The Silent Ones (32 page)

Darren looked at Carly and frowned. His mouth was dry, he couldn’t speak, confusion rendered him mute.

‘Your sister wouldn’t talk to me unless you were present. This is the first time I’ve seen her. What happened at the railway arch?’

Carly saw Darren was struggling and came over to the bed, handing him a glass of water from the trolley. ‘You can do it Darren, tell him what you remember.’ Her voice was low and calm, she put her hand on his forehead.

‘I went to see Berenice, I saw your tag on her skateboard, we fought …’ He trailed off. Orin didn’t take his eyes off him. ‘I got the key and I opened the door and—’

Orin interrupted him. ‘The police are combing that arch for every bit of information they can get.’ He turned to look at Carly in an accusatory way. ‘They don’t understand what they’re finding.’

Carly said nothing, just looked out of the window. Tension bristled in the air. ‘Tell him what happened,’ she finally said to Darren.

‘I opened the door, I saw Carly, all of them, in there, just standing there. Berenice came at me again and Carly shouted a warning to me. She saved my life.’

‘What about Isla?’

Darren paused. He couldn’t remember. The world had turned strange at that point. Flashes of what he’d seen came back to him. There was something he was trying to remember, something from the corner of his vision. ‘Isla was dragging me by the leg …’ He tailed off again. That wasn’t what was troubling him. ‘We came outside, a woman, I guess it was Heather, was crying.’ Darren watched Carly, staring out at nothing through the window. What had happened during all those years? She looked normal, sounded normal, was well fed and healthy, but there was something he couldn’t place. ‘Carly was shouting.’

Orin turned to her. ‘What were you shouting?’

She still didn’t move. ‘I was shouting it’s over. It’s all over.’ Her eyes filled with tears.

Darren took up the story. ‘Isla came out of the lock-up. I said “You’re safe” and she said “No”. And she backed away to the corner and I tried to get up and follow but I couldn’t. I was calling out her name, but she was gone.’

There was silence. ‘So she went voluntarily,’ Orin finally said.

‘Yes. Have the police not found her?’

‘They’re looking of course, but I’ve hired my own private detectives to find her using more aggressive means. There isn’t a flophouse or railway arch that won’t be tossed by my men.’

An image flashed in front of Darren of an army of the homeless and the hopeless being upended by Orin’s people. He was still struggling to recall what he had seen in the arch.

‘Where are Rajinder and Heather?’ he asked.

‘Rajinder’s with a cousin and is refusing to speak to the police or her family. Heather’s gone to a convent. She has no family. During her incarceration she became deeply religious.’ Orin turned to Carly. ‘Which leaves you. Isla didn’t just put on a coat and stroll off. Where is she?’

In that instant Darren remembered what he had noticed as Isla dragged him across the floor. Behind her, on the wall, was a row of coats and on the last hook hung an umbrella.

They had been allowed to go outside.

Carly got off the windowsill and walked towards Orin. ‘I don’t know where Isla is. But it’s important you know what was really happening in there. She disappeared not because she can’t come home but because she doesn’t want to.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ Orin spat. ‘She has been shut up by a madwoman in a cage for ten years, now she’s alone and afraid and half mad and seeing the world for the first time and—’

‘You don’t get it.’

‘No I don’t, young lady. My daughter is alive after years when we thought she was dead. She could come to harm. She needs to be found.’

Carly shook her head. ‘She hasn’t been chained up for ten years. We weren’t rotting away in there. We were busy. We were at work.’

Orin looked too stunned to speak.

‘Does the name Gert Becker mean anything to you?’ Carly continued.

‘The guy on the video on the boat?’ Orin asked.

‘Isla took his confession.’

Darren closed his eyes, trying to shut out the ramifications of all this.

‘She was outside?’ Orin’s voice was quieter than Darren had ever heard it.

‘Berenice was one of Gert Becker’s victims. She had the misfortune to run into him when she was fourteen. He tied her up and kept her for three days before she managed to escape.’

‘Why did she never report him?’ Orin demanded.

Carly laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘A runaway from a children’s home who’d been kicked out of three schools and who hated the police? A girl like that accusing a high-profile, wealthy businessman, a pillar of the community?’ Her voice was thick with sarcasm. ‘He knew exactly what he was doing. Gert chose his victims very carefully. He revelled in being untouchable. Years later Berenice, emotionally unstable and physically scarred, drifted down to Brighton and met Olivia on the seafront.’ She faltered. ‘Olivia saved her. Put her back together. They had a connection, because what happened to Berenice had also happened to Olivia’s sister Lauren. She was used and abused by a man who seemed untouchable – one of her dad’s friends. He worked in London. Olivia’s parents had lots of parties at their fancy country place – powerful people from the City and the government would come and stay. But Lauren wasn’t as strong as Berenice and she couldn’t cope. She killed herself when she was sixteen.’

Darren felt his heart fill with despair. His sister, so young and impressionable, had been fed a modern version of a Grimm’s fairy story, only real and brutal and sick.

‘Hell, this is horseshit! If these women had done the right thing other women and girls would be alive today – Becker would be rotting in a penitentiary!’

Carly got off the windowsill. ‘You
know
that’s not true. Men like him get away with it – all the time. That’s why accusing him wasn’t enough. Olivia and Berenice wanted a full confession, all the details, all the names and dates—’

‘Stop, please stop,’ Darren pleaded. Carly was too young to think the world was made this dark. ‘Not all men are like that. They’re not all monsters—’

‘Where I grew up they are.’

Orin’s strength seemed to fail him and he sat down heavily on the bed next to Darren. Darren didn’t know what to say that could make the other man feel better – a moment of joy Orin must have wished for countless times and never dared to believe could come true had been snatched away from him.

He looked at Carly and his heart bled anew. He thought about all the education she had missed, the relationships she had never had a chance to form, the good in the world that had been denied her. ‘Olivia and Berenice trained us, in computer techniques, in impersonation, in interrogation, in how to tail someone. When Olivia was arrested, we carried on the job without her. Your daughter’s not running, Mr Bukowski, she’s hunting. She’s hunting the man who cut Lauren’s life so short.’

‘Who is he?’

‘We don’t know.’ She paused, staring at nothing through the window. ‘It’s complicated. It’s like we’re hunting a many-headed beast. Once we find evidence against one man, it leads to someone else. There’s a network of people who are connected.’

Orin made a noise Darren couldn’t quite make out. He was pacing round the room, unable to stand still. He came over to Carly and stared out of the window alongside her.

‘There’s something an American notices when they come here. It’s small. So many secrets in somewhere so small.’ There was silence. He turned round. ‘I am going to use all my money, all my connections and all my energy to search every inch of this goddamn tiny, grey country to find her, and then I am going to finish this.’

‘Carly is not to get involved, she needs to concentrate on readjusting to normal life, on repairing herself—’

‘That’s sweet, Darren,’ Carly interrupted, ‘but there’s another problem. I don’t like your daughter, Mr Bukowski.’

‘But you know her, better than anyone. Hell, I don’t much like your brother, but I need him. And he owes me. I’m finding Isla. I have the money to mount a search, I have the police connections, and Darren –’ he turned to the bed ‘– has got close to the architect of the whole sorry saga as she rots away in her cell. So are you two young guns in or out?’

O
livia hadn’t left her cell for days. She wasn’t sure she knew how many; time was blurring and folding in on itself. They had tried to take the restraints off a few days ago but she had punched the wall so hard as soon as her hand was free that they had got her back into them and moved her to a padded cell. The pain of the open knuckle was a welcome distraction from the terrible visions that had set up home in her head.

They had tried to feed her soup and she had spat it back out in their faces; water she did the same with, until they began drugging her again and she simply drifted in and out of consciousness. That was fine by her; she wanted to stay suspended in this state as she starved herself to death. She knew she had the willpower.

She had been wrong about everything she had worked for and believed in, and so it was better that it be over. She would spend every waking moment working out how she could kill herself. She relaxed a little then. She was efficient and cunning – she would be dead before the month was out. She needed to pull herself together and get out of these ties and then she could work on annihilating herself.

The door opened and two female guards came in. They manoeuvered her into a wheelchair and took her down long corridors. She didn’t bother to ask where they were going because she didn’t care.

They parked her in a room with a desk and a small window through which she could see the sky. It was blue and the memory of Berenice with her in Brighton filled her up and made tears spring into her dried-up ducts. She could weep for a thousand years.

The door opened and Helen walked in, a file under her arm. ‘Good morning, Olivia.’

Olivia tried to work some spit together in her mouth to lob at her.

Helen sat down and put the file on the desk, interlaced her fingers and leaned forward.

The tears had helped; there was a big glob of snot forming at the back of Olivia’s throat. She could splatter Helen’s silk shirt from here.

‘Isla Bukowski has gone missing.’

Olivia swallowed the spit in her mouth and stared at her.

‘When the women were discovered in the lock-up, she fled the scene and cannot be located. She is, apparently, looking for someone who she believes drove your sister to kill herself.’

Olivia felt a great peace wash over her, more profound than anything she could have ever imagined.

Isla was fighting the fight, keeping the dream of justice for Lauren and countless others alive. Even after the greatest test she had faced, being confronted with the possibility of return to normal life, to the instant gratification of love and family, she had stuck to the path she had been set on all those years ago. A decade of suffering in here had not been in vain after all.

‘You know, Dr McCabe, I’ve missed our chats.’ Her voice was croaky and hoarse, her vocal cords damaged from prolonged screaming.

‘If you were to cooperate and give us some idea of who this person is, your therapy with me could be continued.’

‘I would feel more able to give you information if we could talk like normal human beings, without all this unnecessary baggage.’ Olivia nodded down at the thick straps that wound round her wrists.

Helen remained calm. ‘It’s very important for you to feel you have some power, however illusory, isn’t it?’

Olivia grinned. Her lips were so dry that she could feel the skin cracking and taste blood rushing to fill the tiny fissures. But more than that, she felt life and possibilities rushing back into every shattered cell of her body. ‘Dr McCabe, let me tell you something about power. Power is held by the person who is thought to wield it. And in this room, today, who do you think that is?’

Helen gave a small smile, as if something Olivia had said amused her. ‘It doesn’t matter who I think it is, Olivia.’

Olivia found herself thinking her psychiatrist’s brown eyes more appealing than any she could remember. Her hair was so thick and glossy. She imagined for a long blissful moment how wonderful it would be to stroke it. If she helped in a small way her mental dance with Helen in their therapy sessions would continue, hopefully for years. She thought with joy about all the entertainment, amusement and distraction it would provide.

‘Welcome back, Dr McCabe.’

She had come home. And it was beautiful.

D
arren was preparing to leave hospital. His overnight bag was on the bed; someone, probably Mum, had packed it and brought it in when he was unconscious and in intensive care. There was his washbag, a selection of clothes and, in a fit of enthusiasm, his mum had packed some art supplies. There were some files shoved in on top of it all with The Missing charity logo on them. Orin must have delivered them to the hospital some time over the past week.

He had only a few minutes – Mum and Dad had gone to get the car and Carly was outside in the corridor getting water. Darren sat down on the bed and pulled the files out. The first one was a short profile of Olivia’s sister and a photo of her that was grainy and very blown up and probably from school. The second contained information about the murder of Rollo McFadden.

Orin had paperclipped a note to the front in his spiky scrawl: ‘This is all the extra I could get. Remember the work of the charity is still as important today as it was yesterday. Come and join me.’

He put the file aside. Orin had dug out this information in an attempt to woo him back when they were still grasping at the shortest of straws, when the possibility of finding all four of the remaining missing alive and well would have seemed beyond fanciful. Molly was the only girl who didn’t make it.
Rollo is six foot two.
Olivia’s words came back to him and he felt dread flicker down his spine.

He picked up the file and opened it. There was a detailed report on Rollo’s murder. He had been a nightclub bouncer in Brighton and had had running feuds with several local drug-dealing gangs; he had two convictions for ABH. Rollo had been beaten about the head several times by unknown assailants in the front room of his house in Hove. The photocopied photos were evidence enough that his end had been bloody, brutal and vicious. Darren couldn’t stomach it; he had endured enough violence to last a lifetime. He was about to close the file when he noticed that the date of the murder was the day before Carly and Isla went missing. He tried to flick back to the front of the file but he fumbled the papers, and several photocopied photos from the back of the file fell to the floor. He swore. With his injuries, he couldn’t bend over to pick them up. He stared down at the photocopies of evidence collected from the crime scene and saw something that made his newly constructed joy drain away.