Free Splinter the Silence by Val McDermid Page A

one-way street to self-destruction.

And so they’d done the logical thing and killed themselves. And since the message he wanted to send was that these loud-mouthed women were setting themselves and their so-called sisters on the road to perdition, the books would serve to hammer home the message. They would act as a kind of suicide note, there to reinforce the act itself, to still any doubts on the part of the authorities. They would be an easily solved code that indicated these women had brought about their own deaths.

This was the message he wanted to go viral: failing to fulfil yourself as a wife and mother would make you want to kill yourself. He wanted there to be no misapprehension in the eyes of the audience. He didn’t want to cloud the issue with the notion that there might be something else going on. He didn’t want them martyred as murder victims so he had to strengthen that image of suicide. Trying to forge suicide notes would have been asking for trouble; the books served the same purpose and couldn’t be exposed as forgeries.

And besides, after the first two or three went public and people began to sit up and take notice, they’d become a fashion statement in themselves. Silly women driven to death and despair would pick their own texts to say goodbye with, so they’d become part of the movement he was creating. The ones who got it would join his very own sisterhood of their own free will.

The books had been a late addition to his plans. But a brilliant one. He had to scrabble to get them all together in time. But the more he thought about it, the larger their significance loomed. The little stack on the shelf in his garage had turned into one of the most powerful elements of his campaign. Women who had killed themselves raising their voices in support of women who were killing themselves. It had an almost poetic symmetry.

And of course, they led him directly to the next death.

At first there had been a lot of swearing and walking into walls. Carol’s aim was appalling, her co-ordination little better. But Tony was encouraging, occasionally taking over the controls to show her how to negotiate a particular difficulty. And gradually, she got the hang of it. Watching her immerse herself in the world of pixels, Tony cursed that he hadn’t managed to persuade her to do this years ago. With the game as their focus, they slipped back into an easy intimacy that he thought they’d lost forever. They teased each other, made jokes, groaned at her failures and cheered her victories. They jostled each other’s shoulders like a pair of teenage gamers, both lost in what she was trying to achieve.

When he’d suggested they pause for a cup of tea, Carol had been astounded to realise they’d been playing for more than three hours. ‘I’d no idea. I thought it was about ten o’clock. Not midnight. I have to be up in the morning,’ she said in tones of wonder.

‘Take the dog out now, she’ll cut you some slack in the morning, won’t she?’ He yawned and reached for his tablet.

Carol gave him a derisive look. ‘It’s clear you’ve never had a dog. I’ll be lucky if I get an hour’s grace with this one.’

‘At least you’ve got a proper bed to sleep in tonight.’

They’d spent an hour earlier in the evening assembling a king-size bed at the far end of the barn. Carol had insisted on the widest option in the shop. ‘If I’ve got to share my bed with a bloody dog, I need as much space as possible,’ she’d pointed out.

‘It doesn’t matter what size bed you buy, she’ll snuggle up to you anyway. You’re the leader of her pack, she wants to be close to you.’

Carol had grunted but opted for the big bed regardless. And now she’d surfaced from the game, she intended to crawl into it as soon as possible. But by the time she came back from a short jog along the shoulder of the hill, Tony was deep into 80 Days . ‘That looks a bit dull,’ she said, looking over his shoulder.

‘Try