The Silence (Dc Goodhew 4) (16 page)

‘What d’you want, then?’ he asked.

Goodhew explained his connection to the Shanie Faulkner case. ‘You jointly rented that house in King Street.’

‘My son lives there. He’s studying.’

‘I know. So how did Shanie Faulkner come to move in?’

Stone blanked the question. ‘Do you know why Matt’s studying?’

Goodhew shook his head.

‘If he went and got himself a job, he’d have to pay me to live at home, or else move out and cost me nothing. Instead of that I’m paying because he is studying. He thinks he’s punishing me.’ Stone pulled a face that, partly at least, included a wry smile. ‘He thinks he hates me.’

Stone’s voice had a woolly edge to it, but the sentences themselves seemed coherent. A reverse telescope didn’t make things invisible though.

Goodhew wanted to show interest without pushing, so he just echoed the statement back. ‘Matt hates you?’

‘His mother was ill with cancer, and he thinks I killed her.’

‘How?’

‘Well, he knows it was cancer that actually got her, but thinks it was my fault she contracted it. I made her unhappy, and it was that stress that caused it. Or so he’s decided.’

‘Is that possible?’

‘Medically? Yeah. Apparently there are websites and discussion forums that say so, therefore it must be true.’ Stone hadn’t touched his beer since Goodhew joined him; now he made up for it by gulping down the rest of the pint. ‘God bless the Internet, I say.’ He finished the cigarette next, with several equally intense puffs. ‘I’m getting another pint.’

Goodhew followed him into the bar. Stone was talking now and it didn’t seem to bother him that everyone from the landlord to the opposing pool team would hear all about his family crisis.

‘We can go somewhere private,’ Goodhew offered.

‘God, no. Matt’s temper’s no secret in here, is it, Trev?’

The landlord shook his head obligingly as he filled a pint glass with Old Speckled Hen. Goodhew caved in and ordered lemonade. With ice.

‘When you talk about your wife being unhappy, do you mean your marriage was unhappy?’ Goodhew kept his voice low, uncomfortable at the idea of asking questions in a public bar. He needn’t have bothered.

‘Me and Mandy?’ Stone laughed, and it sounded genuine until the last moment when it took on a hollow edge.

He crossed his fingers and held them close to Goodhew’s face. ‘This was me and Mandy; the best woman in the world and she picked
me
. D’you know what gets me – wanna know?’

Goodhew nodded.

‘There have been times when I’ve felt like I’m the cat with the cream, the one who’d got his life sorted. I’ve even given mates advice, feeling I’d done something that set me apart – as if a happy marriage and great kids were mine because I’d somehow earned them.’ Again the hollow laugh. ‘But life’s like a bloody credit card: if you have all the good stuff up front, it feels to me that the repayments are loaded with one hell of a lot of interest.’

‘So she wasn’t unhappy.’

‘Mandy was naturally cheerful – one of those warm people that gets huge pleasure out of small things, know what I mean? Charlotte and Matt used to be that way too. And we said we told each other everything, but I know there was one thing she held back.’

‘What was it?’

Stone narrowed his eyes, as if weighing up how much of an idiot Goodhew really was. ‘If she’d told me she wouldn’t have been holding it back, would she?’

‘I thought someone else might have known.’

‘No. This was something private. A preoccupation that ate away at her sometimes. She’d get this look. I asked her plenty of times over the years but she always said, “I’m fine, don’t worry.” Just once I pushed it and she said that if she ever admitted to having a secret, she wouldn’t then be able to keep it from me. “So, Rob,” she said, “The only thing that matters is you and me are okay. And we are.” That was the end of it. The subject was completely closed.’

‘There’s a big difference from your wife seeming worried or withdrawn, to your son’s idea that you made her unhappy, isn’t there?’ Goodhew mused.

‘All I can think is that Mandy had lost her mum and aunt to breast cancer, and I wonder whether she feared it. She said not,’ he shrugged, ‘but I don’t know now. Point is, there was a lengthy period between her first visit to the doctor and her second or third hospital visit. We didn’t open up to the kids during that time. We decided to wait till we could give them something definite. Can you imagine the tension in the house for all those weeks? Unbearable. We bickered in front of the kids. Then, when they were out, we’d talk about our fears. Apart from that, I don’t understand any reason Matt would have for thinking I made her unhappy.’

Stone swilled the last couple of inches of beer around in the bottom of his glass. ‘If that’s all you want me for, I’ll get off home now.’

‘I was asking about Shanie Faulkner remember?’ Goodhew prompted.

‘Shanie’s like the others, there to share the costs and helping Matt and Libby put a couple of miles between them and home.’ He drifted off subject immediately. ‘It’s bollocks.’

Stone finally drained the glass then thrust it towards the landlord. ‘Matt’s grieving. I don’t know how a teenager starts to get their head round it. I’m his dad and I don’t know where to start. Stupidly big hole Mandy left behind, you know what I mean?’

Everybody’s grief was different, but Goodhew looked at Stone and was pretty sure
he
did know.

‘And if Matt’s way is to lash out, who am I to tell him he’s doing it wrong? Better than this, eh?’ He pointed at his empty pint. ‘I know Mandy and Sarah messaged each other right up till the end, so when she phoned me, I really wanted to help.’

‘You’ve lost me. Who’s Sarah?’

‘Shanie’s mum. Dead Shanie from America.’

‘So Shanie came to stay because your wife and her mum were friends?’

‘BBFs or BFFs or whatever it is.’ Again, the laugh.

‘A favour to your wife?’ Goodhew said it almost to himself, trying to pin down the uneasy feeling lurking in the shadows of his mind; as if someone with the whole picture was watching him struggle to make something up from just the first few fragments.

Stone leaned towards him, close enough that his heavy features filled Goodhew’s entire field of vision. ‘Sarah will be like me now. You don’t just lose the one you love. Friends care, but they don’t know what to say and it comes out stilted. Or else they don’t say anything at all.’ He continued his list of those he’d lost, along with his wife, including Matt, but not Charlotte. As hard as Goodhew tried to keep up with the list of colleagues, old schoolfriends and assorted relatives, his thoughts kept drifting back to Mandy, and the preoccupation she’d never shared with her husband. Perhaps it involved him. Maybe she’d discovered something about him that she wasn’t supposed to know. Or maybe it was the other way around, and she’d been afraid of telling him something about herself. He wondered whether she would have confided in Sarah about this.

Goodhew turned to leave, then hesitated. Shanie was dead and the only reason she’d been in that house at all was because of Mandy. Who was also dead. And however Shanie had died, there had to be a reason.

He would later struggle to remember much more about his visit to the Carlton Arms. He had asked Stone more questions; he must have done because Goodhew could remember himself sitting on one of the bar stools. And later watching Stone leave.

Then he had left too. But somewhere between the front entrance and his car, he heard a heavy crack. A splitting sound. The gravel rose to meet him.

He blacked out before he hit the ground.

The next thing he saw were several men, and behind them the approaching flash of a blue light blinking in the darkness.

He heard a woman’s voice. ‘Gary, can you hear me? Gary? The ambulance is here.’

Regaining consciousness in hospital usually meant that the first thing visible was the ceiling. Recessed lighting, tiles embossed with a little squiggly pattern, and a powder-coated curtain track. Maybe there was a patient’s suggestion box where he could ask them to add a sign up there that said
Welcome to Addenbrookes.

He blinked slowly . . . and when he opened his eyes again he realized that the sun streaming through the blinds had moved on by an hour or two.

‘Keep them open this time, Gary.’

He twisted his head to the left and found his grandmother sitting on one of the visitors’ chairs holding an open copy of
Maxim
.

‘Am I concussed or are you really reading that?’

‘Both. How are you feeling?’

‘Coming round slowly.’ He pulled himself into a sitting position, moving very slowly, waiting for something to hurt. Nothing actually did for the first few seconds, then a dull thudding kicked in just above his right ear. He reached to touch it.

‘Stitches.’ She put the magazine on to his lap. ‘Interesting article on Scarlett Johansson.’

‘Did you buy this for me or yourself?’

‘Neither. Bryn dropped it by.’

‘He’s been in?’

‘Yup, and Gully too. Even Kincaide.’

‘Why Kincaide? Did he think I wasn’t going to pull through?’

‘Very funny. Came for a statement. Fat chance. And Bryn said you had another visitor here when he arrived. A young woman with, and I quote, “a dazzling smile and rampant curls”.’

‘Charlotte?’ That made sense, it was her voice he’d heard in the car park.

‘Bryn seemed to like her.’

‘But he would.’

‘Exactly.’

His conversation with Rob Stone remained hazy, but as his head began to clear he thought about Mandy and Sarah. Sarah Faulkner’s flight was about to land.

‘What time is it?’ He asked the question out loud even though there was a clock clearly visible in the corridor. It was a white analogue, and though it told him it was seven it didn’t seem as though either the morning or evening option could be correct.

‘Quarter to seven,’ she confirmed.

‘Evening?’

‘Yep, you were out for about twenty hours. Not bad for an insomniac.’

‘I need to get back to Parkside.’

Maybe it’s just that a parent and grandparent have different attitudes, or maybe that was just his own grandmother, but he didn’t either expect or receive the stay-in-bed-and-rest dialogue. Instead, ‘I’ll call a taxi,’ was all she said.

And in less than ten minutes they were heading towards the city centre.

‘And Marks sent you a text.’

Goodhew checked his phone.
Don’t go feral. I want to speak to you as soon as you are fit to be discharged.

He guessed his grandmother had already read it. ‘Did the doctor say I was fit to be discharged?’

‘I didn’t hear him say so.’

‘Me neither.’

‘Problem is, Gary, I texted him back and told him you were leaving in any case. He’ll be waiting in the incident room.’

‘Thanks.’ Gary pulled up the Internet on his phone, and used the last few minutes of the journey to search online images.

The display of photographs connected to Shanie’s death had grown since Goodhew last looked.

Marks sat with his back to the door, simultaneously facing the photographs and Goodhew’s reflection in the window beyond. He swivelled his chair around slowly. ‘So what happened to you last night?’

‘Obviously someone hit me, but beyond that, I don’t have a clue.’

‘What did the doctor say? Or did you leave the hospital before you found out?’ Marks glared.

Goodhew realized that his previous tone had sounded a few shades too indifferent. ‘I started looking into the background of one of the other students, and I let myself get distracted.’

‘Remind me what you were supposed to be doing?’

‘Tracking down Shanie Faulkner’s sweatshirt.’

‘And?’

‘I believe it came from Giles and Co. on Trinity Street. That design is one of their own and it appears that they are the only place to stock it. They sell them online too. I’ll go in and try to work out who bought it, and when. It will have to be tomorrow now though.’

‘Hallelujah, Goodhew remembers an instruction.’

‘Sir?’

‘Theoretically you could have still been in a very serious condition today. You were bleeding heavily when you were found. A few hours like that and I would have been down by one whole time equivalent.’

‘It’s so comforting to be thought of as a manpower statistic.’

‘It comforts me if you’ve finally recognized that it is exactly what you are. The young woman who found you?’

‘Charlotte Stone.’

‘Why was she there?’

‘I don’t know. I’d been speaking to her father there, so maybe she turned up to find him?’

‘No matter, Kincaide’s going over to take her statement later. You’ll also need to make one.’

A little more of the conversation with Rob Stone was coming back to Goodhew now. ‘Did Shanie’s parents arrive?’

He nodded. ‘They came into the station first thing. Shanie was their only child.’ Marks picked up a folder, tipped out some loose pages, tapped them into a neat pile, then placed them back inside, before closing the flap. Again he was distracted and again Goodhew’s thoughts were drawn to Emily Marks, his only child.

Goodhew nudged him. ‘Were they aware of Shanie displaying any suicidal tendencies in the past?’

‘No, not at all. But her mother . . .’ Marks sighed. ‘She’s one of those women who kept questioning why Shanie had done it to
her personally
.’

‘And the suicide note leans that way.’

‘That’s true.’ Marks’s voice tailed away. ‘She didn’t come across as a tremendously maternal woman, left me with the feeling that it could have been difficult for Shanie to confide in her if she was having problems.’

‘But she
was
upset?’

‘Yes, absolutely. No suggestion of anything less than heartfelt grief. Have I ever told you about Emily’s cat?’

This abrupt change of subject threw Goodhew for a moment, but it didn’t really matter; Marks often asked a question without expecting a reply.

‘He’d originally been a stray and one night he decided to curl up under the warm bonnet of a parked car shortly before the car’s owner drove to work. The lady pulled over when she heard unidentified bumping and squealing, and rushed the injured animal into the nearest vet’s. It lost a leg and most of its right ear. It was malnourished, flea ridden and worm infested – and do you know what they wanted to call it?’ He paused, but only for effect. ‘Lucky. Personally I could think of far more appropriate names. My wife suggested Mangle . . . The point is, Gary, I could call you Lucky after last night. Lucky your injuries weren’t worse. Lucky you didn’t bleed to death, and so on.’