Sarah Pinborough - Into the Silence

Jack nodded. 'You and me both. So give me what your guys got before we got here.'

'Not too much to report.' Cutler smiled grimly. 'At 9.15 this morning the vic was in the shower. Singing, according to the couple in the room next door. After about five minutes, they heard glass smashing, which must have been the bathroom window.' He glanced up at Jack. 'And then Llewelyn stopped singing. After a few seconds he started screaming, but that didn't last long. The neighbours heard the wife banging on the bathroom door, and then they went and got the owners.' He paused. 'They called us. I called you.'

Jack looked at the open suitcase on the floor, and the tub of face cream on the small dresser. 'So where's the wife now?'

'The hospital. There's no point trying to speak to her. She's had a massive stroke. Apparently she had a mild one last year. I guess seeing her husband's insides on the outside was enough to bring on the big one.'

Gwen glared at him, in part for his insensitivity, and in part to reprimand herself for finding him quite so sexy when she was so recently married. Still, she thought, looking at the craggy lines that ran down his cheek where dimples might lie if he ever really laughed out loud, there was no harm in looking, was there?

Cutler noticed the look. 'Sorry. Tactlessness is part of my charm.'

Gwen turned back to the crime scene. She frowned. 'The bathroom cabinet mirror's broken. It looks like it's been punched.'

'I thought maybe it was done by Llewelyn fighting back,' Cutler said.

Jack's expression was grim. 'Or maybe whatever did this is getting angrier.'

There was a long pause which Cutler finally broke.

'Oh, that's great. What ever, not who ever. I thought I'd left all this weird crap behind after everything that happened last time.' He stood up and stared at Jack for a long moment before releasing a sardonic smile. 'Good luck with it.'

He was at the bedroom door when his mobile rang out: no trendy song or humorous sound effect, just the shrill clear tone cutting through the air.

'Cutler.' The handset pressed to his ear he looked up at Jack and Gwen, his hooded eyes sharp. 'Where? OK, keep the scene tight and the public out. I'm on my way.'

Watching him flip the lid shut, Gwen knew what he was going to say before the words were out.

'We've got another one.'

Outside, the heavens opened.

Adrienne Scott stared out at the rain that smeared itself against the other side of the reinforced window, distorting her reflection. Her left eye slid lazily downwards towards her nose, turning its elegantly made-up oval into a sagging circle, whilst her right stared into itself and at the drooping bag underneath that expensive face creams could no longer hold back. She looked hard and ugly. The stylish bob that had cost her a fortune was too sharp, removing any softness from her angular face. Great in the courtroom, perhaps not so great for getting along in the real world. Perhaps this was her true reflection.

Bad mother .

The drops outside grew heavier, smashing silently into the reinforced glass, and her alter ego's mouth trembled for a moment before blending with her chin. Maybe this was the way Ryan saw her: an ugly monster to be avoided. In some ways she wished that were true. At least if he saw her as a beast, it would indicate that she had some presence in his life, other than just as an irritant like all the other people he was forced to have some kind of interaction with. Adrienne knew better than that, though. In a small, dead part of her heart, she knew that she was nothing to Ryan. Not even a concept. She was as intangible as the transparent reflection that tried in vain to stay solid in the window.

Behind her, Ryan had slipped directly from 'Walking In The Air' into 'Where Is Love?' from the musical Oliver! Even with Ceri trying to cajole a drink of water into his mouth, each note held its purity, fluidly shifting from one to the next. As always when her boy sang, the haunting emotional quality he created with his voice made it almost impossible for anyone seeing him for the first time to really believe he could be so disconnected from people. No one could sing like that without some huge reservoir of emotion bursting through their skin, surely?

In the early days, which were only a few years ago, but seemed and felt like a lifetime to Adrienne, some of his singing would make her cry all night. Even after he'd moved in permanently to the Havannah Court centre, she would go home to the wreck of her marriage and curl up on her side of the bed and wait for the snoring to start so she could let the less beautiful sound of her own pain out to be poured wetly into her pillow. His voice would haunt her more than the deadness of his intelligent expression and for a long while she was convinced that it was an indication of his trapped feelings. He did love and need her; he just didn't know how to express it. She didn't care what the doctors said. She was his mother. She knew . She wanted more tests. More evaluations. They'd all got it wrong.

It was only when Michael had dragged her into Ryan's room, the little boy oblivious to the rage of his parents as they screamed at each other, and forced her to listen to him — to really listen to him — and then to listen again to that damned CD, that the truth hit home. She finally saw it. Or heard it. Whichever. Her heart broke for the final time that day, all her hopes and dreams of one day reaching her blond angel, shattered in the music. Michael and the doctors had been right all along. All the beautiful power in Ryan's voice was just the original singer's emotion made better . It was as if her tiny, talented, lost child was a mechanical computer. He absorbed the sound and reproduced it, but as it should be. The perfect version. He had enhanced the song, but not with his own emotions, whatever they were.

Michael had been right, but she couldn't forgive him for it. That day was the last time she had spoken to him. Perhaps it wasn't only Ryan that could be so remote. And the advantage of being one of Cardiff's best barristers meant that the divorce was swift and clean-cut. Their marriage was executed as painlessly as possible.

'Bloody awful weather, isn't it?' Ceri's soft voice broke Adrienne's reverie and she turned round. The nurse was trying to slip a baby's drinking bottle of fruit juice into Ryan's mouth. 'I was hoping we'd get one of those Indian summers.' Ceri looked up, her round face cheerful, despite having to catch the mouthfuls of juice that dribbled down the little boy's chin. 'You know, the kind that the people on the weather are always telling us to expect but never arrive.'

Adrienne gave her a tired smile. 'I know the kind.'

Ryan sat unmoving on the bed, his blue eyes staring into some void that only he understood, his mouth still producing the music in spite of the bottle being gently pushed into the corner of his mouth. Adrienne didn't know how his voice hadn't totally given out or been damaged by now. But then Ryan was the only child in the unit who would sleep for twelve-hour stretches every night, regular as clockwork. Maybe twelve hours on and twelve hours off was what his body needed. Adrienne often thought that those twelve hours where Ryan was completely lost in the darkness of his own mind must be his favourite times. If he was capable of such things as favourites. The workings of little Ryan Scott's mind and heart were truly an enigma.

'Didn't you have a holiday this year?' Adrienne asked, pretending to ignore the juice that slipped down her son's tiny Welsh rugby shirt. She never came at meal times. She just didn't have the stomach for it — one more indication of her uselessness to a boy like Ryan.

'No.' Ceri caught the liquid stream before it made its way to the carpet. 'My mum's waiting for a hip operation so I've been looking after her when I can. Didn't want to leave her.' She gave Adrienne a warm, open, beaming smile. 'I can always dream of booking myself some winter sun, but I expect I'll just wait for next year to roll around and grab myself two weeks in Magaluf, the same as everyone else.'