Page 89 of No Safe Place

Sunday | Evening

Field

The interview room didn’t have air-con, and it felt like Field was sealing them all in as she shut the door.

Andrew had refused a solicitor. Field had agreed that Riley could sit in on the interview, partly because Wilson was knackered and needed to get her head down for an hour.

But Riley had also been working his arse off to make up for his fuck-up with Callum Mulligan.

He’d lost some of his swagger in the last few days, and she could tell he was grateful to be there.

‘Hi, Andrew. I’m DCI Field, and this is DS Riley. Are you ready to answer some questions? How’s the arm feeling?’

‘It’s better.’ He looked down at his neatly parcelled forearm. ‘I feel okay. I want to help. And you can call me Andy – if you like.’

Riley introduced the recording and asked a few opening questions.

Andy liked his job, said he had a team to manage but for the most part he was lost in code all day.

He was close to his housemates, although they went out a lot and he preferred being at home.

Andy had loved his mother, and they’d always had a good relationship.

Her death wasn’t wholly unexpected, but yes, it hit him hard.

When Riley got to the end of his easy openers, Field leaned forward.

‘I want to start with how you got that injury, Andrew.’

Riley gripped his pen tighter, poised to take notes.

Andy took a breath. ‘I was walking home, across Blackheath common. It was late but not totally dark yet, and there were a few drinkers about—’

‘Which day was this, Andrew? What time?’

‘Sorry—’ he stammered. ‘Thursday night. I was walking home. It was just before midnight.’

Field glanced down at the timeline in her notebook.

Wednesday 00:20 – David attacked

Thursday 01:00 – Sam attacked

‘And where had you been, that evening?’

‘I went to see a play, at the Old Vic,’ Andrew said, looking down at his lap. ‘Then I had a few drinks in a pub in Bermondsey and came home.’

‘On your own?’ Field prompted.

Andrew nodded.

There would be plenty of CCTV at the theatre. It was an easy alibi to check.

‘Okay, thank you,’ Field said. ‘Carry on – you were walking across Blackheath common?’

Andy paused. ‘So, there’s a place off the common, a little nook. Surprisingly few people know about it. It’s called Point Hill. When the pubs and stuff are busy and there’s loads of people around, I go there. To think and enjoy the quiet.

‘I struggle with noise. Even now – after the therapy and stuff.’ He twisted his hands in his lap. ‘I don’t let sound rule my life anymore but it’s still nice, having quieter places to go.’ His breathing hitched and he closed his eyes, his broad frame folding in on itself. ‘Places that feel safe.’

Next to her, Field could sense Riley was humming with excitement, impatient to get to the root of Andrew’s story.

Nonchalant, she turned the pen in front of her ninety degrees, so it was facing Riley. He saw the action and registered her warning not to interrupt.

Andy carried on. ‘From Point Hill you can see all across the city. Sit on a bench and watch the world go by, and even if you can hear the noise from the common, it’s all muffled.’

His speech was speeding up, the sentences running into each other. Field trusted Riley not to interrupt. They needed Andy to tell this in his own words, however rushed and garbled. His eyes were still screwed shut.

‘But I can’t switch it off, even there. David—’

‘It’s okay. Take your time,’ Riley said, after the pause dragged on.

Andy took a deep breath. ‘David said that was okay.

People with hay fever are sensitive to dust and pollen, and I might always have a sensitivity to noise.

It makes my chest go tight and my heart races, my palms sweat – I might not be able to control that physical response. All I can control is how I react to it.

‘Do you know I used to pray that one day I’d go deaf?’ Andy’s eyes flew open, wet with tears. ‘How fucked up is that? How selfish?’

It chimed with something Callum had said. He’d called himself selfish, too.

‘What happened on the hill, Andrew?’ Field asked, gently.

‘Even all these years later …’ his voice was barely a whisper ‘… I still do what David taught me. I was anxious that night – I can’t even remember why now – and I wanted to put my headphones on. Cancel the noise out. But I didn’t let myself. I sat with the anxiety. Let myself feel it.’

They were inching closer, Field felt. Riley was rapt.

She added a line to the timeline: Friday 00.00 a.m.

‘Sometimes you have to let yourself get anxious,’ he said. His shoulders were so hunched, so clenched, that he must be in physical pain. ‘You’ve got to prove to yourself that you can listen to the noise and not block it out, and even though you’ll be anxious, you’ll be okay.

‘So that’s what I was doing. And that’s why I heard them coming.’ A sob escaped him. ‘David saved my life. Again.’

Field gave him a second to wipe his eyes.

‘I need us to go through that again, Andy. Step by step, if you can.’