All Chapters of NO ONE ASKED: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

21The most extraordinary faculty our minds possess is the ability to break apart and compartmentalise. It's how we juggle multiple demands and how we cope with pain and trauma. After my wife died, I saw a string of therapists and grief counsellors and psychologists. One of them suggested I take my memories, lock them in a chest using heavy chains and padlocks, and drop the trunk into the deepest part of the ocean, beneath millions of tons of water.I tried it for a while, but it didn't work. The memories are still with me. They are like wolves hunting me through the forest. I have hacked a clearing from the undergrowth and built a fire to keep them at bay, but I have to keep collecting wood, or the fire will burn down, and the wolves will creep closer.The newspaper arrived, and the headlines were full of the explosion—the cause given as a gas leak leading to journalist Mariella Novotny's untimely death. Other victims include a retired gay couple, a thirt

23DCI Burton organised six boxes delivered to my home address. They must be back at the police station by the following day. A courier will collect them just after six o'clock the next day.Inside the boxes were witness statements, timelines, phone calls and crime scene photographs relating to the eleven deaths.Closing my study door, I turn the key and take a seat before opening the first box. In the boxes stacked around my feet is evidence of eleven lives and eleven deaths. Nothing will bring these people back, and nothing can harm their feelings anymore.I feel like I am intruding, flicking through photographs, statements, timelines, videos, all different versions of their pasts.They say once is okay, twice is a coincidence and the third occasion is a pattern. But I possibly have eleven crimes to consider. Eleven victims. All involved in a business project in Moscow, except Mariella Novotny, the journalist.Ten men. Property developers,

25University College Hospital is a teaching hospital in London, England. It is part of the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and is closely associated with University College London. The hospital is on the south side of Euston Road in the Bloomsbury area of the London Borough of Camden, adjacent to the main campus of UCL. Its tower faces Euston Square tube station. Not far away west is Warren Street tube station, and Euston station is beyond Euston Square Gardens, situated east.I put the money in the machine and got out two coffees. Blanche had driven me to the hospital to see if Jimmy Raistrick would say anything.The very least we would want was an ID of the shooter. I handed a coffee to Blanche."White, no sugar."Blanche took the coffee in both hands.Hospital waiting rooms are useless, helpless places, full of whispers and prayers. Nobody looks at us.Doctors and nurses wander in and out, never able to re

27The traffic meanders at an agonisingly slow pace, shuffling and pausing. I can only see the back of the driver's head. He has a soldier's haircut and wrap-around sunglasses, looking ridiculous as he is wearing them at night."Where are you taking me?""To see someone important.""Who?""You'll find out when we get there.""And where is there, by the way?""There is where we are going.""There must be some mistake.""You are Quintus Andrew Noone. You are sixty-three years of age. You worked for MI5 for nearly forty years. You are the youngest of five children, with one brother and three sisters.Your brother passed away suddenly seven years ago. You went to Littlegrove School in East Barnet and then Challoner School for Boys in Woodside Park. You lived in East Barnet, to begin with, followed by Whetstone for fourteen years and then moved to Suffolk. You graduated from Homerton College, Cambridge, with a degree i

29Blanche has scarcely said a word since our flight left Heathrow. Her silences can be so eloquent.I told her that she didn't have to come. "I'm sure you've got enough on work-wise.""I have," she replied, "but how am I going to keep you out of trouble if I don't go with you." The faintest of smiles wrinkles the corners of her eyes.It's incredible how little I know about her. She has children – twins – but doesn't talk about them. Her mother is in a retirement home. Her stepfather is dead. I don't know about her birth father as she's never mentioned it before.Blanche is the most self-sufficient woman I have ever met. She doesn't appear for human contact or needs anyone. You can those survival shows on TV where people are separated into competing tribes and try to win immunity. Blanche would be a tribe of one, all on her own, and would come out on top every time.Paris. It makes me think of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashio