The Final Silence

by Stuart Neville

  I stood there as long as I dared, taking in as much of it as I could. Then I walked down the side street. Not hurrying, not dragging my feet. These houses had no gardens, front doors opening onto the footpath. Paint flaking off the window frames and doors. One house was boarded up.

  Two doors before the house she’d entered there was an alleyway. I saw as I passed that it cut straight through to the next street, with another alley branching off, giving access to the rear of the houses. I pictured it as I walked, yard walls, weeds in the cracks, rubbish bins spilling litter on the ground.

  I turned left at the end of the street and found where the alley opened onto the road. Without pausing, I entered, kept walking, my head down like I knew where I was headed. Just a man taking a short cut between the buildings.

  Counting as I went, I passed the back of her house. A family home, I wondered, her parents’ or her husband’s? She didn’t wear a wedding ring. Or maybe the house was divided into flats. Not that it mattered.

  I kept moving until I reached the back of the boarded-up house. The gate had been forced open long ago. I pressed the wood with my fingertips. The gate eased aside, and I stepped into the yard.

  It felt colder between the walls, like I’d slipped into a dead thing’s womb. I stood close to the brickwork, where no one could see me, and thought.

  The way became clear. Grabbing her would be easy. Keeping her quiet was the problem. And the van. People notice a strange vehicle when it’s parked on their street. And a street like this, where everyone knows each other. But no way could I take her without the van. Disguising it was the only option. It was a white Toyota Hiace. There’d be hundreds of them in the city. Steal a number plate, maybe one of those magnetic signs for the side.

  It was dark by the time I let myself out of the yard. I saw no one until I reached the main road with its traffic and bus stops. I was back at the patch of waste ground where I’d parked the van within half an hour, and I knew exactly how to get it done.

  7

  WITH THE BEDROOM door closed, Lennon swallowed two pills with water. He felt them in his throat, working their way down. Another mouthful from the bottle chased them to his stomach. The headache would fade soon, and the pains in his joints, replaced by that warmth in his veins, the pleasing weight to his eyelids.

  Ellen was quiet in the living area of the flat, doing her homework. Perhaps he could steal half an hour’s sleep before Susan came home from her office. She would pick up her own daughter, Lucy, from swimming classes on the way.

  Susan had taken Ellen and him in when he was released from hospital a year ago. He had rented out his own apartment on the floor below, leaving all but his clothes behind. Susan had nursed him, cleaned his wounds, changed his dressings. All on top of caring for her own little girl, and her career, giving him the closest thing he’d ever had to a family.

  No time to think of her now. He had work to do. Or what he thought of as work.

  The small electronic safe was bolted to the floor of Susan’s walk-in closet. He knelt down, enduring the pain it caused, and pressed a series of six numbers on the keypad: Ellen’s birthday, day, month, year. A soft whirr as the safe unlocked.

  Pages and pages inside, bound together in a manila file, much of it collected in the weeks before his suspension. Prints and photocopies of arrest records, memos, emails, reports to the Public Prosecutions Service. Almost thirty cases that had fallen through due to misplaced evidence, witnesses withdrawing statements, or requests from C3 Intelligence Branch to halt investigations in order to protect informants.

  DCI Dan Hewitt’s name was all over them.

  Lennon knew in his gut that Hewitt had paid a fellow officer to try to kill him in the car park of Belfast International Airport two Christmases ago. As he had lain on the frost-covered ground, three bullets in him, consciousness slipping away, it was Dan Hewitt’s face Lennon saw through the fog.

  Hours later, a taxi driver and a Lithuanian businessman were executed on the road to the same airport. He had no proof, but Lennon believed that if Hewitt hadn’t pulled the trigger himself, then he’d hired someone to do it for him.

  Two things had got Lennon through the days and weeks in hospital, the hours upon hours of agonising physiotherapy. His daughter, the only real and meaningful thing he had in his life, and the idea of nailing Hewitt for what he’d done.

  In truth, he’d made little progress towards that goal in the last twelve months, but still he sought refuge in the materials he had gathered, poring over every page, imagining the day he would bring Hewitt down. Occasionally, CI Uprichard, Lennon’s only remaining friend on the force, would pass him a few relevant pages. Lennon knew it was only to appease him, to keep his anger and hatred for Hewitt from boiling over, from becoming dangerous. And it worked, to an extent.

  Susan called it an obsession, and Lennon knew she was right. But that didn’t necessarily make it unhealthy. She had stopped listening when he told her the grimy details he had uncovered, and eventually told him to keep his findings to himself.

  Stalking, she called it. Why couldn’t he let it go? she asked. Think about us, our relationship, the girls, his daughter and hers. Ellen and Lucy had become like sisters since Lennon had given up his flat and moved in with Susan.

  Lennon tried. But it was Hewitt who kept him from sleep at night, kept him reaching for the pills that would close his eyes and dull his mind.

  ‘Daddy,’ Ellen said.

  Lennon spun towards the door.

  She stood there, fingers knotted together, as if seeking his permission to enter. He held out his hand, and she approached.

  ‘What’s up, darling?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  He patted the bed beside him, and she climbed up. He gathered up the few pages he’d removed from the file and slipped them back inside. Ellen pretended she hadn’t seen them.

  Lennon asked, ‘Have you finished your homework?’

  Ellen nodded. ‘It was sums. They were easy.’

  ‘Good,’ he said.

  She leaned into him, and he put his arm around her shoulder. Her soft hair tickling his lips and nose.

  ‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’

  Ellen remained quiet, but he could feel the quandary in her.

  ‘Tell me, darling.’

  She inhaled once and said, ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘Anywhere.’

  He asked, ‘What do you mean? Who says you have to go anywhere?’

  ‘I like living here,’ she said, her voice little more than an expulsion of air. ‘I like living with Lucy. And Susan, too. I don’t want to go.’

  ‘Is this about your aunt Bernie?’ he asked. ‘If she’s bothering you, you don’t have to see her any more. She won’t take you away from me.’

  ‘It’s not her,’ Ellen said.

  ‘Has Lucy said something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did her mummy say something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why do you think you’ll have to go anywhere?’

  ‘Just,’ she said, shrugging.

  Lennon felt the fine bones of her shoulders through her school cardigan. Soon after Ellen came into his care, after her mother’s death, he realised she saw and felt things she shouldn’t, secrets she could never know, but somehow did. He wanted to call it intuition, like Susan, but he knew it was more than that. He tried not to think too much about it: to do so would be to risk his already fragile sanity, and Ellen had learned to keep such things to herself.

  But now this.

  As the painkillers began to dull the blade that dug into his head, Lennon said, ‘Well, you’re not going anywhere. What would I do without you?’

  He didn’t dare ask himself that question too often. Ellen was the thread that kept him tethered to his own life. In the coldest hours of the night, she kept the most terrifying possibilities from his mind.

  Lennon had come closest six months ago. He had built u
p a stock of painkillers, over-the-counter and prescription-only, enough to stop a horse’s heart. He had wondered how many he could swallow with vodka, how many it would take to put him under. He had seen enough suicides over the years to know how ugly a death it could be. The idea of Ellen finding him, vomit crusting around his mouth, made him flush most of the pills away. But not all of them.

  He sometimes thanked God that his personal protection weapon had been taken from him when he was suspended. Officers were only relieved of their standard issue Glock 17s when their transgressions involved firearms. That Lennon had shot a fellow policeman, albeit in self-defence, certainly qualified. Had he still possessed the pistol over the last year or so, Lennon wasn’t sure he’d still be alive.

  ‘Neither of us is going anywhere,’ he said.

  She looked up at him. Not a word, but she didn’t need to say anything.

  Ellen slipped off the bed leaving Lennon to feel like a liar even though he was sure he had told her the truth.

  8

  REA SAT DOWN in the chair. It creaked beneath her weight. She felt heavier than she had before, as if the words she read had crept under her skin, small leaden things to drag her to the floor.

  She brought her hand to her mouth, stomach cold and slippery inside, trying to creep up to her throat once more. She took the mobile phone from her pocket and opened the contacts.

  ‘Hello?’ her mother answered.

  ‘It’s me,’ Rea said. ‘I need you to come back to the house.’

  ‘But I’m not dressed,’ Ida said. ‘I’m running a bath.’

  ‘Please. I need you to come now.’

  ‘Why? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Just come. Please.’

  ‘All right. But I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong. You’ve got me all worried, now.’

  ‘Don’t be long,’ Rea said, and hung up.

  She felt suddenly cold, air moving around her as if the house had taken a breath. How long had she been sitting here? The thin trickle of light that had slipped past the closed blind had weakened and disappeared.

  Her skin prickled, the fine hairs on her hands stood on end. That cool draught again, air displaced.

  Someone was in the house.

  The certainty of it formed in her, hard and immovable. She sat motionless, frozen in the chair, listening, staring at the open doorway and the landing beyond, now cast in a strange blue grey by the coming evening.

  A creak from below.

  Absolutely, definitely a creak. No question about it.

  It wasn’t until Rea’s head went light that she realised she’d been holding her breath. She let it out with a hiss, sucked air back in. Her heart bounced in her chest; she put a hand between her breasts as if to calm it.

  Well, what are you going to do? she thought. Sit here and wait? Or go and see?

  Rea stood. Her legs quivered with adrenalin.

  ‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Who’s there?’

  She listened. No reply came.

  Another creak.

  ‘Fuck,’ she whispered.

  She walked to the doorway, treading as soft as she could on the bare floorboards. Each footstep felt like a thunderclap. She stopped on the threshold, listened again.

  Nothing. But still that cool draught, brushing against her cheek.

  ‘Hello?’ she called again.

  No answer.

  She walked three paces to the top of the stairs.

  ‘I know you’re there. I’ve called the police. Get out now before they come.’

  Her voice resonated in the stairway and hall below, coming back to her as a hollow, frightened girlish sound.

  Yep, she thought, that’ll scare them off.

  Them. Was she sure there was anybody? The certainty that had taken root so firmly in her moments before now seemed to crack and crumble. There was probably no one. It was an old house, at least a century, and old houses are draughty and creaky. Everyone knows that. Feeling more brave and foolish with each step, Rea made her way downstairs.

  There’ll be a cat, she thought. A cat, and it’ll jump out and hiss and scare the shit out of me. Then I’ll turn around, and Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger will be standing there with a big fuck-off knife.

  By the time Rea’s foot left the bottom step, all notions of intruders, armed or otherwise, had dissolved like the childish fantasies they were. She reached for the hall light switch and flicked it on. The bin bags still lay there, lined up, waiting to be taken to the dump. They’d have to wait another day.

  Creak.

  She gasped, spun on her heels. And then she understood.

  The front door moved in the breeze, its hinges groaning. Of course. Her father had promised to see about getting it fixed, said that it needed a good shove to close it properly.

  Rea went to the door, put her hip against it, and pushed. The key still in the hole, she turned it, heard the snap and clunk of the tumbler.

  She walked to the back sitting room, turning the lights on as she went, and made her way to the kitchen beyond. Ugly floral linoleum on the floor, cupboards and drawers that should have been replaced twenty years ago. A fluorescent strip light on the ceiling that accentuated the worst features of the room. At the brown plastic sink, she poured herself a cup of water. She gazed out into the garden, wondering if she had the nerve to return to the book and the handwritten pages that waited upstairs.

  Minutes later, she did.

  She read a story about a boy called Andrew.

  Andrew

  27TH MARCH 1994

  I NEVER FOUND out Andrew’s second name. No one ever reported him missing. Not a single person noticed he had gone, even his companion on the night I picked him up. At least, no one who would go to the police.

  He wasn’t planned. There was no preparation. No following, no watching. It just happened.

  Maybe I should regret it, but regret is an emotion I don’t understand. I understand anger, and lust. Sometimes I think I know love, what it feels like, so big inside me that I fear I’ll burst. Do you feel that, sometimes?

  I never did another like Gwen Headley. The preparation, the planning, the following, the watching. I am not careful enough. I have read about men who can do those things, over and over again, one after the other. The wicked inside me wouldn’t allow me to do that. I got lucky with Gwen. I would not be so lucky if I tried it again, I know that.

  But Andrew.

  I’d been in Leeds for three months. They were building a hotel just off the M621 motorway, the kind of place sales reps would stay at. Lonely men, like me. The contractor worked out of Dublin, bringing some men over, hiring some on the ground. They put us up in Portakabins on the site. They were cold and damp, the cots hard, the blankets thin. Some of the boys slept in their cars or vans instead, others went into the city to see if they could pull women, as much to get a warm bed as to fornicate.

  That night, I drove through the city centre to Spencer Place, the road that runs north to south, all hedges and walls and tall leafy trees. Anywhere else, it’d be where the rich people lived, with its big houses and driveways. Here, it’s where a man goes to buy the things he needs. Girls, boys, drugs.

  I don’t bother much with the drugs. I don’t like losing control. You know I find it hard to hold on to myself as it is. Bad things might happen. But that night, I wanted a boy.

  Not to fornicate with, at least not in that way. I am not one of those men. I know I am not, whatever anyone else says, I am not.

  My uncle told me I was. When he held me down, the pillow over my face. So big, so strong. Thick arms pinning me to the bed. A nancy, he told me, a sissy. Not a boy, he’d say, not a real boy who’d grow to be a man. A real boy wouldn’t let him do those things he did to me. A real boy, a someday-man, would fight back. Would say no loud enough to make it stop.

  I could never say no loud enough. I was never strong enough to make him stop. Not until I was fourteen, when I hit him so hard he never so much as looked at me again.

  In L
eeds, I’d got rid of the Toyota van I’d had in Manchester and bought an old blue Ford Transit. That night, I pulled up beside a pair of young men in tight jeans. I could tell by the way they smoked their cigarettes, the way they fidgeted, the hollowness in their faces, that they were rattling – suffering for want of some heroin. They would work for cheap.

  I wound down the passenger window and they both approached.

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘Two for the price of one, love,’ the taller boy said. He had a Glasgow accent. ‘Both of us for fifty quid. Bargain, eh?’

  Hateful animals. Nancy boys. Sissies.

  ‘I only want one. So twenty-five, then.’

  ‘Fifty,’ he said. ‘I said two for one. You only want one, that’s your lookout.’

  I started to wind the window up.

  ‘Hang on,’ he called before I could close it.

  I wound the window back down.

  ‘Thirty,’ he said.

  ‘All right.’

  He opened the door and went to climb in.

  ‘No,’ I said. I pointed to the other one, the younger, smaller one. ‘Him.’

  The older boy stepped back and exchanged a look with his friend. The younger boy nodded, don’t worry, it’s all right.

  He climbed up into the cabin and closed the door behind him.

  I put the van in gear and said, ‘Close the window, there’s a good lad, keep the cold out.’

  He did as he was told and I moved off towards the park at the northern end of the road.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Andrew,’ he said, keeping his gaze on the passing houses, the cars, the other streetwalkers.

  ‘Is that your real name?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Does it matter?’ he said.

  His accent was north-east. Gateshead, Sunderland. Maybe Newcastle.

  ‘I suppose not,’ I said. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘However old you want me to be,’ he said, smiling, fluttering his eyelids, posing like a girl.