The Final Silence (4 page)

‘It’ll wash off,’ she said to the empty hall.

Upstairs in the bathroom she ran water over her hand, rubbed her fingers, rinsed as much of the paint away as she could. Still it remained in the creases of her skin and beneath her nails.

‘Stupid girl,’ she scolded the mirror.

At the age of thirty-four, Rea Carlisle still considered herself a child. While everyone she’d gone to school with seemed to be enjoying glittering careers, beautiful families, or both, she felt for ever stalled in some teenager’s mind.

‘Grow up,’ she said.

The resonance of her voice in the bathroom unnerved her. She wiped her hands dry on the stained towel and retrieved the crowbar from the floor.

Back out on the landing, the locked bedroom door glowered at her. A hot and bitter swell of anger made her clench her jaw. She’d be damned if a bloody lock would keep her out of a room in what was almost certainly now her own house.

Rea pressed the blade at the straighter end of the crowbar into the gap between the door and its frame, close to the lock. It barely penetrated. She pushed harder, putting her shoulder behind it. The blade went no more than a fraction of an inch deeper. Rea leaned against the crowbar, putting all her weight behind it. She heard a scratching, cracking noise, then felt the crowbar break loose of the door frame, saw the landing carpet coming up at her.

Rea fell hard on her chest, trapping the crowbar between her ribs and the floor. She cried out as the metal jabbed into the flesh beneath her breast. The pain bloomed, and she rolled onto her back, hissing through her teeth. She slipped her hand beneath the fabric of her T-shirt, felt the offended ribcage for blood. Tender, but the skin was unbroken. She breathed in and out, expecting the pain to grow to a shriek as her ribcage expanded. Nothing broken, thank God. She imagined explaining a cracked rib to her father.

‘Stupid girl,’ she said.

Rea grabbed the crowbar and got back to her feet. She examined the minor damage she’d inflicted on the door frame. Barely a chip on the paintwork, but it was a start.

She returned the crowbar’s blade to the tiny furrow it had dug. This time, she worked the blade back and forth, widening the gap before pushing it deeper. Soon she had forced the crowbar’s tip in by a quarter of an inch. Not too hard. Only a little sweat on her back.

Rea kept working, back and forth, pushing, rewarded by the grinding and cracking. The frame took the brunt of the damage, its wood softer than that of the door. When the blade had dug in almost half an inch, it met something solid. The latch plate, she thought. The crowbar would go no further.

She took her hands away. The crowbar remained suspended, wedged in place. She felt her pulse in her ears. What if she wasn’t strong enough to force the door open?

‘Course I am,’ she said.

Rea gripped the crowbar, set her feet apart, and pulled. Pressure built inside her head. Her shoulders shook with the effort.

Nothing.

She released the bar and let her hands drop to her sides. A cold line of sweat ran from her temple to her cheek. She gripped the crowbar again and leaned back, pushing with her legs, using the weight of her body.

A hard crack, and the door moved. Only a fraction of an inch, but it moved.

Rea’s breath came in gulps, her heart feeling like it would force its way up her throat.

‘This time,’ she said, taking hold of the crowbar once more. She braced one foot against the door frame, planted the other on the floor, and threw her weight back.

Through no will of her own, a growl started deep in her chest and grew to a strained squeal. Christ, I sound like a pig, she thought. A laugh bubbled up from her belly, but before it could escape, the crowbar came loose of the frame and she fell tumbling backwards.

The back of Rea’s head connected with the wood of the banister and a fierce light flared behind her eyes. The world lurched and shifted. Time creased like folded paper.

Something warm and metallic in her mouth. She swallowed, felt a gnawing pain at the back of her tongue. Bitten it, probably, but she couldn’t remember when. How long had passed?

Rea sat upright, rested her shoulders against the banister. She touched her fingertips to the back of her head. Tender, but her scalp was unbroken. A goose egg had already swollen beneath the skin. She turned her head from one side to the other. The muscles in her neck twitched and flickered with pain. Could’ve been worse, she thought. She’d known a boy at school who’d been left paralysed from the neck down after a simple fall.

What had she been thinking, anyway? She should’ve waited until her father was there to help. But then, she’d always been like that. Flashes of bravado followed by regret and retreat to her parents’ safety net.

All to get a bloody door open.

Then she looked up and saw the empty space where the door had been. And the room beyond, dark as a cave.

LENNON WALKED THROUGH
the doors of the old Presbyterian church on the Falls Road. The building had been expanded and converted into an Irish cultural centre with a theatre, a cafe, exhibition rooms and galleries. He made his way upstairs to one of the classrooms and found it empty save for the Irish dance teacher packing up her gear. Lennon couldn’t remember her name.

‘I’m here to collect my daughter,’ he said.

The teacher looked up from the collection of CDs she was stowing into a bag.

‘Ellen McKenna,’ Lennon said.

The teacher smiled. ‘Oh, Ellen? Her aunt came for her.’

Lennon cursed under his breath. He was no more than ten minutes late, but Bernie McKenna had used those few minutes to swoop and take Ellen. She only lived a two-minute walk away, so Lennon knew Bernie had taken Ellen home, was probably preparing a meal for her.

He thanked the teacher, headed back downstairs and out onto the street.

The Irish dance classes had been Bernie McKenna’s idea. Ellen had little interest, and seldom practised, but it kept her aunt off Lennon’s back. Left to his own devices, he would have allowed Ellen no contact with her late mother’s family. They had wanted nothing to do with the child while her mother was alive – Marie McKenna was a traitor for having had a child to a cop, as far as they were concerned – but ever since Ellen was made motherless, they had been trying to claw her away from Lennon.

It was Susan who persuaded Lennon to allow the McKennas this small amount of access. Ellen was their blood, Susan reminded him. It was unreasonable to keep her away from them. But Lennon knew the kind of filth that the late Michael McKenna had been involved in, and that many of his clan were still delving into. Even so, he acquiesced, and allowed Bernie McKenna to pick Ellen up from school once a week and take her to these classes. That, and a day out every other Saturday.

Lennon turned the corner onto Fallswater Parade, a narrow street, two rows of identical terraced houses, each home with a small walled garden to the front. A shallow incline led to Bernie McKenna’s door at the middle of the street. Lennon knew her mother lived next door, with Bernie’s sister taking care of her, and another sister across the street with her family. Ellen’s mother had been raised in one of these houses.

The small iron gate squeaked on its hinges. A dog in one of the neighbouring houses barked at the noise. Three paces took Lennon to the front door. He rapped on the wood with his knuckles.

The door opened almost immediately.

Bernie McKenna said, ‘Oh, look who decided to show up.’

‘I was only a few minutes late,’ Lennon said, irritation already blossoming into anger. ‘Is she ready to go?’

‘I was just making her a bite to eat,’ Bernie said.

‘She’ll have dinner at home. I want to get going before the traffic gets too bad.’

‘Daddy,’ Ellen called from the hall.

She came running, grabbed her bags from the floor, pushed past her great-aunt, and out onto the doorstep. She took her father’s hand in hers and pulled him along the path.

Bernie’s lips thinned. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But be on time in future.’

Lennon stopped Ellen’s retreat. ‘Be polite and say goodbye to your aunt.’

Ellen turned and did as she was told as courteously as she could manage.

When they reached the gate, Bernie called after them.

‘Here, did you think on what we talked about last week?’

Lennon stopped. ‘What was that?’

‘Her confirmation.’ Bernie followed them down the short path. ‘You said you’d think about it.’

‘No I didn’t,’ Lennon said. ‘I said no. You told me to think about it. Either way, it’s still no.’

‘But she’s coming ten,’ Bernie said. ‘She should be getting ready for her confirmation. If you’d sent her to a good school, not that auld Protestant place, she’d have been getting her classes and—’

‘It is a good school,’ Lennon said. ‘Her friends are there. I’m not forcing any religion on my daughter, Protestant, Catholic, or otherwise. She can make her own mind up when she’s old enough.’

Bernie’s voice rose. ‘How can she decide if you won’t let her go to Mass? Even her mother had the decency to get her baptised.’

‘I’m not having this discussion with you again,’ Lennon said. He led Ellen away, walking back towards the Falls Road.

‘That’s what happens when a man raises a child,’ Bernie shouted after them. ‘It’s a bloody disgrace.’

Lennon ignored her and kept walking.

When they’d reached his car, and Lennon was easing into the traffic, Ellen spoke up from the back seat.

‘I don’t want to go to those dance classes any more.’

Lennon glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘It keeps your aunt Bernie happy.’

‘She’s my great-aunt,’ Ellen said.

‘Still, she’s your family. I don’t like it any more than you do, but that’s the way it is. It’s only once a week. You can stand her once a week, can’t you?’

Ellen turned her gaze out of the window.

‘Can’t you?’ Lennon repeated.

‘I suppose,’ she said.

‘Good girl,’ Lennon said. ‘It’s part of growing up. There’s things you don’t want to do, but you go ahead and do them anyway, because it’s the right thing. You understand?’

‘I suppose.’

Ellen remained quiet for a time before she asked, ‘Why does Aunt Bernie hate you so much?’

Lennon applied the handbrake at a set of lights. ‘She thinks I’m a bad person,’ he said.

‘Why does she think that?’ Ellen asked.

‘She doesn’t like policemen, for one thing. And she blames me for what happened to your mother.’

Ellen shook her head. ‘That’s stupid. You tried to help her.’

Lennon could have argued with his daughter, told her he sometimes blamed himself for Marie McKenna’s death, as illogical as he knew that idea to be. He could have told Ellen that her mother’s fate was only one of the burdens he carried with him every day.

Instead, he said, ‘I love you, you know that, right?’

He heard the click of Ellen’s seatbelt coming undone. She leaned over from the back seat, wrapped her arm around him. He kissed her hand. Felt her lips on his cheek. Felt clean for the first time that day.

‘Seatbelt,’ he said as the lights changed.

REA STARED INTO
the gloom for long seconds, feeling like a rodent gazing into the mouth of a silent owl.

After a while, she shook herself, swallowed blood, and said, ‘All right.’

She got to her feet and steadied herself against the banister as a giddy wave washed through her. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, and she saw that a thin trickle of light seeped in around the edges of a closed blind. She released her grip on the banister and stepped towards the threshold. The painted doorsill creaked beneath her foot.

Inside, she could make out variations in the dark, blocks that might be furniture, patterns that could be pictures on the walls. She felt for a light switch, found it, and flicked it on. The glare of the single bare bulb made her squint, and she raised her hand as a shield.

The word ‘office’ appeared in her mind.

Of course, it was a home office. Just like many people had in a spare bedroom. A desk that looked as if it had been rescued from a school sat at the centre of the room, along with a single chair. A cork noticeboard on one wall, bare but for the drawing pins that dotted it. A large map of the British Isles on another.

Yet it didn’t make sense.

From what Ida had told her, Rea’s uncle had been a manual labourer. He had been in the merchant navy at one time, before he’d got married, but he had worked with his hands ever since. Travelled all over Britain and Ireland, wherever he could find employment. Why would he need an office in his home? And who would have an office without a computer of some kind – a laptop, or even one of those little netbooks?

‘You didn’t know him,’ she said aloud.

Rea scolded herself for talking to the empty room. She’d been doing it more and more frequently. A symptom of being single for so long. Next thing, she’d have a dozen cats.

With a creeping feeling of being an intruder, she crossed to the desk and stood by the chair. The surface of the desk was scarred with childish graffiti, slurs and insults, names of bands who’d come and gone by the eighties. The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Specials. In another patch, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Dio. The kind of music middle-class schoolboys listened to while they squeezed their spots. Rea imagined this piece of furniture in some grammar school, the air thick with chalk dust, an ageing master conjugating Latin verbs while a pale young man scratched the words Echo and the Bunnymen into the wood. Raymond had probably rescued it from a skip somewhere.

Then she noticed the shallow drawer beneath the desk.

A plain brass knob at the centre. Rea gripped it and pulled. Wood whispered against wood. She stared at the object within for a time before she could make sense of it.

A large leather-bound book, like a ledger, or an oversized photo album. Yes, that’s it, she thought. Like a wedding album. Was it from her uncle’s marriage? It didn’t appear to be more than thirty years old, but perhaps it had been well looked after.