Dead Silent

by Mark Roberts

  ‘What’s the matter, mate? You can tell Barney!’

  ‘The sheer number of names in the Book of Genesis. Gabriel Huddersfield dropped it that maybe his accomplice’s name was buried in the opening book of the Old Testament. Dozens of them are way off the scale, because no one uses anything like them anymore, but it’s still like he’s sent us looking for a needle in a field full of haystacks.’

  ‘Is he playing games with us?’

  ‘I don’t know. How’s your afternoon, Barney?’

  ‘Pretty shit afternoon following on from a similar morning.’

  He showed Hendricks the GH. ‘I can make a set of initials for Gabriel Huddersfield from the deconstructed symbol, but the trouble is, you can turn the lines into any letters you like if you try hard enough.’ Cole smiled but, in Hendricks’s mind, it only served to make his eyes look sad and tired. ‘Maybe, Bill, they’re leading us up a blind alley.’

  Hendricks walked across the space to Cole and offered him the Bible. ‘Swap?’

  Cole took it. ‘Halleluiah! Praise the Lord!’

  65

  1.15 pm

  As a band of fog rolled in from Sefton Park, Adam Miller arrived from the Anglican Cathedral at the corner of Croxteth Road, doing 15 mph, his headlights fully on. All he could see was dense mist in the glare of his headlights, yellow light trapped in a thick cloud. This could be the death of me, he thought, pulling over and parking, two wheels on and two wheels off the pavement.

  Voices drifted through the fog from the direction of 777 Croxteth Road, the only other place apart from his shed that he could be himself.

  Cautiously, he turned the corner, recognising the streetlight that looked like a frozen giant set to pounce.

  Fucking hell, fucking hell... If they (is it more than one or just one?) have picked up Gabriel’s phone and the phone was inside Flat 5, what else have they found? Calm down. He took a set of deep breaths. There are photographs in the flat, but my face is always covered. If someone’s found them, how could they link them to me? It could be anyone. Anyone.

  The voices got louder the closer he came to 777. Across the road came the sound of a car revving up and heading away. Voices? Voices, three or four of them: a man, another man high up, his voice raised, sailing through the fog like something winged and lethal.

  ‘Tell Gina Riley, it’s impossible to see. I’m coming down the ladder...’

  Oh, fuck’s sake. Who’s up a ladder? Why? Competing sounds, voices, engines. Someone came down a metal ladder, seemed to be sucked into the fog. An eerie silence froze Adam to the spot. And from the silence came a sound that sent bolts of terror up and down his nervous system.

  He turned to the sound of his father’s voice. ‘You shouldn’t have done what you did last night. You and your violent games. You shouldn’t have done what you did to me! I was your father, but you put an end to that.’

  A darkness formed in the mist where the voice had come from, a darkness that came closer. ‘What kind of a man are you, Adam? Killing? Killing your father for personal gain?’

  Adam wanted to turn and run as the darkness came closer and the breath from it drifted through the mist. But he couldn’t move.

  ‘But you know best, don’t you, Adam?’

  The darkness was upon him. ‘Didn’t I teach you the fear of God, boy? I’ve got a good mind to take your pants right down and spank you until you bleed.’ The darkness entered his body, paralysed and blinded him.

  Memory possessed him and he was young and small again, listening to the creak of his bedroom door as it opened and closed, his father’s footsteps coming deeper into the pitch-black darkness, the smell of cigarettes and tobacco, the meaty weight of his father’s hand on his mouth, and the only sound that came from his father, night after night after night: ‘Sssshhh!’

  The darkness passed through his skin and bone, twisting his muscles and firing through his organs. Then it was gone.

  The beam of a powerful spotlight – it seemed to hang in mid-air – pointed directly at 777, picking out the shape of the front door that seemed to be open.

  Yes, people were moving around the building.

  My secretions are all over the flat, thought Adam. He felt as if his feet were sinking into the fabric of the pavement, his ankles dissolving into the granite of the paving stones, his legs sucked down into the hardcore underneath.

  My secretions are all over the flat. And all they’ll need... My secretions are all over the flat.... is one... My secretions are all over the flat.... swab.

  Sound returned in the form of a car’s engine creeping up behind him.

  He touched something wet and thin, taut and made of plastic. Something plastic. A continuous piece of rectangular tape.

  The car pulled up behind him. He watched the shapes emerge from the car. They moved down the middle of the road, ducked beneath the tape in his hand, not noticing him.

  ‘DS Karl Stone,’ said one of the shapes.

  ‘OK, sir,’ replied a shape at the edge of the scene-of-crime tape.

  Adam thought he was going to throw up, but then a stronger urge seized him. To turn and run. He turned, straight into a tall man with a broad body, a real physical presence. The fog danced around his face as Adam froze in front of him. Stray streetlight fell on to his face and Adam saw that the man was blind.

  ‘I recognise your breathing, your heavy breathing and the catch at the back of your throat, when you’re excited, when you’re in Gabriel’s flat hurting him. I live across the landing. When you go, I tend his wounds. I hear everything.’

  ‘Move out the way,’ said Adam, hearing only weakness and fear in his own voice.

  ‘You move around me!’ replied the man. Adam felt as if he’d turned to stone. ‘I am told that the fog is blinding. Welcome to my world.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘We’ve got the picture from Leonard Lawson’s bedroom!’ A voice, young, male and excited, piped up.

  Lawson?

  ‘The Tower of Babel. The trophy.’

  ‘They won’t be able to talk their way out of this.’

  They? They... they... they... they... they...

  Fear remained, gripped Adam, but evolved into a confused anger.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Adam.

  Two dogs barked at each other, their ferocity increasing with each in-breath.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Adam.

  ‘I am what you see before you. The police have Gabriel in custody.’

  ‘Gabriel’s crazy, Gabriel doesn’t know what day of the week it is...’

  Adam found himself walking around the blind man, his walk picking up into a trot. A siren nearly caused him to scream. He wanted to jump off the pavement and howl at the sky.

  The place behind him, where he could be himself, had been opened up by the authorities. And there was a place he needed to go. The other place. The shed.

  It felt like an hour passed in a handful of seconds as he struggled to press the right button to unlock his van. His face and hair were soaking with condensation. He turned on the ignition and drove quickly. A voice that sounded a lot like the blind man’s but was inside him, asked, ‘What day of the week is it?’

  Adam had no idea.

  66

  1.21 pm

  Each time she turned to a new photograph of Gabriel Huddersfield submitting to yet another degradation, DS Gina Riley’s heart dropped a little further. She counted. Nineteen. Gabriel chained to the sink, gagged and blindfolded. Twenty. Gabriel on all fours with multiple bleeding tracks where he’d been viciously scratched. Twenty-one. Gabriel inserting the handle of a whip up his own anus for the gratification of the person taking the picture. Twenty-two. She gasped, looked away and then back again. Gabriel with a large weight clamped to his penis.

  She was on the verge of handing the task over to one of the Scientific Support officers because she knew that when she next tried to sleep, these pictures would play across the darkness of her mind’
s eye like a slideshow on PowerPoint.

  Twenty-three. ‘Jesus,’ she whispered. Twenty-four. ‘Je-sus.’ Twenty-five. Silence. She froze, double-checked the image taken in the mirrored bathroom.

  ‘You’ve tripped yourself up, Fuck Face!’

  ‘You talking to me?’ asked DS Terry Mason, passing her in Huddersfield’s living room.

  ‘My pet name for you, Terry, happens to be Cuddles, not Fuck Face.’ She showed him the twenty-fifth picture.

  ‘So that’s the Grand Master of Agony and Ecstasy?’

  He carried on and she moved to the window to milk the light and analyse the image. She flicked forward through the pictures, but there was no other sign of him from the twenty-sixth to the fortieth image. She took out her phone and within three rings was talking to Clay.

  ‘Eve, do you want the good news or the bad?’

  ‘Bad, Gina.’

  ‘In the one picture I’ve found of Huddersfield’s beau, the elusive nasty is wearing a leather mask. It’s taken in the bathroom with the mirrored walls. Gabriel’s hanging by the wrists, chained from the shower head. There’s a flash on it.’ She peered at it again. ‘His masked head’s above the flash and his feet and legs are below it. Judging by his feet and legs, he’s no spring chicken – late thirties, early forties. Oh God! Yack. Judging by the angle of his elbow jutting out from the side of the flash...’

  ‘Yes, I get the idea, Gina. Masturbation, the sincerest form of flattery. Copy all the pictures to my phone, please. It’s time to have another chat with Huddersfield. I’ll print them off before I do so.’

  ‘Asap.’

  Within half a minute the image had been photographed and sent to Clay, Hendricks, Stone and Cole. Riley looked out at the dense fog, made out shapes, some still, some moving. The world around her assumed a silence, and then her phone rang. She looked at the display and felt a wave of nervous energy.

  ‘Justine Elgar!’ she said. ‘How are things in the uni’s human resources department?’

  ‘I’ve got a name and address for you. Caitlin Braxton. Lives in the Albert Dock. She’s just retired from the Fine Art faculty. She worked with Leonard Lawson for two years. Her career was starting as his was winding down.’

  67

  2.25 pm

  In Interview Suite 1, Clay trudged through the photographs of Huddersfield and his partner and felt a profound dismay. As Sergeant Harris opened the door, she shuffled the ace in the deck to the top of the pack that she’d printed off from her phone.

  ‘He continues to waive his right to legal representation,’ said Harris as Huddersfield sat across the table from Clay. ‘Do you want me to stay?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Clay held up the top photograph, showed the blank side to Huddersfield. She eyed him, held his gaze, said nothing as Sergeant Harris stood behind him.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ asked Huddersfield.

  She smiled at him, turned her attention back to the picture, placed it face down on the table, out of his reach. Next she looked at the clamp attached to his penis and said, ‘We couldn’t find anything on the back of the triptych. We looked at the gable wall directly behind your mural of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Last Judgment. We couldn’t find any reference to a garden, therefore we can’t find a body because we don’t know which garden to dig in.’

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  She kept her eyes fixed on the photograph.

  ‘You.’

  ‘Me?’ Silence. ‘Show me?’

  She looked over the top of the picture and into his eyes. ‘You’re not a bad person,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, you’re not a bad person.’

  ‘When you say you’re looking at me, what do you mean?’

  She turned the picture round, heard Sergeant Harris take a sharp intake of breath, but kept her eyes fixed on Huddersfield.

  ‘Have you been rooting through my things?’ asked Hud-dersfield.

  ‘You’re not a bad person.’

  ‘Are they all photographs of me?’

  ‘You’re not a bad person.’

  ‘Can you show me another?’

  She placed the penis-clamp picture face down and moved on to the image of him inserting the handle of a whip into his own anus.

  ‘You’re not a bad person.’

  ‘Why do you keep saying that?’

  ‘Because you’re not a bad person.’

  She placed that picture down on the desk and watched as Huddersfield’s eyes moistened.

  ‘Do you think I’m a sinner?’

  ‘You’re not a bad person.’

  She turned the next picture round for him. He was chained to the sink, gagged and blindfolded.

  ‘You’re not a bad person, Gabriel, because this picture shows what someone else has done to you. This is a picture of someone else’s sinfulness. This is a picture of you being blinded to the truth. This is a picture of you having your voice taken away from you. This is a picture of you being bound and shackled, having your body hijacked and kidnapped, made to do things that someone else wants. You’re not a bad person, Gabriel. You’re not a bad person.’

  ‘Who is a bad person?’

  ‘I can show you a bad person if you want.’

  ‘Can you show me a bad person?’

  ‘You can tell me the name of a bad person. At the moment, I’ve got people trying to work out what the lines on the shaft of the spear mean and sifting through the Book of Genesis for names. There are so many names in the Book of Genesis. You’re not a bad person, Gabriel. You could put me straight. Like that.’ She clicked her finger and thumb sharply and Huddersfield started as if a bomb had gone off. A single tear rolled down his cheek.

  ‘Give me a name. You’re not a bad person, Gabriel. I’d be very happy to stand up in a crowded courtroom, in front of the world’s media, and make no mistake, Gabriel, of two things. This is going to go global. And you’re not a bad person, Gabriel. You’ve been gagged and bound and chained like a slave.’

  ‘Can you show me a bad person?’

  ‘If you tell me their name.’

  ‘How can I do that?’ asked Gabriel.

  ‘Speak.’

  He placed his wrists together, his fists closed, face down on the desk. JESUS DIE4U. He closed his eyes and shut his mouth.

  ‘Bound and gagged and chained,’ said Clay, reaching across the table and placing her hands over his fists. ‘Bound by the First Born.’

  He opened his eyes, looked down at Clay’s hands and closed his eyes again.

  ‘I take the key and I turn it in the lock,’ said Clay. She slipped her hands between his fists. ‘Hear the click as the key unlocks the shackles that bind your hands.’ Clay pushed his hands apart, lifted them. ‘Delivered by the Law. Open your eyes.’

  Huddersfield opened his eyes, tears streaming.

  ‘Open your mouth.’

  He opened his mouth, took in a huge breath of air.

  ‘Speak. Look.’

  She turned the picture of Huddersfield chained from the shower head with his lover’s reflection caught in the glass but distorted by the camera’s flash.

  ‘You’re not a bad person, Gabriel.’

  She handed him the picture.

  He looked at it in intense silence, stroked the surface of his reflected lover and said, ‘You lied to me, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clay. ‘He lied to you.’

  Huddersfield looked up at Clay. ‘Do you want me to tell you the truth?’

  ‘Yes, I want you to tell me the truth.’

  ‘Leonard Lawson wasn’t the first,’ said Huddersfield. ‘Abraham Evans, 112 Knowsley Road, Cressington Park, Liverpool 19. Abraham and his wife Mary.’

  Clay was on her feet.

  ‘Leave him with me,’ said Sergeant Harris.

  She opened the door and in the background heard a sound like an animal with its body crushed between the jaws of an iron trap.

  In Interview Suite 1,
Huddersfield howled.

  68

  2.47 pm

  Adam Miller had difficulty breathing. As he flipped the bolt shut inside his shed, he found he had to think about drawing in air and pushing it out. The kernel of anguish that had ruptured inside his brain had swollen to the size of an orange and painkillers had done nothing to ease it.

  Although he was quite alone in the shed, he began to feel that the knots in the wooden walls were eyes watching him. In the muddy light of the winter’s afternoon, the shed, which had once felt like a barricade against the world outside, had turned on him.

  He sat down on a three-legged stool and saw that the walls were littered with faces that he’d never seen before. A bearded profile of Christ peered sadly into the centre of the shed. A pair of eyes with a thin nose but no mouth or chin stared directly at him. A face distorted by weeping howled silently above his head.

  He closed his eyes briefly, to shut them out, and felt violated. He tried to fight the light-headedness that had started as he drove away from the police and the ghost of his father and the blind man and the terror that 777 Croxteth Road had become, and the faces in the wood seemed to be moving.

  He stood up and threw on a lamp, but the light did nothing to ease the gloom or stop the insane notion mushrooming in his mind. The walls of the shed, that had once been so wide and still, were growing narrow and moving in on him, threatening to bury him alive in a wooden box the size of a coffin.

  The thump of a bird landing on the roof startled him and sent his heart racing, but the scream that was growing steadily inside him was gridlocked in the dryness of his mouth and throat.

  I’ve gotta go, I’ve gotta go, I’ve gotta go, I’ve gotta go. Words like runaway trains thundered through his head and down his spine, causing needle-like pains in his extremities. But where?

  A beam of hope. I’ve got money, he thought. Lots of money. Savings no one else knows about, savings in all kinds of accounts, savings that will take me far away from here, for as long as I need. Forever, if necessary. To some country where life is cheap and I can live like a king.