The Silent Ones

by Knight, Ali

  As Melanie clung to her daughter she was transported to a time years ago when she had sailed out into the English Channel to watch a solar eclipse. As the boat bobbed in the water, the seagulls had suddenly fallen silent and the wind had dropped. She had felt a spike of fear as a huge threatening shadow had raced over her across the miles of open water. She had been stunned at the speed that the earth was travelling, had been in awe at the scale of the universe. It felt to her now as if that monstrous darkness, the pain and loss of the past ten years, was receding at lightning speed away from her and her child. She had been forgiven. She thanked every god and spirit she could think of for her daughter’s deliverance.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Carly sobbed.

  ‘I knew you would come back, I knew.’

  The harsh alarm on Darren’s monitor exploded into life as his heart gave out.

  76

  Olivia was woken by the cell door opening. A group of guards filed in. Suspicion swam round in her mind as she sat up. No one ever came this early or in these numbers. The routine was out.

  She’d heard the alarm yesterday – it could be heard in every cell in the accommodation block – but when she had pumped the guard for information through the hatch in the door, she got nothing more than a terse denial of everything. She could feel the tension though, the quickening steps, the long periods of silence as people did things elsewhere. She had never heard that alarm before; it must be used only for escapes or large-scale events. She wondered what had happened. It had been turned off less than ten minutes later, but the biting tension remained.

  They must have discovered who Darren was. This wasn’t a surprise; it was always going to happen eventually. But somehow the mood this morning didn’t fit that theory: one of the guards was grinning. She stood up, anticipation crackling in the soles of her feet, but she was ordered to sit back down. Helen appeared in the doorway.

  Berenice, she thought in despair. Her first thoughts were always that something might have happened, that a revelation had been made that would break their tenuous connection – the slim strands of snatched words in the lunch queue, the glorious moment twenty-nine days ago when she had been close enough to touch her arm. It was four and a half months since she had been near enough to smell her.

  Helen looked dishevelled, like she hadn’t slept. Her make-up was heavier than normal. Olivia saw restrainers in the arms of one of the guards. She stood sharply, and this time they didn’t bother telling her to sit back down.

  ‘The women have been found,’ Helen said. She turned to leave the cell. She didn’t even bother to look at Olivia. ‘Darren discovered them.’

  ‘All of them?’ Olivia’s voice was coming from far away, from someone who was not her at all.

  ‘Berenice McArthur is dead. Carly Evans killed her.’ Helen put a hand on the door.

  ‘Wait!’ But Helen didn’t wait. She disappeared round the door. ‘Wait! Did they say anything? What did they say about me?’

  She tried to run after Helen, the questions piling up into a great mountain of anguish and failure, but the guards didn’t let her. Helen didn’t come back. It was over. She screamed as loudly as she could, and lashed out with her nails at the nearest guard. She was wailing, unable to contain the grief and the endless questions. The guards were more than ready. They circled her in a practised manoeuvre, restraining arms and legs, avoiding her gnashing teeth. She kicked and thrashed, the few words Helen had said more brutal and final than any she could have imagined.

  Darren and Carly had destroyed everything that made Olivia’s life worth living. She had been in control, and somehow, the clueless cleaner had undone ten years of work. So much work!

  Her hands were clamped together now. She saw one of the nurses preparing an injection and she howled expletives down on them all.

  There was something even worse than what Helen had told her. The men in her cell were grinning, as if she didn’t matter any more. As if the power she had held was drained entirely away; she was already a nobody. Theirs were the grins of the victors.

  77

  Five Days Later

  Darren was pulled back to consciousness with a hard slap on his left arm. He was disorientated, the light too bright for his eyes, his limbs like lead. An African nurse was shaking her head, remonstrating with Orin, who stood next to her. ‘He needs to rest to get better! You get five minutes, then you’re out.’ She pressed the button on the bed and Darren began to rise to a semi-seated position. She turned and left the room and Darren saw that Carly was also there, leaning on a windowsill.

  Darren was too weak to move. His hand was connected to a drip by the bed; he had difficulty keeping his head upright. That was OK though: he didn’t want to do anything except gaze at his sister. She smiled at him uncertainly and he thought he could sit here for the rest of his life and stare at her like an idiot. She looked the same, yet so different. Her face was thinner than he remembered, her hair longer and darker. She was striking now that her face’s childish plumpness was gone, but there was sadness in her eyes, an air of being old before her time. He was staring at a beautiful stranger.

  ‘Partially collapsed lung, stab wounds to the vastus medialis and the right deltoid and a depressed fracture of the skull.’ Orin had picked up Darren’s notes and charts from the hook at the bottom of the bed and read from them, his voice a monotone. ‘Your heart stopped twice, you came out of intensive care this morning. You’ve been out of action for five days, but you’re back now.’ He hung the notes back on the bed and stood, arms crossed, feet splayed, looking down at Darren. ‘Where’s my daughter?’

  Darren looked at Carly and frowned. His mouth was dry, he couldn’t speak, confusion rendered him mute.

  ‘Your sister wouldn’t talk to me unless you were present. This is the first time I’ve seen her. What happened at the railway arch?’

  Carly saw Darren was struggling and came over to the bed, handing him a glass of water from the trolley. ‘You can do it Darren, tell him what you remember.’ Her voice was low and calm, she put her hand on his forehead.

  ‘I went to see Berenice, I saw your tag on her skateboard, we fought …’ He trailed off. Orin didn’t take his eyes off him. ‘I got the key and I opened the door and—’

  Orin interrupted him. ‘The police are combing that arch for every bit of information they can get.’ He turned to look at Carly in an accusatory way. ‘They don’t understand what they’re finding.’

  Carly said nothing, just looked out of the window. Tension bristled in the air. ‘Tell him what happened,’ she finally said to Darren.

  ‘I opened the door, I saw Carly, all of them, in there, just standing there. Berenice came at me again and Carly shouted a warning to me. She saved my life.’

  ‘What about Isla?’

  Darren paused. He couldn’t remember. The world had turned strange at that point. Flashes of what he’d seen came back to him. There was something he was trying to remember, something from the corner of his vision. ‘Isla was dragging me by the leg …’ He tailed off again. That wasn’t what was troubling him. ‘We came outside, a woman, I guess it was Heather, was crying.’ Darren watched Carly, staring out at nothing through the window. What had happened during all those years? She looked normal, sounded normal, was well fed and healthy, but there was something he couldn’t place. ‘Carly was shouting.’

  Orin turned to her. ‘What were you shouting?’

  She still didn’t move. ‘I was shouting it’s over. It’s all over.’ Her eyes filled with tears.

  Darren took up the story. ‘Isla came out of the lock-up. I said “You’re safe” and she said “No”. And she backed away to the corner and I tried to get up and follow but I couldn’t. I was calling out her name, but she was gone.’

  There was silence. ‘So she went voluntarily,’ Orin finally said.

  ‘Yes. Have the police not found her?’

  ‘They’re looking of course, but I’ve hired my own private detectives to find her using more agg
ressive means. There isn’t a flophouse or railway arch that won’t be tossed by my men.’

  An image flashed in front of Darren of an army of the homeless and the hopeless being upended by Orin’s people. He was still struggling to recall what he had seen in the arch.

  ‘Where are Rajinder and Heather?’ he asked.

  ‘Rajinder’s with a cousin and is refusing to speak to the police or her family. Heather’s gone to a convent. She has no family. During her incarceration she became deeply religious.’ Orin turned to Carly. ‘Which leaves you. Isla didn’t just put on a coat and stroll off. Where is she?’

  In that instant Darren remembered what he had noticed as Isla dragged him across the floor. Behind her, on the wall, was a row of coats and on the last hook hung an umbrella.

  They had been allowed to go outside.

  Carly got off the windowsill and walked towards Orin. ‘I don’t know where Isla is. But it’s important you know what was really happening in there. She disappeared not because she can’t come home but because she doesn’t want to.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Orin spat. ‘She has been shut up by a madwoman in a cage for ten years, now she’s alone and afraid and half mad and seeing the world for the first time and—’

  ‘You don’t get it.’

  ‘No I don’t, young lady. My daughter is alive after years when we thought she was dead. She could come to harm. She needs to be found.’

  Carly shook her head. ‘She hasn’t been chained up for ten years. We weren’t rotting away in there. We were busy. We were at work.’

  Orin looked too stunned to speak.

  ‘Does the name Gert Becker mean anything to you?’ Carly continued.

  ‘The guy on the video on the boat?’ Orin asked.

  ‘Isla took his confession.’

  Darren closed his eyes, trying to shut out the ramifications of all this.

  ‘She was outside?’ Orin’s voice was quieter than Darren had ever heard it.

  ‘Berenice was one of Gert Becker’s victims. She had the misfortune to run into him when she was fourteen. He tied her up and kept her for three days before she managed to escape.’

  ‘Why did she never report him?’ Orin demanded.

  Carly laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘A runaway from a children’s home who’d been kicked out of three schools and who hated the police? A girl like that accusing a high-profile, wealthy businessman, a pillar of the community?’ Her voice was thick with sarcasm. ‘He knew exactly what he was doing. Gert chose his victims very carefully. He revelled in being untouchable. Years later Berenice, emotionally unstable and physically scarred, drifted down to Brighton and met Olivia on the seafront.’ She faltered. ‘Olivia saved her. Put her back together. They had a connection, because what happened to Berenice had also happened to Olivia’s sister Lauren. She was used and abused by a man who seemed untouchable – one of her dad’s friends. He worked in London. Olivia’s parents had lots of parties at their fancy country place – powerful people from the City and the government would come and stay. But Lauren wasn’t as strong as Berenice and she couldn’t cope. She killed herself when she was sixteen.’

  Darren felt his heart fill with despair. His sister, so young and impressionable, had been fed a modern version of a Grimm’s fairy story, only real and brutal and sick.

  ‘Hell, this is horseshit! If these women had done the right thing other women and girls would be alive today – Becker would be rotting in a penitentiary!’

  Carly got off the windowsill. ‘You know that’s not true. Men like him get away with it – all the time. That’s why accusing him wasn’t enough. Olivia and Berenice wanted a full confession, all the details, all the names and dates—’

  ‘Stop, please stop,’ Darren pleaded. Carly was too young to think the world was made this dark. ‘Not all men are like that. They’re not all monsters—’

  ‘Where I grew up they are.’

  Orin’s strength seemed to fail him and he sat down heavily on the bed next to Darren. Darren didn’t know what to say that could make the other man feel better – a moment of joy Orin must have wished for countless times and never dared to believe could come true had been snatched away from him.

  He looked at Carly and his heart bled anew. He thought about all the education she had missed, the relationships she had never had a chance to form, the good in the world that had been denied her. ‘Olivia and Berenice trained us, in computer techniques, in impersonation, in interrogation, in how to tail someone. When Olivia was arrested, we carried on the job without her. Your daughter’s not running, Mr Bukowski, she’s hunting. She’s hunting the man who cut Lauren’s life so short.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘We don’t know.’ She paused, staring at nothing through the window. ‘It’s complicated. It’s like we’re hunting a many-headed beast. Once we find evidence against one man, it leads to someone else. There’s a network of people who are connected.’

  Orin made a noise Darren couldn’t quite make out. He was pacing round the room, unable to stand still. He came over to Carly and stared out of the window alongside her.

  ‘There’s something an American notices when they come here. It’s small. So many secrets in somewhere so small.’ There was silence. He turned round. ‘I am going to use all my money, all my connections and all my energy to search every inch of this goddamn tiny, grey country to find her, and then I am going to finish this.’

  ‘Carly is not to get involved, she needs to concentrate on readjusting to normal life, on repairing herself—’

  ‘That’s sweet, Darren,’ Carly interrupted, ‘but there’s another problem. I don’t like your daughter, Mr Bukowski.’

  ‘But you know her, better than anyone. Hell, I don’t much like your brother, but I need him. And he owes me. I’m finding Isla. I have the money to mount a search, I have the police connections, and Darren –’ he turned to the bed ‘– has got close to the architect of the whole sorry saga as she rots away in her cell. So are you two young guns in or out?’

  78

  Olivia hadn’t left her cell for days. She wasn’t sure she knew how many; time was blurring and folding in on itself. They had tried to take the restraints off a few days ago but she had punched the wall so hard as soon as her hand was free that they had got her back into them and moved her to a padded cell. The pain of the open knuckle was a welcome distraction from the terrible visions that had set up home in her head.

  They had tried to feed her soup and she had spat it back out in their faces; water she did the same with, until they began drugging her again and she simply drifted in and out of consciousness. That was fine by her; she wanted to stay suspended in this state as she starved herself to death. She knew she had the willpower.

  She had been wrong about everything she had worked for and believed in, and so it was better that it be over. She would spend every waking moment working out how she could kill herself. She relaxed a little then. She was efficient and cunning – she would be dead before the month was out. She needed to pull herself together and get out of these ties and then she could work on annihilating herself.

  The door opened and two female guards came in. They manoeuvered her into a wheelchair and took her down long corridors. She didn’t bother to ask where they were going because she didn’t care.

  They parked her in a room with a desk and a small window through which she could see the sky. It was blue and the memory of Berenice with her in Brighton filled her up and made tears spring into her dried-up ducts. She could weep for a thousand years.

  The door opened and Helen walked in, a file under her arm. ‘Good morning, Olivia.’

  Olivia tried to work some spit together in her mouth to lob at her.

  Helen sat down and put the file on the desk, interlaced her fingers and leaned forward.

  The tears had helped; there was a big glob of snot forming at the back of Olivia’s throat. She could splatter Helen’s silk shirt from here.

  ‘I
sla Bukowski has gone missing.’

  Olivia swallowed the spit in her mouth and stared at her.

  ‘When the women were discovered in the lock-up, she fled the scene and cannot be located. She is, apparently, looking for someone who she believes drove your sister to kill herself.’

  Olivia felt a great peace wash over her, more profound than anything she could have ever imagined.

  Isla was fighting the fight, keeping the dream of justice for Lauren and countless others alive. Even after the greatest test she had faced, being confronted with the possibility of return to normal life, to the instant gratification of love and family, she had stuck to the path she had been set on all those years ago. A decade of suffering in here had not been in vain after all.

  ‘You know, Dr McCabe, I’ve missed our chats.’ Her voice was croaky and hoarse, her vocal cords damaged from prolonged screaming.

  ‘If you were to cooperate and give us some idea of who this person is, your therapy with me could be continued.’

  ‘I would feel more able to give you information if we could talk like normal human beings, without all this unnecessary baggage.’ Olivia nodded down at the thick straps that wound round her wrists.

  Helen remained calm. ‘It’s very important for you to feel you have some power, however illusory, isn’t it?’

  Olivia grinned. Her lips were so dry that she could feel the skin cracking and taste blood rushing to fill the tiny fissures. But more than that, she felt life and possibilities rushing back into every shattered cell of her body. ‘Dr McCabe, let me tell you something about power. Power is held by the person who is thought to wield it. And in this room, today, who do you think that is?’