Dead Silent (15 page)

She made a call to the incident room at Trinity Road police station.

DC Barney Cole, the anchor, picked up. ‘What’s up, Eve?’

‘I’ve got three possible names. I need you to look on the electoral register and the NHS database.’

‘Fire away!’

Daylight seeped into Leonard Lawson’s study and the long silence between Hendricks and Stone was broken when Hendricks turned over the last page of the second half of Leonard Lawson’s manuscript and said, ‘Done. Almost.’

‘I want a black coffee and a Sausage McMuffin,’ replied Stone, head in hands, the first part of the manuscript on the desk in front of him.

‘Will you be eating in or taking out?’

‘And I’ll have a bowl of porridge for little Billy Hendricks.’

‘Aw, thanks, Uncle Karl.’

Stone rubbed his eyes and looked down at the manu-script.

‘So, Part One. Fire away, Karl?’

‘Part One. The Ancient World p.4-210. Egypt. Six centuries before Jesus walked the earth, there’s a king called Psamtik the First. He was a bit New Labour. Opened the country up to mass immigration.’

Hendricks laughed. ‘Was he a warmonger as well?’

‘He was constantly at war because there were armies at the borders and other psycho kings claiming a slice of the Egyptian pie. Psamtik figured that the country that possessed the
original
language, the
lingua mundi
, as it were, had the right to be called top dog. Language was the proof in the universal pudding, the gods’ stamp of approval. So in between war after war after war, Psamtik conducted a crude experiment.’

Stone showed Hendricks a picture of a rugged man on a mountain with two bundles on his back. ‘Two babies were taken from their mother at birth and given to this shepherd.’ He pointed at the bundles. ‘Baby one. Baby two. The shepherd’s job was to say nothing, feed them goat’s milk and listen out for whatever came from their mouths. Many months of silence later, one of the little ones pipes up with
Bekos
, the word for bread in Phrygian.’

‘Phrygian?’

‘An Indo-European language from Asia Minor. Now lost. Psamtik said,
OK, Phrygian is the proto-language. My dream of primal greatness is just that – a dream.
’

‘So he handed his kingdom over to the Phrygians?’ asked Hendricks.

‘No, just found new enemies to go to war with,’ replied Stone. ‘Very New Labour.’

Hendricks looked through the pages of Part Two and separated them into two piles, one thick, one slender.

‘Part Two takes place in California in the 1970s. It’s about a girl called Genie who more or less crawls into the LA county welfare office one autumn day with her partially sighted and whacked-out mother. She was basically brought up in a home dominated by an abusive father who deprived Genie of language from birth.’

Hendricks showed Stone a small colour profile photograph of a thirteen-year-old girl, eyes downcast, skin like marble, dark hair snatched back in a short ponytail, finger and thumb linked in a noose, other fingers splayed.

‘Genie. Kept in silence and deprived of social contact from birth. Her story was up against the trial of Charlie Manson for
merde du jour
in the LA papers for a week or so.’

Hendricks fell silent.

‘And?’ prompted Stone.

‘And we have a gap in the manuscript.’ Hendricks picked up the larger chunk. ‘Genie’s story, page 211 to 378.’ He touched the smaller section. ‘Pages 379 to 390: some very bizarre tributes to Psamtik, and to Genie’s misunderstood and visionary father. The glorification of child abuse and the need to continue these linguistic experiments until the mystery of how language is acquired is resolved. It’s not even Leonard Lawson’s field of expertise. He was an art historian and scholar. Two things, Karl. Did he suffer some sort of mental breakdown? Or substance abuse?’

‘And what about the missing pages?’

‘Exactly. This is page 378. Check the final two paragraphs before the gap.’

Hendricks slid the page towards Stone. Outside, a bus roared on Aigburth Drive and life on earth rolled on.

The motives of Genie’s father remain unclear, but his method – although crude – was essentially correct. In this he was similar to Psamtik. For this experiment to succeed, a more academic model is needed, supported by the top universities of England and Wales. A unique opportunity arose for the English Experiment. But, in spite of the mesmeric intellect of the man leading the research, it was doomed because of the lack of academic infrastructure and the covert nature of the work. The supposed criminality of its content turned the golden vision into brass.

Hypocrisy is the root of all evil. Our society aborts children in utero by the thousands each year, yet it is unthinkable to use twenty to fifty unwanted children for an essential experiment into the acquisition of language.

‘So Leonard Lawson was basically either a cruel bastard or off his head. Maybe both,’ concluded Hendricks.

‘We need to dig into his medical records. Did he go gaga? Did he get a season ticket for Yates’s Wine Lodge?’ asked Stone. ‘I’ve dipped into his other writing and there’s nothing like this.’ Stone shook his head. ‘Twenty to fifty children brought up in silence with no sensory stimulation?’

‘
The mesmeric intellect of the man leading the research
? It’s like a line from a funeral elegy. It’s—’ Hendricks was silenced by a sudden, astonishing noise.

In the hall outside the study, the landline telephone rang out.

Hendricks and Stone stood up and headed towards it. The telephone, cream coloured and plastic, looked like it belonged in a junk-shop window. Hendricks picked up the receiver.

Silence. Hendricks listened hard, but there was no background noise. He waited, could hear no breathing or sign of life on the other end. Stone took out his phone, pressed record.

‘DS Bill Hendricks. Can I help you?’

‘Bill Hendricks?’ The voice was androgynous, ageless and without a trace of accent. It caused a coldness to pass through him.

‘Who is this?’ asked Hendricks.

‘Where are you?’

‘Who are you?’

‘I am the Angel of Destruction. With the First Born, I serve Death. There’s a body in the garden. Whose body? Which garden?’

Hendricks looked at the French window. Outside was a small paved yard enclosed by three brick walls.

‘Whose body? Which garden?’ The voice dipped.

‘Name the body. Name the garden.’

The line went dead and the room was completely silent.

Stone stopped recording and played the call back. Even though the hall was flat and rectangular, the voice on the line seemed to echo as if the space was full of invisible curves and crevices.

Hendricks’s phone rang out. On the display: ‘Clay’. He connected.

‘Drop what you’re doing,’ said Clay. We’ve got a prime suspect and an address.’

He hurried to the front door.

‘It’s very near where you are now.’

On the street, he ran towards his car.

‘Eve, we’ve just had a call directly to the Lawsons’ landline. It was from the Angel of Destruction. Where are you?’

Four minutes. The time it took DC Cole to locate the only Gabriel Huddersfield in Liverpool on the electoral roll. It took Clay less than five to arrive at the front door of 777 Croxteth Road, a large Victorian family house divided into six self-contained flats.

The bell of Flat 5, 777 Croxteth Road didn’t have a name next to it, just a small picture of an angel, sideways on, playing a slender reed and facing right, its wings dissolving into the blue-whiteness of the celestial sky. Clay recognised it as a supporting player to Jesus from a colour plate in one of Leonard Lawson’s books.

She pointed at the image. ‘Is this how he sees himself? Heaven’s foot soldier? God’s hitman? The Angel of Destruction?’

After the fourth unanswered attempt at that bell, Clay pressed the bell of Flat 1 – ‘Sally’ – and a woman’s gravelly voice came through the intercom.

‘Who is it?’

‘Police! We aren’t looking for you. Open up, please.’

‘K!’

Clay looked up at the second-floor window and hoped Gabriel Huddersfield was sleeping the sleep of the righteous.

‘Come on!’ she said, irritated by the sloth-like lack of action behind the door. ‘Come on! Come on!’

The door finally opened to reveal a painfully thin, purple-and grey-haired woman, who could have been in her thirties or possibly fifties, taking a puff on a hand-rolled cigarette. The smell of weed around her disappointed Clay. Not a reliable witness.

‘Who are you after?’ She blew a trio of smoke rings through her brown-stained fingers and teeth.

‘Gabriel Huddersfield,’ replied Clay. ‘Move aside, please.’

‘I don’t think he’s in,’ she said, allowing Clay inside the wide, gloomy hallway.

Clay headed towards the stairs. ‘If you know enough to know he’s not in, do you know where he is?’

Sally thought about it as Clay ran up the stairs two at a time.

‘There was a commotion in the night and then he was gone. That’s all I know. He might’ve come back. I don’t know.’

At the turn of the first floor, the darkness deepened and Clay noticed there wasn’t a bulb in the ceiling light. An overwhelming smell of damp and the robotic beat of dance music followed her up as she continued to the top floor.

She slowed at the head of the stairs, looked right. Flat 6. And to the left saw Flat 5.

‘Jesus!’

On the door of Flat 5 was painted a more complete version of the image on the bell outside. She processed some of the details as she approached the door.
In a cloud of light,
Jesus sitting in glory. In heaven. His arms bent at the elbows, right hand pointing up to an unseen
Father, left hand pointing down to Creation. Jesus the hinge between the two.
It was the upper part of the central panel of Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych,
The Last Judgment
. She recognised it from one of the professor’s books.

She knocked on the door and called, ‘Gabriel Huddersfield! Police! Open up immediately!’

There was no reply, no sign of life on the other side. She pushed the door, but it remained shut. A rich, smoky smell oozed from Huddersfield’s home. Incense.

Clay raised her arm, felt along the top of the door frame for a key but found only a damp, greasy surface.

‘Is this what you’re looking for?’

Clay turned towards the educated voice. In the doorway of Flat 6 stood a tall, middle-aged black man with a shock of white hair, holding a key in one hand. She showed him her warrant card but withdrew it when she saw the white cast to his eyes. A melancholic Labrador waited beside him. He smiled and tapped the floor with his white stick.

The witnesses were a semi-conscious stoner and a blind man. Bitterness ground its fist into the back of Clay’s skull and she couldn’t help feeling short-changed by Chance.

‘Is Gabriel in trouble?’ asked the neighbour. He handed her the key, his speech and manner respectful.

‘I think so,’ said Clay. ‘My name’s Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay. Mr...?’

‘Evergreen. Mr Elliot Evergreen. I hold the key for Gabriel.’

‘He trusts you then?’

‘Gabriel says he has no secrets. So a man with no secrets must have no problem allowing the Law inside his home. He went out last night at ten o’clock. He wasn’t alone.’

‘Thank you.’ Clay took the key from Mr Evergreen. ‘Was there trouble in the building last night? A commotion?’

‘There’s always trouble in the building. Commotion follows Gabriel like a pet dog. And when commotion sleeps, Gabriel is as silent as a shadow.’

‘What kind of commotion, Mr Evergreen?’

‘Gabriel has a regular visitor. I don’t ask questions of him. But from what I can hear, he’s the only person apart from me who goes over his threshold. Gabriel doesn’t mind what his other friend
sees
. Gabriel’s friend was angry, following him down the stairs, bullying him, I’d say.’

‘Did you hear any words?’

‘You have to do it! Do as I say!
The rest...?’ Mr Evergreen shrugged.

‘Did he come back to his flat?’

‘Briefly. I was listening to the radio. His door opened as the three o’clock news was finishing.’ He stroked the dog’s ears and Clay could feel the blood pumping inside her head. The blind witness was quickly turning out to be more valuable than seven fully sighted ones.

‘He came back for a few minutes. He tried to do so discreetly, but I could tell. He couldn’t open his front door, he was breathing like he’d just run a marathon and he was highly agitated. That’s all I can tell you.’

‘Thank you, Mr Evergreen.’

‘You know where I am if you need me. I’m told that the eyes can play tricks. But I know that my ears can never deceive me. Give me your number. I will call you if I hear anything that might be useful to you.’

She reeled off eleven digits and he parroted them back to her. In placing Elliot Evergreen across the landing from Huddersfield, it seemed Chance had done her a favour.

Two floors down, she heard DS Bill Hendricks arrive. As he hurtled up the stairs, Clay stuck the key in the lock of Flat 5. She pushed the door open, calling, ‘Gabriel Huddersfield! Police! We’re coming in!’

Close to the top of Brownlow Hill, Riley stepped off the frozen street and through the doors of the grey-tiled Hart Building. She took in the blue shield of the university’s crest, the three cormorants bearing leaves, and the motto ‘
Haec Otia Studia Fovent
’.

‘Detective Sergeant Riley?’

In the reception area, Riley followed the voice and saw a very tall woman in her twenties wearing a University of Liverpool ID badge on a band round her neck. ‘Justine Elgar?’ she asked, and showed her warrant card. She’d been expecting a raven-haired siren from an old horror film but was faced instead with the blonde captain of the ladies’ basketball team.

Justine nodded. ‘Let’s go to my office,’ she said.

As she followed, Riley asked, ‘
Haec Otia Studia Fovent
? What does that translate to?’