Dead Silent

by Mark Roberts

  ‘What’s happening, Eve?’ Hendricks’s voice on the end of the phone.

  As the doors began closing again, Clay’s eyes dipped to the metal runner and saw a lump, dead centre at the entrance to the lift.

  She stepped towards it. The doors closed on the lump, squeezing its soft, pliable mass, and she thought, this is what it must be like in hell.

  Another piece of corrupted evidence, another piece of horror.

  The crumpled facial skin took another compression from the base of the lift doors, giving it the look of an undiscovered species teeming with life. The doors opened out. The hair on the scalp was matted with blood, unrecognisable as anything human.

  ‘Miller can’t have taken Louise down by the lift,’ said Clay, picking the skin from the runner. ‘He’s either still here on the tenth floor...’

  She placed the skin on the cold stone floor.

  ‘There’s another way down,’ said Hendricks.

  Clay watched the skin unfold on to the flatness of the floor

  ‘There’s an internal staircase from the bell tower to the porch door at the front of the cathedral.’

  She held the lift door with her foot, glanced at the corner beyond which Stone lay unconscious and vulnerable. ‘Where’s the door into it up here?’

  ‘I don’t know. You still want me in the bell tower?’

  She worked it out. If he’d been quick, if he’d abandoned his hostage, Adam Miller could already be outside the cathedral and away.

  ‘No. Try and intercept Miller, but you need to be armed.’

  Time. More seconds lost on the ground floor. She wanted to scream.

  ‘I’m sorry, Karl.’ I have no choice. Nothing is certain.

  If Miller was still in the tower, she wondered what macabre carnage he might weave from Karl Stone’s vulnerable flesh.

  She stepped inside the lift, pressed to go down, watched the doors slide closed and felt a sickening lurch as the lift descended and she left her friend and colleague behind.

  93

  4.40 pm

  At the ground-floor lift, DS Bill Hendricks picked out the sergeant from the firearms unit in the gathering. The police medic was deep in conversation with two paramedics and the civilian hostage negotiator stood at a discreet distance from the group, talking on her mobile phone.

  ‘Sergeant!’ said Hendricks, taking the paperwork from him and pulling a pen from his own pocket. He signed the dotted lines and took the Glock 17 pistol and an extra cartridge of ammunition.

  ‘Bill, what’s happening?’ Riley’s voice behind him.

  ‘Karl’s taken a heavy hit, Eve’s in the tower, there’s a door by the porch at the front. I’ve got to go. There’s a chance—’

  Above the lift doors, the screen lit up and a downwards arrow announced the descent of the lift from the fourth floor to the ground.

  ‘Back from the doors, everybody!’

  The small space had evacuated by the time the indicator showed the lift had reached the third floor. As it hit the second, Riley was at the corner to the left of the lift doors and Hendricks was flat-backed against the wall to the right.

  Riley took a Glock 17 from the arms sergeant and scribbled her name on the paperwork.

  ‘First floor, Bill...’ She peered from the corner. The descending arrow flashed and flashed. G. The lift stopped. ‘The doors are about to open.’

  Riley dropped to one knee and pointed her gun up. The doors opened. Hendricks stepped in front of them, gun pointing squarely at head height. At first, it was as if he’d seen a ghost.

  The lift appeared to be completely empty.

  He looked down.

  In the left-hand corner, on the floor of the lift, Louise Lawson cowered, made herself as small as was humanly possible.

  Hendricks lowered his weapon. ‘All right, Miss Lawson, you’re quite safe now.’

  She looked out, at DS Gina Riley, as if she was peering through fog.

  ‘Louise, it’s me, Gina. Gina Riley. I went to the hospital with you last night.’

  Hendricks’s footsteps echoed as he hurtled towards the porch at the front of the cathedral.

  Riley stepped into the lift, crouched to Louise’s eye level. ‘I want you to stand up. Are you ready?’ She folded one hand around Louise’s frozen left hand and another hand under her armpit. Slowly, she lifted Louise to her feet, felt the wetness that soaked her coat. ‘Walk with me, Louise.’ The lift door closed and Louise’s eyes widened. ‘It’s all right, Louise.’ Riley opened the doors again. ‘You aren’t going back up there. Walk with me.’

  With her weight supported by Riley, Louise stepped out of the lift.

  ‘Will you speak?’ asked Riley.

  In the lights of the cathedral, Louise’s white hair glistened with silver dots of condensation as she shook her head. Her body shivered as Riley guided her to the nearest seat, in the back pew of the cathedral.

  Riley sat herself down in the seat directly in front of Louise. ‘Louise, please try and speak.’

  She looked beyond Riley at the huge stained-glass windows above the main altar. ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Louise?’ Her eyes drifted towards Riley’s gaze. ‘Every word is like a stain on silence and nothingness.’

  ‘Pardon?’ She exhaled the word.

  ‘Your father quoted an Irish writer to you. You quoted your father to me. Silence. Nothingness. Only silence isn’t nothing. It’s precious. Like gold. How much work did you put into that beautiful cross-stitch?’

  Louise turned her face away, looked up at the huge ceiling above her head. Riley said nothing, waited.

  ‘Abey’s dead,’ said Louise. ‘I’m numb. With horror. Horror after horror.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So am I. I loved him. And he loved me.’

  ‘How long have you known Abey?’

  ‘A few years.’

  ‘Abey? Was that short for Abel?’ Riley handed Louise a paper handkerchief. Louise’s hands shook as she wiped her face and nose. ‘Abel had a brother called Cain, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes he did. In the Book of Genesis.’

  ‘No, in your dream. The boy who spoke and the boy whose mouth was sealed by a layer of skin. Cain and Abel? Were they the two boys in your Tower of Babel dream?’

  Louise looked at Riley. ‘But that was just a dream.’

  Riley nodded.

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you. You’re a detective. I shouldn’t have burdened you with my dream when all you seek is the truth. Dreams belong in the ether. The truth is all around, if you look in the right places.’

  ‘Oh, I think we’re looking in the right places, Louise.’

  Riley’s phone vibrated in her pocket. ‘Excuse me, Louise.’ She stepped out of earshot and connected. ‘Eve, where are you?’

  ‘Waiting for the lift. Are there armed officers there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want them to accompany the paramedics collecting Karl, and the Scientific Support officers heading up to the roof.’

  Riley heard the sound of the lift doors hissing open on the fourth floor. There’s been a development,’ she said. ‘I’ve got Louise Lawson with me and Danielle Miller in the Lady Chapel.’

  ‘What about Adam Miller?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Bill Hendricks is chasing him.’

  The doors shut and the lift rumbled as it descended.

  ‘The missing pages from Lawson’s manuscript were in the back of Louise’s cross-stitch,’ said Riley. ‘I’ve dipped in and it looks like Abey and his identical twin brother were the subjects of the English Experiment. Noone bought the babies, recruited Lawson and staged the experiment in Liverpool. Lawson was up to his eyes in it, trying his own aesthetic farce on the so-called normal one.’

  Riley felt the depth of Clay’s silence. She looked at the archway leading to the ground-floor lift. ‘I’m twenty metres away when you hit the ground, Eve. Back pew. You need to read it. Am I adding two and two and making five?’

  She watched t
he archway, heard a commotion near the porch of the cathedral.

  ‘Wait there with Louise. Have you got the manuscript with you right now?’

  She took the cross-stitch from her bag and the lift doors opened. ‘Right here in my hand.’

  Clay appeared in the archway. Riley held up her free hand.

  ‘Why have you got my cross-stitch?’ asked Louise, her voice filled with agitation.

  Clay strode across the floor from the lift.

  ‘That’s my property, give it back to me. Please.’ Louise rose from her seat.

  ‘Louise, sit down!’

  ‘Give me my cross-stitch.’ She held out her hand. ‘Do you know just how much of my life went into that?’

  ‘Yes, I think I do know how much of your life went into that cross-stitch, Louise. And we need to talk. You. Me. And Eve Clay.’

  94

  4.43 pm

  As Hendricks walked at speed away from the closed but unlocked door to the internal staircase, he heard voices cutting across each other. He picked up pace and sprinted towards the front entrance. From the body language of the officers in the vicinity, he sensed that Adam Miller had committed another act of violence as he’d made his escape. The crackle of walkie-talkies partially masked the noise of a paramedic vehicle in the distance.

  At the swing doors of the porch, a burly PC swept past him, muttering, ‘This is fucked, totally fucked.’

  He saw a circular wall of Merseyside Constabulary high-visibility jackets, and a pair of paramedics pushing through the bodies.

  A dark premonition flooded through Hendricks as he attached himself to the outside of the wall.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Bill Hendricks, let me through.’

  Without turning, without speaking, the bodies parted and Hendricks stood on the inside of the circle.

  He looked down at the backs of two paramedics blocking his view of the body they were working on. The legs in the black trousers, and the black shoes, were still, helpless.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said one of the paramedics, standing up.

  The young constable’s head hung at an impossible angle from his prone body. His left temple was red and swollen from what looked like a fierce boot to the artery. ‘What was the lad’s name?’ Hendricks asked.

  ‘Paul Jones. He’s just passed out from the Training Academy on Mather Avenue. It was only his fourth day on the job,’ said a voice, trembling with emotion. ‘He was top of his class. An Oxford graduate.’

  Hendricks noted that Constable Jones’s cap and high-visibility jacket were missing, two items for which he had paid with his life.

  He saw that the lad wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and wondered who would tell the young man’s mother and what she was doing right then, before the news came that would end her life as she knew it.

  Hendricks went back inside and pictured Adam Miller walking out of the cathedral, past officer after officer, with the peak of the dead PC’s cap half over his eyes and disguised by his high-visibility jacket.

  The darkness receded and Hendricks gave in to a bitter hope. That the dead man was an orphan.

  95

  4.45 pm

  As she stepped out of the lift at the ground floor, Clay could feel the blood pounding inside her head and swirling in her eardrums. She walked into the body of the cathedral and saw Riley and Louise in the middle of the huge space.

  ‘He’s escaped.’ Hendricks’s voice echoed. Clay turned to it, saw him striding over to her. ‘He’s killed a constable in the process. What do you want me to do, Eve?’

  ‘I want you to help me lead the manhunt. We’ll leave enough officers here to guard the entrances and exits. Go and take control of it, I’ll join you in a minute.’

  She looked around. The only civilians present were Louise and, in the Lady Chapel, Danielle Miller. Clay stopped a little short of Riley, weighed up the whole scene, settled her gaze on Louise. She took the cross-stitch from Riley, turned the writing towards Louise and lifted the back enough to see the hidden pages.

  ‘Gina, take Louise and Danielle back to Trinity Road. Ask the custody medic to examine Miss Lawson.’

  ‘Physically, I’m not harmed.’ Clay watched Louise, tried to read her but saw only a blankness born of horror. ‘Where is Adam Miller? He’s escaped, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clay. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Riley showed the photograph of the two newborn baby boys to Clay. ‘From the back of Louise’s cross-stitch. Silence is golden. Cain and Abel Noone.’

  ‘Louise, which one’s Abey?’

  Louise wiped her eyes and said, ‘Horror. I’ve seen such horror.’

  Clay turned, called across as she headed back to the lift. ‘I’ll be back at Trinity Road as soon as I can. I just need to check the tower again.’

  96

  4.59 pm

  The wind whipped a stray band of snow across the roof of the Vestey Tower as Clay walked across it towards the mutilated corpse. Abey Noone. Abel Noone. She looked again at the way the body was positioned and remembered the fish-headed demon in Bosch’s The Last Judgment, preparing to mutilate its victim’s face.

  She looked at the pulp where there had once been a face, noted the bloody root of his severed tongue and the absence of scalp and hair on his head.

  Clay thought about Adam Miller and how the other victims had been older men. So why murder Abey? It didn’t fit the pattern, and nor did the killing of the security guard. Was it for sexual pleasure? After all, Miller took pleasure in systematically harming Huddersfield – perhaps this was no different. She guessed the scalping and removal of Abey’s face had two dimensions: borrowing from Bosch, and giving him an erotic thrill. But she couldn’t shake off the feeling that her ideas were round pegs and her mind a square hole.

  ‘Jesus!’ She pictured the scene and imagined Louise’s terror. ‘I’m sorry, Abey. I’m sorry I could scarcely bring myself to look at you earlier. The thing is, I have a son, you see. I have a son. His name is Philip. I’m sorry that you have suffered, Abey. I’m sorry for the sheer bad luck that you’ve had to endure.’ She listened to the wind, thin and lyrical as it whistled past her head.

  She took out her phone and called DS Hendricks. Within one ring, he connected. ‘Bill, you’re going to have to lead the manhunt alone. I need to get back to Trinity Road.’

  ‘Do you want me to return Huddersfield to the station?’

  ‘I don’t think we have any further use for him at the cathedral.’

  ‘I’d like to speak to him before he goes back,’ said Hendricks. ‘We have to find out how he knew where those bones were buried.’

  ‘Send him back when you’ve done with him.’

  97

  5.03 pm

  In the education room of the Anglican Cathedral, the almost complete skeleton of a human being was laid out on a waxed cloth that covered a long desk.

  Sergeant Price videoed as DS Terry Mason placed the last bone, the tip of the little finger of the right hand, in place.

  A door slammed in a far-off place deep in the cathedral, emphasising the stillness and silence of the room.

  Dr Lamb and her APT, Michael Harper, looked at each other and then with approval at Mason’s handiwork.

  ‘Absolutely nothing missing, nothing broken...’ Mason eyed the skeleton and was filled with awe at the construction of the scaffolding of the human body.

  Harper measured the neatly arranged skeleton from head to foot. ‘Height, 152.5 centimetres.’

  All eyes turned to Dr Lamb. ‘It’s a teenage boy. Look at the shape of the forehead and the narrowness of the pelvis. Average height for someone aged twelve to thirteen. No immediate cause of death evident based on the condition of the bones.’ She pointed at the eye socket. ‘In females this is rounded. In males it’s rectangular and the nasal aperture is long and narrow. Classically male.’ She lowered her face close to the skull, peered inside the mouth. ‘No fillings or signs of tooth decay, which is one indicator that this was a well cared-f
or child.’

  ‘A teenage boy?’ said Mason. ‘What about a short adult?’

  ‘The skull,’ replied Dr Lamb. ‘The sutures, the gaps between the plates, are mainly open.’ She drew her finger across a pair of fused plates at the front of the skull. ‘This frontal suture closes fairly early on in life.’

  Mason looked at the narrow gaps between the plates across the rest of the skull.

  ‘They start closing over when a person is in their twenties.’

  The education room was filled with a poignant silence and Mason, thirty years into the job and veteran of the worst that human beings could inflict on other human beings, felt a sadness for the lonely boy buried in a shallow grave and exhumed in a rising tide of chaos.

  With his imagination, he furnished the boy’s bones with flesh, gave him a face, eyes to see and a mouth to speak with. He dressed him in simple clothes and, silently, told him to sit up from the table.

  ‘We know it won’t be natural causes that claimed him,’ said Dr Lamb. ‘It could have been strangulation, a knife wound even. But the bones are perfect. Untouched.’

  Stand up! Walk away! Live your life!

  Mason watched him walk to the door, open it and leave without a backward glance.

  ‘Terry, are you all right?’ asked Price.

  Mason looked down at the bones on the table and turned to Dr Lamb. ‘We’ll bag his bones and deliver them to the mortuary. Thank you for coming out so promptly. It’s been a busy, demanding day for all of us, hasn’t it?’

  98

  5.04 pm

  As the last of the departing officers streamed out of the cathedral car park to the zones in the city centre and the suburbs where they had been directed, Bill Hendricks suddenly felt small and alone under the massive bulk of the Anglican Cathedral.

  He phoned Sergeant Harris, the custody sergeant who had accompanied Gabriel Huddersfield to the cathedral.

  In one of the gardens of the modern houses to the west of the cathedral, the wind played merry hell with a chime as it rolled in from the River Mersey.