The Silence (Dc Goodhew 4) (32 page)

He scrambled through, into the kitchen, and grabbed the bunch of keys from their hook. He was heading for the front door when he noticed the answerphone flashing. On the off-chance that Libby had left a message, he went over and pressed ‘play’. A message from yesterday, from Matt:
Hi, Libby, it’s me, de-da-de-da . . .

Tony pressed ‘
stop
’ and listened. He heard nothing, but pushed the door open to the sitting room. Then: ‘Oh fuck, Vicky.’

She lay face down, a pool of blood around her head and a thick, immobile trail of it visible through her matted hair. ‘Vicky,
Vicky
.’

He reached out and found she was still warm. He put his ear close to her mouth and heard the faint sound of her breathing. ‘I’ll get help. Stay with me, Vicky.’

He eased her into the recovery position, grabbed the house phone and hit 999, saying, ‘Ambulance.’ He gave the details of her injuries but stopped short of telling them who had done it. Whatever he said now, he’d probably still get the blame. Only Vicky could decide whether he deserved it.

This time there’d be no running from the responsibility. He knew it was his.

Her lips moved a fraction. ‘Don’t talk,’ he told her. ‘I know who did this. I need to find Libby.’

She opened her nearer eye a couple of millimetres, and mouthed what looked like a soundless ‘
Matt
.’

He tried again, but her eye reclosed and stayed that way.

He hurried from the house, leaving the front door wide open. ‘Vicky needs help!’ He shouted it twice, as loudly as he could, and prayed the neighbours really were as vigilant as he believed.

Tony Brett uttered a second prayer as he swung out into the main road and saw the ambulance headed towards him. Time was everything, for all of them, right now.

Had Vicky thought that Libby was still with Matt – was that all she meant? Or was there more? He could have misread the word on her silent lips.

He drove towards the city in any case, instincts pushing him towards Matt and King Street.

Several times, he glanced at his phone which sat beside him on the seat. Could the police really find Libby more easily? They might not even believe him, especially once they discovered he’d just driven away from the home of a seriously beaten woman.

He pulled over into a layby on Victoria Avenue, next to the dome-roofed public toilets. He was within sight of Four Lamps Corner and the end of King Street, but he could see the crowds there. It made more sense to ring Matt, one final shot at working out what Vicky had meant; after that he’d call the police despite his misgivings.

He opened his contacts list, sure that he still had Matt’s number in there. He wasn’t like Vicky with her lilac iPhone and consistent formatting of every name and number. He’d rung Matt and was waiting for it to connect. It was all he could do to sit still. Vicky’s phone even had a photograph against each contact. He thought of her picture of Matt, a sunny day and the rarity of his smile.

It switched to voicemail. That didn’t matter. Tony now knew where Matt’s photo had been taken and knew why Vicky had tried so hard to whisper his name.

Tony swung the car round in a wide arc. He knew exactly where he was headed and the idea of calling the police was instantly gone.

Goodhew had spotted Charlotte the moment her house came within sight; she was standing next to her front door, bare armed, with a laptop clutched across her chest. She’d hurried to the kerbside as soon as she saw the blue light. Her first words were, ‘Libby’s missing.’

‘We’re already searching for her,’ he’d told her, but doubted that did anything to ease her fears.

Now she sat in the seat next to him, laptop open, as they wove through the streets. ‘I can’t open her emails until I get on the Internet.’

‘It’ll be easy at the station. Just tell me what you’ve found.’

‘Messages between Libby and a girl named Zoe. Doesn’t matter about Zoe right now – she was a fake profile Libby set up on Facebook just so she had someone to talk to. There are pages of it, and that’s all Libby was doing, talking – like you would to a therapist, I suppose.’

He asked again, ‘What did you find?’

‘That’s just it – I don’t know. Her dad phoned me, panicking because she hadn’t turned up. I couldn’t get hold of her or Matt. I didn’t know what to do so I went on to her computer and found this. I started reading, but there’s so much and I knew there wasn’t time. It’s too much for me, too impossible. I rang you because I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘Where’s Matt?’

‘In town. Phil wanted them all to join in the Run.’

‘Phil told me that too, but said no one would speak to him.’

‘Right.’ She pulled a rueful face. ‘Phil phoned our house and I answered. I actually thought it was a good idea. I talked them round.’ She paused. ‘Saying goodbye’s important.’

Goodhew glanced away and concentrated on the road again, but he could clearly hear the distress rising in her voice.

‘So Libby went too?’

‘Yes, but only to meet them beforehand. She must have decided she’d show her support. But if she found out her dad was being released and she’d promised to be there, she wouldn’t let him down.’

‘How would she travel from King Street to home?’

‘Bike – but, no, not today. She and Matt came into town together, and his bike’s still at home.’

‘Bus, then?’

She nodded.

‘D’you think she’d accept a lift from anyone she didn’t know?’

‘Absolutely not. She’s very careful that way.’

He considered that for a moment: being careful was such a dangerous game.

Safer to be a lone pedestrian at night, or take a lift with a friend who might be driving drunk? Safer to meet a stranger in public or secretly meet someone you think you know? Safer to keep it secret than feel embarrassed, in case the friendship is misconstrued? Sometimes it took luck as much as judgement. Especially with people you barely know.

More so when, like Shanie, you’re thousands of miles from home.

The police station was in sight now, meaning little time for a major switch of topic. ‘Shanie said she met someone for a drink but they never turned up. Any idea who it was?’

‘No,’ Charlotte shook her head, ‘but Libby and Matt talked about it. Shanie said she’d wasted her money . . .’

‘. . . because she’d bought a drink for the person already?’

‘Yes, so they reckon it would have been someone she knew quite well . . .’

‘. . . otherwise she wouldn’t have known what type of drink to buy.’

‘Exactly. Don’t keep finishing my sentences.’

Goodhew didn’t reply. He pulled up to the front of the station instead of driving into the car park. The image of Shanie buying an extra drink was floating in his head, and somewhere in the back of his mind was the other half of that picture, the anchor that would hold it all still long enough to tell him where to go.

Charlotte started to speak but he turned his head away. He stared at the lamp-post in the centre of Parker’s Piece.

Reality Checkpoint
was the name given to this lamp-post that stood on the spot where the paths crossed; its four curled arms pointed to every boundary to the city. The ancient buildings, the research, every possible subject, the edge of science. Past, present and future. A small city that touched the whole world. All the answers were here and he just wanted one, one snippet of Cambridge Trivia.

The Rain Check Tree.

He grabbed Charlotte’s wrist. ‘Take that in, ask for PC Sue Gully. Only her. Tell her I need her to read it all now.’ He leaned across her and opened her door. ‘I have to go.’

Goodhew floored the accelerator and cut through the lights on red; he then drove up East Road, riding the white line and trusting the siren to clear the way through the next three sets of lights too.

The next left took him on to Maids Causeway, and from there he’d have a straight run to the end of King Street and the St Radegund. The traffic was busy but moving freely, and he had no trouble weaving through the cars all the way to Four Lamps, the closest spot to the pub. He jumped out and dashed into the throng of competitors and spectators who were filling the pavements outside the pub doors.

Why hadn’t he remembered the Rain Check Tree? Why hadn’t he noticed it there when he’d gone in with Phil? ‘Police, let me through.’ A few stepped aside, he repeated himself and pushed forward, through the doorway. And for a moment wondered whether he hadn’t noticed it because it had gone.

‘Move aside!’ he shouted.

But he knew it would be there. Notes promising drinks had been pinned there for years. A round to say congratulations. A pint bought for a baby at birth, redeemable on their eighteenth birthday.

A sorry-I-missed-you drink.

Goodhew was only a couple of feet away from the bar when he saw the first of the white memo-block squares pinned to the upright beam. ‘Police!’ he yelled. ‘I need to reach the bar.’

Someone chipped in with, ‘Queue like everyone else.’

A couple of his mates laughed.

No one moved much, there just wasn’t the space. Goodhew pushed through the final gap between the two nearest drinkers and started snatching at the squares of paper.

The landlord stopped serving. ‘What do you need?’

‘Anything recent.’

The landlord came over and grabbed a handful; Goodhew did the same. ‘How recent?’ the man asked.

‘Last four weeks,’ Goodhew told him.

‘They don’t always get pinned on top, so check them all.’

Goodhew nodded and pulled down the next clutch of notes. The man standing next to him did the same. Goodhew reached for the sheets. ‘Here, let me.’

The man held them out of Goodhew’s reach. Began shuffling them haphazardly. Protruding from under the man’s thumb were the letters ‘S-H-A’. ‘Hand it over now!’ Goodhew barked, snatching the message from the man’s grasp.

She’d written across it diagonally in large block letters,
YOUR ROUND NEXT TIME!!
And at the top of the sheet, in much smaller writing, the man’s name.

Goodhew held it tightly and turned for the door. Despite the crush of people, their noise and their pub-crawl-addled wits, he broke through in moments, bursting out to Four Lamps and his car.

Now he understood Tony Brett and what the conversation had meant. And he knew why Tony Brett had had no plans to share the identity of the killer of his own children.

Why would he, when Tony Brett thought he could reach the killer first?

Matt was still sitting slumped on the pavement when he saw the pulse of police lights against the walls of the whitewashed houses at the Midsummer Common end of the street. He wasn’t particularly curious. He couldn’t imagine the King Street Run taking place without at least a minor emergency. Even so, he gave in to the basic urge not to miss out on anything, and clambered to his feet.

Then he spotted the man pushing through the drinkers and heading into the St Radegund: DC Goodhew.

Now it was Matt’s turn to push forward.

There were two doors to the pub, and he chose the closer. He’d caught his first glimpse of inside just as Goodhew broke away from some activity at the bar and pelted towards the other exit.

Matt backed out of the door and chased after Goodhew, but the detective was both quicker and probably completely sober. By the time Matt arrived at the police car, Goodhew was already inside with the engine running. Matt threw himself in front of the bonnet, shouting, ‘Stop, stop!’ – until he realized that Goodhew was shouting into his radio and simultaneously reaching across to open the passenger door.

‘Get in.’ Then, to the radio, ‘I’ve got Matt Stone.’

From the radio: ‘We’re running his van through ANPR, see if we can track it.’

They signed off and Goodhew turned to look at Matt properly for the first time. His expression sobered Matt in a heartbeat. He had no idea exactly what he was about to hear, but knew it was going to alter the course of his life.

Not Libby . . . no, not Libby
.

Goodhew already had the car in gear, handbrake off, foot over the accelerator. The moments before Goodhew spoke seemed to stretch for an eternity. Matt understood: he had to listen carefully, respond accurately. Goodhew was looking at him to make a difference.

‘Matt, we need to find Colin Wren immediately. You’ve known him a long time. Where would he go?’

‘His house – our house if he’s with Dad.’

‘Does he have a key?’

‘Knows where to find it.’

Goodhew radioed that through. ‘Where else?’

‘I don’t know.’ Goodhew hadn’t driven off yet, so Matt knew he wasn’t giving the right answer. ‘Oh, shit, yes, the allotment. Arbury Road.’

That was enough: they shot forward, accelerating towards Arbury.

Goodhew spoke to the radio: it spoke back. Some of it passed Matt by but he understood enough: helicopter scrambled, cars going to multiple locations, ambulance and police in attendance at 57 Brimley Close.

A jolt of shock went through him. ‘What’s happened to Libby?’

Goodhew’s eyes were pinned on the road. ‘We don’t know.’

‘But she’s hurt?’

‘We’re trying to find her.’

No, no, Matt wasn’t buying that. He needed to know. ‘Don’t hide it from me. They’ve just said there’s a fucking ambulance at her house.’

‘Her mother’s been attacked. Her dad’s missing. His car has gone from outside their house.’

‘And you think Colin’s behind it?’

‘Yes.’ Flat, matter-of-fact.

They were rounding Mitcham’s Corner now. Matt had been round here a hundred times in Colin’s van, helping him with planting. Helping his dad to help Colin. And helping his dad keep his job with Colin – that lifeline they’d all been thrown by his dad’s best friend from school. He didn’t want to believe it. The man had been like family, and all the time . . . ‘He killed Nathan?’ His voice hovered between doubt and disbelief. ‘And Rosie? And Meg and Shanie?’

‘Meg really was a suicide. Shanie was killed with insulin, there was none present for Meg.’

‘Okay.’ Matt didn’t know why he said that. It was just his mouth running solo for a minute, while his brain tried to lock on to something else. He just didn’t know what.