White Silence

by Jodi Taylor

  And then, one morning, I woke early with tears on my cheeks and a jagged sense of loss. The pre-dawn light was filtering through the curtains. I wiped my eyes and sniffed. Even now, at odd moments during the day, I found myself mourning Ted. The unexpectedness of it could be quite disabling sometimes, but this was different. This wasn’t the usual gentle surge of sorrowful memories. This was sharp. Painful. Like a knife wound. I was no stranger to grief but there was more to this. There was anger and rage and helplessness and despair and … it just went on and on. Volley after volley of emotion that was too much to cope with. Too much to bear alone …

  At first, I didn’t know what to do and then I did. I was experiencing this for a reason. I lay very still and let my mind drift away. It took me a while and several times the emotion was so intense I very nearly had to let it go, but I stuck with it. I lay still and let my mind do the work. I knew from experience that trying to pin something like this down only makes it even more elusive. It’s rather like trying to remember something at the back of your mind. You know it’s there but you can’t quite get to it. You have to tease it out …

  Something to do with Michael Jones. Who was here in Rushford. He was back and something was … not right.

  I wiped the tears off my cheeks again and threw back the bedclothes. I telephoned him and there was no response. I emailed with the same result. He’d never given me his address, only his mobile number and all I knew was that he lived on the other side of the river. Almost opposite me, he’d said once.

  I crossed the landing, climbed into the bath, opened the window, stood on tiptoe and peered out across the river. There was St Stephen’s. Well, he wasn’t there. Next to that stood the old eye hospital now a block of luxury flats, the disused hospital chimney, a multi-storey car park, a corner of the bus station … this was hopeless. The area was too large. It’s not as if I’m a sniffer dog. I couldn’t just wander the streets trying to pick up his scent. I had to use what Jones himself would laughingly call my brain.

  I didn’t know what to do. I stared again. I wasn’t looking at a residential area of Rushford, but there was that one single block of flats. A good place to start. Although it was perfectly possible he might have a loft apartment in a warehouse somewhere nearby. I sighed. It was very likely I’d just be aimlessly roaming the pavements either until darkness fell, or until the police picked me up for suspicious behaviour. I thought I’d try the flats first and if he wasn’t there then I’d have breakfast somewhere and rethink my strategy.

  I grabbed my keys and bag, slammed the door behind me, ran down the front steps, along the cobbled path, through the arch and down the hill towards the bridge.

  The old eye hospital was quite an imposing building. They’d kept the old Victorian façade, with its pediment and pillars. I climbed the impressive steps and shoved my weight against the two, heavy wood and glass doors and, of course, they didn’t move an inch. I studied the list of names opposite the bells with little hope. He might not even call himself Jones here. Every slot was filled except one and no one was called Jones. I looked thoughtfully at the empty slot, selected four names I thought looked friendly – don’t ask me what a friendly name looks like – pressed the bells and held my breath. It was nearly eight o’clock. People would be leaving for work. Someone was bound to be waiting for their lift. Or a taxi. Or something. Someone would buzz me in.

  Someone did. I shot through the door before anyone could change their minds, ignored the lift and headed towards the stairs. If the name slots were in flat order, then the blank slot was on the top floor. And if he could see across the river then he was at the back. Flat 4B.

  The stairs and passages were well carpeted. I made no noise at all as I made my way upwards, more and more certain I was right with every step. I eased through the heavy fire door and set off down the corridor. 4B was on my left. I rang the bell.

  Nothing.

  I wasn’t going to let that stop me.

  I rang again.

  Nothing.

  More concerned every moment, I kept my finger on the bell. I could hear it through the door, ringing and ringing and ringing and …

  The door was hurled open with some force. It took everything I had not to step back in alarm.

  ‘What?’ he demanded. ‘What could you want at this time of day? In fact, what could you possibly want at all? Just f …’ he paused and then changed what he had been going to say. ‘Just push off out of it will you,’ and went to slam the door.

  I put my hand on the jamb which didn’t turn out to be a smart move. The pain was intense.

  ‘You bloody idiot,’ he said, grabbing me and yanking me inside. ‘What on earth possessed you …? What are you doing here anyway? For God’s bloody sake …’

  I didn’t need any special senses to know he wasn’t that pleased to see me.

  I stood clutching my hot, throbbing hand and trying not to throw up.

  I could hear him crashing around in the kitchen, reappearing with a bowl, a couple of towels and three ice packs.

  ‘Here. Sit down.’

  I sat quietly while he wrapped my hand in a tea towel, then the ice packs and covered the whole lot with a towel.

  When he’d finished, he sat back with a sigh, saying, ‘I’m never going to be able to keep a secret from you, am I? Have you had breakfast?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  He passed me a small bottle. ‘Very efficient painkillers but you can’t take them on an empty stomach.’

  ‘Oh. No.’

  ‘No painkillers?’

  ‘No breakfast.’

  He sighed again. ‘Toast, I think. God, Cage, you’re high maintenance, aren’t you?’

  Traditionally, a bachelor pad is a wreck, with underwear all over the place, empty lager cans, overflowing ashtrays and a very peculiar smell. The living accommodation of a bachelor who has recently received a severe emotional blow should probably look like a landfill site. Jones’s apartment was immaculate. Apart from the bowl and a discarded towel and me, there wasn’t anything out of place anywhere.

  And it was a nice flat. There was good modern art on the walls, a whole wall of books, a huge and very comfortable sofa, and a state of the art home entertainment system. Everything looked quiet and expensive. Except for the owner himself, currently wearing a crumpled and sweat-stained Grateful Dead T-shirt and the world’s most disreputable jeans. He smelled stale and unwashed. He certainly hadn’t shaved in a while. A doorway led into a modern kitchen and I could see him slipping bread into a chrome toaster. His colour was wrapped closely around his body, dark and thick. There was no glow about it at all today. I could guess what this was about, but I held my tongue.

  He clicked on the kettle and then, probably not realising I was watching, rinsed his face under the tap, buried his face for a long moment in a tea towel, and then turned back to face the world.

  ‘Eat,’ he said, bringing in a plate of toast.

  Food was the last thing I wanted, but I picked up a piece and nibbled.

  ‘All of it.’

  ‘You too,’ I said.

  ‘Not hungry.’

  ‘Neither am I.’

  He sighed and we both ate a silent piece of toast. When he considered I’d had enough, he shook out a tablet and handed it to me. I gulped it down with a glass of water.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘There’s no answer to that question. I just know.’

  ‘That’s no answer.’

  I shrugged. ‘Presumably you know when you’re hungry?’

  ‘Yes. My stomach rumbles.’

  ‘Well, my brain rumbled.’

  ‘On your performance to date I’d be surprised to hear you have a brain. Does it still hurt?’

  ‘The pain is subsiding. I probably didn’t need the tablet.’

  ‘Put your feet up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re going to be out like a light in a minute.’

  ‘You drugged me?’

 
‘I gave you a strong painkiller, not Rohypnol. Relax, will you.’

  ‘Will you still be here when I wake up?’

  ‘I think we’ve already established there’s no hiding from you. Close your eyes. I’m going to have a shower.’

  I did as I was told.

  I’d like to think my visit had made a difference but I would have been kidding myself. I blinked myself awake as he emerged back into the living room about half an hour later. Physically, he looked slightly better. He’d changed his clothes, shaved and washed his hair. He was still drunk but less drunk than he had been before. Otherwise, he was unchanged. His colour was still folded in upon itself, tight and defensive.

  He seated himself at the other end of the sofa and we looked at each other. He sighed. ‘There’s no point in pretending is there?’

  ‘No, but if you don’t want to talk about it that’s your decision. My hand is fine now. I’ll just go home.’

  I began to unwind the towel.

  ‘No, leave it another thirty minutes or so.’

  The silence went on.

  Eventually he said, ‘How did Ted put up with you for so long?’

  ‘He’s obviously a lot tougher than you.’

  ‘Everyone’s a lot tougher than me at the moment.’

  ‘I’m assuming, by the state of you, that you’ve had bad news.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Clare.’

  He closed his eyes. ‘Are you going to make me tell you all about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want a drink.’

  I didn’t think he meant tea. ‘No, thank you, but you go ahead.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any left. You would have been my excuse to go out and get some more.’

  ‘I can wait for you to come back.’

  ‘Could you just stop being so bloody reasonable?’

  ‘OK. My hand hurts and it’s all your fault.’

  ‘Everything’s my fault.’

  I waited.

  Eventually he said, ‘I told you about Clare, didn’t I?’

  I nodded. ‘Have they found her?’

  ‘They have.’

  You didn’t have to be a genius to see it wasn’t good news.

  ‘They told me yesterday. She’s dead.’

  ‘Definitely? How do they know?’

  He stared out of the window. ‘Because they shot her.’

  I was confused. ‘Who’s they? The people who took her?’

  ‘No. Us. We killed her.’

  I stared open-mouthed, hardly able to believe what he was saying. ‘Why?’

  He sighed and turned back to me, his colour a turmoil of scum and filth. ‘She’s been executed.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. We didn’t execute people in this country. Did we? ‘For what?’

  ‘Treason.’

  ‘But – does that still happen?’

  ‘Sometimes. Oh, the public never gets to hear anything and certainly no one ever talks about it but there’s a grim little factory unit in Droitwich with a furnace in the basement. They hold you while they decide whether to let you live or not. No one bothers with a trial on the grounds that if you weren’t guilty then you wouldn’t be there in the first place. They make sure you tell them everything you know and then they take you down to the cellar and shoot you. And there’s none of this blindfold and last cigarette charade either. One to the heart and one to the head and then it’s game over.

  I was hot and cold at the same time, struggling to make sense of what he was telling me. ‘They shot Clare? When?’

  ‘Last week. She didn’t die well, apparently. She was hysterical and cursing me and struggling with the guards so they knocked her to the floor and shot her where she lay.’

  A hideous picture that made me feel sick. And how much worse must it be for him? I could see anger, grief, despair, guilt, and rage all roiling around him in shades of dirty sludge.

  ‘They’ve had her since last week?’

  ‘They’ve had her since January. It’s taken them this long to verify her story. She wasn’t very cooperative. In the end, she had to write her confession. They’d broken her jaw.’

  I still couldn’t believe it. I was being given a glimpse of a world I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to know about. Like most people, I always assumed ‘they’ were on ‘our’ side. But as I’d discovered recently, ‘they’ were not who or what I thought. And I wasn’t sure any longer of what ‘our’ side constituted either.

  Not sure I wanted to know any more, but unable to stop myself, I asked, ‘What did she do?’

  There was a long silence and then he said heavily, ‘She betrayed us. Betrayed me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘After they broke into our house.

  The people who took me – they knew I wouldn’t talk. That’s why they didn’t bother with me. They roughed me up, making sure she knew it would much be worse for her. Good psychology. Then they bundled her out of the house back to … well, somewhere else. Where she gave us up. She gave us all up.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘She admitted it all.’

  ‘Under interrogation?’

  He nodded. ‘Eventually.’ Remembering the broken jaw, I decided not to pursue that.

  ‘Do they know why she did it? Ideology? Fear? Given what happened to you, I could understand fear.’

  ‘That’s what our bosses wanted to know. They needed to know what she’d told them and why. So they sent for a specialist who “interrogated” her.’

  My stomach turned over. ‘Sorensen.’

  ‘He’s very good at what he does.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if that was what he had wanted me to do too. To watch as the questions were asked. To stand, unmoved, as the ‘interrogation’ proceeded. To say ‘Yes, she’s telling the truth.’ Or ‘No, she’s lying.’ To participate in the breaking of another human being. If they’d had her since January then the timeline was right, but there were other, more important issues here. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know anyway.

  ‘So, why did she do it?’

  His mouth twisted in a bitter, ugly line. His colour wrapped itself around him once more.

  ‘For me. Apparently, she did it all for me.’

  I stared at him.

  His lip curled. ‘She said she loved me. Had always loved me. Apparently, they – the people who took us – had offered her a chance to get out. You see, not always, but usually the only way you get out of our game is in a box. They offered her – and by implication, me – a second chance. There would be a sum of money, new IDs, a fresh start in the neutral country of our choice. All she had to do was tell them everything they wanted to know. The alternative was too unpleasant to contemplate, they said, so what would it be? A very messy and painful end or a new life with the man she loved. She took the deal. Of course she did.’

  ‘But they tried to drown you.’

  ‘Yes, but she didn’t know that. She thought she was buying us both our freedom. The problem was, of course, that having finally got all this out of her in the debrief, attention swung straight back to me. The initial assumption was that I’d been in it with her and they took it from there. I was hauled in front of Sorensen while he established by one means or another whether I was telling the truth. I’m wondering if that’s why they’d brought you in. If you’d agreed to do as they wanted, then I would probably have been your first customer. Without you, it’s taken them all this time to establish that I’m blameless as well as clueless. Because I really had no idea she was a security risk. None at all. I still don’t think they quite believe me. I’m not back on active duty anyway. Probably never will be now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m a security risk, too.’

  He stopped again. He seemed to be calming down a little. I, on the other hand, was becoming more and more furious on his behalf. They’d had Clare for months. All this time he’d been going out of his mind with worry about her an
d they’d had her all along. Playing cat and mouse with him. Waiting for him to betray himself with a word or gesture. Did he know this? Was he able to think clearly enough to have worked this out?

  I was indignant. ‘There’s been nothing proved.’

  His smile was tired. ‘Doesn’t matter. Mud sticks.’

  ‘Get another job somewhere else.’

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

  ‘Make a complaint. Kick up a stink.’

  ‘Sweetheart, at the moment I’m only on some sort of unofficial blacklist. If I don’t behave myself, they’ll stick me on the sex offenders register.’

  I was appalled. ‘Can they do that?’

  ‘They can do anything they like and if they do that then I’m well and truly buggered. I’ll be dead in five years – either through drink or at the hands of half a dozen righteous citizens in a dark alley one night. Either way, problem solved for everyone.’

  ‘I’ll see you’re all right,’ I said, stoutly, not having the slightest idea how, but it seemed to work because his colour lightened a little and swirled towards me.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said gravely. ‘I appreciate the offer.’

  ‘It’s genuine,’ I said, defiantly.

  ‘I know. That’s why I’m thanking you, but trust me – I’ll never take you up on it. I’ll straighten this out, you’ll see.’

  He stood up. End of conversation.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  There was a lot there for me to think about. And I did. I emailed Jones nearly every day, not asking any questions but just so he would know I was here.

  My life was very quiet but I wasn’t unhappy. I often chatted with Colonel Barton. Occasionally, if he couldn’t leave his wife, I did some shopping for him. I was invited to tea with them on one of Mrs Barton’s good days. I joined the Local History Society and ate delicious cakes twice a month. I attended an art class at the library and drew an apple. Everyone congratulated me on my realistic interpretation of a pear. Nothing was flashy or exciting, but I was enjoying my new life. I kept my little house clean and Ted had his fresh flowers every week. I had my new start and I was happy.

  Autumn was pleasant, mild and windy, with leaves everywhere and the smell of bonfires. I went to the public fireworks display in Archdeacon’s Park and ate too many hot dogs. Over there was the bench where I had been sitting when Sorensen’s creepy stalker and his puppy had turned up. What a long time ago that seemed now.