself, Lou?”

  “I will. I’ll see you soon. Need you on the team.”

  He laughed then. “No you don’t. I’m your worst nightmare, remember?”

  “You’re everyone’s worst nightmare.”

  She disconnected the call and looked out of the window at the former custody block across the other side of the car park. The decorators had moved in, which meant it was only a matter of time before Computer Crime moved in. Brian had been remanded; his lover was still in the custody suite at Briarstone nick, trying to talk her way out of a murder charge and yet running out of things to say now that they had some hard evidence against her.

  Lou looked at her watch. She was going to fit in a visit to see Flora in the hospital, take Sam with her. Somehow she felt there was a whole lot that Flora had left unsaid, and now Lou was more than ready to listen.

  Appendix

  When people hear that my previous job was as a police intelligence analyst, I’m often met with a blank look, and this may be partly because of the absence of analysts in police dramas in film and in crime fiction. And yet the role is an important one that can have a significant effect on the success of an investigation.

  After seven years of working for Kent Police, I am still painfully aware of the limits of my expertise. Here’s the thing—the police force operates on a “need to know” basis. If you don’t need to know something, then you won’t hear about it. Working on a particular case, you will have access only to the intelligence that directly applies to your job, even if the investigation isn’t particularly sensitive. This has nothing to do with parochialism—the data are secured by legislation, including the Data Protection Act, which means that nosing around and showing an interest in something that doesn’t concern you is not only frowned upon, it is actually illegal. My knowledge of the way things work is based on my experience and what other people are able to share with me.

  An easy way to describe the analyst’s role is that it seeks to answer the big question “What if . . . ?” Intelligence analysts work within various departments in the police organization (and other organizations, but that’s another story). Some analysts work in neighborhood policing teams, looking for patterns in what they call “volume” crime (car thefts, burglaries, and criminal damage, for example). Their work includes geographical analysis (for example, “hot spot” mapping) and temporal analysis—showing where and when crimes are statistically most likely to occur. A smaller number of analysts work in more specialized fields, particularly in serious crime. There are analysts working within the fraud and financial investigation departments; analysts who deal specifically with organized crime; and analysts who work in public protection, providing profiles of sex offenders and seeking to minimize the risk to the most vulnerable people in our society. And there are analysts working in professional standards, who provide support to corruption cases, too.

  The analytical role that always seemed the most interesting to me is that of the major crime analyst. The principles are the same—looking for patterns and details that someone else may have missed, providing an easy-to-read, at-a-glance guide to whatever it is that the police need to know—but the investigation is often developing quickly, with an urgent need to get to the truth before further crimes are committed.

  Phone analysis—or, to use a more recent and more accurate description, communications data analysis (for these days contact with others takes many forms)—is often a crucial part of the investigation: data are supplied, under strict protocols, by service providers, and it is often simply a spreadsheet of numbers. Historically, police officers received little to no training in interpreting these data, despite the fact that the evidence they can yield may prove vital to an investigation. In major crime incidents such as murder, rape, and armed robbery, the early hours and days of an investigation are the most important, and so the quicker the data can be interpreted, the quicker an arrest might be made.

  As well as communications data, the analyst has at his or her disposal various specialized software programs to create a visual interpretation of events and relationships between nominals involved in the investigation. This may include a timeline of events, which is useful to keep track of what happened when (and to prove when a witness statement can’t possibly be accurate), and various network or association charts, to highlight the links between people, places, and events. Examples of both timelines and association charts for Op Nettle follow later in this appendix.

  Often charts will expand over the course of the investigation, with the analyst printing out wall-size copies (we sometimes have access to big plotter printers, otherwise we spend ages sticking sheets of Xerox paper together) so that investigators can catch up on recent developments in the case as well as spot potential new leads or opportunities.

  If the phone analysis reveals something particularly interesting—for example, demonstrating links between phones—this can also be displayed visually and interpreted further by the software. This is often used to show which phones are in use by criminal associates, weeding out less relevant numbers—takeout shops, girlfriends, family members, and chat lines. Another way charts might be used is in relation to cellsite data—and one such chart is included here.

  When I first started to write crime fiction, it was important to me to try to get as much procedural accuracy as possible into my stories—a very difficult balancing act, trying to find that tipping point between the excitement of an unfolding plot and the tedium of paperwork and legal bureaucracy. Usually crime fiction tends to tip the scales in favor of drama and suspense, not only because even the most assiduous research cannot compare to years of experience in the unique working environment of law enforcement, but also because reading about “real life” police work would mostly be quite dull.

  It’s difficult to explain how it’s possible to get excited by a spreadsheet, but believe me, it is. Spotting the beauty of a pattern in pages of numbers, or noticing that one particular contact between two phones that really shouldn’t have any connection, yet they do—that’s something I hope the charts that follow will convey.

  It’s exciting to me, anyway. The ability to assist an investigation, believing that you may hold the crucial bit of information that will unravel a case and bring a serious offender to justice, is intensely rewarding. I hope Under a Silent Moon will give you an insight into the role of an intelligence analyst. I have tried to keep the events surrounding the investigation into Polly’s murder as accurate as I can. The world of policing in the U.K. is constantly changing, and at a faster pace more recently with even more pressure on resources and staff. Aspects of police procedure have changed even in the time it’s taken to edit this story, and will likely have changed further by the time you read it. Keeping things accurate isn’t easy. In the interests of plot and suspense, I have also taken some small liberties. I hope you will forgive me for that.

  ELIZABETH HAYNES

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank the brilliant team at Sphere, particularly Catherine Burke for her patience and for having faith in me when I didn’t believe in myself. Lucy Icke and Thalia Proctor have also made this book so much better thanks to their genius ideas and creative input—thank you all so much! Thank you, too, to my agents, Annette Green and David Smith, who have he
lped me develop as a writer, and for calming me down and keeping me sane when the excitement got a bit much. I also want to thank my brilliant editor, Jennifer Barth, and the entire team at Harper in the States, especially Cindy Achar, Mark Ferguson, Heather Drucker, Kathy Schneider, Leah Wasielewski, and David Watson. I am so grateful for your hard work, your professionalism and dedication—and it’s been a privilege to work with you all on this book. I hope you’re as proud of the results as I am.

  The first draft of Under a Silent Moon was written during November 2006 as part of the annual National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org) challenge, and thanks are due to the wonderful people behind the website, without whom this book undoubtedly would not exist at all.

  To my fellow NaNoWriMo participants, and Jacqueline Bateman in particular, who kept me going with write-ins both real and virtual, thank you. I assure you, it’s your turn next. Lillian George helped me greatly with one particular scene, and provided support when I began to doubt whether this book could ever be completed—I’m very grateful, Lillian.

  Thank you to Karen Aslett, Samantha Bowles, and Suze Dando for allowing me to use their names and for not minding how they were used. As well as lending me her name, and tirelessly listening to me wittering on about my plot, Sam had a tremendous influence on how this story developed, and many of the twists and turns are entirely thanks to her. I hope she approves of how it turned out.

  Special thanks to the people who shared their expertise on various matters—and please be assured that any mistakes are mine, not theirs. To Lisa Cutts, Gina Haynes, Janice Maciver, Alan Bennett, Katie Totterdell, Alan Bennett, and Hugo Benziger, who advised on various aspects of police procedure; Nicola Samson, who put me straight on equestrian matters; Floss Wilks, for help with Fire and Rescue; Jess Adair, who helped me with Taryn’s job; and Andy Kelly and Caroline Luxford-Noyes, for help with medical matters, thank you all so very much.

  Sarah M’Grady, Lisa Cutts, and Mitch Humphrys all helped me enormously by reading through complete drafts of this book and making sure that I kept some degree of accuracy. Thank you!