Dead Silent

by Mark Roberts

  She turned to the back of the left-hand mirror, playing with the letters s t b a v o n and walking into mental walls as she reached the middle of the panel.

  She carried on. One more chance, one more slow sweep from right to left. Closer to the middle than the right, she felt how intensely cold she was and saw her breath frosted on the light.

  s

  es

  mes

  ames

  James

  t James

  St James

  Whose garden? The Garden of St James. Whose body? The other half.

  She took her iPhone out and was on her way to the top of the stairs when she turned back and went into Louise’s bedroom. She got through to Hendricks as she reached the wall opposite Louise’s bed.

  ‘The garden on the back of the triptych. It’s the Garden of St James, the cemetery at the back of the Anglican Cathedral.’

  She took the ‘Silence is Golden’ cross-stitch from the wall.

  ‘I’ll ring round the troops,’ said Hendricks.

  Clay was on the stairs.

  ‘Bring Huddersfield with you.’ Huddersfield’s words to Leonard Lawson, in Sefton Park just days before he was murdered, formed in Clay’s mind. ‘And as much back-up as is humanly possible.’ At the bottom of the stairs, she said, ‘It’s a huge place. Looking for a body in there is going to be like looking for a raindrop in an ocean.’

  On the way to her car, Clay looked at the cross-stitch.

  Silence is Golden

  She had a question she wanted to ask Louise Lawson about silence, but first of all she had a body to find.

  In the Garden of St James.

  Whose body?

  The other half? But the other half of who or what?

  ‘The half Leonard Lawson condemned to the silent void!’ Huddersfield’s accusation poured from her mouth in a cloud of mist as she sprinted towards her car.

  77

  3.25 pm

  Outside The Sanctuary, Stone heard footsteps crunching up the path behind him. ‘Detective Sergeant Stone?’ Danielle Miller’s voice followed.

  Stone banged on the front door for the fourth time, but there was no sign of life behind it. He turned round.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked as she unlocked the door and stepped into a strangely silent hall. Danielle looked at Stone, her face darkening. ‘Hello!’ she called. ‘Where are you all?’ She looked unnerved by the silence.

  ‘Do you know where your husband is?’ asked Stone.

  ‘He’s on duty at the Anglican Cathedral, guiding visitors.’

  ‘The number?’

  She rattled off seven digits and Stone dialled the cathedral on his phone.

  ‘Anglican Cathedral. How can I help you?’ A woman’s voice.

  ‘Is Adam Miller there?’

  ‘Adam Miller?’ She called into the office. A muffled voice responded. ‘He showed up but left just before one. Most unlike him.’

  He closed the call down, headed into the kitchen, where the back door was wide open. Shivering and wet, Tom Thumb sat at the kitchen table. He pointed at the back door.

  ‘Where is everyone, Tom?’ asked Danielle.

  He thought about it for a few moments, looked in the direction of the front door. He drew a large circle in the air.

  ‘Everyone,’ said Danielle.

  With his index and middle fingers, he mimed walking.

  ‘Everyone’s walked out.’

  He nodded his head.

  ‘They’ve all gone out?’ asked Danielle, panic in her voice. ‘Except you?’

  ‘Phone your husband on his mobile, ask him where he is.’ One man. One van. ‘Don’t tell him I’m involved,’ said Stone.

  She pulled out her phone and called Adam.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Stone.

  ‘It’s gone to answer phone.’

  ‘Don’t leave a message. Hang up.’

  ‘Tom, Gideon wouldn’t leave you in on your own.’

  ‘Tom?’ said Stone. ‘Where is Adam?’ Tom turned, pointed away from the house and mimed rotating a steering wheel. ‘Who did he go with?’ Tom used the index finger of his right hand to point at the tip of his little finger, left hand.’

  ‘He’s signing the letter A,’ said Danielle. ‘A? A? Abey?’ Tom nodded, kept his palm open and dragged his index finger across the middle, signing the letter L. ‘Louise?’ He nodded again.

  ‘Gideon? Where’s Gideon?’ Danielle’s voice rose with each syllable.

  Tom pointed to the garden and made adjoining diagonal lines with his hands.

  ‘The shed?’ asked Danielle. Tom turned his face away, his bottom lip jutting out.

  Stone walked out of the kitchen and headed for the shed at the bottom of the garden. Halfway there, he saw a spot of blood on the snow and felt his mind race faster.

  The shed door was locked and he caught the aroma of a butcher’s window.

  ‘Gideon?’ He heard Danielle’s voice as he made his way down the side of the shed, but it sounded ghostly.

  He looked through the window at the side of the shed.

  Gideon’s face, eyes wide open, the shock of violent death upon him. He felt Danielle’s presence behind him. ‘Go back!’ The wound on his face was vivid and blood pooled around his head.

  ‘Gideon?’

  ‘I’m sorry. He’s dead,’ said Stone.

  Her eyes swam with horror and sadness.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated.

  She swayed on the spot and he held up her weight with both hands on her arms. Danielle looked at the shed and then down at the blood on the snow.

  Her scream seemed to reach the leaden sky above them and when she stopped screaming, she shouted, ‘I hate him! I hate him! I hate him! Gideon was...’ She made for the shed, but Stone held her back. ‘He was... Gideon... was the only nice thing in my life and he had to take that away from me.’

  She fell into hopeless tears as Stone held on to her.

  ‘I hope he dies,’ she screamed. ‘I hope he dies in agony and goes to hell!’

  78

  3.37 pm

  Adam Miller snatched the ticket from the barrier at the front entrance of the Anglican Cathedral. The barrier rose and as he drove around the corner in the direction of the car park, Louise asked, ‘Why are we going here, Adam?’

  In the corner of the van, Abey whimpered.

  ‘Tell him he’d better not start crying.’

  ‘If he’s afraid, he’ll cry.’

  ‘Get a grip of him, Louise.’

  ‘Why are we coming here, to the Anglican?’

  Driving at 10 mph, Adam looked straight ahead. ‘You’re to come inside the cathedral with me. Are you listening?’

  Louise looked through the windscreen at the cathedral’s sandstone bell tower. The Vestey Tower. It blocked out the sky, looming over them like a frozen giant.

  ‘Are you listening?’ he asked as the van flopped over a speed bump.

  Abey started to cry. Adam took the sharpened screwdriver from his pocket and rolled it back and forth between the fingers and thumb of his left hand. His eyes met Louise’s.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘I’m very afraid of you,’ replied Louise, quietly. The tremor in her voice was like balm to him. ‘I’m listening to you. We’ll do whatever you say. Of course we will.’

  ‘You’re to come in with me. To the cathedral. You walk in front of me and you don’t say a word. If anyone happens to speak to you, you smile, but you keep your mouths shut, dead shut, tight shut.’

  ‘Why don’t you leave us in the van? Then you won’t have to worry about us embarrassing you by speaking.’

  ‘If I leave you in the van, as soon as my back’s turned you’ll be out and telling the first policeman you see that I killed your father. That’s quite an allegation you’re making, Louise. So I want to be there when you make it. Do you understand?’

  ‘As God is my judge, we’d sit in the car and wait for you.’

&nbs
p; ‘You think I’m a murderer. Why should I trust you?’ He steered round the corner and down the ramp leading into the main car park. ‘I didn’t kill your father. Next you’ll be telling me I killed my father!’

  ‘Did you kill your father?’ asked Louise.

  He was silent. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Let Abey out of the van. Please, Adam.’

  ‘Abey out! Abey out!’

  ‘Speak to him and calm him down and then we’ll go inside. The sooner we do that, the sooner we go to the police. I’ll park as close to the front as I can, that way we can be as quick as possible.’

  ‘Abey?’ Louise turned his face towards hers. She leaned in to him, pressed her lips close to his ear and whispered.

  ‘What are you saying to him?’

  She continued whispering and with each in-breath he became a little calmer. ‘I’m telling Abey where we’re going. And, Abey, when we go inside, we must be very, very quiet. No crying. We have to go where Adam tells us and do what Adam says. And if you’re very good, we can light a candle.’

  ‘For Dada?’

  ‘For Dada.’

  No longer crying, Abey pointed at her.

  ‘Yes, for my father too.’ She took a tissue from her pocket, wiped his face clean. ‘In the cathedral, no sad faces allowed.’

  As Adam reversed into a parking space close to the main entrance, wind curled around the walls of the cathedral. ‘Listen to that,’ he said, with a note of tenderness that was shocking to his own ears. ‘It’s as if the Lord’s voice has carried down from heaven. ‘It’s all right. Everything’s all right.’ He felt the screwdriver in his pocket. ‘Everything will be all right. We’re going to settle a score, we’re going to light candles and then we’re going to say our prayers because we’re all good Christians around here, aren’t we?’

  The wind changed direction sharply. And within its powerful shift, there was a sound like someone crying inconsolable tears.

  ‘Can you hear that?’ asked Adam.

  Just behind the wind, and just out of earshot, was another sound.

  Sirens.

  Adam placed his left hand in the air in evangelical prayer. He looked at the bell tower and the heat of humiliation flooded through him as the security guard’s mocking voice echoed inside his head. ‘Stop bothering the stonemason. Fuck off, faggot, he’s not interested in you.’

  ‘How like that other tower, Babel,’ said Louise. She looked up at the sheer face of the bell tower ornamented with elegant gothic arches. It seemed to support the weight of the sky.

  ‘Get out. It’s payback time,’ said Adam.

  Part Three

  Sunset

  The Triumph of Death

  by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1562)

  Nothing could escape Death.

  The First Born had known this for as long as he could remember. He had first learned this fact from a picture in a book. As he closed his eyes, in the darkness of his bedroom, the picture came alive inside his head. An army of skeletons, some of them dragging carts piled high with skulls, some of them riding horses carrying curved weapons to knock down the living. He tried to shut out the voice that followed him every single day.

  ‘Look at the picture and know the truth,’ commanded the voice. ‘Death has servants and here are just some of them. Look at them and tell me what you see!’

  The First Born closed his eyes tight and did not answer. The voice grew angry. ‘Speak or else!’

  He heard his own voice whispering into the dark. ‘I see Death’s servants. I see skeletons. I see people, terrified, they cannot escape...’ His voice wobbled, and he tried his best not to cry. ‘Far away, fires rage in the mountains. There are no leaves on the trees. There are no fish in the lake. The boats are burning in the harbour. I see the Triumph of Death.’

  The First Born’s mind stumbled and remained on one detail. A brick bridge with an arch. A man in a green coat, red hose and black shoes trying to escape from the water. A skeleton on the bridge pushing him back down, pressing on his right shoulder. A skeleton in the water beneath him, dragging down the man’s right leg. Another man already drowned, face down in the water, his body upside down against the bridge. The skeletons smiling. The man in green and red would be next.

  The First Born could hear his own blood thrumming in his ears and understood perfectly what the voice told him.

  Man’s suffering and death on this earth were the just deserts of sin. But what came afterwards made these agonies seem like nothing.

  Man. Sin. Death. Damnation.

  All had been made perfectly clear to the First Born.

  Especially this.

  Nothing could escape Death.

  79

  3.53 pm

  As Clay drove down Catharine Street towards the Anglican Cathedral, she picked up a call from DS Stone.

  ‘Eve, I think I’ve got a name for the First Born. Adam Miller. It looks like he’s killed Gideon Stephens. He’s done a runner and taken Louise Lawson and Abey with him. I found a flyer with his name and contact details at the Knowsley Road murder scene. Man with a white van? In my head, I’m linking it to the white van that dropped the freezer off at the Otterspool tip.’

  ‘Gideon Stephens dead?’

  ‘I’ve seen his corpse in Miller’s garden shed. Smacked with a spade.’

  ‘Let’s run with your idea. Miller’s the First Born.’

  As she burned a red light and turned on to Upper Duke Street, the sobbing behind Stone’s voice intensified.

  ‘Where are you, Karl?’

  ‘I’m in The Sanctuary with Danielle Miller.’

  ‘Where’s he likely to go?’ asked Clay out loud. ‘The Anglican Cathedral?’

  ‘He was supposed to be there. I’ve checked. He walked out around one o’clock. What do you want me to do, Eve?’

  ‘I want you to bring Danielle Miller to the Anglican Cathedral. We’ve got a hotspot. Whose body? Which garden? It’s in the Garden of St James. Meet me there, Karl. Put me on to Danielle.’

  Stone passed his phone over.

  ‘Danielle, take a deep breath and listen to me. Is there anywhere other than the cathedral that your husband might go?’

  ‘No. Not that I know of.’

  ‘DS Stone’s going to bring you down to the Anglican Cathedral, Danielle. We’ll need any information and documentation you have on Abey, Louise or your husband. You’re going to have to tell us everything you know.’ She paused. ‘The truth, Danielle. Is your husband a violent man?’

  ‘Yes. Yes he is.’

  80

  3.56 pm

  Clay’s phone rang out again as she was walking across Upper Duke Street. She stopped to avoid a collision with a motorbike, then hurried to the other side against a wave of horn-blaring motorists. On the pavement, she connected to the unidentified caller and glanced at the Constables’ Lodge in front of the Anglican Cathedral precinct. At its gate stood two officers, unaware of the bomb that was about to go off on their sleepy patch.

  ‘DCI Clay?’ A man, his voice dense with anxiety. ‘It’s Alan Ferry, Anglican Cathedral, head verger.’

  ‘Thank you for calling me back. I need you to clear the cathedral of all visitors and personnel. I want all vehicles off the car park as I’m sealing off the entire perimeter of the precinct, including the Garden of St James.’

  ‘That could take some time.’

  ‘Get your constables, your clergy, your staff and volunteers together, get everyone on board, Mr Ferry. Officers are on their way right now to help you.’ She heard the echo of feet.

  ‘They’re here already. What’s happening, DCI Clay?’

  ‘It’s a murder investigation. Where are you assembling, Mr Ferry?’

  ‘In the nave, near the west door.’

  ‘Have you seen Adam Miller within the last hour?’

  ‘No. I saw him at lunchtime, but he left.’

  ‘If you see or hear from him, call me immediately. Does he have a friend?’

 
‘Not really. He’s not one of our more popular volunteers.’

  ‘Does he worship in a parish church?’

  ‘He worships here. He volunteers here. He doesn’t like parish politics.’

  ‘Does he go anywhere socially, any favourite place he’s mentioned?’

  ‘He keeps himself to himself. Is he in trouble?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Ferry, he’s in trouble. Please listen. If he shows up, don’t approach him. There are enough police officers around to deal with him. You must clear your building as quickly as possible. Do you have a mobile phone number for Adam Miller?’

  ‘It’s on my phone... hang on.’

  Clay felt the passing seconds like drips of cold water on the centre of her forehead. The verger finally read out a number, which she keyed into her phone, then tried to ring. The phone was off.

  When she reached the top of the stone corridor leading down into the Garden of St James, Clay took a roll of scene-of-crime tape out of her bag. In her bag, Louise Lawson’s cross-stitch tugged sharply at her need to know, but she pressed down the urge to look at it more closely and sealed off the main entrance into the graveyard.

  ‘DCI Clay?’ A voice found her out. She turned, saw two police constables advancing.

  ‘Go to the outer gate, main entrance,’ she instructed them. ‘As uniformed officers arrive, you’re to direct half to go inside the cathedral and assist the head verger, Alan Ferry, in evacuating the building. The other half are to come down to the Garden of St James to assist me with the search for a body.’

  A police motorcyclist at the head of a convoy pulled up near the Oratory and the vehicles behind slowed and stopped.

  ‘Come on, come on, come on...’ Clay’s breath was white as the huge up-lighters came on, illuminating the exterior of the Anglican Cathedral.

  Hendricks stepped out from his car and, in the next moment, Gabriel Huddersfield was on the pavement, handcuffed and in a borrowed coat that was three sizes too big for him. Hendricks grabbed Huddersfield’s elbow. ‘Walk with me, Gabriel.’