Dead Silent

by Neil White

  ‘You made her poor?’ I guessed.

  He nodded and smiled. ‘You have me worked out already, don’t you, Mr Garrett? I went to my bank, withdrew all my money and headed for France.’

  Susie took hold of his hand, cradling it gently in her palm.

  ‘I almost jumped, you know, when I was on the ferry,’ he said quietly, looking at Susie. ‘France was getting nearer and I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got there. So I stepped onto a railing, and I was ready to go, but I was even too cowardly for that. I climbed down and slunk off into France. I caught the train south and rented a small house just outside Carcassonne.’

  ‘What were your plans?’ I asked.

  He looked back to me and dropped Susie’s hand. ‘I didn’t have any. For a week, I drank wine and took long walks, and after a while things didn’t look so bad. It’s a beautiful part of the world, and it seemed a long way from Blackley. Our careers suck us in, make us feel that nothing else matters, but I felt like I had stepped away from it, and it was glorious. I had cash, I had sunshine, and I thought I had got some sweet revenge on Nancy—she couldn’t pay the mortgage without me. I thought about roaming Europe for a while, maybe even going to Monte Carlo and blowing all I had in the casino, and then I could drink wine as her life fell apart. Let her bring up her little bastard in some rented hovel somewhere.’ His eyes looked distant again. ‘Then, one day, I caught sight of a newspaper, and my face was on the front. My French wasn’t brilliant, but I knew enough to get the gist, that Nancy was dead, and that I was the chief suspect. That’s when my life changed.’

  ‘So why didn’t you hand yourself in?’ I said.

  ‘Because I was in a mess,’ he said. ‘I had to deal with the shock of Nancy’s death and how she died, and then when I thought about it, I knew how it looked. Wife found buried in the garden, a husband who emptied the accounts and ran? I knew the system, and anyone that does wouldn’t trust it to save them. I would go to prison, I knew that, and I knew what sort of men were in there. A good advocate can convince a jury of almost anything, and I would have been a high-profile catch.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘At the time, it made sense to keep on running.’

  I glanced at Susie, and saw that she was staring at him, as if his story caused her personal pain. Perhaps she felt some guilt that she had encouraged his lifestyle, as if she were complicit in some way.

  ‘Where did you go next?’ I asked. ‘Where does all of this Josif Petrovic stuff come from, this human quantum energy thing?’

  ‘Serbia,’ he replied. ‘It was 1988 when Nancy died. The Iron Curtain wasn’t even ruffled back then, and so I headed east and hid behind it. It was the perfect place for a runaway Englishman, because the authorities weren’t too keen on helping out the Brits. I had some Yugoslavian contacts from university and so I was able to build a life over there. I was working in a tyre factory until the Berlin Wall came down, and when the Balkan Wars started, I had to go running again. I came back to England and reinvented myself as an expert in alternative therapies. There’s always someone willing to buy a crystal or self-help tape, provided you package it correctly.’

  ‘And human quantum energy?’

  He looked at me carefully, as if he knew I was testing him.

  ‘We all have a quantum energy field, like an electric field in our bodies,’ he said. ‘It is what drives the electrons around our bodies, makes us feel good or bad. If you feel bad, you can overcome it by correcting the human quantum energy, taking it to a higher orbit. It fights stress and disease.’

  I nodded, impressed. ‘That doesn’t sound like a northern lawyer, all that mystic nonsense, but then lawyers are used to arguing a position they don’t believe in. Paid bullshitters. Isn’t that what most lawyers are?’ He didn’t respond, and so I asked, ‘When you look back, do you regret running?’

  His eyes twinkled. ‘At first I did, but then I got a different life, even started to enjoy it. And do you know what, Mr Garrett, I had even started to think that I would never be discovered.’ He rubbed his stomach and chuckled. ‘Getting out of shape gave me a disguise.’

  ‘But what about your wife?’ I asked. ‘You staying on the run meant that Nancy’s killer stayed free.’

  His laughter subsided, and then he sighed. ‘And me being in prison would have changed that?’

  I made a note and then tapped my pen against my lip. I needed some more of the emotional angle.

  ‘Do you ever think about her?’ I asked. ‘About what Nancy went through?’

  He folded his legs and pursed his lips so firmly that his mouth disappeared behind the bush of his beard. ‘Of course I do, Mr Garrett, every single day. Can you imagine it, being stuck in that hole, unable to get out, knowing you are going to die? You can only imagine how you would deal with it, but I knew Nancy, still loved her, and so in my head I hear her screams, her cries, her panic.’ He tapped his head. ‘So you can see why I don’t like to think of her too much.’

  He watched me and stroked his beard. He seemed wary.

  ‘You don’t like me,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Am I obliged to?’

  ‘I would feel better if you did.’

  ‘I don’t have to like you to write the story,’ I said. ‘I should call the police, for Christ’s sake, but I don’t want to, because I’m curious, and because I’m a good reporter. I want to write the best story I can, but walking out of here and not calling the police puts me at risk of prison. Like you, I don’t like the thought of someone’s hairy hands holding me down in the middle of the night to whisper sweet nothings, and so excuse me if I don’t join your fan club.’

  He nodded. ‘I understand.’

  ‘So where do I start?’ I said. ‘If I’m going to prove your innocence, where shall I look first?’

  ‘When I conducted a trial,’ he replied, ‘putting another suspect before a jury helped, because jurors like playing detective.’

  ‘I’m not risking prison to set up red herrings,’ I said. ‘Call me pompous, but I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t think purely of what can be proven in court. I am only interested in the facts, and in your case, innocence. I am not interested in whether someone can be fooled into finding you not guilty.’

  His cheeks flushed again. ‘I’m not talking just about my innocence,’ he said. ‘I’m talking about finding Nancy’s murderer, and so to find the real killer you should look to the only other person who had something to lose by Nancy being pregnant.’ He held out his hands. ‘Mike Dobson.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I didn’t feel like talking much on the train heading north. I just wanted to watch the English countryside fly past through grubby windows and reflect on how I might have just walked out on the scoop of the decade, all on the promise that Claude Gilbert would wait around while I looked into Mike Dobson.

  Susie seemed to have different ideas though, and she recounted her days with Gilbert all those years ago, her voice low and her head dipped towards the voice recorder on the table in front of her, her face animated as she talked of their casino evenings and trips out of town whenever a trial took him away for a few nights. I had stopped responding though, just giving the occasional nod when I sensed a pause, her voice barely a distraction. Then a pause turned into silence.

  I looked at Susie and realised that she had stopped talking. She was looking at me.

  ‘What’s wrong, Jack?’

  I looked across, eyes wide with innocence. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘There is,’ she said, and reached across to pat my hand. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Like I said,’ my voice sterner, ‘there’s nothing wrong.’

  Susie sat back in her seat and turned towards the window, although I could sense her eyes still watching me. I tried to look at the trackside golf courses and stretches of fields as we raced northwards, but I couldn’t ignore Susie’s gaze.

  ‘What?’ I said, trying to keep the irritation from my voice.

  She smiled at me, a knowing look on her face. ‘Me
n like you end up killing themselves,’ she said.

  I scowled. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Men like you, northern men, you just keep it all in, hold everything back until it turns into a poison and eats away at you. No one would laugh if you told them what was wrong.’

  ‘Maybe Claude was right,’ I said. When she looked confused, I added, ‘That we have turned into a nation of mourners, of emotional wrecks. What’s wrong with keeping things to ourselves? And anyway, there’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘No, no,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve met a lot of men like you.’ She wagged her finger at me, playfully. ‘It seems like I’ve spent most of my life trying to change them, to open them up.’

  ‘To like you?’ I asked, cruelly.

  Susie went red at that. ‘Yes, and to like me,’ she said, traces of hurt in her voice. ‘You should try it, liking people.’

  ‘I do like people,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m a reporter, so I can meet people and tell their stories.’

  ‘No, it’s so you can observe people and comment on them,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It’s nothing to do with liking them. And now you’re taking it out on me because you’re worried about losing your story, because you met Claude Gilbert and you let him go. Or is it just because you lash out when people get too close?’

  I looked at her and thought that I didn’t need Susie to tell me what had been going through my mind ever since we walked out of the flat. Then I felt guilty, because Susie hadn’t gone all the way to London and back just for me to take it out on her. And because I knew she was right.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was just thinking about the story.’

  ‘You need to think about your girlfriend too, and that little boy,’ she said. When I frowned, she added, ‘Every time I mention them, you hunch up or put your hands in your pockets, all defensive.’

  ‘Do I?’

  Susie nodded. ‘You just need to tell her that you love her.’

  I turned to look out of the window.

  ‘Look, you’re doing it again.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are. The minute I said the word “love”, you turned away to avoid the subject. Have you been hurt in the past?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are your parents divorced?’

  I shook my head. ‘Both of my parents are dead.’

  Susie nodded slowly and reached out to take hold of my hand. ‘Don’t think that everyone will walk out on you. You won’t get hurt every time.’

  I looked at the veins standing up on the back of her hands, her fingers stained nicotine-brown, before I was rescued by the ring of my phone. I pulled my hand away and checked the number. It was Harry English.

  I slipped out of the seat and headed for the vestibule between the carriages before answering. It was noisier, and I knew I would be interrupted by people walking along the train, but at least I was out of Susie’s earshot.

  ‘Hello, Harry.’

  ‘How did you get on?’ he said.

  I looked out of the window and saw that the view had become more northern, the brickwork darker, the horizons spoiled by industrial units, away from the greenery of the Home Counties.

  ‘I met him,’ I said.

  Harry fell silent, and I could sense the publication figures turning over in his head.

  ‘So when do we meet?’ he said, eventually, his voice quieter than normal. ‘We need a big splash, a press conference.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘What do you mean, not yet?’

  ‘I’ve got to prove his innocence,’ I said. ‘If I can, he’ll come forward.’

  ‘But you know where he lives. Why wait?’

  ‘Because I promised, Harry,’ I replied.

  Harry sighed down the phone. ‘That’s why you couldn’t cut it at a desk. Too much damn honour.’

  ‘Yeah, and I remember yours from last night, with Dave following me.’

  ‘It’s called control, Jack.’

  ‘Whatever you say,’ I said, my voice weary. ‘If you print anything, Harry, I’ll deny it and you’ll lose the exclusive. Just be patient and it will work out.’

  ‘I’m just glad it wasn’t on our expense sheet,’ he growled, and then hung up.

  I smiled as I looked at my phone. I knew that Harry would forget about it soon. Journalists don’t have grudges, just deadlines, and Harry would listen again when the time was right.

  I glanced through the door into the carriage and I saw that Susie was on the phone as well. I realised that there was only one escape route out of this: to follow the trail set by Claude Gilbert.

  Chapter Thirty

  The parting at Blackley station had been brief, just a promise to call Susie when I found out more. She was suspicious, obviously worried that I would sell the story and keep her share, but I wasn’t like that. Journalists can be unscrupulous, but they have to be loyal to sources or else the sources dry up. Now I was heading back to my house, the taxi meter ticking over as I had made a detour to collect Bobby. Laura was still at work and so he had been picked up from school by old friends of my father, Jake and Martha, who lived on a quiet estate at the edge of Turners Fold.

  Bobby was quiet in the back of the car, almost as if he resented me for going away, but I knew he had been hurt badly by his real father, who chose to sleep around rather than look after his child. He made do with contact visits every fortnight, two nights in the capital, but his vowels were getting flatter and London was becoming just a memory for him now. I ruffled his hair to extract a smile, but he just looked at me, his brown eyes wide, his hair across his forehead in wisps. I noticed that it was getting darker.

  ‘Are the flowers for Mummy?’ he asked, and pointed to the bunch of pink roses that I’d picked up outside the station, the petals emerging from the buds.

  I smiled. ‘Yes, they are.’ I lifted them to his nose so he could smell them.

  He screwed up his nose as he sniffed at the flowers, and then he asked, ‘Is that man coming again tonight?’

  My smile faltered. ‘What man?’

  ‘There was a man in the house last night. I heard him. Mummy was scared, I could tell.’

  My stomach rolled as Bobby said the words and I felt the flowers shake in my hand. Someone in the house, when I was away? I caught sight of the taxi driver watching me in the rearview mirror.

  ‘No, I know who that was,’ I said, but my voice was hoarse. I tried to smile, just so that Bobby wouldn’t be scared, but I knew that I didn’t sound convincing.

  Bobby was silent the rest of the way home, and as the taxi made the long climb to the cottage, I saw my red car parked up ahead, bright against the grey stone walls. Then I noticed a car further along, and a man knocking on my door. As he turned towards the taxi and stepped out of the shadows, I saw that it was Tony Davies, and that he had a bag in his hand.

  As I climbed out of the taxi, he said, ‘It’s not booze in here. Sorry, Jack. Just long forgotten secrets.’

  His smile died when I didn’t offer much of a response. ‘Everything okay?’

  I nodded towards Bobby and raised a finger to my lips. Tony winked that he understood; once Bobby had darted upstairs to get changed, he asked, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s Laura,’ I said. ‘Bobby told me that someone was here last night, and that she was scared.’

  Tony cocked his head, concerned. ‘What, you think it might be something to do with your Claude Gilbert story?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe Laura can tell me more, but it doesn’t sound good.’

  I went through to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of white that had been in the fridge for a few days. I asked Tony what he had brought while I poured us both a drink.

  Tony put the bag onto the table, and then he looked up at me, his teeth crooked in his smile. ‘Did you find Claude?’

  I faltered for a moment, unsure whether I should be truthful.

  He banged the table an
d laughed. ‘You did!’ he exclaimed. I raised my finger to my lips again and pointed upstairs, from where I could hear Bobby making banging noises. Tony leant forward and whispered, ‘You found Claude Gilbert, didn’t you?’

  I felt a smirk tug at the corners of my mouth.

  His eyes widened, and then he pointed at his bag. ‘Jesus Christ, Jack. This is all too late now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve got the front page of the nationals now. You’ve made it.’

  I grimaced. ‘It’s not quite as simple as that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I put my hands on top of my head and sighed.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘You know how it is when you have a great story, but you think it can become fantastic?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Tony replied. ‘And I know what to do: you write the good one and put the fantastic one to the back of your mind—because a deadline has to be met, a page has to be filled.’

  I put my hands down and shrugged in apology. ‘I know that, you taught me it when I first started out, and it was good advice. But Claude has a different plan.’

  ‘Oh Jack, what have you done?’

  I took a deep breath. There was no other way to put it. ‘Claude Gilbert wants me to prove his innocence,’ I said.

  Tony’s mouth opened, and then closed again.

  I nodded. ‘I did that too.’

  ‘But he’s not innocent,’ Tony said. ‘His wife was buried alive. He emptied his account and ran. Cut and dried.’

  ‘That’s not what he says.’