Dead Silent

by Mark Roberts

‘No, Ken. Can’t. Can’t see. Can’t see no Dada. Dada dead. Body bury, soul in heaven. With?’ Pause. ‘Jesus!’

  Abey’s head turned. His eyes tracked the space from the chair opposite to the door. ‘Where going, Ken? Come back, Ken! Ken! No eat toast. No grow big strong like Abey.’

  Gideon made his way to the seat opposite Abey and the skin on his arms puckered into goose bumps when Abey looked directly into his eyes and smiled.

  ‘Can I sit there?’ Abey nodded and Gideon sat in Ken’s place. ‘Oh, look!’ said Gideon, indicating the tea and toast he had made earlier. ‘You said Ken would eat and drink it if I made it.’

  Abey took a few moments and responded. ‘Ken naughty. No eat tea toast.’ He pointed at his own empty plate. ‘Me good. Me eat up and say thank you.’

  ‘What’s Ken like?’ asked Gideon. Abey licked the tip of his finger and dragged it through the crumbs on his plate. ‘Is he a good friend?’ Abey stuck the finger in his mouth and Gideon, noticing the friendship bracelet on his wrist, wondered just how much Abey would ever understand of Louise’s trauma.

  ‘Ken mean to Abey this morning.’ The door creaked open, but no one came in. ‘Ssshhhh!’ Abey placed his finger to his lips. ‘Hello, Ken!’ Abey lit up, tracked the phantom friend from the door to the chair opposite. Gideon watched Abey’s eyes make the journey through thin air. ‘Where been, Ken?’ An imaginary step. ‘Been good, Ken?’ Closer came the illusion.

  ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon, Ken,’ said Gideon, standing up for Abey’s imaginary friend. ‘Your seat. Here, please...’ He paused. ‘Sit down, Ken. That’s good, yes, just great.’ Gideon pushed the empty chair into the table and smiled. Abey made a switch. The tea and toast was in his place, the empty plate and cup in Ken’s place.

  ‘Ken eaten up. Abey eat he toast now.’

  The door opened and Adam walked in, a smile on his lips. Abey stood up quickly and, head down, walked past Adam and out of the room.

  ‘What’s wrong with you now, Adam?’ asked Gideon. ‘You look like you’ve lost three pints of blood.’ Adam looked at Gideon with an intensity that stopped him in his tracks. ‘You don’t look yourself. I think I know what’s troubling you.’

  ‘Do you really?’ Adam closed the kitchen door. ‘Tell me, what’s troubling me?’

  ‘I’m worried about you, Adam.’

  ‘What a coincidence.’ Adam advanced towards Gideon. ‘What’s troubling me?’

  ‘Danielle. She doesn’t know, does she?’

  ‘Doesn’t know what?’

  ‘777 Croxteth Road,’ said Gideon.

  The smile on Adam’s face froze and the colour rose in his throat. He moved closer, his eyes not leaving Gideon’s. ‘Go on.’

  ‘The longer it’s been going on, the more careless you’ve become.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about the purple-haired pot-head who screws you for weed money.’

  Adam stopped. The tension in his body reached saturation point and he appeared to turn to stone on the spot. ‘Don’t even think about using that against me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. But I’m confused, Adam. She’s a bag of bones. I’ve been behind her in the checkout at Tesco on Aigburth Road and she stinks. What’s her name? Sheila? Sally? Sandra?’

  ‘How do you know about me and Sally?’ There was a tone in his voice, a feline purring or a bomb about to go off.

  ‘I’ve seen you letting yourself into the building with your own key.’

  Adam smiled and the effect was unnerving. ‘Go on, Gideon, keep that slanderous tongue wagging.’

  ‘I don’t get it. The attraction.’ In little more than a whisper, Gideon asked, ‘Is it the grubbiness of her?’ Adam said nothing, but his eyes were dancing with a muddy light. ‘You’re married to Danielle. She’s attractive, a lady, and you keep disappearing to that woman. I’m warning you, it’s out on the neighbourhood tom-toms: you, a pillar of the Church of England, and the local skank.’

  Adam laughed and was then suddenly silent. ‘I’ve been visiting her because she wants me to pray with her. She’s desperate to come off the drugs. We had a chance meeting in the same Tesco’s where you made judgments about her because she lacks the basic skills to care for herself. You should listen to yourself. You’ve got a diseased mind, Gideon. Shame on you!’

  The doorbell rang, three sharp blasts. The sound galvanised Adam and he was in the garden at speed. Gideon watched him and listened to Danielle’s footfall as she headed to the front door.

  You’re a liar, Adam! The truth of this overwhelmed Gideon as he tracked Adam heading through the snow. The man was poisonous. A dangerous liar and a total hypocrite. Adam opened his shed door and, not for the first time, Gideon wondered what he did in there. Fear pricked Gideon’s skin like hot pins. His heart beat faster at the coldness in Adam’s eyes and an old-fashioned word came into his head. Evil.

  He heard the front door open and Danielle’s voice. ‘Come in, Detective Sergeant Stone. It’s a cold day. Let me fix you a hot drink.’ They came into the kitchen.

  Gideon walked but wanted to run. ‘Would you like me to get Louise?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Stone, sitting at the table.

  ‘You don’t look well, Gid, are you OK?’ asked Danielle.

  ‘I think I’m catching a bug,’ he said, leaving the room. A nasty, violent bug.

  55

  11.30 am

  At the Royal Liverpool Hospital, in a windowless room near the A&E suite, Clay and Hendricks sat across a table from Gabriel Huddersfield.

  Huddersfield looked back at Clay, staring through her as if she was a fleeting shadow. His top and lower lips were broken, crusts of blood rimmed his nostrils, a black eye was making its way out on his left side and to the right his whole cheek was deeply grazed. His clothes – black trousers, top and coat – looked as if he’d been living in them for weeks.

  ‘Gabriel,’ said Clay. ‘DS Hendricks and I are making an audio recording of this interview. Do you understand that?’

  Silence.

  ‘You have the right to a solicitor and I’m going to offer it to you again. So far, your response has been silence. Gabriel, would you like the services of the duty solicitor?’

  Silence.

  ‘You know, Gabriel, you’re lucky. You’re lucky you have no broken bones.’

  ‘That’s not luck. My bones are filled with my spirit and my spirit, like my bones, is unbreakable.’

  ‘Again, do you want a solicitor?’

  Silence.

  ‘Then we’ll proceed with the interview. Who beat you up?’

  For a moment he looked surprised by the question. Instead of looking through Clay, he focused on her.

  She pointed at the purple bruising around his neck. ‘I can see suction marks on your neck and the imprint of human teeth marks. Yet on the knuckles of your hand I see tattooed JESUS DIE4U. I suggest to you, Gabriel Huddersfield, that the person who inflicted these sexualised wounds on you was the same person who assisted you in the murder of Leonard Lawson in his bedroom in his house on Pelham Grove. Am I right?’

  Silence. He tilted his head back, stared at the ceiling directly above him.

  ‘Give me a name, Gabriel. Where were you between the hours of ten o’clock last night and two o’clock this morning?’

  He scraped a crust of blood from his nose with a thumbnail, looked at it, ground it into dust between his thumb and finger on the table. ‘How can I talk to you if you don’t know what I am?’

  ‘We’ve spoken on the phone, Gabriel, when I was in Leonard Lawson’s house,’ said Hendricks. ‘Leonard Lawson’s house. You’ve been there, haven’t you?’

  ‘Oh, but I do know what you are.’ Clay considered his role in the sadomasochistic relationship. ‘You’re the Angel of Destruction. And your earthly lover, your partner, is the First Born.’

  Gabriel looked beyond Clay at Hendricks and then back at Clay. ‘How do you know what I am?’

  ‘You�
�re the killer of Leonard Lawson.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘But this was not something you did on your own?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Give me the name of the First Born.’ Hendricks leaned in a little closer.

  ‘The First Born,’ echoed Huddersfield.

  ‘And his name is...?’

  ‘Why should I need to know a name? The First Born is enough. The First Born raised me to be his angel.’

  ‘What does the First Born look like?’

  ‘The First Born looks like a man, it is a clever mask. I think you know the First Born. Why don’t you ask him yourself?’

  ‘How do I know him?’ asked Clay.

  ‘How do you think?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘With your eyes and your ears.’

  Clay looked at him and saw his eyes hardening and knew he was not going to give up the name of his brutal lover. ‘Are you afraid of the First Born?’ she asked. ‘Are you frightened that the First Born will destroy you?’

  Silence. His hands were pressed flat against the surface of the table, palms down, fingers splayed. Lips moving without sound. His head fell forward, he closed his eyes, raised his arms in the air in evangelical fervour, hands cupped to heaven.

  ‘I know why you murdered Leonard Lawson, Gabriel.’

  ‘You know nothing.’ He looked at her through the trees of his raised arms, fingers spread like diseased branches.

  ‘Just as he condemned one half to the silent void...’

  Gabriel’s arms fell suddenly, thumping on to the table with force.

  ‘...Leonard Lawson and his other half are condemned...’

  He banged his arms again. The pain made his hands shake and a look of ecstasy flashed through his cold eyes.

  ‘...to the eternal silence of hell.’

  His face twitched and Clay could almost see the adrenaline pumping round his body. A film of sweat glazed his face.

  ‘You delivered him to that punishment, you and your partner.’

  She could smell his blood and a hint of sweat beneath the metallic tang.

  ‘With these hands.’ He spoke with complete detachment as he lowered his fingers and, under the ceiling light, examined his clawed hands as if they were the crowning glory of some mythical beast. ‘The deliverer’s deliverers.’ He spoke to his hands, kissed the tips of his own fingers.

  Clay looked at him closely, analysed every detail and took a picture with her mind’s eye. ‘Do you know who Leonard Lawson condemned to the silent void? Or were you just repeating what your partner told you?’

  ‘Silence,’ said Huddersfield.

  ‘Do you know who Leonard Lawson’s other half was?’

  ‘Silence.’

  ‘Do you know what the eternal silence of hell is like, that you have delivered Leonard Lawson to?’

  Huddersfield covered his mouth with both hands.

  ‘Any questions, DS Hendricks?’

  ‘Yes. You mentioned a body and a garden in your phone call to Leonard Lawson’s house. Whose body? Which garden?’

  Huddersfield closed his eyes.

  ‘What is the colour,’ asked Hendricks, ‘of Jesus Christ’s eyes? They’re not brown, are they, Gabriel?’ Huddersfield opened his eyes. ‘Unlike yours. And what about the end of the world? It won’t be a global nuclear war. One moment it will be here and the next gone. In time for the Last Judgment. Speaking of which, Gabriel, which part of hell does Judas Iscariot live in? He isn’t in hell. His soul is in heaven. I hope the same can be said of you one day, Gabriel. I do hope the First Born has his facts about the afterlife straight. I hope so, don’t you? No more questions.’

  Huddersfield clasped his hands together in front of him, looked straight ahead at Clay. She held his silence, stared deeper into his eyes and, in a double blink, saw the faintest sign of a crack within him.

  ‘We know something about the history of your mental health,’ said Hendricks. ‘And we know what you’re up to. That was a fine performance, Mr Huddersfield.’

  ‘You’re a policeman, not a psychiatrist. You know nothing.’

  ‘I’ve got a PhD in forensic psychology. You had the presence of mind to run away from me when you thought I might be a police officer. Your notes are on the way over from Broadoak as we speak. I’ve booked in to see Mr Leavis, your consultant psychiatrist, to discuss your history.’

  Huddersfield looked up at him.

  ‘You’re fit to stand trial, Mr Huddersfield, because you understand the nature of the crime you’ve committed and the charges that will be brought against you.’

  ‘I have severe mental illness.’

  ‘I’ve never seen such cold premeditation as in Leonard Lawson’s killing,’ said Clay. ‘Your little act isn’t going to win you a term in Broadmoor Hospital. You’re going to end up on a Category A wing in Wakefield!’

  ‘I’m not well!’

  ‘You’ve got to understand,’ said Hendricks. ‘People have been trying to pull the wool over my eyes for many, many years. I can see right through you. And so will every psychiatrist the justice system can throw at you. If I was you, I’d cooperate with us.’

  Huddersfield covered the lower half of his face with his fingers.

  ‘When we spoke on the phone,’ repeated Hendricks, ‘you mentioned a body and a garden. Whose body? Which garden?’

  Silence.

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Clay. ‘Shall we stop wasting our time, DS Hendricks?’

  ‘The garden. Its name. It’s on the back of the triptych.’

  ‘Mind games,’ said Clay, ‘will get you nowhere. A garden? For dead people?’ She smiled. A curtain parted behind her eyes.

  ‘I’m sick, I tell you.’

  ‘You’re referring to a cemetery!’

  His eyes dithered.

  ‘A garden for dead people.’

  ‘I’m sick. Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick!’

  56

  11.35 am

  Danielle Miller, early fifties but with the figure of a woman half her age and the indelible stamp of the pretty girl she had once been still visible in her face, turned and smiled. ‘Milk and sugar?’

  ‘Milk, no sugar, thank you.’

  Sitting at the kitchen table in The Sanctuary, DS Karl Stone watched her pouring coffee and, for a moment, imagined what it would be like to be in a relationship with her. As she turned and brought the coffee over, he abandoned the pleasant but self-defeating daydream. She was way out of his league. Her husband had at some point in time presumably had looks and charm, and most certainly money.

  As she put the cup of coffee down, the edge of her hand brushed his. The accidental touch filled him with a loneliness he only dwelt on in the privacy of his clean but rather unhomely flat. Eighteen months after his last disastrous date, he abandoned a solemn pledge he’d made to himself. Internet dating, he thought, come back, all is forgiven.

  The door opened and Louise came in and sat down at the table. Danielle placed a cup of tea in front of her and put her hands on her shoulders. She looked at Stone. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  Stone waited until Danielle had closed the door on her way out.

  ‘Miss Lawson, of the two men involved in the murder of your father, one of them is currently in our custody and on his way to Trinity Road police station. His name is Gabriel Huddersfield.’

  The door to the garden opened and Adam entered.

  A strange look crossed Louise’s face. ‘Can it really be Gabriel Huddersfield?’

  ‘Gabriel Huddersfield?’ Adam sounded perplexed. ‘Who’s he?’ He closed the door, but the room was now full of cold air.

  Stone looked at Louise, who said nothing for a few moments and then asked, ‘Are you going to the cathedral, Adam?’

  ‘I am.’

  Stone checked his watch, then said quizzically, ‘Carols, is it?’

  ‘No. I’m an interpreter. At the Anglican Cathedral. I interpret the building for visitors.’

  ‘Like a tour
ist guide?’

  Adam Miller smiled coldly. Stone watched the way Louise tracked him as he crossed to the door into the hallway. The lines in her brow seemed to deepen with each step he took.

  ‘I’ll light a candle for your father,’ Adam said. He closed the door and was gone.

  ‘Miss Lawson, it is Gabriel Huddersfield. You know him?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to him in Sefton Park. The first time we met, he was distressed, alone on a bench and in tears. I asked him what was wrong. He was full of fearful questions about God and the Devil. I calmed him down. It took hours. Ever since, whenever I pass him, he bows his head towards me, joins his hands and says, Thank you, kind lady.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have had to reignite your grief,’ Stone said. Her eyes remained on the door. ‘Miss Lawson, have you remembered anything, anything at all that you’ve failed to mention to us so far?’ He saw a flicker in her face as she reconnected with him.

  She leaned across the table and laid her hands on the back of his hand. He placed his free hand over the coldness of hers and, as they sat in silence, she looked directly at Stone.

  ‘You’re a good man, Detective Sergeant Stone. I can tell. Your wife is a lucky woman.’

  He didn’t tell her the truth, that he had never been married and that it had been three years since his last brief relationship folded.

  ‘You are giving me strength through your kindness. I didn’t imagine it. It’s like my memory is a locked room, but the door is opening and light is seeping in. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand, Miss Lawson. You’ve had a huge trauma. The mind shuts down to prevent the totality of what you know from overwhelming you.’

  ‘I thought maybe I did imagine it, but I didn’t. There was definitely another voice in my father’s room. Long, breathy sounds. I remember two things. Something about a garden and a body, maybe? I’m convinced of that. Strange. And... the triumph of death. The voice definitely said the words, This is... the triumph of death. You are the First Born and I am the Angel of Destruction and we serve Death. Death is our master.’

  Stone heard the voice on the telephone in Leonard Lawson’s hall echoing inside his head and it sparked a sense of being on the edge of a personal revelation.