by Mark Roberts
‘Covered, aren’t they? Layer on layer. Snow on snow. This is the day that the Lord has made. Do you know that hymn?’
‘We should rejoice and give thanks in it.’ Riley delivered the next line. ‘Those joggers...’ She pointed at them. ‘So dedicated, out running even in this cold.’
‘There’s Gabriel,’ said Louise. Riley followed Louise’s eye line. A tall man in a threadbare black coat with his back turned to the road was walking down a path leading into the heart of Sefton Park. ‘Gabriel? A friend of yours?’
Louise shook her head. ‘Just a man in the park.’
Riley blew a silent sigh of relief. They had passed the entrance to Lark Lane and Louise was still staring at the trees in the park.
Outside The Sanctuary, Riley paid the driver, then helped Louise from the back of the taxi and on to the treacherously icy pavement. Clay approached them, carrying two large bags.
‘Good morning, DCI Clay,’ said Louise.
‘How are you?’ asked Clay. Louise’s eyes were black and puffy, the bang to her head working out across the contours of her face.
‘I’m cold!’
Clay went ahead and rang the bell while Riley supported Louise on the approach to the front door. As they waited on the step, Clay cut to the chase.
‘I’ve a few things to show you and I’d like to ask you some questions once we’re inside and settled. Is that fine by you, Louise?’
Louise nodded, her face vacant.
The door opened slowly, like the person on the other side was playing a game. Clay began to get impatient but reminded herself that this was a home for men with learning difficulties.
A face appeared through the narrow gap, the eyes smiley. The man made a small sound in his throat, a sudden intake of breath, an expression of pure surprise and excitement. A glow of happiness shone in Louise’s eyes.
It was Abey, the sleepwalker, now wide awake and in playful mood. Clay took him in with a glance, saw the friendship bracelet on his wrist, a match with the one Louise wore. In his hair, drops of melted snow glittered. His breath fell thick and fast. An overexcited child in a man’s body, thought Clay.
‘Oh my!’ Louise looked behind herself, theatrically. ‘Let me in, Abey! Let me in! Save me from the big bad wolf!’ She worked hard to act normally, to play a game with him.
Abey’s smile broadened. He opened the door wide and pointed past Louise.
‘Don’t scream out loud, Abey! He’ll hear you and come running towards us.’
He opened his mouth and let out a silent scream, waving his hands and gesturing towards the park. Then he grabbed Louise’s hand and pulled her across the threshold. He looked at Clay and, waving her indoors, said, ‘Quick! Quick! He’s behind you!’
Clay and Riley entered The Sanctuary. Abey shut the door. Louise and Abey let out a long, harmonised sigh, each of them wiping their brows; a well-rehearsed play ritual.
‘Go away, Mr Wolf!’ Louise’s voice was deep. ‘Leave us in peace. Go chase Red Riding Hood today!’
The kitchen was full of the sound of men’s voices, excited and happy. Snow, thought Clay, and men who viewed the world with the eyes of children. Philip? She took out her mobile phone, looked at the time and, with a sinking heart, knew she was too late to call her son.
Abey threw out his arms like a child and swamped Louise in a man-sized hug that looked like it could suffocate her. ‘Lou-Lou...’ She wrapped her arms around him and patted him on the back.
Clay felt like she was invading a tender, private moment. But she had to watch. It was a vision of uncomplicated love and Clay was filled both with the sweetness of Abey giving Louise that gift in that moment and with a sourness that she couldn’t do the same for her son.
From the kitchen doorway, Gideon said, ‘Come on, Abey. Come to me. Lou-Lou’s very busy today.’ He waved Abey over with big, deliberate gestures.
A short, fat man with Down’s syndrome, of indeterminate age and with short sandy hair and a wispy beard, wandered down the stairs sucking his thumb, then jumped from the fourth step.
Abey looked across at Gideon, unwrapped his arms from Louise’s body and addressed the man. ‘Tom Thumb!’
Tom held up his hand and Abey high-fived him as he followed Gideon’s instruction.
‘Abey good,’ said Abey, patting his own chest in the same way that Philip did when he wanted to assert his identity.
‘DCI Clay,’ said Louise. ‘I need to go to the bathroom before we begin our discussion.’
‘Of course,’ said Clay, watching Gideon escort Abey away.
Danielle Miller, dressed in a black Jaeger skirt and an elegant cream-coloured blouse, stepped out of the kitchen and towards Clay and Riley. Her make-up was subtle, took years off her.
‘Danielle,’ said Clay. ‘How much of what is said does Abey understand?’
‘About as much as your average four-or five-year-old would understand.’
Cognitively then, Clay thought, he was slightly ahead of her son.’
‘Why do you ask, DCI Clay?’
Clay considered what she had seen, the way Louise had opened up emotionally in the presence of Abey, the way she had come alive. ‘I’d like Abey to be present in the room when I talk to Louise.’
Danielle’s face clouded. ‘You’re talking about murder? I don’t know.’
‘We’d place him out of hearing distance, but we’d like him in the room,’ Riley chimed in.
‘He’s her favourite, we know this,’ Clay said. ‘And he’s clearly a great comfort to her. I think it would be immensely helpful to Louise if he was there. It’s the kind thing to do.’
‘If she becomes upset, he’ll become upset.’
‘We want to conduct an exploratory conversation about her father,’ said Clay. ‘We know what she saw last night. We won’t be going over that right now. If at any point she looks like she’s going to become emotional, we’ll cut the interview.’
‘He’s a sensitive man.’ Danielle turned her attention away from Clay, focused on Riley.
‘We’re professionals, Mrs Miller. We conduct difficult and highly sensitive discussions with all manner of people nearly every day,’ said Riley.
‘You’d better conduct your interview in our apartment,’ said Danielle. ‘At least you’ll be able to hear yourself think.’
As they followed up the stairs, Clay noted the bottom wiggle of a woman who clearly thought she was made of the world’s finest chocolate. She looked at Riley, who puckered her lips and cupped her hands under her breasts.
‘Gorgeous!’ mouthed Clay.
30
9.08 am
Everything in the Millers’ living room was perfect. Tan carpet, white walls and black leather furniture that looked as if it had been specifically designed for the place. It was set out at angles, giving the room a sense of space and, at the same time, intimacy.
On the wall were framed pictures. Adam Miller, in a black gown, on the steps of the Anglican Cathedral. A large oil painting of the Anglican Cathedral. Adam and Danielle on their wedding day with a man Clay recognised, from the portrait downstairs, as Adam’s father.
In the corner, Riley was on her phone, listening and then talking, her face becoming animated as the conversation developed.
Standing between the plasma television on the wall and the bay window, Clay flicked through her notebook but watched from the corner of her eye.
As Clay had requested, Abey had been set up in the corner of the room with something to do. Waiting for Louise to arrive, Clay observed Danielle’s manner with Abey. Clay and Riley exchanged a glance. She was genuinely kind and patient.
Riley took her iPhone away from her ear, closed the call down and headed towards Clay. ‘I’ve had a hit with the Hart Building, Liverpool University’s human resources centre,’ she said. ‘I called on the off chance at eight this morning and got someone called Justine Elgar. Leonard Lawson’s records pre-date computers. She’s just called me back. She’s dug up his paper records and I�
�ve asked her to make me a copy.’
‘Did she know anything immediately?’
‘She said, Every Professor is big in his or her day, but when their day’s done so are they! She told me there’d be some record of him. There had to be.’
‘Good work.’ Instinct prompted Clay and she spoke with urgency. ‘Go there now, Gina!’
‘Sure!’ As she left the room, Riley recalled that her car was round the corner where she’d parked it in the pit of night.
Abey looked closely at Danielle from his table in the corner.
‘This is for colouring,’ said Danielle.
Abey took a piece of shaped card from her. ‘What this?’
‘It’s a picture of a bird’s face, Abey. Don’t disturb Lou-Lou. She has to talk to her visitor. Be good.’
‘Abey good boy,’ he replied.
Adam Miller poked his head into the room. ‘Danielle, did you put my van keys into the kitchen sink?’
She answered with a silent look and he left as quickly as he had arrived.
The living room door opened. Turning, Clay watched Louise enter, her face washed, her hair combed.
Engrossed in colouring, Abey didn’t seem to notice her as she passed him and sat on a leather armchair.
Clay positioned herself on the sofa, at an angle to Louise, and pressed record on her iPhone. ‘Are you ready, Louise?’
The sound of Abey’s pencil scratching back and forth across the card drifted from the corner of the room.
‘Yes, I’m ready.’
‘Your father was a highly intelligent man...’
In the corner, deep in his throat, Abey hummed a series of random notes, but Louise didn’t seem to notice.
‘Did you ever read your father’s books?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘I’d have thought, Louise, if it was my father and he’d written a book, I’d have been really curious to know what he’d written about.’
‘Well...’
Clay watched the shifting contours of her face. ‘You can say anything you like,’ she reassured her.
‘With all due respect, DCI Clay, you never knew your father. You were abandoned as a baby. So you don’t really know what you’d have done if your father had written a book.’
Although it was common knowledge, Clay was surprised that Louise had articulated the information so bluntly. ‘How did you find that out?’ she asked.
‘When you captured the sisters who murdered their mother.’
The memory caused coldness and sadness to pass through Clay. ‘Go on...’
‘Gideon told me all about it. It’s a dreadful thing for a child to kill a parent. And then I went into the Sefton Park on Aigburth Road and read about it in a True Detective magazine.’
‘So you know all about my Satanic cult background as well?’ Clay faced it head on.
‘I don’t blame you for that. It’s no one’s fault where they are born or the parents they are born to. The Lord won’t judge you for other people’s sins. Remember, Jesus died to save us all from our sins.’
Clay looked across the silent room. Abey stared down at the page, drew a circle over and over. For a moment, he looked at Clay, but it seemed to her he couldn’t see her. He returned to colouring.
‘Not everyone has the good fortune to be born to such an eminent father as yours, Louise. Two things I picked up on. Your doorbell was broken and was covered with two sticking plasters?’
‘We never had callers to the house. Father didn’t welcome company of any kind. Visitors or people selling things we didn’t need.’
‘But he liked your friend Gideon Stephens, didn’t he?’
‘He did. He would speak to Gideon because his manners were good and he looked after my safety. They would speak briefly, the same conversation: words of thanks, words of response.’
‘No other visitors or friends?’ Louise shook her head, looked away. ‘Which brings me on to the next thing I picked up on. His address book. It was completely empty.’
‘Like I said, he didn’t welcome company.’
‘Is it fair to say he prided himself on being self-contained?’
‘That would be fair.’
‘That’s why he kept an address book. To remind himself that there were no addresses in it?’ Clay pictured Leonard Lawson’s life, the never-ending struggle for knowledge, the professional obligation to talk and write himself into the ground, and she understood a little of his eccentricity.
‘But...’ Clay leaned in a little closer to Louise. ‘He did have relationships in his life. Historically. He must have done.’
‘For me to be here? My mother? She died when I was a baby. She had cancer of the throat. He found it impossible to talk about her. He couldn’t talk to me about it. I stopped asking questions about her when I was quite small because I knew I’d never get any answers.’
Clay produced a copy of Hieronymus Bosch: Divine Visions and placed it on the coffee table. From the same evidence bag she then pulled out the framed photograph from Leonard Lawson’s desk.
‘Louise, I need to find out as much about your father as I can because I believe that the person who killed him knew him. Do you know who the people in this graduation photograph are?’
‘One of them is my father. I don’t know who the other man is.’ Clay heard a catch in Louise’s voice. ‘It was something he wouldn’t talk about.’
‘Which one is your father?’
Louise pointed at the taller of the two and Clay connected his youthful features with the face of the corpse.
She opened the dedication page of the Hieronymus Bosch and showed it to her.
For DN
Now and for always
‘Your father never mentioned a university friend called David or Daniel or Douglas...?’
‘I do not know the name of the other man in the picture. I’m sorry. But I do know who DN is because I worked it out for myself,’ said Louise.
In the corner, Abey blew his cheeks out and neighed, his lips rattling in the air.
‘It’s Denise Nicholas. She’s my mother and that was her maiden name.’
Denise Nicholas? thought Clay, a cloud parting. DN. The person to whom he dedicated every single book that he wrote for the rest of his long, lonely life. Idea after idea tripped inside Clay’s head and the picture of the ice-cold, aloof father that was forming gave way to another version of the same man. Leonard Lawson’s private self had a tragic door leading to his secret self. She needed more light. ‘What kind of a father was he?’
‘He was a good father. It was the 1950s, a different world to today. He was strict because he was a single man bringing up a daughter. He did as much for me as he could, which was almost everything.’
Respect crept into Clay’s vision of Leonard Lawson. Devastated by the loss of his wife, he hadn’t turned to drink. Instead, he had immersed himself in the academic study of art and in looking after his daughter, sealing off the loneliness with self-imposed solitude and silence.
‘Your father walked in Sefton Park every day.’
‘Yes, regular as clockwork.’
‘Did he tell you about an incident in the park last Thursday?’
‘No. But he was upset when I came home to make his meal. Did something bad happen to him?’
‘We have a prime suspect for your father’s murder,’ said Clay.
Outside, snow started falling.
Louise sat forward. ‘Tell me. Who is it? And what happened?’
31
9.23 am
There were two places Adam Miller could be himself.
In his shed at the bottom of the long, rectangular back garden of The Sanctuary, Adam Miller turned the handle of the vice on his workbench and sealed the wooden window frame in place. He picked up a planer, drew the blade across the edge of the wood and felt a surge of pride at the skill and strength with which he manipulated the tool in his hand.
Outside, he heard the sound of excited voices coming out of the house a
nd into the garden. The pleasure evaporated and anger took its place. He looked out of the window and saw the source of the excitement. Snow. Fucking snow. It always turned the retards’ lights on. Made them act different. Just recently, Abey had gone wandering off in it after he’d been told to shovel the snow off the gravel path at the front of The Sanctuary. They only noticed he’d disappeared when Danielle returned home, and then it had taken Adam three hours to find the wandering idiot.
Adam opened the door and looked out through the snow at Gideon and eleven of the residents. They were standing in a circle and following his lead, their faces turned to the sky, their eyes and mouths open, their arms reaching up, fingers splayed, welcoming the falling snow. The twelfth resident, Abey, wasn’t there. Him again. Louise’s little pet and the most irritating of the twelve.
‘You’re all snowmen!’ called Gideon. ‘Go and find your own space in the garden and become very still. Just like snowmen.’ He clapped his hands together and started lunging playfully at the men.
What a life, thought Adam. Playing music, playing games. You’re men! You should be working! You’re capable of digging, and carrying weights! If fucking donkeys can work, so can you!
The circle disintegrated and the men scattered, some running, some hobbling, some dancing, some limping. Half the group found their space in the garden and fell still within moments; the other half needed Gideon’s help to reach even a semblance of stillness. Some wobbled, some rocked back and forth, and some fidgeted, but it was the closest the group would come to being snowmen.
‘Who is the stillest of them all?’ Gideon asked. His eyes connected with Adam’s. Of the other people in the garden, only Tom Thumb looked at Adam.
What are you looking at, dwarf? ‘All right, Gid!’ Adam said, with a smile. He beckoned him over to the shed.
‘What is it, Adam?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Working.’
Adam hated the way the snow melted on Gideon’s hair. ‘Working?’ He laughed. ‘Playing, surely?’
‘I’m a play therapist. That’s one of the jobs I do here. That’s why you employ me, Adam.’
