by Neil White
She climbed off him too quickly and stepped out of the car to put her knickers and T-shirt back on. He pulled at his trousers and then tossed the condom and wrapper out of the car window. As he clambered out of the back seat, puffing and wheezing from the exertion, he went towards her, to touch her hair, but she pulled away and smoothed her skirt instead.
‘I need to go back,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk if you don’t want to take me.’
‘No, I’ll take you,’ he said. ‘I’d like to spend more time with you.’
She looked wary. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It isn’t just about this,’ he said, and he gestured around him, at the car, at his lap. ‘I want something more.’
She looked away and thought for a few seconds. ‘I’m not going to your house.’
‘No, it’s not that,’ he said, and then he sighed. ‘This will sound stupid, but it’s about feeling someone in my arms, someone who will hold me. I can make it better for you, more than this.’
She folded her arms and looked at him. ‘That would be expensive.’
He took a deep breath. ‘I know, I know. I’ll come and find you when I can arrange it.’
She didn’t say anything for a few moments, and then she said, ‘I’ll walk back, it’s okay.’
And then he was alone again. His breathing returned to normal, and he climbed back into the driver’s seat and started the engine, the noise loud in the shadows around him.
Chapter Sixteen
The early morning train to London was busy, filled with pensioners on cheap advance bookings. The journey was shorter than it used to be, just a couple of hours from Lancashire to the bright lights, and the aisles were busy as people tottered to the buffet car to relieve the monotony. A group of Scottish students swapped boyfriend-talk on the opposite table and the air was filled with the smell of sandwiches. I looked up as I saw Susie making her way towards me, two coffees in her hands, a magazine tucked under her arm.
‘I thought we might have gone first class,’ she said as she lowered herself into her seat. ‘We’re going to make some big money from this.’
‘You wouldn’t like first class,’ I said. ‘You get free coffee, but you’ll also get businessmen trying to impress the rest of the carriage.’
Susie smiled and slid one of the coffees over to me.
‘When do I get to meet Claude?’ I asked.
Susie didn’t answer at first, as she fiddled with the lid on her coffee. ‘Whenever he calls,’ she replied eventually.
‘But you know where he lives. Why can’t we just go there?’
‘Like I told you, he needs to know that you’re on your own, that he can trust you,’ Susie said.
‘You can vouch for that.’
‘How do I know someone hasn’t been following us since we met this morning?’ When I didn’t answer, she said, ‘We just go to where I’ve been told to go and we hang around. Claude will find us, don’t worry.’
I thought about the prospect of meeting Claude Gilbert, and it was hard not to smile. I took a drink of coffee, and then said, ‘Claude comes second though. I need to see someone first.’
‘How do I know you’re not speaking to the police?’ she said, shocked.
‘You don’t,’ I replied. ‘But these stories don’t sell themselves. I’m trusting you, and so you’ve got to trust me.’
Susie considered this before saying, ‘But will they let you write it up how Claude wants it?’
I looked out of the window as I thought about that. The truthful answer was that they would go with what they think will sell papers and they wouldn’t give a damn about Claude, but maybe it was too early for a lesson in the cold world of journalism. Fugitives don’t get copy approval.
‘If it is Claude, then yes,’ I lied, ‘but the story might change if he goes to prison.’
‘But he won’t,’ Susie said. ‘He didn’t kill Nancy.’
I turned away again and looked at the reflection of my cup in mid-air, a ghost against the backyards of some Midlands town that we were racing through, the landscape getting brighter. I could see Susie in the reflection too, but as London got closer, the cold reality of having to sell her story to a ruthless press started to sink in, and so I began to wonder whether her story really made sense, that Claude Gilbert could have been undiscovered all these years—but I was willing to gamble my reputation on the chance that I was about to write the best story of my career.
Mike Dobson lay alone in bed while Mary cleaned the kitchen downstairs. He thought he could still smell the night before on him, the latex on his fingers, her cigarette smoke in his hair. And it seemed like Mary knew. He didn’t know how, but she always seemed different after he went for a drive. Maybe it was the way that he no longer pawed her or tried to tease out a response, hoping that their sex life would reignite just once and become something more than it had been for most of their marriage. Or perhaps the flush to his cheeks gave him away.
Mary always cleaned the house afterwards. At least that’s how it seemed.
He turned over and looked towards the window. He could see the tops of the sycamore trees in the park nearby, giving the roofs a frame, and birds swirled overhead. It felt like freedom out there. In here, it was stifling.
He closed his eyes. It had once been good with Mary, but they had been younger then. She had been the quiet girl who worked on the tills when he had his first job in a supermarket. He had loved her the first moment he saw her, from the nervous way she toyed with her hair to the way she blushed when he tried to make a joke. But their sex life had always been the same, all shy and coy, as if, for Mary, it had only ever been about the closeness afterwards.
They should have had children, and maybe that would have changed things, but they had found it difficult. For a while it became all about producing children, so the fertile days turned into an obligation, and as they failed, as all Mary’s friends got families, Mary became colder.
It was just the way it was, he knew that, but Mary hadn’t seen it that way.
He hadn’t meant to look outside of the marriage, but it had come along when he wasn’t expecting it.
He put the pillow around his ears and tried to stop himself thinking of it. It had gone on too long now. He prayed for the day when he could get through a summer and not see her face, red, bloody, or hear her shouts. But the memories hit him like a punch each time.
He heard a car pull up outside, and he wondered again whether it was a police car, that gnawing dread of discovery back again, but then he heard the loud chatter of his neighbour.
He threw back the sheets and sat on the edge of the bed. As he looked around the room he saw a shadow just disappear from view, like someone skipping through the doorway. He ran his hand across his forehead. He had the sweats again. He always got them at this time of year, when the scents brought everything back. He needed to get out of the house. He had to sell things, it was what he did, but the fake smiles were wearing grooves into his cheeks. To make money he had to overprice, but the internet and lack of credit made people shop around.
Maybe it wouldn’t matter, he told himself. So what if he lost all of this? He could go abroad, sell cold beers and hot pies to expat Brits in a Spanish seafront bar; for a moment, as he thought of it, his life seemed to have a point. But then his mood darkened again. He knew that he couldn’t. He felt tied to Blackley, as if events beyond his control would occur if he went elsewhere and the life he wanted to leave behind would just drag him straight back.
He climbed out of bed and went to the shower. He had to start another day.
Chapter Seventeen
Lancashire felt like another country as I rode the underground to Canary Wharf, squashed into the carriage and making snake-shapes with my body to find a space between the suits. This had once been my life, working at the London Star, my first break in the city before I went freelance. I had travelled to London with my head filled with tales of long lunches in Fleet Street, deadlines met through the fog of flat beer;
Tony Davies was to blame for all these stories. When I had arrived there, it was the glass and steel of Canary Wharf that had been my playground instead, most of my journalism done on the telephone. That’s why I went freelance, just so I could feel the big city more, to try and find its heartbeat. And it had worked for a while, the fun of getting to drug raids first, and cultivating police sources. Laura had been one of those sources, before the move to the North.
The good times in London had waned eventually. I struggled to get to the underbelly because I didn’t really know the city. I knew the landmarks, the geography, but the people constantly surprised me. They had a confidence, almost an arrogance, and I realised that I had never stopped being the northern boy, a long way from home.
Canary Wharf looked just as I remembered it when I emerged from the cavernous underground station—flash and fast and all about the money. But the real London was not far away, the ethnic mix of Poplar, from the window boxes of the London pubs to the takeaways and noise of the East India Dock Road. In the Wharf I brushed past dark suits and good skin, the strong jaws of the successful who I guessed would know nothing of the real Docklands, the hard work replaced by flipcharts and bullshit.
But I wasn’t there for a tourist trip or to wallow in the memories. I was there to meet my old editor, Harry English, still head of the news desk at the London Star. I’d given him a wake-up call before I left Lancashire, promised him the first feel of the story, just to get an idea of its value. He was waiting for me on the marble seats opposite the tube station exit. To reach him I had to weave through the crowds of young professionals enjoying their lunch break and a group of salesgirls trying to persuade people to test-drive a Volvo. Times must be hard. It had been a Porsche the last time I had been down there.
Harry grinned when he saw me and then coughed as he clambered to his feet.
‘Jack Garrett,’ he said. ‘Good to see you again.’ He grabbed my hand warmly to give it a firm pump. ‘What have you been up to?’
I patted my stomach. ‘Enjoying more of the high life than you. You look well, Harry,’ I said, and I meant it. He was tall, six feet and more, but he used to be fat, his chest straining his shirts and his face a permanent purple as he cursed his way around the newsroom. He’d shed some of that fat and settled for stocky, and it suited him.
‘I had a heart attack last year,’ he said, his smile waning.
‘I didn’t know,’ I said, shocked. ‘I would have come down.’
‘It’s not the sort of thing that you send postcards about,’ he replied, and then he looked around and curled his lip in disdain. ‘And so I have to eat out here now, box salads, sometimes that sushi stuff, but that’s just rice as far as I can tell.’
‘Beats dying, Harry.’
He grimaced. ‘Just about,’ he said, and then straightened himself. ‘So what hot story have you got? If it’s about a footballer, forget it. They can get injunctions quicker than I can type the story. Sell their weddings for thousands and then bleat about privacy when they break the vows.’
‘No, it’s not about footballers,’ I said. ‘It’s about Claude Gilbert.’
Harry looked surprised for a moment, and then he chuckled. ‘Not that old has-been,’ he said. ‘The internet ruined that story. We could run a hoax sighting for a couple of days a few years ago, but now some distant relative on the other side of the world can wreck the story before lunchtime on the first day, and it gets splashed all over the rival websites. Unless you can dig him up, no one will bite any more.’
My expression didn’t change, but he must have seen the amusement in my eyes.
‘What have you got on him?’ he asked, his face more serious now.
‘Someone’s told me that she’s involved with him, romantically, and that he wants to come forward.’
He laughed. ‘Do you believe her?’
I shrugged. I wasn’t sure.
‘But you’ve come all the way to London to check it out,’ Harry said, his laughter fading. He watched people going past for a few seconds, and then he asked, ‘Why now? It’s not another Ronnie Biggs, is it, going to jail to die—because I don’t think Claude will get out again like Ronnie did?’
I shook my head. ‘He wants to tell his story before the police come for him. The press decided he was guilty twenty years ago, and so he wants to give his version before he goes before a jury, just to give himself a fighting chance.’
Harry wasn’t laughing any more. ‘And what if you decide not to go along with his plan?’ he said. ‘You could just expose him and be the man who caught Claude Gilbert.’
‘I’ll see how good his story is first,’ I said. ‘I’m still not sure it’s really him.’
‘And if it isn’t?’
‘The story runs as another hoax,’ I said, ‘and you get a bit of northern brass for your city readers to snigger at. She’s an ex-lover of Gilbert who was seeing him a few months before his wife was buried alive, and she says they’ve rekindled the romance.’
I could see Harry’s mind race through the sales figures, the syndication rights.
‘I can see that there’s an angle, but the hoax is page eight at best, not the front,’ he said. ‘You might just get your train fare back. We need Gilbert himself for the banner headline.’
I smiled. Harry hadn’t yet said anything I hadn’t expected.
‘So, where are you meeting him?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘She hasn’t told me yet,’ I said, and I patted Harry on the arm. ‘I’ll keep my movements quiet for now.’
‘What, you don’t trust me?’ he said, feigning a hurt look.
‘You’re an editor,’ I said. ‘You would shit in your grandmother’s shoes if you thought it would get you good circulation figures, and Claude isn’t going to come forward if there’s someone with a big lens hiding behind a tree.’
‘Okay,’ he said, chuckling again, holding his hands up in submission. ‘What do you want?’
‘An expression of interest,’ I replied. ‘Six-figure sum if it’s true. Exclusive rights.’
‘And picture rights?’
‘That depends on the big number.’
Harry nodded. ‘If you get Claude Gilbert, I’m sure we can sort something out.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a deal.’
‘So what next?’ Harry asked, and he looked pleased with himself.
‘I find Claude Gilbert,’ I replied, and started walking back to the arched entrance of the underground station, the excitement of a guaranteed front page putting a smile on my face.
Chapter Eighteen
Frankie parked his scooter in the same place as he had the day before, near the cottage outside Turners Fold, his helmet chained and padlocked to the footboards. He clambered over the gate again and set off along the two-rut track, looking around as he went, checking that no one could see him. When he got close to where he had been the night before, the spot marked by a stick jammed into the ground, he crawled along the floor to make sure that he couldn’t be seen, his knees swishing through the long grass that gathered against the wall.
He peeped over the wall and smiled when he saw he had the same view, that he’d got it right. The bathroom window was closed now but the curtains to the bedroom were open, like they had been the night before, when he had caught her as she went in after her shower, a towel around her body.
He wanted to get closer now. He had taken a few pictures the night before. He had trained his camera on her but then turned away as her towel slipped down her body. His camera had carried on clicking though, because he knew it was different that way. He wasn’t looking at her body, he knew it was wrong to do that, but his pictures were different. They were just photographs, not really her. Not really any of them. His photographs. Just scrambles of colour.
He reached into his bag and produced his water bottle. He knew he could be there for a long time.
Then he noticed that her car wasn’t there. There was the red sports car, but the house looked dark.<
br />
It was time to get closer.
I found Susie waiting for me under the vast timetable at Victoria station as we’d arranged, conspicuous in her heels and short skirt among the backpackers and metropols. I weaved through the travellers; when I caught Susie’s eye, she rushed towards me and grabbed me by the arm.
‘About time,’ she said, her voice tetchy.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘Why the urgency?’
‘Because I can’t smoke in here,’ she said, and she set off towards the exit.
‘Slow down,’ I said, laughing. ‘Don’t you want to know how I’ve got on?’
‘Walk and talk,’ she said. Once we got outside, she pulled a cigarette packet from her handbag and lit up quickly. She blew smoke past me and sighed. ‘Go on, what’s the news?’ she said, suppressing a cough but seeming calmer now.
‘I went to speak to my old editor.’
Susie looked suspicious. ‘You told me that much, but why couldn’t I come along?’
‘Because I didn’t want you to be annoyed if he wasn’t interested.’
‘And is he interested?’
I nodded and smiled. ‘Oh yeah, he’s buying,’ I said, although when a smile broke across her face too, I added quickly, ‘but Claude’s got to come forward. Without him, you are the story, and if it’s just you, you won’t get much more than a new handbag out of it. And it could ruin your life.’
Susie took another long pull on her cigarette, a determined look in her eyes. ‘He’ll come forward,’ she said. ‘Follow me. I know where we need to be.’
She walked off ahead of me, towards the jukebox rumble that drifted onto the street from the Shakespeare, a red-fronted pub opposite the station, though the music couldn’t compete with the constant roar of diesel engines from the stream of buses and taxis. It was a busy corner of London and right now it seemed like everyone—suits and shoppers, groups of old ladies—was leaving, heading for the trains or coach station.
