The Silence (Dc Goodhew 4) (12 page)

‘There’s a big heart under that uniform, after all.’

‘Yeah, right. I was actually thinking more about our workload. Less witness trauma probably equals a clearer statement, which probably equals less paperwork.’

‘That big heart?’

‘Yes, I know, it’s made of granite.’

The waitress approached their table holding a dessert bowl, napkin and spoon. ‘Hot chocolate orange pudding?’

Goodhew pointed to Gully’s side of the table. ‘It’s a treat for your soft side.’

She took a mouthful, then paused before the second. ‘I’m concerned for Libby because she’s been through so much, but I wouldn’t joke if I really thought she was a risk.’

‘See, you’re as soft as they come.’

‘Piss off, Gary. If this wasn’t Jaffa Cake heaven, I’d walk out now. Just go back to thinking. I’m not interrupting this just to talk to you.’

I’ll tell you one thing, Zoe. I never expected all of this when I started emailing you.

We’ve been allowed back into the house.

I wasn’t expecting that. I thought it would remain sealed, with tape across the doors and the PC on guard at the front step, at least until the end of the investigation.

So much for TV and my imagination, I guess.

And at college I seem to have gained this weird kind of notoriety. The favourite question seems to be whether I find it creepy going back to a house where someone killed themselves.

And, no, I don’t.

Each time I reply as if that’s the first time it’s been brought to my attention, I never go on to say that being back here is a comfort. It is, especially here in my room with all my own things.

Matt didn’t want to come back, but I think he did it for me. He’s been in my room a bit more than usual, talking about Shanie mostly. We both worry in case she was alive for a while, and trying to get our attention, but we’re also determined not to dwell on that until we’re told more. DC Goodhew had a quiet word and reassured me, saying that it looked like she’d been dead for most of that weekend.

He talked to Charlotte, and I know she would have told him all about Rosie and Nathan. They went for a walk somewhere, and he was white faced by the time they returned. He looked at me as though he felt sorry for me.

Thanks, Charlotte.

No, that’s not fair. I’m genuinely pleased that she told him, and thankful for everything Charlotte has done to try to convince people that Rosie and Nathan would never have killed themselves. I’m just angry that, in the end, she seemed to reach the conclusion that they did. And now she wishes Matt would accept it, too.

And Matt does waver about it sometimes.

‘If they didn’t kill themselves, Libby, what are you saying?’ That’s been a question that he’s asked with increasing frequency.

The word ‘murder’ sounds so extreme that I hesitated before using it. Could that really have happened? I sat on the fence a bit with my reply: ‘Someone made it happen,’ I said.

‘Someone made them kill themselves?’

I’d only made it sound even more unlikely.

‘No, someone killed them,’ I said quietly. It sounded as improbable as a fairy sneaking into your room at night and taking teeth from under your pillow, leaving money behind. Was I just a kid wanting to believe the fanciful over reality?

‘Who?’ Matt asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I answered miserably. I could feel that I would regret it if I lost my nerve. ‘They were murdered.’ I voiced the thought, and realized it didn’t sound ridiculous at all. ‘They were murdered and I don’t know why, or who would have done it.’ My strength of conviction alone has been enough to keep Matt on side.

But, for all Charlotte’s doubts, she is determined to find something that might give me conclusive proof. She understands that it’s the only way I will let it drop and, more importantly from her point of view, my own peace of mind will give Matt the answer he needs so that he can begin to get on with his life.

Charlotte is strong and single-minded, and ‘conclusive proof’ is all I want, too. But I reckon it will give a different answer to the one she expects.

She believes DC Goodhew can help, but wouldn’t say any more than that. I can guess what she’s thinking. I hope she genuinely likes him, as I don’t want to see her make the same mistake twice.

As far as this house goes, I feel like I’m on suicide watch. Jamie scares me, she’s taken it so badly. Of all the people here, I do wonder why she returned. She averts her head from Shanie’s door whenever she walks down the hall and lowers her voice if she needs to say Shanie’s name. I can hear her crying in her room, and listening to an endless stream of angsty music. If I hear her listening to Coldplay, I’m calling an ambulance.

The others aren’t so bad and, yes, they all came back. Oslo’s gone on one of his sick photography expeditions. I would have thought he might have given that a rest in the circumstances. Funny, really – when the police let us back in, he was crapping himself in case either of his precious goldfish had died.

Meg and Phil are together even more than usual. I don’t understand their relationship. They have this way of acting around each other that makes me feel they’re part of their own private club. I can be in a room with them, and then leave with a feeling that I’m the subject of a private joke between them.

I thought that sounded paranoid until Jamie said she felt like that too.

I don’t think I like either of them very much, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’d like them to like me. It’s a shame I’m not studying psychology: none of this is on the accountancy syllabus!

Hang on, now their two-person club is not sounding quite so happy. Shit. I’m not staying here to listen to this. Why don’t they remember that Phil’s room is straight above mine? Perhaps no one realizes how much I can hear in this house.

Or maybe we can all hear the same, but I’m the only one who’s actually paying attention.

Phil’s room was small with just a narrow strip of carpet on either side of the double bed. At its foot was a slightly larger area of carpet where a chest of drawers stood with its back to the wall. In the narrow space left between that and the bed, Meg and Phil were standing almost toe-to-toe.

She was shocked at the fury she felt towards him. ‘I told you to leave her alone.’

‘It’s none of your business,’ he snorted.

‘I had to find somewhere else to sleep, while the police were going through our house.’

‘For fuck’s sake, that’s not my fault.’

‘Nothing’s your fault in your eyes. Has it occurred to you that you hurt her? That this whole mess might be your fault?’ She knew she was goading him now, but she didn’t care.

But he came straight back at her. ‘Just as likely
you
pushed her to it.’

‘Fuck you, Phil.’ Meg wanted to leave, but she wanted an explanation even more. ‘I did nothing to her that she didn’t do to me.’

‘Meg, you picked her up on everything, every chance you had. If you couldn’t bitch at her, you blanked her or sidelined her.’

‘At least I didn’t screw her.’

‘Since when do you care?’

‘She wasn’t even pretty.’ Meg’s mouth pulled itself downwards. ‘There was something about her that made me cringe. I’d just look at her and want to vomit.’

‘That’s pathetic.’

‘Why? She made no effort with her looks, her hair was a mess, she dressed like a slob . . .’

‘Meg. Just give it a rest.’

‘No. You can screw who you like, Phil, but I don’t have to like them too. And you didn’t have to do it here. In this house. In that bed.’ Meg’s voice began to waver. She didn’t want to cry, she just wanted him to know how angry she was.

Phil’s expression suddenly shut down. ‘So what about you and Matt?’ He sounded calm at first, but then began his vent in earnest. ‘
That
was in this house. On your bed, and loud enough for people to hear in the centre of Cambridge. Did I have a problem with it? No.’

‘I was drunk.’

‘Not as drunk as he was, I’d bet. He spent the first two weeks here looking totally ashamed.’

‘Thanks, Phil.’

‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Meg?’ He reached out to touch her but she pulled away. ‘It was the heat of the moment, all right? I didn’t mean it.’

‘Worried that you said too much? You’re quite happy to sleep with me when it suits you, so I’m sure you don’t find it
that
unpleasant.’ She was pleased to see how uncomfortable he looked, and rewarded him by glaring more fiercely. She didn’t want to give in to him and she hated the suspicion that she probably would. ‘The police will find out she wasn’t a virgin.’

His eyes hardened again. ‘And what – arrest me? I don’t think so.’

Meg had hoped he would deny it, though she couldn’t explain why. Couldn’t even begin to form another coherent thought. She backed towards the door. ‘I hate you, Phil.’ And, as she said it, a lump formed in her throat.

His response was a sharp laugh. ‘So much for friends with benefits,’ he shouted after her, and clicked his door shut in her wake.

Jamie-Lee kept crying; the tears came and went in unpredictable waves. Earlier she’d walked along Sussex Street and ordered a jacket potato at Tatties. She’d then taken a seat near the window and idly watched customers drift in and out of the music shop opposite. With a clear view of the sales counter, she soon realized that guitar picks seemed to be their biggest seller.

Guitar picks and sheet music; half the sales were one or the other and she occupied herself for a while trying to predict who amongst the customers would buy which item.

It was an innocuous way to spend half an hour. And it was that very thought that set the tears rolling again. Who was she to while away careless minutes after what had happened?

She had thought she cared about the other housemates, but did she?

Did she really, when one had taken to her room and died while she herself had been too wrapped up in guitar picks or sheet music or whatever that particular hour’s diversion had been.

She turned away from the window, only to catch the eye of the couple sitting at the next table. She bowed her head and sobbed quietly into a serviette, until one of the waitresses leaned across and asked, rather redundantly, whether she was all right.

Her response was to push back her chair and dash for home.

She opened the front door just as Libby was hurrying out. The younger girl looked at her with almost equal despair, then, instead of leaving, Libby grabbed Jamie and the two of them clung together.

Finally Libby spoke. ‘I thought I was okay. But I’m not.’

‘I know,’ Jamie murmured. ‘It hurts so much.’

Goodhew’s Bel-Ami jukebox was set to random play, but so far he had barely noticed any of the 45s that had clicked and whirred their way on to the turntable. The room was dark and, behind him, his window looked out on Parker’s Piece and across to the police station.

The verdict on Rosie Brett’s death had been left open since there hadn’t been any conclusive evidence that she’d planned to kill herself by jumping from the nearby bridge into oncoming traffic. But Goodhew read ‘open verdict’ as ‘Well, she might have done’ – and he didn’t see how any family could ever step out of the shadow of uncertainty hanging over those words.

Goodhew had given evidence at the inquest, and he could remember her parents; they had sat side by side, but were conspicuously separate in their posture and reactions. Her mother kept wanting Rosie’s dad to say more, while he just wanted it all to be over. She looked like someone trying too hard, but behind his smart suit was a man who seemed to have given up on trying at all. Even then, Goodhew had begun to wonder whether Rosie’s home life had been miserable. And now he knew.

The single changed again and this time he listened to the jukebox’s mechanical routine and waited to hear the next track.

Nathan Brett stole his concentration first. Pulling Nathan’s file should have been the first thing he’d done after he came back from talking to Charlotte.

Goodhew turned towards the window, and Parkside Station. He didn’t want to distract attention from Shanie’s case, but felt compelled to find out more about Nathan. Apart from the lobby area, the station looked quiet. It usually was at this time of night, when most of the officers on duty were either out of the building somewhere, or running back and forth dealing with the latest drama to fall through the front door.

Goodhew unhooked a pair of binoculars from behind the open curtains and trained them on the foyer. There were five people presently there, four looking patient and one pacing; he guessed everyone had their hands full. He scanned the rest of the building and the only person he spotted was DI Marks, standing alone at his office window. He held a mug in his right hand, and his left was buried deep in his overcoat pocket.

It was a minor point, but why had he stopped for coffee after putting on his coat? And if he had only just arrived, why had he been motivated to turn up in the middle of the night?

Goodhew grabbed his own jacket and headed for the door. He paused only to switch off the jukebox, halting The Ventures’ ‘Perfidia’ mid-flow.

He crossed Parker’s Piece playing out the final bars of guitar in his head and wondering at the lengths he would go to for the sake of curiosity.

Goodhew reached his boss’s office door and found Marks standing in exactly the same spot.

The man spoke without turning. ‘I saw you walking over, you know.’

‘I fancied a cuppa and not much beats our drinks machine. Can I get you a refill?’

‘Sit down, Gary.’

Goodhew pulled a chair towards the window and sat with his arm resting along the sill.

Marks gave him a sideways glance. ‘You belong on the far side of the desk, Goodhew.’

‘Would you like me to move?’

‘No.’ He paused. ‘Yes, actually. I have a report on Shanie Faulkner. I’d like you to take a look, as you’re here.’

They settled into their usual positions on opposite sides of the table, and Marks turned his PC screen in Gary’s direction. ‘I have the video footage of the autopsy.’

Goodhew merely nodded. ‘Oh good,’ didn’t seem like quite the right response.