The Silent Room Page 8

  ‘What? You think he still has the hots for me?’ She rose from her seat, smiled. ‘Do me a favour. I’m way past my sell-by date and, even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be telling you.’

  Her attempt at cheerfulness was woefully inadequate. It was tough for her to talk about Newman in romantic terms. Any fool could see that. Ryan apologized for having stepped in something that was none of his business. He stood up and walked round the table. Extending his arm, he was about to lay a hand on her shoulder, but then thought better of it and took it away again.

  ‘Sometimes life sucks,’ he said.

  ‘We were good together once.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘You’re curious about him. That’s OK, everyone is. He has that effect on people. It’s irresistible … to both sexes. We worked together a long time ago, a short secondment for me when I was riding high on the way to promotion. We were young and very much in love.’ She looked sideways, eyes misting slightly, and managed a brave smile. ‘We’ve kept in touch but seen each other infrequently the last twenty-five years, sometimes planned, the last time not – a chance meeting in a railway station in Prague.’

  ‘That must’ve been difficult.’

  ‘Not at all.’ She was blushing. ‘We spent the night together.’

  ‘Let your guard down, eh?’

  ‘No one was twisting my arm.’

  ‘You’re a real catch, Grace.’

  ‘Ha! I’m the lucky one.’ She sucked in a breath. When she spoke again, her tone was laced with sarcasm. ‘It was much more difficult when he vanished five hours later.’

  ‘He just took off?’

  Her nod was almost imperceptible. ‘He had no choice. I never saw him again until today.’

  ‘He’s MI5?’

  ‘Not any more.’ Grace turned her head away. Ryan caught sight of her reflection in the blackened window, pain etched on her face. She pulled down the blind as if she couldn’t bear to think of herself as young and see herself now, even though she was in excellent shape for her age. She turned to face him. ‘It’s never been easy for us. We’ve always had to tiptoe around one another. A long time ago we had a choice to make: a stolen night here or there, or nothing.’

  ‘That must’ve been difficult.’

  ‘We did the best we could under the circumstances. I don’t expect you to understand, but when you’ve found your soulmate, time is immaterial. Now you know why I never mentioned him.’

  ‘Too risky, eh?’

  ‘Something like that … I represented baggage, Ryan. That was a no-no in his game. Besides, he’s not the forever type. It would never have worked out.’

  ‘He’s here now.’

  Grace fell silent and Ryan left it there.

  Pouring Newman a drink, he wandered into the living room, wishing he’d kept his big mouth shut. The former spook was still hard at it, the dining room table strewn with images and a diagram he’d printed off the computer, along with notes from their mini house-to-house which had thrown up no anomalies, no conflicting statements they could get their teeth into.

  Setting the glass down, Ryan looked past him to a wall-mounted mirror, rubbing at the five o’clock shadow covering his jaw. He needed a shower, a shave, but there was more work to do. He withdrew to Grace’s favourite armchair and called his sister. They had spoken every single day since he’d left home aged nineteen. Never missed. Not once.

  ‘There’s no news,’ he told her. ‘I’ll swing by tomorrow if I have time.’

  Caroline wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Keep looking for Jack. I miss him.’

  Ryan’s words caught in his throat. ‘I miss him too.’

  They said goodnight.

  At eight-thirty, Grace called them through to the kitchen. She insisted they take a break for dinner, even though Newman had made it clear that he would much rather push on through. He ate in silence, leaving his whisky untouched in the living room. When they were finished, he excused himself from the table and went straight back to work.

  ‘The man is a machine,’ Ryan said as he and Grace began to wash and dry the dishes.

  ‘You wouldn’t think he’d been up since four a.m.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Sourcing the equipment he brought along, presumably. Getting his car ready for the long drive south.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘You don’t even know where he lives?’

  ‘Fisherman’s cottage on the east coast of Scotland. I’m not sure exactly.’

  ‘Must be an official secret,’ Ryan said drily.

  Grace gave a half-smile. ‘I bet you’d love it all the same.’

  ‘I’m sure I would. Not that I’ll ever get an invitation.’

  It was half past midnight when Newman finally knocked off. Sitting back in his chair, he stretched his arms above his head, rotating his aching neck. He yawned loudly. In total, it had taken him six hours. Using technology the police could only dream of, he’d created a three-dimensional image of the crime scene, in bad light, from several angles, superimposing the prison van, the Audi and the Clio with precise measurements. They were in business.

  17

  Jack woke suddenly, panicked by what the Swede had said about Hilary and Lucy, hoping it was just a ploy to get him to talk. He clung on to the notion that Ryan would die rather than allow anything to happen to his family. If they were at any risk, no matter how slight, he’d have them in a safe house, locked away, official or not. That thought – and a conviction that his DS would be doing his utmost to find him – was all that was keeping Jack’s head up.

  Something – he didn’t know what – crawled up the side of his cheek across an open wound. He yelled out, flicking it off with swollen fingers that felt like rubber and didn’t seem to belong to him, shuddering as it hit the wall and scuttled away. Apart from the Swede’s voice and keys turning in the lock, the creature’s bid for escape was the only sound he’d heard since he’d been thrown to the ground and held captive.

  The vicious kicking he’d taken last night had left him lying in a pool of blood and vomit. Together with the stink of piss from the makeshift urinal in the corner of his hovel, the stench made him baulk. Overnight, the temperature had plummeted. His extremities were numb, his left eye completely closed, upper and lower lips split and swollen. Lying with his back to the floor, he stared into the darkness, listening for the slightest sound that might give his location away.

  Still nothing: no hum of traffic, echoes or reverberations of machinery, no aircraft or railway noise. A silence made worse by the pitch darkness and a sense of loneliness unlike any he’d experienced. Closing his eyes, he imagined arguments at work, the chatter of police radios, the squabbles of his children at the breakfast table, his wife’s harsh tone telling them to cut it out – all things he thought, until now, got on his nerves.

  Thinking of his family again brought hot, salty tears to his eyes. Were they safe with Ryan looking out for them? Jack had to believe it. The alternative was unthinkable. Either way, they would be inconsolable, his wife especially. Hilary was tough on the outside, soft on the in. she’d fight the grief and pretend she was handling herself, but she’d be barely holding it together. With only three years until his retirement, she’d already planned a million things to do before they turned up their toes. Jack wasn’t ready to go yet …

  Not here …

  Not now.

  For her sake, and for the sake of his kids, he had to survive.

  He pictured Hilary lying on her side in bed, propped up on one elbow, her beautiful eyes wide with excitement, discussing their bucket list: We could go to Niagara Falls, and Table Mountain. I want to see the aurora borealis too – from anywhere on the planet. Jack, we must! They had made love until they were both exhausted, Jack pointing out that they had the rest of their lives to do stuff like that. There was no rush.

  Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Guilt ate away at his insides. He had to live long enough to take Hilary back to Norway
. He’d taken her there in the summer under false pretences. When she’d discovered his hidden agenda, they had fallen out over it, the worst quarrel in the whole time they had been married. He had to make it up to her – somehow.

  Jack felt for his watch, its luminous dial the only measure of how long he’d been kept prisoner. It was gone. Without it, he couldn’t tell if it was night or day. Alone and disorientated, he wondered what steps were being taken to find him. The police would be looking, of course, if only to make an arrest. But how hard? They were stretched at the best of times and he was now just one more scumbag on the run, a fugitive from justice who’d be caught some day.

  He coughed up blood and spat it out, his throat parched. He’d been given nothing to eat or drink since the hijack. His tongue felt like it was twice its normal size. Lying in the dirt in the dark, he rolled his head first one way, then the other, his neck crunching with every rotation. Stretching his arms out to either side was painful beyond belief. He could touch both walls.

  He was in the centre of the room.

  Hauling himself off the deck, he staggered to his feet. One hand clutching his ribcage, he began pacing to keep himself warm. If he stood against the far wall, it took four paces to reach the other end, lengthways, only three from side to side. When breathing became difficult, he slumped into a sitting position, propped up against the wall, his knees pulled towards his chest. His favourite movie came to mind: Steve McQueen enduring solitary confinement in The Great Escape. Only difference was, Jack didn’t have a ball or anything else to keep his mind off his inevitable fate, no breakout plan.

  The cooler.

  Of course …

  His cell was subterranean. Not the end of a bricked-up tunnel but an underground chamber, an icehouse like he’d seen in big country estates in the middle of nowhere. The question was, where – still in Durham, or somewhere else?

  Wherever it was situated, its isolation scared him.

  Think!

  Only one of his captors had come the time before last. If that happened again, perhaps Jack could rush him. With great effort, he struggled to his feet and found the door. He fingered the edges. It opened inwardly. If he were to position himself behind it, and hit it hard enough, he could use its size and weight to crush someone hardly expecting him to put up a fight.

  How many steps would it take to reach it?

  Several times he measured it out. Timing would be crucial. A split second late or early and his plan would fail.

  Who was he kidding? With broken ribs, he’d puncture a lung for sure. Then where would he be? In spite of the risks, he had to try. After the beating he’d taken last night, his abductors had come back to check on him, free of masks and fully tooled up; indication of intent. They weren’t reckless in revealing their identities. It was no happy accident, in his opinion, but their way of unnerving him, relaying a message of such clarity it made him tremble. It was then he realized he wasn’t going home to Hilary and his kids. Not now. Not ever. For the first time in his life, he was petrified. Unless he took drastic action, he wasn’t going to make it out alive.

  18

  Sunday morning. Shortly before dawn. In Grace Ellis’s living room, Ryan reached forward and turned up the radio: ‘… The hunt goes on for Northumbria Special Branch officer, Detective Inspector Jack Fenwick. Police have flooded the region in order to recapture him and apprehend the men who assisted his escape. A press official stressed that under no circumstances should members of the public attempt to approach these men. And in other news …’

  Ryan tuned the presenter out in favour of three active computers on Grace’s dining table, all of them switched on. On one monitor, an image rotated so it could be viewed from every angle, the result of Newman’s efforts the previous evening. He’d worked with scrupulous attention to detail, creating what could only be described as a mini crime scene, with vehicles in situ. A conjuring trick, the result of which was spectacular.

  The second screen was running footage of the scene as the hijack took place, sent by courier to the BBC. The third was similar footage; this one taken by the female witness whose video was in the hands of Detective Superintendent Eloise O’Neil. Every police officer in the force had been shown the latter. Ryan was grateful to Roz for downloading a copy on to a memory stick for him to use as a comparison, despite the danger of losing her job if caught. His ex was doing her best to get on his good side.

  She was wasting her time.

  ‘So …’ Ryan slowed the footage down, comparing the videos frame by frame. ‘It seems that the person who took the BBC video was not the girl running from the scene. Hers was much closer to the action. O’Neil will come to the same conclusion eventually.’

  ‘She will,’ Grace said. ‘But she’ll need a specialist to recreate what Frank’s done here – and they don’t come cheap. She’d have to be certain it’s worth her while to justify that kind of expense to headquarters. We have the jump on them.’

  Ryan studied the screen. The degree of planning was obvious. The vehicles were on the southbound carriageway. The woods to the west were significant, he was sure of it. There was no footpath on that side of the road. Was that why the prison van was hit at that particular point? he wondered.

  In Newman’s 3D diagram, based on meticulous calculations, there were two crosses outlining the exact position each person was standing when the videos were taken, prompting Ryan to pose a question. ‘You think the girl who took O’Neil’s video saw the person who took the other?’

  ‘Not unless she has eyes in the back of her head,’ Newman said.

  The spook didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. Ryan knew what he meant. The videos were almost identical, except that one was taken from much further away. Someone was standing several metres behind the female witness and off to one side. And there was something even more odd about the footage he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Then it came to him, a faint light emerging through the fog.

  Picking up a remote, Ryan rewound to the point where Jack jumped down from the security van. Flanked by the hijackers, he was led to the waiting Audi, the bonnet of which was protruding slightly in front of the stricken van, before disappearing from view. Ryan pointed at the screen, another question arriving in his head. ‘So why did the hijackers take him round the east side of the security van? The west side is more direct and the safest option as it’s away from the houses and therefore out of sight.’

  His words hung in the air.

  Ryan reminded the others of what Irwin had told him, moving his index finger over the monitor as he spoke. ‘The Clio driver legged it across the northbound carriageway and into the woods here, the girl on the pavement this way towards the houses. Initially, I assumed that the couriered video was taken by one of the householders living nearby, but it couldn’t have been. The angle is wrong. If that had been the case, it would have been taken from the girl’s left, not her right. The photographer would hardly run into the middle of the road, exposing him or herself to risk. They would have taken it from the security of their locked front door. Pound to a penny, Monsieur Clio is involved.’

  ‘Told you he was good.’ Grace threw a smile at Newman that wasn’t returned. ‘The Clio driver could have waited until Irwin and Storey were face down on the ground and crept out of the woods to take the second video.’

  Newman remained silent, his expression unreadable.

  Leaving them to cogitate, Ryan went off to use the bathroom. He was parched from inhaling their smoke, in dire need of a drink and some clean air. A run on the beach was on the menu later if he could possibly manage it. Halfway to the door, he paused. ‘I’m going to grab a coffee. Anyone want one?’

  Newman waved him away like an irritating fly.

  Ryan couldn’t get a handle on him. He was a man of many secrets and few words. That part he could understand. Being in Special Branch, he too had operated in a world of shadows and whispers, but the former spook’s uncommunicative approach bugged him. It felt personal. Every tim
e Ryan tried initiating conversation, the irritating shit either cut him off, or else made light of it.

  On the way back down the stairs, Ryan decided to wait for his coffee. Instead, he went into the kitchen and got himself a glass of water before rejoining the others. He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop but the sound of Newman’s voice prompted him to stop short of the living room door, curious to know what words of wisdom the quiet man was about to impart on the other side of a partition wall while he was out of the room.

  ‘What makes you so sure you can trust Fenwick?’ he was asking.

  ‘Gut instinct,’ Grace said. ‘I’ve known him years. I trust him.’

  ‘Would you think the same about me?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Would you?’ he pushed. ‘You never know anyone a hundred per cent.’

  ‘That’s true … I thought I knew you once.’

  Ryan was about to cough, to flag up his re-entry into the lounge, to avoid a potential and embarrassing ‘elephant in the room’ moment. But as he reached for the door, Newman suggested that Jack had gone dark, that selling firearms seized by the police and due for destruction was a lucrative business. That was very true, Ryan had to concede. They could be resold for anything between fifty quid for a handgun to three hundred for a double-barrelled shotgun, to scum stupid enough to buy one.

  In the living room, Newman was getting short shrift from Grace. She was pointing out that there had never been any suggestion that the guns recovered from Jack’s home were ever in the possession of the police.

  Newman again: ‘You don’t know that any more than Ryan does. O’Neil may be keeping that one up her sleeve. Clever move, if you ask me.’

  ‘I’m not asking you,’ Grace snapped. ‘I know Jack. Take my word for it, he’s as straight as they come.’

  ‘What about Ryan?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Is he as straight as they come too?’

  There was a long pause.

  In the hallway, Ryan imagined the black look that might have passed between them. Grace was degree standard in that respect. She was confrontational at the best of times and fiercely loyal to her friends. He imagined her glowering at her former lover, the man she’d kept secret all the years he’d known her.