Dead Silent

by Mark Roberts

  ‘Go on,’ she said, hooked.

  ‘And as soon as I said That’s a fact!, all the noise stopped. Silence slammed down from the sky. We were near the entrance and you said, Can you hear that? I said, No. You looked up. One voice, high up in the tower, whispered. You pointed. There were two boys—’

  ‘Two boys?’ Riley interrupted, thinking, Two killers.

  ‘Yes, two boys... leaning out of the tower. Oh yes, I could hear it now, a noise like a house fly buzzing far away. One of the boys was whispering, but we couldn’t hear a word. The whispering boy stopped making the noise and then he... stuck out his hand...’ Louise extended her arm, turning it over so that her palm was uppermost and her fingers were parted. ‘Like this.’ She lifted her hand up slowly. ‘We rose from the earth. Like the boy had the power to make us levitate, the power in his hand.’

  Louise paused and stared straight at Riley, as if daring Riley to make light of what she was telling her. Was this significant? Riley wondered. More importantly, perhaps, did Louise think it significant? Or were these just the ramblings of an elderly brain coming out of mild concussion? Either way, it seemed she wasn’t finished yet.

  ‘We rose higher and higher and when we reached the hole in the Tower of Babel where the boys were, there was only one boy there. The silent one. The whisperer had gone and we could see why the silent boy was silent. Underneath his nose, his mouth was sealed up with a single piece of skin that covered the whole of the lower half of his face.’ She reached out with both hands. ‘He touched both of us on the centre of our foreheads and, slowly, down we went. And when my feet touched the ground, it was no longer like being inside the Bruegel painting of the Tower of Babel. You had gone and I was alone in my father’s room, looking at the painting on the wall, the one that had been there for as long as I could remember. And I heard my father’s voice, behind me. Louise? I turned. He wasn’t there. Then I woke up. Here. With you. And you were looking out of the window.’

  Morning had arrived and the blood-red sky unfolded into grey light.

  ‘Bump to the head,’ said Louise. She gave the slightest shrug of the shoulders. ‘Fantastic dreams...’

  ‘Did the boys have names?’ asked Riley.

  Louise shook her head.

  ‘The boy with the skin covering his mouth – did you see any other features?’

  ‘I’ve told you everything there was in the dream.’

  The wind roared against the hospital windows.

  ‘You told me your father refused to speak about why he loved that particular painting?’

  Louise thought about the question and Riley knew she had an answer of sorts. But there was something in Louise’s face that she couldn’t read. In answering the question, would she somehow be betraying her father’s memory? A confidence, maybe?

  ‘Once. He had a fever once. I nursed him back to health. When his fever was high, he talked about the painting. He said, and I think he was quoting a writer, Every word is like a stain on silence and nothingness. That is the truth of the Tower of Babel. For a man who wrote so many words, in his day-to-day life my father was a man of very few words. He could sit in complete silence for hours on end, locked inside the ebb and flow of ideas inside his head. We had no music in the house. No record player. I was the only girl in my class who didn’t own a record by the Beatles. We didn’t get a television until 1980. And even then I could only watch it when Father had gone to bed.’

  ‘He sounds like a strict father.’

  She considered the observation. ‘Times were different then.’

  Riley looked at the curve of her forehead, wondered at the vivid image systems that existed inside her, born perhaps of the constant exposure to art in her childhood.

  ‘You know you won’t be able to go back to your house for a long time?’

  ‘I understand. I’ll go to the Travelodge on Aigburth Road.’

  ‘There’s no need for that. You’ve had an offer of a place to stay.’

  Louise sat up. ‘With whom?’

  ‘The Millers. The Sanctuary. They seem very keen for you to stay. I would take up that offer if I was you. You’ll be able to see all your friends.’

  Riley watched the information percolate in the passing of a brief smile.

  ‘I will. Yes, I will stay there. You’re right. All my friends are there.’

  ‘Who are your friends in The Sanctuary?’

  Louise’s face visibly brightened. ‘Tom Thumb – that’s not his real name, it’s Tom Thomas, but he’s only five foot tall. Oh...’ Louise looked at Riley. ‘Abey. He’s a wonderful man. But don’t tell anyone I said that. I wouldn’t want to hurt the other men’s feelings, and they do have feelings; deep, deep feelings.’

  ‘Louise, how about DCI Clay and I take you there as soon as the doctor says you’re free to go?’

  She nodded slowly and, looking directly at Riley, said, ‘People are so kind, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ lied Riley. ‘People are kind.’

  Part Two

  Sunrise

  The Last Judgment

  by Hieronymus Bosch (1482)

  How they screamed for mercy that simply wasn’t there.

  The First Born measured the ten years of his life with a sadness that he sometimes felt would kill him. He knew he must fight the pain, because he was terrified of what would happen after he died.

  A sudden gust of wind raised the curtain, and light came in from the streetlamps outside. The three panels covering the wall facing his bed were immediately lit up. On the left was the Garden of Eden, and on the right was Hell. But it was the middle panel that scared him the most. Up in a blue sky sat Christ the Judge, and below him were all the people who would go to hell when they died. Some of them were burning and some were speared on horrible sharp hooks. There were so many twisted bodies, writhing in the dark. Hardly any bodies were flying up to join the angels in the blue sky. ‘No one knows the moment!’ The voice intoned inside his head. ‘The Last Judgment must come to all.’ It echoed from the plates of his skull. ‘The first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you see at night.’

  The First Born scuttled beneath the blankets and was filled with a sensation that comforted him. He felt as if his whole body was shrinking to the size of a pea. And he told himself, pea-sized and hidden in the double-darkness of night and blankets, nothing could find him.

  Except for sound. A mean and heavy wind pressed down on the slates of the house he had never stepped out from, in a place he had learned was called Croxteth Road. It seemed to him that the wind was wrapping around the walls, squeezing the sides of the house. Beneath the blankets, The First Born felt his chest tighten and his breath started to come in short gasps. He was sure these were the first steps on the road to death, and to the darkness that lay beyond.

  The First Born threw the blankets from himself and looked at The Last Judgment, his body heaving with silent sobs.

  A demon with the face of a boar, and with burning coals instead of a heart, stood underneath a cauldron packed with bodies, screaming for help but boiling forever. The voice echoed once more inside his head. ‘This is the eternal fruits of sin, the final entrapment of humanity.’

  The First Born closed his eyes but The Last Judgment was printed on his mind.

  How they screamed for mercy that simply wasn’t there.

  27

  8.23 am

  Slender shafts of daylight arrived from east of the Mersey and the temperature on Pelham Grove dropped. Clay walked towards Leonard Lawson’s house, glancing back at the slamming of car doors. Beyond the crime-scene tape, she saw a fat man hurrying under a streetlight.

  She shivered as she stepped into her protective suit. Inside the house the air felt colder than on the street outside. Red-eyed and tired, DS Terry Mason stepped out of the kitchen.

  ‘Have you found anything, Terry?’ asked Clay.

  ‘He had a daughter, I assume he had a wife. I presume she’s the mother of his daughter. But there’s no ph
ysical evidence whatsoever that he had a wife, not a single photograph, not a love letter, not a piece of jewellery. It’s like she’s been written out of history.’ He handed Clay two old pages, one folded inside the other.

  She opened them, separated them. Leonard Lawson’s birth certificate and his daughter Louise’s.

  ‘Where did you find these, Terry?’

  On the street outside, a pair of footsteps echoed as they hurried in the direction of the house.

  ‘In a Queen Elizabeth coronation tin, in a drawer in the kitchen. The only other thing in the tin was Leonard Lawson’s passport, which expired in 1974. That’s the closest it gets here to a lifetime’s memento.’

  From the front door, she heard Michael Harper’s voice. ‘But I’m Dr Lamb’s APT from the mortuary at the Royal.’ There was excitement and urgency in his voice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ replied the constable on the step. ‘DCI Clay hasn’t listed you to enter the scene.’

  Harper’s usually timid voice bordered on assertive. ‘I’m to give this directly to DCI Clay and no one else.’

  Clay opened the front door.

  In front of the constable on the step, Harper stood shivering and Clay couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or the excitement that was apparent on his baby face.

  ‘What have you got for me, Harper?’

  He held out his hand and gave her a small key in a plastic bag. ‘I found it in Professor Lawson’s upper digestive tract,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Harper.’

  She headed directly to the study, took the key from the bag and showed it to Stone and Hendricks, who were at the desk reading the manuscript.

  ‘He swallowed the key?’ said Stone.

  ‘Or was forced to swallow it.’ She handed it to Stone. ‘Check it fits the desk drawer.’

  Stone closed the open drawer, slid the key into the lock and turned it. ‘That’s our baby.’

  Hendricks picked up the second part of Leonard Lawson’s ‘Psamtik I’ manuscript. ‘You just got a heap more significant,’ he said to the dog-eared pages, and smiled at Clay.

  Leonard Lawson’s book on Hieronymus Bosch lay open on the desk. On one page were the panels colour of a triptych The Last Judgment. On the page beside it were two grey panels, the images at the back of the closed triptych, two saints in black and white, their names beneath their images. St James, weary as he walked through the sinful earth. St Bavon dispensing alms to the poor in a room overlooking the city of Ghent.

  Clay took up the framed photograph from Leonard Lawson’s desk and said, ‘LL and DN.’ She looked at the black-and-white image of two young men on their graduation day, the only personal effect in Leonard Lawson’s study, at the heart of his private space. She pictured them on a summer’s day, sitting under the shade of a tree, a heart cut into the bark and their initials carved inside the heart, a dragonfly hovering above their heads, looking for a window in the warm air where there was none.

  Her phone rang out. She looked at the display, picked up the call. ‘Gina, what’s happening?’

  The body language between the two young graduates in the photo spoke of a close relationship. She turned on the desk lamp.

  ‘She’s all ready to leave, in a set of borrowed clothes.’

  ‘Get a taxi to The Sanctuary and I’ll meet you there. Anything to report?’

  ‘She had a weird dream about the Tower of Babel. It was all pretty surreal, but beggars can’t be choosers. There might be something in it.’

  Clay moved the image under the bright light and there was something in the way both men smiled that put her in mind of a wedding portrait, shoulder touching shoulder, looking directly at the camera, smiling.

  ‘If she’s spilling her dreams to you, you’re doing a massively good job of bonding.’

  ‘She’s keen to go to The Sanctuary. It’s like a home from home for her. All my friends are there. Tom and Abey. They’re disabled men who live there.’

  ‘Did you tape it?’

  ‘I certainly did. She’s our eyewitness. I’m interested in every single word that comes out of her mouth. Even if I can’t quite fathom exactly where she’s coming from.’

  ‘Well done, Gina. Keep her talking, keep pumping her. As soon as we’ve left her in The Sanctuary, I want you to go to the University of Liverpool, human resources. I want to know what they’ve got on Leonard Lawson.’

  She closed the call down and called, ‘Terry?’

  ‘Yes?’

  As Mason appeared in the doorway, Clay picked up the framed photograph of Leonard Lawson and his friend on their graduation day and showed it to him. ‘If you’re wondering where this went, I’m taking it away with me.’

  She opened the brief author biography on the back panel of the dust jacket of one of Lawson’s books. Hiding, hiding, hiding... The words shot through her head like rockets.

  ‘Karl?’

  ‘Yes?’ Stone looked up reluctantly, engrossed in Leonard Lawson’s manuscript.

  ‘What did Lawson write about The Tower of Babel in his Bruegel book?’

  ‘That the painting can mean very different things to different people and in different eras. When he painted it, Bruegel was issuing a warning about pride in the face of God. But in Lawson’s interpretation, his own view of God comes out loud and clear. God is a spoiled and brutal child who cannot take any challenge from his creation. One language was all mankind needed to fly, but – I’ll paraphrase – in destroying the Tower of Babel, God acted like a vile little boy pulling the wings off a dragonfly (in other words, mankind) and enjoying the twisting of the wingless body in the dirt. If Lawson believed in God, he hated him with a vengeance.’

  Clay looked at the austere collection of letters in the book’s dedication:

  For DN

  Now and for always

  The itch beneath her scalp sharpened. She decided to show the photo to Louise and ask what she knew about DN, even though she guessed that Leonard Lawson, who had divulged nothing to his daughter about his wife – her mother – would also have kept totally silent about the other love of his life.

  28

  8.23 am

  The last of the sunrise over the River Mersey filled the sky with shifting bands of red and amber light, making its surface shine crimson.

  David Higson, manager of the municipal tip at Otterspool Promenade, stood with his back to the wall of a hut near the entrance to the site, watching the sky through the steam rising from the mug of tea on which he warmed his hands. The wind whipped off the Mersey and made his skin break out into goose bumps. A shiver ran through him.

  ‘Excuse me!’

  Someone spoke, but it seemed to come from far away, a ghost’s voice drifting on the unforgiving wind. He sipped his tea and continued to enjoy the sky.

  ‘I said, excuse me!’ This time it was loud.

  The sudden aggression in the man’s voice forced Higson out of his reverie and face to face with a man wearing a plain blue baseball cap and a pair of Ray-Bans. The man looked down from the driver’s seat of his white van, a crooked crease between his eyebrows.

  ‘Yes?’ asked Higson. The man turned his face and stared through the windscreen. ‘We’re not actually open yet.’

  ‘I’ve got a freezer to get rid of.’

  ‘But we’re not open until nine o’clock. If I let you past me and you have an accident, Liverpool City Council won’t be insured against your injury and there’s a technical term for what I’d be.’ He paused for effect. ‘Fucked.’

  The man continued staring ahead. Higson looked at the man’s hands. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel.

  ‘So...’ The man still didn’t look at Higson. ‘Come back later – is that what you’re saying?’ There was a tremor in his voice that lay on the thin line between crying and screaming.

  The man’s nostrils flared and Higson was suddenly aware of two things. All they had for company were seagulls and he had no idea what kind of weapon might lie beneath the man’s seat
. He glanced at his mug and cursed himself for having drunk the red-hot tea down to the dregs. In the event of needing to, he had nothing left to throw into the driver’s face.

  ‘I’m not saying that at all. But there is a magic word that gets all kinds of stuff done.’

  The colour on the man’s throat rose. ‘Please,’ he said.

  ‘Reverse out and leave the freezer just outside the perimeter. I’ll make sure it ends up in the home electricals graveyard. Just over there.’

  With a sharp jolt, the man reversed the van outside the tip and Higson blew a low sigh of relief. He watched the man climb out of the van, noted his knee-length padded jacket, blue overall trousers and black Doc Marten boots. One of our not-very-well-in-the-head brethren, he thought.

  The back doors opened and, within a few moments, the man had the small freezer, bound by duct tape, out of the van and on to the grass verge. Once he was back at the wheel and reversing away, Higson returned his attention to the sky. He listened as the van squealed away at unnecessary speed.

  The energising reds, ambers and violets had settled into a palette of grey and white. He placed his cup inside the hut, turned the kettle on for a refill of tea and, with a trolley, went to do a chore for the man who had ruined the best of the day for him.

  29

  8.55 am

  The sky over Sefton Park was marked by two fading red lines, crossing each other. Day marked the spot with an X where night had nurtured a barbaric murder. As Riley travelled with Louise Lawson around the park’s never-ending curve, she looked out of the taxi window and saw a flying V of geese reflected on the surface of the lake.

  ‘Are you OK, Louise?’ she asked, painfully aware that they were getting closer to the scene of her father’s murder and would have to pass the top of Lark Lane to get to The Sanctuary.

  ‘It’s a beautiful morning.’

  ‘It is. Look at the trees,’ said Riley, drawing her attention parkside, away from Lark Lane and Pelham Grove.