Dead Silent

by Mark Roberts

  ‘Does that... Does that make any sense to you?’

  ‘Oh yes, Miss Lawson, that makes a whole lot of sense.’ He paused. ‘Your father was a man of few spoken words.’ She nodded. ‘Can I ask why you had a telephone in your house?’

  ‘We were both old. I have epilepsy. It was for medical emergencies.’

  ‘Are you ex-directory?’

  ‘No, our number is listed. But no one ever calls. Why should they? A spinster and her elderly father. No, it never rings.’

  ‘You have friends, Miss Lawson. I’ve heard about Abey and how he follows you like a shadow. I’ve heard of his love for you.’

  ‘The love he has for me comes from the simplicity of his heart and mind. I don’t deceive myself, Detective Sergeant Stone. He is a child forever trapped in a man’s body. But love is love and must never be chased away. If he wasn’t disabled, he wouldn’t give me a second glance.’

  Stone was stumped. ‘Adam?’ She looked at the door again. ‘I was there when he offered to shelter and support you.’

  ‘He has his reasons. My best interests don’t come into it.’

  Stone sipped his coffee. Warm and aromatic. His senses strayed into Danielle Miller territory and he pulled himself back into the moment.

  ‘I can’t think of anything else for now,’ said Louise, looking as if the weight of the universe was pressing down on her narrow shoulders. ‘But if I do...’

  Back on the pavement outside The Sanctuary, DS Stone typed the words The Triumph of Death into Google Images on his phone. Immediately, a gallery of pictures came up, all of them showing the same painting: an apocalyptic vision of the destruction of humanity by an army of skeletons. He tapped the first image and the screen filled with it. Along the top, the name Pieter Bruegel and the title The Triumph of Death.

  Immediately, Stone noted similarities with The Last Judgment. Bruegel, like Bosch before him, had painted an apocalypse, a dark vision of human beings being hunted and tortured, not by monsters and demons as in The Last Judgment, but by sprightly skeletons. He imagined he saw many satisfied smiles in the jaws of their faces. Redness and darkness prevailed, with just enough patches of illumination to highlight the grim palette against which the terrors unfolded. As he drank in the detail, Stone felt that Bruegel had upped the level of horror. In The Last Judgment, the humans had been hunted by mythical beasts and demons. In The Triumph of Death, the terror had come much closer to home. The hunters had the form of human skeletons, people who had themselves faced the triumph of death and had come back to harvest the flesh of the next generation. Ancestors pitted against their descendants.

  He mailed the image to Clay, Hendricks, Riley and Cole and followed it with a text: Louise Lawson now recalls the killers – the First Born and the Angel of Destruction – talking of the Triumph of Death. Her memory is sharpening. She has much to tell us.

  57

  12.20 pm

  Over 300 feet up, on the roof of the Anglican Cathedral’s Vestey Tower, the wind poured through the decorative stone arches of the parapet. Peter Westwood, stonemason, stood on a metal scaffold secured to the stonework by strong blue ropes, mortar board in one hand, pointing the sandstone at the top of one of the pinnacles and wincing at the cold. And although the panoramic view of Liverpool and the Wirral was veiled by shifting bands of fog, the stonemason was bewitched by memories of the River Mersey and the landscape around it.

  ‘Watch out, Peter, we’ve got a visitor!’

  Peter turned to the voice of Jim Bacon, the security guard on duty at the top of the bell tower. The security guard stood near the entrance to the roof space and made a slashing motion to his throat. Peter laughed and then narrowed his eyes at the north wind as a third party arrived on the roof.

  ‘Hello!’ Adam Miller stepped on to the roof, breathless from the climb up 108 steps that led to the roof space. He walked past the security guard as if he was invisible and marched towards the stonemason, who had his back turned and was busy pointing red mortar between the tight spaces in the stone.

  ‘Hello, Peter!’ Adam stood at the base of the scaffolding and looked up at the stonemason, who turned his head and looked down at the unwelcome returning visitor.

  Tall and good-looking, gym physique evident in spite of the layers he was wearing, the young stonemason continued to work as Adam gazed in the direction of his feet and up the length of his body. ‘Hello,’ he replied, eyes fixed on the point of his trowel.

  Adam placed both hands around the neck of a length of scaffolding and shook the metal tubing.

  ‘Excuse me!’ said the security guard, advancing. ‘Please don’t touch the scaffolding when the stonemason is standing on it doing his work.’

  ‘I was just testing how safe it is.’

  ‘It’s a hundred per cent safe,’ said the security guard. ‘The stonemason erected it. He’s a master craftsman. He knows what he’s doing with his erections.’

  Adam felt the accusation and mockery in the guard’s words like knives in his eyes. He picked up a length of the blue rope that secured the scaffolding to the stonework. Metal and stone were welded with the glue of rope. ‘I’m impressed with your knots!’ he called up.

  ‘I was a good boy scout.’ Peter laughed.

  Adam looked around, saw the hardboard on which the mortar was mixed and asked, ‘Do you need me to mix up a batch of mortar? You’re running a bit low.’

  ‘No, thank you. It’s a very precise mix I use.’ Peter moved along the wooden platform.

  ‘Adam?’ said the security guard. ‘It is Adam, isn’t it? He’s busy. He’s 331 feet up at the top of the bell tower overlooking Liverpool. The weather’s horrible and he needs to do his job as quickly as he can. I asked you nicely yesterday. Can you please leave him alone?’

  Adam heard a sound in the sky. Something laughing at him? He looked up, but all he saw were dense clouds. He looked back at the security guard and asked, ‘Are you working here all day?’

  ‘All day, every day, until five o’clock today. Why?’

  ‘Just asking,’ replied Adam. ‘Say!’ he shouted up to the stonemason.

  Peter stopped working and looked down at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Any chance you could show me how you mix your mortar? I’m in the building game. I’m a bit of a jack of all trades, but I’m always willing to learn from a master craftsman like yourself.’

  ‘When I’m not busy!’ Peter said. ‘But at the minute I’ve got until one o’clock to finish pointing here and then I’ve got a list as long as my arm to do indoors.’

  ‘You’re a tourist guide, aren’t you, Adam?’ said the security guard.

  ‘I’m an interpreter. I interpret the building. What of it?’

  ‘Interpret this.’ He gave a wide smile that went nowhere near his eyes.

  Adam returned the smile and looked up at Peter, who had paused to watch.

  ‘Stop bothering the stonemason.’ The security guard leaned closer and whispered, ‘Fuck off, faggot, he’s not interested in you.’

  ‘That was a rather foolish thing to say,’ said Adam, the smile dissolving from his face. ‘Up here all day in this weather? Isn’t that punishment enough?’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘No, I’m empathising with you. We’re all good Christians round here, aren’t we?’

  ‘You might be. I’m just an employee of the diocese.’

  Adam looked up at the stonemason and felt a clash of desire and humiliation. He walked away. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

  He said something else and the security guard asked, ‘What was that?’

  ‘It’s as cold as the grave up here,’ said Adam.

  58

  12.23 pm

  Driving down Aigburth Road back to Trinity Road police station, Clay passed the top of Mersey Road, where she lived with her husband and child. She felt the pull of home as a physical twist deep in her core. She pulled over across the road from Liverpool Cricket Club and took her iPhone from her pocket.


  The Triumph of Death, an image of the Bruegel painting, her temporary screensaver, peered up at her like a curse. She felt a wave of pity for the people being harvested by the skeletons and glanced briefly over her shoulder to check for her own stealthy monster, but there was nothing but oncoming traffic.

  Three missed calls, all from her husband Thomas. She called him back.

  ‘Thomas, pick up your phone! Pick up, pick up!’ she said to the purring tone in her ear.

  ‘Hello, stranger.’ She could hear the smile on his face in the tone of his voice and this dampened the unease that had just gripped her.

  ‘Thomas, love, is everything all right?’

  She could hear the scraping heels and dull background rumble of the reception area of the medical practice where Thomas worked.

  ‘Two things. I just called to reassure you. I spoke to the nursery manager. Philip’s having a whale of a time. Ate every scrap of food they put before him and slept soundly during siesta. Just another day in nursery for him. How are things with you, Eve?’

  ‘Mixed. We’ve got one perpetrator in custody and another maniac still out there.’ She saw a marked police car looming in the wing mirror and watched it pass. Huddersfield stared out from the back seat and their eyes met. And the monster she’d just looked for was gone.

  ‘What’s the second thing?’

  ‘Hang on a minute. I’m going into my room.’

  His footsteps were swift and the background noise faded quickly. She recognised the squeak of the hinges and the soft thud of the door as he closed the door of his consulting room.

  ‘Go on?’ Clay’s curiosity had been fired.

  ‘I’ve just been handed an envelope from the lunchtime post. It’s got your name on it, but, obviously, it’s addressed to you here at the surgery. It’s been posted in Liverpool...’ There were three loud, sharp knocks at Thomas’s door. Ignore it, Thomas, she urged. ‘FAO Detective Chief Inspector Evette Clay,’ Thomas read.

  Evette?

  Something delicate connected inside Eve. She was almost certain that something from her childhood was coming.

  ‘The receptionist brought it in when I was between patients. I palmed my next patient off on Gary so I could talk to you. I tried you three times.’

  ‘Thomas, open the letter, please.’

  The knock on the door came again, this time louder and longer. Eve’s heart sank as she heard him answer it. ‘Not now, thank you. I’m not to be disturbed until I say I’m available!’

  The world around Clay appeared to dissolve; the edges of her vision blurred and the traffic noise of the busy dual carriageway faded like the end of a song. All she heard was the ripping of an envelope and the action of her husband’s fingers delving inside.

  He was silent for what seemed like an eternity and then he said, ‘Oh my goodness...’

  ‘What is it, Thomas?’

  ‘Are you there, Eve?’

  And she realised that the question she’d thought she’d said out loud had been nothing more than the edge of a whisper. ‘I’m listening to you, Thomas.’ To the unique music of his voice.

  ‘Two photographs, no covering letter. Let me double-check that.’ The paper rustled. ‘No covering letter.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘There’s an old black-and-white photograph...’ He paused and she heard a crack in his voice. ‘It’s you and Philomena. You’re probably four years old and you’re wearing a dress with a pattern of dark marks around the neckline...’

  ‘I remember the dress. It was my best frock, my Sunday best. There were cherries in the pattern. I was four. Tell me about Philomena.’

  ‘She’s sitting at a plain table. You’re sitting on her knee. She has one hand on your head and the other on your heart. Both your hands are on her belly. She’s looking directly at the camera and smiling. You’re looking directly up at her. You’re laughing.’

  Clay’s mind tripped through time and she was in the moment that the photograph was taken. Thomas’s voice played like a soft soundtrack as her eyes closed and the memory unfurled like a clip from a film.

  They were in the old cafeteria in the basement of the Catholic Cathedral. A man in a beige coat, the shoulders damp with freshly fallen rain, took a picture of them with a small black camera.

  She wriggled on Philomena’s knee.

  ‘Why’s he want to take a picture of us for?’ asked Eve.

  ‘Ah, humour the old fool,’ replied Philomena softly from the corner of her mouth. Eve looked up at her face and laughed at the way she pulled a smiling Tweetie Pie expression, like their all-time favourite cartoon character.

  ‘OK, all done,’ said the photographer. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Philomena. ‘You flashed your press pass at us like you were trying to bunk on the bus with an out-of-date ticket. Let’s see...’

  She held her hand out and the photographer placed his press pass on her palm. She pointed to the words and Eve recognised one word on sight but struggled to sound out the second word. ‘Catholic Pic... Picty...’

  ‘Catholic Pictorial,’ said Philomena, handing the press pass back. ‘It’s the diocesan newspaper.’

  ‘The cathedral’s cafe’s doing really poor business...’ The man spoke as if they were conspirators. ‘The archbishop wants to drum up business, so we’re running a feature on where all good Catholics should go for their lunch when they’re out shopping.’

  Eve looked round at the plain walls, the tiled floor, the rickety wooden tables and chairs, the counter with its cakes and buns and sandwiches, the steaming tea urn and the milkshake maker. It was her and Philomena’s place and she couldn’t understand why others wouldn’t want to go there.

  ‘We live in St Claire’s, Edge Hill, you know it?’ He nodded. ‘Be sure to send us a copy from your darkroom.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Sister Philomena, I’m not going to get on the wrong side of you.’

  When he was out of earshot, Eve asked, ‘How come...?’

  ‘How come what, Eve?’

  ‘Wherever we go, people know who you are?’

  She considered it for a moment. ‘No, they think they know who I am, Eve.’

  Eve sucked strawberry milkshake through a straw and wished the drink would last forever.

  ‘Remember that talk we had about seems and is? And the seems and is game?’

  ‘Let’s play the seems and is game! Can I go first?’

  Clay opened her eyes, the world came into focus and she heard Thomas’s voice asking, ‘Eve, are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine, just fine, thank you. Tell me about the second photograph, Thomas.’

  59

  12.27 pm

  Clay looked at the clock on the dashboard, worked out that Huddersfield would be arriving at Trinity Road police station, shifted into first gear and started off down Aigburth Road.

  ‘The second picture is recent. It’s a colour photograph of a very old man, a priest, standing on the steps of the Catholic Cathedral. He’s got a kindly face. There’s no one and nothing else in the picture, except... except he’s got a burning cigarette in his right hand.’

  ‘The sender?’ Clay got up to 50 mph on St Mary’s Road, felt compelled to get to Huddersfield in Interview Suite 1 and sweat him down fast. ‘Have a look on the back of the pictures.’

  ‘Aaaahhh. Sorry. There’s nothing on the back of the picture of you and Sister Philomena, but there’s a really spidery scrawl on the one of the old priest. And it says... Come and see me here. God bless and keep you, Evette... That’s odd. The Shrimp.’

  She knew who the pictures were from and the temptation to turn at the next junction and head straight for the Catholic Cathedral to find the old priest was intense. But duty kept her where she was and she knew she didn’t have time for any diversions.

  ‘Can you take pictures of both of them and send them to my phone?’

  ‘That was to be my next trick.’

  Tenderness and vulnerability consumed her. She was glad
that there was no one else there in that moment.

  ‘I recognise that silence,’ said Thomas. ‘Go on. Ask.’

  ‘Shall we run away together, Thomas?’

  ‘One day.’

  ‘I’m a lucky woman to be so loved.’

  ‘No luck involved. You deserve to be loved. Go crack that case.’ He closed the call down.

  He’s right. Philomena’s voice sounded inside her head and Clay wondered how on earth she had survived the twenty-two-year passage in her life, from her sixth year when Philomena had died to her twenty-eighth year when she met Thomas by chance in the stalls of the Liverpool Playhouse.

  The opening night of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons: 15th September 2006.

  As she took her seat, number 34 in row C, she noticed the giant in B 34. The man next to her, in C 35, quashed her long-held conviction that there was no such thing as love at first sight with two simple actions and three words. He smiled at her, stood up and said, ‘Let’s swap places.’ She extended her hand, thanked him and felt a jolt of sadness when he let go.

  They hadn’t so much fallen in love as hurtled into it, and the tenderness that the memory evoked inside her turned into a mournful wish: that Philip would never know the loneliness that she had taken as read until she met Thomas.

  An incoming text arrived on her phone and a call came in. On the display: ‘Mason’. She forced herself back into professional mode.

  ‘We currently have the pleasure of Gabriel Huddersfield’s company,’ she said, not bothering with any preamble. ‘How are things in his boudoir, Mason?’

  ‘You’d better get over here, Eve, as soon as you can. There’s something you’ve just got to see.’

  60

  12.30 pm

  When DS Gina Riley returned to the incident room at Trinity Road police station, DC Barney Cole was hunched over his desk, engrossed, talking softly to himself and drawing short, sharp lines on a blank page with a pen and ruler. He appeared not to have heard her enter.

  ‘You look like you’re having fun,’ she said.