Dead Silent

by Mark Roberts

  Harper laid a silver body bag on the old carpet and unzipped it.

  ‘Bill, you and me will hold the bag open, top and bottom end.’

  They knelt down as Mason and Price guided the suspended body into place.

  ‘Cut the top of the spear!’

  Harper cut and the section of spear fell into the bag his colleague held beneath it.

  ‘The bottom section, please.’

  Snap. It landed with a rustle of paper.

  ‘Lower the body to the bag.’

  Mason and Price negotiated Leonard Lawson’s back, head and bottom into the bag.

  ‘Harper, I want you and your colleague to untie the knots that are securing Mr Lawson to the pole. As one of you unties, I’d like the other to guide his hands and arms, legs and feet into the bag. Any questions?’

  ‘I understand.’

  She looked across the length of the body bag and asked Hendricks, still kneeling at the bottom end, ‘Did you find out about The Sanctuary?’

  ‘Googled it. It’s a residential home for adults with severe learning difficulties. It’s private and, looking at their website, everything’s pretty high-spec. The people who live there are pushed to fulfil their potential, so they don’t just sit around watching TV all day. Guess what? It’s five minutes away.’

  Harper manoeuvred Leonard Lawson’s untied hands and arms into the confines of the bag.

  ‘Thank you, Harper,’ said Clay. ‘Go on, Bill.’

  ‘It’s art therapy, music therapy, sports, drama, trips out, here, there and everywhere.’

  The APTs took one leg each and tucked them into the bottom end of the bag. Mason and Price lifted the pole away.

  Standing up, Clay looked around the room and said, ‘Thank you.’

  She picked up an evidence bag and placed the strobe light into it. ‘I’ve had an idea, Bill, about the strobe light. It wasn’t put there just to disorientate whoever found the old man, it was a grim joke, a window into the killer’s view of life and death. I wonder if he knew that Louise Lawson is epileptic? Trigger the witness – the daughter – into a fit. What a punch line!’

  For a moment, Clay imagined she was dead centre of the picture on the cover of Leonard Lawson’s Hieronymus Bosch book. She listened to the fractured birdsong in the dark, early hours, a blackbird disorientated by electric streetlights, and considered what Hendricks had said to her about The Sanctuary.

  ‘Bill, if The Sanctuary is a residential facility, they’ll have to have someone on duty through the night. There’ll be someone there now who may well know Louise Lawson. We’ll go there directly after the post-mortem.’

  Clay watched the technicians carry Leonard Lawson from his bedroom. She wondered to herself if the section of the shaft that remained inside his body had pierced his heart, sealing his fate like some comic-book vampire and wiping him forever from the face of the earth.

  14

  4.25 am

  ‘Eve!’ Stone’s voice came from Leonard Lawson’s study. ‘Can you come down a minute?’

  Clay descended the stairs to where Stone was standing, in the doorway to the study. He held a thick wad of yellowing A4 paper. She approached him, nodded at the paper and dropped her voice. ‘From?’

  ‘The desk drawer.’

  She smiled. ‘Good. I like it.’

  He turned the collection of papers so that Clay could see the top sheet.

  Psamtik I

  664–610 BC

  The Quest for the World’s Proto-Language

  by

  Leonard Lawson

  ‘There are a load of photographs in the drawer that belong to this manuscript,’ said Stone. ‘I’ve googled it and been on a trawl through Amazon and AbeBooks. There’s no match for a book of this title at all. I can only suggest it was unpublished or it was published under a different title.’

  Clay took the manuscript from Stone and examined it. The pages were dog-eared, from which she inferred that the book had been handled regularly over the years. She sat at Leonard Lawson’s desk and, turning over the top page, imagined him sitting in the same place and reading the text.

  ‘Did you look for the key?’

  ‘All over the study, but I couldn’t find it.’

  ‘So he really cared about the manuscript. Enough to hide the key.’

  She looked at the second page, words from a former world, formed of letters from the metal stamp of an Imperial typewriter on an inky ribbon, letters with blurred edges.

  ISNSSN

  For DN

  Now and for always

  ‘The dedication – For DN, Now and for always – is the same as in all his published works,’ said Stone. ‘But this manuscript has got this ISNSSN tag. It figures that the most important person in Leonard Lawson’s life was a DN, not an LL for his daughter. Not DL, who could’ve been his missus. Unless DN was his common-law wife, but I doubt it, not in those days.’ Stone looked around the room. ‘Interesting life, right. Dreadful conclusion.’

  Clay looked at the contents page.

  Part One: The Ancient World

  Part Two: The Modern World

  ‘As soon as we have a chance to catch our breaths, I want you and Bill Hendricks to get your heads together on this.’ She handed the manuscript to Stone. ‘You read “The Ancient World”, he can read “The Modern World”, or vice versa.’

  She reached into the open drawer, took out a collection of photographs, prints and postcards and started flicking through them. A stone tablet decorated with elegant Egyptian hieroglyphics and with a pharaoh in attendance, holding what looked like a lamp in his hand. She turned it over and read the neat handwriting: Psamtik I making an offering to Ra-Horakhty.

  A warmth illuminated the darkness inside Clay and her instincts twitched. She stayed exactly where she was, but a piece of her mind went travelling through time and space and the room seemed to fade away. Outside, the wind that smothered the house seemed to roar suddenly as her sense of hearing sharpened. Leonard Lawson’s manuscript was alive with something hidden and dreadful and dangerous.

  ‘What are we on to?’ Stone’s voice dragged her back into the moment.

  She looked at him in questioning silence.

  ‘You just said, We’re on to something with this...’

  She looked at the next picture. A drawing of a man swathed in rags and carrying two bundles on his back. ‘I want you and Bill to see if there’s anything in the manuscript, anything he’s written, that could have incurred the wrath that we saw staged in the bedroom.’ Aware of the need to get to the mortuary for the post-mortem, she checked with Stone as she headed for the door, ‘Anything else?’

  He held up a piece of paper. ‘I found this in the drawer.’ He read, ‘709 6010.’

  ‘Admiral Street police station?’

  ‘PC Stephen Rimmer. It’s handwritten contact details.’

  ‘Get on to him immediately!’ She glanced at the front door.

  ‘I already have done. He’s on his way over now.’

  15

  5.00 am

  Leonard Lawson. 71.3 kg. 168 cm. Eye colour blue. Hair colour grey, balding. Caucasian. Male. 90+ years.

  In the long, narrow rectangle that was Autopsy Suite 1 of the mortuary behind the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Clay watched the APTs lift Leonard Lawson’s body from the body bag on to the rubber board on which the post-mortem would be conducted.

  She looked at Hendricks and followed his gaze to the centre of Leonard Lawson’s rib cage. Blood-stained wooden circles plugged his body back and front. This detail, the sawn-off ends of the spear that had impaled him, gave the old man’s body an unreal quality, emphasised by the fact that his eyes were now shut and his face was neutral.

  ‘Eve, we must stop meeting like this.’ The voice of the pathologist, Dr Mary Lamb, came from behind her. ‘And at these ungodly hours.’ She was close to retirement age and looked a decade older, but she walked past Clay with a gait that was sprightly.

  Clay watched Dr La
mb’s reaction as she made an initial visual assessment of Leonard Lawson’s corpse. Her expression gave nothing away, but she said, ‘I spoke with DS Stone on the telephone and he furnished the details of the scene of the crime.’

  Over the light blue autopsy suite smock and trousers, Clay tied the straps of a green plastic apron tightly behind her back.

  ‘In thirty-five years,’ continued Dr Lamb, washing her hands at the sink, ‘I’ve never known the like.’ She turned to her APTs. ‘Get some pictures of him, please.’

  Michael Harper, the senior APT, pointed a digital camera at Leonard Lawson and took the first of multiple images.

  Clay made eye contact with Dr Lamb. The pathologist smiled.

  ‘However, I did see you in Liverpool One with your little boy, Eve. You were lifting him on to a bouncy castle. The man you were with, with the sky-blue eyes?’

  ‘My husband, Thomas. You should have come and said hello, Dr Lamb.’

  ‘I was going to... and then I thought, no. The only places we ever meet are here or in the Crown Court. You looked so happy. I didn’t want to drag this side of your life into your personal space.’

  Dr Lamb dried her hands with the same slow, precise movements Clay had seen her use in dozens of post-mortems. ‘What’s your little boy called, Eve?’

  ‘Philip. Little but getting bigger and mouthier by the day.’

  The smile dissolved from Dr Lamb’s eyes and Clay steeled herself, forced herself back into professional mode, pushing all thoughts of Thomas and Philip away.

  ‘Turn him on to his side, please,’ Dr Lamb said to her APTs.

  Harper placed the camera near Leonard Lawson’s feet and, with his colleague, turned the old man’s body on to his side. Dr Lamb moved from one side of the table to the next and back, inspecting the entry and exit points of the spear. She stopped, her expression reflective.

  ‘We’re going to have to remove the foreign object from the gentleman’s body before we do anything else.’ She scrutinised the site of the exit wound. ‘Which will involve removing his heart. Judging by the entry and exit points of the spear, whoever’s done this has gone directly through his heart.’ She sighed. ‘He’s got a rare congenital abnormality of the rib cage. Poland Syndrome. The absence of a pectoral muscle causes the ribs to bend out of shape. It’s probably how the spear came clean through.

  Was he born like that, thought Clay, born to die and end up like this?

  ‘I’m sorry, Professor Lawson,’ said Dr Lamb, pointing the tip of her scalpel at his sternum. ‘But we’re going to have to pull what remains of you to pieces.’

  16

  5.20 am

  At the window of Louise Lawson’s hospital room, Riley pressed record on her phone. Outside, the snow had stopped falling. The city skyline was capped white and the sky and river were suffused with an amber glow. It was as if all sound and motion had been muffled.

  She stirred herself, spoke into her phone and was grateful for the Sunday School she’d been forced to attend as a child.

  ‘Back in the day, there was one language and a common speech. Humans understood each other perfectly. They decided to build a tower that could reach up to heaven. The Lord came down, saw that mankind was getting on just great and that nothing was impossible for it. So he scattered the people, stopped the building of the Tower of Babel and made the common language incomprehensible. Hence the six and a half thousand languages we have on earth today.’

  Riley turned. Louise was watching her.

  ‘People blame God for everything,’ said Louise.

  Riley walked towards her. ‘I don’t,’ she replied. ‘I’m a police officer. I’ve seen some dreadful things. I don’t blame God. I blame people.’

  ‘There’s a reason why God created so many languages for the people of the earth. Mankind was proud and God had to show the people of the earth that they couldn’t build a tower to reach into heaven and become like God themselves. It was God’s role to build a bridge to the earth in the form of Jesus Christ, God becoming man and not the other way round.’

  ‘I’d never thought of it that way,’ said Riley. ‘But God’s ways are mysterious.’ She sat on the edge of the bed. The gentle light of the arc lamp in the corner gave Louise a soft radiance. ‘To understand, as you clearly do, is good. But God’s deepest motives are his alone to know.’

  She watched a barrier come down inside Louise Lawson. ‘That’s exactly what I think.’

  Riley took Louise’s hands in hers. ‘Mind you,’ she said, ‘my sister’s a French teacher. God’s many languages keep her and many others in a job.’ As her attempt to introduce a note of lightness into the room died a death, it occurred to Riley that Louise no longer knew how to smile.

  ‘Louise, I’ve got a problem and I need your help.’ Their eyes locked and Riley waited until the invisible bubble sealed itself around the two of them, blocking out everything else.

  ‘I know you don’t want to talk about the dreadful things that have happened, and I can understand that perfectly, but the longer it takes for you to tell us what you know, the harder it will be for us to catch whoever’s responsible. And I’m very sorry and sad to say this, but if he’s done this once, he’ll want to do it again. Murder is like alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs. It’s highly addictive. I would be very grateful, Louise, if you would talk to me and my boss, DCI Eve Clay. I know she’ll want to be there when you speak about what’s happened.’

  Louise was quiet for what felt like a long time. She closed her eyes and Riley watched her lips moving, deduced that she was praying to God for guidance. Then she opened her eyes and said, ‘I don’t want anyone else to die. I don’t want anyone else to go through this suffering. Call DCI Eve Clay. I’ll try my best to talk.’

  17

  5.20 am

  Dr Lamb made an incision through Leonard Lawson’s skin from his sternum straight down to his pubic bone.

  ‘The probable cause of death is the head injury. I suspect the killer smashed the victim’s skull to disable him, so he could get on with the business of playing God with what remained.’ She looked directly at Clay for a moment and said, ‘I will of course give you a firmer conclusion once we’ve removed the top of his skull and explored the impact the bone fragments and splintering had on his brain.’

  She looked down again. Her hand skipped deftly back to the top of the initial incision and with two swift, clean cuts she turned the straight line into a Y, the top points turning out to his shoulder joints.

  ‘Harper!’

  That was all the instruction Harper needed. He handed Dr Lamb a cutter that Clay thought looked like it could be useful to prune back garden trees. Then, with two hands, he peeled back the withered skin of the old man’s chest to reveal the front of his asymmetrical rib cage and intestines.

  With the rib cutter, Dr Lamb made incisions at either side of Leonard Lawson’s chest cavity. The sound of ribs snapping died fast in the flat acoustics of the autopsy suite, but the noise echoed as it entered Clay’s head.

  ‘Look,’ said Dr Lamb, catching Clay’s eye. ‘The spear’s gone in through his shoulder, diagonally through his heart, avoiding collision with his abnormal rib cage, and out through his back. Whoever’s done this was deadly accurate.’

  Did they know you well enough, Clay wondered, to know of your condition?

  Dr Lamb turned to her ATPs. ‘OK, one either side, please.’

  Harper stayed where he was and his colleague moved to the other side of the table. The APTs looked at each other and, on a silent count of three, lifted the front of Leonard Lawson’s rib cage away from his body.

  His pierced heart, with a length of spear poking out of it, made the skin on the back of Clay’s hands itch.

  ‘Let’s clear the decks and give us room to free his heart!’ said Dr Lamb.

  Hendricks chuckled. All activity in the autopsy suite came to a standstill and everyone’s eyes turned to him. In the silence that followed, he explained. ‘That sounded like the opening line
from a pretty corny love song.’

  As Dr Lamb and her APTs returned to work, Clay smiled at Hendricks.

  With a pair of large shears, Dr Lamb cut the attachment tissues of the intestines and, without pause, Harper and his colleague lifted the digestive system from Leonard Lawson’s body and placed it on a nearby aluminium trolley.

  Harper removed his hands from the old man’s upper digestive tract and frowned.

  ‘What is it, Harper?’ asked Dr Lamb.

  He stuck his hands back underneath the intestines and said, ‘Yes. There’s something hard in there.’

  Clay clenched her jaw. This observation of Harper’s felt like a massive distraction when there wasn’t a moment to spare. She was desperate to get the heart removed from the spear so she could inspect the central shaft of the weapon.

  ‘Harper, we’ll find out what he had for his last supper later. I’m sure DCI Clay is eager to retrieve the foreign item from the victim’s heart.’

  Harper, whose new beard did little to disguise his fat baby face, blushed and Clay said, ‘But thank you, Harper, for your keen sense of detail.’

  ‘Time to separate his heart from his lungs,’ said Dr Lamb. She stuck a finger through the transverse sinus and with her right hand divided the aorta and main pulmonary artery. With two more incisions, his heart was isolated from the other organs.

  The top and lower end of the spear were clearly visible under the overhead fluorescent light. Dr Lamb nodded. Harper and his colleague reached inside and carefully lifted the impaled heart into the air.

  ‘Lower. Lower. Lower. Just there.’

  Dr Lamb pulled a retractable metal tape measure from an open tool box to her left and, releasing the measure, placed it close to and in line with the section of spear. She pressed record on her dictaphone and said, ‘Section of spear inside Leonard Lawson’s body, twenty-one centimetres in length.’

  Then she picked up a clean scalpel. ‘I’ll release the heart from the spear.’ She squeezed the muscle with the fingers and thumb of her left hand and sank the scalpel into the space she had created. She made a steady slice and the heart was open but still hanging on to the shaft.