The Silent Forest

by Guy Sheppard

  ‘The pain, I have to admit, is bloody awful.’

  Then stay where you are. Soon your lamp will fail anyway. Then you can sleep the sleep of the dead – abide with us all.

  ‘All?’

  Come Jim, give it a go. You’ll feel so much better if you get some shut-eye first.

  Those siren sneers are only part of the problem. To his horror the corpse beside him looks reasonably fresh. Whoever or whatever has gnawed eyes, lips and nose from her face might soon return.

  Then he’ll be helpless.

  He’ll be eaten, too.

  In its den.

  Except Angela hasn’t been devoured by dogs, rats or foxes, she’s been dissolved with acid.

  FORTY-FIVE

  She knew how it must look. Call her old-fashioned, but she had a bad feeling about this meeting – a foreboding Jo did not hesitate to call shameful. She stood in the cathedral doorway in the presence of its sombre stone statues. She had lured Freya here on false pretences, to be sure, in the presence of St Peter and St Paul and the four evangelists, but what good would it do if she still didn’t trust her? She guessed it was up to her. She had frightened her off once before by being too direct and she mustn’t make the same mistake now.

  Freya wore her black, red-lined reefer coat wide open as she hurried towards the South Porch in the falling snow. On her way, she gripped her wine-red turban hat in both her hands, stretched its pleats and fiddled with its bow, but nothing stopped her long blonde hair, wild and wispy, blowing about her shoulders. Her face, with its narrow chin, was slightly anaemic, her lips equally washed out. For someone so pale and tired she paid scant attention to the biting air.

  Jo held out her hand. Freya’s grip struck her as less dismissive than efficient. Her smile was similar.

  Was she pleased to see her?

  It was no bad thing.

  She was pretty happy to see her.

  ‘So sorry I’m late,’ said Freya, as Ruby ran round her heels. ‘It’s so good of you to wait – to go to so much trouble for so little. Hello Bella.’

  Bella snarled.

  ‘She’s not really that anti-social,’ said Jo apologetically.

  Bella humphed. She’d thought they’d seen the last of the yappy Chihuahua. Finish. Finito. Fin. But since no dog with such bat-like ears could be taken seriously she lay down in the porch under the studious statue of St Jerome and his book of writings and covered her nose with her paw. She ignored the silly thing’s deafening bark which was so out of proportion to its size.

  Jo drew a small brown book from her pocket, even as the melodious chanting of Sunday’s 10.30 Matins began with a prayer inside the cathedral.

  ‘Truth is, I put it in a drawer and lost sight of it.’

  ‘Sam can’t manage without his 1943 “ABC of GWR LOCOMOTIVES”. He’s been asking about it every day since he mislaid it. Trains mean the world to him.’

  ‘I guessed as much.’

  Freya slipped the Ian Allan book of numbers carefully into her pocket. Her whole posture was that of earnest and breathless desire to depart as she tapped her chunky heels on the pavement.

  But she didn’t.

  ‘Doesn’t the minster look beautiful today in the snow? I imagine you can see all the way downriver to the ocean from the top of its tower?’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Fire watchers get all the best views.’

  ‘And the coldest.’

  ‘That, too, I suppose.’

  As Freya dithered, she leaned her head back in the direction of some noisy pigeons that settled in rows on the cathedral’s roof, whereupon her throat revealed a black and yellow discolouration inside the collar of her coat. The skin was not broken, exactly, but clearly visible were the burns and bruises from some hostile hand. Shadowy fingermarks traced the spot, not long after the bout of actual violence.

  Jo braved the falling snow, too. Those wheals on Freya’s neck panicked her. They literally did. What was going on? Why had someone done that to her? Would they escape undeterred?

  Would she, was all that mattered now.

  ‘How about I buy you a cup of coffee in the Cadena? It’ll be so much warmer.’

  ‘No need, Jo.’

  ‘No? Well then, how is Sam?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Is he happy?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he be?’

  ‘He was lighting rather a lot of candles in the cathedral, you must admit.’

  ‘You’ll have to excuse him.’

  ‘Please don’t think we don’t want him to return.’

  ‘Sam’s behaviour can be – how shall I put it – a bit obsessive at times.’

  ‘The thing is, Mrs Boreman, he was snuffing out other people’s candles to light his own.’

  ‘As I say, he can be very focused.’

  ‘He was coming every day and Dean Drew began to worry.’

  As Freya opened her eyes wide to floating snowflakes, her pale green irises flashed specks of blue and yellow. These were in no way blemishes, but managed to convey in their brilliance a strange lack of something essential to their completeness, which was not helped by her dark, sunken sockets. Their strained look hinted at a darkness about her that could not be solved or dissolved very easily, thought Jo.

  Nor did she take offence from it, since Freya’s glare was aggressive only in so far as it was protective of herself and her dog.

  Still she seemed to be about to say something to her.

  Did she even know where to start?

  ‘This snow’s getting worse. At least step back inside the porch.’

  Freya tightened her eyebrows with regret. It could also have been an expression of physical pain or constant struggle.

  ‘Goodbye Jo.’

  ‘Forgive me, you must be very busy. But do please tell me one thing before you go. How well do you know Susie Grossman?’

  Freya executed an abrupt about-turn. She did it in an act of rash petulance. For someone in their mid-twenties she was strangely lizard-like. Observing how loosely the reefer coat sat upon her shoulders, Jo had to conclude that she was not so much slim as wiry. Her wrists and ankles were lean, tough and sinewy. She was no less striking for all that. But in her smile there was a sudden fury that she couldn’t hide.

  ‘Go to hell.’

  From inside the cathedral there rose the joyous sound of a psalm.

  Jo couldn’t resist one last try.

  ‘The thing is, Susie says Sarah Smith was in some kind of trouble. So does her husband Bruno – in fact, he doesn’t think she died accidently, at all. I’ve been looking into the circumstances of the car crash. I thought you might be able to shed some light on your friend’s last movements? As I say, why don’t we have a chat over coffee?’

  But it made no difference.

  Freya glared at her with all the fury of some captive animal.

  This was her decision.

  ‘I can never have coffee with you or anyone else, Jo.’

  ‘That sounds very final.’

  Her smile was oh, so sweet and oh, so bitter. Her eyes flashed angrily.

  ‘I’m sorry, that’s just how it is.’

  FORTY-SIX

  ‘Careful,’ said Nora and stopped dead in the moon-lit shadows. Her teeth bit crystals. Her breathing came in sharp, shallow bursts. Ice encrusted her eyelashes. ‘Is that a house I can see up ahead?’

  Thibaut took her hand beside the railway track and waited – should they go straight on or go round? He honestly had no idea. Something told him that they were about to make a terrible mistake. Suddenly there came that blood-curdling shriek from the Forest again. His knees went weak. The hairs rose on the back of his neck. He worried that those men on the Norton motorcycle would return any minute.

  ‘We should keep our distance.’

  No need to. That’s not what Nora was saying. That shout just now had nothing to do with them. It was not even an owl this time – it wa
s just a fox’s scream magnified by the black mouth of the railway tunnel close behind them. Good for her. She had better nerves than him. As they advanced again, very slowly, they saw how the little home stood all alone. That’s because its tenant operated the nearby railway level crossing whose heavy white gates blocked the road? The name over the brown, wooden porch said Tunnel Cottage.

  Nora ducked and dived by a hedge alongside a small garden.

  ‘I don’t see any lights in the windows, do you?’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘We should look for food. This snow isn’t slackening. We’ll die if we spend any longer in the cold.’

  After the noisy fox, everywhere had an unruffled, hushed tranquillity in the bitter landscape. Frosted wires sagged between telegraph poles like heavy spiders’ webs.

  ‘What do you think it all means?’ asked Thibaut.

  ‘Whoever lives here won’t be gone for long.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Maybe get in via the back, somewhere?’

  ‘Makes sense.’

  The view through the window of a brick outhouse revealed an oil stove, a sack of potatoes, a shovel and a wringer. A man’s newly washed clothes hung from two strings while a few cups and plates sat in a wooden rack and drained into an adjacent sink, in some sort of scullery. Its door was not much more than a crudely assembled, ill-fitting series of planks, they discovered. It could have been the entrance to a garden shed.

  Nora gripped the crude metal latch.

  Thibaut stayed her hand.

  ‘Is this such a good idea?’

  ‘I don’t know where else we can go.’

  ‘What if there’s a dog? We could get bitten to death.’

  ‘Don’t I know it.’

  ‘Okay, give it a try.’

  To their astonishment the latch lifted.

  ‘Wow,’ said Nora, ‘that’s lucky.’

  Thibaut followed her inside and the sandstone cottage seemed as peaceful as the grave. Only the soothing tick-tock of a large pendulum clock in the narrow passageway broke the stillness.

  Next moment he put a warning finger to his lips. A black oil lamp had consumed all its paraffin in its reservoir and burnt out on the table. It was still warm. A few red coals glowed very low in a cast iron fireplace in the parlour, but there was no sign of any occupant in any of the chairs. He pointed silently upstairs, then took a deep breath as he began to mount their bare, wooden steps. He was certain to give himself away at the next creak in the treads?

  Near total darkness wrapped him from head to toe with its monkish cloak – he was soon groping his way higher and higher in a grotesque shadow of himself.

  At the head of the staircase he stopped and listened intently.

  No sound of anyone dreaming or snoring issued from the one tiny bedroom.

  But that didn’t prove a thing.

  Only by approaching the black, iron bedstead itself could he see if anyone lay asleep under its covers.

  Once more he trod knotted wooden planks that squeaked and protested.

  Nearly there.

  He was not sure removing his shoes would be much help.

  A railway timetable lay open on a table, with some trains ringed with black ink to remind the reader to open the level crossing gates at the correct hour to let them pass.

  Anything else?

  Oh, scarcely. He stood by the empty bedstead’s brass knobs, but not before his foot struck something made of china. He froze at the loud clang. Held his breath. Too late, a hand took his arm.

  He should turn, fight and wrestle his opponent to the ground.

  So why didn’t he?

  ‘I found this in the kitchen.’

  It was Nora. She was clutching a National Loaf of the sort that everyone had been eating for over a year now, ever since shortages had made it virtually impossible to bake bread with anything except wholemeal flour. The result was more grey than brown.

  Thibaut felt himself deflate like a balloon.

  Her presence was still quite alarming.

  ‘Say that again.’

  ‘There’s more food in the kitchen larder. And I found some money in a wooden tea caddy. We can eat and move on.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose we can.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Never said a word.’

  ‘Then why are you standing with one foot in a potty.’

  Thibaut came to his senses. He and Nora were alone together in this house of shadows.

  So why worry?

  In point of fact they had temporary shelter.

  They had food.

  They had money.

  Most of all they had each other. Anything else had to be sheer conjecture.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  ‘Three, four, five, six….’

  Jo inhaled as much air as possible without pausing in the icy morning. “The Women’s League Of Health And Beauty’s” idea of a perfect body was definitely a more curvaceous shape, which meant improving her bust. It certainly bust her gut. She was a balloon about to burst as she rotated her torso back and forth from her hips.

  ‘Seven, eight, nine…’

  Such early exercises should do her some good in the cloister garth. Where better? A healthy body was a healthy mind. She just didn’t know it yet. She had gone as far as sending her mother a get well card without promising to visit her any time soon. She hadn’t ruled it out, either, only found refuge in silence. Now she felt a terrible coward. If she could just put the whole matter out of her head with her keep fit routine?

  ‘Ten, eleven, twelve…’

  Bella ignored her owner’s ghastly facial expressions, her tortured limbs and her childlike moans as she did her best to bite falling snowflakes. She chased icy dust-devils that whipped up powdery white drifts in corners of the courtyard and punched holes with her paws. Losing half your hair in an air raid could wear the best of dogs down, but it would take more than a German bomb to destroy her desire to jump for the heavens. Much the same could be said of her one-eared owner.

  Suddenly Jo exhaled forcefully past her chapped lips; she let go an audible breath expressive of tension.

  Should she go to the next level? She just did. First she swung one arm like a propeller before rotating both while bent at the elbow. Honestly, she was better suited to her mother’s waif, breast-less look of the 1930s.

  ‘Unbelievable.’

  John Curtis stepped from the long shadows cast by the minster’s tower; he stood with arms akimbo and arched a dark, ironical eyebrow her way. He brought all his grim authority as verger to bear as he looked down his long red nose at her.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Jo, still churning her arms.

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘You think I’m a lost cause.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose I am.’

  ‘They told me in hospital that I get too stressed by little things – I drive myself too hard.’

  ‘And this helps how, exactly?’ asked John, hugging himself in his black gown.

  ‘I’m vacuuming my stomach.’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself. At this rate the only thing you’ll do is give yourself a hernia.’

  ‘Everyone should do it for at least a minute a day.’

  ‘You don’t say?’

  ‘It works the transverse abdominis muscle that pulls in the abdominal wall. You should try it.’

  ‘Not in a hundred years.’

  ‘This way I get to pull in my waist and push out my boobs. Of course I’m not saying you have b…’

  ‘Let’s keep it that way. You ready to go to the flicks with me yet?’

  ‘Hurry up and pass me my towel.’

  John tossed a snowball to Bella who caught it in mid-air and bit it to pieces. Then he threw her another one. She ‘killed’ that one, too, stone-dead. The third snowball she ignored. For a dog to demonstrate that she was not an automaton should have been sufficient.
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  ‘I gave Sam’s book of train numbers to Freya,’ said Jo, mopping her brow.

  ‘And?’

  ‘She walked off the minute I mentioned Susie Grossman.’

  ‘You mean you failed to win her over.’

  ‘Don’t give me that look, that’s not very nice.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  Jo sought relief from the icy wind inside the cloister alley.

  ‘She obviously knows a lot more than she’s telling.’

  John banged snow off his boots – his toes were already going numb.

  ‘Suppose Freya really was in that car with Sarah on the night she died, what went so horribly wrong? My bet is still on James who tried to stop her leaving.’

  ‘I agree. I’ve seen the bruises.’

  ‘What bruises?’

  ‘On Freya’s neck. She’s been half throttled by him, I’m sure. What’s more, I think she meant me to see them.’

  ‘A man like that?’

  ‘You’re right, I should have called his bluff by now.’

  ‘How so?’

  Jo whistled Bella.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve stayed silent this long.’

  ‘You should be.’

  ‘Okay, to be fair, it’s no one’s business but theirs.’

  ‘Isn’t that what everyone says? We keep too damned quiet…’

  ‘Freya wouldn’t even go for a drink with me.’

  ‘…to spare our own feelings.’

  ‘I asked her before and she said she walked into a door.’

  John raised his eyebrows.

  ‘So we assume she stays with her husband for the sake of her son.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘It wasn’t a question.’

  ‘All this business about returning Sam’s book suggests that Freya loves him very much.’

  ‘Yet Susie Grossman says she couldn’t care less about him.’

  ‘To run away with Sarah was to escape serious abuse at home.’

  ‘We can’t blame her if she put herself first for once.’

  Jo scratched her mutilated ear.

  ‘To recap: Bruno’s quite sure that Sarah discovered something big on James Boreman – big enough to get her killed. She told Freya about it and they joined forces to make a run for it, which is when James struck? So far so good. However, Bruno definitely bears James a grudge. He wants us to see him as the grieving husband, but what if he’s using us to ‘fit up’ his former business partner and greatest enemy? He’d like us to accuse James of foul play to prove a private theory? He’s assuming this ghastly war has somehow brought out the worst in him? He wouldn’t be the first.’