The Final Silence

by Stuart Neville

  ‘Dust and air,’ she whispered.

  Should she call out the locksmith again? His bill for opening the front door had been steep. Rea thought about her bank account. Could she spare that much? Not if she wanted to pay the rent this month.

  The only option was to prise the door open with something. That would damage the frame, and the door, but if she took the house she’d want to change this door anyway. Get one fitted to match the others.

  That decided it. She remembered she’d seen an old toolbox in the garage. She went downstairs. The back door that led from the kitchen to the rear garden remained locked with no key to be found, so Rea exited through the front and walked around the house.

  Her uncle’s battered car was still parked on the driveway, the tax and MOT discs in the window months out of date. It would likely have to be towed and scrapped.

  The garage stood well back from the road, a rusted metal gate between it and the house. She slid back the bolt on the doors and allowed the light in. She looked around its walls. Asbestos cement. Having it pulled down and replaced would be another expense.

  Never mind, she thought, find something to open that bedroom with.

  The rusted metal toolbox lay on the floor at the back of the garage, old paint tins stacked on top. Spiderwebs skimmed Rea’s skin as she went deeper into the dark. She lifted the first couple of tins from the top of the stack – almost empty, going by their weight – and set them aside.

  Rea grabbed the handle of a third and pulled, but its base had been glued to the tin beneath by drying paint, and the remainder of the pile toppled to the floor. She danced back, first to save her toes from the falling tins, then to spare her shoes from the puddle of white emulsion that spread across the concrete.

  ‘Bollocks,’ Rea said.

  The puddle turned to a small lake.

  ‘Shit,’ Rea said.

  She pictured her father seeing the mess, giving her that withering stare, as if he wondered where he’d got a daughter like her from.

  ‘Tits and arse and fuck,’ Rea said.

  No point in worrying about it now. She edged along the rear wall to avoid the paint and hunkered down by the toolbox. Her balance wavered, and she put a hand out to keep from falling into the white puddle. The paint chilled her palm. She cursed again.

  With her free hand, Rea pushed the toolbox lid up and back. Inside lay a collection of red-mottled metal and cracked plastic. Pliers and screwdrivers. A socket wrench – what her grandfather used to call a rickety – and a few loose bundles of steel wool. She pushed the smaller tools aside, digging deeper into the box.

  Her fingers gripped something harder, colder, more solid. She pulled it, the screwdrivers and pliers clattering aside. It was heavy, a little more than a foot and a half long, curved at each end with fissures in its flattened blades. A crowbar. She had never used one in her life, but it looked like the right tool for the job.

  She skirted the paint and headed back outside.

  Across the road, a young man in a dark navy suit stood on the garden wall of the house opposite. He smoothed a sticker over the estate agent’s sign, covering the words ‘To Let’ with ‘Let By’. He spotted her as she headed for the front door of her uncle’s home.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he called.

  Rea paused on the doorstep and looked across.

  He waved, hopped down from the wall, and jogged towards her. The garden gate creaked as he let himself through. Even younger than she’d thought, early- to mid-twenties at most. Probably just out of university. He extended his hand as he approached.

  ‘Mark Jarvis,’ he said. ‘Mason and Higgs Estate Agents.’

  Rea showed him her paint-coated palm.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, lowering his hand. ‘One of the neighbours told me your bad news. I’m sorry for your trouble.’

  Rea blinked at him, confused for a moment, before she said, ‘Oh. Thank you.’

  She knew what was coming, braced, instructed herself to be polite.

  He gave her a broad, deferential smile. ‘I just wondered if you’d decided what to do with the property yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Look, I’ve got a lot to—’

  ‘I understand,’ he said, holding his hands up. ‘But I wanted to make you aware that sales are picking up in the area if the houses are priced right, and of course the rental market is very healthy right now.’

  He waved a hand at the house across the street.

  Rea swallowed the urge to swear at him, to slap his smug face. Or to leave a white emulsion handprint on the back of his nice clean suit.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but this really isn’t a good time to—’

  ‘I understand,’ he said again. ‘But I just want to make sure you’re aware of the services we can offer—’

  Before she knew what she was doing, Rea silenced him with her palm pressed against his mouth. He stepped back, white paint dripping from his lips onto his tie.

  ‘I told you it’s not a good time.’ She showed him the crowbar. ‘Now I’d be obliged if you’d piss off and leave me alone.’

  He retreated along the garden path, spitting paint, fishing a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Sorry for your trouble,’ he mumbled.

  Rea stepped into the house and pushed the front door closed with her hip. She stood there for a time, her back against the wood and glass, cursing herself for being foolish enough to let the little prick annoy her. He was just doing his job, being as pushy as he was trained to be.

  ‘It’ll wash off,’ she said to the empty hall.

  Upstairs in the bathroom she ran water over her hand, rubbed her fingers, rinsed as much of the paint away as she could. Still it remained in the creases of her skin and beneath her nails.

  ‘Stupid girl,’ she scolded the mirror.

  At the age of thirty-four, Rea Carlisle still considered herself a child. While everyone she’d gone to school with seemed to be enjoying glittering careers, beautiful families, or both, she felt for ever stalled in some teenager’s mind.

  ‘Grow up,’ she said.

  The resonance of her voice in the bathroom unnerved her. She wiped her hands dry on the stained towel and retrieved the crowbar from the floor.

  Back out on the landing, the locked bedroom door glowered at her. A hot and bitter swell of anger made her clench her jaw. She’d be damned if a bloody lock would keep her out of a room in what was almost certainly now her own house.

  Rea pressed the blade at the straighter end of the crowbar into the gap between the door and its frame, close to the lock. It barely penetrated. She pushed harder, putting her shoulder behind it. The blade went no more than a fraction of an inch deeper. Rea leaned against the crowbar, putting all her weight behind it. She heard a scratching, cracking noise, then felt the crowbar break loose of the door frame, saw the landing carpet coming up at her.

  Rea fell hard on her chest, trapping the crowbar between her ribs and the floor. She cried out as the metal jabbed into the flesh beneath her breast. The pain bloomed, and she rolled onto her back, hissing through her teeth. She slipped her hand beneath the fabric of her T-shirt, felt the offended ribcage for blood. Tender, but the skin was unbroken. She breathed in and out, expecting the pain to grow to a shriek as her ribcage expanded. Nothing broken, thank God. She imagined explaining a cracked rib to her father.

  ‘Stupid girl,’ she said.

  Rea grabbed the crowbar and got back to her feet. She examined the minor damage she’d inflicted on the door frame. Barely a chip on the paintwork, but it was a start.

  She returned the crowbar’s blade to the tiny furrow it had dug. This time, she worked the blade back and forth, widening the gap before pushing it deeper. Soon she had forced the crowbar’s tip in by a quarter of an inch. Not too hard. Only a little sweat on her back.

  Rea kept working, back and forth, pushing, rewarded by the grinding and cracking. The frame took the brunt of the damage, its wood softer than that of the door. When the blade had dug in almost half an
inch, it met something solid. The latch plate, she thought. The crowbar would go no further.

  She took her hands away. The crowbar remained suspended, wedged in place. She felt her pulse in her ears. What if she wasn’t strong enough to force the door open?

  ‘Course I am,’ she said.

  Rea gripped the crowbar, set her feet apart, and pulled. Pressure built inside her head. Her shoulders shook with the effort.

  Nothing.

  She released the bar and let her hands drop to her sides. A cold line of sweat ran from her temple to her cheek. She gripped the crowbar again and leaned back, pushing with her legs, using the weight of her body.

  A hard crack, and the door moved. Only a fraction of an inch, but it moved.

  Rea’s breath came in gulps, her heart feeling like it would force its way up her throat.

  ‘This time,’ she said, taking hold of the crowbar once more. She braced one foot against the door frame, planted the other on the floor, and threw her weight back.

  Through no will of her own, a growl started deep in her chest and grew to a strained squeal. Christ, I sound like a pig, she thought. A laugh bubbled up from her belly, but before it could escape, the crowbar came loose of the frame and she fell tumbling backwards.

  The back of Rea’s head connected with the wood of the banister and a fierce light flared behind her eyes. The world lurched and shifted. Time creased like folded paper.

  Something warm and metallic in her mouth. She swallowed, felt a gnawing pain at the back of her tongue. Bitten it, probably, but she couldn’t remember when. How long had passed?

  Rea sat upright, rested her shoulders against the banister. She touched her fingertips to the back of her head. Tender, but her scalp was unbroken. A goose egg had already swollen beneath the skin. She turned her head from one side to the other. The muscles in her neck twitched and flickered with pain. Could’ve been worse, she thought. She’d known a boy at school who’d been left paralysed from the neck down after a simple fall.

  What had she been thinking, anyway? She should’ve waited until her father was there to help. But then, she’d always been like that. Flashes of bravado followed by regret and retreat to her parents’ safety net.

  All to get a bloody door open.

  Then she looked up and saw the empty space where the door had been. And the room beyond, dark as a cave.

  5

  LENNON WALKED THROUGH the doors of the old Presbyterian church on the Falls Road. The building had been expanded and converted into an Irish cultural centre with a theatre, a cafe, exhibition rooms and galleries. He made his way upstairs to one of the classrooms and found it empty save for the Irish dance teacher packing up her gear. Lennon couldn’t remember her name.

  ‘I’m here to collect my daughter,’ he said.

  The teacher looked up from the collection of CDs she was stowing into a bag.

  ‘Ellen McKenna,’ Lennon said.

  The teacher smiled. ‘Oh, Ellen? Her aunt came for her.’

  Lennon cursed under his breath. He was no more than ten minutes late, but Bernie McKenna had used those few minutes to swoop and take Ellen. She only lived a two-minute walk away, so Lennon knew Bernie had taken Ellen home, was probably preparing a meal for her.

  He thanked the teacher, headed back downstairs and out onto the street.

  The Irish dance classes had been Bernie McKenna’s idea. Ellen had little interest, and seldom practised, but it kept her aunt off Lennon’s back. Left to his own devices, he would have allowed Ellen no contact with her late mother’s family. They had wanted nothing to do with the child while her mother was alive – Marie McKenna was a traitor for having had a child to a cop, as far as they were concerned – but ever since Ellen was made motherless, they had been trying to claw her away from Lennon.

  It was Susan who persuaded Lennon to allow the McKennas this small amount of access. Ellen was their blood, Susan reminded him. It was unreasonable to keep her away from them. But Lennon knew the kind of filth that the late Michael McKenna had been involved in, and that many of his clan were still delving into. Even so, he acquiesced, and allowed Bernie McKenna to pick Ellen up from school once a week and take her to these classes. That, and a day out every other Saturday.

  Lennon turned the corner onto Fallswater Parade, a narrow street, two rows of identical terraced houses, each home with a small walled garden to the front. A shallow incline led to Bernie McKenna’s door at the middle of the street. Lennon knew her mother lived next door, with Bernie’s sister taking care of her, and another sister across the street with her family. Ellen’s mother had been raised in one of these houses.

  The small iron gate squeaked on its hinges. A dog in one of the neighbouring houses barked at the noise. Three paces took Lennon to the front door. He rapped on the wood with his knuckles.

  The door opened almost immediately.

  Bernie McKenna said, ‘Oh, look who decided to show up.’

  ‘I was only a few minutes late,’ Lennon said, irritation already blossoming into anger. ‘Is she ready to go?’

  ‘I was just making her a bite to eat,’ Bernie said.

  ‘She’ll have dinner at home. I want to get going before the traffic gets too bad.’

  ‘Daddy,’ Ellen called from the hall.

  She came running, grabbed her bags from the floor, pushed past her great-aunt, and out onto the doorstep. She took her father’s hand in hers and pulled him along the path.

  Bernie’s lips thinned. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But be on time in future.’

  Lennon stopped Ellen’s retreat. ‘Be polite and say goodbye to your aunt.’

  Ellen turned and did as she was told as courteously as she could manage.

  When they reached the gate, Bernie called after them.

  ‘Here, did you think on what we talked about last week?’

  Lennon stopped. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Her confirmation.’ Bernie followed them down the short path. ‘You said you’d think about it.’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ Lennon said. ‘I said no. You told me to think about it. Either way, it’s still no.’

  ‘But she’s coming ten,’ Bernie said. ‘She should be getting ready for her confirmation. If you’d sent her to a good school, not that auld Protestant place, she’d have been getting her classes and—’

  ‘It is a good school,’ Lennon said. ‘Her friends are there. I’m not forcing any religion on my daughter, Protestant, Catholic, or otherwise. She can make her own mind up when she’s old enough.’

  Bernie’s voice rose. ‘How can she decide if you won’t let her go to Mass? Even her mother had the decency to get her baptised.’

  ‘I’m not having this discussion with you again,’ Lennon said. He led Ellen away, walking back towards the Falls Road.

  ‘That’s what happens when a man raises a child,’ Bernie shouted after them. ‘It’s a bloody disgrace.’

  Lennon ignored her and kept walking.

  When they’d reached his car, and Lennon was easing into the traffic, Ellen spoke up from the back seat.

  ‘I don’t want to go to those dance classes any more.’

  Lennon glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘It keeps your aunt Bernie happy.’

  ‘She’s my great-aunt,’ Ellen said.

  ‘Still, she’s your family. I don’t like it any more than you do, but that’s the way it is. It’s only once a week. You can stand her once a week, can’t you?’

  Ellen turned her gaze out of the window.

  ‘Can’t you?’ Lennon repeated.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘Good girl,’ Lennon said. ‘It’s part of growing up. There’s things you don’t want to do, but you go ahead and do them anyway, because it’s the right thing. You understand?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  Ellen remained quiet for a time before she asked, ‘Why does Aunt Bernie hate you so much?’

  Lennon applied the handbrake at a set of lights. ‘She thinks I’m
a bad person,’ he said.

  ‘Why does she think that?’ Ellen asked.

  ‘She doesn’t like policemen, for one thing. And she blames me for what happened to your mother.’

  Ellen shook her head. ‘That’s stupid. You tried to help her.’

  Lennon could have argued with his daughter, told her he sometimes blamed himself for Marie McKenna’s death, as illogical as he knew that idea to be. He could have told Ellen that her mother’s fate was only one of the burdens he carried with him every day.

  Instead, he said, ‘I love you, you know that, right?’

  He heard the click of Ellen’s seatbelt coming undone. She leaned over from the back seat, wrapped her arm around him. He kissed her hand. Felt her lips on his cheek. Felt clean for the first time that day.

  ‘Seatbelt,’ he said as the lights changed.

  6

  REA STARED INTO the gloom for long seconds, feeling like a rodent gazing into the mouth of a silent owl.

  After a while, she shook herself, swallowed blood, and said, ‘All right.’

  She got to her feet and steadied herself against the banister as a giddy wave washed through her. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, and she saw that a thin trickle of light seeped in around the edges of a closed blind. She released her grip on the banister and stepped towards the threshold. The painted doorsill creaked beneath her foot.

  Inside, she could make out variations in the dark, blocks that might be furniture, patterns that could be pictures on the walls. She felt for a light switch, found it, and flicked it on. The glare of the single bare bulb made her squint, and she raised her hand as a shield.

  The word ‘office’ appeared in her mind.

  Of course, it was a home office. Just like many people had in a spare bedroom. A desk that looked as if it had been rescued from a school sat at the centre of the room, along with a single chair. A cork noticeboard on one wall, bare but for the drawing pins that dotted it. A large map of the British Isles on another.

  Yet it didn’t make sense.