Sarah Pinborough - Into the Silence

Barry . Her brain kept that word, focusing on it. Barry, not bananas, not six first-glass bananas, but Barry. She stumbled back to the car.

As if from outside herself, she saw her husband's smile fall as he slammed the boot, wiping his hands on his trousers. His lips were moving but she couldn't hear his words. Her heart wanted to explode from silent emptiness. Feeling her lips moving and knowing she was screaming something, but only hoping from within the deathly quiet in her mind that she was finding the right words, she pushed her husband to the front of the car, before scrabbling round to get in herself.

It was only when she had the door shut and had desperately pushed down the locks that she could finally hear herself rasping 'Drive… Drive… Drive…' over and over. Peering back between the seats, she was sure she saw the dark space move into the road and start to re-form itself into some kind of shape just as Barry pulled away, tugging the car back onto the right side of the road, and speeding towards the city.

For five long minutes neither of them spoke, Barry staring intently at the road, and Dyllis gripping the back of the seat as she stared out of the rear-view mirror. Then, as they approached the bright lights of Cardiff, she heard her heart beating normally inside her chest, and that awful sense of emptiness slid away from her. She leaned back in her seat and sighed. Every sound seemed fresh and clear and beautiful.

Barry looked over at her. 'Jesus, Dyllis. What the hell was that about?'

She stared through the windscreen. He wasn't going to believe her. She could hear it in the harshness of his voice. 'There was something…' What had there been? How could she explain it? 'There was something in the trees. Something bad.'

She didn't look at her husband. She knew what she'd see. A man biting his lip when he really wanted to yell, and a man who was scared that maybe there was something going wrong in his wife's head other than the effects of the stroke. Either way, by the time they finally pulled up at the small bed and breakfast, not too far from the Bay, the happy moment they'd shared was truly gone. They slept in silence.

Even though the day outside was grey and overcast, the bright lights of the hospital dispersed any hint of the rain with no-nonsense professionalism. Peering through the small glass window of the door separating the corridor from the recreation room, Gwen studied the four witnesses. Where the rest of the chairs were in semi-circular rows aimed at the focal point of the television, or on either side of two small tables by the collection of board games, the singers had pulled theirs into a short line as close together as possible, so that the scratched and worn arm of each was touching the next.

Gwen frowned, two neat lines pulling in between her eyebrows and resting for a moment in the space where one day in the future they'd settle for good. Something about the way these people were sat reminded her of being a child and wanting to be as near to your best friend as you could be so you could giggle about boys and pass notes. But none of these four were children; in fact they were far from it.

A woman sat at the end of the row, her head hanging forward, her long blonde hair obscuring her features above the dressing gown that was pulled tightly around her slim figure. She was probably the youngest of the four, perhaps in her late twenties. Gwen thought through the descriptions she'd got from the scene of crime team and ticked the blonde off as Magaly East. Next to Magaly were two men, Paul Davies and John Geoghan, neither particularly striking in any way and both in their forties. Another woman bookended them, steely-haired although probably younger than she looked. She had to be Rhiannon Cave.

Gwen frowned. The TV was on, but none of the four seemed to be watching the daytime chat show on the screen. Two were just staring in silence at an area of wall just beyond it and, whilst their mouths were moving, it didn't look as if they were having a conversation together. Gwen breathed out, fogging the glass. They were strange, but at least they were awake.

Her foot tapped, impatient for Jack to come back with the nurse and the tray of teas. The nurse had described the mental state of all the singers as 'fragile' and said that they had disturbed the other patients on the ward with their rantings when they emerged from their catatonic states in the early hours of the morning. They knew they had been put in the recreation room to be interviewed by the police, and Gwen knew that the longer she waited the more agitated they would become, if they were as delicate as they seemed.

Glancing at her watch, Gwen sighed. Jack had been gone for much longer than it took to work a vending machine, even in an NHS hospital. The corridor yawned endlessly to her right, occupied only by a slim nurse, whose skirt rustled softly as she carefully filled pill boxes from a trolley of jars. She didn't look up.

Gwen bit her lip. There was no point in just hanging around like some constable waiting for the boss. She might as well get started on her own. The nurse had been quite pretty and it was obvious she'd fancied Jack and, as much as it wasn't like him to seriously flirt on the job, he may well have got distracted. She grinned slightly. Bloody Jack and his sex appeal. If only they could find some alien technology that could extract that, they could all retire early.

Leaving the pale green of the corridor behind, she pushed the door open and immediately the lines between her eyes re-formed. Phillip Schofield's pat laugh filled her head, and she glared at the machine in the corner. God, that television was turned up loud, not that the four witnesses seemed bothered by it.

Pulling a chair towards them, she smiled gently. 'Hi.' She spoke softly. 'I'm Gwen Cooper. I'd like to ask you some questions about last night if that's OK.'

The blonde woman on the end rocked steadily backwards and forwards, but lifted her head slightly so that her bloodshot tired eyes were fixed intently on Gwen.

This time both Schofield and his guest laughed together behind her, cutting a path between Gwen and the people opposite. 'Would it be all right if I turned that television off? It's very loud.'

As one, all four witnesses vigorously shook their heads. The older woman on the end, Rhiannon Cave, leaned forward. 'We want to hear it. We want the sound.' She spat the words out in an urgent hiss, and Gwen recoiled slightly. There was a dark defensiveness in the woman's eyes that hinted at the edge of madness. Her mouth twitched as she sat back in her chair, her jaw moving as she ground her teeth and stared defiantly at Gwen.

For a moment Gwen said nothing, reassessing the situation. They were obviously more disturbed by what they'd seen than she'd expected. Maybe she should have waited for Jack. She could see why the nurse had called them fragile. As far as Gwen could tell, they were beyond fragile. They were nearer broken.

Four sets of eyes stared at her and each of the witnesses held the hand of the person next to them so tightly that the whites of their knuckles seemed to be in danger of ripping through the skin. It was as if they were terrified someone was suddenly going to try to pull them apart. Watching them, Gwen had a moment of clarity. The aggression she'd seen in Rhiannon Cave's eyes was actually hiding an awful, deep-seated fear. Why else would they be clinging to each other like that?

Despite a vague sense of revulsion she couldn't understand, Gwen leaned forward a little. 'I know that this is very upsetting for you, but we need to try and understand what happened to Richard Greenwood.' Magaly East rocked a little harder, and Gwen wondered if her nails had pierced the soft palm of the man next to her. If they had, he didn't seem to notice.