Hold Your Tongue Read online

  Eve took the small photograph from him. ‘Thank you.’ A dark-haired, good-looking young man with intense brown eyes stared at her from the little square. It wasn’t lost on her that Mr Ross still carried it around with him. ‘Please, carry on.’

  He looked like it was the last thing he wanted to do, but he did. ‘At first, we kidded ourselves that they might’ve finally seen sense, but, although we never spoke about it, we both knew it never stopped between them. We’d only made it easier for them. No more nagging at them under the same roof, no idea whether they were together when Melanie was out.

  ‘We wondered if maybe he’d got his own place, especially the nights Melanie didn’t come home. We had a savings fund that was to be released to him at twenty-one. A substantial amount. They both did. We never changed that. I wanted to, but Ellie said no. His was released to him last month. I think it relieved Ellie’s guilt a little.’

  ‘Guilt?’

  ‘That we’d somehow failed him. That we could still do right by him by giving him a decent start in life financially, could give them both that. I, on the other hand, never felt responsible for who he was.’ He stopped, his face registering that Melanie would never receive her fund.

  Eve gave him a moment before speaking. ‘Forgive me, but lots of teenage girls feel awkward, it goes with the territory, but they don’t go running into the arms of their brother.’

  Mr Ross knocked his jittering leg against the table. ‘Detective, Melanie and Ryan were adopted.’

  Eve fought to keep her expression neutral. Now the difference in surname made sense. ‘From the same family?’

  ‘No. Different parents. When he moved out, he returned to his birth name of Phillips. Melanie was three, Ryan six when we adopted them. Ellie always wanted kids. We always wanted kids. Tried for years. When we found out that we couldn’t, I was willing to leave it there. But not Ellie.’

  It explained why Mrs Ross had reminded Eve a little of her grandmother. ‘But surely that changes things with regard to the nature of their relationship?’ she said tentatively.

  Mr Ross glared at Eve, authority returned. ‘It changes absolutely nothing, Detective. We may have been a ready-made family, but we were still a family. To neighbours, friends, our extended family, we were parents, they were our kids – brother and sister. It’s all we ever wanted, and what they were doing was taking that away from us.’

  Eve saw a broken, bitter man. She felt sorry for Mr Ross, but she couldn’t help feeling the same for the teenagers that Melanie and Ryan had been. How Ryan might have felt that he was never as good as Melanie in his adoptive parents’ eyes. All the framed family photos she’d seen at the house. Not one of Ryan.

  How exciting Ryan must’ve seemed to Melanie, the good little girl who always did the right thing. What if Melanie had been cooling towards him? How threatened would he have felt if even she was starting to think he wasn’t good enough? Maybe Ryan’s cockiness was all part of an act, knowing Melanie was the favourite.

  Melanie’s father put the glass on the table, the expression on his face showing he still had more to say. ‘But, you know, as bad as things got with Ryan, I was willing to believe that he at least loved her.’

  ‘That’s what we need to find out, Mr Ross. There could be a hundred different reasons, but it only takes one to provide motive.’

  Chapter 5

  Now

  He sits at the small, square Costa table downstairs in the Bon Accord Shopping Centre, the aroma of coffee wrapped tightly around him. One of the crowd.

  The overweight woman on the table diagonally opposite him, her backside overhanging the chair, chomps into an iced sponge, taking almost half of it into her blubbery lips. She might as well smear it across her face. A blob of white icing sticks to the corner of her mouth, bobbing there as she chews.

  He glances sideways at the elderly man whose skeletal hand shakes, spilling coffee on his brown flannel trousers every time he lifts the cup. Seemingly oblivious as he stares into space, his time left on earth seeping away, much the same as the brown liquid soaking his lap.

  Both of them have no idea of what he’s done.

  He looks at the moving metal staircase of stressed shoppers being spat out on the upper level of Christmas chaos: some scurrying into Next, others preferring Laura Ashley, thinking the choice defines them. The barista in the purple top and stained black apron behind the counter smiles and pretends to love filling cups for a living.

  Not one of them have any clue.

  He relishes this small stolen moment of being normal. So precious to someone who never has been.

  But was anyone normal? Or was it all a big lie?

  Each and every face a painted version of themselves. A mask.

  He of all people knows about that.

  He looks around at the bodies swarming here. There. Everywhere. Hears snippets of conversation, Doric slang, foreign tongues, swearing, laughing, babies crying. Mistaken that their lives are important. He likes to pick one at random and try to work out what their story is.

  He likes stories. And he has an important one to tell. After today, people will listen.

  He will be feared. Him. He knows because he saw the terror in Melanie’s eyes.

  He lifts the toastie in front of him, bites into it, enjoys the sensation of cheese filling his mouth. Just as the blood had filled Melanie’s.

  He looks at the unsuspecting bodies surrounding him. Smiles. Wonders what they did last night. Knowing it would be so different from what he’d done.

  Today his work was found. He knows his days of being normal are numbered.

  The fat woman heaves herself from her chair, looks at him as if he is nothing.

  But he isn’t nothing. Not any more. Soon he’ll be everything. People will know what he did.

  He has a story to tell. And it has begun.

  Chapter 6

  The flimsy door squeaked on its hinges. A pair of bloodshot eyes peered out through the gap.

  ‘Yeah?’

  The young man’s voice was hoarse, a waft of bad breath hitting Eve and making her want to stop breathing through her nose. She waited a beat before she spoke.

  ‘Michael Forbes?’

  ‘Yeah. Who’s asking?’

  Eve showed her ID. ‘We’re looking for Ryan Phillips.’

  The young man looked confused for a second. ‘That dickhead hasn’t been here in weeks.’

  ‘We have a few questions we’d like to ask. Could we come in?’

  Michael Forbes tutted but released the chain and moved from the door. Eve stepped over the threshold, the smell of greasy fast food from George Street’s kebab shops below strong, mixed with stale sweat. The street was a multicultural collection of shopfronts, looking more tatty with each passing year.

  Cooper coughed behind her as the three of them jostled for space in the tiny hallway. She was glad Cooper was with her – she’d instructed Mearns to head back to HQ to help look into CCTV and bank records, effectively getting rid of her, if only for a short while. Eve stared at the hallway walls, which seemed to be closing in on her. Melanie’s father hadn’t been wrong when he’d described the flat as poky.

  ‘Is there somewhere we could sit?’

  Forbes groaned. ‘Look, lady, you woke me up.’

  Eve stared at him until, with a loud sigh, Forbes pushed open one of the three doors off the small, square hallway. The room was ice-cold and dim, lit only by grey winter light breaking through the closed, unlined curtains.

  Eve’s eyes adjusted, making out basic furniture: two sofas, blankets spread over them, hiding God only knows what beneath; an old-fashioned glass-topped table littered with overflowing ashtrays – some suspect stubs lying within them – and mouldy dishes.

  Tie-dye hangings and posters of half-naked women covered the walls. It looked like bad student digs. Eve would bet it was a long time since Forbes had studied anything, if he ever had. Cooper’s nose crinkled. The place was dirty, stinking and sad.

  Forbes li
fted a fag packet from the table, shook one free and threw the pack down. Turning towards them, he lit the cigarette with a Zippo lighter from the back pocket of his jeans. He inhaled, watching them as he held on to the first hit of nicotine before exhaling with force, eyes squinting through smoke, his yellow-stained forefinger and thumb pinching at the filter. He didn’t offer them a seat. Eve was happy to stand.

  ‘What’s he done now and how come you’re asking me?’ Forbes plonked himself on the sofa beneath the window.

  ‘Done now?’ The surprise in Cooper’s voice matched Eve’s.

  ‘I reckon you’re not here unless he’s been up to something.’

  Eve was careful. ‘Is it unusual for Ryan to be up to something?’

  ‘Fuck, no. Unusual for him to get caught.’ Forbes flicked his fag, ash floating to the carpet.

  Eve followed the ash with her eyes. ‘How do you know Ryan?’

  ‘Worked with him at Beagles nightclub on Justice Mill.’

  Justice Mill Lane. A road parallel to the main drag of Union Street. A strip of bars, the young crowd all over it at the weekend.

  ‘How long did you work with him? Did you know him before?’ Cooper took the baton this time. Eve let him go with it. She’d worked with Cooper long enough to know she could. She felt a hankering for the old days, knowing they were long gone without Sanders. She took a deep breath, focused on Michael Forbes’ answer.

  ‘I’d never seen the guy until the first night we were put on the same shift. Would’ve been about a year ago.’

  ‘Did you get on?’ Cooper prompted.

  ‘Yeah, we got on. He was up for good times, like.’

  Those good times likely involved drugs, if the flat was anything to go by. ‘You spent a lot of time together?’

  ‘Yeah, not in some funny kind of way, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  Eve cocked an eyebrow, waited for Forbes to ​continue.

  ‘We had a bit of banter at work, drinks after a shift if the ladies were sniffing. Good thing about our line of work is you’re there to catch the ten-to-two brigade when they fall.’

  ‘Ten to two?’ Cooper asked the question Eve already knew the answer to.

  Forbes sneered, licking his lips before answering. ‘Club shuts at two a.m. Drunken tarts get a little desperate come ten to.’ He dropped his hand casually to the denim at his groin, his gaze never leaving Eve’s. ‘Always happy to make a girl feel special.’

  Cooper sighed.

  Bravado oozed out of the pathetic, acne-faced twenty-something male lounging on the sofa. The reality was he probably rode on Ryan’s coat-tails, more than happy to snatch up his leftovers. In the photo Mr Ross had given her earlier, Ryan had the looks, and by the sounds of things the personality, for persuasion.

  ‘You and Ryan picked up the ladies together?’

  ‘Most shifts, yeah.’

  How drunk and desperate did a girl have to be if she came back here? ‘You’d bring them home with you?’

  ‘Once Ryan moved in. He kept the place straight. He always said he had standards.’

  Eve stopped herself from saying ‘except with women’ and let Forbes babble on.

  ‘Thing is, Ryan came from posh and he might’ve spoke proper, but there was nothing proper about the guy.’

  ‘Where else did you go apart from here?’ Maybe it would give them some clue as to where Ryan was.

  ‘Anywhere. Some nights it was good times at the casino. But there were times we didn’t have to go further than the side alley of the club. Some girls wanted a little shared fun, if you know what I mean.’

  Eve sighed, not trying to hide it. The poor women. Had Forbes enjoyed the closeness to Ryan? Most of the women were probably too drunk to realize what was happening or, at least, how they would feel remembering the next day. Taken advantage of. She wanted to smack the bravado right out of the little shit. Eve had to be impartial, but scum like Forbes picked away at old scars.

  Cooper stared at her. She snapped out of it. ‘When did Ryan move in?’

  He looked like it was the most difficult thing he’d been asked all week. ‘About six months ago. His old man was giving him earache, threw him out.’

  ‘Did he say why?’ Maybe he’d known about Ryan and Melanie.

  ‘Nah, it’s what the folks do sometimes, ain’t it? Get rid of us.’

  It was something Eve’s mother would never have done. She focused on the task at hand. ‘Did you ever meet any of his family?’

  Forbes wasn’t quick to answer, the fag squeezed between his fingers pausing in mid-air before meeting his lips. He took a deep drag and an exaggerated exhale.

  Eve looked at Cooper.

  ‘Yeah.’

  The cocky tone had disappeared.

  ‘And?’ Eve was watching Forbes’ every move.

  ‘His sister. Melanie.’

  Eve said nothing, letting the silence stretch, waiting for Forbes to continue.

  ‘Ryan was funny about her. Didn’t like speaking about her, hated if I tried to.’

  A hint of jealousy, but she suspected it was more to do with Ryan than Melanie.

  Cooper must’ve sensed it too. ‘What made you want to talk about her?’

  Again, the slowed drag, peering at them through the smoke as he blew out.

  ‘She was a looker. Ryan seemed obsessed with her.’

  Eve glanced at Cooper, knew by his face he’d picked up on it too. Was a looker. They hadn’t said anything about Melanie’s murder, knew it hadn’t made the news yet.

  ‘What happened to have you refer to him as a dickhead?’

  Forbes scowled. ‘He disappeared about four, five weeks ago without a word. Owed me rent, took off with some of my shit. No surprise there. I was an idiot to think he wouldn’t. And he left me to explain his ass to work.’

  ‘You’ve heard nothing?’ Cooper sounded doubtful.

  ‘Nope, and he better hope I don’t.’ The tone of his voice said different. He was either lying about not having heard from him or was making an empty threat about what would happen if he did.

  ‘Do you know where he might be?’ She was looking for that flicker of doubt, sure she could sense it.

  ‘I don’t know shit about him, lady. Doubt I ever did.’ Forbes stubbed the fag out, threw himself back on the sofa, looking like he wasn’t going to be offering anything else.

  Eve studied the scrawny, greasy excuse for a guy. Hard to believe he could be capable of what had happened to Melanie, even harder to think he might have somehow overpowered Ryan and was responsible for his disappearance too. More probable that Forbes was covering for Ryan.

  Forbes was pretending to be half-asleep on the sofa already, not a care in the world. They weren’t going to be getting anything else out of him today. But when they left here, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t be seeing each other again.

  Chapter 7

  ‘Very professional.’

  DC Jo Mearns smirked as Eve shook a white blouse from its hanger. Eve was in her bra, standing in the incident room as Cooper kept himself turned towards the wall. She stared at Mearns, said nothing.

  Eve felt unsettled being back at North East Division HQ. Like returning to an old home that hadn’t changed, but yet she had. Queen Street, at the heart of the city. Eve had missed the old grey seven-storey concrete building. It sat a stone’s throw away from countless bars and entertainment venues, including the Lemon Tree and the Arts Centre. Adjacent to the council buildings and Sheriff Court.

  ‘Thanks for getting this, Cooper.’ Eve pushed her arm through the sleeve, the thin material cold against her already freezing skin. The snow outside wasn’t stopping, and the heating in here was useless. More bloody budget cuts. She twisted round to catch the other sleeve and pulled the blouse together at the collar before fastening the buttons.

  Cooper turned. ‘No problem. Couldn’t have you looking like a dog’s dinner in front of Hastings.’

  They both knew it wasn’t only about that. The blouse she’d put
on that morning, which seemed like days ago, had been in a bad enough state to start off with, but the visit to the mortuary with Melanie’s father hadn’t made things any better. Death had a way of clinging to the living. The smell of greasy food and sweat from Michael Forbes’ flat hadn’t helped.

  ‘Plenty of blouses at home, none of them ironed. I see you went cheap.’

  Cooper smiled. ‘You know what they say about us Aberdonians – drop a pound coin and it’ll be hitting the back of our heads before it reaches the ground. Anyway, I was already heading to the Bon Accord Centre; it was no problem.’

  ‘How’d it go?’ Cooper had dropped Eve at the station and gone to Boots the Chemist on the lower floor of the Bon Accord Centre – Melanie’s work – to see if he could talk to someone there. Eve made the excuse that she’d get started back at the office, but the real reason was her leg wasn’t happy and in need of a break. She tried to ignore the pain, glancing at her jacket slung over the chair where her pills were.

  Cooper answered the question that for a moment Eve had forgotten she’d asked. ‘Spoke to Melanie’s boss.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Young guy, especially for branch manager. Bit strange. Looked like he’s never had to shave yet, personality of a sponge.’

  ‘Upset? What did he say?’

  ‘Shocked. Didn’t know her well. A guy like that would be a gibbering wreck around someone like Melanie. There’s a reason he’s made it to management at his age: probably not got a life outside work, never been laid.’

  ‘That’s what? Your expert opinion as a married copper?’ Mearns smirked.

  Cooper sighed. ‘Something like that, except that these days, round my hours and the kids, I’m lucky if I get laid.’

  Eve let herself smile, surprised Cooper would be this open in front of Mearns. It was the kind of banter they had always shared between the two of them, but it seemed he and Mearns had formed a close bond while she was gone. She glanced towards Mearns, who was smiling at Cooper and shaking her head. The first real smile she’d seen from her. Eve became conscious of Cooper’s stare. She swallowed, the pain in her leg increasing by the minute. ‘You said he didn’t know her well?’