The Silence (Dc Goodhew 4) (10 page)

‘I’m glad you wanted to speak to me. I was actually hoping I could have a few minutes of your time.’

‘Your brother asked me to speak to you, actually.’

‘Okay.’ She paused to think for a moment. ‘Okay,’ she repeated, sounding as if she’d made a decision. ‘I didn’t really know Shanie. I’ve met her a couple of times, but nothing more than a “Hi”, and I’m not going to even begin to consider whether or not she was hated, depressed or irresponsible.’

‘But you’re concerned about Matt?’

‘And Libby too. Matt will only be okay if Libby is, and vice versa.’

Goodhew guessed his expression alone made it obvious that she needed to offer him a better explanation.

She glanced towards the window at the other end of the sitting room. ‘I’d like to show you something.’

He knew how Marks would feel about him taking off at a tangent and, by Charlotte’s own admission, she wasn’t likely to be pointing out anything remotely linked to Shanie’s death. He therefore should have said, ‘No.’

‘Fine,’ he replied.

She led him down the back garden and then through the gate opening on to an alleyway that ran behind the houses.

‘We’ve known Libby’s family most of our lives. I went to school with her sister, Matt with her brother, and Libby was always the little kid who tagged along after us wherever she could.’

‘Matt told me to ask you about his outbursts.’

Charlotte stopped, her length of curly hair taking a second longer to fall still. Only then did she reply. ‘Detective, I’m not giving you our family history just for the fun of it. I’m explaining why Matt is in such a mess, and when I get to the end I’m going to ask for your opinion.’ She leaned back against the wooden fence. ‘Do you know how our mum died?’

Goodhew nodded. ‘Cancer. About four years ago?’

‘I think Mum must have known she was ill for a while; she became remote and stressed. She and Dad argued quite a bit and he couldn’t seem to lift her out of it. When we were finally told she was ill, I think she knew it was terminal. But Matt just didn’t accept that she wouldn’t recover. She was in a hospice at the very end, but he carried on like nothing major was happening until the last twenty-four hours. Then, right at the end, he grabbed me . . .’ Charlotte clutched at the sleeve of her jersey near the top of her left arm. ‘For the first time he sounded distraught.’ She turned away from Goodhew and continued along the footpath. ‘He said, “She’s not going to make it, is she, Char?”’ She shook her head. ‘Said it like he’d only just realized, and despite me and Mum and Dad trying to get him used to the idea, he really only believed it at that moment. It feels as though that was the start of Matt’s problems.’

‘Losing a parent at that young age is going to be tough.’

She screwed up her nose. ‘Mr Cliché.’

‘Hmm, sorry.’

‘And I suppose time heals everything?’

‘I really wasn’t being dismissive.’

‘Fair enough.’ Charlotte had a ring on the third finger of her right hand. She rubbed it with the tip of her thumb. It looked like an engagement ring and he wondered whether it had belonged to her mother. ‘Matt became increasingly withdrawn and moody,’ she continued. ‘Now
I’m
reaching for the clichés. I had some bereavement counselling, but he wasn’t interested. I read up on grief, and it seemed to me he was going through the classic stages. I thought we’d just have to wait it out and then I’d get the old Matt back.’ She grinned suddenly, instantly becoming vibrant again. ‘He’s always been so funny – annoying in this charming way, if you know what I mean.’ The smile vanished as quickly as it had arrived. ‘Nathan and Libby also had problems at home, and we knew Nathan was finding it particularly hard, but no one thought . . .’ Again her voice trailed away.

They’d only walked about one hundred yards before she stopped again. She pointed at the fence immediately to the right of the path. He noticed she didn’t actually look at it though. ‘What can you see in that garden?’ she asked.

Goodhew was tall enough to be able to peer over the fence without any difficulty. The house itself had originally been identical to Charlotte’s family home, but its post-war elevations had been rendered and painted cream, and the windows and doors looked as though they’d been replaced about ten years ago. At some point since then, the owner had given up; the grass was knee-high, outstripped by sturdy thistles and flat-leafed nettles. Tentacles of dark green ivy had curled across a weathered pile of unlaid decking and woven their way up around the legs of a rusting barbecue which looked close to disintegration. Curtains covered the two upstairs windows; maybe they had been drawn earlier to block out the afternoon sun, but Goodhew doubted it. The fabric was either faded or behind glass clouded by the heavy patina of neglect.

‘Abandonment,’ he answered finally.

‘That’s where Libby’s parents live. If you look at the back garden, you can see what her home life is like.’

Around the edges of the long grass it was still possible to see the curve of old flowerbeds and the crumbling remains of a broken stone planter. ‘If it wasn’t always like that, what went wrong?’

‘Libby and Nathan’s sister Rosie died within months of us losing Mum. Then Nathan killed himself.’

The final four words came so abruptly that Goodhew took a second or two to fully grasp them. ‘When?’

‘Three years ago. At the time it felt as though it would destroy Matt, and maybe it would have done, if he and Libby hadn’t had each other.’

‘And that’s why they look out for each other then?’

‘They think they do, but how can they when they’re both so vulnerable?’ She bit her bottom lip as she reflected for a second. ‘They
talk
,’ she added, as if those two words explained everything.

‘That’s not a good thing then?’

‘They fuel the wrong ideas.’ Charlotte pointed in the general direction of Libby’s parents’ house. ‘I hate them. They were always spiteful, selfish people, but Rosie, Nathan and Libby were decent kids. Now Libby is the only one left, and she can’t stand living in that house with its locked bedrooms and her parents drinking and fighting every day.’

As they began to walk back towards Charlotte’s home, Goodhew decided to nudge her back on topic. ‘You were saying they get the wrong ideas – but about what exactly?’

‘Matt refuses to believe that Nathan committed suicide. I asked the police to double-check, but even that wasn’t enough to convince him. Sometimes I think I’m getting through, then Matt starts off again. He keeps going over it and over it. Meanwhile, Libby keeps asking him why it happened, saying there has to be a reason.’

‘Trying to rationalize is part of dealing with trauma.’

‘Now they think everything, starting with Mum’s cancer, is all part of the same chain of events. I’ve tried listening, agreeing, arguing . . . everything. Matthew and Libby moved into that student house as a compromise. My dad and Libby’s parents both agreed because it would give Matt and Libby some independence but without too much risk. Or so they thought.’

‘And Shanie Faulkner’s death changes all that.’

‘Totally.’

‘We’ll be allowing everyone back into the student house shortly. Will they want to return?’

‘Libby will. She can’t go back home. And Matt will go where Libby goes.’

‘But they’re not
seeing
each other?’

‘No, and Matt had no involvement with Shanie either, but he’ll still take her death very badly. He couldn’t live with himself if anything happened to Libby.’ They were almost back at Charlotte’s garden gate when she stopped and turned to face Goodhew. ‘And having watched my mother die, I would never use that expression lightly.’

‘What happened to the brother, Nathan?’

‘An overdose. Took about four packs of paracetamol and washed them down with a huge amount of spirits. They found him on the road to Oakington, and . . . What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ Goodhew lied.

His memory was good, he knew it was and he trusted it. He had never considered himself prone to blotting out any of the memories he found hardest to face, but here was the proof.

Rosie plus Brett plus Nathan had not connected for him, but suddenly the name ‘Oakington’ welded them together into a single event.

‘Why did he go to Oakington?’ he asked. Then he listened carefully as she told him her version of the story that he already knew.

Goodhew considered pulling out Rosie’s file and making himself reread all the notes on her death. And forcing himself to look at the photos too.

He knew it would mean steering clear of anyone else involved in Shanie’s case, or he would run the risk of trying to explain to Marks why he was wasting time on an old case so totally unconnected with their current enquiry.

Worse still, he didn’t know the reason himself.

Instead, he phoned his friend Bryn O’Brien and arranged to meet him at D’Arry’s in King Street at eight.

Bryn had arrived at twenty past, and downed his first bottle of Peroni before managing anything more than an initial greeting.

Goodhew had picked a table near the window, but Bryn spent most of that first bottle of beer studying the restaurant interior. The food was broadly European, the stone floors reminded Goodhew of the Med, while the low ceilings and the lighting glowing from wrought-iron candelabras said Bavaria, or maybe Prague. The whole building had burned out a few years before, but it had been rebuilt, giving it the air of somewhere that had evolved over many decades.

Eventually Bryn nodded slowly. ‘I like it in here.’ He continued to gaze down the length of the room, adding, ‘Great legs on that waitress.’ Then finally, he turned to Goodhew. ‘It’s no coincidence that we are here and you’ve been working on a dead body fifty yards up the road, is it?’

‘Perhaps I just like it here.’

‘Have you noticed how some waitresses move quickly, with lots of little steps, but they’re facially serene, like energetic geishas?’

‘And I suppose you’ve always had a thing for energetic geishas?’

‘Do you really want to know, or instead do you want to tell me what’s bugging you?’

There had been a time when Goodhew had kept everything to himself. Occasionally he would open up to his grandmother, but beyond those times everything stayed firmly private. He had moved on from there, made slow but deliberate progress to make his life less isolated. There were now times when he confided in Gully, and others when he discussed things with Bryn but, as he tried to choose his opening line, he became aware that this wouldn’t be one of them. Right now he wished he’d stayed at home, door locked and with nothing but his jukebox for company.

The main course arrived and Goodhew saw that Bryn had ordered a rare steak that was already seeping pink into the surrounding gravy. Bryn peered at Goodhew’s plate with an equally critical eye. ‘Is that some kind of veggie meal?’

‘Goats’ cheese flan.’

Bryn frowned. ‘Now we look like we are on a date.’ He pressed the flat of his knife against the meat until the blood oozed. ‘I’m the bloke, by the way.’

Goodhew replied, at least he assumed he did, but later he realized that he had stopped talking somewhere along the way – some time after Bryn had put pressure on that sirloin and the deep red had seeped further into the gravy.

There had been only two times in his life that Goodhew had seen a dead body and recoiled. He hated succumbing to that reaction, and on both occasions had felt a deep disgust at himself. A corpse deserves respect: that had been one of his grandfather’s serious and abiding messages. A body is no longer good or evil; it has ceased to be anything but an embodiment of the human form, and the way it is treated reflects on the living.

It deserves dignity.

Goodhew heard those words before he’d ever faced a corpse and they’d stayed with him like his ingrained knowledge of multiplication tables or the alphabet.

Whenever he was confronted by a body, he made sure he paused long enough to acknowledge the person lost, and silently offer his respects. He knew it probably didn’t stand up to careful analysis, but that was what he did. Sometimes to recoil was natural, but he also found it unforgivable.

Francisco Silva had regularly driven his lorry from Holland to Peterborough and back again. He knew how a delay in ferry sailings would affect his driving time and equally how any delay on the notoriously congested A14 might impact on his journey from Felixstowe. He timed the UK-bound trip so that whenever he was approaching Cambridge and the North he had made up just enough time in his tight schedule to be able to afford to sit for an hour in the backlog of any accident without his stress levels accelerating beyond comfortable.

Whenever he had to wait any longer, the story changed. He began to fidget, listening to the traffic reports, frustrated that they couldn’t give any more accurate update than, ‘There’s an accident resulting in an eighteen-mile tailback.’ In a situation like that, he would eventually climb from his vehicle and ask other drivers what they knew.

Invariably, when they finally moved again and eventually trickled past the accident scene, the visible remnants would be little more than broken glass and crumpled bonnets. For an actual fatality, the road would close completely, and the six lanes of traffic would be left to pick their way through the string of thirty-mile-an-hour villages that littered the route.

Francisco was not an habitually impatient man, yet he did not understand the necessity of closing the road for so long. And what he didn’t understand, he did not sympathize with.

On 21 October 2008, the trip had worked out much the same as on so many previous occasions. The roads were busy, but the traffic flowed freely, and Francisco’s lorry tucked into the slipstream of an artic belonging to a removal firm; the phone number on the back said it was based in York. It was driven precisely on the speed limit, so he’d have been perfectly happy to sit behind it until the Peterborough turn-off.

The two vehicles ate through the miles that way, passing Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds and Newmarket, through the rush hour and into the dusk. As the A14 passed Cambridge and veered north, the traffic still flowed. Francisco tapped a cigarette from his pack and opened the window in readiness.