Dead Silent

by Mark Roberts

‘Working?’ Adam pointed at the window frame in the vice. ‘You know that window that won’t open in the bathroom, because the damp conditions have swollen the wood? I planed two mills off it, round about midnight. I had to bring it back and try again because it still won’t fit and I reckon it needs another two. That’s working. Fancy a swap?’ He extended the planer to Gideon.

  Gideon shook his head and turned away.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Gid, I’m just having a laugh with you. Where’s your sense of humour?’

  Adam closed the door and took one of two keys from his pocket. He locked the shed on the inside and then, imagining Gid’s face trapped in the vice, sliced the flesh of the wood and felt a rush of blood to his penis. He pictured Gideon’s fat, oversized penis wedged between the metal as he planed through the wood a second time. He heard Gideon’s scream and watched the blood spray. It gave him an erection like iron.

  That’ll teach you to fuck my wife when I’m busy working!

  He put the plane down and with his other key turned to the black box that he kept under the workbench. He pulled it out and, kneeling next to it, caught the aroma of fresh rubber. His stomach churned and a tremor tripped through his nervous system. He laid his arms across the lid, pressed his face against the leather surface and pictured the things inside the box. His body was locked in the moment, but his mind flew to another place, not far from where he was.

  In his mind he replayed the sequence. He took out the key he’d been given, the one for the front door. He stepped inside, quietly, so the other tenants wouldn’t hear him. He came to the door of the flat and used the other key to open it.

  It was dark as pitch. He could hear the drip of a tap and laboured breathing in a room deep inside. He moved into the second place where he could be himself, closed the door and walked in silence through the gloom towards the sound of breathing.

  The room was alive with candlelight and shadows and the sound of the Pig breathing hard. He looked at the Pig. The Pig was naked except for the leather mask that covered its face; its torso was still tied to the ladder-back chair, just as he’d left it hours earlier. ‘Let me in, Little Pig!’ Adam stepped closer, banged his fist into the palm of his hand. ‘Did you hear that, Little Pig!’ There was a squeal from behind the mask. ‘I’m coming to get you, Little Pig. I’m going to hurt you really, really badly, Little Pig.’

  Outside, he heard Gideon coming towards the shed, calling, ‘Tom Thumb, don’t go near Adam’s shed, you know the rules.’

  And he was snapped back into the moment.

  Work! Time to go back to work! ‘Work! Work! Work! Work!’ He could hear his father’s voice and he was on his feet without thinking. He looked up at the window. Outside, the snow was hurtling from the mute sky.

  32

  9.23 am

  Danielle Miller stood at the window on the top floor of The Sanctuary, the house beneath her strangely silent for once. She focused her attention on Gideon, organising games down in the garden with the men in his care. A smile blossomed on her face at the way he slipped effortlessly into their collective mindset and played with the carelessness of a small child.

  As she watched him weave between the human snowmen, Danielle felt a deeply buried longing for the love that was completely absent from her life. She fell to wishful thinking, closed her eyes and pictured the darkness of Gideon’s hair, the warmth of his smile, the ever-present kindness in his eyes. She imagined his hands falling on her shoulders – the hands and arms that had picked her up by the waist and swung her round, circle after laughing circle, in the garden on the open day; she imagined the gentle weight of his fingertips pressing into the knots of tension.

  ‘Do you love me, Gideon?’

  ‘What is there not to love, Danielle?’ The tactful answer he always supplied to the men of the house when they questioned his affections for them.

  In her mind, she turned from the window and faced him. ‘No, Gideon, do you love me?’

  His hands slipped from her shoulders and down the length of each arm. Thrill after pleasure-packed thrill raced through her. She imagined him cupping his hands at the base of her back and pressing himself closer into her. She drank in his natural scent – sunshine and musk – and her head felt light, drunk on the chemicals pouring off him, silent messengers that told her it wasn’t a case of if he loved her, it was a case of how much.

  With a subtle gesture of her head, she offered him her lips and waited. She felt a pulse in the middle of her ribs – his heart beating into her body. She raised her hands and pressed them either side of his face, could feel the smile drifting into her palms. ‘For God’s sake, Gideon, kiss me!’

  His lips descended on her mouth, a fragile and tender collision that ignited a fire at her core and a wetness between her legs. He slipped his tongue between her lips and, as the tip connected with hers, his left hand slid away from the base of her back, down the back of her thigh, inside her skirt and up to her waist.

  His tongue drew a loving circle around hers and a profound sigh of pleasure mingled with the heat of her breath as his index finger slipped into her underwear and slid slowly down from her waist.

  He pulled his head back and urged her, ‘Look at me, Danielle!’

  She opened her eyes and looked directly into his.

  ‘I’ve loved you from the moment I met you. But you’re a married woman and this is wrong.’

  ‘I’ll leave him. I love you so much, Gideon. Do you know how isolated I am? Do you know how lonely I’ve been? Lonely and unloved for years on end.’

  His mouth pressed down on hers and she sobbed as his index finger glided inside her. His kiss was ambrosial, his touch like magic.

  He drew his face away from hers.

  ‘No. He’s got all the money in the world. I live in a shared house and I’m on the minimum wage. I’d be reducing you to poverty. Remember how afraid of poverty you are. Remember the terrible things you saw poverty drive people to when you were a child.’

  Where heat had raged, coldness now flooded in. The grey light of reality sharpened around her, and the phantom of Gideon, and the fantasy of their love, departed abruptly.

  She opened her eyes and looked down at the garden again. Gideon was lying on the lawn, making a snow angel. With the back of her hand, she wiped away a film of tears. She laughed and sobbed in the same breath, pressed the heat of her cheek against the coldness of the glass and remembered again the weight of his muscular arms around her on that hot day in June when the public had been invited in to see the charade that her life truly was.

  ‘Jesus, Gideon,’ she whispered at the window.

  In the garden below, he jumped up from the ground and chased after Tom Thumb.

  ‘It’s right under your nose, man. Can’t you see it, sweetheart? Can’t you see just how much I love and worship you?’

  Silence.

  ‘What are you rabbiting on about?’ She froze at the sound of her husband’s voice. ‘What are you daydreaming about now?’

  She couldn’t turn to face him, couldn’t bear to look at him.

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual,’ she replied. She hung on to her breath, tried to bury any display of emotion.

  ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘World peace and universal happiness and...’

  ‘And?’

  ‘A really nice black dress I saw on eBay.’

  ‘Quit dreaming and get on with some work...’

  His voice drifted away with him.

  A really, really nice black dress, she thought. The one I’ll wear for your funeral.

  33

  9.28 am

  ‘What happened to my father in the park on Thursday?’ asked Louise.

  ‘Did your father ever mention people he walked past in the park?’

  She shook her head. ‘He was in a world of his own. I watched him once, without him knowing. I followed him for a little while. He didn’t speak to anyone. I was in the park on another occasion with some of my friends from The Sanctuary.
He saw me, made eye contact, but didn’t speak. What happened on Thursday?’

  ‘He was pursued, followed by a man who said unpleasant things to him. We’re currently looking for that man so that we can arrest him and ask him questions to help us with our enquiries.’

  ‘Where did this happen?’

  ‘Near the Alicia Hotel.’

  ‘And what did the man say?’

  ‘He was whispering, so it’s hard to say exactly,’ lied Clay. ‘But the point is, your father didn’t want to communicate with this man and he didn’t want this man following him. Other members of the public became aware of what was happening and intervened to defend your father. Fortunately, two police officers came upon the scene and were able to take charge of the situation.’

  ‘Did this man touch my father or in any way physically hurt him?’

  ‘No. No physical contact or violence happened.’

  Louise processed the information. ‘DCI Clay, I’d like to see my father’s body, please.’

  Clay recalled Leonard Lawson’s dismantled torso – his rib cage in pieces, his heart torn apart to release the spear shaft that pierced it, his intestines piled on a metal trolley – and said, ‘There’s no hurry, is there, Louise?’

  ‘Hope is eating me, DCI Clay. Here.’ She touched her heart. ‘I need to give up that hope.’

  ‘What is that hope?’ asked Clay.

  From the table, Abey said, ‘No, Ken. Ken naughty. Naughty Ken.’

  ‘I need to give up the hope that he is still alive. That I’m not really locked in this waking nightmare. I keep expecting him to walk through the door and tell me to come on home because it’s all been a horrible mistake.’

  ‘Stop it, Ken!’

  Louise glanced over at Abey. ‘Ken is his imaginary friend,’ she explained.

  Clay chose her words with intense care. ‘Your father won’t walk through the door. He can’t tell you to come home, because he’s no longer with us. I’ve seen his body and he’s being prepared as we speak for the dignity of the chapel of rest and the grace of a Christian funeral.’

  ‘Chu-chu-chu-chu! Chu-chu-chu-chu!’ Abey uttered a string of sounds with a regular rhythm and then, as if hit by a bolt of a happy memory, he started laughing. He looked at Clay with a vacancy in his eyes, his mouth wide open with laughter, a rope of saliva falling from the corner of his lower lip.

  Louise looked to the sound and was on her feet and heading over to him with a lightness of movement that, in an instant, took twenty years off her.

  As she reached Abey, she glanced back at Clay and said, ‘He doesn’t understand what’s going on here. But sometimes he remembers things and he has no filter. He has good and bad memories.’ She wiped his mouth, mopped up the spit that had fallen on his hands and sleeves. ‘A good memory will make him laugh for no apparent reason, just as a bad one will make him cry. Memory for us is memory; for him it’s as real as the moment he is living in.’

  She placed her hands on Abey’s shoulders and said, ‘Abey, stand up for Lou-Lou!’ He obeyed her immediately. She sucked in a stream of air and held it. He copied her. She breathed out slowly and he did the same.

  ‘The trick is not to let him get too carried away laughing, because he’ll literally make himself sick. And on the other side, if he gets too sad, he’ll start hurting himself.’

  Louise repeated the trick with the breathing and Clay was amazed at the way Abey calmed down so quickly. She decided she would try it at home with Philip when he was agitated.

  Abey looked at Louise. ‘Hug, Lou-Lou, hug!’ She held out her arms and he sank into her embrace, pressing his face into her shoulder. He turned his head a little and looked at Clay. ‘Who’s that?’ He offered Clay a fixed smile.

  She waved back and said, ‘Hello, Abey. I’m Louise’s friend.’

  ‘You Lou-Lou mummy?’ asked Abey.

  ‘No, I’m Louise’s friend. I’ve come to help her.’

  ‘When I little boy... I my help my daddy...’

  ‘Do you want to sit with me?’ asked Louise, pointing to the sofa. He nodded and, as he followed and sat next to Louise, she appeared to grow stronger.

  Three floors down, Clay heard a chorus of voices, laughing as if they’d just heard the greatest gag on earth.

  ‘That explains it,’ said Louise, ideas connecting in her mind. ‘He didn’t go to the park for the last few days. He said it was the weather, which wasn’t like him, but I thought maybe it was his age.’

  Abey turned his head in Louise’s direction but looked past her and at the window. ‘Snowing!’ He clapped his hands three times and his gaze rose and fell, following the action of the falling snow.

  ‘Was the man arrested?’ asked Louise.

  ‘No, but he was given a warning.’

  ‘What do you know about the man who harassed my father?’

  ‘Seems he was a regular feature in the park. I’ve actually got a picture of him.’

  ‘I’d like to see,’ said Louise.

  Clay stopped recording. ‘He’s not a very pleasant-looking man.’ She pulled up the picture and turned the screen towards Louise.

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Louise?’

  ‘I know him. Not to speak to. He’s well known in the neighbourhood because he’s an eccentric. People call him Bible Bob. It’s not a name I like or would choose to use.’

  ‘What’s his real name, Louise?’

  ‘When there are a lot of teenagers in a gang together, they laugh at him, but when I see them on their own or in twos and threes, they walk the other way.’

  ‘Do you know his name?’ Clay pressed.

  ‘Someone told me his name’s Gabriel Halifax... Or Huddersfield or Harrogate... Something like that. He’s always in the park when I walk from home to here and back.’

  Clay was on her feet. ‘I have to go.’

  As she left the room, Abey’s voice followed her. ‘You play in the snow?’

  She made a call to the incident room at Trinity Road police station.

  DC Barney Cole, the anchor, picked up. ‘What’s up, Eve?’

  ‘I’ve got three possible names. I need you to look on the electoral register and the NHS database.’

  ‘Fire away!’

  34

  9.28 am

  Daylight seeped into Leonard Lawson’s study and the long silence between Hendricks and Stone was broken when Hendricks turned over the last page of the second half of Leonard Lawson’s manuscript and said, ‘Done. Almost.’

  ‘I want a black coffee and a Sausage McMuffin,’ replied Stone, head in hands, the first part of the manuscript on the desk in front of him.

  ‘Will you be eating in or taking out?’

  ‘And I’ll have a bowl of porridge for little Billy Hendricks.’

  ‘Aw, thanks, Uncle Karl.’

  Stone rubbed his eyes and looked down at the manu-script.

  ‘So, Part One. Fire away, Karl?’

  ‘Part One. The Ancient World p.4-210. Egypt. Six centuries before Jesus walked the earth, there’s a king called Psamtik the First. He was a bit New Labour. Opened the country up to mass immigration.’

  Hendricks laughed. ‘Was he a warmonger as well?’

  ‘He was constantly at war because there were armies at the borders and other psycho kings claiming a slice of the Egyptian pie. Psamtik figured that the country that possessed the original language, the lingua mundi, as it were, had the right to be called top dog. Language was the proof in the universal pudding, the gods’ stamp of approval. So in between war after war after war, Psamtik conducted a crude experiment.’

  Stone showed Hendricks a picture of a rugged man on a mountain with two bundles on his back. ‘Two babies were taken from their mother at birth and given to this shepherd.’ He pointed at the bundles. ‘Baby one. Baby two. The shepherd’s job was to say nothing, feed them goat’s milk and listen out for whatever came from their mouths. Many months of silence later, one of the little ones pipes up with Bekos, the word for bread in Phrygia
n.’

  ‘Phrygian?’

  ‘An Indo-European language from Asia Minor. Now lost. Psamtik said, OK, Phrygian is the proto-language. My dream of primal greatness is just that – a dream.’

  ‘So he handed his kingdom over to the Phrygians?’ asked Hendricks.

  ‘No, just found new enemies to go to war with,’ replied Stone. ‘Very New Labour.’

  Hendricks looked through the pages of Part Two and separated them into two piles, one thick, one slender.

  ‘Part Two takes place in California in the 1970s. It’s about a girl called Genie who more or less crawls into the LA county welfare office one autumn day with her partially sighted and whacked-out mother. She was basically brought up in a home dominated by an abusive father who deprived Genie of language from birth.’

  Hendricks showed Stone a small colour profile photograph of a thirteen-year-old girl, eyes downcast, skin like marble, dark hair snatched back in a short ponytail, finger and thumb linked in a noose, other fingers splayed.

  ‘Genie. Kept in silence and deprived of social contact from birth. Her story was up against the trial of Charlie Manson for merde du jour in the LA papers for a week or so.’

  Hendricks fell silent.

  ‘And?’ prompted Stone.

  ‘And we have a gap in the manuscript.’ Hendricks picked up the larger chunk. ‘Genie’s story, page 211 to 378.’ He touched the smaller section. ‘Pages 379 to 390: some very bizarre tributes to Psamtik, and to Genie’s misunderstood and visionary father. The glorification of child abuse and the need to continue these linguistic experiments until the mystery of how language is acquired is resolved. It’s not even Leonard Lawson’s field of expertise. He was an art historian and scholar. Two things, Karl. Did he suffer some sort of mental breakdown? Or substance abuse?’

  ‘And what about the missing pages?’

  ‘Exactly. This is page 378. Check the final two paragraphs before the gap.’

  Hendricks slid the page towards Stone. Outside, a bus roared on Aigburth Drive and life on earth rolled on.

  The motives of Genie’s father remain unclear, but his method – although crude – was essentially correct. In this he was similar to Psamtik. For this experiment to succeed, a more academic model is needed, supported by the top universities of England and Wales. A unique opportunity arose for the English Experiment. But, in spite of the mesmeric intellect of the man leading the research, it was doomed because of the lack of academic infrastructure and the covert nature of the work. The supposed criminality of its content turned the golden vision into brass.