Dead Silent (2 page)

‘Jesus Christ!’ said Eve, all the bits and pieces falling into place.

‘Eve, blasphemy isn’t allowed here!’

‘I’m saying my prayers. And I’m asking Jesus to give me strength.’

Eve stood up, turned away from Mrs Tripp and made herself as tall as she could in front of the priest. There was a glimmer of a smile behind the sternness in his eyes.

‘Father Murphy, can I ask you a question, please?’

‘Of course you can, Eve.’

‘Are you one of those head doctors by any chance? What are they called now? Yeah. Are you a shrimp?’

‘I believe the expression is
shrink
.’ He took a drag on his cigarette, tapped a ball of ash on to the floor. Eve warmed to the man.

‘Am I glad you’re here, Father Murphy.’

‘You are?’

‘Yes. You’re just the man we need round here.’

‘I think it would be a really good idea to talk about the past,’ said Mrs Tripp.

‘Me too, me too,’ said Eve. ‘Thank you, Father Murphy.’ She sat down across from Mrs Tripp. ‘The past. Yes, let’s talk about the past.’

She glanced up at Father Murphy, the lower half of his face concealed behind the hand in which he held his cigarette. She recalled a scene from a TV sit-com she had watched.

‘Mrs Tripp, tell me about your childhood,’ said Eve.

The only things redder than Mrs Tripp’s face were the lines in the sky above the River Mersey.

‘Go and finish your game of football before it gets dark,’ said Father Murphy. ‘I’ve heard about your great loss and I know enough of Sister Philomena to know she’d be completely and utterly proud of the way you are coping at such a tender age. God bless you, Eve. We will meet again. Please know, you will always be in my prayers.’

‘Thank you, Father, for understanding.’

He smiled, made the sign of the cross over her head.

The silence in the room behind her as she made her way to the door felt like treacle.

Eve closed the door after herself, checked the corridor. It was empty. She waited.

‘You flicked ash on to my desk and my carpet!’ complained Mrs Tripp.

‘And you have wasted my time,’ replied Father Murphy. ‘Which is the larger sin? She’s perfectly sane in spite of all the things she has had to endure. She’s a credit to Sister Philomena, who saved her from the powers of darkness and moulded her into the child she is.’

Silence. As Father Murphy’s footsteps approached the door of the office, Eve absorbed his words.

She hurtled down the corridor, running faster than she ever had.

Running. Running. Running like the Devil was at her heels.

The Tower of Babel
(2)
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)

There is no mercy at work in the universe.

The First Born knelt at the foot of his bed, staring at a big shiny picture of a painting in a book resting on the top blanket. Just as he had been ordered to do. He looked at it through the splayed fingers and thumbs of both hands, one digit for every year he had been alive.

The Tower of Babel
(2) 1563. He rolled the words around in his head.

P-i-e-t-e-r Br-u-e-g-e-l. He spelled out the painter’s name printed underneath the title.

He knew he had to get it right or the voice would be angry with him again. The voice swam inside his head, an awful voice that he was forced to listen to every day, for as long as he could remember.

‘There is no mercy at work in the universe. God will never be pleased with man’s achievements. Nor will God ever tolerate being outshone by man.
Look at the darkness of the earth from which the tower rises up
.’

The First Born tried humming to drown the noise inside his head but it only caused the voice to rise up louder, stronger, angrier.

‘Look at the way the darkness of the earth spills on to the water and engulfs the boats. There is no escape. The people who built the tower cannot be seen because they are hiding in the structure that they have built. Look at the arches of the many, many windows that run along each level of the ascending tower.’

The First Born felt the blood drain from his legs, arms and head. He clutched at the blanket on the bed to stop himself falling sideways on to the floor.

‘Speak the truth!’ commanded the voice inside his head.

The First Born knew the words he had to speak off by heart. ‘God can come down at any moment and punish me for my sins just as he came down and punished the people who built the Tower of Babel. They tried to hide. But there is no hiding place from God.’ He felt something thumping inside his chest, the swelling of tears behind his eyes.

And then there were more words that the First Born didn’t grasp, a question that the voice asked over and over again.

‘Look at the picture. Is this the beginning of babble?’

The First Born looked at the picture, even though it scared him.

‘Look at the way the tower reaches into the sky, sending the handiwork of mankind into the skirt of heaven. Look at the way it pierces the clouds. Look at the way the top of the unfinished tower glows red like fire.’

The First Born removed his fingers from the picture and looked again. The clouds at the top seemed like smoke pouring from a burning building. He tried to see people hiding in the blackened windows, to find some sign of human life, but all he saw was darkness. It was so lonely there. He shivered.

‘This is what God does to mankind when mankind works together and builds a unified structure. In the eyes of God, this is sin. You are a sinner. And you have shown me you understand that sin has one consequence. Death.’

The First Born closed his eyes and gave the expected reply. ‘True Language died. Babble was born.’

The other voice was now calm and even. ‘There is no mercy at work in the universe.’

‘He’s been slaughtered.’

The old woman’s words rolled around DCI Eve Clay’s head as she sprinted from her car to the Sefton Park entrance of Lark Lane, where Scientific Support officers had already sealed off the scene of the crime.

‘DCI Clay!’ she told the constable running the log at the top of the lane.

‘He’s been slaughtered.’
That’s what the old woman had apparently said to the witnesses who had discovered her wandering at the junction of Pelham Grove and Lark Lane. But that was all.

The moon hung low in the clear sky. Sharp light fell on the glass façades of the shops and restaurants on either side of Lark Lane and, for a moment, Clay imagined she was running down a locked-in corridor of ice.

Closing in on a group of people under a streetlight, Clay slowed to read the scene. A female constable was crouched on her haunches next to an old woman lying in the recovery position on a pair of padded coats on the pavement. Looming above her, DS Gina Riley was deep in conversation with a couple, a man who looked like he’d been made from rubber tyres, and a beanpole woman. They put Clay in mind of Popeye and Olive Oyl.

‘DCI Eve Clay.’ She showed her warrant card. ‘You’re the couple who found her?’

‘Yes,’ said the man.

The woman looked at Clay with pleading eyes.

‘Thank you for helping her. Do you know the old lady’s name?’

‘No!’ They answered in one voice.

‘Do you know where she lives?’ asked Clay.

‘Pelham Grove, I’m pretty sure,’ said the woman.

‘Which side?’

‘I’ve seen her coming in and out of the even side,’ said the man.

‘But she didn’t appear to be physically injured?’

‘Not until she fitted and smacked her head on the pavement.’

Clay stooped to take a closer look at the old woman, at the fresh wound on her forehead. The coats had been carefully laid under her body to stop her temperature from plummeting on contact with the freezing pavement, and the recovery position was neatly executed. She looked up at the witnesses.

‘Are you care workers?’ They looked at each other as if Clay was a gifted psychic. ‘You’ve made a really good job of this.’ She stood up to her full height. ‘So, what happened?’

‘She was wandering around in the middle of the road. We approached her and she said,
He’s been slaughtered
. Then she wandered here, to this spot, had a seizure and hit the deck. We called 999. She stopped fitting after a minute and fifteen. We timed it. When she stopped fitting, we put her in the recovery position.’

‘You didn’t see anyone else around?’ asked Clay.

‘No,’ said the man, calmly and firmly.

‘Take me to where you think she lives,’ said Clay.

A police car, siren off, blue light turning, sat outside The Albert on the corner of Lark Lane and Pelham Grove. Clay followed the man and woman into Pelham Grove and took in the whole scene with a 360-degree turn.

DS Karl Stone was getting dressed in a white protective suit at the back of a Scientific Support van.

Facing each other on either side of Pelham Grove, the tall Victorian terrace houses looked eerie in shadows and moonlight.

‘Used to be large single dwellings, family homes when families were big,’ said Stone. ‘Most of the houses are flatted now, mainly student accommodation.’

Clay did a mental date check: the middle of December. ‘A witness famine.’ She sank deeper into the logic of the time and place, scanned the houses picked out by the Scientific Support van’s Night Owl light. ‘Looks like she’s walked out of her home, away from the scene.’ Clay combed the pavement with her torch, but there were no obvious bloodstains.

An ambulance siren drew closer at speed, giving Clay an unpleasant itch under her wrist.
Not much time.

She dressed quickly in a protective suit. Lights came on in bedrooms as people woke up to the gathering police presence on their doorsteps. Her heart sank. Whatever had happened, it looked like those neighbours who were still in residence had slept through it.

‘Who’s the
he?
Who’s
been slaughtered
? Husband? Brother? Father? Son?’ A thought hit her hard. ‘The killer’s timed this so that the students wouldn’t be around.’

As DS Bill Hendricks hurried into Pelham Grove, he called, ‘The paramedics are loading her on to a trolley stretcher.’

‘DS Riley!’ called Clay. ‘You go in the ambulance with the old woman. Call me when she comes round.’

‘I got it!’ Riley shouted back.

‘DCI Clay!’ The man’s voice was loud and urgent. He was facing a house near the centre of the terrace. ‘We’re pretty certain this is the one.’

Clay hurried along the pavement and up the stone steps. She reached down to the edge of the door and gave it a shove with her gloved fingers.

The door opened a few centimetres. A strange pattern of light emerged within the house.

She turned to the witnesses. ‘I think you’re right. This is it.’ DS Bill Hendricks and DS Karl Stone were behind her. ‘You’ve given your details to the WPC?’ They nodded. ‘Thank you for your assistance.’

‘We won’t breathe a word to anyone about any of this,’ said the woman.

‘I’d appreciate that,’ said Clay. ‘Because if there has been a murder, my guess is the killer lives around here.’ She registered their astonishment, allowed the uncomfortable notion to sink in. ‘You’ve helped the old lady. Help me with your ongoing silence.’

Clay opened the front door a little wider and eyed the door bell covered with two beige sticking plasters in an uneven X. The home of a person or people who did not expect visitors.

The flickering light inside the property grew brighter.

The door of the neighbouring house opened. A middle-aged man, blinking himself awake, asked, ‘What’s going on?’

‘Who lives here, sir?’ Clay asked him, holding up her warrant card.

‘Professor Leonard Lawson and his daughter Louise.’

‘Karl,’ she said to Stone, ‘talk to this gentleman, please. DS Hendricks, I’d like you to come inside the house with me.’

She looked around, saw DS Terry Mason and his assistant Sergeant Paul Price with two large evidence bags crammed with aluminium stacking plates.

Clay pushed the door open wide.

As the hall came into view, her eyes were drawn to the top of the staircase. A faulty white electrical appliance appeared to be casting out bands of intense light from a room upstairs.

She took in the whole scene. To the right of the staircase, and in the doorways leading into the rooms downstairs, nothing appeared to stand out.

Clay turned her attention back to the light at the top of the stairs.

‘OK, Terry, plate up the floor from the front door to the top of the stairs. We’re aiming for wherever that light’s coming from.’

‘He’s been slaughtered!’

Within seconds, Mason and Price were at the stairs, three plates down, three steps forward, moving with acrobatic precision. With moth-like compulsion to get directly to the light, Clay was grateful for their speed but also tempted to call,
Go faster, faster, faster!

She stepped into the hall, followed the Scientific Support officers on to the stairs. She looked up at the light and called, ‘Police! Anyone there, call out to me! We’re coming up the stairs!’