The Silence (Dc Goodhew 4)

Constable & Robinson Ltd

55–56 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Constable,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2012

First US edition published by SohoConstable,

an imprint of Soho Press, 2012

Soho Press, Inc.

853 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

www.sohopress.com

Copyright © Alison Bruce 2012

The right of Alison Bruce to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

Data is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 978-1-84901-203-4

eISBN: 978-1-84901-786-2

Soho eISBN: 978-1-61695-166-5

Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon

Printed and bound in the UK

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cover photos: main image, Derek Langley 2012/darknessandlight.co.uk, leaves, Corbis

Bruce, Alison.

 The silence / Alison Bruce. -- 1st US ed.

      p. cm.

 ISBN 978-1-61695-165-8

1. Teenage girls--Fiction. 2. Detectives--Fiction. 3.
Murder--Investigation--Fiction. 4. Suicide--Fiction. I. Title.
PR6102.R83S54 2012

823'.92--dc23

                                                  2012018507

Iakona
,

Ko aloha makamae e ipo
,

Aloha no au ia ’oe
,

Alekona x

July 2007

Saturday, 14 July 2007 started hot, and stayed hot. For the six plain-clothed officers waiting out of sight behind an empty house in Histon Road, Cambridge, there was no choice but to attempt to ignore the dual discomfort of sweat-damp clothes and the stench of unemptied food bins.

DC Michael Kincaide was less than impressed, and only his boss’s conviction that this operation would lead to the arrest of Roy Kelvin had persuaded him that it would all be worth it.

Apart from DI Marks, Kincaide was the most experienced officer on the current team and, even after a wait of almost two hours, he was determined to lead the others in a quick and decisive arrest as soon as the moment presented itself.

After two hours and five minutes, Kincaide’s radio came to life.

Ten turns through the network of streets to the other side of Madingley Road, a man called Ratty was sitting on the grit-strewn tarmac that ran between two long rows of facing lock-up garages. He had his back to a low, partially collapsed wall, and the only things in front of him of any interest were a half-drunk can of Strongbow and an open tin of tobacco. Ratty was muttering disjointed words which sounded like the mumblings of a hopeless alcoholic. The words emerged all mashed by a mouth that had lost too many teeth and too many nerve-endings. The one person who never seemed to find it difficult to understand Ratty, without reading his lips, was crouching on the other side of the wall.

‘What can you see?’ Goodhew whispered.

‘I’ll cough – all right?’

‘You cough all the time.’

‘All right, I’ll stand up, and then you’ll see my hand on the top of the wall.’

‘Don’t draw any attention to yourself.’

Ratty swore twice, and the next few words were totally unintelligible, then: ‘I told you before, I never get involved.’

‘And
I
told
you
, you didn’t have to stay. You showed me which lock-up, and that was enough.’

A few seconds later, Ratty erupted in a volley of coughs, and beyond him Goodhew heard the unmistakable squeal of an up-and-over garage door.

So much for subtle signals.

Goodhew scrambled over the wall and ran towards the Lexus, parked facing forwards inside the fourth lock-up to the left. He stopped about six feet in front of the car and held out his warrant card.

‘Police! You are under arrest!’ Goodhew shouted.

In response came the sound of the engine gunning. He repeated his instruction just as the driver slammed his foot full on the accelerator and released the clutch.

Goodhew didn’t have time to jump out of the way. But then he didn’t need to. Only the driver’s side of the car moved because Goodhew had already clamped the other back wheel, and the full power of the XE20’s three-litre engine propelled it into the passenger-side wall of the garage.

The driver killed the engine and burst out of the car, but he was coughing too hard to run and Goodhew brought him down and cuffed him within a couple of yards of the front bumper.

Goodhew had no idea what the damage to the car might be but, judging by the amount of tyre smoke in the air, he suspected he could add four bald tyres to the aggravated burglary charge. He’d left his mobile for Ratty in case there was a problem, but Ratty was already gone and Goodhew’s phone lay unattended on top of the wall.

He rang DI Marks.

Marks answered, saying, ‘It’s your day off.’

‘Sorry, just how it worked out, sir. Didn’t have time to call it in.’

Marks didn’t acknowledge the excuse and then, in the background, Goodhew could hear him speaking to Kincaide on the radio. Marks was instructing him to bring his team over to join Goodhew.

Then Marks was back. ‘Kincaide’s not happy, but I’m sure you’ll have worked that out. Stay there till Kincaide relieves you, then go home. And report to me in the morning.’ On reflection Marks didn’t sound too happy either but, by morning, Goodhew suspected that his boss would be more pleased to have Roy Kelvin off the streets than displeased about having one extra officer turning up uninvited.

Once relieved, Goodhew walked homewards, stopping at University Grocers in Magdalene Street for a can of Coke and a copy of the
Cambridge News
. Roy Kelvin’s arrest would provide tomorrow’s headline, but for today he was happy to just sit in the sun on Parker’s Piece and catch up on any other local news.

As Goodhew sat reading on Parker’s Piece, the same hot sun was scorching the wide tarmac that ran along Carlton Way. Like much of Cambridge, the street was totally flat. Regularly spaced trees had been planted when the houses were built half a century ago, but they had still not grown sufficiently to provide any decent shade. True, there was shade in the bus stop, but its metal roof and frame caused the air to be intensely hot, and even the broken windows refused to let a draught through.

Joey McCarthy knew these things; in fact, he reckoned he still knew everything there was to know about hot summers on the Arbury estate, though it was a long time since he’d lived here. A long time, too, since his natural aptitude for anything connected with a computer had first opened the door to the possibility of a proper ‘career’.

Not that he’d wanted one, but it had taken only a few short contract assignments to show him how easily the application of skills he cultivated on his home PC, combined with tidy dress and the kind of bullshit he usually reserved for visits to his grandmother, could be converted into actual currency.

Real cash.

So he’d peeled away all the unwanted layers of his former life. He’d thrown away the idea that if you didn’t want the cheap replica you had to nick the real one. And if you couldn’t nick it, you couldn’t have it.

He had broken off contact with most of his former friends, kept contact with his own family to a minimum. They didn’t seem surprised by his lack of interest in them, but their expectations of anything in life had never been that high.

Joey had rented a large apartment halfway between the Cineworld Multiplex and the train station. It came with private parking, and shortly afterwards he had filled that space with a black Audi. It was two years old but top of the range.

Of all the layers he’d stripped away, one he had never quite managed to dispense with was Arbury itself – the Carlton Arms in particular.

The best pint is always the one in your first local, or so the landlord said.

But Joey knew, and admitted only to himself, that his real reason for going back there was to measure the ever-widening gulf between his success in life and the mediocre existence that he’d nearly been condemned to. He loved the way the regulars pretended not to notice his car as it swung into the car park. He accepted each nod of greeting as he strode into the bar, knowing that, behind their brief smiles, they felt the same sort of envy that he’d grown up feeling every day of his teenage years. He guessed that they looked at him with contempt. He knew exactly why, knew what it felt like to be on their side of the fence and felt proud that he’d left them behind.

Joey left two hours later, by which time the only remaining punters were male, and too absorbed in some European football game to pay any attention to his leaving.

‘Cheers, mate,’ he threw over his shoulder, in the direction of the landlord. If he got a reply, he didn’t hear it.

He’d parked halfway across the car park, under the branches of a cherry tree where he hoped the car would catch plenty of shade but not too much birdshit. Joey pulled his keys from his pocket and aimed them towards his Audi, pressing the remote.

Nothing happened, so he guessed he was still too far away.

As usual, he cast his gaze a little further, just to see whether there was any sign of anybody casting an admiring glance in the direction of his vehicle. A woman, eyes down and ear bonded to her mobile, turned in from the main road and went inside the pub, still talking.

The car was about fifteen yards away when he tried again, but still no response. He pressed the button a couple more times, then studied the key, half wondering whether the battery was going flat. When he looked up again, a familiar figure stood in his path.

Despite the fact that this was their first contact in . . . he really didn’t know how long, Joey found his lips curling into the same sneer that their encounters had always prompted. ‘What d’
you
want?’