The Silence (Dc Goodhew 4) (26 page)

‘Like who?’ Kincaide’s tone was casual. Artificially so.

Goodhew heard Marks finishing his call. He shrugged. ‘I really think it would be better if I saw him first.’

Kincaide hesitated, about to speak, when Goodhew pushed open the office door then kicked it shut in his wake. He expected Kincaide might hurry in after him, but nothing interrupted the sound of the paperwork thumping down on the desk.

‘Sit, Gary.’

Goodhew dropped into the nearest chair.

Marks nodded towards the paperwork. ‘What is this?’

‘Every case connected to Shanie Faulkner. I’m sure she was murdered.’

Marks stared hard at Goodhew for several seconds before he spoke. ‘I had some reservations about her death. Everything seemed on the level, and I might have put my doubts down to my other . . .’ he paused to choose the next word ‘. . . preoccupations, except I couldn’t quite overlook your instinct to look further into it. In situations like that, you’re like some persistent yapping puppy.’

Goodhew’s gaze drifted on to the files, not sure if Marks had paused to let him speak.

But Marks spoke immediately. ‘Congratulations, Rin Tin Tin, because your yapping made me push for further tests on both Shanie Faulkner and Meg DeLacy. Meg DeLacy remains a suicide. Faulkner, on the other hand, was killed with an overdose of insulin – administered intravenously. The case is to be reopened with immediate effect.’ Marks stared at Goodhew expectantly; whatever reaction he’d expected from him he clearly wasn’t seeing. ‘What is in that pile, Gary?’

Goodhew reached for the first one. ‘More. Lots more,’ he replied quietly. He laid his right hand on the top of the pile. ‘See how these papers are bundled together? All but one relate to a death, and all of them are connected.’

Marks started counting.

‘Ten deaths.’ Goodhew pre-empted him. He lifted the first two piles. ‘These concern Shanie Faulkner and Meg DeLacy, both suspected suicides and both sharing a house with Libby Brett, whose brother and sister had both killed themselves.’

Marks looked as though he was about to point out that they already knew this, but Goodhew pressed on.

‘What I didn’t know, until this morning, is that Shanie’s mother, Sarah Faulkner, was a schoolfriend of both Matt’s mother, Amanda Stone, and Libby’s father, Tony Brett.’

He moved on to the next two piles.

‘I was attacked outside the Carlton Arms – as was Joey McCarthy, who was also at the same school with Sarah, Amanda and Tony Brett.’

‘And three of the four lived locally,’ Marks interjected, ‘within the catchment area of their old school, so the fact that they all attended is hardly a coincidence.’

Goodhew nodded. He understood the point but didn’t agree. More importantly, he was prepared for this response. Amanda Stone’s notes came next, and he extracted a printout from her pile.

Marks frowned. ‘I hope you’re not going to suggest there was anything untoward about Amanda Stone’s death?’

‘No, just that her close friendship with Sarah Faulkner was the reason Shanie happened to lodge with the other students.’ Goodhew passed the paper over to Marks. ‘This is the list of pupils from a particular year,’ he continued. ‘Those four didn’t just go to the same school; they were all there at the same time. After that, I pulled all records on suicides, accidents and suspicious deaths from then until now, and there are a couple of other instances where two siblings died.’

‘Why did you look for that particular pattern?’

For the first time Goodhew hesitated, as he knew exactly what was coming next. ‘I made a list and realized that was the case, then with Rosie and Nathan Brett, I—’

‘You decided to fit the data to the situation?’

‘No.’ It was actually a
yes
but he drew breath and ploughed on. ‘The first two were former pupils called Aiden and Becki Stacy.’ Goodhew pointed at the list in front of Marks. ‘They were the children of Len Stacy, same school year. The other pair, John and Vincent Wren, were still at school and were the younger brothers of Rob Stone’s current employer and old schoolfriend, Colin Wren.’

This time Marks stared down at the list without being prompted to do so.

‘I know I’ve only looked at them because of Rosie and Nathan, but it started me thinking that perhaps Shanie and Meg fitted as yet another pair.’

‘It’s a big jump in thinking. You’re suggesting eight murders, when we only have grounds to investigate one at the moment.’ Marks stared at the remaining sets of papers. ‘So what happened with the other four?’

‘Accidents – two drownings and two drug related.’

Marks was usually seated very upright, both straight backed and sharp eyed. This time though, he buried his face in his hands and pressed his eyes shut with the tips of his fingers. ‘Oh, shit,’ he whispered.

Goodhew wasn’t about to hazard any interpretation of this comment, so he stayed still and silent.

After a long pause that seemed to run on for several minutes, Marks drew a weary breath and leaned back until he appeared to be looking at the wall behind Goodhew. ‘Once in a while it would be a pleasant change for the easy option to be the right one. Never turns out that way, does it?’

‘Sir?’

‘I respect your perseverance, Gary. I would have preferred a clear suicide verdict on both girls, and you might easily have reached the same conclusion. The fact that you haven’t has been the result of more determination on your part than I myself have shown these last few weeks.’ His attention immediately reverted to the papers. ‘So are you familiar with
all
these documents?’

‘Roughly speaking, I know what they deal with, but I haven’t had time to read them all fully.’

‘Okay, I will need to pull everyone off other assignments and get them back on to this case. I’ll brief them later this morning, so we’ll aim for eleven o’clock. In the meantime . . .’ His attention wandered away briefly, then returned. ‘In the meantime that gives us about three hours, so you go and visit Colin Wren, and I’ll take Len Stacy.’

Goodhew located Colin Wren with a single phone call.

He drove to Chesterton, pulled into the car park of Ferry House and left the police car next to Colin’s van. He spotted Colin almost at once, standing precisely in the same spot as the last time they’d spoken, facing the far end of the garden as if he was still watching Rob Stone walk away.

When he’d said
I’m working at the same place
Goodhew hadn’t guessed it had been meant quite that literally.

Colin turned to him slowly, his expression quizzical.

‘No Rob today?’ Goodhew asked.

‘No, not today. I’ve spoken to him on the phone, and he seems okay. Says he’ll be back on Monday.’

‘D’you think he’ll really show?’

‘Probably.’ Wren shrugged. ‘We’ll see. I’d like to think it’ll be because his conscience will get the better of him, but he’s more likely to turn up because I don’t pay him if he’s not here. Actually, that’s not entirely fair – he’s much better than he was.’

‘Really?’

‘Give him time.’ Colin Wren’s expression changed, as though he’d only then realized that the reason for Goodhew’s visit might not involve Rob Stone.

Goodhew knew this was his cue. ‘I’m here on another matter, Mr Wren. The death of your brothers.’

Colin looked stunned. ‘Johnnie and Vince?’ Their names were uttered in little more than a whisper. He took a couple of steps backwards, towards the nearest bench. ‘Can we sit?’

‘Of course.’

‘Has something happened?’

Goodhew shook his head. ‘Did you realize that Shanie’s mother was at school with you?’

Colin frowned. ‘I know she was acquainted with Amanda, but I don’t know how. Who is she, exactly?’

‘Sarah Sumner?’

It took him a moment to register that name. ‘The American girl?’

‘Yes, and it’s the connection with your old school that’s made us look back at other cases.’

Colin nodded slowly. ‘I see, but it was twenty-eight years ago. How can there be a connection?’

‘We don’t know that there is, but I’d like you to tell me what you remember.’

‘Don’t you have the case-notes, still?’

‘Some, the rest are archived. I expect they’ll be waiting for me when I get back.’

‘Checking my memory then?’ It was a jokey comment and Colin tried to add a smile but it touched his lips too briefly to count. ‘Obviously I have photos of Johnnie and Vince, but they’re in an album. I saw one of those pictures recently and I realized they looked slightly different to the way I remembered them. In between one time I see the photos and the next, I think I do forget a little bit more.’

Colin leaned forward and plucked a broad blade of grass growing up alongside the leg of the bench. He had one elbow on each knee and split the grass from end to end with the nail of his thumb. He let the two pieces fall to the ground before continuing to speak. ‘Nineteenth of April 1984. It was a Thursday, I remember that clearly. They were a year apart from each other in age, and I was five years older. That made me the serious older brother and them the two irritating kids. I mean, that’s how it seemed then.’ His voice wavered as he finished the sentence. ‘I had this Walkman – they were expensive then and I’d saved for it. John nicked it from my room a couple of weeks before and I’d caught them both with it. I was angry, of course, and next time it happened I ended up scrapping on the floor with Vince. Our house was like that – we were timid at school but rough at home. My mum went nuts.’

‘Because you hit him?’

‘Not with me, just with them. She could see how angry I was, I reckon. I never thought they’d do it again, after that barney.’ He sighed. ‘What a fucking nightmare.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘Thursday the next week, they went down to Jesus Green, and I know they had some cans of cider with them. Probably smoking, too, maybe joints. I didn’t actually know where they’d gone, but when they didn’t come back home that night, I guessed they might have been down there.’

‘So you raised the alarm?’

‘No, Mum did. I found out they’d taken my Walkman again and I was angry. Said I wouldn’t look for them. Said they had better bring it back, or else. “I’ll kill the bastards” is what I actually said.’ He clasped his hands behind his neck, eyes shut, head down until he felt it safe to speak again. ‘They’d gone into the water, and the police found the bodies the next day. Still had their clothes on, so they reckoned one had tried to rescue the other. The Walkman was in a carrier bag also in the water. Bag was knotted. Heavy enough to sink I guess, but airtight. It still worked. Fucking thing.’

Len Stacy worked as a brickie and was currently employed on a new housing development out on Cambridge’s northern expansion. The building company was quick to let DI Marks know where to find him, but actually locating plots 108 to 120 on an unmarked and unsurfaced street somewhere in a warren of what felt like hundreds of similar streets took far longer.

In the end, Marks found Stacy at about the same time as Goodhew was wrapping up his interview with Wren.

Stacy was around five foot eight and stocky, the kind of tree-trunk physique that managed to simultaneously look both robust and unhealthy. He was working on the exterior wall of one of the houses. His back was to the road, but he’d turned to look at the approaching car before Marks had even slowed. By the time Marks had parked, Stacy had already reached him. Some people possessed a sixth sense that alerted them to any policeman within a five-mile radius; the fact that Stacy and Marks already recognized each other helped too.

‘Who d’you want?’

‘You, actually.’

Stacy planted his feet so he faced Marks more squarely. His first response was to look angry – some things never changed. ‘Go on,’ he instructed.

Marks didn’t hurry. He wasn’t intending to antagonize the man, but he knew that giving in to Stacy’s bad attitude would provoke him as much as a slap across his cholesterol-filled face. During Marks’s younger days, rounding up Stacy had been a regular event, especially during football season; luckily that only lasted for about eleven months out of twelve. Stacy had a dull and predictable repertoire: pre-match disturbance, swearing on the terraces, post-match scuffle, pub scuffle, domestic scuffle.

Stereotyping wasn’t great but Stacy
was
that stereotype, right down to the never-to-be-removed England shirt, fuzzy Union Flag tattoo on his left forearm and a swallow tattooed on his neck. He was fairly adept at the bully stereotype too, flaring up quickly, facing off loudly and, when threatened, backing down at the last, scraping out of trouble time and again.

He had incurred a couple of minor convictions that dated back to his twenties, nothing since.

‘I’m part of a team investigating two sudden deaths in the Cambridge area.’

Stacy’s expression darkened, and he turned his head away. He then pulled a packet of Golden Virginia from his pocket and busied himself with the ritual of Rizla, tobacco, filter, and finally lighting up.

‘And you want to talk to me about my kids, right?’

‘Aiden and Becki, yes.’

‘I thought that was done with.’ His expression hadn’t changed but now his glare was directed at his cigarette rather than at Marks. ‘No point going over it. I don’t think about it any more.’

‘We’re looking into the possibility of a connection between Aiden and Becki’s deaths and another case.’

‘There won’t be one.’ His voice was heavy with disinterest but then his gaze suddenly pitched sideways and landed on Marks. ‘Or is this your way of saying you lot screwed up the investigation?’ He realized how much that answer now made sense to him. ‘Years since I’ve seen you, right?’ He didn’t need to wait for a reply. ‘What are you now – DI or above, right?’

‘Just DI.’

‘You’re too fucking senior to be down here, unless you’ve been sent to sell me some special bullshit. What really happened to my kids, Marks?’

The workers across the road were still now, tools in hand, staring over at the commotion.

‘What do
you
think happened to them, Mr Stacy?’

‘I don’t think it was an accident.’

‘Then what?’