The Final Silence (7 page)

Her voice resonated in the stairway and hall below, coming back to her as a hollow, frightened girlish sound.

Yep, she thought, that’ll scare them off.

Them. Was she sure there was anybody? The certainty that had taken root so firmly in her moments before now seemed to crack and crumble. There was probably no one. It was an old house, at least a century, and old houses are draughty and creaky. Everyone knows that. Feeling more brave and foolish with each step, Rea made her way downstairs.

There’ll be a cat, she thought. A cat, and it’ll jump out and hiss and scare the shit out of me. Then I’ll turn around, and Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger will be standing there with a big fuck-off knife.

By the time Rea’s foot left the bottom step, all notions of intruders, armed or otherwise, had dissolved like the childish fantasies they were. She reached for the hall light switch and flicked it on. The bin bags still lay there, lined up, waiting to be taken to the dump. They’d have to wait another day.

Creak.

She gasped, spun on her heels. And then she understood.

The front door moved in the breeze, its hinges groaning. Of course. Her father had promised to see about getting it fixed, said that it needed a good shove to close it properly.

Rea went to the door, put her hip against it, and pushed. The key still in the hole, she turned it, heard the snap and clunk of the tumbler.

She walked to the back sitting room, turning the lights on as she went, and made her way to the kitchen beyond. Ugly floral linoleum on the floor, cupboards and drawers that should have been replaced twenty years ago. A fluorescent strip light on the ceiling that accentuated the worst features of the room. At the brown plastic sink, she poured herself a cup of water. She gazed out into the garden, wondering if she had the nerve to return to the book and the handwritten pages that waited upstairs.

Minutes later, she did.

She read a story about a boy called Andrew.

I NEVER FOUND
out Andrew’s second name. No one ever reported him missing. Not a single person noticed he had gone, even his companion on the night I picked him up. At least, no one who would go to the police.

He wasn’t planned. There was no preparation. No following, no watching. It just happened.

Maybe I should regret it, but regret is an emotion I don’t understand. I understand anger, and lust. Sometimes I think I know love, what it feels like, so big inside me that I fear I’ll burst. Do you feel that, sometimes?

I never did another like Gwen Headley. The preparation, the planning, the following, the watching. I am not careful enough. I have read about men who can do those things, over and over again, one after the other. The wicked inside me wouldn’t allow me to do that. I got lucky with Gwen. I would not be so lucky if I tried it again, I know that.

But Andrew.

I’d been in Leeds for three months. They were building a hotel just off the M621 motorway, the kind of place sales reps would stay at. Lonely men, like me. The contractor worked out of Dublin, bringing some men over, hiring some on the ground. They put us up in Portakabins on the site. They were cold and damp, the cots hard, the blankets thin. Some of the boys slept in their cars or vans instead, others went into the city to see if they could pull women, as much to get a warm bed as to fornicate.

That night, I drove through the city centre to Spencer Place, the road that runs north to south, all hedges and walls and tall leafy trees. Anywhere else, it’d be where the rich people lived, with its big houses and driveways. Here, it’s where a man goes to buy the things he needs. Girls, boys, drugs.

I don’t bother much with the drugs. I don’t like losing control. You know I find it hard to hold on to myself as it is. Bad things might happen. But that night, I wanted a boy.

Not to fornicate with, at least not in that way. I am not one of those men. I know I am not, whatever anyone else says, I am not.

My uncle told me I was. When he held me down, the pillow over my face. So big, so strong. Thick arms pinning me to the bed. A nancy, he told me, a sissy. Not a boy, he’d say, not a real boy who’d grow to be a man. A real boy wouldn’t let him do those things he did to me. A real boy, a someday-man, would fight back. Would say no loud enough to make it stop.

I could never say no loud enough. I was never strong enough to make him stop. Not until I was fourteen, when I hit him so hard he never so much as looked at me again.

In Leeds, I’d got rid of the Toyota van I’d had in Manchester and bought an old blue Ford Transit. That night, I pulled up beside a pair of young men in tight jeans. I could tell by the way they smoked their cigarettes, the way they fidgeted, the hollowness in their faces, that they were rattling – suffering for want of some heroin. They would work for cheap.

I wound down the passenger window and they both approached.

‘How much?’ I asked.

‘Two for the price of one, love,’ the taller boy said. He had a Glasgow accent. ‘Both of us for fifty quid. Bargain, eh?’

Hateful animals. Nancy boys. Sissies.

‘I only want one. So twenty-five, then.’

‘Fifty,’ he said. ‘I said two for one. You only want one, that’s your lookout.’

I started to wind the window up.

‘Hang on,’ he called before I could close it.

I wound the window back down.

‘Thirty,’ he said.

‘All right.’

He opened the door and went to climb in.

‘No,’ I said. I pointed to the other one, the younger, smaller one. ‘Him.’

The older boy stepped back and exchanged a look with his friend. The younger boy nodded, don’t worry, it’s all right.

He climbed up into the cabin and closed the door behind him.

I put the van in gear and said, ‘Close the window, there’s a good lad, keep the cold out.’

He did as he was told and I moved off towards the park at the northern end of the road.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Andrew,’ he said, keeping his gaze on the passing houses, the cars, the other streetwalkers.

‘Is that your real name?’

He didn’t answer.

‘Is it?’ I asked.

‘Does it matter?’ he said.

His accent was north-east. Gateshead, Sunderland. Maybe Newcastle.

‘I suppose not,’ I said. ‘How old are you?’

‘However old you want me to be,’ he said, smiling, fluttering his eyelids, posing like a girl.

‘The truth,’ I said, hating him.

‘I’ll be nineteen in a couple of weeks,’ he said. ‘But I can pass for younger.’

I said nothing more until we reached the gate at the far end of the park. It stood open, even approaching midnight. I eased the van through and along the path that wound between the sports fields and open meadows. Other cars, their windows steamed, were parked along the way, weaker men having their itches scratched.

I never meant to do the boy any harm.

As much as he made me sick. Even though he waited on a corner, selling himself like a calf for slaughter, and despite all the wretched things he made me feel inside, I did not mean to hurt him. Not really.

When I found a dark, quiet place, I intended only to do what I needed with him, then take him back to where I’d picked him up. Safe and sound. More or less.

I climbed out of the van, went to the passenger side, opened the door, and let him out. He waited while I opened the sliding door at the side, saw the mattress and blankets I’d laid on the plywood floor.

‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘It’s the Ritz.’

He followed me inside, and I closed the door behind us. At one time, encounters like this terrified me. The closeness, the intimacy, the shame of it. Now I know the shame is all his. He is the one who sells himself so he can afford to blot out his mind with poison. He is the one whose sordid desires brought him here. I am not to blame.

I knelt there, waiting for him to lie down, passive like a corpse, and let me get on with it. Instead, he knelt too, facing me. I knew something was wrong. He hadn’t detached himself from the now, he was too much here in the present, his eyes watching and seeing.

‘So, what do you like?’ he asked.

‘Just lie down,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you lie down? Let me show you what I can do.’

I didn’t answer, even though I wanted to strike him for such obscenity. To offer to do things to me. Like my uncle did. He was no better. I stayed still and watchful.

‘Go on, then,’ he said, nodding down towards the mattress.

I shook my head, only a small movement, but enough to change the expression on his face from weak obedience to fiery hate.

He tried too hard to be fast, going for his coat pocket, fumbling. I knew what he was reaching for long before he had it out, slashing at the air between us.

‘Give me your fucking money,’ he hissed.

The knife looked like it had come from someone’s kitchen, small and sharp, the kind of knife you’d use for peeling a potato or cutting up an apple.

‘Put it away and get out,’ I said.

He bared his teeth. ‘I said, give me your money, now.’

‘I’ll give you one more chance,’ I said. ‘Go. Now. I won’t give you another.’

He lurched forward on his knees, swiping the blade inches from my face. ‘I’ll fucking cut your face off, I—’

One hand took his wrist, the other his neck. I slammed his head against the van’s inner wall, making a dull clang. He slumped, quiet, his eyelids flickering.

Five minutes later, he was tied up with strips of bed sheet, being driven out of the city towards the countryside where the stars are brightest in the sky.

Weeks later, after I’d left for better work in the south, I heard a news report on the radio saying a body had been found by the River Aire, close to the M1 motorway, hidden in the woods. As far as I know, they never identified him. I sometimes wonder what they did with his corpse. Did it lie in a mortuary somewhere, frozen, waiting to be claimed? How long would they keep it?

I shouldn’t have done it. The risk was too great. I hadn’t taxed the van when I took him. It didn’t have an MOT. What if the police had stopped me?

I am careless. I am rash. I am wicked.

If I let the wicked take over once too often, nothing and no one will save me.

Not even you.

‘
HOW MANY’S THAT
today?’ Susan asked.

‘Dunno,’ Lennon said.

He put his palm to his mouth and tilted his head back. The pills settled on his tongue. He took a mouthful of water, swallowed, set the glass on the drainer. A cough rattled in his lungs, reminding him that the cold still lingered.

Susan sat at the table, still wearing her work suit. He’d promised to start preparing dinner for the girls before she got home. All he’d managed so far was to rummage through the freezer, looking for something he could blast in the oven or the microwave. Susan wouldn’t approve. She only kept that processed stuff for emergencies, as she’d reminded him many times before.

Ellen and Lucy were watching television in the living area, giggling at some American cartoon on one of the satellite channels.

‘Fish fingers?’ he asked Susan. ‘There’s beans and oven chips.’

Susan pressed her fingertips to her forehead. ‘There’s plenty of veg there. And chicken thighs. You could roast them.’

‘How long for?’

She placed her hands flat on the table and closed her eyes, made a begrudging decision, and opened them again.

‘I’ll do it,’ she said, standing.

‘No, I can—’

‘I said, I’ll do it.’

Susan pushed past him to the fridge. Lennon stood with his hands by his sides for a few moments, wondering how to speak without making her angry.

Eighteen months, two years ago, she had seemed quietly beautiful to him. Too good for a wastrel like Jack Lennon, so he had resisted her attention up until then. Now he could only see the resentment on her face, masking what had drawn him to her in the first place. He believed all along that he didn’t deserve a woman like Susan, someone as kind and decent. But since she’d taken him in, more out of pity than want, she seemed to have realised it too.

As she cut open a pack of chicken thighs, Susan asked, ‘So what did you do today?’

Lennon took the seat she had just left. ‘I told you, I had that meeting with the Police Federation rep this afternoon. I picked Ellen up from her dance class on the way back.’

‘She told me you were late,’ Susan said.

‘Ten minutes. I had the meeting, I couldn’t move it.’

‘The meeting took, what, an hour?’ She set the knife down on the worktop, kept her gaze away from him. ‘Another ten minutes to bring Ellen home. You were barely out of bed when I left here this morning. What did you do with the rest of the day?’

Lennon ran his fingertips across his chin. He was surprised for a moment to find it smooth to the touch. Then he remembered he had shaved that morning. The first time in nearly a fortnight.

The girls fell silent, stopped watching their television show, studied their hands instead.

‘Well, there wasn’t much I could do.’

Susan turned to face him. ‘Did you do the laundry?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve been asking you for weeks to sort out what stuff you can give to the charity shop. Did you do that?’

‘No.’

‘Did you chase up that appointment with the psychologist?’

‘No.’

Her eyes glistened with moisture, her cheeks reddening. ‘So you sat around here most of the day and did sweet fuck all?’