Dead Silent (29 page)

‘You remembered what?’

‘It was the way you walked that triggered something very clear in my memory.’

‘I’m going!’ He opened the driver’s door.

‘I watched you walk out of my father’s room in the early hours of this morning. You were with Gabriel Huddersfield in my father’s room. You didn’t speak, he did. But I watched you walk out of the room. You killed my father and strung him up like a beast. You. You and Gabriel Huddersfield. Gabriel Huddersfield pretending to be the Angel of Destruction. And you. You. Pretending to be the First Born. Making yourself out to be something bigger and more powerful than you could ever be.’

‘Dead. Dada dead. My dada dead.’

‘No!’

‘Don’t even try to deny it!’

A jogger thundered past them.

‘Calm down, Louise,’ said Adam.

‘Don’t patronise me. I will not be silenced. Not any more.’ The anger in her voice had turned into outrage and her eyes shone.

‘All right, Louise.’ He walked to the passenger door and opened it. ‘You’ve had a traumatic experience. You think I’m responsible for your father’s death.’

‘You are responsible! I was there! I saw you!’

‘Get in the van, Louise. I’ll take you to Trinity Road police station. I’ll come in with you and you can tell the desk sergeant all about your suspicions about me. Then he can get that Clay woman to come and interview me. I can’t say fairer than that.’

Louise said and did nothing.

‘I’m being reasonable here in the face of some very serious allegations.’ He moved quickly, opened the passenger door.

She linked hands with Abey.

‘Get in the van, Louise. Tell the police what you’ve told me.’

She stood her ground. ‘Murderer!’

He slapped her face hard, grabbed Abey and bundled him into the passenger seat. ‘Fucking get into the van or I swear to God I’ll kill your retarded pet.’

He drew a knife from his pocket, grabbed her arm, hustled her into the seat next to Abey and slammed the passenger door shut.

In the driver’s seat, he pulled away and headed towards Croxteth Gate.

‘Trinity Road’s in the opposite direction,’ said Louise.

He picked up speed to 45 mph.

‘I said—’

‘I heard you,’ said Adam, reaching under his seat. ‘I’m in the driver’s seat. And I’m telling you, we’re going on an errand. I owe a man something and it’s payback time. Then I’ll take you to Trinity Road. I’m the driver and what I say goes. I don’t want to hear another word from either of you.’

Beneath the seat, he felt the shaft of a hammer, touched the sharpened point of a screwdriver next to it and, concealing it with his hand, buried the screwdriver inside his coat pocket.

‘Who do you need to pay back so urgently at such a time?’

The words hit Adam hard. Like the voice of a stranger had melted into a sentence. He looked at Louise, bewildered, wondering if his mind was bending to a point where it would break so badly that it would never be mended again.

‘
Who do you need to pay back so urgently at such a time
?’ said Louise, but it sounded like her voice was masked.

Adam wanted to scream because his senses were warping and the walls inside him that separated what was real and what wasn’t had suddenly collapsed.

‘Who do you need to pay back so urgently at such a time?’ asked Louise. On the third time of asking, her voice sounded like her own.

He heard the words, recognised the speaker, but wondered if his sense of hearing was warped by stress.

Pay back
, thought Adam.
Someone who deserves everything that’s coming to him.

Outside Leonard Lawson’s house, the itch beneath Clay’s crown became almost unbearable.
Everything is here
. Her own words, from the dead of night, followed her through the front door.

In the downstairs hallway, the nearest human being to Clay was the constable on the doorstep, guarding the scene of the crime. As she hit the stairs, it felt like he was already thousands of miles away.

She looked at the landline telephone and recalled Huddersfield’s words to Hendricks and Stone. ‘
There’s a body in the garden.’

She hurried up to Leonard Lawson’s bedroom with one specific goal and Huddersfield’s words like a gang of demons at her back
. First things first
. The dressing table. The triptych of glass in which she’d first seen the old man’s naked limbs, suspended from the ground as if by some magical force. But as she arrived at the top of the stairs, her attention was diverted to Louise Lawson’s room, the door wide open.

The cross-stitch on the wall facing her bed.

Silence is Golden

She felt a drum beat at the centre of her being, a faint tap that increased in volume and speed with each new beat and a child’s singsong voice echoed inside that beat as she walked into Leonard Lawson’s bedroom.

‘Silence is golden! Silence is golden! Silence is golden...’

The dressing table and the wardrobe were the only items still left in the professor’s room. She turned on the light to dispel the gathering gloom and the room came alive with dust motes. She slipped on a pair of latex gloves and took the torch from her pocket.

The wooden body of the dressing table was covered in dark dust and there were rectangular strips where the dust had been lifted to salvage finger-and palm-prints.

Clay flicked on her torch and crouched in the alcove to face the back of the triptych of mirrors. The space was cramped and dark.

Starting at the back of the widest, central, mirror, she combed the black wood from the top, left to right, saw the grain of the wood beneath the dark surface, noted the odd little scratch as she dropped the light down and went back right to left.

‘You’re missing the obvious,’ she said out loud. ‘
First things first.
’

She reached the centre of the mirror’s back and hope collapsed. Left to right, another blank line. Right to left. She was close to the bottom and still nothing had been revealed. By the time she reached the bottom, she cursed Gabriel Huddersfield for playing games with her and herself even more for falling for it.

She stood up, made her way to the front of the mirrors. Carefully she unfolded the wings and exposed their backs.

Then she beamed in on the back of the right-hand mirror, using the same top-to-bottom, left-to-right and then reverse system. On the second right-to-left trawl, she paused suddenly, felt her stomach flip. In tiny letters carved on the surface of the wood:

St Bavon

St Bavon? She juggled the letters in her head as she carried on combing the wood, but there was nothing else; every other strip to the bottom drew a blank. There was no garden she knew of named after a saint she had never heard of and it seemed an unlikely anagram.

She turned to the back of the left-hand mirror, playing with the letters s t b a v o n and walking into mental walls as she reached the middle of the panel.

She carried on. One more chance, one more slow sweep from right to left. Closer to the middle than the right, she felt how intensely cold she was and saw her breath frosted on the light.

Whose garden? The Garden of St James. Whose body? The other half.

She took her iPhone out and was on her way to the top of the stairs when she turned back and went into Louise’s bedroom. She got through to Hendricks as she reached the wall opposite Louise’s bed.

‘The garden on the back of the triptych. It’s the Garden of St James, the cemetery at the back of the Anglican Cathedral.’

She took the ‘Silence is Golden’ cross-stitch from the wall.

‘I’ll ring round the troops,’ said Hendricks.

Clay was on the stairs.

‘Bring Huddersfield with you.’ Huddersfield’s words to Leonard Lawson, in Sefton Park just days before he was murdered, formed in Clay’s mind. ‘And as much back-up as is humanly possible.’ At the bottom of the stairs, she said, ‘It’s a huge place. Looking for a body in there is going to be like looking for a raindrop in an ocean.’

On the way to her car, Clay looked at the cross-stitch.

Silence is Golden

She had a question she wanted to ask Louise Lawson about silence, but first of all she had a body to find.

In the Garden of St James.

Whose body?

The other half? But the other half of who or what?

‘The half Leonard Lawson condemned to the silent void!’ Huddersfield’s accusation poured from her mouth in a cloud of mist as she sprinted towards her car.

Outside The Sanctuary, Stone heard footsteps crunching up the path behind him. ‘Detective Sergeant Stone?’ Danielle Miller’s voice followed.

Stone banged on the front door for the fourth time, but there was no sign of life behind it. He turned round.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked as she unlocked the door and stepped into a strangely silent hall. Danielle looked at Stone, her face darkening. ‘Hello!’ she called. ‘Where are you all?’ She looked unnerved by the silence.

‘Do you know where your husband is?’ asked Stone.

‘He’s on duty at the Anglican Cathedral, guiding visitors.’

‘The number?’

She rattled off seven digits and Stone dialled the cathedral on his phone.

‘Anglican Cathedral. How can I help you?’ A woman’s voice.

‘Is Adam Miller there?’

‘Adam Miller?’ She called into the office. A muffled voice responded. ‘He showed up but left just before one. Most unlike him.’

He closed the call down, headed into the kitchen, where the back door was wide open. Shivering and wet, Tom Thumb sat at the kitchen table. He pointed at the back door.

‘Where is everyone, Tom?’ asked Danielle.

He thought about it for a few moments, looked in the direction of the front door. He drew a large circle in the air.

‘Everyone,’ said Danielle.

With his index and middle fingers, he mimed
walking
.

‘Everyone’s walked out.’

He nodded his head.

‘They’ve
all
gone out?’ asked Danielle, panic in her voice. ‘Except you?’

‘Phone your husband on his mobile, ask him where he is.’ One man. One van. ‘Don’t tell him I’m involved,’ said Stone.

She pulled out her phone and called Adam.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Stone.

‘It’s gone to answer phone.’

‘Don’t leave a message. Hang up.’

‘Tom, Gideon wouldn’t leave you in on your own.’

‘Tom?’ said Stone. ‘Where is Adam?’ Tom turned, pointed away from the house and mimed rotating a steering wheel. ‘Who did he go with?’ Tom used the index finger of his right hand to point at the tip of his little finger, left hand.’

‘He’s signing the letter A,’ said Danielle. ‘A? A? Abey?’ Tom nodded, kept his palm open and dragged his index finger across the middle, signing the letter L. ‘Louise?’ He nodded again.

‘Gideon? Where’s Gideon?’ Danielle’s voice rose with each syllable.

Tom pointed to the garden and made adjoining diagonal lines with his hands.

‘The shed?’ asked Danielle. Tom turned his face away, his bottom lip jutting out.

Stone walked out of the kitchen and headed for the shed at the bottom of the garden. Halfway there, he saw a spot of blood on the snow and felt his mind race faster.

The shed door was locked and he caught the aroma of a butcher’s window.

‘Gideon?’ He heard Danielle’s voice as he made his way down the side of the shed, but it sounded ghostly.

He looked through the window at the side of the shed.

Gideon’s face, eyes wide open, the shock of violent death upon him. He felt Danielle’s presence behind him. ‘Go back!’ The wound on his face was vivid and blood pooled around his head.

‘Gideon?’

‘I’m sorry. He’s dead,’ said Stone.

Her eyes swam with horror and sadness.

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated.

She swayed on the spot and he held up her weight with both hands on her arms. Danielle looked at the shed and then down at the blood on the snow.

Her scream seemed to reach the leaden sky above them and when she stopped screaming, she shouted, ‘I hate him! I hate him! I hate him! Gideon was...’ She made for the shed, but Stone held her back. ‘He was... Gideon... was the only nice thing in my life and he had to take that away from me.’

She fell into hopeless tears as Stone held on to her.

‘I hope he dies,’ she screamed. ‘I hope he dies in agony and goes to hell!’

Adam Miller snatched the ticket from the barrier at the front entrance of the Anglican Cathedral. The barrier rose and as he drove around the corner in the direction of the car park, Louise asked, ‘Why are we going here, Adam?’

In the corner of the van, Abey whimpered.

‘Tell him he’d better not start crying.’

‘If he’s afraid, he’ll cry.’

‘Get a grip of him, Louise.’

‘Why are we coming here, to the Anglican?’

Driving at 10 mph, Adam looked straight ahead. ‘You’re to come inside the cathedral with me. Are you listening?’

Louise looked through the windscreen at the cathedral’s sandstone bell tower. The Vestey Tower. It blocked out the sky, looming over them like a frozen giant.

‘Are you listening?’ he asked as the van flopped over a speed bump.

Abey started to cry. Adam took the sharpened screwdriver from his pocket and rolled it back and forth between the fingers and thumb of his left hand. His eyes met Louise’s.

‘Are you listening to me?’

‘I’m very afraid of you,’ replied Louise, quietly. The tremor in her voice was like balm to him. ‘I’m listening to you. We’ll do whatever you say. Of course we will.’

‘You’re to come in with me. To the cathedral. You walk in front of me and you don’t say a word. If anyone happens to speak to you, you smile, but you keep your mouths shut, dead shut, tight shut.’

‘Why don’t you leave us in the van? Then you won’t have to worry about us embarrassing you by speaking.’