The Silent Dead: A gripping crime thriller with a stunning twist

by Graham Smith

  ‘Please hear me out.’ Beth returned his stare until he looked away. ‘It’s just hours into the investigation, we can’t say anything for certain yet. We’re still gathering facts and looking for clues.’

  The brother’s bottom jaw stuck out. ‘Then think harder and look better. My sister isn’t a killer and you’re barking up the wrong tree if you think she had anything to do with his death.’

  A hand snaked out from the older sister who lifted her head off her arms and grabbed her brother’s hand. ‘Peter.’ A swallow as she fought for composure. ‘The lass is just doing her job. Stop picking a fight with her and answer her questions. You’re not helping anyone.’

  Peter scowled at his sister, then turned his head to Beth and lifted an eyebrow. ‘C’mon then, Miss Marple. Let’s hear your questions.’

  Beth ignored the insult. ‘You said earlier that Angus had gone to stay at his mother’s. Where does she live?’

  ‘Longtown. Don’t know the address.’

  The address didn’t matter. The question wasn’t one Beth needed the answer to. It was just a soft question she’d asked to start the conversation – a minor detail. Each of the questions she planned to ask would increase in importance, but it was necessary to foster a willingness to answer in what had become a hostile witness.

  ‘If he was staying with his mother, don’t you think it was odd that the mother didn’t report him missing?’

  A confused expression covered Peter’s gaunt face and he looked to his sister for help. She wiped a tear from each eye before answering. ‘Maybe she is in Spain. She has a villa out there and I know Angus said she sometimes goes for a couple of months at a time.’

  That was the kind of answer Beth had been hoping not to get.

  ‘What about his work? Wouldn’t his workmates have called him to find out where he was?’

  ‘He’s a self-employed builder. I dare say some of his customers would have called wanting to know where he was, but I guess he wouldn’t have been able to answer his phone.’

  A knock at the door made them turn their heads.

  Beth gave an inward curse at the interruption to her questioning, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  Peter went to answer it and came back trailing Unthank and a young blonde who was introduced as ‘Kerrie the FLO’.

  The FLO and Unthank crowded into the kitchen and shared polite nods with the sister.

  ‘So, Peter.’ Beth had to try again. ‘Angus was a self-employed builder. Do you know if he ever had any problems with customers? You know, unpaid bills or complaints about shoddy workmanship?’

  ‘No!’ If the one-word answer wasn’t emphatic enough, Peter’s head gave a violent shake.

  ‘What about the reason for his leaving Suzy, do you know anything about that? Did she kick him out or did he leave of his own accord?’

  The head shake was less certain this time. ‘I kept out of it. They’d always be back together in a fortnight anyway, so I never got involved.’ He nudged his sister’s arm. ‘D’you know?’

  Once again, tears had to be wiped away before an answer could be given. ‘He accused her of cheating on him.’ A sob. ‘She denied it, of course, but apparently he’d stormed out saying he was sick of being taken for a fool.’

  ‘He what? The hypocritical bastard had no right to accuse her of anything after what he did!’

  Beth couldn’t let Peter’s comment pass. ‘What did he do?’

  ‘She caught him swapping gobs with some tart outside the pub.’

  As much as she disliked Peter’s crude and derogatory terminology, Beth kept her face neutral. ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘A couple of years ago.’ Peter’s face twisted into a feral expression. ‘If that’s what he’s accused our Suze of, the bastard got everything he deserved.’

  Peter may have felt that Angus kissing someone when his children were young was inexcusable, but it was not that unusual. The pressures of parenthood, not being the centre of attention in his wife’s world any more – it was a cliché but it happened more than people ever realised.

  At once Beth saw a whole tangled web that would have to be unravelled. Was Peter imbued with a sense of anger that went beyond a brother’s concern for a bereaved sister? And if there was the possibility that Angus’s claims had any foundation, could that put Suzy’s alleged lover in the frame for his murder?

  She realised what she needed to do was to get the sister alone to find out if there was any truth to the allegations of Suzy’s infidelity.

  That said, while there was no doubt Angus had been killed, having seen his corpse, Beth couldn’t help but doubt it was a crime of passion. Too much thought and planning had gone into it. If her limited experience had taught her anything, it was that women who killed their spouses most often did so in a fit of temper fuelled by rage or self-defence. Angus’s body had shown no signs of impact wounds from either a blunt object or a weapon such as a knife. Though they hadn’t had a toxicology report yet, so perhaps it was too soon to make any assumptions. Women who carried out planned kills often used poison.

  What troubled Beth most was the way Angus had been found. It just didn’t fit with a domestic killing and spoke of a deeper issue. On the other hand, it could be he was staged that way to throw all suspicion away from family members.

  At this early point, Peter was her prime suspect. He seemed very angry and too quick to speak his mind for her liking. Grief can do strange things to people, but she had the feeling he’d been angry with Angus long before he was killed.

  She heard the squeak of a door opening. ‘Peter, Harriet, can you come through, please?’

  Both of her siblings stood to answer Suzy’s call.

  Once they’d left the room, Beth requested Kerrie keep her eye on Peter, and also try to find out from the sister any details she could about Suzy’s alleged affair.

  A huge part of the role of a Family Liaison Officer was to watch the family and listen for any slip-ups. Kerrie’s monitoring of the family would be invaluable and, once she’d established their trust, she’d get far more from them than Beth or even O’Dowd could hope to get in an interview room.

  As Beth walked out to the car, she vowed to herself that she would be careful about which of her suspicions she shared with Unthank lest he pull the same stunt Thompson had. She didn’t think for a second that he would, but once bitten…

  Fourteen

  Sarah Hardy finished with the family who’d been looking at an X5 and turned to find herself faced with a timid-looking man. He wore good clothes and his watch looked to be worth several thousand pounds. The man was attractive without being handsome. Unlike the creep who’d been in earlier, she didn’t mind the way this guy’s eyes flickered over her.

  She held out a hand. ‘Hi, I’m Sarah, how may I help you?’

  ‘I’m er, erm, looking for a new car. Something fast, but not too big.’

  ‘How about an M3 or an M4?’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking.’

  The smile that covered Sarah’s face was genuine. The sale of either car would get her a decent commission. Plus there was a chance she’d be able to ingratiate herself with this guy. A quick glance at his left hand had informed her of his marital status, or lack thereof.

  Sarah arranged to have an M4 available for him to test drive on Wednesday. By the time he was leaving with her card in his pocket, she was giving her wardrobe a mental stocktake, trying to decide which outfit would impress him the most.

  With a rare lull taking place, she made herself a coffee and grabbed Veronica, the only other female saleswoman, for a quick gossip.

  ‘You see that guy who I was just talking to?’

  ‘I did, you lucky cow. He looks minted. That’s got to be a sure-fire sale.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Sarah giggled in spite of herself. ‘I also thought he was well fit, but Christ on a bike, he was hard work to talk to. He was so shy. Like, I had to take the lead and basically start every part of the conversation.�
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  ‘So he’s the silent type.’ It was Veronica’s turn to giggle. ‘Sounds like the perfect man; rich, fit and quiet.’

  ‘You’re not wrong there. Mind, you should have seen the one who was in before, dirty old sod hardly looked at the car, or my face.’

  ‘You should wear a loose-fitting trouser suit, that’d put men like him off.’

  ‘Yeah right.’

  Sarah didn’t need to say anything else. While their boss imposed no official dress code, beyond being smart, both she and Veronica always wore a skirt or dress rather than trousers. Sex sells and when your pay is heavily reliant on commission, you sometimes have to make sacrifices and be prepared to flirt a little.

  Besides, she’d never had a bad experience at work until this morning, and in the greater scheme of things, a guy admiring her when she’d dressed to show off her figure was a compliment. That he’d fixated on it was more his problem than hers. Anyway, other than a shaking of hands, there was no way she’d be touching him, or allowing him to put his hands on any part of her body.

  She didn’t give it a moment’s thought, and instead focussed on thinking about what she might wear for her more attractive customer’s test drive on Wednesday.

  Fifteen

  Beth fired up her computer and grabbed a notebook. O’Dowd had listened to her findings and theories, given a curt nod of appreciation and then issued a set of orders about what she wanted them to do.

  Across the room, Unthank kept his head down and carried on with his work. O’Dowd had laid into him for something minor, and it was clear he was smarting from the insults she’d hurled his way.

  Once she’d logged onto the computer, Beth went online and started the task O’Dowd had given her – which was to research Arthuret Hall. It wasn’t what she wanted to investigate, but she knew she had to follow orders.

  It only took her a few minutes to learn the history of the grand house. Built in the seventeenth century by the Appleby family, it had been in the ownership of the Dacre-Applebys for almost two hundred years. The next owner had taken Arthuret for a surname and, the estate remained in the family’s hands until the 1940s when the building was requisitioned by the RAF as an officer’s mess, and during the later war years, it was home to evacuees from Rossall School in Lancashire. After the war, it was converted into flats for servicemen working at the MOD depot at Longtown.

  Its next reincarnation was as a casino; The Borders Country Club was run by a man who was alleged to have gangland connections. When the licensing laws changed, the hall was abandoned to the whims of weather and vandals. By the early seventies it was a roofless, ruined shell. Only since early the previous year had it come back into use, as a bohemian venue for weddings, its still-beautiful and incredibly grand entrance hall an ideal place for a civil ceremony with enough room to accommodate up to a hundred guests.

  The history of Arthuret Hall was fascinating and the more Beth read, the more she wondered if it had been chosen as the deposit site for a significant reason, or selected at random by someone who knew nothing of its history.

  She wondered if Angus had a connection. Maybe he was descended from an evacuee, or an airman who’d lived there. Or maybe it was the killer whose ancestors had once inhabited the house. Or perhaps he’d been executed for non-payment of gambling debts, and his body had been dumped in the way it had in a former casino as a warning to others with outstanding debts.

  It crossed Beth’s mind that the killing could be connected in some way to the weddings that took place at the venue, but she couldn’t figure out how beyond Angus Keane knowing someone who’d married there. According to O’Dowd’s notes, Suzy hadn’t known of a connection between her husband and Arthuret Hall, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

  Whichever way she looked at it, there was a shedload of possibilities to consider and she was grateful the burden of decision about which avenues they explored would fall on O’Dowd’s shoulders rather than her own. Not only were there so many strands to investigate, each one was fraught with difficulties. It would be straightforward enough to find out if Angus was a gambler, but locating the records that listed the evacuees and the RAF men who lived there could prove to be a nightmare. Plus there were all the men who’d lived there when working at the MOD depot to consider.

  There would be dozens if not hundreds of people to identify. Some of the house’s occupants may still be alive, though even the youngest of the evacuees would be pushing seventy-five at best. To add to all that, there was the former owner who’d turned the house into a casino, with his shady past. Was it possible that a criminal empire had been passed down and Angus had been murdered by the owner’s sons’ or grandsons’ henchmen?

  Regardless of all these possibilities, there was every chance the house’s history had no bearing on the case, and Beth was convinced their best chance of getting a result was to identify the reason Angus was killed.

  She got Unthank’s attention. ‘Paul, have you got a minute?’

  ‘Yeah, what is it?’

  Beth outlined her findings and the various ideas she’d had to Unthank.

  ‘Sounds like a right nightmare. It’ll take us weeks to work our way through that many folk.’

  ‘Any ideas on ways to hurry the process up?’

  Unthank wagged a finger in front of his shaking head.

  Beth got his meaning at once. Some things couldn’t be hurried up and there were no shortcuts in a murder investigation. She was glad she hadn’t voiced the same sentiment in front of Thompson or O’Dowd.

  To change the subject, Beth asked Unthank how he’d got on with his own tasks.

  ‘I’ve got the request in for Angus Keane’s phone records and I have also asked for its geopositioning for the last week. I’m now on with running both his and his wife’s family through the system to see what pops up.’

  ‘Found anything?’

  ‘Suzy’s brother Peter has a couple of arrests for assault in his past and he was bound over for ABH about five years ago.’

  ‘Sounds like he has a big temper for a little man. Do you think O’Dowd will pull him in?’

  ‘Damn right she will.’

  Beth’s head snapped round at the DI’s voice. She hadn’t heard O’Dowd enter the room and she was glad she’d used the right terminology and hadn’t prefixed the name with the insulting nickname that she was increasingly aware others used.

  Sixteen

  The name he answered to wasn’t the one he’d been christened with. It was a name he’d adopted to protect himself. An insurance policy against being identified for the person he really was.

  He tossed a casual smile to the waitress who brought over his lunch and picked up his knife and fork. This morning had gone so much better than he’d hoped.

  Sarah Hardy had been such a godsend, an angel dropped from the heavens into his lap. Her presence was an unexpected bonus, like finding a winning lottery ticket, or receiving an inheritance from a long-forgotten great aunt.

  The chance encounter had given him a target. He didn’t need to hit that target just yet. Other pieces had to be brought into play first, but now he had time to cultivate Sarah, before he added her to his collection. She would be the finest piece he’d collected to date. Beautiful and graceful, she’d be a decorative thing to have around.

  As he fed a forkful of salad into his mouth he felt his excitement grow. She would give him such a special thrill, pleasing him in every way that mattered. Her very presence in his life would lift him, give his creations meaning, and burn in the eyes of those who’d cast him down, belittled him and sought to destroy his very being.

  For too long he had been the victim, the one to cower, and the person who never fought, or even answered back. Now he was the one with the power. He saw this every day, from the way people looked at him, to the way they reacted to his presence. He liked that people noticed him; it gave him the feeling of worthiness that had been absent from his childhood.

  He’d sensed Sarah’s attracti
on; it was easy to create: dressing in expensive clothes, using good manners and pretending to be shy worked every time for him. Even now, sitting in a country pub with a chilli-infused vinaigrette tingling his lips, he could see two young women giving him sidelong glances and checking out his watch.

  Despite being left-handed, he wore his watch on his dominant arm so the women who recognised its worth didn’t have to shift their eyes too far to see the bare ring finger.

  He knew he was a manipulator, knew it wasn’t a pleasant trait to have, but he didn’t care. He’d been trained in the art of manipulation by the best. The teachings were now ingrained in him and he found himself getting everything he wanted, exactly when and how he wanted it.

  He exchanged a smile with one of the young women.

  Maybe he’d get lucky and she would be called Claire, or Carole. Her name could be something ridiculous like Candii and she’d still be of worth.

  Regardless of the woman’s name, he wasn’t ready to add Sarah to his collection just yet. Still, there was nothing to prevent him grooming her for as long as it took him to add the two pieces which had to come before her.

  Seventeen

  Beth listened as O’Dowd outlined her strategy for the interview with Suzy Keane’s brother, Peter. Beth was to take the lead and O’Dowd would butt in from time to time. Her role wasn’t quite that of ‘good cop’ to O’Dowd’s ‘bad cop’, but there was no doubt that Beth was there to be the gentle balance to O’Dowd’s stronger line of questioning. She was also aware it was another of O’Dowd’s tests; that her boss would be monitoring her as closely as she watched Peter.

  They were to start off speaking to him as a witness, but should he prove obstinate, or worse, mute, then they’d arrest him and apply some real pressure.