Down Among the Dead Men (22 page)

Under the table Harris taps her foot against Frank's, their prearranged signal that they should speak.

'We're going to take a break, Mr Noone.' Frank leans forward and presses a button on the digital voice recorder. 'DCI Keane and DC Harris suspending interview with Benjamin Noone.'

As Keane and Harris push back their chairs, Noone does the same. Frank holds out a hand, palm up, gesturing for Noone to stay.

'We'd like you to stay a little longer, Mr Noone. If that's all right with you.'

Noone sinks back onto the chair and nods to himself as if Keane has confirmed something. 'I'm all yours, DCI Keane.'

Outside, Harris moves a little way along the corridor before speaking.

'I just want to check where you're going with this. You're pushing him hard.'

'He's the one, Em. Can't you feel that?'

Harris steps back and looks at Frank as if he's mental.

'What is this, the fucking
Matrix
? The "one"? What the hell does that mean, Frank?'

Frank grimaces and holds up his hands in a placatory gesture. 'I know, I know. It's weird, it's flaky. And I know that there's pretty much nothing solid we can put against him yet.' Frank pauses. 'But I also know I'm right about him. You must have had that kind of reaction before? He's guilty.'

'I agree he's not making me ready to strike his name off, but I'm not picking up the same vibrations as you.'

'We sit on him,' says Frank. 'Give the cocky fucker a couple of hours and see how he likes being messed around.'

'That won't do anything,' says Harris to Frank's back. He is already heading for his office.

'Perhaps not,' he replies as he reaches the stairs. He stops and looks back at Harris. 'But it'll make me feel a lot better. Who knows, perhaps he'll have a fit of remorse and confess to everything?'

'I wouldn't hold my breath,' says Harris, but Frank isn't listening.

Forty-One

It's not the first time Ben Noone's found himself waiting in a police interview room. If Frank Keane thinks this shit's going to knock him off his stride, he's mistaken.

If he's honest, this is what he's been looking forward to since Monday.

Once Dean was dead there was no doubt in Ben Noone's mind that the cops would make the connection to
The Tunnels
.

That hadn't stopped him killing the writer.

Ferguson's autopsy won't show it, but as with many before in Liverpool, in the final reckoning it had been drink that killed Dean Quinner.

The vodka he'd been sculling most of Monday afternoon up at The Pilgrim and then at a succession of increasingly blurry bars on the way down to the river ensured his wits were gone when the time came. Maybe, thinks Noone, it might still have happened the way it did, but the condition he was in didn't help.

Sitting in J7, Noone replays the night.

It's past eleven when Quinner, as fried as an egg on a hot skillet, stumbles out of the last bar on Slater Street and heads for home through a dizzying maze of midweek drinkers. Noone watches him bump into a small knot of young lads, all white shirts and gelled hair. They laugh and part for him, pushing him away as if leprous, not yet pissed enough themselves to take offence. That might come later on the two o'clock exodus.

On the pavement Quinner straightens himself with the exaggerated care of the terminally blitzed.

'You can do this, feller,' he mutters, loud enough for a passing girl to hear. She cackles and grabs the arm of her friend. Trailed by
Noone, Quinner heads slowly down Slater Street and picks up a kebab, most of which ends up on his jacket, but he makes it to the Albert Dock without incident. His route takes him past the front of Canning Place Police Headquarters.

Noone is careful to stay out of range of the CCTV cameras as best he can. He's dressed in a high-necked black jacket and a dark baseball cap. He stays on the side streets as much as possible and, because he guesses where Quinner is headed – to his flat on the docks – he is able to tail him from the front. The CCTV footage from in front of Canning Place is the clearest the MIT investigators will find of Quinner. He'd be picked up again on a camera overlooking the Maritime Museum and once more on one belonging to his block of apartments. The twenty-two-second clip shows him stopping and answering his phone. After a few moments he walks out of shot and it's the last time Dean Quinner's seen alive. Later, when Frank's going over the flickering blue and white images on the monitor at MIT, he'll peer closely at Quinner's image again and again as if, by concentrating hard, the end result will change.

Noone, standing in the shadows across the dock from the flats, makes the call as Quinner is reaching for his keys. He fumbles before answering.

'Dean? I need to explain something to you.'

Noone keeps his voice hesitant. He sounds vulnerable, contrite. He is convincing.

'I'm embarrassed about what happened. That thing with the wallet? I don't know what I was doing. Maybe pressure, I don't know. Do you have time to talk?'

Relief floods Quinner. This man couldn't have hurt Niall. He wants to talk. Suddenly Quinner sees what he's been doing: dramatising a small incident into something larger than it is.

'I'm down by the arena,' says Noone. 'Meet me there?'

In his befuddled state, Quinner doesn't click how Noone knows where he is.

He just goes.

The wind's picking up a little as Quinner starts to walk along the river on Kings Parade. For the first time Quinner's aware he's only wearing a thin jacket. To his left is the curving hulk of the Echo
Arena, masking the city from view. At this time of night there's no one there.

Quinner walks carefully, mindful of the river racing past to his right. He's never liked staring at the waters of the Mersey. Here, black as treacle, it slides along the thick stone walls of the river walk without a sound. Quinner sits on a concrete bollard and waits for Noone.

Noone watches him all the way. After Quinner sits down, he checks that there is no one in sight before emerging. The taser is in the pocket of his black zip-up. He folds a gloved hand round it and walks swiftly across to Quinner.

There's no conversation. With a final look up and down the windswept promenade, Noone lifts out the taser and applies it to the writer's exposed neck. Quinner jerks and is still. Noone sits down next to him, supporting Quinner's unconscious form – someone helping a friend a little the worse for wear.

Noone finds Quinner's phone and throws it into the river. Standing, he drags Quinner upright and pulls him towards the low fence next to the water. Noone's much bigger than Quinner and has little problem tipping him over and onto the stone ledge. He hops over the fence and pushes the writer into the water. The tide is high and Quinner's body slips under and is gone. Noone vaults back over the fence and walks towards the city, his cap pulled down low. Less than a minute after Dean Quinner's been put in the Mersey, Noone is gone.

Forty-Two

Theresa Cooper isn't the sort of woman who takes setbacks well, and being deprived of the lead in the Peters case at the Tuesday briefing comes high on the scale of things that seriously piss her off. After the meeting she had driven to the largely deserted car park at a nearby Asda, stopped in the furthest corner and screamed out her frustration for five minutes. Then, checking that not a trace of it showed on her face, she drove back to Stanley Road and continued working.

By two on Thursday afternoon the fire's still burning.

If it kills her, she is going to find out one important thing to help this case along.

Cooper's been detailed to dig around into Terry Peters. The brief has been for background on all the Peters family but, after being brought up to speed by DI Harris about Terry Peters' affair with Maddy, it's Terry she's concentrating her efforts on.

The trouble is that there's virtually nothing. Everyone who comes into contact with him seems to say the same thing: he's basically a good guy.

His only obvious brush with the law has been the case brought by his ex. Cooper reads and re-reads the details and is forced to concur with the version of events that Peters had given in the interview with Harris and Keane: in frustration he'd broken a window and his ex had sustained a minor injury. From this she'd made maximum trouble, bringing charges against Terry Peters and making sure that the case didn't run out of steam. In the end, the punishment reflected what the court believed: that Peters was in the wrong but not dangerous.

After some more digging, Cooper finds the details of the divorce five years ago. The grounds are irreconcilable differences, no
mention of cruelty. The wife got the house, custody of the only child and what looks to Cooper's eyes like a decent result. She's about to abandon that line of enquiry when a thought occurs to her. If Terry's ex-wife came out of the deal with pretty much everything, why was there so much bitterness? It could, of course, simply be the residue left when so many marriages collapse, but Cooper wonders if there might be something else.

It's probably worth a trip to Ainsdale to find out what Terry Peters had done to piss off the ex so much.

'Mrs Peters?'

The small dark-haired woman standing in the doorway of her house has her arms folded. 'No,' she says flatly. 'It was. Now it's Ms Flynn. My maiden name. You're DS Cooper?' Her voice inclines to the Lancashire rather than the Liverpool side of things. It can go either way in Southport.

Cooper nods and Flynn invites her inside with a movement of her head.

The house on a middle-class estate in Ainsdale is modern, clean and completely absent of any character. The rooms look like they've been cleaned that morning.

In the living room, the woman offers a hand. 'Stella,' she says. Cooper can't tell if the staccato style is natural or simply the result of nerves. Some people just can't operate normally around the police, although if she had to bet, Theresa is pretty sure that Stella Flynn doesn't come into that category.

Cooper looks at a photo of a serious-looking teenager – was there any other kind? – in a frame above the fireplace.

'Your son?'

Stella Flynn's face blooms into a glorious smile. It transforms her, and it's easy to see the impact she'd have had in her youth.

'Jacob. He's eighteen this year. Hard to believe.'

'He looks like his father.'

As rapidly as it had arrived, the smile vanishes from Stella Flynn's face.

'I can't see it.'

Cooper doesn't say anything.

'Tea?' says Stella and Cooper nods. When Stella heads for the kitchen, Cooper follows her.

'What school does your son go to?'

'College,' corrects Stella, filling the kettle. 'KGV. He wants to be an engineer. Loves making things work properly, does Jacob. Always has done.' She presses the on switch and lifts two mugs from a cupboard. 'Milk?'

Cooper nods. 'No sugar.'

'How has he coped since the divorce? It can be hard for boys.'

Stella bangs the mugs onto the kitchen counter with a little more force than Cooper believes is strictly necessary.

'It was a while ago. He's fine.'

Stella turns as the kettle begins to hiss. 'Look, what's all this about? The divorce? I heard about . . . what happened. But we don't see any of Terry's family since we split up.' Her ex-husband's name is spoken with venom. Stella lifts out the milk from the fridge. 'Obviously I'm sad about it. Nicky's a nice boy.' She glances up at Cooper.

'Were he and Jacob close at any stage?'

'No.' The word is spat out. 'Like I said, we haven't seen anything of them for five years. I spoke to Maddy in the shops once but that's about it.' She faces Cooper square on. 'What's this about? I want to help, but I can't see what I can do.'

'Can we have the tea?' says Cooper. 'It'll be easier with a brew.'

Back in the living room Cooper sips from a china cup and she's right; it does help.

'I am here to ask about the divorce. It's nothing really, just something that I'm curious about.'

Stella looks wary but Cooper thinks she's starting to loosen up a little.

'Yes?'

'Well, it's just that when I dug around in the files I couldn't see why you'd be so set against your ex.'

'He smashed up the house!'

'He broke a window, Stella. According to the report.'

'Well, yes, maybe I did make it bigger than it was.'

'Why? Was there another woman?'

Stella shakes her head and says something under her breath.

'What was that, Stella?'

Stella Flynn looks up. 'I wish it had been . . . another woman, I mean.'

Cooper sits up a little straighter. 'Men?' she says and Stella shakes her head more vigorously. Tears well up in her eyes and her cup begins to tremble.

'What was it, Stella? What was it that Terry did?'

'Boys,' says Stella in a voice so low that Cooper can hardly hear her. 'He liked boys.'

Forty-Three

Frank's plan to ruffle Noone's feathers by letting him wait in the interview room doesn't work out exactly as he'd hoped.

Just after three, with Noone waiting in J7, he and Harris take Frank's car to the Pier Head and park outside Bean, a coffee shop Frank's become a regular at. Sitting in a back corner seat – the policeman's choice, facing the door, full view of the room – Frank sips his coffee and tries to relax.

Harris is drinking tea. For a few moments neither speaks.

'How's Linda doing?' Frank says. Even to him it sounds jarring.

'She's OK. Still upset.'

Frank nods and, without thinking, touches the side of his face where the vinegar had hit. That had been a bad moment.

'It was only vinegar,' says Harris, as if reading his thoughts.

'Easy to say.' He looks up at Harris but she just nods. She doesn't seem in the mood for an argument.

'What about Noone?' She jerks a thumb in the general direction of Stanley Road. 'Are we going to talk about him?'

'It's him,' says Frank. 'You can see that, can't you?'

Harris holds her hand out, palm down, fingers splayed, and waggles it from side to side. 'Maybe. When he came in I sort of warmed to him, at first. But that went away. He's too cocky. Even allowing for him being an American.'