We present an extract from Silent Voices, the latest D.I. Lottie Parker thriller by author Patricia Gibney.
When Rachel Mullen is found dead by her only sister Beth, her body twisted in an arc of pain, Detective Lottie Parker knows that she has been murdered the minute she enters the bedroom. Lottie's heart aches for Beth, all alone in the world, whose last memory of her sister will forever be the brutal way she was taken. And when Lottie finds a shard of glass placed in the young girl’s throat, she fears that Rachel may be just the first victim...
The night was silent, birdsong no longer audible in the air. The birds had flown to warmer places, Ellen thought, as her feet squelched through the soggy dead leaves. Rain hung in the air.
Taking the damp washing in from the clothes line was a nightly chore. She wasn't sure why she continued to hang clothes out each morning and bring them in again at night. She supposed it gave the outward appearance that someone lived in the house. That her life was normal.
A soft sheen of mist settled on her hands as she threw the last peg into the plastic basket hanging on the line. She looked up at the dark sky, devoid of stars, the moon hidden by black clouds. The night her life had changed forever had been quite similar. Silent, damp and dark.
Shivering, she turned towards the warm light breathing out through the back door, casting eerie shadows along the paving stones that cut the lawn in two. She kicked the leaves from the path onto the grass as she walked, telling herself that she would give it one last run-around with the mower tomorrow if the promised rain decided not to fall.
She thought she heard a sound. Holding her breath, she listened. Crackling. The leaves were too moist to make such a noise. She couldn’t see anyone about, so she shrugged and walked into the house.
She didn’t realise how cold it was outside until she had shut the back door and felt the heat wrapping itself around her like a shawl. Placing the clothes on the table, she flattened them out before draping them on the rack beside the stove. Maybe she wouldn’t bother hanging them on the line in the morning.
Talking to herself as she worked, she wondered if she was going mad in the swamp of loneliness in which she found herself. At thirty years of age, she knew she should be happy with her life and out enjoying it, but things were never that simple.
She turned on the television for company and noticed the two mugs on the table, there since her visitor had left earlier. She had too much going on in her head, with the past tormenting her more and more with each visit. The mugs should have been rinsed and stacked in the dishwasher. As she lifted them, she glanced into the one she had used. A finger of whiskey slid around the bottom, so she drained it, even though she’d have preferred vodka, and brought the mugs to the draining board.
On the television, the familiar soap was almost over and she tried to remember what came on afterwards. She threw another stick in the stove and sat down with the remote control. It felt fuzzy in her hands.
Another sound. A door slamming. Upstairs? Ellen stilled, before dropping the remote, her hands shaking and her stomach suddenly gurgling. She jumped out of the chair. Her jeans caught on the nail she’d been meaning to hammer back in, and she heard the material rip. Her stomach was gripped with a merciless cramp. The pain burned up to her throat.
In the hall, the yellow shimmer from the outside light flickered in through the small pane of glass at the top of the door. Automatically she felt for the switch on the wall, but another sound caused her to pause. Was it from upstairs?
She wasn’t easily frightened, but something warned her to be careful.
'I’m always careful,’ she muttered, having learned the hard way.
She climbed the stairs in the darkness. Tomorrow she’d laugh about this, but tonight she didn’t feel like laughing. On the landing, she waited and listened. Not even a breath of air as she held her hand to her chest, gulping silently.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said out loud when at last she allowed herself to breathe normally. ‘It’s only birds on the roof.’
But there were very few birds around, she reminded herself. A bat in the attic? Yuck. Instinctively her hand flew to her hair. The idea of vermin caught in the silky strands was almost more repulsive than a stranger hiding upstairs.
Another pain pierced her abdomen, shooting right up to her throat. She stood in the deathly silence, listening to her own laboured breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Imagining things.
Doubling over, she screamed as the agony ripped her insides like a sharpened knife. She crawled into the bathroom. Her cries clogged her throat as the torturous throbbing clenched her lungs, squeezing them like plastic balls until she couldn’t breathe at all. She crawled back out onto the landing. The taste in her mouth. What was it? She struggled to put a name to the taste and smell. Her stomach was skewered once again. She dragged herself up along the wall and edged towards the stairs.
That was when she heard a whoosh. The flutter of material. Right before she felt the push between her shoulder blades. Then the thump-thump of her body as it tumbled, first against the wall and then against the steps, the hall floor coming towards her too quickly. Her hands flailed in front of her, trying to soften her landing on the hard tiles.
The crunch of bone on ceramic.
The crash of her head against the wall.
Two vertebrae in her spine snapping like chicken wings. From the torrid pain, she knew that she’d shattered her coccyx. Everything had happened so quickly.
Her cranium smashed against the floor as she came to rest, one leg still on the stairs, the other twisted beneath her body.
Silent Voices by Patricia Gibney is published by Sphere
