Wall of Silence

by Tracy Buchanan

  ‘Of course,’ Melissa said with a shaky smile as the detective jutted her chin at the uniformed officer, who reached into his pocket and pulled on some rubber gloves. ‘Just warning you,’ Melissa said to him, ‘it’s all a bit mucky. Teenagers can be pretty gross.’

  The officer wrinkled his nose.

  Detective Powell’s phone rang. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, leaving the room to take the call.

  Melissa handed the bag over to the officer with trembling hands.

  It was game over now; she knew it. What had she been thinking, coming here? She had just made it a hundred times worse. How would it look, being caught with the knife that had been used to stab her husband . . . with her DNA all over it now, as well as the kids’?

  ‘I don’t know if you remember me,’ the officer said as he rifled through the top layer of clothes. ‘I brought a hedgehog to you with my kids last year?’

  ‘Oh God, yes, I remember,’ Melissa replied. ‘Your little boy is gorgeous. You live in Ashbridge, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The officer paused, peering around him. Melissa tried not to stare at the bag. ‘We’d love to live in Forest Grove, though,’ he said, ‘especially before my son goes to school. Even with what’s happened with your husband, Forest Grove is still better than bloody Ashbridge.’ His eyes widened. ‘God, sorry, that was insensitive of me.’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ Melissa said, just happy he hadn’t yet resumed searching the bag. ‘I actually know someone who’s about to put their house on the market on Birch Road. The garden is small, but the price will reflect that.’

  The officer’s eyes lit up. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep. Give me your email address, I’ll get her to contact you when it’s going up for sale.’

  He peered behind him to see the detective still talking on the phone, pacing the hallway. Then he placed the bag down, getting his notepad out and scribbling his address down. ‘That’d be awesome, thanks.’

  She took the piece of paper and tucked it in her pocket. ‘No worries.’

  ‘Sorry for what you’re going through, by the way,’ he said.

  Melissa didn’t need to fake the tears that flooded her eyes. ‘It’s very difficult. I’m just trying to keep things normal for the kids, you know? Sounds mad, but it’s the little things, like them being able to wear their favourite tops,’ she said, gesturing to the bag he’d been searching.

  The officer looked at the bag then sighed, handing it over. ‘Here, go home to your kids. I didn’t feel right searching it anyway. Detective Powell can be a bit OTT, you know?’

  She took the bag, holding it close to her like it was a newborn baby. ‘Thank you. Take care, okay? Fingers crossed you’ll get to move here.’

  She turned on her heel and hurried out with the knife in her bag.

  Tonight, she would bury it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sunday 21st April, 2019

  2 a.m.

  It was a still night with very little breeze as Melissa set out to bury the knife. The forest felt like it was moving in the darkness as she entered it, a hive of hidden activity. The long trunks of the pines took on a different form, like the ash-riddled columns of a burnt-out mansion. The ground below felt hazardous and Melissa walked carefully, her torchlight not quite enough to illuminate every little root she might trip over. Beyond the path, in among the trees, she saw movement, flashes of eyes. She knew in her rational mind it would simply be nocturnal animals – deer, owls, maybe foxes and bats, wondering who this stranger was among them. It still made Melissa quicken her step, though, heart thumping loudly as she peered over her shoulder.

  After a while, the place she was heading for came into view, a hint of luminescent green on the horizon: her and Ryan’s old meeting place. She trod over tangled roots and brittle branches until she got to the clearing. It was filled with dying tree stumps, some decorated with the bulbous green glow of the fungi feeding off them.

  Melissa walked to the stumps. She imagined Ryan approaching with his bag of goodies in the darkness like he once used to, eyes sparkling as he caught sight of her.

  She sighed and placed her own goodies down: a bin bag holding the knife in one hand, Bill’s spade in the other. She’d cleaned the knife in the darkness of Bill and Rosemary’s kitchen before she came out, trying not to think that it was her husband’s blood she was wiping off. It had worked to begin with, her mind too tired and foggy from waking at such an ungodly hour to think with much clarity. But as the blood disappeared and the blade began to shine, she saw her reflection in it and that was when she lost it, fat tears rolling down her cheeks, stifled sobs coming from the core of her as the full gravity of what she was doing hit her. The fact was, she was cleaning her husband’s blood off a knife she was pretty sure one of their kids had plunged into him. Patrick had seemed paler to her when she’d spent the afternoon with him, a small rash appearing on his chest; Melissa couldn’t help but panic that something was wrong.

  As she cried, she’d heard a creak on the stairs and looked up to see Lilly watching her.

  She put her finger to her lips. ‘Shhhh,’ she said. ‘Go back to bed.’

  Lilly did as she asked and Melissa felt an overwhelming tide of sadness rise within her. Had she looked to Lilly just as her mother had to her all those years ago, sobbing in the kitchen?

  Melissa peered at her watch now. Nearly two-thirty already. How had time flown by so fast? She quickly dug the spade’s blade into the soil and started digging, using the rhythm as a way to distract her mind from going elsewhere other than the task at hand.

  In the distance, a branch cracked.

  Melissa stopped, eyes searching the darkness. Probably just a fox, she reasoned.

  But then there was another noise, like something – someone – taking a deep breath.

  ‘Hello?’ she whispered, slowly picking up her torch and searching the darkness with the light. She tried to tell herself again that it must be an animal, but all the hairs on the nape of her neck were up, just as they had been before she discovered Patrick on that kitchen floor.

  That’ll be your instincts, Lissie, she imagined her mother whispering.

  She placed the spade down and walked around the area, shining the torchlight into the forest, illuminating the dark, hidden spots.

  There was a loud thud, a sharp intake of breath, then another branch cracking.

  Melissa swivelled the torch around, heart thumping. ‘Hello?’ she shouted out, trying to be brave.

  There was a flurry of noise, then a large bird flapped out of the tree above. She wanted to feel relieved. That must have been where the noise had come from, surely? But something told her it wasn’t.

  She looked towards the hole she’d dug. If there was someone watching, they would have seen her. That meant they’d know the hiding place of the knife. Should she abandon her plans, find somewhere else to hide it? Or return to the house with the knife?

  She closed her eyes, trying to calm her mind.

  No, she was just being paranoid.

  She took a deep breath and went back to the hole, picking up the spade. After ten more minutes, she’d created the hole she needed. She carefully took the knife out, still wrapped in the bin bag, then placed it in the hole, pushing it into the soil so it sunk even further down. She paused a moment, thinking of one of her children wrapping their hands around the now hidden handle and thrusting the blade into their father.

  Then she imagined them doing it to her, their own mother.

  She put her dirty hand to her mouth, shaking her head as tears flooded her eyes.

  ‘Stop it,’ she hissed to herself. ‘Stop thinking about that!’

  She forced herself to stand back up and started to scoop soil over the space until it was eventually full. Patting the top to make it flat, she grabbed some foliage and covered it, even digging up some plants and replanting them there just to make sure.

  She surveyed her work, wiping the sweat from her brow. It looked good in a ‘nothing to see
here’ way. As far as she could tell, even people searching the area specifically for disturbed ground wouldn’t look twice. She was no expert, though. That was the thing with all this. She was fumbling in the dark! But she had to trust her instincts, just like her mum would say.

  She felt exhaustion sweep over her. She’d been running on adrenaline since she’d woken but now the job was done, the ‘three in the morning’ fact of this moment hit her full force. Yawning, she started heading back through the forest, torch jumping over the trees and foliage as she quickened her step, looking forward to getting out of her dirty clothes and sinking into bed.

  But then she heard another noise.

  She turned, looking over her shoulder, and let out a gasp.

  Someone was standing in the darkness, watching her.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sunday 21st April, 2019

  3 a.m.

  The figure, clad in black, merged into their surroundings but Melissa could just about make out their tall frame and the white of their eyes. She turned her torch on whoever it was, but they darted out of the spotlight.

  Suddenly feeling brave, Melissa ran after them. ‘Who are you?’ she shouted as they sprinted off into the foliage. But then her foot caught on a root and she came thundering down, the torch smashing to the ground and turning off, plunging her into darkness. She lay among the leaves and the roots, clutching at her shin, feeling it sticky with blood.

  ‘Shit,’ she whispered as the reality hit her: she was in the forest, injured, in the middle of the night with some stranger skulking about. And who really knew for sure if Patrick had been stabbed by one of the kids? What if it was someone else, someone they were so scared of they were covering for them?

  Hadn’t Grace said she was scared?

  Melissa’s heart thumped loudly in her ears as she grappled for the torch, trying to make it work, to no avail. She reached into her coat pocket for her phone, but it was gone. She slid her hands over the branches around her but couldn’t find it. It must have fallen out as she was running.

  She stood up and yelped as pain darted down her leg.

  ‘Come on, you can do this,’ she told herself, limping through the darkness. But it was useless; she was bleeding too much.

  She peered to the right of her, a small yellow light marking Ryan’s lodge out from the surrounding darkness. It was only a five-minute walk away.

  She limped in the direction of the lodge, shoving branches and long grass out of her way. When she reached the lodge Ryan had once shared with his father, she rapped gently on the window where she knew his bedroom was. A light was on inside but, still, she didn’t want to risk waking Maddy if she was staying there that night.

  ‘Ryan,’ she whispered, ‘it’s Melissa.’

  The curtain twitched open, Ryan staring out at her. His eyes widened and he opened the window, leaning out.

  ‘Melissa?’ he asked in surprise. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Yeah, of course.’ He appeared at the front door a few moments later, and she noticed he was dressed already in cargo pants and a T-shirt.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked her quietly, looking her up and down as she limped in. ‘Jesus, are you okay?’

  She followed his gaze to her shin. There was a hole in her jogging bottoms, blood seeping through it. ‘I fell.’

  He gestured to his sofa. ‘Sit down. Let me look at it.’

  She took a seat on his brown leather sofa and watched as he reached for a first-aid box in one of the kitchen cupboards. It was an open-plan area with two bedrooms leading off at the back, and a small kitchen overlooking a decent-sized living room with a massive fireplace. She’d been here many times before, first as a child when her father would come over to drink beer with Ryan’s dad . . . and then there was a time when she was here many years later too.

  It had changed over the years, once cluttered and neglected by Ryan’s father, with tools and empty beer bottles all over the place, now tidy and smart. Ryan had built a workroom out the back for all his tools, giving the lodge more living space. He had replaced the old carpets too, with neat pine floors, and the walls were now painted a pale blue. The kitchen was small and the most familiar of all, with its original pine units and granite tops, but the units had been repainted as well.

  Melissa could still see hints of Daphne’s presence here from all those years ago in some paintings of the forest on the walls and a blue vase on the table, filled with wild flowers. Maddy’s touches were here and there now as well, teen books and notepads strewn over the wooden coffee table in front of Melissa and a small black hoodie with Free the press scrawled on the back.

  Ryan sat beside Melissa and lifted her leg on to his knee, rolling her jogging bottoms up to reveal a jagged cut in her skin. She flinched as he pressed a gauze hard against it, stemming the bleeding. Then he took out an antiseptic wipe, cleaning away the blood and dirt before placing a large plaster over the wound. He was quiet as he did it, every now and again examining Melissa’s face with a frown.

  ‘How’d this happen?’ he asked eventually, ‘and why are you in the forest at this time of the night?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep so I took a walk . . . then I fell.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ll ask again. How did this happen?’

  Melissa regarded her old friend’s face, feeling the urgent need to tell him – to tell someone – what had been happening the past three days. But could she trust him, especially with that talk of him having had an argument with Patrick? But then that was just a rumour and there were always plenty of those in Forest Grove, many of them turning out to be untrue. She took in his earnest blue eyes, as familiar to her as the forest. She had always been able to trust him.

  Still, she had to ask him: ‘Can I trust you?’

  ‘You know you can.’

  She wiped her hand over her tired face. ‘It’s so hard keeping it all to myself.’

  ‘Then tell me, like you used to when we were kids.’

  She peered towards the other room. ‘Is Maddy here?’

  ‘Yeah, but she’d sleep through World War Three. What happened?’

  Melissa told him everything, from the moment she walked into her house to see Patrick on the floor to just now, when she’d seen a strange, silent figure watching her.

  Ryan stood up when she finished, going to the window and peering out, fists curled as he tried to find the stranger she’d mentioned. ‘I wish you’d come to me sooner,’ he said.

  ‘I couldn’t. Imagine if the same happened to you. Wouldn’t you want to keep things as close to your chest as possible for Maddy?’

  She saw him frown in the reflection of the window. ‘Yeah, I would.’ He walked back to the sofa and sat down, thinking about it all for a moment. ‘So you’re sure it’s one of the kids? You sure they’re not covering for someone?’

  ‘I really don’t know, Ryan. I can’t imagine them hurting a hair on their father’s head, but equally . . .’ She shook her head, pursing her lips as tears flooded to her eyes. ‘It’s such a mess.’

  ‘Have you thought about which of them could do that to Patrick, if it is one of them?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I guess the obvious choice might be Lewis,’ Ryan said.

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘He’s been in trouble at school for beating some kids up, right?’

  ‘Not quite beating them up, Ryan. Anyway, that’s completely different!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Ryan said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Melissa said with a sigh. ‘They all have their quirks. Lilly can blow up at the smallest thing sometimes. Grace is fascinated by the weird and dark side of life, but they’re all good kids!’

  ‘They are,’ Ryan agreed. ‘If one of them did it, they’d have to have had a good reason.’

  ‘That’s what I keep thinking. But Patrick is a good man. Why wou
ld they want to hurt him? Why would anyone?’

  Ryan looked down at his hands.

  ‘I can’t help but blame myself,’ Melissa admitted. ‘I’ve always been a bit lax about them watching films, you know? Letting them watch 12s when they were five. Especially Grace – she’s always preferred the Disney villains to the Disney princesses. Maleficent is an icon to her!’

  Ryan smiled. ‘That’s cool. She’s different. I like that.’

  ‘Then there’s Lewis, with those video games. I let him buy that God of War game with his birthday vouchers last year, even though it’s too old for him. What about Lilly, too, with her social media obsession, maybe I should have—’

  ‘Oh, come on, Melissa!’ Ryan said, interrupting her. ‘You sound like Kitty Fletcher. It’s all BS. I mean, look at Andrea Cooper’s kid, Carter? She sticks to all Kitty Fletcher’s stuff like Velcro, and Carter is a little shit – the number of times I’ve seen him wandering around the forest when he should be at school. No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Your kids are good kids. Something must’ve happened between them all, something so big it made one of them stab their dad . . . and then not tell you about it.’

  ‘They won’t say a word.’

  Ryan nodded. ‘One for all and all for one. Wasn’t that their and Maddy’s motto when they were all little?’

  ‘Yes.’ She peered towards Maddy’s room. ‘Has Maddy said anything to you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She remembered the conversation she’d overheard between the kids in Bill and Rosemary’s summer house. ‘I overheard Maddy chatting to the twins about something,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘They mentioned Carter Cooper saying something about me at the New Year’s Eve party. I’m not sure it’s related in any way, but the kids seemed cagey about it. Any idea what they might mean? You were at the party, maybe you overheard something?’

  ‘Nope,’ Ryan said, focusing on packing all the first-aid stuff away and turning the kettle on.

  Melissa looked out at the trees, trying to find a familiar comfort in the dark, swaying branches. ‘I do wonder if I should have just been honest with the police from the start. Do you think I should have?’