The Final Silence

by Stuart Neville

  She hung up.

  Rea said, ‘He’ll say the same as you, won’t he? Not to call the police.’

  Ida nodded. ‘You know he will.’

  Rea had an answer for that hidden in her pocket.

  Graham Carlisle paced the room, hands clasped at the small of his back. He had worn one of his best suits to the committee meeting, charcoal grey with a pale pinstripe, a well-pressed shirt with French cuffs and a stiff collar. Rea pictured her mother ironing it that morning, feeling like the great woman behind the great man.

  He’d kept in decent shape for a man his age – even a reasonable amount of hair remained on his head – and Rea vaguely remembered that his hard features had once been handsome. Graham had been a lawyer specialising in conveyancing for most of his career. He’d come from as rough a background as Belfast could offer, but he’d clawed his way to a grammar school and university education, unusual for a boy with his upbringing when such opportunities were the preserve of the middle classes.

  His journey into politics began at the time when Rea moved from primary to grammar school. Somehow, Rea had sensed that his standing for election to Belfast City Council had been dependent on her passing her Eleven-Plus exams and getting into the right school. She often told herself that was a foolish idea, but she remembered the morning the results arrived in the post bringing to a climax the months of crushing pressure and tension, the after-school sessions with private maths and English tutors, one mock test after another.

  When her mother opened the envelope she had sat quiet for a few moments, then burst into tears. Rea had stood there watching, waiting, an eleven-year-old child in pyjamas, the future course of her life having been decided by the piece of A4 paper in her mother’s hands. She remembered needing the toilet badly, afraid she might not be able to hold it but terrified of walking away before her mother revealed the result. The tears meant she’d failed, surely. She felt heat in her own eyes, her lip beginning to tremble. There was nothing worse in the world than to fail.

  The first fat, hot drop of salt water had rolled down her cheek when her mother said, ‘You got an A, love. You passed.’

  Rea’s tears flowed freely then, but good tears, tears of relief. Ida came over and embraced her. Yet Rea could not stop crying.

  Graham had come in from the other room where he had been hiding until he knew it was good news. He patted Rea’s head and took a twenty-pound note from his wallet. Rea accepted it, thanked him, understanding this was as much of himself as he would give.

  The following Monday, her father started making calls to his friends and colleagues in the party. He got the nomination for the next council election and comfortably won his seat.

  For twenty-three years, Rea had told herself the timing was a coincidence, though she never quite believed it in her heart.

  Now the Assembly at Stormont; next, Westminster.

  Graham Carlisle had been a man of liberal views, but Rea had watched him turn into one of the grey men of unionism, moulded by the party, becoming more and more conservative as he progressed through the ranks. He had allowed his own beliefs to wither under the shadow of his ambition, no longer a man of principle but a company man, toeing the line set down by his superiors.

  When a party leader had expressed the most archaic homophobic views on a late night BBC news panel, her father had been among the first to defend him the following morning. He trotted out the party policy on gay marriage, said it was against the moral beliefs of the majority of Northern Ireland’s citizens. Rea had watched Graham on the lunchtime news, truly ashamed of her father for the first time in her life. It gave Rea an ache in her breast to see him turning so stony and cold that she barely remembered the man who had held her close as an infant.

  ‘Well?’ Rea asked.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ Graham said, not slowing his step, back and forth, back and forth. He took his glasses off, the fine-framed pair he thought made him look sophisticated, and tapped the tip of the leg against his teeth.

  Rea leaned against the wall, next to the map of the British Isles. Ida had taken the seat at the desk as soon as Graham had vacated it. She had moved it to the other side of the room, as far away from the book as she could manage.

  Graham paused halfway across the floor. ‘How do we even know this is real? What if it’s just some sick fantasy of Raymond’s? Maybe it was all in his head. You said yourself, some of it sounds like he’s away with the fairies.’

  ‘It’s real, Dad,’ Rea said. ‘I looked up Gwen Headley’s name online. It’s all there, how she went missing, all of it.’

  Graham snorted. ‘Oh, it’s on the Internet, so it must be true.’

  ‘It’s on every newspaper website that has an archive going back that far. All the papers reported it at the time. It’s real. And her parents are still wondering what happened to her.’

  ‘If they’re alive,’ Graham said.

  Ida leaned forward in the chair. ‘That’s what I said. Didn’t I say that? They could be dead and buried, for all we know.’

  Rea shook her head. ‘They’d be in their sixties by now, maybe their seventies. Not that much older than you. They’re probably still alive. Still wondering. And it’s not just them. There are other people in the book. Men and women. They all had families, they all had mothers and fathers.’

  ‘Well, I don’t see how this is our problem,’ Graham said. ‘They have my sympathy for what they’ve gone through, but it’s not our place to find answers for them.’

  Rea fought to keep the anger down. ‘What do you mean it’s not our problem? How can it be anyone else’s? Look at the information we have. It’s been our problem since the moment Raymond died.’

  Her father approached the desk, and the book that rested there. He reached for the leather-bound cover and closed it.

  ‘We’ll destroy it,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Rea stepped away from the wall, the anger pushing up and out of her.

  ‘We’ll make a fire in the back garden and burn the book.’

  ‘No.’ Rea’s nails dug into her palms. ‘No, we can’t. How could you do that to them?’

  ‘I’m not doing anything to anybody. Raymond’s dead. He can’t hurt anyone now, and nothing’s going to help that poor girl’s family.’

  ‘What if it was me?’ Rea asked.

  ‘Don’t,’ Ida said, looking up from her hands.

  ‘But what if it was? You’d want to know what happened to me, wouldn’t you? You’d want my body back.’

  Graham’s face hardened. ‘But it’s not you. Look, that girl’s parents are no worse off tonight than they were yesterday. Or last week, or last year. Are they?’

  ‘No,’ Rea said, ‘but that’s not the—’

  ‘Maybe they’d get a little comfort from burying their daughter, but I’d lose my career.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘Yes, I do. You know how the party’s run. Any hint of a scandal, anyone who gets tainted, even if it’s not their fault, they’re done. If this gets out, I’ll be finished. I’d be lucky if they let me go back to a council seat. I can’t afford to lose my salary from the Assembly.’ He paused, looked straight at Rea. ‘We’d have to sell this house, for a start.’

  ‘What, you’re going to bribe me with the house? Do you think I want to live here after finding that book?’

  ‘I’m not trying to bribe you,’ he said. ‘I just want you to know what this would cost me. What it would cost us as a family.’

  Rea’s hand went to her back pocket, felt the Polaroid print between her fingers. ‘What exactly are you afraid of people finding out about you?’

  She approached the table and dropped the picture face up. It spun on the surface, came to rest in front of her father.

  Graham’s face reddened. He stared at the photograph. Ida got to her feet and came to her husband’s side. She looked down at the picture and bit her lip.

  ‘You and Raymond were tied up with the paramilitaries,’ Rea said. ‘What are the
y? UDA? UVF? Are you afraid that’s going to come out now?’

  ‘I was never a member,’ Graham said, bristling as if he’d been insulted. ‘I have contacts in those groups, yes, but I was never a member.’

  ‘Contacts,’ Rea echoed. She did not try to keep the scorn from her voice. ‘So that’s all right, then. You just have contacts with these murdering bastards.’

  A little of Graham’s calm slipped away. ‘That’s right, they’re murdering bastards. But who do you think was there negotiating with them when they called the ceasefires, eh? Who helped to guide them into the peace process? Judge all you want, but those people live and die in the same world we do, and they have as much at stake as the rest of us.’

  He reached for the photograph, but Rea grabbed it first. Graham watched her hand as she tucked the picture back into her hip pocket. She asked, ‘And what about Raymond? Was he one of them?’

  ‘No,’ Graham said. ‘He was like me, he just knew a few people who were involved. He never joined, no matter how many times they asked him.’

  Rea shifted her gaze between her parents. ‘I thought you hardly had any contact with Raymond.’

  Ida spoke up. ‘He got back in touch when he came out of the merchant navy. Just for a year or two. That’s how I met your father.’

  Rea shook her head. ‘God, you two are full of surprises. But none of this solves the problem of what to do with this book.’

  ‘There’s no problem,’ Graham said in a tone he hadn’t used on Rea since she was a teenager. ‘We’re not going to the police, and that’s that.’

  Rea took a step closer, raised her finger. She forced calm into her voice. ‘You can’t stop me going to them.’

  ‘No police. And I’m destroying that book.’

  ‘You’ll be destroying evidence,’ Rea said. ‘As bad as you think this looks for you, it’ll look a hundred times worse if you destroy evidence.’

  Graham frowned at that thought. ‘That’s a point. All right, the book can stay here until I figure out what to do with it – but no police. Now, I’ve got to get back to that meeting. I’ve no time for this carry-on.’

  ‘Please, Dad, you can’t—’

  He came close to her, put his hands on her shoulders, the first time he’d touched her in years.

  ‘Listen to me, sweetheart. I’ve worked so hard all these years, ever since you were a wee girl. Think of everything I’ve sacrificed to get where I am, to get this chance. Think of everything your mother’s done to support me. All those nights I spent away from the both of you for one meeting or another, all the weekends I was out working for the party instead of being with my wife and daughter. Do you really want me to throw everything away now?’

  Rea shook her head. ‘But it’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘Maybe so, but there’s another way. There’s always another way. Your uncle Raymond has gone to answer for what he did, and he’s met whatever justice was waiting for him. But, yes, that poor girl’s parents deserve better. As well as the rest in that book. And I’ll figure out a way to make that happen. Please, trust me, I’ll find a way to handle this right for everybody.’

  Rea closed her eyes and breathed out the last of her anger. ‘I wish I believed you.’

  Graham gave her a sad smile. ‘I’m telling you, I will find a way to make this right. A way so that no one has to suffer.’

  Rea studied his face, noticed new lines she hadn’t seen before.

  ‘You promise?’ she asked.

  11

  LENNON SWALLOWED MORE painkillers with a mouthful of lager. Cheap stuff from the supermarket that came in a can with gaudy lettering. He used to buy good quality stuff, the bottled craft beers made by Whitewater in Kilkeel, or the Hilden brewery in Lisburn, but he could no longer afford the luxury. Not every day, anyway. This was some sort of made-up Czech brand that tasted of metal and sour fruit. The sort of thing the alcoholics bought along with their fortified wine and extra-strong cider.

  He’d started going to a different shop every day, just so the staff wouldn’t recognise him and note that his visits were becoming a habit.

  Becoming? It had been a habit for more than six months now. And Susan had certainly noticed. She didn’t say much, but she no longer wanted to sit with him on the couch in the evenings. Instead, she went to bed, leaving him to drink his cheap beer alone. She was less forgiving of the painkillers.

  Earlier, when he had been alone for an hour, Lennon had gone to the table to find his meal cold on its plate. He reheated it in the microwave and ate it along with the first beer of the night.

  Two hours ago, now.

  He took another swig of lager and focused on the television. He realised the programme he’d been watching – a repeat of a motoring show – had ended, and some eighties comedy film had started in its place.

  The silence in the flat around him felt cold and heavy. How much longer could it go on? He had told Susan he loved her after she had asked him to move in. It had been a lie, and he knew she didn’t believe it, but he had honestly thought he could grow into their relationship, given the time. Instead, resentment had flourished. Eventually, she would want to talk about their life together. He would avoid it as long as possible, but he wouldn’t dodge it for ever. And they would sit at the table, and she would tell him how much she loved Ellen but that they couldn’t go on living there.

  Maybe not tomorrow, or next week, or next month – but before long the conversation would come. And Lennon had no clue what he would do then.

  For six months after his release from hospital, Susan had continuously emailed him links to articles she’d found about post-traumatic stress disorder. He rarely read them. She badgered him to seek counselling, whether it be with a psychologist, a psychiatrist or a cognitive behavioural therapist. Anything at all, just so long as he talked to somebody about what had happened to him.

  Lennon still dreamed about that cold morning, the airport car park, everything blanketed in dense freezing fog. As the memory played out, as his experience regenerated itself in his sleeping mind, he would reach for his weapon and find it missing, or caught in its holster, or his hand would lose its ability to grip.

  As Sergeant Connolly took aim, dream-Lennon might find his pistol’s trigger too stiff to pull, or the weapon too heavy to lift, or its rounds no more than cylinders of gunpowder, no bullets to stop his attacker.

  The dreams always ended the same way. Lennon on his back, holes torn out of his body, his life leaking out onto the frost-jagged ground. Connolly entering his narrowing vision, the pistol ready to end everything.

  Lennon always woke before he died, heart stuttering, paralysed by fear. The painkillers and the alcohol had dulled the edges of the dreams, but less so recently.

  He turned his attention back to the television. Chevy Chase and some actress he didn’t recognise, sitting by a country club tennis court drinking—

  Lennon’s heart leapt in his chest as he felt movement against his leg. He swatted at it, felt something hard through the denim of his jeans.

  Christ, his phone. It had been so long since anyone had called him that the vibration had felt alien. His fingers dug into the pocket and pulled the phone out. He read the number on the display, didn’t recognise it. The time said it had just gone eleven. He slid his thumb across the touchscreen to accept the call and brought the phone to his ear.

  12

  REA HAD TOURED the house, opening doors, turning on lights. She had gone from corner to corner, haunting the doorways like a ghost, looking for signs of Raymond Drew’s life. A photograph, a letter, anything at all personal. She and her mother had been over the place countless times and found nothing, but still she looked.

  An hour had gone by, and the building remained as empty of life as it had been the first time she crossed the threshold. She went to the stairs and sat on the same step she had earlier that evening when she had decided to open the back bedroom. Tiredness crept into her legs and arms and dried her eyes. Her jaw creaked as she yaw
ned.

  Her father had said he’d find a way to make it right. He’d promised. And she did not believe him.

  Rea loved her father dearly, but she knew Graham Carlisle was not a man who kept his word. He would put his ambitions first, as he had always done. The matter of his brother-in-law’s crimes would be swept aside, buried.

  Perhaps the easiest thing would be to allow him to destroy the book as he’d wanted. Then it would be done, and she and her parents could forget about it.

  Except Rea would not forget about it. She had seen the girl’s smiling face. She had read her family’s names, seen their pleas for their daughter’s safe return.

  Rea brought her hands to her face, shut out the light. But the images behind her eyes remained. Gwen Headley’s open, happy expression. The crude sketches of her. The small photograph of the young woman’s parents on a couch, clutching at each other’s hands.

  She couldn’t keep it to herself. She had to tell someone. Christ, someone had to stand up for poor dead Gwen Headley.

  There was one person she knew. Or rather, used to know.

  It had been perhaps five years since she’d spoken to him, and they had parted on bad terms. She wondered if she still had his number on her mobile. And if she did, would it still be his? She had left it on the kitchen counter.

  Beyond the kitchen window the back garden was a dark, layered black. Little light from the street found its way past the house.

  Rea reached for the phone and opened the contacts. Scrolling through, she found the number she wanted.

  A movement in the black outside distracted her. A shape, darkness upon darkness. Had it been there before?

  She blinked three times to clear the dry fatigue from her eyes. The shape remained. It watched her through the glass.

  Watched?