Dead Silent

by Mark Roberts

  ‘The excuse being?’

  ‘Teaching commitments in Liverpool. He could have easily got out of them. And the unnecessary lie was that such a trip would involve him taking Louise out of school. I did the sums. Louise was hitting thirty when he turned the gigs down. It was a don’t bother asking again lie.’

  They approached the constable manning the edge of the scene of crime. He looked cold and miserable. Clay met his eye. ‘Thank you for keeping all those nosey bastards from getting under our feet.’

  He laughed as they passed him. ‘No problem, ma’am.’

  ‘Don’t be so old-fashioned, lad. What’s your conclusion, Gina?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Two hundred thousand bucks for twenty lectures versus fourteen thousand pounds before tax for a whole year in Liverpool Uni tells me that he’d done something or had been involved in something that made him want to be like the Invisible Man. He’d have been the Led Zeppelin of the academic world.’

  Clay opened her driver’s door and Riley got into the passenger seat. Clay put the heater on and warm air danced around their feet. ‘Any ideas?’ she asked.

  Riley opened Leonard Lawson’s photocopied file and pulled out his book review from The Spectator. ‘This is really odd.’

  Clay turned on the overhead light and began to read. Three sentences in, she stopped, looked sideways at Riley. ‘In this absolutely brilliant and ground-breaking study of the need to follow monastic principles of silence and meditation as a means of enhancing the quality of life, Professor Noone outlines how the systemised retention of language could eliminate crime, poverty and a whole range of social ills.‘ She raised her head. ‘Absolutely brilliant and ground-breaking?’ she queried.

  ‘Read on. He’s only warming up, Eve. This is the one and only time he stuck his head over the rampart in decades. Noone’s proposition is that if a man can gain a profound understanding of how a child acquires language – how the blank canvas is filled – then he can control how people think en masse. Whoever controls language would have the tools to change the world and re-create it in his own image. It strikes me Professor Noone’s book is a control freak’s Bible.’

  It took Clay two minutes to read the review and weigh it up. She sighed. ‘Professor Noone is a mesmeric intellect and his inspirational ideas, if adhered to, would lay the foundation for a new world order that would foster the best qualities in human nature and make war, famine and disease a thing of the past.’ She looked at Riley. ‘King-size Messianic Complex. Absolutely bloody barking mad. But who’s the bigger head case?’ In spite of the cold, Clay suddenly felt hot. ‘Professor Noone?’ Illumination was near and the light threatened to be blinding. ‘Or Professor Lawson?’

  Clay took out the framed photo from her bag. ‘This was the only photograph in Lawson’s house. This young man is Leonard Lawson and that young man is...’ She checked the author’s name on the review. D.L. Noone.

  ‘What are you smiling at, Eve?’

  ‘Every dedication in every book that Lawson published was to this man. I thought at one point they were to Denise Nicholas, the maiden name of Louise’s mother.’ Fireworks set off inside her head and a knot tightened in her stomach. ‘Gina, google Professor DL Noone, please.’

  As Riley pulled out her phone, Clay flipped over the framed photograph and released its back panel. She took the picture from the frame, saw that there was a line of neatly inked words on the back and held them up to the overhead light.

  ‘The first page up is Wikipedia,’ said Riley. ‘Looks like meagre pickings.’

  ‘In sepulchrum nos sequitur silentium nostrum.’ Clay read the words as she showed them to Riley.

  They both looked at the Wikipedia page for Professor D.L. Noone. There was a black-and-white close-up of his face. A striking, good-looking man with eyes that appeared jet-black and stared darkly at the viewer. He was the other man in the little portrait in Clay’s hand.

  Riley read: ‘Professor Damien Noone was born in London in 1921. A conscientious objector, he served as a stretcher-bearer in the North African campaign during World War Two. He was educated at King’s College, Cambridge, 1946 to 1949. In 1958, he was appointed Professor of Linguistics at Cambridge University.’

  Clay found an English to Latin translator on her phone, typed in the words In sepulchrum nos sequitur silentium nostrum. The ISNSSN on the dedication in the Psamtik manuscript.

  The brief details of Leonard Lawson’s biography flashed through her head. ‘They met in North Africa during the war and went on to study at the same college in Cambridge.’

  A cloud of thrushes swept across the sky.

  ‘Do you have anything else?’ she asked, clicking on translate.

  ‘Just waiting on a call from Justine Elgar.’

  ‘Look at this. Look what In sepulchrum nos sequitur silentium nostrum translates to in English.’

  Riley read: ‘Our silence follows us to the grave.’

  51

  10.53 am

  With a plainclothes constable stationed at the main entrance of the Metropolitan Catholic Cathedral and another at the exit in the basement, DS Bill Hendricks entered the building. He walked slowly around the curve of the circular interior, pausing in front of every one of the thirteen dedicated chapels, hoping Gabriel Huddersfield would be in there on his knees, looking for affirmation or forgiveness.

  As he walked, Hendricks repeatedly glanced over his shoulder, distracted by a growing unease that someone or something was right behind him. But each time he turned, he was alone. He put the sensation down to the atmosphere in the cathedral.

  Serene blue light from the stained glass of the huge central tower filled the interior and the place swam in competing silence and echoes. Hendricks completed his first circuit at the Amnesty International chapel, the place he had started, feeling as if he was going to explode with frustration.

  He walked to the back row of benches near the main door, to watch the entrance, the feeling of being watched or followed coming back at him with increasing intensity. This time, he thought, ignore it.

  The smell of candle wax and floor polish became infused with a floral note. He sniffed. Lavender. Softly, footsteps echoed towards him.

  He watched the door.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  He turned towards the gentle, husky voice and saw an elderly priest.

  The priest smiled at him. ‘You seem as if you’re looking for someone?’

  Hendricks stood up, towered over the old man and offered him his seat.

  The priest looked around at the dozens of empty benches. ‘May I ask, who are you looking for?’

  Hendricks smiled at the hand-rolled cigarette behind the priest’s left ear. He took out his warrant card and showed it to him. ‘My name’s Detective Sergeant Bill Hendricks.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  ‘I’m with the Merseyside Constabulary.’ He called up the picture gallery on his iPhone and showed him an image of Gabriel Huddersfield. ‘This is the man I’m looking for.’

  The priest looked at Hendricks and nodded. ‘Oh dear. What’s he been up to now?’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A serious crime, Father.’

  ‘Oh no.’ His face filled with sadness. ‘Gabriel’s not very well. His mind is full of confusion.’ Hendricks gazed into the priest’s eyes, which seemed to draw down the cool blue light of the stained glass in the tower. ‘He’s a paranoid schizophrenic.’

  ‘How do you know that, Father?’

  ‘I was a doctor before I became a priest and I practised medicine as part of my priestly vocation before I was put out to grass.’

  ‘How do you know Gabriel Huddersfield, Father?’

  ‘You came here looking for him, didn’t you, Bill? That was an astute move. He’s a regular visitor here. As am I. We speak. He asks me questions. He is conflicted. Questions, questions, questions.’

  ‘What sort of questions?’

  ‘What are the colour of Jesus’s eyes? W
here is the soul of Judas Iscariot? What will happen when Creation breaks and falls away?’

  ‘What do you tell him?’

  ‘What would you say?’

  ‘Brown. Hell. Global nuclear war.’

  ‘Wrong on all counts.’ The priest smiled and Hendricks found himself smiling with him. ‘If he’s committed a serious crime, it’s my belief that his mental health will suffer a major downturn. This will make him quite easy to catch because of the delusional state, but the same delusional state will make the process of interviewing him about his crime difficult.’

  ‘You seem very sure of yourself, Father.’

  ‘Seem. The operative word.’ Silence. ‘Speak, Bill. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Gabriel took part in a murder, eight to ten hours ago. Tell me what you think about his state of mind now.’

  ‘If he’s done something that wrong, he’ll be especially vulnerable.’ He touched his heart. ‘Here. For all his confusion and his extremely strange questions and obsessions, Gabriel Huddersfield has got a very special gift.’ He paused as a tourist passed close by their bench. ‘He’s got a conscience. And deep down, he’s very afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of going to hell when he dies. Which is why he constantly asks about historical figures. Like, If there are many mansions in my Father’s estate of heaven, how many different mansions are there in hell? Which part of hell does Adolf Hitler live in? Whereabouts in hell is the soul of Caiaphas? He’s a very talented artist. Did you know that?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen his work.’

  ‘Let me guess. A painting of hell?’

  ‘One part of it. One part is of the earth, but that’s not much different to hell. One part is paradise.’

  The elderly priest looked at the confessional box a few metres away. ‘I have to go now. Discussing the sins of others has reminded me. It’s time to confess my own.’ He held out a hand and shook Hendricks’s. His fingers were icy. The skin on his hands was like paper and thin blue veins ran like deltas into the rivers of his fingers. Although his touch was full of tenderness, Hendricks felt almost as if he’d been caressed by a ghost.

  ‘I don’t think you’re capable of sin,’ said Hendricks.

  ‘Pardon?’

  The priest smiled with his eyes and an inexplicable sadness coursed through Hendricks. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Never mind. Oh... if you can’t find him here, have a walk down Hope Street and try looking for him in the Anglican.’

  Hendricks stared after him as he walked towards the door of the confessional box. Then he turned and said, ‘Give my love to Eve Clay.’

  ‘You know Eve?’

  ‘Tell Eve to come in and see me sometime, Bill. I’m proud of the way she turned out.’

  It felt like the final seven grains of the sands of time were falling through the egg-timer. ‘How do you know Eve, Father?’

  ‘She’s been in the Liverpool Echo more than once.’ As he opened the door of the confessional box, his voice seemed to roll around the circumference of the cathedral.

  ‘Father, what’s your name?’ But Hendricks’s voice was lost in the gaping space, and the door of the confessional was shut.

  In the light-soaked reception area at the main doors, Hendricks glanced back at the ethereal space and chided himself. Since when did you believe in ghosts? A trick of the light and the stillness of the place.

  Hendricks watched his feet as he walked down the treacherously steep white steps to the pavement. At the bottom, he stared down the length of Hope Street, towards the Anglican Cathedral.

  A woman trudged through the snow, leading a class of junior school children into his path. As he allowed them past, Hendricks saw a man in a black coat crossing the junction of Hope Street and Mount Pleasant.

  The man looked up at the blue glass tower of the cathedral and made the sign of the cross as he walked towards the steps.

  Hendricks waited, double-checked the man’s features as he looked directly at Hendricks.

  The man stopped.

  ‘Gabriel?’ Hendricks stepped towards him. ‘Gabriel Huddersfield?’

  Huddersfield turned, ran into the road and back towards Hope Street.

  52

  11.03 am

  A car swerved to avoid Huddersfield as he sprinted towards the Everyman Theatre and ploughed into the base of a traffic light. Hendricks watched as a stream of traffic screeched to a halt behind the lead car.

  Huddersfield was across the centre of Mount Pleasant and Hendricks weaved through the frozen cars, avoiding the drivers as they jumped out of their vehicles and got directly in his way.

  A double-decker bus steamed towards the junction with Hope Street. Hendricks looked at the bus, the black ice on the road and Huddersfield’s departing figure. He ran into its path, heard the horn screaming at him and felt the disturbance of air as he avoided the vehicle and made it to the corner.

  He scanned the length of Hope Street and clocked Huddersfield heading towards the huge black and gold Art Nouveau gates of the Philharmonic Pub. A column of traffic forced Huddersfield to pause. He looked back as Hendricks made a diagonal cut across the road towards him. Their eyes met.

  Huddersfield streamed past the pub’s decorative turrets and domes, turned the corner into Hardman Street and left Hendricks’s sight.

  The sounds around Hendricks lifted and all he could hear was the pulse of blood inside his head. He felt his body melting into the air and the weight of his legs vanish. He got closer and closer as Huddersfield headed down the hill then cut across the road, drawing angry blasts of car horns.

  On either side of the pavement, pedestrians stopped to watch as Hendricks held up his hand to a line of oncoming traffic, raced to the middle of the road and was then penned back by a single-decker 86. He darted through its slipstream to the other side, ran into the gutter, where red grit had turned the ice to slush, and kept his eyes pinned on Huddersfield’s back as he hit the corner of Pilgrim Street. Expecting him to turn the corner, Hendricks was surprised to see him cross the road towards St Luke’s, the bombed-out church.

  Without warning, Huddersfield stopped in the middle of Pilgrim Street and tried to turn. But a motorbike hit him. Bike and rider curved to the ground as Huddersfield’s body flew into the air then slammed on to the tarmac.

  As Hendricks closed in on him, Huddersfield got to his feet and hobbled down the side of the ruined church, past the black railings of its garden. An old man stopped and moved in his direction. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Police!’ called Hendricks. ‘Get away from him!’

  Huddersfield pulled a knife. The old man backed off. Hendricks was ten paving stones away. Closer. He could see the cold cast of Huddersfield’s eyes.

  Hendricks felt his body rise as he leapt towards Huddersfield, feet first into his back. He connected, full on with both feet in the base of Huddersfield’s spine, and Huddersfield crashed to the pavement. Hendricks landed half on the pavement and, adrenaline pumping, was on him, both hands pinning his chest, his knees on his hips.

  Coldness poured off the pavement.

  ‘You’re under arrest, Gabriel.’

  A ring of onlookers started to form. Hendricks kept one hand on Huddersfield and flashed his warrant card. ‘Beat it right now!’

  53

  11.15 am

  Driving to the Royal Liverpool Hospital to meet with Hendricks and Huddersfield in A&E, Clay slowed down at a red light. Her phone rang out, she connected, hit speakerphone and burned the light.

  ‘I got your text,’ said Stone. ‘You want me to come to the Royal?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied and then, remembering the victim’s daughter, ‘No. Go to The Sanctuary and tell Louise Lawson that we’ve got one of the men who killed her father. Confirm we’re looking for his accomplice. See if you can press her for anything else.’

  As Clay sped down Lodge Lane, she considered the explosive cocktail of mental illness, religious mania and sexual deviancy on which Gabriel Hudder
sfield was so extremely drunk and wondered how hard it would be to crack him open.

  At the junction with Smithdown Road and Upper Parliament Street, her phone rang again. Excitement gripped her when she saw the name ‘Cole’ on the display.

  ‘Barney! The white van, the CCTV from Fulwood Court?’

  ‘The central stretch of Jericho Lane leading away from the tip was swamped in fog from the playing fields alongside the road. The driver was CCTV savvy and held his hand up to his face when he passed Fulwood Court and their camera. He needn’t have bothered. The fog was so thick, I can only tell you that the van was a Mercedes-Benz, probably a Citan. And I could only pull two digits from the licence plate. K and C. The woman from the DVLA laughed at me, told me she wasn’t capable of performing miracles. Go find the rest of the numbers and letters, Plod, and maybe I can help you then. Quote unquote. Bitch!’

  Clay buried the crashing disappointment that Cole’s news brought and tried to sound bright. ‘Barney, stop feeling sorry for yourself and get to work on the symbol from the shaft of the spear. Unravel the dragonfly at the open window.’

  54

  11.15 am

  In the communal kitchen of The Sanctuary, Abey sat alone at the table, a plate of toast and a milky cup of tea in front of him. Another plate of toast and another cup of tea sat on the table in the empty place opposite.

  ‘So, where did you slip off to when everyone else was having their snack?’ asked Gideon, loading the dishwasher.

  ‘Eat up toast, Ken,’ said Abey to the empty place. ‘Drink tea, Ken. Hungry if don’t, Ken.’ With a delicate gesture, he pushed the plate and cup a little closer.

  Gideon stopped what he was doing and, smiling, watched.

  ‘Come on, Ken. Be good boy now and me tell Lou-Lou, Ken be good boy.’ Abey nodded. He fell still and Gideon positioned himself so that he could see the expression on Abey’s face. He appeared rapt, listening attentively, nodding and making affirmative noises with his mouth.