An Act of Silence Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also by Colette McBeth

  Praise

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  Monday, 17 November 2014

  PART TWO

  Monday

  November 1991

  Tuesday

  December 1992

  Wednesday

  October 1996

  Thursday morning, 8.32 a.m.

  June 2001

  Thursday 10.45 a.m.

  Eleven Months Before

  Thursday, 10.55 a.m.

  Saturday, 15 November 2014

  Thursday, 11.03 a.m.

  PART THREE

  November 2014

  1992–94

  Thursday, 11.45 a.m.

  One Year Before

  Thursday 12.25 p.m.

  Summer 1994

  Thursday 1.05 p.m.

  October 1996

  Eleven Months Before

  Eleven Months Before

  Autumn 1996

  Thursday 2.51 p.m.

  November 1996

  1996–2013

  Thursday, 3.36 p.m.

  Nine Months Before

  Nine Months Before

  Eight Months Before

  Thursday, 4.38 p.m.

  March–October 2014

  One Month Before

  Thursday 4.20 p.m.

  2000–2008

  Saturday, 15 November 2014

  Monday, 17 November 2014

  Thursday

  Thursday 5.05 p.m.

  Thursday

  Friday

  PART FOUR

  April 2017

  May 2017

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2017 Colette McBeth

  The right of Colette McBeth to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook in 2017 by WILDFIRE, an imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  Ebook conversion by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire

  eISBN: 978 1 4722 2667 9

  Cover design © www.asmithcompany.co.uk

  Cover photographs © Karina Vegas/Arcangel Images

  Author photograph © Paul Curran

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

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  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Also by Colette McBeth

  Precious Thing

  The Life I Left Behind

  Praise

  For An Act of Silence

  ‘Sensational. Intricately plotted and emotionally tense. Loved it’ – Clare Mackintosh, author of I Let You Go

  ‘I loved it. Clever, atmospheric and truly scary. Colette is the real deal’ – Marian Keyes, bestselling author of The Woman Who Stole my Life

  ‘An intelligent psychological thriller with a new twist on the genre. A thrilling read’ – C.L. Taylor, author of The Missing

  ‘A scorcher of a novel where all of the elements of great storytelling come together – vivid characterisation, great plotting, and a denouement to freeze the blood. I loved it!’ – Liz Nugent, author of Lying in Wait

  ‘The complex nature of family relationships are portrayed with clarity and heart in Colette McBeth’s An Act of Silence. A taut thriller’ – Ali Land, author of the Sunday Times bestseller Good Me, Bad Me

  ‘Dazzling. Political intrigue, echoes of Savile, with a troubled mother and son relationship at its heart’ – Tammy Cohen, author of When She Was Bad

  ‘Thoroughly gripping, clever, beautifully written crime fiction’ – Jane Casey, author of After the Fire

  ‘A superbly written and compelling story that combines sharply observed characters with fabulous plotting’ – Amanda Jennings, author of In Her Wake

  ‘I inhaled it – literally reading it in one sitting. A beautifully-written, gripping and thought-provoking book’ – Emma Kavanagh, author of Falling

  ‘One of those beautiful books where you think you’ve worked it all out, only to discover that you’ve been duped by an expert who knows how to write brilliant twists and turns. I devoured it, but also didn’t want it to end as I was captivated by both the perfectly executed plot and the sublime writing’ – SJ Holliday, author of The Damsel Fly

  ‘Expertly crafted and completely gripping. Pacy, suspenseful, emotionally convincing and surprisingly moving . . . One of the best thrillers of the year’ – Graeme Cameron, author of Normal

  ‘Brilliantly compulsive, utterly heart breaking, beautifully written. A psychological thriller of depth and beauty’ – Liz Barnsley, blogger at LizLovesBooks.com

  For The Life I Left Behind

  ‘A rare thing; gripping but compassionate’ – Paula Hawkins, international bestselling author of The Girl on the Train

  ‘The plot is taut and compelling, the writing excellent, but it’s the exciting narrative structure that sets it apart.’ – Marian Keyes

  ‘Intelligent and creepy. One of this year’s best psychological thrillers’ – Paula Daly, author of The Mistake I Made

  To everyone who hasn’t been heard.

  PART ONE

  Monday, 17 November 2014

  Linda

  Say yes.

  One word, all he wants to hear.

  Yes, I believe you. Yes, I will help you.

  That look of his, brimful of need, stirs in me the biological instinct to protect, make safe, put things right.

  I am hardwired to give him what he wants. That is love, I suppose.

  But here’s a thought: what if I had resisted, left him to deal with his own mistakes, learn his lessons the hard way; would he be the same man, sitting here recounting this story?

  The truth is I’ll never know.

  We are where we are.

  It is early, night is fading but dawn has yet to crack open the day. These are what I call the never hours. Suspended between dark and light when the world’s eyes are firmly shut and only the few night owls and early birds among us get to glimpse secrets unfolding. Five minutes ago I woke with a jolt; a noise, a movement, an overactive imagination tore through my sleep. I descended the stairs, fearful there was a secret waiting for me in the shadows, behind a door or hidden in a cupboard. I reached the kitchen, flicked on the light and his voice shattered the morning silence with a simple request.

  ‘Milk, one sugar, please.’

  The fright found an echo in my heartbeat, galloped through my body. Another break-in, that was my first fear. My second? That it was me they wanted this time, not simply an old laptop. I swung around to match the voice to a face and found him.

  I waited for relief to flood me. It didn’t arrive.
Instead, my fear was replaced by dread.

  It wasn’t him.

  He could have been a stranger, this man. The familiar gloss of wealth and success and fame scoured away to reveal a bleaker version, one with a film of dirt thick on his skin, dark oily eyes that hadn’t found sleep in a long time. He was broken, that much was obvious. Something had happened and seeing him like this broke me too.

  ‘What have you done?’ I asked.

  He caught me in a stare. The swell of tears in his eyes quickly rubbed away with the back of his hand.

  ‘Oh, Gabriel.’ I held my son as tightly as I did when he was a baby. ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing that can’t be fixed.’

  Now we sit at my kitchen table where he used to inhale one, two, three Weetabix as a boy each morning. And he tells me.

  A woman.

  She is called Mariela. Pretty name. About mid-twenties he thinks but apparently it’s hard to tell these days.

  ‘Was she your girlfriend?’

  ‘It was just sex.’

  I don’t bite. Gabriel’s casual approach to intimacy has long been the cause of my disapproval. Now is not the time for lectures.

  ‘I see. And when was this encounter?’

  ‘Two days ago. Not last night, the night before.’

  ‘At your house?’

  He nods, rolls his eyes at his own stupidity.

  ‘And then what?’

  He covers his mouth with his hand, the words sting as they come out.

  ‘Then they found her.’

  These are the facts I collect.

  My son Gabriel met a woman called Mariela in a sushi bar two nights ago. She went home with him where they had sex. The next morning she was found in an allotment.

  Mariela is dead.

  The allotments back on to his house.

  Gabriel has been asked to report to Camden police station in six hours for questioning.

  ‘You believe me, don’t you?’

  ‘I . . .’

  I’m not fast enough and he can’t slow down now he has started. He races on with his monologue. My mind is stuck, terrified of following him because it knows where this ends.

  He wants me to help him. Give him some time to get his head straight. Provide my car, that’s all really, not a lot to ask, and cash too. And if anyone asks if I have seen him, the answer is no. He’s not running away, just giving himself a bit of space.

  There’s an intensity to his argument that is impossible to ignore. Wasn’t it always the way? My boy is nothing if not persuasive; one of his many qualities, but dangerous at times too. ‘Someone is trying to frame me,’ he says. I want this to be true but it doesn’t stack up, all I can think of is, Why, why, why would they do that?

  ‘You’re my mother. You know I couldn’t have done this. And you know how it looks, it’ll be all over the papers by the morning. They’ll be judge and jury and I’ll . . . I’ll be fucked. I’ve never begged you for anything before but I’m begging now.’

  His desperation spins out a fierce, kinetic energy that drags me along. He is falling apart and it is agony to witness. I need to hold him together, I have to do something to help. He is right about the press, they’ll crucify him. He won’t be treated fairly. He is well known, a famous face, all the better to sell newspapers. They’ll rake over every detail of his life, cook up a dark side. And my name will be dragged in to damn him further: disgraced politician’s son. He’s in for a public mauling, no doubt, and having been there myself I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, least of all my son.

  I have to do the right thing, but it wears many guises and at the moment I can’t tell it apart from wrong.

  Time. He’s not the only one who needs time to think. The world has slipped out of sync, sent me freefalling into a terrifying darkness. I close my eyes, praying that when I open them again, order will be restored.

  ‘Mum, please.’

  His words go to my core, to who he is, who I am. He is a baby in my arms again, the midwife handing him to me for the first time, a tiny wet being writhing against my skin. And me, his mother, drunk on fear of the past, hope for the future.

  ‘Gabriel,’ I said. My very first word to him, to his father. ‘We’ll call him Gabriel, like the angel.’

  Yes, I’ll help you. I’m about to give him what he wants because what else can I do, he’s all I have. He needs me and above everything else I know this: my son is not capable of murder.

  But.

  I open my eyes and I see it, a red line gouged out of his neck like a warning.

  ‘What is that?’

  He runs his index finger along its trail. Surprised. Hesitates long enough for me to catch the lie that flashes on his face.

  ‘Oh that. I did it on a branch.’

  It is only a scratch but it rips through my belief. It is doubt and fear and dread.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  No answer. He’s stopped making sense now.

  ‘If you haven’t done anything wrong,’ I say, ‘you have nothing to worry about.’

  ‘If?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said, if I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘You think I could have done this?’

  Gabriel

  It’s her house. My subconscious is playing tricks, has lured me here knowing that if I was in full control of my faculties this is the last place I would have chosen. The vision of it rearing up in front of me, half lit by a stuttering streetlight, produces a violence in my gut. Why here? Why not a friend’s house, or Palab’s? Anywhere.

  A deep phlegmy laugh crackles through the night air. Someone’s been smoking too many Marlboro reds. But there’s no one else around. It is my laugh. And suddenly I know what’s so funny. The truth, that’s what. This is the place. The only place. Who else was I going to turn to? She knows who I am, underneath the bullshit and the expensive suits and the fame. That’s what everyone else wants, my so-called friends, my manager, the women. She loves me despite it. Another truth, they’re coming thick and fast tonight. Maybe that’s why I avoid her. She can see right through me.

  She’s my mother.

  I have to tell her. That’s why I have come here. I need her to look at me and see beyond the state I’m in and know, absolutely, no shadow of a fucking doubt, that despite everything I am still her son. I’m her boy, not faultless, far from it, but good at my heart.

  I am not a murderer.

  I need to hear her say the words: I believe you.

  If I don’t have that, what else is left?

  I let myself in. The blue numbers on the oven say 5.01. I want to wake her but then I always was a selfish bastard so I fight the urge, sit on my hands and let her sleep. As it happens, I don’t have very long to wait until her footsteps creak on the stairs. A warmth spreads through my veins, travels the length of me from my big toe to my fingertips and up through my head. It is hope. She is my hope and she’s here in the kitchen, flicking on the light. She hasn’t seen me, so I keep it casual and say, Milk, one sugar, please.

  You’d think it is a fairly harmless request, but it doesn’t go down well.

  She emits a scream. I hadn’t entertained the possibility that my presence might give her a fright, it certainly wasn’t my intention. I should have thought it through, planned my arrival more carefully, but my cognitive abilities aren’t functioning at their peak right now, and I can’t turn back the clock.

  We are where we are.

  Her first words take a while to come out because after she recovers from the initial shock she spends a good while staring at me with a look of abject horror. It produces a sweat that beads on my forehead and chin and slides like worms down my back. I know I’m not looking
my best but, to be fair, neither is she. Her hair would put Medusa to shame and her dressing gown, well, that should have been retired years ago. So I’m on the verge of saying, Shall we call it quits, when she beats me to it.

  ‘What have you done?’

  I rerun her question in my head. What have you done? I heard it right first time. Why would she assume, before anything else, that I had done something wrong?

  Because she always does.

  My eyes tear up. The hope that had been kicking out so much heat fizzles to nothing.

  I’m a grown man, universally acknowledged to be a success – though granted this current shitstorm isn’t my golden moment – but I need her trust, her love. Belief. I still need her.

  She sees my tears. I wipe them away, embarrassed.

  ‘Oh, Gabriel,’ she says and holds me in a squeeze. ‘Tell me. There’s nothing that can’t be fixed.’

  BOOM!

  The hope ignites again.

  I tell her about Mariela, as best I can; the details are a little sketchy even in my mind. I wasn’t exactly sober on the night and thirty sleepless hours have not improved my recall.

  As I’m recounting the story and trying to gloss over the sex bit (there are things no mother needs to know about their son) it occurs to me that I can’t turn up at the police station in my current frame of mind. How can I sit in a room for hours and answer question after question? Christ, I don’t have any answers, none of it is straight in my head. I need a bit of space. Time to straighten myself out and collect my thoughts.

  I ask her if I can borrow her car because this, it seems to me, is the obvious solution. She mutters something about needing it for a trip to Scotland. I ask for a bit of money too. It’s not like she won’t get it back. I have plenty, but walking to the cashpoint right now could be problematic. Someone would recognise me and, even if they didn’t, the police could trace my whereabouts. That wouldn’t be good for either of us.

  I wait for her response. I’d settle for a simple nod of her head. Something. Now is not the time for the silent treatment.

  In the absence of a reply, I up the ante. ‘Someone is trying to frame me. You’re my mother. You know I couldn’t have done this . . .’