by Mark Roberts
‘He murdered his father?’
‘Cleverly. He was near enough for other people to see him jumping into the water to save him. But there was enough distance so that he could drown him and nearly drown himself in the process. If I can do that to my father, Danielle, just think what I could do to you if you ever displease me. What a hero. What a good son. What a tragic accident.’ Her voice became angrier. ‘Stick that in his face when you catch him. See how that rattles his cage. But me? Me? He’d only use violence against me as punishment. I wasn’t worthy of it for any other reason. He didn’t know. But I knew. Violence was his greatest pleasure, but only when he inflicted it on other men. He paid off a rent boy last year. He broke his jaw and burned him. It cost him £10,000. It nearly killed him, the miserly bastard.’
Hendricks pictured the bleak space of Gabriel Huddersfield’s room, the wounds around his neck, the indentation of Adam Miller’s teeth.
‘He was a sexual sadist,’ said Danielle. ‘I had a key made for his shed. I knew what he had in that box of his. The pornographic pictures of men being humiliated and tortured. I knew where he disappeared to. Croxteth Road. My husband is a monster. A monster with a will of iron and a cruelty like no other. But that will crumbled today and cruelty took charge. Gideon.’ She began to cry. ‘Abey. The gentle ones savaged by the monster. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him!’ she screamed at the curtain.
She took thick, heavy breaths, the surge of rage calming by small degrees as the red light went out and the green light came on.
‘Are you ready?’ Dr Lamb’s voice piped through the speaker on the wall.
Danielle wiped her eyes and composed herself.
‘If you’re not up to this...’
‘I’m up to it. Poor Abey. It’s the least I can do after what that specimen did.’
Hendricks positioned himself behind her. ‘We’re ready,’ he said.
The curtains parted. Danielle took a deep in-breath and gasped. On the table behind the glass lay the corpse, his face covered with a white cloth, his body dressed in a sky-blue coverall, the red, yellow and green friendship bracelet on his wrist.
Hendricks caught her as she slumped. Her eyes rolled and a noise like an animal caught in a vicious trap came from her throat.
‘A... A... A... A... A....’
The tears of a woman exhausted by life.
Hendricks managed to manoeuvre her into a seat. He held on to her hands and listened and, for a moment, the noise sounded like hysterical laughter.
‘Mrs Miller. Danielle. Take your time. When you’re ready we’ll try again.’
101
6.42 pm
After a silence that lasted minutes, Louise Lawson lifted her head and spoke.
‘I opened the door and recognised Professor Noone immediately, an older version of the man with my father in the picture on his desk. He didn’t ask if he could come in, he merely stepped past me as if I didn’t exist and headed towards the sound of my father’s typewriter. He opened the door and my father stopped typing. Professor Noone stepped into my father’s study, closed the door. I stayed where I was outside the door, listening to the urgent whispering inside. It felt like only moments passed. But when the door opened, day had turned into night and the house was dark, silent.’
Her eyes clouded as painful memories played out inside her head.
‘I lay in bed that night, unable to sleep, listening to the noise of their voices seeping through the wall. At dawn, I packed a bag, determined to leave but with no idea where I would go. As I reached the front door, my father said, Stop! Where are you going? You have work to do. It was the beginning of it all.
‘My first task was to find a suitable property for Professor Noone. A detached house, close to my father’s and hidden by large shrubs and trees at the front and back to secure privacy. A simple enough task, made easier by the fact that Professor Noone could pay for it outright. The deeds of the house were in my name to ensure Professor Noone’s privacy. Over the years that followed, I acted as caretaker for the house, cleaning it, employing men to keep the gardens from running wild and fixing anything that needed repairing. I still had no idea what the purpose of this was. The next stages were not as straightforward. Time passed and nothing happened until one day, without warning, Professor Noone arrived at my father’s house once more. This time he dismissed my father and lavished his attentions on me. My father’s fury was barely concealed.’
The darkness that filled her face was pierced briefly by a smile, a smile that faded as quickly as it had bloomed.
‘Professor Noone was a changed man. Damien. I was to call him Damien, there was no need now for formality. He took me out to a restaurant in town and I saw an altogether different man. He is the only man who ever did this. Caring, attentive, attractive in a dark way. He asked me what was the one thing I would like most in the world. I didn’t tell the truth. The truth was a life of my own. I said, A television set so I can watch medical documentaries. He said, I will order it and have it delivered to your house at the earliest convenience. I said, But my father... To which he replied, I’ll deal with your father.
‘He was charming, witty and interested in me. He asked me what my dream was. I told him I would have loved to work in a caring profession. Nursing. He suggested that I would make an excellent midwife. I told him I couldn’t go and train in a hospital because my father wouldn’t allow it. My job was to care for him, not strangers. Damien told me that I was so intelligent that I didn’t need to go and train as a nurse or a midwife, that I could and should teach myself. I was flattered. I was completely beguiled by him. No one had ever said such kind things to me. No one had ever paid me that much attention. By the end of the night, I wanted him to want me, I wanted him to take me away, but he didn’t. He took me home and told me to go to the house I’d chosen for him and prepare it. I was head over heels in love with him at this point.’
Tears formed in her eyes and she wiped them away with the backs of her hands.
‘He instructed me to open a bank account in my own name, against the wishes of my father. And from the start, every month he paid in £300 to cover the cost of my time in maintaining the house and studying.
‘I was told to study at home the skills needed to be a midwife. I still had no idea what the purpose of this was, but I was happy to do something other than attend to the needs of my father. Damien sent me books through the post, all the latest books. A VHS machine arrived. Instructional videos for trainee midwives arrived. I read all the books, from cover to cover, watched the videos over and over. I befriended a neighbour who was pregnant and managed to be there at the birth, watching the midwife as she delivered the baby, asking question after question. I even assisted, and I cut the umbilical cord.’
She fell silent. Clay reeled her back in. ‘Go on, Louise.’
‘He telephoned me once a week, every week, and asked me questions about my studies. And every time he called, he left me with this message: one day, and he couldn’t say when, a woman would come to live for a brief period at the house and I was to help her with all her needs. I was to prepare one room as a nursery for a child. And I was to prepare the attic space with nothing in it other than a cot and a changing mat.
‘Years passed. Years. And nothing. Just cleaning and maintaining Damien’s house. Learning. Every month a payment of £300 into my bank account. And every week, the phone call. The questions. The instructions. The promise of a woman who I must one day help.’
Clay heard the beginnings of anger creeping into Louise’s voice.
‘She arrived in 1980 without warning, nine months pregnant and unwilling to give me so much as her name. Damien turned up. Or rather Professor Noone. The cold fish had returned, the warm man who had been so interested in me was nowhere to be seen. My job was to care for the woman, but I was not to talk to her or speculate about his relationship with her. Talking was not allowed. I was to deliver the babies and await further instructions. On the day after she arrived, she gave b
irth to twin boys, within five minutes of each other. Professor Noone was there filming. He ordered that the mother was not to touch, look at or go near the babies. While I took the babies away to clean them, he gave their mother a document to sign, and an envelope. Then, raising her hands to the sides of her face like a blinkered horse, the woman walked past us, down the stairs and out of their lives. I fed both babies with formula milk and placed one in the bare attic, the other in the nicely appointed nursery.’
Louise’s hands rose slowly to her mouth and Clay predicted that her statement was about to turn darker.
‘When they were both asleep, Professor Noone summoned me to the kitchen. He offered me a glass of whisky to celebrate the successful births of the babies and the beginning of the English Experiment. Did I know how he’d recruited the woman? He’d paid a GP to inform him of any woman pregnant with twins who went in seeking an abortion. I told him I didn’t understand. He poured himself another drink and told me that he and I were going to raise the boys and that my father was going to help by chronicling the experiment. What experiment? He explained that I was to be in overall charge of both boys. I was the Shepherd. My half of the experiment was to help him in the nursery with Cain, who was to have as normal an upbringing as possible. He would keep Abel separate. Abel would be deprived of many things in general but one thing in particular. Language. My father would help chart the progress of both children with a view to seeing if Abel could come up with a brand-new language or method of communication.
‘I told him that I would not be taking part in anything so monstrous and that I would take both children immediately and make two journeys. One to deliver the boys into the care of social services, one to inform the police.’
She raised a hand and slammed it on the table.
‘Suddenly, the secrecy and silence surrounding the scheme made perfect sense. He told me that it would be interesting to see how long a custodial sentence I would get. I told him I wouldn’t be going to jail, that I hadn’t done anything wrong, that I had known nothing of the vile project.’
‘Well... He smiled. I will never forget the way he smiled at me. Well, it will be your word against the word of your father and me. You’ve been involved from the word go. You purchased the house, on my behalf, in which the English Experiment was to be undertaken. You were given the house as a reward for your informed involvement. You employed people to maintain the property. You purchased books with my credit card and taught yourself to become a first-class midwife. That was your idea, remember. I have filmed evidence of the skill with which you performed this task. You have been paid handsomely month after month for your services. If you inform the police about me and your father, you may as well take your own life now. Because people will look at your father and me and think, men... cruel, callous men. But the same people will look at you and think, woman... how could she partake in and contribute to such an abomination against two babies? You will make Myra Hindley look like a saint. You will never get out of jail and if you do, you’ll be murdered in broad daylight, a woman who went against the grain of nature.’
Louise sagged, looked set to collapse. ‘I was trapped,’ she said. ‘But one day, all that changed.’
‘What changed, Louise?’ asked Clay.
‘Professor Noone thought he was God Almighty. And that was when the real God Almighty stepped in, just as he did all those years ago when mankind built the Tower of Babel. That’s when he struck. It took time, but I had plenty of that. And I was there, not as Professor Noone’s slave but as the handmaiden of the Lord.’
Clay’s phone rang out. She looked at the display and felt the skin pucker on her neck. Riley glanced over her shoulder.
‘Take the call,’ said Riley. Clay was on her feet and heading for the door. ‘You want me to carry on?’ asked Riley.
‘We must carry on. We must, we must,’ said Louise.
‘Yes, you must carry on,’ said Clay, opening the door of the interview suite and stepping into the corridor. She closed the door and connected the call.
‘DCI Clay?’ A cultured, educated voice.
‘Mr Evergreen?’ Gabriel Huddersfield’s blind neighbour.
‘All the police officers have gone,’ he said.
Clay headed at speed to the front door of Trinity Road police station.
‘They closed the flat down with tape. I heard the last officer leaving. But there’s someone inside Gabriel’s flat now. I can hear him. It sounds like Adam Miller.’
102
7.17 pm
Clay paused at the bottom of the final set of stairs leading up to Gabriel Huddersfield’s flat, felt the weight of a spanner in her coat pocket. She saw the moon through the skylight, picking out the landing in an ethereal glow. From the space above, she heard Elliot Evergreen whisper, ‘DCI Clay?’
‘Mr Evergreen, sssshhh.’
She walked up the last few stairs, ears straining to hear what might lie behind the door of Gabriel Huddersfield’s flat. Silence. At the top, she took the door key from Elliot Evergreen. ‘Go inside, close your door, stay inside.’
Outside, she heard cars arriving, engines turning off, the mounting back-up behind her that, once she was through the door, would be of no use. The sound made her intensely aware of how alone she really was. She felt an emptiness that she hadn’t known since she was a small girl, when the truth had sunk in that she had no one in this world.
She listened, and for a brief second flew through time and space to her home in Mersey Road, watched Thomas giving Philip his dinner, both of them blissfully unaware of the danger she was in, both of them unable to see or sense the phantom of their wife and mother, desperate for what could be the final contact.
Back. Fast. Now.
Clay looked at the picture of Jesus on Huddersfield’s door, framed by the moonlight. She heard nothing behind it as she turned the key with infinite care.
The door opened without a sound. She stepped into the flat, left the front door open. A pipe gurgled. A tap spat out a stream of water. At the bathroom window the wind moaned. Every hair on her body stood up on end.
Clay turned on her torch, pointed it at the door ahead, at Huddersfield’s chapel, art gallery and torture chamber. She passed the bathroom door. A board creaked beneath her foot and her heart banged. Her head spun as it danced with the memory of his atrocities. She listened through the rising tide of blood inside her skull. No sound of life behind the door, but she could sense a presence there, waiting, waiting for her.
Her hand pressed against the surface of the door. She gripped the spanner in her pocket, wondered what she would look like stripped naked and without a face or scalp. She looked down on herself from the ceiling of the mortuary, watched as Dr Lamb pulled what was left of her to pieces.
‘I did see you in Liverpool One with your little boy, Eve...’ Dr Lamb’s words echoed on the wind outside the house. ‘The man you were with, with the sky-blue eyes... I thought, no... You looked so happy...’
And she hoped against hope that she was wrong. That Elliot Evergreen was mistaken. She opened the door slowly and she knew she was not alone. Clouds passed over the moon. Wisps of moonlight illuminated the figures at the top of the three panels of The Last Judgment. She saw Jesus in his heavenly glory. Beneath his feet was a bank of shadows. She stared into the darkness and made out the shape of a man.
He sat perfectly still, directly beneath Jesus, like the silhouette of a statue.
Clay grasped the handle of the spanner in her pocket.
She listened to the even sound of his breathing in the dark.
The smell of blood, semen and testosterone flooded her senses and she felt violated by the air she was forced to breathe.
The wind pressed hard on the roof and exterior walls.
Clay took a step inside and froze when she heard a voice.
‘Stop!’
Was it Adam? She doubted her senses.
Freezing air rushed through the cracks in the old windows. It gave her the coldest
kiss as it streamed by. The front door slammed shut.
‘Alone at last, Eve!’
The floor beneath her turned to wax.
103
7.19 pm
Clouds sailed away from the moon and the room came alive with silver light. Something glinted in his hand, metal or glass.
Clay hung on to the silence as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. The details of what lay before her came clearer as the seconds ticked past.
She pressed record on her iPhone, placed it on the floor. His breath sounded like a primitive curse.
‘Are you surrendering to me?’ she asked with a hollow calmness. ‘The building’s surrounded. The street outside is crawling with police officers.’ The silence was dense. ‘You came back here? You killed a man to run away. So why have you come back?’
Her vision focused and, in the moonlight, the features of the room gained definition. He sat with his back to her, facing the wall. The sheen of his body told her he was not in his own skin. She narrowed her eyes and saw he was wearing the leather body suit. She heard a zip being undone, watched as he lifted the leather mask that covered his face and head.
He threw it backwards and it landed at her feet. It looked up at her, the hollow eyes sinister in their emptiness. An aroma of sweat, blood and tears wafted up from it.
‘Masks. Do you ever wear masks, Eve?’ Something fractured in his voice, made him sound unlike himself, and she wondered if this was Adam Miller’s take on tender intimacy. ‘The answer is yes, Eve. I’ve read about you. I’ve been fascinated by you for years. You wouldn’t believe how pleased I was when you walked into The Sanctuary. Did I appear excited?’
‘No, you appeared annoyed. Disturbed from your bed.’
‘Masks, Eve. Masks. You wear masks, Eve. I know you do. You have to. You’re wearing one now. I can see you through the shadows with the eyes in the back of my head.’