The Quality of Silence Read Online Free PDF Page A

generators at Anaktue so a detailed survey was done on every household. There was also a survey carried out for a possible new Inupiaq school. It was very specific on the numbers of villagers living there and at what times of the year.’
    Captain Grayling sounded so reasonable and kind. She saw DI Lieutenant Reeve watching her; he must have spoken to Captain Grayling first. He had a glass of water ready for her. Captain Grayling was continuing, the sound waves relentlessly hitting her eardrums and turning into words.
    ‘Of the twenty-seven villagers, four of the young Inupiat men are away working at the wells in Prudhoe Bay as they do every winter, which means there were twenty-three villagers remaining. And as I said, we recovered twenty-four bodies.’
    ‘You haven’t identified Matt though, have you?’ she said.
    ‘You told Lieutenant Reeve the wedding ring was his.’
    ‘But he wasn’t wearing it, was he? And you haven’t done proper forensic tests, you can’t have done. You would have told me.’
    Grayling felt compassion for this woman coursing through him, threatening to dislodge the dead weight of grief always present inside him, so precariously balanced. He wished there was a way of telling her that wasn’t brutal.
    ‘The fire was very intense,’ he said. It left some bodies barely identifiable as human let alone as a person with a name and family. It was unlikely they’d even be able to get dental ID for some of them.
    ‘I wish I hadn’t been the person who had to tell you, but your husband is dead. I’m so sorry. I know that Lieutenant Reeve will look after you.’
    He hung up the phone.
    The phone call from Matt had simply been tangible evidence of what Yasmin had already known, carried on the tip of a knife and now in the core of her, that he was alive.
    In truth, she hadn’t been surprised to learn the phone call wasn’t from him, the surprise had been when she thought he’d called her. She wished he had, not because it would be a sign of reawakened love for her, but because then the police would have to believe her and she wouldn’t be in an Alaskan police building next to an airport with no clue, really, as to what she should do.
    Mum’s just come in. She’s crouching down, so her face is close to me and I can read her lips easily. She tells me that Dad is fine. There’s been a mistake, but she will sort it all out. She looks too tight, like when you miss hitting a Swingball and the cord wraps itself round and round the post. I pretend not to notice and smile at her.
    She tells me that Dad dropped his phone, which is why he hasn’t been able to call or text us. An older policeman comes in and asks Mum to go with him. She says she’ll be back soon. As they leave, the older policeman puts his arm out towards her, then drops it again without touching her. Lots of people don’t know how to behave towards Mum, her looking so lovely puts them off, but it’s completely clear she needs an arm around her.
    In his office, Lieutenant Reeve tried to usher Yasmin Alfredson to a chair but she wouldn’t sit down.
    ‘Matt’s not dead,’ she said. ‘The state trooper in the north, Captain Grayling, has to search for him.’
    Lieutenant Reeve had read somewhere that there were four stages of grief, denial being the first.
    ‘I’m sorry, he doesn’t think there’s any point.’
    ‘So he just gives up? How hard can it be to go and look for someone?’
    He was afraid that her voice would break into a scream or a sob and kept his own voice calmly firm.
    ‘If Captain Grayling thought there was the remotest chance then he’d go. He flew a helicopter himself to Anaktue, despite the storm. Wasn’t even on duty but came in anyway. And he was the last person to leave; spent nearly twelve hours in minus thirty, searching.’
    The man was a maverick in Fairbanks terms, running the show up in the north, as if he owned the place, often with scant regard for rules. But he would always go the extra mile,