Her Silence

Chapter Thirty

"Evil people rely on the quiescence of naive people to allow them to continue with their evil." Stuart Aken

A Voice from Above

The bar was merry. The tables were full of joyous faces, and the smell of a Christmas dinner was divine. The sound of Christmas crackers would fill the air everyone now and again, a round of cheers would follow. Two men were leaning against the bar, murmuring quietly, naïve and unaware of the events that were about to unfold. Naïve and unaware of the three cars full of police officers and the two fire engines that were close to turning down the small street. Even more naïve and unaware were the twenty-odd staff members and company that were so innocently counting down the overly climatic days to Christmas. It wasn't until a wild-looking, red-in-the-face girl came storming through a set of double doors that attention was drawn. One of the two men at the bar swallowed the anger-driven bile that was rising up his throat, and hissed something along the lines of:

"She was meant to go around the back." The other man nodded hastily and put his head in his hands. They were doomed. Failure was inevitable. But not for all of them: one of the men had an idea, and it might just save him by the skin of his teeth. He subtly turned on the voice memo app on his phone and made sure he was set to record the following conversation. Sure enough, the girl came over and became whispering so quickly that it was nearly impossible to make out what she was saying. Hysteria had overcome the poor thing.

"What did you do?" One man asked. The girl looked at him deliriously.

"What did I do?" She asked in a tone suggesting the man had grown a second head. "What I did Jacob, was lock one of my dearest friends in the kitchen and set the place alight." She stopped, the colour draining from her face. The realisation had hit. She covered her mouth just as her cheeks blew out, and an odorous liquid seeped through her fingers. The two men looked up and away in disgust with little sympathy. "I'm going home." She said, weakly. The man, Jacob, panicked.

"No." He snapped. "You're staying here and making sure no one leaves. I'm the one going home." The second man looked at him.

"Well I'm coming with you."

"No, no you're not. You're going anywhere other than with me, but only once you are certain she will stay. I don't care how you do it."

"You set us up." The man growled. Jacob shrugged.

"No, I didn't. You'll get the money, but I never said I'd help you get out of this." He turned to face the girl. "You are stupid. I hope you find comfort in the prison cell you're about to spend your life in. Committing murder and arson isn't something you can wriggle your way out of easily." Tears formed in the girl's eyes.

"But you're the one who told me to." She wept. "You and her Mother." Jacob nodded but didn't say anything else on the matter, and walked straight out of the front door of the bar and into the night, all without another word to anyone. The couple were left standing in disbelief.

"We can just go Amy. He isn't going to be watching." Amy nods.

"Yes, he is." She whimpers, turning and pointing at the camera above the till. Staring at it, she blinked rapidly before widening her eyes as her second bout of realisation hit. "Oh my God." She scarcely whispered.

"What?" The man whined.

"The camera picks up sound. It will have caught both mine and Jacob's confession." Suddenly, it all didn't seem so bad, until she remembered that the one person who made her life a little brighter was mostly likely going to be a burnt corpse by the end of the night. All within a matter of minutes the alarm was raised by a group of people sitting closest to the double doors leading down to the kitchen, who had at first smelt smoke and thought nothing of it. It was the heat felt on their ankles, the smoke wrapping around them and the table legs, that made them realise something wasn't quite right. To them, there was a God above, as almost instantaneously red and blue lights flooded the bar, and at least thirty men and women entered and began screaming two defining words: get out. At the same time, the fire alarm went off, causing a look of confusion among the police officers and fire fighters, none of whom had yet found the alarm and triggered it. Questions began to be asked: how did the emergency services already know, who turned on the alarm, and where was the police officer and the mute girl?

*****

I really enjoyed writing from this point of view, it was totally different and a challenge at times, but it was something I always wanted to try out and use in this story. I hope you enjoyed it!

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