The Final Silence

by Stuart Neville

  Lennon took his phone from his pocket, opened the web browser, and entered the girl’s name. He scanned the list of results: old news headlines about the young woman’s disappearance and presumed murder.

  ‘She was real,’ Rea said as Lennon raised his eyes to meet hers. ‘She really disappeared. They don’t know what happened to her. But I do.’

  Raymond Drew had buried Gwen Headley in the foundation trench of the building site he’d been working on, Rea explained. Her remains lay beneath the concrete footing of an office building.

  ‘There’s no way to prove that,’ Lennon said. ‘Without the book, it’s just your word.’

  ‘You don’t believe me,’ she said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter if I believe you or not,’ Lennon said. He considered going easy on her, but there was no point in sugar-coating the truth. ‘No one else will. All you can do is cause more distress to this girl’s family.’

  Rea covered her face with her hands as she slid down the wall and hunkered near the floor. Her shoulders trembled.

  Lennon crossed the room to her. He wondered if he should comfort her in some way, perhaps put an arm around her. Something told him no, don’t touch her. He crouched down, clenching his jaw at the pain it caused, but kept his hands to himself.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.

  ‘Don’t call me a liar,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not calling you any—’

  ‘The book was here. I saw it. I touched it.’

  Lennon took a breath before he said it. ‘What book? Rea, there is no book.’

  He saw the hate on her face and knew he deserved it.

  ‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Go. Please.’

  He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I want to make sure you’re all right.’

  ‘Fuck off.’ She spat the words at him, her eyes threatening tears. ‘Look, just go and leave me alone.’

  Lennon hoisted himself to his feet. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But I’ll be in touch tomorrow. Just to see how you’re doing.’

  She nodded and brought her hands to her face once more. ‘Thank you, but I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. He searched for some reassurance he could give her, but he knew all she wanted was for him to be gone. His footsteps reverberated in the stairway as he descended.

  ‘Wait,’ she called.

  Lennon turned and looked up to her.

  ‘I have a photograph,’ she said, taking something from her hip pocket.

  He climbed the stairs, halting a few steps below her. She handed him a Polaroid print. Two rows of three men, the back row in paramilitary garb. To the right of the front row, a young Graham Carlisle.

  Lennon said nothing.

  ‘You recognise my father,’ Rea said. ‘That’s my uncle, Raymond Drew, on the left. There’s one thing you can do to help me.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Lennon asked.

  ‘Find out if my father was ever suspected of anything . . . bad.’

  ‘I’ll ask around,’ Lennon said. ‘Can I hold onto this?’

  Rea nodded. ‘I’m sorry for getting angry. I appreciate you coming. I really do.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, tucking the photograph into his jacket pocket, and left her at the top of the stairs.

  He had to slam the front door three times to get it to close behind him, cursing as he did so. Across the street, a fussy-looking man of late middle age stopped washing the windows on his house and watched him. An estate agent’s sign said it was newly let.

  Lennon stared back, an ugly flare of anger in his chest, daring the man to say something. The man dropped his gaze and went back to his cleaning.

  As Lennon walked back towards the Ormeau Road, he took the phone from his pocket and dialled the direct line to Ladas Drive station. When the duty officer answered, Lennon said, ‘CI Uprichard.’

  ‘I’ll see if he’s available,’ the officer said. Lennon recognised the voice as belonging to Sergeant Bill Gracey. ‘Who’s calling, please?’

  ‘DI Jack Lennon.’ He listened to the duty officer’s breathing for a few seconds, then said, ‘They haven’t sacked me yet, Bill. Put me through.’

  A pause, then, ‘All right. Hold, please.’

  Lennon listened to something that passed for music until he heard the familiar voice.

  ‘Jack? It’s been a while. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fucked, Alan, how’s you?’

  ‘Language, Jack, please. The wife has me on a diet again, but other than that, I’m all right. To what do I owe the pleasure?’

  ‘I need a favour,’ Lennon said.

  Uprichard sighed. ‘Why does that give me a bad feeling?’

  Chief Inspector Alan Uprichard had been the only one to stick by Lennon after his suspension. The closest thing in the world he had to a real friend, but even that was stretching the point. Uprichard was a stout chap, pushing sixty, a devout Christian whose wife fretted constantly over his health. Lennon couldn’t imagine a man further removed from him in character, yet somehow their friendship endured, though perhaps begrudgingly on Uprichard’s part.

  ‘You’ve always got a bad feeling,’ Lennon said.

  ‘True,’ Uprichard said. ‘Go on, then. What is it?’

  Lennon told him. When Uprichard was done listening, he asked, ‘Is this going to get me into trouble, Jack?’

  ‘I hope not,’ Lennon said.

  ‘And you certainly don’t need more bother hanging over you.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Lennon said. ‘Will you do it for me?’

  ‘All right,’ Uprichard said, ‘but you owe me.’

  ‘I already owe you plenty,’ Lennon said. ‘One more debt won’t make any odds.’

  ‘True. I’ll get back to you. Take care of yourself.’

  ‘You too.’

  As Lennon hung up, he noticed the time on the phone’s display.

  ‘Shit,’ he said to himself.

  ‘Forty-five minutes,’ Susan said.

  ‘I know, I’m sorry.’

  Lennon couldn’t look at her across the table. The girls ate in silence. The food on his and Susan’s plates had barely been touched.

  ‘Have you any idea how embarrassed I am that the school office had to call me?’

  ‘It won’t happen again,’ Lennon said. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Anything could’ve happened to them. Anyone could’ve taken them.’

  Lennon shook his head. ‘They know not to go with strangers.’

  ‘You put my daughter at risk.’ Her voice became a thin hiss, anger and hate driving her tongue. ‘And your own. How could you live with yourself if anything happened to Ellen? How could I live with myself for trusting you with Lucy?’

  He raised his eyes to see the fury in her face. He swallowed his own anger at her words, but couldn’t keep the tremor from his voice. ‘I’d never do anything to hurt our girls. You know that.’

  Lennon knew he should have told her the truth the night before. Had he done so, he could have explained that someone needed his help. That he would never have been so late, that he wouldn’t have forgotten the time, if not for an old friend being in trouble. But he had lied, he couldn’t take it back, and he hated himself for it.

  Susan sighed. A tear made a crystalline track on her cheek. ‘But you’d let them stand on the side of a road, all alone, for forty-five minutes.’

  Lennon got up and left the table.

  He slept on the couch until the phone call woke him in the early hours.

  16

  IT TOOK HOURS for Rea Carlisle to die.

  Lennon had left. She had gone back to the room, sat down at the desk and wept until the tears were exhausted. Then, suddenly cold, suddenly aware that the house had darkened, she had walked to the landing. She had felt safe in the light. Now the light had burned away.

  The blow felt like a sun exploding in her head, then the world turned beneath her feet. She supposed she must have fallen. A memory, vague and greying, of the stairs descending awa
y from her vision, something cool and hard against her cheek.

  Then another blow, and she couldn’t see anything at all.

  Rea wanted to cry out, to speak, to say something, but her tongue would not obey. It felt blunt and thick inside her mouth. Her voice rose in her chest, squeezed through her throat, out into the air.

  An impact on the back of her neck silenced her. Then another, and another, more across her shoulders and back, so many she couldn’t tell one from a doll she had when she was a little girl with blue eyes that closed when you laid it down and school corridors bright lights hard stares and falling cut knees and loving him madly like bitter tastes of god and jesus and doggie can we have the doggie I never get anything I want and sand clinging stinging to my skin and . . .

  Pain forced its way through the thickening clouds in her mind. The sound – no, the feeling – of things cracking and splintering inside her and bubbling breath and metal taste and sand and water and mummy tickles stop mummy stop daddy not a baby got to go got to go got to go . . .

  And the pain once more, but the shower of blows to her back had stopped and she heard hard breathing, not hers, hers bubbly like chocolate and – no, come back – and someone pulling and stretching at her pockets then cursing then stepping over her and feet clumping down the stairs like a giant and the beanstalk and jack and david and goliath and a sling brought the giant down like the bible says yes jesus loves me this I know cause the bible tells me so deep and wide deep and wide there’s a river running deep and wide . . .

  Rea’s consciousness receded and swelled like a tide on a barren shore, but her mind finally left her long before her lungs filled with blood, long before she drowned at the top of the stairs in a house that once belonged to Raymond Drew.

  17

  IT WAS LIGHT outside when Lennon woke. He’d been dreaming of a madman he’d last seen in a burning house outside Drogheda, the flames eating them both.

  Lennon breathed hard as his senses fell into place. He was already reaching into his pocket for his phone when it rang again. The display said the number had been withheld.

  ‘Hello?’ he said, his voice hoarse with sleep.

  ‘Jack? It’s Alan.’

  ‘What’s wrong? It’s not even six-thirty yet.’

  ‘That woman you told me about yesterday,’ Uprichard said. ‘The one in Deramore Gardens.’

  ‘Yeah? What about her?’

  ‘She was Graham Carlisle’s daughter?’

  ‘Yes. Rea Carlisle.’

  Lennon listened to Uprichard’s breathing. ‘Alan, what’s wrong?’

  ‘She’s dead, Jack. She was beaten to death with a crowbar.’

  Lennon shook his head. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I turned the radio on when I got up this morning, and there was a report about a woman found dead in Deramore Gardens. I remembered what you’d said, so I rang the station to see what the story was. Her mother got worried because she hadn’t been in touch, so she went to this house and found her there. The medical officer reckons she was killed late yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘No,’ Lennon said. ‘Couldn’t be. I was with her late afternoon. I rang you when I left the house. There’s been a mistake.’

  ‘No mistake, Jack. She’s been identified. And a man was seen leaving the house, agitated, slamming the door. I read the description. It was you, Jack. You were seen leaving the house around the time of the killing.’

  Lennon thought of the man who’d been cleaning his windows across the road, who’d watched him slam the door and walk away. He stayed quiet for a moment as his sleep-addled brain tried to make sense of what he’d been told.

  ‘She’s dead? Rea’s dead? You’re sure?’

  Exasperation hardened Uprichard’s voice. ‘Yes, I’m sure, there’s no doubt. Jack, are you listening to what I’m telling you?’

  ‘Rea’s dead,’ Lennon said. The idea lay there, a dull and hard fact. He didn’t know how to feel. Yesterday had been the first time he’d seen her in five years. How did he feel?

  ‘Yes, Jack, but that’s not what I’m driving at.’

  Angry. He felt angry.

  ‘Then what are you driving at?’ Lennon asked.

  ‘You were seen at her house around the time she was killed,’ Uprichard said. ‘It’s only a matter of time before someone twigs it was you. It’ll look better for you if you come in and explain yourself. Don’t wait for them to figure it out and send a car for you. Are you listening to me, Jack?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lennon said, but he really wasn’t.

  He’d left her there, tearful because she knew he didn’t believe her. And now she was dead.

  ‘Jack, get yourself down to Ladas Drive first thing. Tell them you’re going to cooperate.’

  ‘Cooperate with what?’

  ‘With the investigation.’ Uprichard’s voice rose to a shout. ‘You get down there and tell them everything you know. If you don’t, I’ll put them on to you myself. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ Lennon said.

  He hung up.

  18

  LENNON SPENT MOST of the day in an interview room. Bill Gracey had been on the desk when he walked into Ladas Drive station, staring from behind the glass.

  ‘Who’s on the Rea Carlisle case?’ Lennon asked.

  ‘Why?’ Gracey’s frown made him look like the officious prick he was.

  ‘Because I need to talk to them.’

  Gracey shook his head. ‘The ACC hasn’t officially assigned the team yet, but it’ll be Flanagan’s crew.’

  ‘She’s based in D District, isn’t she?’

  ‘True,’ Gracey said, ‘but there isn’t an MIT going spare in B District right now.’

  ‘What about Thompson?’

  Gracey leaned closer to the glass. ‘Between you and me, they’re nudging Thompson towards retirement after the balls he’s made of his last few cases. They’ll not give him anything serious now.’

  About time, Lennon almost said. He’d been on Detective Chief Inspector Thompson’s Major Investigation Team up until his own suspension more than a year ago, and had hated every minute under that idiot’s command.

  DCI Serena Flanagan was a different matter.

  She was young for her rank – only a year or two older than Lennon – and ambitious. And hard as nails, Lennon had heard. Republican paramilitaries had tried to kill her twice, the first time with a car bomb that had failed to explode, the second up close and personal with a Springfield 1911. The pistol had jammed after the first shot missed, leaving the gunman wrestling with a useless piece of metal while DCI Flanagan calmly drew her personal protection weapon and took aim. The would-be killer had been the pillion passenger on a motorcycle. The driver took off, spilling his friend off the back of the bike, already dead from holes in his heart and lung.

  The bike had slammed into the rear of a bus a quarter of a mile away. As far as Lennon knew, the rider remained in a vegetative state.

  It was common practice for an MIT to be assigned a case outside of its district and for the crew to be moved to the station nearest the crime they were to investigate.

  ‘Is Flanagan here?’ Lennon asked.

  ‘I assume she’s at the scene,’ Gracey said, ‘but DS Calvin’s setting up an office for her. What’s this about?’

  ‘None of your business. Just let me talk to Calvin.’

  Gracey’s frown deepened. ‘No need to be rude, Jack.’

  Lennon watched through the glass as Gracey went to his desk, lifted the phone, and spoke to somebody. When he hung up, he did not return to the partition. ‘He’ll be a minute,’ he called, and made a show of busying himself with paperwork.

  Lennon waited, listening to the familiar thrum of the station, the shrill telephones, the voices and footsteps from behind closed doors.

  Five minutes passed before the doors opened and a young detective stepped through.

  ‘DI Lennon?’ he asked, extending his hand.

  ‘DS Calvin,’ Lenno
n said, returning the gesture.

  He guessed Calvin to be in his early thirties. Stocky with a face like a glowing light bulb, prematurely thinning hair, a suit that looked like it had come from a supermarket or a discount store.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Calvin asked.

  Lennon talked and Calvin listened.

  It felt strange on this side of the table, in the interview room with its bare painted walls, the expanse of wood between the two men, the audio recorder sitting idle at one end.

  Calvin scribbled in his notebook. ‘So how did you know about the killing?’

  ‘A colleague phoned me this morning,’ Lennon said.

  ‘Which colleague?’

  ‘You don’t need to know,’ Lennon said.

  Calvin looked up from his notebook. ‘But I will do. Eventually.’ He closed the book, tucked his pen into his breast pocket, and stood. ‘I need to make a phone call. Wait here.’

  Lennon asked, ‘Are you calling Flanagan?’

  Calvin paused halfway to the door. ‘I’m calling DCI Flanagan, yes.’

  ‘Tell her I want to talk to her.’

  ‘She’s busy,’ Calvin said, turning back to the door. ‘But I’ll pass it on. Don’t worry, DCI Flanagan will deal with you in her own time. And if you talk to her like you talk to me, she’ll cut your balls off.’

  ‘So, I should be scared of her?’

  ‘Very,’ Calvin said. ‘She fucking terrifies me.’

  He opened the door.

  ‘Grab me a coffee when you’re out,’ Lennon said.

  Calvin looked back over his shoulder, his eyebrows raised.

  ‘Please,’ Lennon said.

  Calvin left without replying.

  19

  DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR Serena Flanagan sat very still in the chair by Dr Prunty’s desk, barely breathing. His face was so expressionless it looked as if it were cut from pale pink chalk. He reminded Flanagan of her late grandfather, who always smelled of cloves. They had the same feathery white hair that revealed too much of the scalp beneath. The same awkward length to the limbs, countered by an unlikely grace in their movements.