Down Among the Dead Men (31 page)

Noone can't see a way in without being seen.

He loops around the property to the front and stoops to tie a shoelace. The double-barred gate is unmarked, and from the street there's not an inch of the house that can be seen. A small sign reads simply: 'Private'. A single camera above one of the gateposts stares unblinkingly.

Noone rises and runs on.

He'll have to find another way.

One of the first things Noone had done when he got back to LA was find an agent. Even with
The Tunnels
production folding, his experience at being cast and the links with Hungry Head – and the celebrity investor – are enough to get him on the books with a solid outfit; not the best, not the biggest, but respected, and connected with some of the better productions coming out of Hollywood. Noone doesn't want any work from the agent. He
wants the agent to give his appearance texture should an investigation head in his direction.

For a few weeks he settles back into the groove as smoothly as if he'd left ten weeks ago and not almost ten years.

The big difference is that now he
knows
who he is. He knows who his father is. He knows he can kill people.

Most importantly, he now knows exactly what he wants to do with his skills.

He'd got the idea quite suddenly. Going over and over the events of the last few weeks he'd been in Liverpool, it struck him how much effort he'd been putting in. And for what, exactly?

To prove he could kill?

Well, that was something. But the scale of the work needed to get away with killing someone, now that was the thing. And he'd done it just to kill some fucking suburban dentists and a fucking writer.

It was exhausting. His first thought on leaving Liverpool was to stay quiet, let time take its course and allow everyone to forget that Ben Noone was ever involved. Terry was such a wonderful outlet for blame. A child molester. A kidnapper. With nothing to connect him to the deaths, Noone is sure it will all blow over.

It was halfway over the Atlantic that the thought struck him that if it was really all over, then no one would know how well he'd done it. It was the most criminal thing about it, really. Some of the things he'd done. Jeez. For that never to be known . . .

A confession was out of the question. Confessions stunk of losers. Of failure, when what he'd done was a triumph of quick wits and planning and decisive action.

And then, thinking about the things he'd discovered when his mother died, he knew what he was going to do. It would be truly majestic. The poetry of the thing was staggering. The sweep of it, the grandeur, almost blew him away. No one would ever forget him.

So at JFK he'd made the call to that cop and started the ball rolling.

He needs a witness. Frank Keane fits the bill.

Two

While LA sweats, Monday morning in Liverpool barely staggers past ten degrees. It's raining hard with a chill wind coming in off the river. Almost four weeks since Frank found Nicky Peters' body in the Williamson tunnels and things aren't looking good for his pet theory about Ben Noone's involvement.

If Frank's honest, there's not much looking good about anything right now.

He walks to work at Canning Place from the flat at Mann Island, the much-prophesied desk move to Stanley Road no nearer to materialising. Since the relationship with Em – if that's what it was – sputtered into nothing, Frank hasn't had the heart. The time at Canning Place is time he doesn't have to deal with working alongside her. He's drifting into management by inches but Frank's finding it easier that way.

Discovering Nicky's body broke something in him that hasn't been fixed yet.

There hasn't been an hour since then that he hasn't thought about the boy.

The autopsy showed he'd been dead for less than a week. Suffocation is the cause of death. There is little additional physical evidence apart from more corroboration that places Terry Peters at the scene. There is nothing linking Ben Noone to the crime.

Frank's been through the tunnels many times since and is beginning to get a clear idea of what might have happened. Three days after Frank discovered Nicky, DC Magsi and a couple of uniforms stumble across the space where Nicky had been kept in the immediate aftermath of the Burlington Road killings. It's Frank's theory that Nicky was moved to a more secure location while Terry Peters
wrestled with killing him and, perhaps, to prevent the possibility of Noone doing that. If Frank's right about Noone, there's little evidence to suggest that Terry Peters killed anyone, except perhaps Nicky. Frank's idea is that Nicky died because Terry Peters couldn't face killing his nephew directly. Instead, he left him to die of suffocation, thirty-five metres under Edge Hill.

The thing that's nagging at Frank is why Noone tipped him off that the boy was still underground. An attack of conscience? Frank doesn't believe that. The nearest he can get is that Noone wants him to stay interested.

He decides that there'll be no answer to this question while the situation remains as it is.

After getting out of the tunnels – it took almost thirty minutes – Frank had called in the SOC officers to start the investigation and had stayed on site until late in the morning. He and Em hadn't had a chance to discuss what had happened between them until the afternoon. By that time her attitude had hardened. Frank hadn't told her about the message, or about his solo trek to the tunnels. Em reads it as a slap in the face, professionally and personally, and they haven't been together outside work since. Sometimes when Frank closes his eyes he can see her walking naked towards the bedroom and wonders what might have been had he decided to stay.

Since that night Frank's been working out at the boxing club more often. It's the only thing he's enjoying right now. With Jesus gone the place is being run by Val. She's got a nephew in to help her and it's going fine.

He hasn't been to a Thursday at The Phil since finding Nicky's body. He's lost weight, the skin on his face close on the bone. He lashes out too easily, is constantly tired. Work is the raft he clings to.

At his desk, Frank does a couple of hours of emailing and paperwork before heading over to MIT at Stanley. For once his phone remains mute. The Monday briefing is at eleven.

At Stanley Road, there is a full team present for the meeting. Only DC Flanagan is absent, returned to duties at Sefton as the need for extra personnel at MIT is downgraded. Frank's managed to hang onto Saif Magsi and the young cop is showing every sign he could develop into one of the unit's best. It's good for the likes
of Scott Corner and Phil Caddick to have some decent competition. Caddick especially is wary of Magsi's apparent rise and Frank has noted a few deliberate attempts by Caddick to show the new arrival in a bad light. Unless it shifts over into outright bullying, Frank won't act. If Magsi's going to do as well as Frank thinks he will, then he'll have to cope with nonsense like that. So far, Magsi seems to have Caddick's measure.

'Good morning,' says Frank. Over the past month he has become much more businesslike at the briefings, preferring Harris to lead, or Theresa Cooper if Harris isn't around. He's found that it helps him keep a distance from the team, something that he's beginning to see as essential. Footballers who make the transition from player to management often find that they can no longer be one of the boys.

He gestures for Harris to start. She nods. There's no underlying heat in their brief exchanges which may, thinks Frank, be the saddest thing of all.

As Harris outlines the various MIT cases, Frank's mulling over his meeting with Searle scheduled for this afternoon. He's going to try and make a case for going to Los Angeles to interview Noone and needs to have more than he's got right now.

There are three routes open to Frank.

The first – and the one that he knows isn't going to work with Charlie Searle, let alone the US authorities – is extradition. To make an application for extradition, Frank needs to show evidence to the court that Noone will face charges if brought back to the UK. Even in his wildest moments, Frank doesn't think he's got enough for that. There's a prickly relationship between the US and UK on extradition. In Frank's experience it's a lot easier for the Americans to extradite a Brit to the US than the other way round. He knows that there are several cases in play right now in the UK – he'd had Magsi do some background work – which have reached a seemingly interminable impasse over extradition.

Frank's second option, and the one he thinks might work, is for him to make a case to Searle that MIT makes an application to the US Justice Department under MLAT, the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. Under MLAT, Frank has a route by which he can go
to the US and interview Noone
if
he can make a case that Noone has evidence Frank needs. MLAT is specifically designed for those investigative situations which fall short of extradition status but in which there is still evidence to be gathered. Frank's had the groundwork for this done already; DC Magsi's drawn up the paperwork and all Frank needs is Searle to OK the application. It's a workable solution but Frank would like another item or two of evidence that helps point towards Noone. So far all he has is the shaky testimony of Niall McCluskey connecting Noone to the Peters case. It might be enough, but it might not.

The last option is simply to interview Noone as a witness in the US. Frank will consider this if his MLAT application fails, but for this to work, Noone must be willing to be interviewed voluntarily. He'd also be chaperoned by the FBI. In the past this approach has worked for MIT in a few cases, the key thing being the depth of research on the witness. Frank's confident they have enough background to proceed and, weirdly, thinks that Noone would relish being interviewed. But it's not ideal.

He tunes back in to the meeting as Steve Rose is updating them on the evidence from Nicky's computer. Frank's impatient. The computer evidence has, he thought, been sifted thoroughly before now. It's been four weeks for fuck's sake. Why Rose is bringing this up when the whole of MIT (Frank excepted) is working on the assumption that Terry Peters killed his brother, sister-in-law, nephew and wife before topping himself in the fire, Frank isn't sure.

He decides to give Rose a little leeway, bites back the barb that springs to his lips and tries to concentrate on where Rose is going with it.

Although an initial forensic examination had proved fruitless, Rose has made contact with Operation Vector.

'Nicky Peters' computer was clean, as far as we could tell.' He looks at Frank, conscious perhaps that he is on old ground. Rose picks up the pace of his briefing. 'We gave it a pretty good going over. The same went for his phone. As you know, there was nothing of any significance, and Terry Peters' computers were lost in the fire.'

'Come on, Steve,' murmurs Frank. 'Cut to it.'

Rose nods. His voice becomes more urgent. 'This morning I spoke to Nia Saleed at SOCA and she passed on some information they'd got from a third party they're looking at now. The guy they have targeted has links with a North West paedophile group which they suspect Terry Peters to have been in contact with.'

'And?'

'And there's some evidence to suggest two things: one is that Nicky and Terry Peters exchanged information via an internet chat room and via Terry Peters' Hotmail account. That Hotmail account was accessed from Peters' phone after he was dead.'

'We know that,' says Frank. He leans back and puts his hands behind his head.

'But the new information is that Vector can pinpoint the call that accessed the email account and it came from outside the UK.'

Now Rose has Frank's interest. There's a ripple of noise in the room as it starts to sink in what Rose is saying.

'Go on.'

'We know you've got a thing about Noone, so I pushed them for details. The call came from New York. At the time it was made, Ben Noone was in transit at JFK.'

Steve Rose sits back, his skin flushed.

'Fuck me,' says Frank. Although filled with potential flaws, it's the first piece of concrete evidence that could positively link Ben Noone to the case. If it can be proved that he made that call on Terry Peters' phone then they have something. Maybe not a watertight case but enough to get the fucker back here and go to work.

Frank's sure it's Noone. He flashes back to the text he got pointing him back to the tunnels. And didn't Niall McCluskey say he'd lost his phone the night he tailed Noone? Quinner's phone never showed up either. Plenty of phones have been involved in the case but very few are still around. Phones are good. Courts like phones and phone evidence. They're solid, mathematical, scientific. Frank would love to get Noone's phone or evidence relating to Noone's phone.

'Good work, Steve,' says Frank. Rose smiles and nods. He looks at Phil Caddick and surreptitiously flips him the finger. Rose's potential breakthrough pushes him to the head of the pack of DCs but Corner, Rimmer, Cooper and Magsi look as pleased as he does.

Harris pats Frank on the shoulder. 'It's enough for an MLAT application,' she says.

It is enough for Frank to accelerate the MLAT application, enough evidence that Noone could help in the enquiry. Establishing that he had been in possession of a phone linked to both Terry and Nicky Peters, used to access a paedophile chat room, would be devastating.

'They have a time at JFK?' This could be crucial. A time would allow someone to trawl the CCTV at JFK and place Noone making the call. It's a laborious and complex trail, but it is a possibility, another small but significant brick in Frank's efforts to build a case against Noone.

'Yes,' says Rose.

Harris glances at Frank and raises her eyebrows. There's really something in this. A cold Monday morning suddenly got a lot warmer.

'Let's get cracking,' says Frank.

Three

Frank, a black document case in one hand, presses the buzzer with the other.

'Keane,' he says when prompted by the disembodied voice. There's a click and he pushes open the heavy glass door. He walks through a small atrium and into a modern waiting room. It's empty. The way out of the building is through another exit. Frank's sure this is deliberate.