SILENT (a psychological thriller, combining mystery, crime and suspense)

by D. M. Mitchell

  ‘You’re mad, Sykes! That’s inhuman! Look, you can have money, lots of it. You don’t have to do this!’

  ‘Yes he does,’ said a voice from behind him. ‘Sykes, just get on with it. We haven’t got all night.’

  ‘Betsy?’ said Mason disbelievingly. He was totally shocked to see her step in front of him. She wore a long black coat, a black hat whose brim bathed her eyes in shadow. ‘You’re ill – what are you doing here? Christ, Betsy, is this some kind of sick joke?’

  ‘Ill?’ she gave a crackling, humourless laugh. ‘I’m an actress, Rick. I act. It’s what actresses do, when they’re given the chance.’

  ‘Betsy, I don’t understand! Look, you’re not well, you don’t know what you’re doing!’

  ‘Yes I do, Rick. I know exactly what I’m doing.’ She motioned for Sykes to begin.

  Jefferson shook his head wildly, yanked at his fastenings, but all to no avail. Sykes placed the sharp edge of the knife against the man’s stomach. Blood started to dribble from the cut. ‘Hold still, you old fool, or you’ll ruin my line!’ said Sykes. He dragged the knife across the flesh, pressing down deep. Jefferson’s head tilted back, his eyes screwed up in agony, his screams stifled by the gag. ‘Not too deep,’ said Sykes clinically, almost to himself. ‘Don’t want to split open your stomach now, do we?’

  Blood splashed onto the stone floor at Jefferson’s feet. He juddered, then his head went limp, chin resting on his chest as he passed out.

  ‘Hurry up, Sykes!’ Betsy urged.

  ‘I like to take my time over these things,’ he replied curtly. ‘Like I did with Bunny.’

  ‘You bastard!’ Mason cried. ‘You killed Bunny Foster? Betsy, what the hell have you gotten into?’

  Sykes stopped, stepped back a little to admire his handiwork. He pushed a finger into the foot-long gash on Jefferson’s stomach. ‘This should come away nicely,’ he observed, gripping the flap of skin between a bloody index finger and thumb. He moved forward, brandishing the knife again.

  A loud retort rang out and Sykes lurched sideways. He dropped the knife, his hand going to his upper arm, turning to see where the bullet came from. As he turned he reached inside his coat for the pistol, aimed it quickly at the shadows and managed to let off a single round before another bullet ripped through his chest.

  He hung there for a moment, then slumped to his knees, dropping the gun into the pool of blood that had run down from Jefferson’s gaping wound. With a sickening gurgle, Warren Sykes fell face down onto the floor never to move again.

  A figure emerged from the shadows, a smoking gun held out before him in two shaking hands.

  ‘Don’t even think about running, Betsy,’ said Davey. ‘I swear I’ll use this on you if I have to.’

  * * * *

  35

  Silent

  ‘You’re dead!’

  Davey advanced, bent cautiously down to Sykes. He shook his head dolefully. ‘It’s lucky for you that I’m not dead, Rick,’ he said, picking up the bloody knife from the floor. Covering Betsy with the gun, he began to slice through Mason’s bonds.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Betsy cried, her hands out before her, pleading with her brother. ‘Don’t do that! Don’t set him free!’ then her voice plunged to one of rage. ‘I said stop it!’

  Mason’s hands fell free and he rubbed them together to restore life to them. Davey ignored her strident demands, and his gun still pointed at her. ‘Stay there!’ he said to her. ‘This has got to end.’ He handed Mason the knife. ‘Cut Jefferson down and see if you can pack something into that wound to stop it bleeding.’

  Conrad Jefferson was coming round, a pathetic groan rumbling deep in his throat. Mason cut him down and he lay in a puddle of his own blood.

  ‘We can still do this,’ said Betsy. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’

  ‘For the first time in years it’s very clear what I’m doing,’ Davey replied, his expression grave.

  ‘What’s going on, Davey?’ Mason asked, tossing aside the knife and grabbing Jefferson’s shirt that had been dropped a few yards away.

  ‘Everything that’s happened has been leading up to this,’ he replied. ‘To murder Conrad Jefferson and frame you for it.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Betsy warned, taking a bold step closer. Davey stiffened, waved her back with the gun.

  Mason was shocked. ‘To murder Jefferson? Why would Betsy want to do that?’

  ‘She’s got her own personal reasons, but someone’s got an even bigger one. Luke Dillon of Prima Studios. He’s the one behind it all.’

  Mason removed Jefferson’s gag and he sucked in air. He wrapped the shirt around the wound. He was losing a lot of blood, but he was fully awake now, listening to what Davey was saying.

  ‘I know there was no love lost between Dillon and Jefferson,’ said Mason, ‘but to want him dead?’ He turned to look at Betsy. ‘I don’t understand.’ He didn’t recognise her face anymore. She stood like a stranger to him.

  ‘True, they hate each other,’ Davey said. ‘Dillon wanted revenge for his long-standing grievances. And what better way than to take away Jefferson’s company, to ruin the man. He’s been trying for years. He knew Metropolitan had been struggling recently, but the Dragutin films were in danger of resurrecting the studio’s fortunes so he was scared he’d never get his hands on the company. And you giving him the public cold shoulder only incensed him more. He hated you after that, Rick.

  ‘The Dillons have some very nasty connections with the Los Angeles underworld, which is partly why Jefferson parted company with them in the first place. You’d never guess who they’ve got in their filthy pockets. Politicians, police, a raft of powerful people. Somehow, Luke Dillon got to know that I was wanted for a murder back in Louisiana.’ He stared at his sister. ‘With his police cronies working for him he was privy to all sorts of information, and I figured that’s how he found out about me being in Hollywood, in hiding, on the run. He contacted Betsy and me, we had a private meeting with him. He told me he could fix it so that nobody would be coming after me ever again. But it came with a steep price tag. If we didn’t go along with what he had planned he’d turn me over to the cops and he’d use his connections to make sure I went to the chair. Told me Betsy would be sent to jail as an accessory to murder. The options were pretty slim, so we agreed to go along with what he told us. Thing is, I believed he found out about me by accident, that my dear sister here was an unwilling accomplice in it all, that she was even doing it for me, to protect me, to save my life. But that’s not quite the truth, is it?’ He waved the gun at her.

  ‘This is not the time or place,’ she said. ‘Think about what you’re doing…’ she said.

  ‘What a sap I’ve been. I never thought you’d use me, too.’ He frowned, his jaw muscles stiffening. The gun was shaking. ‘Luke Dillon told us he could fix it so that I’d be found dead, the hunt for Peter Harvey called off. In return he wanted Betsy to bring down Jefferson, and in his eyes he would settle for nothing less than Jefferson’s murder, finally allowing him to get full ownership of Metropolitan Studios.’

  ‘You’re a fool!’ she said. ‘You’ve spoiled everything for us! We could have had so much!’

  ‘You had everything!’ Mason fired. ‘You had me, money, a baby…’

  ‘I didn’t have everything,’ she spat angrily. ‘I was being forced out, dropped by the studio and you didn’t care at all. I saw what they were doing early on. Everything I ever wanted, to be a star, was going to be torn up before my eyes. Did you seriously think I’d be satisfied with being your simpering little wife, a mother? A nobody?’

  ‘I would have helped you,’ he said.

  ‘It’s no use,’ said Davey. ‘She’s blind to it. And nothing gets in the way of what she wants, isn’t that true, sis? She’ll even kill for it. She has already killed for it.’

  ‘Liar!’ she cried.

  ‘It wasn’t me that killed John Saunders, was it? Come on, sis, stop thinking about yourself for a change a
nd spill the beans. Rick is owed that much.’ He waited a moment. ‘No? Then let me spell out what really happened in Louisiana. You tried out for John’s play, but he didn’t want you because you weren’t right for the part. He tried to let you down gently, but you wouldn’t have that, would you? You killed him for that.’

  ‘He was a filthy, degenerate animal!’ she said, her eyes livid, her cheeks and neck flushing with rage and frustration. ‘He was a sick man and he deserved to die! He raped me!’

  ‘You’ve said it so often you’re even starting to believe it yourself. That’s not true though, is it? You know that can’t be true, because of who he was. You tried to blackmail him, didn’t you? Because of what you saw.’

  ‘He was sick! You were both sick!’

  ‘He was my lover,’ said Davey quietly. ‘I loved him.’

  ‘Stop it!’ she said, putting her hands to her ears. ‘I don’t want to hear that! It’s obscene! It’s vile!’

  ‘You discovered us together, in bed. I know that because John told me he thought he saw you at the door. You weren’t supposed to be there at his house, but he also told me how you’d been desperate to get the part in his play and had turned up a couple of times begging to be taken on. But now you had something you could use against him, didn’t you? Let me tell it as it probably happened, shall I? You went back to him and tried to blackmail him, threatened to tell everyone about his preferences for men. You were hoping he might think he could be ruined. But he wouldn’t take the bite, would he? He refused to go along with it, told you to go away. But you wouldn’t let it rest, you took his gun which I told you he kept in his desk drawer. You threatened him again. But he didn’t respond and you shot him dead.’

  ‘I was perfect for that part!’ she said. ‘He knew that.’

  Davey shook his head. ‘And you’d kill a man for that reason? For nothing more than that? I’m ashamed of you. For so long I wanted to believe what you told me, about you being raped. You’re my sister; you wouldn’t lie to me, I thought. You wouldn’t use me in that way.’

  ‘So it wasn’t you who killed him?’ Mason said. ‘She told me…’

  He turned to Mason. ‘I know what she told you. But it’s a lie. She came to me in distress, Rick. So cut up, her dress ripped. She said John had raped her. Said he was dead, that she’d shot him in self defence. Concerned, I went back to his place. It was true. I found him on the floor, his chest covered in blood. I picked up the gun that had killed him. I don’t rightly know why. I looked down at the man I loved, and didn’t want to believe how he could betray me and attack my sister. I was torn.

  ‘Then the maid came in for her afternoon shift, saw me there and screamed. I ran out of the house, still holding the gun, which I threw away into the bushes as soon and I realised I had it in my hand. I believed you, Betsy. I believed every word. I was willing to take the rap for you – it was me they saw, me they were after, me that would have gone to the chair, because I wouldn’t turn you in, wouldn’t ever admit it was you who killed him. That’s how much I loved you.

  ‘But recently it’s dawned on me what you’re really capable of, and forced me to confront the truth about what really happened in Louisiana. I think I knew, really, but I didn’t want to know. I wanted to believe you. But all this with Dillon made me reconsider everything. Now you’d use Rick, too, to further your own selfish ends.’

  ‘I thought you loved me, Betsy,’ Mason said, his eyes beginning to flood with tears. ‘I truly loved you…’

  ‘What does love matter?’ she said. ‘Love gets you nowhere in life. Love is a means to an end.’

  ‘I’m as much to blame for what’s happened to you, Rick,’ said Davey. ‘OK, so I could say I didn’t have a choice, Dillon was blackmailing us to go along with his plans. But I went along with it to save my own neck. My suicide attempt wasn’t real. Betsy and I arranged it so that you’d come into the shack at the same time I kicked away the chair. We even placed a convenient knife there so you could cut me down fast. It was to make you think it was me that was in that burning shack, that it was my body they’d found burned to a crisp, a man who had already tried to commit suicide once and this time had succeeded. In truth it was Dillon who arranged it. The man they found was some dead hobo or other. Dillon also arranged it so that the body would be identified by the police as the late Peter Harvey, wanted for murder in Louisiana. I was to disappear, make a life elsewhere free from looking over my shoulder. What I didn’t know was how it was that my sister had approached Dillon to cut a deal.’

  ‘Can it, Peter!’ she said. ‘Don’t listen, Rick, he’s lying!’

  ‘Luke Dillon didn’t just happen to find out about me, about us; you went to him. It was you who came up with the entire thing, to get me off the hook, frame Rick for Jefferson’s murder, and all so that you could have your stardom and he could have his revenge on Mason and Jefferson. You were in on it together.’

  She had her arms folded about her, shivering. She looked much smaller, as if she were gradually fading away. But her eyes still burned with fury.

  ‘I thought you were ill,’ said Mason, emotion drained from him. ‘I thought I was going mad…’

  ‘That’s exactly what they wanted you to believe. You were being drugged, slowly, day by day, something that was making you more aggressive, gave you severe mood swings, a hallucinogenic. Doctor Lombard was on Dillon’s payroll. Lombard and Betsy worked together to make you believe you were under the Dragutin curse, even making you think you might be turning into him. Punching that woman that day, that wasn’t you, it was the early effects of the drug. And you willingly took more tablets from Lombard without question. Believed everything he said about your wife. And why should you even think to question it?

  ‘Dillon even funded some of the religious protests so that the movie, and you, would be discredited. Then the bomb under your car – that was arranged by Dillon, too, partly so that you’d not question taking on a new head of security to protect you and your family, partly to draw negative attention to the new movie. Warren Sykes here,’ he said motioning with the gun to the dead man, ‘is not ex-military but an ex-con. The men on your mansion gates are all part of the deception. They’ve even created false logs of your movements to and from the mansion, ready to use in evidence against you. Truth is, when Bunny was murdered you were home, drugged to the eyeballs. It was Sykes who murdered Bunny Foster, making it look like there was a Dragutin copycat killer on the loose, and he planted her bloodied clothes and severed finger in your room to make you think you did it. But he was careful not to lead the police directly to you. Not yet. You see, they wanted something else first. The plan was to make it look like you’d gone off your head; you killed Bunny and then went on to kill Jefferson. Finally you turned the gun on yourself. No one would even think to question it. All the evidence pointed to you. Christ, it was so good you even believed you were under a curse yourself. The jury would find out how you’d gradually flipped, drugged your wife like Dragutin drugged Dorottya – the bottle you found and gave to Lombard was planted there; it had your prints all over it and would be used as evidence of how you kept Betsy under sedation. A nice final touch was for them to order leg-irons. They’d thought of every little detail that would point to you as the murderer.

  ‘With Jefferson’s death, the new movie in big trouble, Dillon would manoeuvre ownership of Metropolitan, especially when Betsy sold the shares you owned in the company to Dillon. And in return, Betsy would get everything you inherited and a lucrative deal with Dillon promising her long-term contracts and stardom with the new Metropolitan Studios. A grateful Luke Dillon would set her up for life.’

  Mason rose from Jefferson and went over to Betsy. His hands were covered in blood. ‘Is this all true, Betsy?’

  ‘You believe all that?’ she said. ‘You really think I am capable of something like that?’

  ‘We had so much going for us. Was it really worth killing someone? For all this plaster crap?’ He waved his hand at the towering set.
‘It’s all false. None of it’s real. It doesn’t last. It can never last…’

  Her expression softened, and for a flickering moment the woman he fell in love with shone through her mask of hate. ‘I’m still your Betsy, Rick…’ she said.

  ‘You would have had me killed…’ he said.

  ‘Don’t listen to her,’ said Davey. ‘I tried to warn you about her, Rick, but you wouldn’t listen…’ he said. ‘I tried to protect you from her…’

  ‘You mean you wanted him for yourself!’ she snapped. ‘That’s why you’re doing this. Why don’t you tell him?’ she said coldly. ‘Go ahead; tell Rick what you really feel.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Mason.

  ‘Don’t believe anything he’s saying, Rick. He’s the one who’s sick. John Saunders corrupted him!’ Her eyes steeled. ‘He loves you,’ she said acidly. ‘Can’t you see that? Davey is in love with you.’

  Mason turned to Davey, whose head was shaking as if emotions ran through him like an electric current.