Dead Silent by Mark Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

APTs took one leg each and tucked them into the bottom end of the bag. Mason and Price lifted the pole away.
    Standing up, Clay looked around the room and said, ‘Thank you.’
    She picked up an evidence bag and placed the strobe light into it. ‘I’ve had an idea, Bill, about the strobe light. It wasn’t put there just to disorientate whoever found the old man, it was a grim joke, a window into the killer’s view of life and death. I wonder if he knew that Louise Lawson is epileptic? Trigger the witness – the daughter – into a fit. What a punch line!’
    For a moment, Clay imagined she was dead centre of the picture on the cover of Leonard Lawson’s Hieronymus Bosch book. She listened to the fractured birdsong in the dark, early hours, a blackbird disorientated by electric streetlights, and considered what Hendricks had said to her about The Sanctuary.
    ‘Bill, if The Sanctuary is a residential facility, they’ll have to have someone on duty through the night. There’ll be someone there now who may well know Louise Lawson. We’ll go there directly after the post-mortem.’
    Clay watched the technicians carry Leonard Lawson from his bedroom. She wondered to herself if the section of the shaft that remained inside his body had pierced his heart, sealing his fate like some comic-book vampire and wiping him forever from the face of the earth.

14
4.25 am
    ‘Eve!’ Stone’s voice came from Leonard Lawson’s study. ‘Can you come down a minute?’
    Clay descended the stairs to where Stone was standing, in the doorway to the study. He held a thick wad of yellowing A4 paper. She approached him, nodded at the paper and dropped her voice. ‘From?’
    ‘The desk drawer.’
    She smiled. ‘Good. I like it.’
    He turned the collection of papers so that Clay could see the top sheet.
    Psamtik I
    664–610 BC
    The Quest for the World’s Proto-Language
    by
    Leonard Lawson
    ‘There are a load of photographs in the drawer that belong to this manuscript,’ said Stone. ‘I’ve googled it and been on a trawl through Amazon and AbeBooks. There’s no match for a book of this title at all. I can only suggest it was unpublished or it was published under a different title.’
    Clay took the manuscript from Stone and examined it. The pages were dog-eared, from which she inferred that the book had been handled regularly over the years. She sat at Leonard Lawson’s desk and, turning over the top page, imagined him sitting in the same place and reading the text.
    ‘Did you look for the key?’
    ‘All over the study, but I couldn’t find it.’
    ‘So he really cared about the manuscript. Enough to hide the key.’
    She looked at the second page, words from a former world, formed of letters from the metal stamp of an Imperial typewriter on an inky ribbon, letters with blurred edges.
    ISNSSN
    For DN
    Now and for always
    ‘The dedication – For DN, Now and for always – is the same as in all his published works,’ said Stone. ‘But this manuscript has got this ISNSSN tag. It figures that the most important person in Leonard Lawson’s life was a DN, not an LL for his daughter. Not DL, who could’ve been his missus. Unless DN was his common-law wife, but I doubt it, not in those days.’ Stone looked around the room. ‘Interesting life, right. Dreadful conclusion.’
    Clay looked at the contents page.
    Part One: The Ancient World
    Part Two: The Modern World
    ‘As soon as we have a chance to catch our breaths, I want you and Bill Hendricks to get your heads together on this.’ She handed the manuscript to Stone. ‘You read “The Ancient World”, he can read “The Modern World”, or vice versa.’
    She reached into the open drawer, took out a collection of photographs, prints and postcards and started flicking through them. A stone tablet decorated with elegant Egyptian hieroglyphics and with a pharaoh in attendance, holding what looked like a lamp in his hand. She turned it over and read the neat handwriting: