by Mark Roberts
Mrs Pearson’s eyes rolled. ‘Jon, that is your handwriting.’
‘No it’s not.’
‘Jon,’ Hendricks said. ‘Read what it says on the paper.’
He looked at Hendricks as if he was a monster that had suddenly appeared in the room out of thin air.
‘Or shall I read it to you?’
‘It wasn’t me.’
‘Eat my shit, you bitch hore,’ said Hendricks, as if he was reading the opening line of a fairy tale. He pointed at the sheet. ‘There’s a silent w missing from the word whore, but I don’t suppose that spelling will come up in the SATs.’
Clay turned over the next sheet.
‘Oh my God, Jon!’ said his mother.
‘Mrs Pearson, please,’ said Clay.
The social worker caught Hendricks’s eye and looked away with embarrassment as he said, ‘Well, seeing as no one wants to look at your artwork, Jon, I’ll describe it. It’s a penis with some fluid or other flying from it into what looks like a girl’s face and underneath it says, Suck it bittch.’
‘Jon,’ said Clay. ‘We’ve got four more sheets of this stuff to go and, in my opinion, your writing just gets ruder and ruder.’ She waited for that to sink in. ‘Shall we carry on with the show-and-tell or shall we stop right there?’
‘Stop it.’
Mrs Pearson turned to the solicitor and the social worker and said, ‘I really don’t know where he gets it from.’
‘I will stop it, Jon, on the condition you stop messing around and tell me the truth. Deal?’
‘Deal.’
‘Did you do these drawings? This writing?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did you do them?’
‘In school, on Friday.’
‘Did you show them to anybody?’
‘No.’
She pointed at the phone.
‘Whose phone is that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It is Mrs Harry’s phone.’
‘How do you know?’ he asked.
‘I’ve got her number.’ She took out her iPhone and dialled the eleven digits from the Patels’ answer machine. The phone rang. ‘Mrs Harry’s phone.’ Clay disconnected the call.
‘We’ve established ownership of everything on the table. Another question and we’ll soon be done for now. Who stole Mrs Harry’s phone?’
‘It... it must’ve been me,’ said Jon, eyeing the phone in the evidence bag.
In the silence that followed, Clay stared directly at the boy, willing him to look at her, which he eventually did. She pushed the papers away.
‘Have you been out much recently, Jon?’ asked Clay.
Jon looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Have you left the house since Friday?’
‘Yeah.’
‘With your brothers?’
‘No.’
‘Did you go out last night at all?’
‘No.’
‘Did your brothers go out?’
‘They’re always out at night.’
‘Did they go out last night?’
‘Yeah.’
Clay looked at Mrs Pearson.
‘They went out at around seven o’clock.’
‘When did they get back, Mrs Pearson?’
‘Early hours of the morning. I woke up when they came in. Half one.’
Clay leaned across the table and whispered, ‘Jon?’
He looked her in the eye. ‘Yeah?’
‘Did you... put the book bag in your brothers’ bedroom?’
He looked incredulous, as if he was facing someone who had seen deep into his head.
He nodded.
‘Why did you put it there?’
‘Because it’s a mess and Mum never goes in there.’
‘When did you put it there?’
‘When I came home on Friday.’
‘So your brothers could have used the phone.’
‘They did. They called their mate Lee before they left the house last night. I heard them. They arranged to meet up with him. They took the phone out with them.’
‘Thank you, Jon. You’re going to have to stay here tonight. But for now, the interview’s over.’
45
7.45 pm
Stone drank in the cool waves of air from the fan he’d positioned next to his desk. At some point in the day, the heating in Trinity Road police station had broken down and all attempts by engineers to turn it off had failed. It was jammed on a high setting.
He angled his desk light onto the third volume of Adrian White’s Satanic writings: The Matriarch. He listened sympathetically to the frustration of the officers who had spent hours trying to make sense of the books.
‘There’s a viciousness under the surface,’ said DC Cole, a man whose passion for literature made him the stand-out first choice for the task. ‘It makes me feel cold. I feel like a child peering at hard-core pornography.’
‘There’s nothing involving red and cloud?’ asked Clay.
‘We’ve made notes where the words red and cloud feature, but it’s as if they’ve been randomly dropped in, like certain words spring into his head and he writes it down. Listen to this. The yes star rise city fruit of air blood man run earth your womb fire flame city red will alert cloud... What was he on when he wrote this?’
‘He wasn’t on anything. He didn’t smoke, drink or do any drugs,’ said Clay. She looked at the officers. They were all drawn and blank-eyed. Except for Stone.
‘OK,’ said Clay. ‘I can see you’ve all had enough. You’ll have to go and join everyone else on the streets looking for Vincent and Robert Pearson. White said they’re going to do it again. Tonight. The teams and the territorial zones are on the noticeboard. Pick the streets where you feel you’ll be most useful.’
As the officers gathered their things together and made their way out of the door, Clay rolled a chair over to Stone’s desk and sat with him in the draft of cool air.
‘That’s nice.’ She hung limply for a moment, then said, ‘You know when you’re that deprived of sleep, your subconscious starts throwing stray images into your field of vision? I’ve just seen a cat sitting on your shoulder, Karl.’
‘Is it still there?’ He stroked thin air six inches above his shoulder.
‘Karl.’ She leaned closer. ‘I was hallucinating. There’s nothing there, mate.’
‘But there is something here, Eve.’ He touched White’s book The Matriarch.
‘Go on.’ She felt a surge of energy after the torpor that had come off the rest of the team.
‘I don’t know for sure, Eve, but the more I read it, the more of a sense of rhythm I’m getting. It looks like surreal darkness to the naked eye, but there’s something going on here, like there’s a serpent hissing a dark lullaby in my ear.’
She looked at him, at his eyes, tired from soaking up White’s written words, and saw the tension in him. Little rims of red lined his eyelids and she explored his face, with the sudden intuitive knowledge that Stone had discovered something about the writing that could be the key to the mystery of it.
‘Eve, that’s your fuck-or-fight face and we don’t have time for either.’
She looked at his ears, at the pierced lobes for the diamond studs he wore off duty, his inner dandy fighting a losing battle with advancing age.
‘Can you keep going, Karl? I can see how tired you are, but will you please carry on?’
‘I’d rather be freezing my balls off on the streets looking for Vincent and Robbie Pearson but, yeah, seeing as it’s you, Eve, yeah.’
She felt a surge of excitement and sensed the colour in her throat and face rising, in spite of the fan. Her pulse raced as she spoke with a rush of knowing and sharp intuition. ‘Read a passage out loud to me.’
‘Chapter one, verse one, from the book entitled The Matriarch. Evening is on a the is the fall all and on a...’ Clay felt the steady beat of her heart, growing thicker with each pulse. ‘...child of actor artifact the one to one to one to who reigns para
site yes you in darkling red cloud oneness.’ Her pulse beat faster and faster. ‘That’s the end of that chapter. Want me to carry on?’
‘Pass me the book, please.’
The blade of the fan cut a choppy beat as it turned and blasted cold air at Clay and Stone. She read over the brief chapter he’d read aloud and said, ‘It’s a difficult passage, but you read very well.’
‘My mother used to torture me every year in the Liverpool Speech and Drama festival. Before my voice broke.’
Clay spiralled back in time to her own childhood, was reminded of a large Bible that used to sit on the lectern of the chapel in St Claire’s and of the Irish priest from St Anthony’s on Scotland Road, Philomena’s friend, who visited daily to say Mass for the elderly nuns and the children in their care. Father James O’Reilly, a thin man in black with the look of Samuel Beckett and a fine reading voice.
‘What are you doing, Eve?’ asked Stone.
Her palms and fingers were pressed together in prayer.
‘Raiding the past to pay for the present.’
She could almost hear the sound of Father O’Reilly’s voice reading from St Matthew’s Gospel, words her childish ears couldn’t comprehend but that filled the echoing chapel with a lilting music.
‘Jesus answered, “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, “I am the Christ.”’
The last time she saw him, at Sister Philomena’s requiem mass.
Her hands were no longer in a prayer-like posture. ‘You’re going to hate me for this, Karl.’
‘Go on?’ He opened his chest wide in front of the fan.
‘All this writing by Adrian White, it’s not meant to be read silently by individuals sitting down and quietly taking it all in. It’s meant to be read aloud and listened to by the faithful. It’s like the Dark Ages in the Catholic Church when most people couldn’t read or write. They got all their religious instruction from stained-glass windows and priests reading stories from the Bible about Jesus and his home boys.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Stone. ‘You want me to read this out loud to you?’
‘Yes, Karl.’ She handed him her iPad. ‘And I want you to record it all. Start with any sections that feature red and cloud. Work your way out, looking for anything that looks remotely like it may have something to do with this case.’
Stone picked up a pad from his desk and flicked through dozens of pages of handwritten notes.
‘Red and cloud. I’ve noted down where those references are already. You going to listen to all this?’
‘I was born to listen, Karl.’
The landline phone on her desk rang.
‘I’m going to Ullet Road at 7 am,’ said Stone.
‘I’ll meet you there,’ she said, picking up the receiver. ‘DCI Eve Clay.’
‘Eve?’ The voice on the other end was thick with sleep or alcohol.
Clay didn’t recognise it at first. It was tired, strangled and struggling to make itself heard. Then she worked out who it was. DS Gina Riley.
‘Gina? You’re supposed to be resting.’
‘I’m spaced... out on... painkillers.’
‘Do you need me to come and see you?’
‘No. Listen. Text message. Rupert Baines. Shoe guy.’
‘He’s identified the print on Kate Patel’s body?’
Stone held up a pair of thumbs and Clay smiled.
‘Yeah. Converse. Hundred million. Pairs. World. Wide. UK. Three mill. PA.’
The line went dead.
‘Clever,’ said Clay. ‘Almost invisible. Even down to the soles of their feet.’
46
11.00 pm
As the grandfather clock chimed eleven, Daniel Tanner swallowed a sleeping tablet and washed it down with a mouthful of lukewarm tap water. He turned off the bathroom light and, guided by the lamplight drifting from the bedroom he still shared with his wife, negotiated his way through the shadows of the large upstairs landing.
He paused at the top of the stairs and listened as a thin wind whistled round the walls of the house. The house, like the dizzy dreams of his youth, was too large for its own good and had proved unmanageable since his wife’s descent through the ever-narrowing circles of dementia.
The adjoining doors of Rebecca’s and Daniel’s rooms were shut, but there was a ribbon of light at the base of each and he could hear the overflow of the abysmal music they were listening to on their headphones. Distant Rebecca with her functional-only conversations. Disinterested Daniel who only wanted money.
He paused at his own bedroom door and looked at his wife’s face, softened in sleep by the light of a lamp on the table that separated their twin beds. Without thinking, he made his way to his bed and picked up his pillow. Each night the same temptation, sometimes dull, sometimes sharp, as it was in that moment, to press it over her face and claim temporary insanity or the conclusion of some manufactured pact from a time when they’d both had full command of their faculties.
But no. The thought of a custodial sentence proved simply too much and he placed his pillow down. He would just have to sell the house, buy a smaller property and place his wife in a nursing home. Rebecca and Daniel were in touching distance of leaving home. And Maisy? Maisy was Maisy and would have to live with him, with day centres and adult support services when he was at work.
Maisy?
He stepped back out onto the landing and slowly opened her door. Immediately he noticed how bitterly cold the air was inside Maisy’s room. He’d turned the heating off two hours earlier, but even so... There was too much light and it was coming in through the big sash window next to his daughter’s bed. The thick curtains that usually blocked out all trace of the streetlights on Ullet Road were parted and the sash window was raised. Wind blew the net curtains up into the air, making them billow like jellyfish.
Was this a new trick of Maisy’s? Maisy, who had less sense than the average two-year-old.
He looked at the bed and was seized by panic. He couldn’t make out her shape in the tangle of bedding. Hurrying over, he called out to her. ‘Maisy?’ But there was no answer. He felt his heart leap when he saw the side of her face against the creased pillow, her hair spilt and still, framing her sleeping features.
He crossed to the open window, pulled the sash down and reached a hand up to lock it. But the old lock had broken, he remembered, and had come away from the peeling paint and Victorian woodwork. It was just another job he’d been putting off for years.
The bolts that secured the wrought-iron fire escape leading to the stone landing just outside Maisy’s window were coming away from the brickwork and were completely unsafe. The thought of her climbing out and falling into the snow made him sick.
The net curtain danced in the wind that still leaked through the ill-fitting frame. He gathered the fabric of the thick hessian curtains and, pulling them together, returned the room to darkness.
I’ll get a joiner out first thing in the morning, he thought, and damn the expense.
And, summoning the last crumpled leaf of faith within him, Daniel Tanner knelt beside Maisy’s bed and said, ‘Please, please, please, don’t take her away from me.’
‘Don’t...’ Click click click click click click click click click click. ‘...worry.’
He peered at the sound of the voice in the dense darkness of Maisy’s room and wondered if he was finally tipping over into insanity.
Something was coming towards him, he could feel its presence closing down on him.
‘We won’t harm a hair on her head.’
There was more than one.
From his knees, he struggled to his feet.
‘Ka...’ Click click click click click. Five simultaneous clickings from two sources ‘...Ri...’
‘Who are you?’
Click click click click click.
‘...Sa...’
He threw himself over his sleeping daughter to shield her and felt the cold air move as a heavy weight swung in the darkness
.
Click click click click click.
His skull cracked and as he felt himself spiral into the darkness of death he saw Kate Patel’s face, the way the light used to dance in her eyes, the scent of her hair.
‘A...’
Click click click click click.
‘Den...’
His body banging to the floor was the last sound he heard.
Next door, Rebecca slipped off her headphones, listened, imagined she had heard a loud noise. She put her headphones back on and her senses were filled with music.
The Matriarch
Day Three
47
6.55 am
Clay walked cautiously across the ice from her parking space on Sefton Park to Ullet Road. A number 75 bus rolled past, full of cold, weary-looking workers. I don’t know why you’re all looking so pissed off, thought Clay. At least you watched TV last night and went to bed to sleep.
Five to seven in the morning? She pictured what she’d be doing if she was having a day off. In her mind, she sat facing Philip in his high chair, spooning Weetabix into his mouth and making aeroplane sounds to entertain him. Thomas would place a mug of coffee next to her and kiss her on the cheek. She wished she was there, at home with them, instead of making a routine inquiry at the Tanner family’s house because they were in Kate Patel’s address book and had three children.
As she turned onto Ullet Road, her iPhone went off in her hand. An incoming text message. She keyed in her passcode: 3502 – 35 for Thomas’s age and 02 for Philip’s – and opened messages.
It was from DS Terry Mason. The Pearson residence. Look what we found.
There were a series of photographs attached. A purple Liverpool City Council wheelie bin for general household rubbish, lid down. The same again, but this time with the lid completely open.
Clay looked up and saw Karl Stone waiting at the gateway of the Tanner’s home in Ullet Road. ‘Karl,’ she said, approaching him. ‘Something’s come in from Ravenna Way, Jon Pearson’s house in Belle Vale.’ He looked dog-tired, the bags beneath his eyes dark as bruises. ‘You OK?’ she asked.
‘I’m sick of the sound of my own voice. I’ve just finished recording a whole book.’ He handed her the iPad. ‘The Matriarch. It’s all on there. I’m telling you straight, Eve, there’s something tangible going on inside White’s writing. I couldn’t sleep. White’s words kept rolling round my head. I didn’t want to shut my eyes in the end.’