His Silence - Chapter Five

I wake my computer up and log into my emails, at least I work from home; I don’t think I could’ve gone into the office today, not with everything still swirling around inside my head from last night, after speaking to Jeremiah. Emma can’t see why I prefer working from home, but it would end up taking me an hour to get into London and home again, meaning I’d have to get up at stupid o’clock, plus I get so much more done when I’m at home anyway. She works in Chelmsford at a nail salon so the journey isn’t too bad for her; I suppose I could look for a job there, if I ever do want to go back to working in an office. Not at the nail salon though, that’s definitely not a job for me. Michael’s the only one who commutes into London, which means he has to be out of the house by seven at the latest.

My foot’s tapping underneath the table. I can’t get my conversation last night with Jeremiah out of my head. I texted him the moment I went up to bed so he had my number, but he hasn’t replied, he’ll be waiting for me to confirm I want to go with him to see Harvey. Perhaps the whole thing is a scam. Perhaps Callum’s right and he is just a journalist. But what about the photograph he gave to me? I shift forward in my seat and pick up my cup of tea, glancing at the last email I received yesterday from my colleague, Isobel, the only person I work with who’s around my age.

God is the guy with the farm driving you nuts as well?

I smile. I should try and catch up with her at some point soon; it’s been ages since we’ve had a night out. Sometimes Callum comes out with us and that’s when we go really wild.

‘Righto, I’m off,’ Emma says, drifting into the living room, clutching her bag. ‘If you want to make a sandwich later you might want to grab some bread from the shop; the last of it got used when Graham decided to make himself a sandwich at nine p.m. last night.’ Mum rolls her eyes.

I smile. Graham, Emma’s brother, is the same at Christmas whenever we’re together; he’ll be the only one who’ll get up to make himself a turkey sandwich, but he won’t think to ask if it’s OK, or at the very least, if anyone else would like one. We always take bets to see how long it’ll be before he slips off to the kitchen to make one.

‘Yeah no worries, see you later, have fun at work,’ I say.

Emma slips back out into the hallway; I wait until the door clicks shut before I open up the Internet. I’ve still got half an hour before I start work anyway. I type in my family’s name and press enter. Hundreds of results pop up on the screen, like I knew they would. The article at the very top is from a couple of years ago, when it was the eighteenth anniversary of the murders. I click on it. My mother and father’s faces beam back at me. I sit back in my seat. There was a time when I couldn’t bear to look at their pictures, I used to always imagine what life would’ve been like with them, had Harvey not killed them, and it was always so hard. Would they have been proud of me, of what I’ve achieved so far in life? Would they have pushed me to get a degree? I shake the thoughts out of my head and begin to read the article.

Eighteen years ago today, the shocking murders of the Cole family became a worldwide phenomenon. Only a handful of cases around the world have received the same level of publicity. John Cole (47) and Laura Cole (45) were butchered to death by their only son, Harvey, who also killed a family friend, Ian Jones (47) who was living with them at the time in a rented house in Little Castle, Essex. Harvey confessed to killing them, but refused to tell the police why he killed them, and to this day the case still remains a mystery, and of course this has given rise to a number of conspiracy theories. What is even more shocking is that at the time, Harvey was only fourteen years old; child murderers are extremely rare in this country, so there was no question about it that this case was going to be big. Countless investigators have tried to solve the case over the years, with no success, and what is even more puzzling, is that there is very little trace of this family before the murders. On the eighteenth anniversary we spoke to key witnesses, who lived in the area at the time, about what they can remember from that fateful day. Alice Whitlock who has lived in the area all her life recalls, “I remember this strange family arriving three weeks before the murders. My husband used to always make a point of welcoming anyone new, particularly if they’re on our street. I remember he baked a cake for them, and when he went up to the gate, they wouldn’t let him in, wouldn’t even talk to him when he tried to make his presence known. He was in a right mood about it at the time and thought then there must be something odd going on. Of course we never saw the children while they were there, that’s why we were so shocked to hear that a fourteen-year-old boy had been arrested. It was just so shocking.”

I stop reading. It’s weird hearing other people giving accounts of my family, thinking they know them. There’s a photograph at the bottom of the article of the house where my family were killed. It reminds me a little bit of the house in The Haunted Mansion, only without the graveyard. There’s a tall wrought iron gate at the foot of the drive. The house is big; I read somewhere it was built in the seventeenth century, why Ian chose this place to take my family to I have no idea. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere once the rent was cheap, and it sounds like they needed somewhere quick. There’s a fountain before the front door. I stare at the big wide windows and think of myself as a six-year-old peering out of them. I must’ve been over the moon as a kid, living somewhere so big and with lots of garden space. Were we allowed to play out in the garden while we were there?

I go back to the search results. There’s no article, at all, that I read through that mentions Jeremiah’s name. I type his name and my family’s name into Google. Still there’s nothing. I tap my fingernails on the table; he didn’t give me his last name. If I knew that, then perhaps I would be able to search for him. Damn it why didn’t I ask? I thump my fist on the table.

I pull out my phone, and bring up my last message to Callum. I haven’t told him about my conversation with Jeremiah yesterday. He’ll want to know if I’ve made contact with him again, after we spoke about it at the party yesterday. I send him a text.

Can we chat at lunch time? Xx

I watch the little dots appear on the screen to indicate he’s replying.

Yeah sure, what’s up?

I’ll chat to you later, just got something I need to discuss with you xx

I place my phone on the table and focus on the emails I’ve got to work through.