The Silence (Dc Goodhew 4) (2 page)

‘Are you interested in politics?’

‘Politics? What the—?’

‘I’m not. Except for that moment when it suddenly gets interesting, like when one of them gets caught out – you know, put on the spot in front of a reporter. I always want them to get caught lying, but I stop listening and instead, watch their faces. And that’s how I judge them. And that’s why I came to see you.’

‘About what?’ Joey couldn’t imagine why he now felt threatened, but he instinctively planted his feet squarely, shoulders-width apart, and felt himself puff out his chest and bulk up his shoulders. ‘Seriously, when have I ever had anything to say to
you
?’

‘I meant it literally. It’s just to see you, to look at you. Do you really think I’d want some meaningless dialogue either? I only came to watch your face.’

Joey scowled. ‘Just piss off.’ He stepped to one side, wanting to get into his car and go.

‘I know
everything
.’

The last thing Joey expected was any physical intervention. He knew he was the stronger of the two, and he doubted the owner of such precise hands would have the guts to lay a single finger on Joey’s sleeve, yet those three words halted him with the same force as a punch to the guts.

He turned slowly, trying to maintain his mask. ‘You don’t know anything about me, so what are you getting at?’ He was sure that his face remained expressionless, but knew his eyes were darting about uncontrollably.

For several seconds neither of them spoke, or moved, until finally, Joey stepped back, a small rebalancing of his weight, nothing more. ‘You mean back then, don’t you?’

‘What else would I mean? We’ve barely seen each other since, have we?’

‘It was just an accident.’

‘Just an accident? And what would you say to me if I said I knew it wasn’t? I’m standing here in front of you, and I’m telling you I
know
what happened – every detail. Now you are the politician, the one with the chance to tell the truth. And I am the audience, the one who is watching your face to see if you lie.’

Joey thought he had an aptitude for reading people, especially when, like now, he considered them a soft touch. It was always easy to spot when childlike fear had been visible too long into adolescence, and had then been picked upon by the stronger ones in the pack. But a single look told Joey that the eyes that returned his stare were dilated with something far more potent than fear, or even anger.

Resolve
.

Then Joey half smiled: did the kid really think they were about to square up for a fight? ‘Stop wasting my time.’

No reply.

‘It’s madness.’ Joey tapped his temple a couple of times. ‘You were never going to let it drop, were you?’ He pushed past and, this time when he jabbed at his remote control, the central locking responded with a muted beep.

‘It’s a nice car.’ A pause. ‘I mean, I don’t really like it – too pretentious. You’d only drive a car like that to a pub like this if you were trying to make a statement, one that you couldn’t manage by turning up on foot.’

Despite knowing he ought to go, Joey turned his back on the car. ‘And your point?’

‘Brand new, top-of-the-range Audi which only unlocks at the fourth bloody attempt? I don’t think so.’

Joey was caught between the urge to step forward, and further into the confrontation, and an unfamiliar but stronger urge to get into his car and drive away. So instead he didn’t move.

‘So I’m thinking there’s nothing wrong with the technology, which means there has to be something wrong with your aim, perhaps, and your level of soberness without doubt. So what’s the truth I see? You’re not somebody who has learned a sense of responsibility, or really suffered, or knows any compassion.’

Joey scowled. He realized that this was the moment to speak, but there was nothing he could say that would ever be genuinely heartfelt or truthful. So he stayed silent. And unmoving. And, in his remaining seconds, he was aware that his quick wits and speed had deserted him when he needed them both most.

He became a spectator as, with no sign of a stumbling childhood or awkward adolescence, his assailant moved closer.

The reversal of the roles was absolute, and Joey finally understood the power that a bully wielded from the point of view of the stunned prey.

This was action without hesitation. No self-conscious wavering, just a single fluid movement from pocket to hand to neck. A 6-inch thin shaft of flathead screwdriver, rubberized handle. No slip or resistance, through skin, into artery.

Joey’s eyes were wide, his mouth wide, his blood pumping. It splattered across his driver’s side window, and he reached towards it, his fingers sliding through slippery wetness as he sank to the ground and died.

Libby wrote:
Hi, Zoe, thanks for the friend request. How are you? I heard you died.

‘Doing well for a dead person. LOL.’

There was a gap of a few minutes before Libby replied.
Sorry, that was bad taste.

Then there was a gap of a few minutes more.

‘I heard about your sister,’ Zoe wrote. ‘You know she was in my year at school?’

Of course. Your profile picture comes from your class photo. I think you’re standing just behind Rosie. She’s got a funny look on her face, told me once how you pulled her hair just as the flash went off.

‘Yeah, I was in the back row and we were all standing on gym benches. The kids in her row were messing around, trying to get us to fall off. Mrs Hurley saw me wobble and yelled at me. I tugged Rosie’s hair to get my own back. I reckon that was Year Seven or Eight. I don’t remember seeing Rosie much after that.’

Libby had hesitated over the keyboard. She didn’t want this to become nothing more than awkward and pointless chit-chat. She had an opportunity here and, although she guessed it was going to be difficult to get things started, she knew that she needed to do it.

I have a proposition . . . a favour, I suppose. You see, I don’t have anyone to talk to. Rosie’s death left a hole, but there’s more and, if I’m honest, I’m struggling a bit. I’ve tried writing it down, but it just doesn’t work. I get so far, then I’m stuck. So I wondered if I could message you?

‘Do you think that would work?’

I don’t know, but I’d like to try. I thought you might ask me some questions, prompt me to look at things differently. Or maybe I just need to let things out, I’m not sure. The point is, I need to talk.

Those first messages took up little space on her computer screen, yet Libby felt as though getting even that far had taken up the equivalent effort of a 2,000-word essay. She had worked hard to balance her words, to load them equally between truthfulness and understatement.
I need to talk
had been a tough admission, as it stank of being unable to cope. The last thing she had wanted, through all of this, had been to load anyone else with any part of this burden. But she now accepted that it was the only way to move forward. She thought of Nathan and wished she could speak to him – or her parents even, but they were almost as inaccessible as her brother.

And what about Matt?

No, when she looked at him she recognized what other people saw when they looked at her. It was a hollowness that scared her.

She read Zoe’s ‘Okay’ and nodded to herself. This was something she had to do.

I’m not sure where to start
, she told Zoe.

‘Begin with Rosie.’

Libby took a deep breath.
Rosie, Rosie
.

Rosie was in your year, Nathan was one year below, and then there was me, two years below him. I’m 18 now, just to save you working it out, and I’m at sixth form college. The course is a bunch of ‘A’ levels and the college propectus calls them a ‘Foundation in Accountancy’. I’d always wanted to work with small children, but I assumed I’d just leave school and get a job in an office or something.

Instead I chose this course. I gave them all the spiel but, in truth, the only reason I’m doing it is because they were the same ‘A’ levels that Rosie took. She was going to get a degree. She wanted to be a primary school teacher one day, and I bet she would have managed it.

I’m explaining it this way because it shows what Rosie and I were like; how we were similar but different. On a parallel track except I was always a little bit behind, and a little bit in her shadow.

‘But she was three years older?’

Yes, and I’m almost the same age now, but I still haven’t caught up with her in so many ways. And you’re misunderstanding me if you think I feel that’s a bad thing. I was happy in her shadow: it was always a safe and comfortable place to be.

For my entire childhood I could look up and see Rosie and Nathan. Rosie teased Nathan, and Nathan teased me; that was our pecking order. And if Nathan ever upset me, Rosie stepped in, or the other way round.

I can’t remember one single time when I didn’t have one or other of them to look after me.

Anyhow, now I feel like I need to follow in her footsteps, at least for a little while. I’m not ready to let go of her yet, so I sit in the same lectures and try my hardest to get grades as good as hers. That’s what got me through school. It’s like she’s been there before me and I can feel her looking over my shoulder. She says ‘Go on, Bibs, you can do it.’ No one calls me Bibs any more, and I wouldn’t want them to.

Then after a gap of almost twenty minutes, Libby added,
Can I message you tomorrow?

‘Of course.’

What do you know about Rosie’s death?

‘Just bits and pieces – you know how fragments of information fly about.’

Can I tell you?

‘Only if you want to.’

The short version is that she went to the cinema and never came back. The short version is important to remember, because to me that’s how it happened. I was in my bedroom – my hair was three or four inches longer then, and I was straightening it. Rosie heard me swearing, came into the room and finished the section that I couldn’t reach properly.

I told her she looked nice, but I was too wrapped up in my own night out to pay her much attention; later that night, Mum and Dad asked me what she’d been wearing and I just couldn’t remember. I knew that, when she put the hair straighteners on my dressing-table, I noticed that she’d had her nails repainted a slightly metallic shade of purple.

And that’s really all I could remember. I can’t remember which cinema, which film or if she said who she was going with. I can’t remember a single word she said, just the touch of her fingers as she separated the strands of my hair, and the colour of her nails as she finished.

I tell myself that I can’t remember all those things because I never knew them, that she’d never shared the details with me. I don’t believe though that she would have ever gone to watch a film on her own. And I find it equally hard to believe that I wouldn’t have said, ‘Who are you going with?’

I went to the beauty salon a couple of weeks later and bought a bottle of that same nail polish. I’ve still got it in my drawer.

I returned home just before 1 a.m. I came back in a taxi and, as it pulled up, I noticed the lights on in our front room, with the curtains open. I could make out Mum and Dad standing apart from one another. It was only a brief glimpse but I felt uneasy and hurried inside.

Nathan was there too. You can see our kitchen as soon as you walk through the front door and he was standing by the kettle, pouring boiling water into three mugs.

‘What’s happened?’ I mouthed at him.

‘They tried to ring you because they can’t get hold of Rosie. But your phone was off.’

In that case, I reasoned, they wouldn’t get hold of me either, would they? Why were they so worried about her when they weren’t worried about me?

I can’t really remember how I felt at that moment. I think I wondered why there was this amount of fuss. Or maybe I realized something was up. Mum’s always been a bit paranoid, and Rosie had only passed her driving test a few months before.

Dad called through from the front room and asked me what Rosie had said to me about her plans for the evening. Mum snapped at him, told him to get to the point. He snapped back.

Then he turned to me and started, ‘It’s probably nothing, but . . .’

Even now those words always fill me with dread.

Rosie had told Mum that she’d be back by eleven. No biggie on its own, but Nathan had been playing an away match for the Carlton Arms pool team, and she’d promised him a lift home. Her phone kept going straight to voicemail, so he waited for her till 11.30, then rang our parents as he walked home.

Like I said, it never took much to make Mum start worrying, and this was plenty. Nathan said she’d made Dad phone the police at half-past midnight. I suppose there wasn’t much the police could say at that point, except to let us know that they’d had no incidents involving anyone called Rose, Rosie or Rosalyn, or with the surname Brett.

Straight after I got home, Mum told him to call the police again. He was kept on hold for a while, and said they were being very polite and understanding, but I could tell that they’d left him with the feeling that he was totally overreacting.

I don’t know if you remember much about my dad, but he’s a stubborn bloke, and when he makes his mind up about something, it’s really hard to get him to shift. ‘That’s enough now,’ he decided, and demanded that we all go and get some sleep.

So of course Mum started to argue with him, and he refused to budge. I looked at Nathan, and he just raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t like we hadn’t seen it all countless times before.

We left them there to wrangle, although I don’t remember hearing another sound from them.

I lay down on my bed fully dressed, and let the rest of the house think I’d gone to sleep. I heard Nathan’s door close, and imagined him in the next room, doing exactly the same. I don’t think I slept at all. Maybe it wasn’t like that, but that’s how I remember it.

If I did stay awake, it wasn’t because I was scared for Rosie. I didn’t believe for one second that I’d never see her again. It was more that I kind of felt out of kilter.