The Final Silence

by Stuart Neville

  From what Ida had told her, Rea’s uncle had been a manual labourer. He had been in the merchant navy at one time, before he’d got married, but he had worked with his hands ever since. Travelled all over Britain and Ireland, wherever he could find employment. Why would he need an office in his home? And who would have an office without a computer of some kind – a laptop, or even one of those little netbooks?

  ‘You didn’t know him,’ she said aloud.

  Rea scolded herself for talking to the empty room. She’d been doing it more and more frequently. A symptom of being single for so long. Next thing, she’d have a dozen cats.

  With a creeping feeling of being an intruder, she crossed to the desk and stood by the chair. The surface of the desk was scarred with childish graffiti, slurs and insults, names of bands who’d come and gone by the eighties. The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Specials. In another patch, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Dio. The kind of music middle-class schoolboys listened to while they squeezed their spots. Rea imagined this piece of furniture in some grammar school, the air thick with chalk dust, an ageing master conjugating Latin verbs while a pale young man scratched the words Echo and the Bunnymen into the wood. Raymond had probably rescued it from a skip somewhere.

  Then she noticed the shallow drawer beneath the desk.

  A plain brass knob at the centre. Rea gripped it and pulled. Wood whispered against wood. She stared at the object within for a time before she could make sense of it.

  A large leather-bound book, like a ledger, or an oversized photo album. Yes, that’s it, she thought. Like a wedding album. Was it from her uncle’s marriage? It didn’t appear to be more than thirty years old, but perhaps it had been well looked after.

  She reached into the drawer and lifted the book. The weight of it surprised her. As it thumped onto the desk, Rea pictured Raymond sitting here, leafing through the pages, gazing at photographs of his dead wife. She felt an ache of pity for him, the latest of many in recent days.

  Rea wondered what her aunt had looked like. She had to think for a moment to remember the name. Carol. Yes, Carol, that was it.

  She opened the book.

  Inside, wedged into the crease between the cover and the first page, was a manila envelope. Rea could tell by its fatness that it contained loose photographs. She lifted it from the book, slid her finger beneath the flap, and slipped the bundle of prints from their paper sheath. Maybe fifteen or twenty in various shapes and sizes.

  The first photograph caused a moment of confused recognition. She stared at the three faces, knowing but unknowing.

  Rea, her mother, and her father. A restaurant with gaudy decorations. Ida Carlisle’s face and arms lobster red, Rea’s the same. A family holiday, one of the very few they’d ever taken, more than a dozen years ago. Rea had just graduated from university, and Ida had insisted they go away to celebrate. Graham had resisted, saying he had far too much work to do, but eventually he gave in.

  They’d gone to Salou in the Costa Dorada for a week, and it had been seven days of solid misery for Rea. If she went out to any of the bars, her parents made their disapproval clear, so she spent most nights rereading the books she’d brought while her father grumbled about the time he’d have to make up when he went back to work.

  Why did her uncle have this picture? Where did he get it? As far as Rea knew, Ida and Raymond hadn’t spoken in years, so it seemed unlikely they would exchange photographs.

  She leafed through the bundle, examining each in turn. A few more portraits of her family, a day trip here, a birthday there, going back perhaps twenty years. A crawling sensation across her skin as she imagined her uncle alone in this room, studying these images.

  Half a dozen older prints showed Raymond in his merchant navy days, two of them in formal uniform, the rest casual shots. Eating at a galley table. Bare-chested on the deck of a ship. Only one showed him smiling, and even that looked like a painful effort for him.

  Rea turned over the last photograph, a Polaroid print, worn and faded. A group of six men, three in the foreground. Paramilitary flags pinned to the wall behind them. Those at the back wore military-style sweaters and trousers with camouflage patterns. Balaclavas covered their faces. They held weapons in their hands, two of which she recognised as AK-47s. The third was a pistol of some kind.

  The front row, three young men, somewhere in their twenties, hunkered down, casual clothes, hands empty. On the left, Raymond Drew, his face expressionless, his eyes burning through the print. In the middle, a young man she didn’t know, grinning. A tattoo on his neck.

  To the right of the row, Graham Carlisle, Rea’s father, smiling. The first thought in her mind: So young. Twenty-four, twenty-five?

  Then she wondered what he was doing with those people, the paramilitaries. And Uncle Raymond. Had they been friends?

  She touched her father’s face and asked herself if she knew him at all. So many questions, and he would answer none of them. Rea determined to take the photograph to her mother, ask her to explain it. She tucked the bundle of pictures back into the envelope, set it aside, and returned her attention to the book.

  The paper was stiff against her fingers as she turned the first page. A minute or more passed as she stared, unable to grasp what she saw.

  A single word, a name, cut from a newspaper headline and glued at the top of the page.

  GWEN.

  Hair, the colour of wheat, a lock of it tied with a fine ribbon and affixed beneath the name. Without thinking, Rea touched it with her fingertip, separating the strands. Smooth and soft against her skin.

  And something else. Something milky translucent, a teardrop shape stuck to the paper, ragged and stained brown at the wider end. Again, Rea touched it, finding the texture maddeningly familiar.

  Then she knew, and her gut tightened. She tasted bile, swallowed, swallowed again, felt the heat in her throat as it opened.

  Rea ran for the bathroom and retched over the basin. And again, her stomach convulsing, her eyes hot and stinging. She turned the taps, released a flow of water to wash the foulness away, even as more streamed from her mouth.

  When it was done, her belly empty and aching, she rinsed her mouth and splashed cold water on her face. Her skin remembered the sensation of the torn fingernail, and her stomach rebelled once more, but she had nothing left.

  Rea lowered herself to the floor and rested her back against the side of the bath. She twined her fingers together to subdue the tremors that ran out from her centre.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said.

  There was no question what it had been. A human fingernail. A woman’s, going by the shape. And the hair. Had they belonged to Raymond’s wife? Had he kept them as a memento of her? Had he called her Gwen, some sort of pet name?

  She pictured Uncle Raymond, or at least the ghost-like memory she had of him, bent over his wife’s open coffin, scissors in one hand, pliers in the other.

  The urge to giggle crept up on her, and she covered her mouth, kept it trapped inside. No one would hear, but even so, she would not laugh at a dead man’s grief.

  All right, she thought. Pull yourself together. Go back and look at it. It’s gross, but it won’t kill you.

  Rea closed her eyes, counted to ten, and climbed to her feet. She walked back to the bedroom and paused in the doorway. The book still lay open on the desk, where she’d left it, the envelope of photographs alongside. She crossed the room slowly, quietly, as if she feared to wake it.

  She stopped, told herself not to be so stupid. A bit of hair and a fingernail. That’s all.

  Rea stepped up to the desk and looked down at the book. What a strange and sad man, she thought, to keep such things in here. Treasures to him, maybe. Precious things to be locked away. She reached for the corner of the page, lifted it, turned it, let it fall away to the other side.

  ‘Oh no,’ Rea said.

  A newspaper article, cut out and pasted to the page.

  MISSING GWEN FEARED ABDUCTED.

  A black and
white photograph of a young woman, a formal portrait taken in some studio, a reluctant smile on her pretty face. Her hair and jewellery years out of fashion.

  ‘Oh God, no,’ Rea said.

  The caption beneath the picture was printed in bold letters.

  Greater Manchester police have expressed concerns for the safety of Gwen Headley, 23, missing since the early hours of Saturday morning.

  Rea felt suddenly cold, as if the air in this secret room had crept and slithered under her clothing. She shivered as she fought the desire to flee the house.

  But she wanted to know.

  On the opposite page, sheets of notepaper glued in place, each one covered in line after line of neat, precise handwriting. And drawings, small, fine sketches of the same girl. And at the top of the first sheet, her name, and a date.

  In spite of every shred of common sense that told her not to, Rea started to read.

  Gwen Headley

  MAY–JUNE 1992

  I MET HER at the post office on Cheetham Hill Road, in the northern part of Manchester. She worked behind the counter. I was there to get a registration form for the van I’d bought while I was working on the site. She had beautiful hair. I watched her through the glass while I pretended I couldn’t find the form.

  I went back the next day to buy stamps. I waited and waited until there was no queue at her window. When I walked up to the glass, she smiled at me, and I shivered.

  For a while I couldn’t think what to say. I just stood there like a fool, staring at her.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. She waited, her eyebrows raised, a little smirk on her lips, and I wanted to put my fist through the glass.

  At last, I said, ‘Stamps.’

  The tag on her blouse said her name was Gwen.

  ‘What sort?’ she asked.

  I kept staring at her.

  ‘First class?’ she asked. ‘Second class?’

  ‘First,’ I said. ‘A dozen first class stamps, please.’

  She tore the stamps off a sheet while I scooped coins from my pocket. I had it exact to the penny and dropped the money into the tray. She slipped the stamps across to me.

  I stood there, the stamps in my hand, for I don’t know how long. Eventually, she asked, ‘Do you need anything else?’

  I said, ‘No, sorry,’ and walked away, my face burning.

  I didn’t sleep that night. The old terraced house on George Street I shared with the other workers, the bunk beds occupied in shifts, all the creaking and snoring around me. I couldn’t get her face out of my mind. That smirk. As if she could see right to the middle of me and tell how rotten I am inside. Judging me.

  The front room of the house had once been a hairdresser’s. The business had closed long ago, the owner fleeing, leaving behind three swivel chairs with their helmet-like dryers, and the mirrors on the walls. The landlord had not bothered to remove them, and I sat in one of the chairs as I thought, watching the street outside lighten.

  I decided then that I would take her.

  I’d done it before, many times, but always on a whim, at random, chances and mistakes leading me to it. Boys and girls both. How many have there been? I can’t be sure. More than twenty years since the first time it happened, back when I was in the merchant navy. I can’t even remember what he looked like, just that it was quick and sudden, and it was over before I knew it had started.

  We’d met in a bar, and he led me to a back alley. Then he wanted to touch me, and I wanted to touch him too, and I couldn’t bear it.

  I remember the heat of it, how quiet he became. I don’t know if he really went silent, or if I went deaf for a little while. Either way, heat and quiet. Then, somehow, it was later and I went back to my ship. I told the Second Officer that I’d got into a fight at a bar. He told me to get down below or he’d have me up in front of the captain in the morning. Lots of us got into fights. A seaman coming back with blood on his clothes was nothing unusual.

  I spent two weeks in terror of being caught. That a call would come over the radio to the boat, that someone wanted to talk to the crew about a dead man. After a month, the fear had gone altogether. I never worried about it again. Not once.

  This time I wanted to do it right. To have a plan. A method. And Gwen would be my first.

  I was lucky. Work had stalled at the site. They were waiting for some fancy kind of glass to come from Sweden, so all the men had to down tools. They put us on half-time to keep us around. Most of the boys spent their days drinking, but not me. I spent them watching Gwen.

  The post office was off the main road, in a little pedestrian arcade, next to a newsagent’s. There was a cafe across the way. I went for lunch there now and again. But not too often. I didn’t want them to notice me as I sat by the window with my fried-egg sandwich and mug of tea, watching the post office through the glass.

  Sometimes she would leave with another girl, sometimes on her own. Sometimes I would follow her. After work, she would walk out onto Cheetham Hill Road, with all the men in dark suits, wide-brimmed hats and beards, and the women with their wigs. The synagogue and the kosher shops. There, near the bank, she waited for her bus, one of the many orange double-deckers that streamed along the road through the day and into the night.

  It took two or three times before I had the courage to join the line behind her, climb aboard, hand the driver the coins and take my ticket. I moved to the back with the shouting school-children. I could see her yellow hair. She never went up to the top deck. She’d stand rather than do that. Her stop wasn’t far, after all.

  I’d watch the streets change as the bus travelled further south towards the city centre. Rows of shops, family places, and greasy spoon restaurants. Some chain stores, a McDonald’s, a Kwik-Save. Within five minutes, the buildings changed to houses, rows of old red-brick places branching off the main road.

  Eight minutes or so before she got off the bus. She’d wait at the lights to cross. I could see her from my seat. I knew I could follow her home from there, see where she lived. But only once. It was almost certain she would notice me. One time might not matter. A second time would. Then it would all be for nothing.

  Six weeks and three days since the first time I’d seen her until the day I followed her home. The site had got back to work, but I’d called off sick more days than I’d turned up. The foreman had sacked me a week before, kicked me out of the house, and I’d been sleeping in my van. I’d been taking cups of tea in cafes just so I could use their toilets to wash in.

  This day, I queued behind Gwen for the bus like I had a dozen times before, five people between me and her. I gave the driver my change, took the ticket, walked to the back. The schoolchildren squawking, the mothers scolding their babies, the shop workers gossiping. The noise of them all coming at me like swarms of flies. I wanted to swat at my ears, to shut them up, but I had to keep calm. Not draw attention.

  I took a seat next to a fat brown-skinned man and kept one hand on the pole, leaning out so I could see her.

  A young man sat across the aisle, chatting to her. A yobbish looking boy, that ugly hairstyle shaved at the sides and gelled flat at the top. A tracksuit, an earring in his ear. He was trying to make her laugh. She was trying to ignore him. I could tell.

  Anger built up inside me. I wanted the boy to stop, to leave her alone. I wanted to rip that earring from his ear. To smash his face with my fists. At each of the three stops before hers, I wanted to scream at him to get off, get away, leave my Gwen in peace.

  But he stayed there, kept grinning and chatting to her, and she kept ignoring him, and I remained silent while the sweat trickled down my ribs.

  It probably only took five minutes to reach her stop, but it felt like hours. She stood before the bus had even halted and made her way to the front. The young man followed her. So did I.

  Maybe a dozen people crammed into the aisle, waiting to step off onto the pavement. They pushed up against me, against Gwen,
against the boy. I smelled them all, their sweat, their dirt, but all through it I could smell her, clean and alive.

  Shoulders nudged shoulders as the bus stopped, the doors hissing open. I was carried along by the people, down onto the footpath. The huddle split, some making for the crossing at the lights.

  The boy was still with her, still picking at her. I could hear him now.

  ‘Go on, give us a chance,’ he said. ‘You might like me.’

  She didn’t look at him. ‘I said, no thank you.’

  ‘Just one chance,’ he said, leaning close. ‘Just a drink.’

  The lights changed, the green signal to walk. She marched ahead, leaving him trailing by a few steps.

  ‘Just one drink,’ he called after her. ‘Come on, just one drink, that’s all.’

  She quickened her pace, making him jog to catch up. She reached the far pavement while he got snagged up in the cluster of people crossing the other way. I stayed behind him, keeping her in my sight.

  When he got to the footpath, he slowed down, breathless. ‘All right, sod you, then. Stuck-up bitch.’

  If she heard, she didn’t show it. She kept her head down and walked towards the corner.

  The boy turned and saw me watching him.

  ‘What the fuck are you looking at? You want some?’

  I would’ve ripped his throat out if I hadn’t wanted to avoid a scene. Instead, I stared at him, let him get a glimpse of me, of the wicked I have inside.

  He went quiet and pale. He swallowed, turned, and walked away. One animal knows another. It knows when to stand, and when to run.

  Gwen had turned the corner. I followed. She was halfway along the street by the time I got her in my sight again. Terraced houses, bay windows, small front yards. Dogs barking, the grumble of traffic from the main road. The dim grey time between the sun fading and the street lights coming on.

  She crossed the road between the parked cars, headed for a side street. I stayed across the road, twenty yards away from her. When I drew level with the side street, I watched her stop six doors down, take a key from her bag, and let herself into the house.