Splinter the Silence (42 page)

Tony had been inside twice. Once for a colleague’s overblown wedding to a Cheshire stockbroker, and once for a conference organised by a rich Swiss pharmaceutical company. He’d found the interior intimidating and uncomfortable, but guessed that was the effect it was supposed to have on the likes of him. Today, he’d have to ignore its effect on him and concentrate on the man he was there to save. It scarcely crossed his mind that he might be wrong. He couldn’t have explained why he was so certain. But he was.

As he drew nearer to the hotel, he slowed his pace and craned his neck to look up. He knew the tall windows that started at ground level were an optical illusion that actually ran the height of two interior floors. From Wikipedia, he’d learned that the hotel had fourteen floors. That meant Martin would be somewhere on the second level down. Among the pinnacles and decorative balusters it was hard to distinguish whether there was anyone there. Tony squinted and peered, but he couldn’t see any movement.

He walked the length of the frontage and turned the corner. The Exchange occupied a whole block, so he’d be able to circle the entire building without any difficulty. He crossed the street for a better view but still he saw no one.

But when he rounded the next corner, Tony could see a figure outlined high above the street. He was outside the third window from the end, leaning on the stone parapet that came up to his waist. Tony barely paused, lowering his eyes to avoid Martin realising he was being observed. As soon as he reached the next corner, he stopped and took out his phone. When Carol answered, he said, ‘I think I’ve found him. I need you and Paula here to arrest him when I talk him down. And probably to get me alongside him. Can you do that for me?’

‘You’re kidding.’ Carol said, incredulous. Then, with resignation, ‘No, you’re not. Where are you?’

‘Outside the Exchange Hotel. On the Midland Street side. I can see him on the thirteenth floor. Like I said.’

‘We’re on our way. We’ll come round the front. See you there.’

Tony continued on his way back to the front of the hotel. He was itching to get to Matthew Martin but he knew that trying to make it on his own would only end in disaster. He’d freak out a chambermaid or terrify some innocent guest or get into a fight. Slowly, he was beginning to learn from experience to modify his impulses when it came to confronting the kind of people who didn’t understand his therapeutic desires. He’d pushed his luck once with the call to Martin’s father. Twice in a row would be too much to hope for.

He didn’t have long to wait. Carol and Paula drew up outside the hotel less than seven minutes after he’d called. Carol didn’t waste any time; she swept into the hotel with Paula and Tony scurrying in her wake. She flashed her ID and gave the receptionist the hard stare and in moments, they were in the office behind reception, talking to the duty manager, an elegant young man with a French accent. ‘There’s a man on the ledge outside the thirteenth floor,’ Carol said.

The manager frowned. ‘We do not have a thirteenth floor.’

It was a weird response, Tony thought. To be more concerned with the numbering of the floors than a potential suicide displayed a disturbing ordering of priorities. ‘The floor below the top floor.’

‘That is the fourteenth floor.’

‘But it’s actually the thirteenth floor,’ Tony persisted. ‘Only you don’t have a floor called the thirteenth floor, right? Because people are superstitious?’

The manager pulled a face. ‘If you say so. But yes, the floor above the twelfth is the fourteenth.’

‘I’m glad we got that cleared up,’ Carol said, failing to hide the sarcasm. ‘Where exactly is he, Tony?’

‘He’s outside the third window from the corner of Midland Street.’

The manager’s eyes strayed upwards, as if he was envisaging the layout above him. ‘This is a bedroom,’ he said. ‘Fourteen forty-seven, I think.’

‘What’s the layout outside the windows?’ Carol asked.

‘There is a ledge and a parapet. The ledge runs right along the floor. But you can’t get out there from the bedrooms. The windows don’t open far enough.’

‘So how has he got out there?’ Paula asked.

‘He must have used the maintenance door. It’s round the corner.’

Tony gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Whatever he used, I need to get out there, and I need to get out there now, before he manages to wind himself up to the point where he can actually jump.’ Seeing the manager’s shocked face, he continued. ‘What? You think he’s up there for the view? He’s going to kill himself unless I can stop him.’

The manager flushed. ‘But that’s terrible. You must stop him.’ He pushed past them and headed out of the room, pausing to look over his shoulder. ‘Come on, I’ll take you there now.’

In the lift, the manager couldn’t keep still, twitching and fidgeting like a sugared-up toddler. ‘Why has he done this? Why has he come here? Does he have some grudge against us?’

‘It’s nothing personal against the hotel,’ Tony said. ‘It means something to him, that’s all. Something from his family history.’

On the fourteenth floor, they hurried down the thickly carpeted hallway until they reached an anonymous door that was almost invisible against the dark walls. The manager held a plastic card against the electronic lock. It buzzed and released. He pushed it open a crack. ‘I don’t how he got through here. This should not be possible.’

‘I’ll take it from here,’ Tony said.

The manager looked as if he was about to protest, but Paula put a firm hand on his arm. ‘He knows what he’s doing. You need to wait here.’ Her voice was like the caress of a mother towards a fretful child. Tony nodded his thanks and slipped through the door.

59

T
he first thing that struck him was the wind. Barely a breeze at ground level, up on the thirteenth floor it was a gusty tug, ruffling his hair and chilling his ears. The traffic noise from below swirled round him in phases. Tony checked out his surroundings. The ledge was about two feet wide, a dirty kerb of gritty concrete; cheap material here where it couldn’t be seen, unlike the ornate red sandstone and brick of the visible exterior. All around it ran a carved stone balustrade at waist height, its top about a foot wide. Deep enough to sit on comfortably, Tony calculated. He made his way gingerly to the corner, telling himself he was perfectly safe.

He moved round the corner, trying not to startle Martin. He needn’t have worried. The other man didn’t stir. He was sitting on the parapet, his legs dangling over space, his hands loosely gripping the edge of the sandstone. His features were drawn, his eyes screwed up as if it hurt to focus. ‘Don’t come any closer,’ he said, his voice dark with tension.

‘OK,’ Tony said. ‘I’m just going to come round the corner because I can’t stand halfway round without it hurting. If that’s all right?’

‘Keep out of reach.’

‘You’ve no worries on that score. If you’re going down, I don’t want to be dragged down with you. You’re Matthew, right? Or do you prefer Matt? My name’s Tony. Tony Hill. I’m not a police officer. I’m a psychologist.’

‘You’re wasting your time.’ The tone matched the bluntness of the words.

‘I don’t think you’ve thought this through. Not properly.’

A quick sideways glance. ‘You know nothing.’

Tony sighed. ‘Actually, I know quite a lot. I know what happened to your mum. I expect that was devastating for you.’

‘Leave my mum out of this.’

‘I’d love to, Matthew, but you know I can’t. She’s the reason all of this happened.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I know that if she hadn’t gone off to Greenham, none of this would have been necessary. If she hadn’t listened to those women, she’d still be alive. Those women who don’t understand what it means to be a wife and mother. That’s the best thing a woman can ever be, isn’t it?’ He paused. Nothing. Time for a sideways shift from straight sympathy.

Tony leaned against the parapet, stuffing his hands in his pockets to keep them warm. ‘I understand the point you’ve been trying to make. These women should shut up. They should stop trying to make men feel bad about wanting women to be proper wives and mothers. They should shut up, right?’

Martin turned his head. ‘They can do what they want. But they’ve got no right to try and make other women think like them. If women want to be good mothers and take care of their families, nobody should tell them not to. Nobody should try to turn them against men who want to take care of them.’ It was a long speech in the circumstances and Tony was pleased to hear it.

‘When your mum and dad came here for their wedding reception, all they wanted was to be a happy family.’

‘Exactly. We were happy. She was happy. Till those women took her away from us.’

‘It’s what you wanted too, isn’t it? To make a family with Sarah?’

Matthew flinched. ‘I don’t want to talk about Sarah.’

‘But she spoiled all that.’

‘Those so-called friends of hers, filling her head full of their shit, telling her it was too early to have a baby, telling her I wasn’t good enough for her to make her life with. She should never have listened to them. But they overwhelmed her. They didn’t give her space to think for herself.’ He shifted his buttocks, edging slightly forward on the parapet.

‘I can’t imagine how I’d feel if someone I loved killed my child,’ Tony said. Now it was time to start needling. To provoke a response. As long as they were talking, there was hope. ‘I guess I’d be grief-stricken. And angry too. She didn’t have the right to do that, did she?’ The thrust met no parry. Martin said nothing; he carried on staring down at the street below. ‘Any man would be driven to do something about it. The trouble is, Sarah was the tip of the iceberg. Everywhere you looked online, there were women pushing other Sarahs into doing the same kind of thing.’

This time, Martin spoke. ‘You have no idea,’ he said, his voice grating in his throat.

‘I do, you know. They’re everywhere. I can see why you thought it would be a good idea to make it look like they’d come to their senses and killed themselves out of shame for what they’d become. It was a clever idea. And it worked. You got your suicide verdicts.’

He saw a tiny twitch at the corner of Martin’s mouth. The smallest of smiles. The man was proud of what he’d done, even if he’d had to abort his mission before he was finished.

‘You were a bit too clever, though. The books were good signposts, but once somebody like me realised it wasn’t a one-off, it was obvious there was somebody controlling what was going on.’

Martin grunted again. ‘They’re easily led. They might have copied each other.’

‘They might have, except that the cops didn’t notice so the media didn’t cover it so how would they have known about it? But still, you did get those verdicts when it counted. There’s only one problem,’ Tony continued. ‘If you jump, the suicides won’t stand.’

He shot a quick look at Tony. ‘What do you mean? How can they not stand? The coroners gave their verdicts.’

‘Verdicts can always be overturned. The woman cop who’s running this show, Carol Jordan, she’s a real bitch. She’s furious with you, with the point you’ve been determined to make. She’ll go to the ends of the earth to have those inquest verdicts changed. And with you dead, she’s got carte blanche to say whatever she likes about you and what you did. She’ll piss all over the point you’ve been making. She’ll turn you into another internet troll, a mindless bully who hated women.’

This time, Martin turned his head to face Tony, who thought he could see the faintest look of consternation on the other man’s face. ‘She can’t do that.’

Tony gave a regretful smile. ‘Of course she can. With you gone, she’s got all the power. And she’s not afraid to use it. Like I said, she’s a bitch. There’s only one way you can get your point across.’

Martin gave a bitter laugh. ‘I know what you’re going to say. “Don’t jump, have your day in court.”’ He rubbed a hand vigorously across his upper lip. Tony could see the tremble in his fingers. Sitting on the edge of his world was starting to get to him. It was all becoming too much. His head told him jumping was the only sensible thing to do, but deep down a powerful part of him was clinging to life.

‘Pretty much, yeah,’ Tony said. He was heading for the last throw of the dice, the appeal to vanity and the desire for posterity. The Achilles heel for so many killers. ‘Because that’s what makes sense. Otherwise, it’s all been for nothing. You had something to say. You obviously think it was something worth dying for or you wouldn’t be here right now. But if you give in and run away from the endgame, it’s all been a waste of time. Because she’ll turn it all into something it wasn’t. Something sordid and twisted and meaningless. And you might as well not have bothered.’ Martin turned away from him and Tony took advantage of that to inch closer. Now he was almost in touching distance.

He carried on pressing his point. ‘You might as well have let Sarah and all those other women walk all over you, because Carol Jordan will walk all over you when you’re dead. If that sounds like a good deal to you, fine. I’ll walk away now and leave you to it. But if you do care about getting your message across loud and clear, unequivocally? Turn round and come back with me. Don’t let the bitch win.’

He could see uncertainty in Martin’s body language. There was a slump to the shoulders, a spasm in the fingers, a bowing of the head, as if a weight was pressing down on him. ‘You promise I’ll have the chance to say my piece, but that’s bullshit. I’m not stupid enough to fall for that.’

Tony nodded. ‘You go into the witness box and that’s the one place you can say whatever you want and she can’t stop you. Come on, Matthew, don’t make it all for nothing. You’re a bright guy. You know I’m talking sense.’

He straightened up, shoulders back, head up. Eyes front, chin up. He pushed down against the parapet with his hands. In that terrible moment, Tony knew he’d lost. But he wasn’t ready to give up. He lunged forward and grabbed Martin’s left arm just as he thrust off into space. Tony’s body smacked into the parapet, the jarring shock powering through his body. But he didn’t let go in spite of the joint forces of gravity and Martin’s determination. Time seemed to spin like a sycamore seed falling to earth. He could smell Martin’s sour sweat, feel his own heart pounding like a steam hammer in his chest.