The Silent Ones (3 page)

Darren swallowed and tried to concentrate. Olivia’s house and garden were taken apart so thoroughly by Sussex Police there was nothing left of them by the time they’d finished. The house was later demolished.

Olivia accepted she was guilty, baldly said she’d murdered all five and never said another word. She had never revealed what she’d done to them, or where she’d put the bodies. She showed no remorse, had no understanding of what she had inflicted on the victims or their families and was judged to be legally insane. She was sentenced to life with no opportunity for parole and had been sent at first to a high-security hospital in the Midlands, but been moved three years later to Roehampton, a secure psychiatric hospital in south-west London.

He had been eleven when Carly had disappeared. She had been fourteen.

He pushed the box back under the bed.

He went back into his bedroom and lay down, computer games boxes cascading onto the pairs of trainers on the floor. He picked up his laptop and looked up Olivia’s name on Google. There were 1,753 million results. They tended to fall into distinct categories: articles denouncing the freak of nature that she was – how someone trained as a social worker to save and improve the lives of the disadvantaged could terminate them so coldly; campaigners who claimed she was innocent, her confession the misjudged ramblings of a disordered mind; the smaller numbers who believed that she hadn’t acted alone, that a man must have been pulling the strings behind her. The newest search results covered the attempts by the other families to get her to reveal where she had put their daughters’ remains, led by Orin Bukowski, Isla’s father, and his pressure group, The Missing. Under Google Images he found a succession of photos of Orin and a small group of protestors from The Missing climbing the outer wall of Roehampton Hospital to highlight Olivia’s lenient treatment. They’d unfurled a banner saying ‘Victims must come first’, and stayed on the wall for seventeen hours. They were applauded by the press for their show of defiance.

He typed ‘Roehampton Hospital’ into the search engine and looked at the low, red-brick buildings that seemed conspicuously free of high-security features; lots of green lawn and saplings. It looked like a place celebrities checked into and wore fluffy bathrobes as they dried out, rather than somewhere murderers and violent psychopaths went to be punished. He clicked through some more pages, read the biogs of the staff, saw the smiling faces of the directors. He looked at the place on Google Earth, zooming in and out again. He felt angry. The Witch had ended up on Easy Street, had a view with no barbed wire. She was probably enjoying herself – watching TV and taking self-improvement classes. He saw her in his mind in a sun-filled room, a pencil in her hand, a life drawing class in progress, hiding a sly grin of victory. An image of his mum begging her for scraps of information about a beloved daughter, debasing herself even though she was ill … The drumbeat of rage in his skull began to reach a crescendo and he sucked on his joint with quivering hands.

He clicked on a link that said ‘Job opportunities’. They were asking for a facilities manager, a financial controller, IT workers and cleaners.

He heard the front door opening and shut his computer in a hurry, as if what he was looking at was shameful.

Darren woke in the night with a start, a bad dream chasing him awake. He could hear low, urgent voices from the room next door. Mum and Dad were arguing, her voice reedy in the night. He turned to the wall and put his pillow over his head, but he still couldn’t block it out.

T
he next morning his mum was black in her mood, pacing the kitchen.

‘What time you call this to get up?’ She was on a war footing. ‘I don’t know why you think you can lounge around here all day, you need a job, Darren. J. O. B. Or paint the front of the house, put your degree to good use.’

Darren put his cup of tea down. ‘I got a fine art degree, Mum! It doesn’t mean I’m any good at painting the house!’

‘Too proud to get stuck in, that’s your generation. And cut your hair. Painting the house is the only thing you can do – no one’d hire you looking like that anyway.’

Darren rubbed his blond Rasta locks protectively. ‘Leave me alone!’ He stomped out of the kitchen and back towards his room.

‘And I don’t want you smoking your gear in the house, d’you hear me!’ she called after him.

He flopped down on the bed. He felt bad; she was ill and scared and he needed to be supportive, but he just wanted, for one day, to wake up and have a cuppa in peace. Living back at home was turning into a nightmare. He traced the knots and twists of his once vaguely curly hair with his fingers. He had left it for years uncombed and uncut, and it had twisted in and around on itself until it was a mass of shoulder length dreadlocks, lightened to blond by the sun and the salt water from the surfing he enjoyed. He had stopped cutting it when Carly disappeared, promising himself he would go to a barber when she came back. Ten years later, he still hadn’t touched it. And now he couldn’t, because he was more like his mum than he cared to admit – he was superstitious, and cutting it off would mean too many things, none of them positive.

In the creative bubble that was art school he hadn’t really thought about his hair, but back home in the real world he realised it served a purpose: he was shy and he hid underneath it.

He picked up his laptop, lifted the lid and found it still open on the Roehampton website page from last night. He took a deep lungful of smoke, feeling the ends of his fingers become numb.

The job vacancies swam in his vision. No one cared what a cleaner looked like, he thought. His hair wouldn’t be a disadvantage. He picked up his mobile and dialled before he had thought through what he was doing.

After he had chosen options on a menu and endured some lame classical music, a woman answered.

‘I’m calling about a cleaning job I saw on the website.’

‘Hold on a minute please.’ She put him through and after a few rings a man answered.

‘I’m phoning about a cleaning—’

He was cut off before he could finish. ‘Email in a CV. You’ll need previous experience.’ The voice had an accent Darren couldn’t place.

‘Of what?’

There was a pause, a sharp intake of breath. ‘What do you mean, of what? Cleaning.’

‘Oh, yeah, I see.’ Damn. He’d never worked as a cleaner. ‘I’ve worked in a pub, does that count? I’ve cleaned the glasses, wiped the counter and stuff.’

‘Toilets?’

‘Yeah, you’re right, sorry I forgot, I did that too.’

‘Of course, everyone wants to forget that. You need to have the right to work in the country.’

‘That’s all OK, I’m English.’

‘What you want, a medal? You need a DBS check.’

‘A what?’

‘Disclosure and Barring Service. It’s the new CRB. They’re in chaos, surprise, surprise. Their checks are taking ages. You need proof of ID. If you can’t provide all that, original documents, don’t bother applying.’

‘Er, OK.’

‘Who’s your friend here?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Who do you know who already works here?’

‘Oh, I don’t know anyone there already.’ There was the first pause, Darren fancied, of suspicion. ‘I’m moving in with my girlfriend and she lives nearby.’ He was surprised how easily the lie tripped out.

‘Can you start straight away?’

‘I guess.’

The man barked out his email address, said his name was Kamal.

‘Kamal what?’ Darren asked.

‘There’s only one of me,’ the man said, and put the phone down.

Darren lay back and smoked the rest of the joint. The day ahead of him existed in great acres of unformed time. He was out of sorts and there was no Chester to walk.

The phone call was ridiculous, a mania brought on by Chester’s death, by his warring parents, his sick mum being humiliated by Olivia Duvall.

And then there was the insurmountable problem about who he was. A victim’s brother, trying to get a job at the facility where her killer was housed! He wouldn’t get within a hundred feet of the place.

He lay back on the bed, dropped the tab into a wooden cannon he’d made in A level Art and looked at the preliminary studies of a series of paintings that covered his bedroom wall. He groaned, realising the absurdity of what he had just done, but he couldn’t let it go. A few minutes later, he changed the surname on his CV and pinged it to Kamal, and promptly fell fast asleep.

T
he next afternoon Darren was in the bath, a joint in one hand, trying to shove his toe up the tap. It was midweek, Mum was laid out on the sofa cushions in the living room; the pills she was taking were robbing her of energy and any desire to eat. Dad was at work. His mobile rang with a blocked-number message. He answered it.

‘Is this Mr Smith?’

‘Wrong number.’ Darren put the phone back down on the porcelain.

A moment later it rang again. ‘I’m looking for Darren Smith. It’s Roehampton High-Security Hospital.’

Darren sat up sharply, sending a wave of water over the side of the tub. ‘Er, yeah. That’s me.’ His pulse was racing. He had forgotten that Smith was the name he’d put on the application form when he was stoned.

There was a long, tense pause.

‘It’s Kamal. Can you come for an interview on Friday?’

‘Friday?’

‘It’s the day after Thursday,’ Kamal said, not hiding the sarcasm. Darren wanted to say no. He wanted to scream it, that it had all been a mistake. ‘Come Friday at ten. Remember your documents.’

All Darren could think of to say was, ‘OK.’

Kamal hung up without saying goodbye.

‘Darren, stop slopping water over the side of the bath!’ Mum was yelling from downstairs. ‘It’s dripping through the ceiling!’

He struggled out of the water, the thin bathmat failing to cope with the water draining off his long limbs. He used his foot to sweep the dishcloth of a bathmat around the soaking floor. He wrapped a towel round his middle and padded downstairs, shaking water from his hair like Chester after a dunk in the park pond.

Mum was reading a card, a friend expressing her sympathy probably, which had come with a gift box of lotions and potions. She was staring absent-mindedly out of the window, rubbing cream across her knuckles.

She turned and appraised him. ‘Goodness, look at you. It’s funny, I forget that you’re so tall.’ She sighed, a faraway smile appearing. ‘So strong. I never thought I’d see a six-pack again! You’re lucky your genetic heritage isn’t ours. Evanses are short and Michaelses are stubby.’ Darren’s heart constricted as he saw what he thought was fear on her face. ‘Maybe you’ll avoid this fate too.’ She tapped her chest and held up the card.

Darren felt goosebumps stand up proud on his arms as if a door was open somewhere. He sat down next to her on the sofa and put his arm round her shoulders. He felt a desperate tenderness for her that he couldn’t express. He wanted to take away some of her pain, to soothe her, if only for a moment. ‘Mum, I’ve got a job interview.’

Her tired eyes widened in surprise and her face creased into a smile. ‘That’s great. Where?’

Now Darren wished he could take it back. This was typical of him; he had acted on impulse to try to make things better and had not thought through the consequences. His mind had drained of every word except the one he couldn’t say: Roehampton. He struggled to think of a job that would please her and cast around the room, hunting for inspiration. He saw a crown on the front of a pack of Tarot cards on the table. ‘At King’s College Hospital. In the records department.’ He didn’t even have the ambition to think of a creative lie, he thought.

‘That’s fantastic. It’s a start. Think of that debt you’ve built up.’

‘You only pay off the student debt when you start earning enough.’

‘Well, they’ll be waiting a long time, eh?’ She stood up, ruffling his hair fondly, and left the room.

Darren picked up the card next to the gift box; it was from one of her friends. The loopy writing said, ‘A little something to help you face the battle that is to come.’

Darren put the card back on the coffee table, berating himself for his dull, stupid lie. In a couple of days he would have to tell Mum that he hadn’t got the job, which would make her feel worse, not better. He would seem even more of a failure to her. His eyes came to rest on the picture on the shelf by the fire, a photograph of Carly, Mum, Dad and him, on a beach in Devon, taken by a kindly dog walker. It had been shot the last summer before she was ripped from them. He had been happy then, a different person, a better person. The Witch had changed and reduced them all.

He got up fast and came out into the hall, grabbed his jacket that hung from the banister and went upstairs to his room. He rifled through his jacket looking for ID. He found a student card with a photo and his former student address on it, the name Darren Evans clearly printed across the middle. He glanced at his full-colour, top of the range printer, bought as a Christmas present by his parents for his artworks.

He opened his computer and began to work, days of inaction now replaced by a feverish concentration on forging an ID card. He played around with fonts, downloaded new ones that were subtly different. Four hours later he was placing a new ID card back in the worn plastic student card cover. He was proud of his work; it looked realistic. He knew that this card alone wouldn’t be enough to get the job – he needed a passport or driving licence too, and those were beyond his artistic skills. But he had to admit it felt good, it felt like he was taking action. It would get him in the door of Roehampton for an interview. It would get him closer than he had ever been to the woman who had murdered his sister.

F
riday dawned hot and still as Darren cycled across south London to the hospital. Roehampton was uglier and shabbier than it looked onscreen. The woman at the front desk was in civilian clothes and made him fill out a pass, gave him the top copy and told him to pin it to his chest. He sat down on a plastic chair and watched people coming and going past a security checkpoint at the other end of the lobby.