An Act of Silence

by Colette McBeth

  At the sound of his name, Alexander joins us. He has a familiar face, though from where, I couldn’t tell you.

  I stick with him; not because there’s any instant connection – the guy’s a dick – but he’s the only person in the room who’s more pissed than me. Next to him, I’m a model of sobriety.

  Oh, and at some point he offers me a line. ‘Shall we?’

  I shouldn’t. I’m trying to cut it out. I don’t want to be the car crash I’m threatening to become, but now isn’t the time for abstention. I just need something to get me through the evening.

  Alexander has been here before. He knows his way through the labyrinth of rooms upstairs and he knows where the drugs are. Turns out they’re not his, they’re freebies laid on by Curtis. I don’t know why this makes it sleazier. I’m hardly averse to taking them. But not with this crowd. They should have learnt by now, some of them are touching sixty. Geriatric drug abuse, that’s another level of wrong.

  Back downstairs the party has loosened. Time has raced on. Hours lost. Men lounge on the sofas, tangled in girls. Girls. Too young for the men. They can’t all have got lucky, judging by the state of some of them. Through the film of drugs I see the room properly. Everyone thinks drugs mess with your head, but the opposite is true. They bring everything into focus and what I’m seeing makes me sick to my stomach.

  Curtis is next to me. ‘I have something for you.’ He motions for me to follow him and I do because I don’t want to spend another minute looking at the men with those girls.

  Only, it’s worse upstairs. There are voices coming from rooms, muffled sounds I can’t and don’t want to decipher. I feel like I’m levitating across the hallway, wheeling after Curtis wherever he’s taking me.

  Finally, he stops, pushes open a door. ‘I thought you’d like this room.’ Then he’s gone. It’s just me and the girl.

  Could you?

  Everyone else here is doing it. It’s obviously the point of the party. It strikes me how wrong becomes acceptable if enough people around you do it. Just look at the fucking Nazis.

  Could you?

  I assess her. She’s out of it. Struggles to open her eyes, more wasted than me.

  The question repulses me. I am not that person.

  Is my public image so sleazy that Curtis believes I’m one of them? That I would sink this low?

  ‘How old are you?’ I ask the girl.

  She shakes her head and peers past me as if searching the room for her answer. Her eyes can’t grip on to anything. I’m far from sober myself but I try to follow her, scanning the back wall of the room to where her gaze leads me. It’s easy to miss, sitting on a shelf: a tiny red eye. All-seeing.

  ‘Bastard.’

  I open the machine and remove the card.

  ‘Now tell me how old you are.’

  ‘Fifteen,’ she pushes the word out and falls back on the bed and the room collapses around me.

  The monster has tricked me again.

  I run out of the room, out of the door. Down the drive. The country air bites into me, the road is pitch-dark, noises of the night chase me. I walk and walk until I’m capable of clear thought. I call a cab to take me home.

  That weekend I wait until I’ve sobered up but I can’t hold my disgust down. It’s radioactive. I need to pass it on, to make all the things at that party stop. I call the police. An officer comes out to visit me. His name is DS Jay Huxtable.

  I tell him about the pig role and the party. I don’t like Huxtable. His face is a picture of disbelief. Curtis Loewe is a national institution, it says. You’d have better luck accusing the Queen of joining ISIS. Fuck you, my face replies. I’m not letting this drop. The girls were underage. They should arrest him. It’s clearly not the first time or the last. They have a duty of care.

  Don’t they?

  Weeks later, after questioning Curtis Loewe, they turn on me: What were you doing at the party, Mr Miller? We have eyewitnesses who say you were ejected for taking drugs. Do you take drugs, Mr Miller? What about this photograph showing you snorting cocaine off this woman’s breasts? That’s you, isn’t it?

  It’s not long before DS Huxtable calls to say there is insufficient evidence to proceed with an investigation. His tone is dismissive, weighted with a snigger. Who would take your word over the legend that is Curtis Loewe?

  ‘Safe to say you won’t be getting the talking pig part now,’ he says.

  I put the phone down. My hands are shaking and I’m not even hungover, but I will be tomorrow. I open a bottle of whisky and heave as it hits the back of my throat.

  There is something sickeningly familiar about the feeling that floods my veins; the terror of telling the truth but having no one, not a single soul, believe me.

  Thursday, 10.55 a.m.

  Linda

  A happy ending. Saved in the nick of time.

  Not quite.

  Spot the difference.

  Anna gets out of the car. She’s about to make a run for it, surely.

  But.

  She heads straight for DS Huxtable, and it is here, at this juncture, that the picture begins to warp.

  They speak. There’s an undeniable familiarity between them that causes my insides to shift, somersault. I can’t hear the words they share; dread fills my head with its own sound.

  Still locked inside the car, I bang on the window to attract the detective’s attention.

  HELP!

  Neither of them take any notice.

  They finish their conversation and Anna walks away from the car towards the van. She turns back once, a look that lingers.

  Why?

  It is left to DS Huxtable to extricate me. He saunters across the yard, in no hurry, not a scratch of concern on his face.

  Help? The notion is fading. I root around, desperately, to get a handle on what has just happened, what is going to happen, but my vision is unsteady and the shapes are shifting in front of my eyes.

  Huxtable reaches the passenger door, clicks the keys.

  ‘DS Huxtable?’ I say. A question now, not a greeting.

  His face is a blank, scrubbed of emotion. ‘If you say so,’ he says. The ground that was solid only a few seconds ago tilts again. Relief vanishes as if it were an optical illusion.

  ‘There’s someone who wants to see you,’ he says, pulling me out of the car. ‘An old friend. I’m going to take you to meet him.’

  Henry Sinclair.

  Who else?

  They win again.

  Inside the van I shiver uncontrollably. My trousers, wet from the puddle, are now stiff with cold. Huxtable sits in the back with me, fleece, jacket, thick boots. He shouts to whoever is driving, ‘Turn the heating on, I’m freezing back here.’

  A glimpse of humanity blown away with his next breath: ‘I should bring you up to date. Gabriel is about to be charged with murder.’

  Saturday, 15 November 2014

  Gabriel, aged 30

  No matter how many women I fuck, I can’t find what I’m looking for. In fact the inverse is true: the more I fuck, the less likely I am to find it. The ‘it’ is love. There, I’ve said it. I want to be loved. Pathetic, isn’t it? A man of thirty craving the affection his mother never gave him. You wouldn’t believe how much money I’ve paid for that insight and it doesn’t change a thing. I’m no closer to discovering my holy grail.

  The newspapers call me a womaniser, lothario or serial bonker (that last one courtesy of the Star), but what they don’t know is that at the beginning of every liaison there’s an honest to God, could-this-be-it? flare of hope. And yes, I am aware that the chances of finding someone special in a bar in Soho at one in the morning are slim to nonexistent, but the romantic (or the drunkard) in me ignores this probability and steams right in. The hope is always short-lived. At the mo
st it lasts five minutes or so, sometimes less. On occasion, the first word a woman utters kills it dead, but on I march, my dick leading me forward.

  Tonight her name is Mariela. We’re in a sushi bar in Hampstead that’s decked out like a boudoir. The few friends that accompanied me here are on their twentieth toilet trip of the evening, sniffing Colombia’s finest from the porcelain loo seats. I’m aware of her picking me out of the crowd, her gaze burning into me, and by the time she throws me a smile, I’m a lost cause, a prisoner, felled by desire. She’s got big glossy hair and a red dress that’s scooped low at the back. I reach out as if to trace my finger down her spine.

  Please, let her be the one.

  Mariela is not the one. This I deduce when she tries to pull my trousers down in the street like I’m so hot she can’t wait another second. I’m all for singing my own praises, but in my current state, ten hours into a session, I’d be hard pushed to elicit any kind of lust, let alone the sort that needs it right now. So I know Mariela is faking it but once I get past the disappointment there are consolations, like the way her hand is stroking my cock so expertly.

  ‘Let’s go to your house,’ she says. As a rule, I use hotels but my dick makes the decision tonight. It says, whatever you want.

  As predicted, Mariela is fiery, all nails and biting. She draws blood and smiles when she licks it from her lips. She wants it hard. She wants Gabriel Miller the sexual caricature and I’ve taken enough drugs to become him. I give her what she wants. Twice. Sometimes I wonder how I do it.

  Afterwards, when her breathing goes sleep deep, I remember why I use hotel rooms. I can leave whenever I fancy, which is usually in the middle of the night. Sleep doesn’t visit me much these days and there’s nothing worse than lying listening to someone else’s dreams when you have none of your own.

  I wouldn’t say the leaving thing is a strict policy, more of a habit. We both know this is about sex. I’m not breaking any hearts by bailing early.

  I decide to take a walk on the Heath. Leave her to wake up alone so she gets the message. She could nick all my stuff, but honestly, if she wants to take a coffee machine or the Xbox, she’s welcome. I want space in my head. I don’t want to be reminded of who I’ve become.

  As I leave, I shoot her a final glance. She looks peaceful.

  I walk and walk to outrun the drugs that chase through my system and inflate my thoughts into terrors and catastrophes. I must go for miles. The first shoots of light infuse the sky as I head back towards home. Except, I don’t go home, I go to Elsie’s allotment. To her shed. It’s quiet there, peaceful. Elsie is seventy-one and knows me simply as Gabriel. Her knowledge of popular culture is limited to The Archers. She gives me tomatoes and runner beans. I give her time and chat. She knows I come here when I can’t sleep, that is the only place where I can close my eyes and find peace. And I know there’s a spare key to her shed where she plants the marrows. She doesn’t mind that I keep it stocked with red wine. I don’t mind that she drinks more of it than me. Come to think of it, Elsie is probably the friend I value most.

  As usual, I wrap myself in the blanket Elsie keeps in the shed, drink wine and drift off. Morning has scrubbed out the dark when I leave the allotment and return home. My house is empty, Mariela has gone. I change the sheets, shower and slip into bed. Sleep grabs me in fits.

  I wake to bright light beating through the blinds. I pull on some clothes and decide to check on the allotment, make sure I didn’t leave empty bottles and fag ends around.

  I see Elsie in the distance but I don’t get near. She is surrounded by police and an ambulance. A blanket shrouds her. Has she fallen? No, not Elsie. There’s something else.

  A tent has gone up in the furthest corner of her allotment. White, not the kind of tent to force-grow strawberries out of season. People in white suits pad around.

  ‘A body,’ someone says in the small crowd that has gathered.

  All I can think of are Elsie’s tomatoes, the juicy red flesh of them. Poor woman. Maybe she’ll grow cabbages instead.

  I catch a bit of sick and swallow it back down.

  They knock at my door. Two uniformed officers. Routine, they say. ‘Did you see or hear anything last night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you alone?’

  ‘Yes.’ This is true, partly. I was alone for a portion of the night.

  ‘Do you ever use the allotments?’

  ‘I know Elsie.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘That’s what I said. She’s a friend. I help her out sometimes.’

  ‘You’re Gabriel Miller, right?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And you help an elderly lady out with her allotment?’

  Why is that so hard to believe?

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Your friend Elsie discovered the body of a young woman in her allotment this morning.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You see?’

  ‘I mean, that’s awful. Poor Elsie.’

  ‘It’s not too good for the victim either.’

  I watch the news. Wish I hadn’t.

  There is a picture. She looks different, but not so different I can’t recognise her. Mariela. Castell. We never got as far as her surname.

  My mind cracks, wedges open, and all my thoughts are sliced into tiny pieces so nothing makes sense.

  Was it me?

  I close the blinds, get a pen and paper and write down what happened.

  I brought her back here.

  We fucked.

  I left.

  I walked on the Heath.

  I went to Elsie’s shed.

  I scour the route for anything that might have slipped outside my conscious, a fragment of violence, her shadow following me. Back and forward, back and forward I go. Nothing. But even in this state, when the thoughts are cut up and skirting around the room, one keeps returning fully formed. You had sex with her and now she is dead. Dead in the allotment where you spent hours last night.

  Afternoon. I open a bottle of wine to calm me. And another. It was always a long shot.

  At some point the phone rings, a woman’s voice. ‘Mr Miller? This is DS Marek.’ She signs off with the words, ‘We’d like you to come in to Camden police station for questioning tomorrow at midday.’

  It’s only a matter of time. My cigarette butts will be in the shed, the wine bottle.

  My semen inside her.

  Hours fall away. Sleep is too distant a prospect to contemplate. If I sleep, I’m vulnerable. But I can’t stay in the house. I call a cab. Without thinking, I tell the driver to take me to Clapham Common, where I walk briskly through the streets without any purpose, or so I think. I come to a halt outside a house.

  It’s her house.

  This is the place.

  Of course it is.

  And the only thing that matters is that my mother believes me.

  If I don’t have that, what else is left?

  Thursday, 11.03 a.m.

  Linda

  Huxtable pulls out a newspaper from a black rucksack on the seat next to him. ‘It looks like Gabriel is going to be charged today.’

  He hands me the copy. The Times. Written by Jonathan Clancy. The sight of his name sends a pang of longing through me.

  But my thoughts race away from Jonathan as soon as I see the headline.

  I read it once.

  Twice.

  Ten times.

  But I still can’t get the words to make sense.

  COMIC SUSPECTED OF HIS MOTHER’S MURDER

  I turn to Huxtable. ‘But . . .’

  He passes on the chance to reassure me, shrugs and slides his eyes away from mine.

  The air is sucked from my lungs. I am being buried alive, pushe
d down into an abyss.

  Someone is trying to frame me.

  That was what my son had said.

  I didn’t believe him, pinned it on his paranoia.

  Because, even knowing all I do about them, I did not imagine, not for a moment, that they would go to such lengths to stop me.

  Frame him to get to me.

  And it is them. There is no one else it can be.

  No one else who would plumb such depths.

  I failed to understand the equation, didn’t join the dots.

  Their actions correlate with how much is at stake.

  If they have everything to lose, they will do anything to win.

  I stare at the newspaper, trace the outline of my son’s face with my finger. Too far away from me now, out of my reach.

  If he’s charged, he will go on trial for my murder.

  And me?

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ I ask.

  ‘You?’ Huxtable says. ‘You don’t even exist.’

  PART THREE

  Good People. Bad Things.

  November 2014

  Anna

  Anna is head girl. A teacher. A pair of court shoes. She’s a neat bob. A little short on laughs, not the kind to stretch a night out beyond eleven o’clock, but she’s dependable, trustworthy. Given the chance, you’d want her on your side.

  My name is not Anna.

  Anna is a creation designed to trick Linda Moscow, to allow me to get close to her, hear the beat of her heart. Make her pay.

  You’re thinking less of me now, admit it. It is there in your eyes. You’ve made a value judgement. Sure, Linda has her faults, but what could drive another woman to lure her into a trap? What scum would pull a trick like that?

  It’s complicated, let me tell you.

  We are all a product of our environment, the choices we make, the ones others make that affect us.

  I’m a good person at heart, but circumstances have driven me to this.