Free Silent Fear by Katherine Howell

was as natural as breathing, the worry equally so.
    *
    Ella came out of the air-conditioned hospital to find that the afternoon was hotter than ever. She hadn’t thought that possible. The sun beat down on the car’s windscreen. She sat gingerly in the driver’s seat, the wheel too hot to touch, and started the engine and aircon.
    Murray got in, then, as Garland stepped away from his friends and hurried towards them across the empty ambulance bay, he got back out.
    Her phone rang. Dennis. ‘How’d you go?’ he said.
    She gave him a brief summary while turning the aircon vents on her face. Garland and Murray talked at the front of the car. Murray shook his head.
    Ella said, ‘We’ve got the keys to where Fowler was staying and are on our way. No sign of his phone yet though.’
    ‘Keep in touch.’
    She ended the call as Murray shrugged Garland off and came back to the passenger door. Garland looked pissed off but went to his friends.
    ‘What was that about?’ she said when Murray got in.
    ‘Wanted Holly’s address.’ He clipped in his seatbelt. ‘Tried to tell me he used to have it and just mislaid it.’
    As if we hadn’t noticed the animosity between them , Ella thought. She’d be keeping a very close eye on what happened there.
    She tested the wheel. Better, almost cool. Ready to go.
    *
    Seth Garland’s flat was on The Grand Parade in Brighton-Le-Sands. Ella lowered her window to smell the salt of the bay but the hot air was full of car exhaust as people trawled up and down in the vain hope of finding a parking space. The beach was packed and kids screamed and splashed in the calm blue waters of the bay, while more families walked along the parkland carrying eskies and towels.
    ‘The brown building with the white trim.’ Murray pointed to a block of units.
    Ella pulled into the driveway and parked in one of the visitors’ spaces. Garland’s flat was on the ground floor. A number one was screwed to the door above the peephole. Ella fitted the key into the lock and turned it. The flat was a mess. Clothes lay scattered everywhere, the old coffee table was stacked high with cups and beer cans, a pizza box lay open on the floor with two dried-up crusts in a dark grease stain. Light poured into the room from the big windows that looked over the road to the bay, and the contrast between the deep clean blue of the water and the complete shambles at Ella’s feet was almost painful.
    ‘Talk about a bachelor pad,’ Murray said.
    She nodded. ‘Place could’ve been tossed and we’d have no idea.’
    Murray walked past her and into the small kitchen. ‘Same state in here.’
    Boys .
    Ella turned right down a short hallway and found a bathroom with a dripping sink tap and a crumpled towel on the tiles, then a bedroom where a foam mattress lay squeezed on the floor between an empty computer desk and a window with closed curtains. Blue cotton sheets were tangled at the foot of the mattress and clothes were piled in the four corners of the room, even behind the door. Ella could smell that they needed washing. Three used coffee cups stood between the legs of the office chair that was pushed up hard against the desk. A cardboard box on the desk held an unplugged clock radio, a couple of paperback books and a stack of CDs. A child’s drawing of two stick figures next to a pool was propped against the wall by the flat pillow. Darcy , Ella thought.
    ‘Check this out,’ Murray said behind her.
    He stood in the doorway to the main bedroom. The large window looked out over the bay, the curtains pulled well back, one of them moving in the breeze that came through the security screen. Below stood a bed made with almost military precision. There were no clothes on the floor or flung over the timber chest of drawers, the top of which was bare and dust-free. Murray opened the sliding doors of the built-in wardrobe and Ella saw clothes hung neatly on their hangers, organised into shirts, jeans, trousers and suits.
    ‘So