An Act of Silence

by Colette McBeth

The afternoon before the interview with Naomi Parkes, I arrived back from a walk to an empty house. Until now, Linda had heeded my warnings to rest, recuperate and stay indoors, but I had sensed she was growing restless. It came as no surprise to find her gone. I wasn’t particularly worried; without being cruel, she looked nothing like her old self. The chances of her being recognised were slim.

  I spied her laptop sitting on the desk in her room. It was open, she must have been working before she left. I’d tried to get into it many times back in London, when she was sleeping, when she’d popped out to the shops. I’d racked my brains for her password, variants on Gabriel, Linda’s date of birth, zinnia, her favourite flower, all to no success.

  This time I sat down and without thinking I typed Horatio1984.

  I was in.

  As predicted, her tome on female politicians of the twentieth century was nowhere to be found. The most recent file, last opened a few hours ago, was entitled Whathappenedat . . . This one had the shape of a book, with chapters, headings, and a foreword that I started to read:

  These girls weren’t drunks or prostitutes, they didn’t willingly go along with it, as was the received wisdom at the time. They were groomed. They were shown love and affection and then fed alcohol and sometimes drugs so men of power and influence could have sex with them at parties. Men who always got what they wanted and whose money and influence has bought them out of trouble. No thought was given to their victims, nor to the effect the abuse would have on their lives.

  For my part, I could have done more. I should have done more. I am culpable too. I can’t undo the wrongs of the past or heal the damage, but I can say this to the survivors: you matter, you deserve justice. You have the right to be heard.

  The moment collapsed. My anger and mistrust of Linda, once so tightly packed, unfurled. She had been on my side all along. And Jay? He had got it wrong. The police had made a mistake, turned me in the wrong direction. I gripped the table, something solid to grasp in a spinning world. What have I done? You’ve betrayed the woman who was trying to help you. Tears of rage blurred my vision. The words on the screen rushed in and out of focus:

  You deserve justice.

  You matter.

  You have the right to be heard.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, but it was late and darkness had fallen when I turned and saw Linda, her face a white moon, peering through the rain-lashed window.

  And then it was gone.

  I ran out through the cottage to open the door.

  ‘Linda!’

  I found her, unconscious, sodden and lying in a pool of mud.

  Drenched and beaten by the storm, I managed to drag her back to the cottage and into the armchair closest to the fire, where I removed her sodden clothes. ‘Linda!’ I patted her cheek. ‘Linda, wake up!’

  Was she dead? Don’t let her be dead. Terror thudded through me. I felt her wrist. A pulse pressed through her veins. Thank fuck. I waited, held water to her lips and when that didn’t work found some brandy because I’d seen someone do it on TV once. Slowly, her pallor changed, a trace of colour painted her cheeks, the blue of her lips turned to pink. Eyes fluttered open and closed.

  ‘Wake up, Linda. You fell. You’re heavier than you look.’

  She licked her lips, tried to find the moisture to wet her words. ‘Could I have some water please?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘You were in my room.’

  ‘You’d been gone a long time, I was worried,’ I lied, turning away so she couldn’t see my tears.

  I let an hour pass, long enough to settle her. ‘Are you OK? Can I get you anything?’

  ‘Low blood pressure,’ she said. ‘It’s a bugger, but I’m fine really. For God’s sake, stop fussing.’

  ‘I need to go out. Not for long.’

  ‘In this weather?’

  ‘I need to make a phone call. There’s a spot on the main road where I get a signal. I should get the number of a doctor in case.’

  She shouted something but I was already on my way out, the wind tearing her words away from me.

  Jay. I had to speak to him, tell him what I had found. This was all wrong. Linda couldn’t be meeting Henry. Why would she, when she was trying to expose what he and Curtis and their cronies had done? What a monumental cock-up. How had he got it so wrong?

  The wind shook the car as I drove along the shoreline. The water was black and agitated and the lips of the waves danced in the storm. After a few minutes, I pulled over and checked my phone. Two bars. I called Jay. Voicemail. I started to speak, fast, my words running out before I lost reception. I tried again. Voicemail full. I raised my head to the sky as the rain pelted down, and screamed, deep and visceral, a scream loud enough to travel for miles. Anywhere but here. The wind caught it and spat it back at me.

  Despair seized me. I told myself I’d try again in the morning, that losing my sanity wouldn’t help anyone. I got into the car, ready to drive back when a nugget of information rose to the surface of my mind, glinting and gleaming like a diamond in the dark. DS Huxtable worked at West End police station. Secret investigation or not, I needed to contact him.

  I dialled 101, the non-emergency police number, because it wasn’t a life-or-death situation, was it?

  ‘I need to speak to DS Jay Huxtable at West End police station, please.’

  ‘Just a second. Caller, can you give me your name? It’s a bad line, I can’t hear you very well.’

  ‘Anna Robertson. I’ve got a poor signal. My number is 07440 818 355, if I get cut off. It’s important that I speak to him. He’s given me a mobile number, but it’s unobtainable.’

  ‘What is it concerning?’

  ‘An investigation he’s working on. I can’t say much more.’

  ‘I’ll do my best . . .’

  I hoped she meant it, because the line went dead.

  The storm had turned the road hostile. Rain lashed the windscreen and shrunk my vision. The wipers, manically toing and froing, were as good as useless. I wanted to go home. To my home. Not Anna’s. God no. I would shed her like a skin as soon as we returned to London. To think I had been making progress, getting there, wherever there was in life, until Jay had come along and derailed me.

  Snap. Something hit the car. I swerved out into the middle of the road, my body as tight as a spring. I looked for the culprit, saw the trees bent over in the wind, their branches reaching out on to the road. Nothing to worry about. I was nearly back at the cottage.

  The fuzz of oncoming headlights surprised me. I hadn’t seen another soul so far but here was someone else as stupid as me, battling the weather. I dipped my full beam but theirs streamed towards me, burnt everything else out as if the road belonged to them and them alone. I beeped my horn. Bad idea. The driver, startled, veered his car towards mine. A finger’s distance before he righted it. I caught his eye as I passed. A nanosecond, nothing more. Long enough to feed him my anger.

  Long enough to see who was at the wheel.

  A face I’d recognise anywhere, even after all these years.

  It was Henry Sinclair.

  Thursday

  Jay Huxtable

  Events have thrown Jay off piste. This isn’t how it was supposed to play out. He’s a good guy, walks on the right side of life. Until last Saturday, his criminal highlights were nicking a Toffee Crisp from Sainsbury’s aged eleven and drawing the knob on Toby’s BMW. Fuck, if only he’d known what that simple act of vandalism would do for him, he wouldn’t be here, wondering why he doesn’t recognise himself any more.

  ‘I don’t like this. I want out,’ he told John when they left Linda’s house on Monday. He’d seen a flash of inspiration, the thrill of an opportunity, in the Scot’s eyes when they arrived and surveyed the chaos. Don’t touch a thing, he’d told Linda and Anna. It’s a crime s
cene. What did he know? That was Jay’s territory.

  ‘Too late, sunshine,’ John told him, ‘you’ve already signed up for the ride. No getting off now.’

  But he had tried to get off again, before they headed to Scotland. Hadn’t answered John’s calls, locked himself inside his flat, spent the whole day reading through the posts on that website, www.whathappenedatkelmore.com. The women’s accusations stuck to his mind like sludge this time. On the balance of probabilities, he knew they were telling the truth, and he asked himself how the fuck he had missed all the signs. The answer stung: the dazzle of fame and glamour and money had blinded him. And now he had killed Mariela and her face, the listless face he last saw in the allotment, stalked him. He was not that man – a murderer, a thug, the kind of scum who would hurt a woman and dump her body for an elderly lady to find the next morning.

  Was he?

  The evidence suggested otherwise.

  Jay couldn’t bring her back to life, but he could have gone to the police, turned himself in, paid for his crime. He considered being questioned by his old colleagues, the same ones who only a few weeks ago were admiring his new gear, the suits, the car.

  Done well for yourself, mate.

  And he contemplated going to prison, getting beaten up and worse . . . for being a copper.

  He picked up the phone, dialled the number, repeated the confession, I killed a woman, I killed a woman, I killed a woman. Let it ring. Listened to the operator answer and the silence expand between them.

  And then he hung up and wept like no man ever should.

  He needed to get out, buy some food to make him feel human again. He was thankful for London, the way its streets swallowed him up and hid his crimes, made him insignificant. In the Indian takeaway, no one cared what he had done, as long as he paid for his Jalfrezi, and in the off licence the assistant smiled as if he was just a normal bloke buying a six-pack of beers.

  Maybe, he thought, if no one knows, you can bury the truth from yourself.

  But when he returned to his flat the truth was waiting for him.

  ‘You seem to have forgotten your manners. When ah call, you pick up, right?’ John said.

  Jay would have nodded his head if he could’ve moved it, but John had him up against the wall, his jaws clamped between the Scot’s hands.

  ‘Aren’t ye going tae invite me inside? I’d love a beer, and that curry smells the business,’ he said when he released him. ‘I’ve something tae show ye.’

  Four photographs, taken at night. Or last Sunday morning, to be precise. They showed Jay lifting Mariela’s body through the allotments – You’ll have to carry her the rest of the way, Jay remembered John saying that. Why me? he’d thought, but didn’t ask. Now it was clear why.

  Leverage.

  ‘Let’s just say ah’m holding on tae these in case ye have any second thoughts. Ye had better pray tae God they charge Gabriel Miller, because if they don’t they’ll start looking for another suspect. Do you hear what I’m saying?’

  Loud and clear.

  When he reaches the farmhouse in Scotland, it is not the real Jay Huxtable who talks to Anna or Charlie (he’s not the only person who’s taken on an alter ego), it is someone else, pretending to go along with John’s plan. He sees Anna in the car and before the van has even stopped, he is out, sprinting to get to her first. He knows something John doesn’t. The short clip of her on his voicemail last night. No more than a few words before she was cut off, but enough to convey her panic, her outrage that he had got it wrong. Linda was trying to help, not obstruct them.

  Now he needs her to calm down before John picks up on her vibes.

  ‘Just play along for now,’ he says, hopes she understands, prays his face is conveying the danger she is in. He can already hear John’s boots stamping towards them. Tension stretches the moment so tight he fears it is going to snap. ‘Don’t say a word to him. I’ll do what I can.’

  You see, despite everything, Jay has not given up on being the good guy just yet.

  The day runs on and he’s desperate to carve out an opportunity, but he can’t find one anywhere. When he hears Anna letting Linda out of her room, his heart jumps with hope, and when he sees her streaking through the grass he doesn’t move. Only when John screams at him – ‘What the fuck . . . Are ye asleep, man? She’s out there now!’ – does he make a show of running after her.

  Later, when the woman from the general store delivers a trout (a trout!), he allows Anna to answer the door and write the shopping list.

  He reads it before she hands it over, his eyes running down the page. Once, twice. He’s about to say something when he realises what she has done. As chances go, it is Rizla thin.

  But he lets her take it anyway.

  Thursday 5.05 p.m.

  Detective Inspector Victoria Rutter

  ‘Nice man,’ Victoria Rutter remarks as DS Clyde runs her through a list of John McKee’s greatest hits. GBH, ABH, possession of an offensive weapon, to name a few. He works for an outfit called Chadwick Security, and the company’s website, although too discreet to go into detail, claims to organise security for high-profile clients in the banking, media and film industries. What Victoria wants to know is what was John McKee doing chewing gum outside Gabriel Miller’s house on the weekend Mariela Castell was killed?

  The news of DS Huxtable’s departure has also unsettled her. Victoria had envisaged chatting to him on the quiet about his investigation (if you can call it that) into Curtis Loewe. But Jay Huxtable was kicked out of the force in January after painting a knob on his love rival’s BMW. She’s heard it all now. With regard to his current employment, his former colleagues informed her that he is wearing better suits and smiling, because he was a miserable bastard before, but they couldn’t be more specific about his new role, other than telling her he worked in security.

  Security.

  She’s in the middle of having a word with herself, issuing a warning not to leap to hasty conclusions, when DC Rita Halton informs her she has located Charlie Pedlingham’s car.

  The white Volkswagen Polo was found abandoned on the coast in East Sussex three days ago.

  ‘I’ve checked it out and a few personal effects were recovered,’ Rita says. ‘An old wallet and a kids’ book, no note. That’s something, I suppose, but it doesn’t look good.’

  ‘Clancy, I need your help.’

  Victoria brings him up to date with the news about Charlie’s car. ‘The sea has been rough all week. It was parked by the roadside, fifty metres or so from the edge of the cliff. We didn’t find much inside – a book, no note. Although suicide has to be one line of inquiry.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what they want you to think.’

  ‘I’m pulling together a press release. It’s one missing woman, not the kind of story your lot would normally deem worthy of more than a couple of inches. I’ll give you all I’ve got. A picture of her, her car, her possessions. Any chance you can twist a few of your fellow hacks’ arms and get it as much coverage as possible?’

  ‘That’s the advantage of being an old git, I’ve been around long enough to have some favours owing.’

  ‘One more thing . . .’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’m thinking of charging Gabriel Miller.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you were to suggest as much in your newspaper tomorrow, I’d obviously have to deny we ever had this conversation.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘If Sinclair and Loewe are behind this, it wouldn’t do any harm to let them think their plan has worked. After all, it would be a terrible shame if they got careless.’

  ‘I always knew there was a reason why I liked you,’ Jonathan says.

  ‘The time is 5.32 p.m. on the twentieth of November 2014 . . .’

  DI Rutter assesse
s Gabriel Miller. Experience tells her he is close to the edge, the precipice reached by some suspects where sleep deprivation and endless questions and the filth that’s built up on their skin, the stench of three-day-old breath, their unwashed bodies, leaves them beaten, open to suggestion, inclined to say whatever the hell it is they have to say to make it stop.

  DI Rutter doesn’t want Gabriel Miller to fall over the edge. In many respects, the man is odious. What kind of son would hurt his mother and leave her bleeding, in pain, alone? But, she doesn’t believe he killed her. A hunch? Not quite. It is a theory born out of the evidence amassing to the contrary.

  The set of his jaw, the way he holds his body ready for impact, tells her he is braced for another onslaught, a barrage of accusations and questions, so much so, that when she passes him a photograph of a man, and asks him, gently and quietly, if he has ever seen him before, Gabriel’s face is filled with such relief, she thinks he might cry.

  ‘No,’ he says in a soft tone that mirrors her own. ‘I would remember that face if I’d seen it.’

  ‘Did your mother ever mention that she was planning on going away anywhere?’

  Gabriel begins to shake his head, then hesitates, screws his eyes up as if he is mentally scrolling back to Monday morning.

  ‘The car. She said I couldn’t have it because she was going to Scotland. And there was a suitcase in her room.’

  ‘Do you know where she was going, or why?’

  ‘No. I didn’t bother to ask her.’

  DI Rutter lets a silence fall between them as the information settles. It is broken by the sound of Gabriel crying.

  ‘Please,’ he begs her, ‘find my mother.’

  Thursday

  Charlie

  After my encounter with Henry on the road, I knew sleep would elude me. My mind chattered and churned throughout the night. What was he doing here? Was Linda really meeting him, and if so, why? By early morning, exhausted and defeated, I got up, dressed and left the cottage in the hope of reaching Jay.