‘He won’t come back here, will he? He scares me.’
‘No, he won’t come back. I’ll make sure of it.’
They sat in silence for a while, each lost in their own, very different thoughts.
‘Can I ask you a favour?’ Scott said.
Daniel nodded. ‘Of course you can.’
‘Can I ask you not to talk to anyone about this?’
‘About Ronan?’
‘Yes. And also about his brother, and what happened to him when we got out of the lift.’
‘I’m not supposed to tell lies.’
‘I’m not asking you to lie. I just want you not to talk about it to anyone. That’s not the same as a lie, is it? If you’re not talking about it, you can’t be lying.’
Daniel thought some more. ‘Okay. I’ll try.’
‘Thank you, Daniel.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Scott went to place his hand on Daniel’s back, but paused. He sensed that his son didn’t want human contact right now.
He stood up and walked towards the door.
‘Dad?’
‘Yes?’
‘Is it true what the man said? Did you really chop his brother up into tiny little pieces?’
Scott stared into his son’s eyes. He would have preferred not to give an answer, because that would be better than lying. Practise what you preach.
‘No. Of course not. I think he must have got broken up in the bin lorry.’
Daniel said nothing more, but Scott felt less than worthless.
29
Wednesday morning in the briefing room. Seated around the long table, an array of detectives who didn’t seem to have a clue what was going on. Hannah could feel herself sinking into despondency.
‘Are you seriously telling me,’ she said, ‘that not a single person in the whole of that block of flats caught even the merest glimpse of Joey Cobb entering or leaving the building?’
The DC who had broken the news seemed to shrivel in his chair. ‘Well, not exactly. It’s more accurate to say that nobody is owning up to seeing him.’
‘Amounts to the same bloody thing, Simon. Unless you’ve got some foolproof way of telling us who might be lying, we may as well not have spent all of our time interviewing the occupants of Erskine Court, for all the good it’s done us.’ She paused while she allowed her blood pressure to return to normal. ‘What about the taxi driver?’
Somewhat tentatively, another detective spoke up. ‘I spoke to him again. He remembers very little about the conversation he had with Joey. Most of what he does remember was about football.’
‘Great. So where does that leave us?’
‘We’ve widened the search,’ said Marcel. ‘It’s perfectly possible that no one we spoke to in Erskine Court was lying. Maybe they really didn’t see him. We know he went in there, but maybe he came out again, just like Barrington Daley said. That cell mast signal covers a pretty wide radius. Cobb could have been killed in any of a number of buildings near the flats.’
Hannah knew he was right, of course, but it did nothing to lighten her mood. A larger search area was bad news. It meant more buildings to visit, more people to interview. With zero chance of gaining additional resources to work on the murder of a victim that many saw as unworthy of their attention, it seemed to her that any hopes of solving this case were fading fast.
She wished now that she’d taken more painkillers before the meeting. Her whole body seemed to be throbbing to a steady beat. She had noticed how the eyes of her fellow officers were constantly drawn to the swelling on her forehead.
‘What about Cobb’s associates?’ she asked.
‘We’re talking to them again, but it’s not looking good. Some refuse to cooperate. Those who do speak to us are probably lying through their teeth. Others have gone into hiding.’
‘Why? Guilty consciences? You think we should put more effort into finding them?’
Marcel looked doubtful. ‘I think they’re just scared. The word going around is that this is a gang thing. Someone is out to upset a very big apple cart. People don’t want to be around when it all comes crashing down.’
‘But what they don’t know is that we’ve got Cobb’s money and drugs. That tells me it’s probably not gang related.’
‘Unless that’s exactly what they want us to believe.’
Hannah raised her eyebrows. ‘You think they’re that clever? Most of the pushers I’ve met think IQ is a quiz show.’
‘True, but there are exceptions.’
‘I don’t buy it. These are greedy bastards. I don’t care how smart they are, put twenty-five grand in front of them and it’s like showing the ring to Gollum. And even if one of them does have an IQ in triple figures, why would he think that tossing away all that cash was the most obvious way of throwing us off his scent? What kind of imaginary perpetrator was he hoping to plant in our minds? Someone who quite happily murders and dismembers his victims but has qualms about taking their money? Who the hell fits a profile like that?’
