The Silent Ones (34 page)

Her face dropped into its mask-like state, the light in her eyes gone. ‘I don’t know. We narrowed it down to a core of thirty of my dad’s contacts. Lauren talked to me about it only once before she put herself out of her misery. She was too scared to even utter his name.’ Her voice was low and unhurried, like acid dripping on metal and slowly discolouring it. ‘It’s been ten years. It takes a long time to eliminate suspects, to tail them at night and to befriend them online and to break passwords and to delve into the most hidden parts of a man’s life. But we will get there. When Isla gets close, it’s going to get dangerous. She’ll need help. When it’s required, Carly will fight the fight, and no amount of doltish adoration from her brother or fluttering hands from her mother will stop her. You know now what she’s capable of. She’s pretty impressive, your sister.’

Darren glanced at the long black window at the side of the room, where normal people, good people, were waiting to lead him away from this. He felt so tired, so beaten down by the scale of her ambition. ‘It’s over, Olivia. It’s done.’

She smiled and threw her hair back, and he saw she had a terrible, uncompromising beauty. ‘Did the police tell you what was found at the scene of Gert Becker’s death?’ Darren felt dread coat his stomach. ‘The avenging angel left a note, a calling card, if you like. “The Silent Ones”. It won’t be the last time you see that name. It’s not over, Darren, the fight against the men who hate women is only just beginning.’

‘You can’t take the law into your own hands—’

‘A woman’s hands are all she’s got. Sexual violence is such a distinctive, peculiar crime; the victim goes on trial with the perpetrator, more often than not the man walks free. Not in my world. I’ve made my mistakes—’

‘What mistakes?’

She was in a mood for revelations. ‘Eric Cox was one, but my methods improved.’

‘Your old boyfriend? What do you mean?’

‘You know why Eric went to jail? For fencing stolen cars. He saw the inside of a cell because he took a car. He raped underage girls but he went to jail for theft.’ There was a long pause, during which a smile began to creep out from the sides of her mouth. ‘I got him to confess to his real crimes. It took time, but I got there. What I didn’t get was a recording.’

Something in her tone made the hairs on Darren’s neck rise. His voice was so quiet when he spoke that he wondered that she could hear him at all. ‘The blood that the police found in the back garden of your house, it couldn’t be from the girls. So whose was it?’

Her smile widened and it chilled Darren to the bone.

‘Was that Eric?’ he asked.

‘Among others.’

Darren stood up sharply. He opened the door, desperate to get away. ‘I hate you.’

As the door began to swing shut behind him he caught a last glimpse of her. Her eyes were flaming with flecks of fire as she mouthed, ‘I love you.’

T
he man heard the knock on his office door and shouted ‘Come in.’ One of the countless middle-aged lackeys who populated his department stepped in and the man tried hard to look like he was pleased to see him.

The lackey sat down and pointed at a photo in a frame on his desk in a bid to be conversational. The man wondered what favour was about to be grovelled for.

‘You’ve gotten far too prosperous in your old age,’ the lackey said. ‘You look thinner in this picture here.’ It was his family bathed in sun, leaning on a gate in the Cotswolds. He was glad he had dusted it off and put it on show; people had a strong desire to believe in the myths they saw in photos. It also served another purpose. Now that the revelations about Gert Becker had exploded into international news, he needed to polish his family-man credentials. ‘How old is your daughter now?’ the lackey continued.

‘Nearly all grown up, off to Oxford in October, if she gets the grades.’ He sighed, as if seeking sympathy. ‘It seems harder than it was in our day.’

The lackey smiled with recognition. ‘Anyway, the reason I’m here—’

‘And I thought you’d come by because you liked me.’

A sycophant’s grin spread across the lackey’s face. ‘We all have to bow at the feet of the powers that be, Harris.’

Harris pulled on the cuffs of his blue shirt.

‘So, it’s about this Isla Bukowski thing and the Gert Becker video confession.’

The smile died on Harris’s face.

‘The minister wants to make a statement in the house.’

He was surprised and didn’t hide it. ‘Whatever for?’

‘It’s pandering to public opinion in the most craven way, if you ask me. The press can talk about little else. You know questions are being asked about why the police never found those women before, about the Bukowski girl playing the avenging angel and going AWOL. The minister’s looking for somewhere to park the blame and walk away.’

‘Well she’s not parking it with us,’ Harris said indignantly.

‘Of course, but we need to be seen to be doing something. An inquiry, most likely.’

‘Well, that’s not a problem. We can find someone to be knee-deep in old paper for a couple of years.’

‘Indeed.’ The lackey paused. ‘But there’s another area that needs attention. These women were being trained, supposedly. Trained to seek out men with,’ he waved a hand vaguely as if the right word was about to float by on an air current, ‘predilections to unsavoury behaviour.’ He fiddled with his tie and then smoothed it.

The idiot’s so constipated, Harris thought, he can’t even mention the word sex. Or rape. Or murder.

‘Terrorism fears are at fever pitch at present. A secret group being trained covertly comes under the remit of this department to some extent. We need to keep an eye on these women, undertake surveillance, make sure there’s no blowback on the department. The lowest level, I’d suggest, just to keep tabs.’

Harris stood up fast. He yanked on his blue cuffs again, hard this time, and banged his hand so loudly on the table that the family photo clattered to the floor.

‘Fuck! Can’t you see the bigger picture? If something happens to an innocent male member of the public because of these women, it’s bedlam, vigilante justice at its worst. Every man in the country will be quaking in their beds fearing they’re going to be pulled from them and stuck in front of a video camera with a knife to their bollocks!’

The lackey reeled back in his seat. Harris leaned forward, menacingly. ‘Low-level surveillance, are you mad? We have the budget – find your balls and get a team! Jesus, I’ll take control of it and end this once and for all.’ He pointed his finger at him. ‘You know what, this is personal. Personal, because I’ve got a pair, like thirty million other Britons.’

The lackey grinned, pleased he could tip the whole troublesome matter out of his in-box and into someone else’s. Harris didn’t let up. ‘And what in hell is happening with the one who hasn’t been found? This Bukowski girl?’

‘Word downstairs is that the police have no idea where she is or who she’s with.’

Harris swore. ‘The DCI presiding over this mess is going to be over my knee getting spanked by the end of the day. He will report to me by Friday too.’

‘By all means, Harris, take control. It does seem as if someone needs to and having a senior person on board who is passionate about the issue is all to the good. I’ll inform the Home Secretary. Keep me abreast of developments.’ He stood up and turned to the door. ‘Remember, come to our party in Kent next Saturday. Bring Julia, Sally would love to see her. And pray for sun.’

The door closed and Harris yanked his shirt cuffs down again. He looked out of his window at the spire of Big Ben poking over the squat sixties tower blocks. Gert Becker had been exposed. Harris wasn’t hugely worried – ever since he had first begun, years ago, to target the vulnerable daughters of friends and associates he had taken precautions – but the Bukowski stunt was audacious. Olivia Duvall obviously couldn’t connect him and Lauren, even after searching for ten years. His position seemed secure, but he didn’t know what information Becker had given up under his torture. He needed to be front foot and ready, that was all. No one was going to unseat him from this spot of power and influence. He’d risen until only the pigeons pecked higher.

He felt the familiar itch begin its faint thrum in his heart, the drumbeat of excitement, transgression and desire. A 24-year-old, friendless waif, unused to the world, without a family or a home, partially locked up for a decade and scarred by extreme images she had seen as a child. She was pitting her pathetic sense of justice and retribution against the security apparatus of one of the world’s richest countries. One thing was for certain: he would enjoy Isla Bukowski when he finally got hold of her.

T
he tide was low, the great expanse of yellow beach unpeeled and staring up at the sun. It was going to be an Indian-summer scorcher of a day, the news had said. It was still early and the teenager in cut-offs and a T-shirt with a money belt slung low on her hips like a Wild West gunslinger had plenty of change for the car park fee. Darren pulled in and rolled down to the spots nearest the beach. He sat staring at the view for a moment as everyone else opened the car doors and began to unload the mountains of gear that they had with them.

Dad was fussing over the portable chairs and an umbrella. Mum was putting the lead on Carly’s puppy – she had named him Skye. Chloe was picking up plastic bags full of food that looked like they would split under their own weight. She had a towel, a cricket set and a bodyboard too. Darren got out of the car and began to untie the surfboards from the roof. Carly stood on the other side of the car and threw the straps back to Darren. He caught his sister’s eye and grinned.

‘It’s corduroy,’ Darren said.

She nodded, staring west, and for the thousandth time since she had burst back into their lives Darren wondered what she was thinking, marvelled at how she had coped and remained stunned at her ability to rise, relatively unscathed, from the darkest depths of human despair. He pulled the surfboards from the roof and placed them on the ground, looking at his reunited family.

Mum was running in tight little circles chasing Skye, Dad was pointing out to no one in particular something about rock formations. Chloe was good-naturedly coping with the madness of the last few months and throwing Darren a lifeline of love and pleasure. He didn’t deserve her, he felt, which made her love for him all the more precious.

They had waited so long for Carly to come back to them and that road had not been easy. For Carly, too, there had been so many challenges to meet: long months of intense counselling and adjustment to family and adult life when most of her childhood had been stolen, all carried out under a white-hot media glare, the swirl of theories and speculation about Olivia, Berenice, Isla and the other girls.

At times it had seemed that they would drown in it, the ramifications like a tidal wave from an underground earthquake. Darren had begged Orin to give them time, time to heal and adjust before they began work to find the last one missing; the police were still sifting through a mountain of evidence from the lock-up and Gert Becker’s confession. But these were details that felt far off; the adjustments closer to home were more heartfelt. Guilt ate away at Dad still, guilt that he had not had faith like Melanie, he had not believed. For Mum herself, her battle with cancer remained something she was determined to win, but her treatment was ongoing and the outcome still uncertain.

Darren changed into his wetsuit, picked up Carly’s board and his own and began to walk down the steps to the beach. Later in the day they would queue for tea and ice cream at the shop, sunkissed and wave-cleansed, the city and its concerns blasted from their skin and their minds.

He felt the cool sand between his toes, his shadow still long as he walked to the sea. They crossed the sand in a straggle: a family – compromised, complicated, but all heading in the same direction. He looked at the huge Devon cliffs soaring skywards, monumental and everlasting. There were decades of life still to live, years and years of it to enjoy and to take on. He turned to his sister and felt bliss in his heart. She could, and she would, recover. Her life would be long; finally she could dive in and live it.

Carly was standing near him in her wetsuit, her board under her arm. She was still, as she often was, happier the longer she waited for something. He felt it was a result of her restricted teenage years, this ability to wait and wait. Her eyes were narrowed against the light. She was counting waves, he realised, waiting for the larger seventh, anticipating the right moment.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

She turned to him, her hair streaming backwards, and she smiled. ‘I’m ready.’ They walked towards the Atlantic together.

Books are never written by the author alone, and there are many people I wish to thank for their encouragement and inspiration while I worked on
The Silent Ones
. My editor, Francesca Best, and the publicity and marketing team at Hodder, have been as enthusiastic and professional as any writer could wish for. My agent, Peter Straus, has always been a trusty guiding hand. A huge thank you to my family and friends for their anecdotes and stories, which have forever improved and informed my own.