The Silent Ones

by William Brodrick

  Littlemore’s last place of residence was in Mitcham, a grey stone building attached to a church, the spire of which rose like a blunt sword between two mock battlements. A cat slinked along a shadowed wall heading towards a pool of sunshine. Sanjay was sitting on the bonnet of his car, fumbling with a roll-up. He hadn’t quite got the technique.

  ‘There’s no point,’ he said, nodding towards the house.

  Robert shrugged. ‘We just want a quick look around. Get a feel for the guy.’

  Sanjay licked the wrinkled paper. ‘I know what you mean. But you’ll still find nothing. Never seen anything like it.’

  Taking the offered keys, Robert looked quizzical.

  ‘Most people leave a sort of fingerprint where they live,’ said Sanjay, searching for his matches. ‘They leave something of themselves in the air. This guy left nothing because when he came he brought nothing. And I mean nothing.’

  Sanjay was right.

  Littlemore had made the premises available for general parish business, reserving one upstairs room for his exclusive use. Even that restriction seemed pointless, however, because it showed no signs of having been lived in. A bare desk faced a couple of faded yellow armchairs arranged on either side of a gas fire with plastic coals. A grey filing cabinet had been shoved into a far corner. All the shelves were empty. A bed, stripped by the police, stood upended by a wall lamp without a shade. There were no pictures, no cards propped on the mantelpiece, no ornaments or mementoes. There was no TV, CD player or radio. The only object, like something left behind inadvertently, was a small wooden cross, lost on a pale expanse of scuffed woodchip wallpaper. Sanjay had said that buildings speak and for the first time in his life he’d heard nothing.

  Robert and Andrew checked all the remaining rooms, not quite knowing what they were looking for, each of them sure that Littlemore had left the place clean of anything remotely personal. This was no decision, thought Robert. It’s instinctive. Littlemore was hiding from everyone, including himself.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, frustrated, heading down the stairs. ‘The man we’re looking for was never here.’

  ‘Every door is unlocked except for one.’

  Robert turned on the bottom stair. ‘And?’

  Andrew pointed back the way they’d come. ‘Well, the door’s in the middle of an adjoining wall. The church wall. But it’s on the first floor, which means the door must open into thin air. And that’s impossible.’

  Robert pushed by his bright-eyed apprentice, taking two steps at a time. Coming to the door, he felt along the top of the frame, hoping to find the key; disappointed, he turned the handle, pushing in vain until Andrew’s voice came from behind.

  ‘Allow me.’ He’d taken a credit card out of his wallet and was bending it into shape. Moments later, after jiggling the plastic against the lock, the door snapped open. Robert was impressed.

  ‘Where did you learn to do that?’

  ‘YouTube. I can do old cars as well. With a coat hanger.’

  In fairness, Sanjay had probably worked out that the one locked door led to a tiny balcony visible from the inside of the church. But he hadn’t bothered to call a locksmith. And as a result he’d failed to discover that this was the place where Littlemore had concealed the key to his future intentions.

  The balcony was only large enough for a wooden chair and small desk. Finding a switch on the wall, Robert flicked it down, bringing a soft light onto a blue folder.

  He was intrigued.

  The folder contained faxed newspaper cuttings relating to a ‘recluse who abjured the term detective’, preferring – for the interviewer in question, at least – ‘a bewildered cleaner in the basement of justice’. The recluse in question was Father Anselm, a man with a reputation for ‘solving cases beyond the reach of the law’. His work had attracted the attention of several broadsheets, though no commentator had been able to secure an interview of any substance. Brief replies to unsolicited telephone calls had provoked reflections on the nature of the individual who couldn’t stay on the line. Two of them had been marked with black lines:

  For a man who has confronted extreme evil he remains surprisingly buoyant about the human condition. Something good remains within reach, a particle, perhaps, that can be salvaged from any heap of moral wreckage. I venture to call him naive and he agrees, almost happily. I ask why help the perpetrator? Sadly, our conversation ended there.

  The second took up the same theme but went one step further:

  I wonder if his capacity to trust is almost blinding. It’s a breadth of vision that most of us lose as we grow older, as we confront pretence in those we once admired. We acquire – at some cost – prudence. Has he found a cheaper route? Unfortunately he has to go. It’s only after I’ve put the phone down that I’m left contemplating a paradox, which is surely the secret to this monk’s success: it’s this large outlook which permits him to glimpse what another observer might easily miss: the wickedness at our elbow.

  Apart from these two passages, random details – insights into the monk’s character – had also been underlined: a ‘disciple of the fifties trad jazz revival’, a ‘horror of mobile phones’, ‘a monk more familiar with doubt than certainty’. He had another job, too: he was ‘a sort of guestmaster for the homeless’. The last word had been circled twice. Using his mobile phone, Robert photographed the marked passages, along with the fax number and date of transmission printed along the bottom of the page.

  ‘These were sent two days after Littlemore stonewalled the police,’ he said to Andrew, who’d stood back to watch. ‘Three days later he vanished.’

  ‘They’re linked to where he went?’

  ‘I’d have thought so.’

  Robert then photographed the only other document in the folder: a sheet of yellow paper containing notes about the history of jazz, from Papa Jack Laine’s Reliance Brass Band onwards. Written on the folder itself, on the back cover, were a couple of phone numbers and addresses of London night shelters: the Viaduct in Paddington and the Archway, Victoria.

  ‘He went homeless,’ said Robert, more to himself than Andrew.

  ‘And then he went to Larkwood Priory. They don’t know who they’re sheltering.’

  Robert looked again at the fax number on the cuttings. Someone else had done the research. They then faxed what they’d found to Littlemore.

  ‘They effectively sent him to Larkwood Priory,’ Robert said quietly, realising that Littlemore’s sudden departure hadn’t been that sudden after all, and certainly hadn’t been forced by Robert’s persistence. It had been the first step of a more complex operation.

  ‘But why run away at all?’ said Andrew, uncertainly.

  ‘What?’ Robert had forgotten he was there.

  ‘If the boy was too scared to stand by his story, why would Littlemore run away? All he did was draw attention to himself.’

  Andrew was right. Crofty had picked a winner: diffidence aside, this late starter was in his element. He had nous. And he was looking at something on the floor, something that must have fallen off the desk: a postcard. Robert leaned down to pick it up.

  It was from Sierra Leone.

  Young boys were splashing around on a golden seashore. They were leaping and laughing among the breakers. Further out to sea, men cast their nets from long boats. Robert turned over the picture. There was no stamp and no address, just a phrase in red ink:

  YU KOHBA SMOK SOTE, I MOHS KOHMOHT

  Robert tried to pronounce the words. He turned to Andrew: ‘You didn’t work in West Africa, by any chance?’

  ‘No, just with street kids in Lusaka … That’s Zambia, in the south.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Andrew nodded at the file and postcard: ‘You’ll show this lot to Sanjay?’

  ‘No. For now they’re leads, and we keep leads to ourselves. If they produce anything we go first to Crofty. He’s the one who decides. That’s the chain of command.’

  Robert photographed the picture and the text and th
en left everything as he’d found it, closing the door behind him.

  They went back downstairs. On stepping outside, Robert tossed the house keys towards Sanjay, making him juggle for his matches and roll-up. The cat watched from behind some railings, its long tail curling in the sun.

  ‘Well, did you find anything?’ asked Sanjay.

  ‘Like you say, you wouldn’t believe he ever lived there.’

  ‘Told you.’

  ‘Have you got a photo?’

  Sanjay opened the car door and reached in for a file, flicking through the papers until he found a Missing Persons profile.

  ‘Can I see a transcript of his interview as well?’ added Robert, pushing the boat out. ‘Off the record.’

  Robert read the document, making notes, and then they shook hands all round. After Sanjay had pulled away, Robert wasn’t quite sure what to say. He didn’t want to patronise Andrew by complimenting him and he didn’t want to lose face by letting him think the teacher had been taught a lesson by his pupil. But he had to say something and Andrew was keeping half a step back, not wanting to lead the way back to the office.

  ‘Twisted guy,’ he said, eventually.

  ‘Yes, very.’ As if granted permission Andrew went further and ventured a thought. ‘That cross.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It was exceptionally small.’

  Robert waited for more.

  ‘He must have put it there and then left it behind.’

  Robert had noticed the same thing. Pinned to the scuffed wall, it seemed to be floating like wreckage after a storm, detached from any meaning.

  ‘I think we’ve just seen into Edmund Littlemore’s private world,’ said Andrew.

  Robert agreed: even God was adrift. But his stronger thought was about the magician’s apprentice. Where on earth had Crofty found him?

  9

  Martin and Maisie Brandwell lived in Leyborne Park near Kew Gardens. When Anselm dialled he got Maisie not Martin, and she suggested a meeting early that afternoon, to be followed by another with her son Dominic in Clapham. ‘He’ll want to see you,’ she insisted, promising to make the arrangements. ‘He’ll be so pleased. We feel completely abandoned by the police. They’re doing nothing.’ And so, near the appointed time, Anselm rounded a corner and practically walked into a man standing in the middle of the pavement. Anselm tried to step past him twice but the man just mirrored Anselm’s movements.

  ‘You’re going nowhere near my wife. Now listen to me.’

  There was something silver about Martin Brandwell. His hair was silver, his glasses were silver and his eyebrows were silver. He was dressed formally: a white shirt, a red silk tie, a light brown and maroon checked jacket. There was perspiration on the high, lined forehead.

  ‘This is our affair not yours,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of priests. But you can do me a favour. You can do our family a favour. You can make up for some of the harm. You’re looking for that American, Littlemore?’

  Anselm felt caged. This wasn’t the place to explain that John Joe Collins was an employee of Larkwood Priory.

  ‘Well, when you find him, give him a message.’

  Anselm opened his mouth to speak but Martin Brandwell had no interest in discussion.

  ‘You tell him to stay hidden, do you understand me?’

  Anselm frowned. He seemed to hear Kester. If anyone knows anything it’s Martin Brandwell. He was here shortly after Littlemore went missing. He was with Father Carrington for most of the afternoon. They had a row …

  ‘Hidden?’ echoed Anselm.

  ‘That’s right. Tell him to keep out of our lives.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ll pay him if need be. But I want him out of circulation for good. It’s the only way we’ll ever get to the other side of this hell.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Anselm flinched at Martin Brandwell’s eyes. They were raw, like flesh when you peel back the epidermis.

  ‘Don’t you know? Have you forgotten what happens when these things end up in court? Harry will be pulled to pieces.’

  ‘Not if—’

  ‘I’m not asking your advice, right? I’m telling you what to do. My grandson’s beginning to get over what happened to him. I don’t want policemen and lawyers opening it up again. They don’t have to live with the memory. He does.’

  Anselm didn’t know how to handle the transferred hostility. He opened his mouth to try and calm him, but again, Martin Brandwell intervened:

  ‘Look beyond the crime. Isn’t that your special gift? Try and understand that sometimes the right decision is a horrible decision. If Littlemore is arrested he’ll only deny what he did, and then things will only get worse … far, far worse. For Harry. For Maisie. For everyone. Now go and give him that message. You’ll have a father’s blessing.’

  Martin Brandwell waited. He wasn’t going to leave until Anselm had turned round and gone. Obediently, Anselm backed away, finally retracing his steps beneath the shade of tall trees.

  Anselm went to Clapham Common by bus. The route was tortuous but it gave him time to think. In principle – given Martin Brandwell’s instructions – he ought to have simply not turned up at his son’s home. But an appointment had been made by Maisie. They’d felt let down by the police and he didn’t want to add to their disillusionment. More to the point, he didn’t want to be controlled by Martin Brandwell: given his unthinkable request, Anselm thought he ought to meet Harry’s parents, if only to demonstrate his refusal to cooperate with the boy’s grandfather. It would be a delicate meeting and he didn’t know how best to handle it. Hopping from bus to bus, seemingly on the run from Kester Newman’s disclosure, Anselm let his mind play upon trivia: why had Martin Brandwell isolated Maisie from the long list of people who’d only be harmed by a future trial? Why had he made that slip of the tongue about a father’s blessing?

  He’d meant a grandfather’s, surely? Unless he meant himself in relation to one of his own children.

  10

  Andrew chased down the meaning of ‘Yu kohba smok sote, I mohs kohmoht’ as soon as they got back to the office. It was a Krio proverb variously translated to mean ‘A person’s bad character can’t be hidden for long.’ More literally: no matter how much you try, you can’t cover up smoke. He’d handed over the page, torn from his reporter’s notebook, and then announced that Crofty had just asked him to cover a gas leak in Bromley, which was annoying, because Robert was warming to his trainee; he wanted him there when he doorstepped the monks at Larkwood Priory. He’d just organised the transport, borrowing the car from his mother, when Andrew appeared with his chit of paper.

  ‘That’s unfortunate,’ said Robert. ‘Because there’s a chance I’ll find him. You ought to be there.’

  ‘Crofty says he’s short-staffed.’

  ‘Short-sighted, more like. Never mind. I’ll let you know what happens.’

  Robert glowered at Crofty and then went to Raynes Park, where he found his mother in the back garden. Passing through the house, he could tell every room had been cleaned from top to bottom. Cushions had been plumped, surfaces wiped. There was a smell of disinfectant. All the windows were open. The kitchen floor was wet. And, as if ambushed, Robert felt a stab of grief. Without realising it, his mother had removed all trace of his dad. Stepping through the French windows, he said:

  ‘How are you doing?’

  His mother hadn’t heard. The tiny electric mower was whizzing over the grass. She was smiling to herself, like someone rehearsing a conversation. Back and forth she went, still wearing the flowery apron from when she’d blitzed the house. On seeing Robert, she came over, untying the strings.

  ‘How are you doing?’ she echoed, gathering in her features with concern.

  ‘Fine.’

  Robert had expected to find his mother in a heap, not fizzing with energy. He stalled for a moment, noticing the shocking difference in her appearance. She had the glow that comes with a second wind. A blush of colour lit her skin. There was a lig
htness about her movements. She was ready for the second half of the game. Glancing over her shoulder he saw a few plants in plastic pots. His mother had been to the garden centre. Their eyes met and Robert experienced his first taste of dust: life without his dad; neither Robert nor his mother wanted to talk about him. They were each of them on a road of their own.

  ‘Where are the keys?’ asked Robert, stepping over an abyss.

  ‘The usual place. In the bowl by the door.’

  He hadn’t noticed because the house was no longer the usual place. His mother flicked a leaf off the garden table. ‘How long do you want the car for?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning. Probably towards lunchtime.’

  ‘That’s fine. Do you want something to eat before you go?’

  Robert declined. He just wanted to get away from this incredibly clean and proper house that he no longer fully recognised. It was as though he didn’t quite belong any more. He turned at the door to look at his mother and he felt abruptly sad. She was watching from the end of the corridor, but she seemed so much further away: at the end of a longer passage that reached right back into his childhood. She’d loved him, he knew that; but she’d been remote, too. She’d been trying. Doing her best. And now there was a distance that they couldn’t even talk about because it was part of a history patched over time with the smallest of careful stitches. None of them could be unpicked. He waved, wondering if he’d ever really known Janet Louise Sambourne; wondering why it had taken the death of his dad to realise something so tragic.

  * * *

  A person’s bad character can’t be hidden for long.

  Robert mulled over the insight while motoring through rural Suffolk. It turned out to be an exquisite phrase for the moment because, after parking in a country lane near the entrance to Larkwood Priory, he walked around the grounds, camera in hand, finally spotting Father Edmund Littlemore in the sun-trapped paradise of a walled orchard. He was piling cuttings from the apple trees onto a fire. At times he flinched, turning his head swiftly to one side as the breeze blew the smoke into his eyes. It took Robert a while to be sure. Littlemore had grown a beard and his hair was longer, and he looked different out of his clerical garb, but it was him all right. After another gust or two, and having taken several photographs, Robert moved away from the leaning gatepost. Now seemed a good time to put a few questions to the monk who sought ‘justice beyond the reach of the law’.