Dead Silent

by Neil White

When I got outside, Lake said, ‘Don’t come here again, and be careful what you print.’

  ‘I would have thought it would send your prices higher, a bit more criminal credibility for your clients,’ I said, his attitude irritating me.

  ‘I’ve shaken off my past, Mr Garrett,’ he said. ‘It’s about time everyone else did.’

  I nodded towards Adrianne, who was watching us through the glass. ‘You live off your past, Mr Lake,’ I said, and then I headed down to my car.

  It didn’t start straight away, and Alan Lake smirked at me while I turned the engine over and the car misfired; but it caught on the third turn. The plume of dark smoke I was able to send towards him made it seem worth it.

  He didn’t move as I drove away, and I knew that he was watching me, had noted my number. But I couldn’t help wondering why someone who thrived on his past was so reluctant to talk about the most famous figure in it: Claude Gilbert.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Mike Dobson looked out of the window at the children playing in the cul-de-sac, screaming and laughing as they cycled on their bikes, the local schools just finished for the day.

  ‘Why were the police looking for you?’ Mary said, her voice quiet.

  He remembered the conversation with the officer, how she had turned it round to Claude Gilbert and watched how he responded. He was a salesman, and so his job depended on reading people, on working out when they were interested or just playing at it.

  ‘There’s been someone hanging around work,’ he said. ‘They’re worried about a break-in, someone casing the place.’

  ‘But the officer didn’t know where you worked,’ Mary said.

  ‘I gave them my home address by mistake,’ he said, looking back at her. Just leave it alone, he thought, but he saw a glare in her eye.

  ‘When?’

  ‘When what?’

  ‘When did you tell them?’

  ‘A few days ago. I thought they would have got back to me before now.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about it?’

  ‘Because it wasn’t important.’

  ‘It was important enough for them to come here.’

  ‘It’s not important, Mary,’ he said, and closed his eyes. Their conversations were like this, short little jabs, like apologies for breaking the silence.

  But the police visit was important, he knew that. They were watching him. But why now, after all these years? It would make it harder for him to see her again. His stomach tightened.

  The room was silent as he kept his eyes closed. He heard the rustle of clothes, the soft creak as Mary moved about in her chair. The screams from outside died down as his mind raced back through the years. His nose filled again with the scent, and he felt her hair across his face, her lips wanting, urgent, the grab of a stolen moment. Mary tapped on something, the drum of her fingers loud in the quiet room, flesh on wood, and his eyes flew open. As always, there was movement, just at the edge of his vision, someone moving quickly out of view. When he looked at Mary, she hadn’t moved, her hands still wrapped around her cup.

  But she was watching him, her mouth set, her eyes cold.

  He stood up. ‘I’m going out,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Just out,’ and he slammed the door as he left the room.

  Rachel Mason surprised me. She was smart and attractive in her dark blue trouser suit, with blonde hair and a pale complexion; she stood out from the shopping crowd as she walked across Blackley’s new cobbled market square. A group of young men in hoodies tracked her as she walked, but they turned away as she sat down opposite me outside the coffee house.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Garrett,’ she said, although there was a frost to her tone.

  ‘Laura must have described me well.’

  She shook her head and gave me a condescending smile that told me that it hadn’t been Laura’s description that had given me away. ‘Have you been watching me?’ I said.

  ‘We’re here to talk about you, not me,’ she said.

  I was wary of her straight away. There was a bluntness about her that I liked, but I sensed that it was a front, perhaps to hide a lack of confidence. In my experience, people like that tend to go at everything with their claws out.

  ‘Tell me about me then,’ I said, and sat back to take a drink of my coffee.

  ‘There’s not much to know. You’re a reporter living with a police officer. You write up court stories and get the occasional scoop that puts you in the nationals. Beyond that, you’re a man, a pretty simple species. Sex and sport fill your head most of the time.’

  I smiled back. ‘I’ve never been spoken down to by someone with so little life experience. What are you, mid-twenties?’ When she blushed, I said, ‘I’m not going to give anything up unless you do. Remember, we don’t want the same thing. You want the man. I just want the story.’

  ‘So why do you think I’m interested in you?’ she said, her voice more hostile now.

  ‘Claude Gilbert,’ I said, and when she raised her eyebrows, I added, ‘And I know I’m not giving away too much there.’ I swirled the coffee in my cup for a few seconds as I thought. ‘It’s not the why that interests me though,’ I said. ‘It’s the why now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Come on, Rachel, I’m no fool. Claude Gilbert went missing twenty-two years ago. I was a teenager when he went on the run, and you’ll have been younger than that. I start writing about him and then all of a sudden it turns out that you’re after him too, some smart policewoman from headquarters. That’s too much of a coincidence. Except that in police work, there’s no such thing as coincidence.’

  Rachel looked into the coffee shop and waved at someone behind the counter to indicate that she wanted a coffee. For most people it was counter service, but something about her manner meant that she got what she wanted. As she waited for her drink to arrive, she said, ‘You’re right, it isn’t by chance. It’s because we started the same way.’

  I was confused. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Susie Bingham,’ she said. ‘She got you involved in all of this.’ I must have looked surprised, because she continued, ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr Garrett, but you are not the first journalist she spoke to about Claude Gilbert.’

  ‘Who else?’

  Rachel shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you that, but he contacted the police, not his editor, and so she moved on to you.’

  I detected a barb to the conversation, that I hadn’t done the right thing. I wasn’t concerned by that. I was a journalist. My first duty was to the story. My popularity came a poor second.

  ‘So why didn’t you speak to her?’

  ‘How do you know we didn’t?’

  That surprised me, because I thought Susie would have told me if she had been questioned by the police.

  ‘Did she tell you anything?’ I asked.

  Rachel paused as her coffee arrived, and then took a sip before answering. ‘Maybe, like you, she saw the pound signs, not the handcuffs.’

  I sighed. ‘Are you going to be judgemental all day, because I’ve got a story to write? Okay, let’s get the apology out of the way. I’m sorry about my low morals. There, done, but you ought to know that I’m not here to do your job.’

  ‘Have you found him?’ she asked.

  ‘What makes you think I’m looking? How do you know I’m not doing a conspiracy write-up?’

  ‘Because the story is up here, in Blackley, not in London.’ She studied me for a few seconds. ‘Where did you go, Jack?’

  I shook my head slowly. ‘Wait for the front page.’

  Rachel took a sip of coffee and watched me over the brim of the cup.

  ‘How well do you know Susie Bingham?’ she asked.

  ‘I met her for the first time a couple of days ago.’

  ‘She told the last reporter that she had seen Claude Gilbert. Did she say the same thing to you?’

  ‘That’s between me and Susie.’

  ‘What abo
ut the booze?’ Rachel said. ‘Did you notice that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Susie’s just some past-it party girl who never noticed that the party had ended,’ she said. ‘I asked around the station, and some of the older ones remember her, a couple of them a bit too fondly. She had a good career, but she blew it because it became more about the booze than the clients.’

  When I didn’t have an answer, Rachel went on, ‘She doesn’t seem quite the compelling witness any more, does she?’

  ‘I’ve met him,’ I blurted out.

  Rachel’s cup paused on the way to her mouth, and then she lowered it slowly.

  ‘Gilbert?’ she asked, her voice quiet, her gaze steady.

  ‘Who else?’ I replied. ‘And if I can meet Claude Gilbert within a day of meeting Susie, when you haven’t done it in twenty-two years, maybe you should be a little slower to have a go at me.’

  ‘You’ve met him?’ she said, her voice almost a gasp.

  I nodded slowly, enjoying her reaction.

  ‘When? Where?’

  ‘A couple of days ago. In London.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me anything more?’ she said.

  ‘I will, on one condition.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Laura. None of this backfires on her. She knew nothing about Claude Gilbert. I didn’t tell her why I went to London, because I know she’s loyal to the job. If anything of this is going to backfire on her, I walk away from here, and you never find out where I met him until he comes forward on my terms.’

  ‘You’re assisting an offender,’ she said.

  I laughed. ‘To prove that, you have to prove that it was Claude Gilbert.’ I held out my hands. ‘Your call, officer, but it won’t get you any nearer to Claude.’

  Rachel thought about that for a few seconds, and then she nodded. ‘Laura gets no fallout from this. But I can’t promise anything in relation to you.’

  I smiled. ‘I wouldn’t expect anything more.’

  She reached into her pocket and produced a notepad. ‘So, go on, talk.’

  I shook my head. ‘Not yet. I want to know what you’ve got on him, whether there are any other suspects for Nancy’s murder. This is not a one-way conversation. If you’re open with me, it goes down as nothing more than an inside source, and I give you what I know.’

  ‘Everything?’

  I nodded. ‘Everything.’

  Rachel exhaled and looked around the square as she thought about what she could say. ‘I know I’ve nothing else to tell you about Nancy’s murder, because you’ve spoken to Bill Hunter,’ she said eventually.

  ‘How do you know?’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Bill Hunter might be retired, but he never stopped being a cop. He gave you what he knew, and then he told me that you were looking.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘Because I’ve been given the job.’

  ‘But he told me that people get interested in Gilbert,’ I said, ‘that he thinks Gilbert might have friends in high places.’

  Rachel nodded. ‘I think he does too. That’s why they asked me to do it.’ She flashed me a sheepish smile, a chink in the ice. ‘Maybe I come across as cold, but I don’t spend my life looking after the club, the old canteen set. Gilbert knew a lot of the old guard. His wife was killed at the end of the eighties, when it was still all right for detectives to accept hospitality from defence lawyers, like meals and football tickets. It wasn’t corruption, no special favours were done, but it was a way of getting the recommendation when the scared punter turned up at the custody desk, not sure if they wanted a lawyer.’

  ‘So what’s that got to do with Claude Gilbert?’

  ‘Join the dots, Mr Garrett,’ she said, the frost returning. ‘Claude didn’t get away on his own, and he didn’t stay free on his own. No one can be that resourceful. So he had some help, and it will have come from friends in high places. Maybe tip-offs when they were getting close, or help with accommodation, that kind of thing.’

  ‘If you know that,’ I said, ‘then why hasn’t something been done?’

  ‘There’s no proof—just guesswork, and rumours from retired coppers who’ve had too many drinks at the golf club, telling tall tales of the old days,’ Rachel said. ‘So Joe and I were brought in quietly, once we got the report that Susie Bingham was touting the Claude Gilbert angle. No one was to know.’

  ‘It’s different this time,’ I said.

  ‘Why is it?’

  ‘Because he wants to come home.’

  Rachel gasped, and I saw her cup waver in her hands. I could see the press conference in her eyes, Rachel Mason announcing the arrest in her best new suit.

  ‘It’s on his terms,’ I added.

  ‘He’s a wanted man. He doesn’t have terms.’

  ‘He does, because he’s not in a cell,’ I said. ‘He can just disappear again. And his terms must be better than no terms.’

  Rachel played with her spoon for a few seconds while she looked into her coffee; then she said, ‘What terms are they?’

  ‘That I prove his innocence first.’

  Rachel laughed, but it was sharp and shrill. ‘Did you believe him?’

  I chewed on my lip as I tried to give a truthful answer. ‘I don’t know,’ was the best one I could come up with. ‘Were there any other suspects?’

  Rachel shook her head. ‘The only credible one was some gangland thing, and so Alan Lake was an obvious one. You know, the sculptor?’

  My face remained impassive. Rachel had spoken as if I wouldn’t know about Alan Lake, which told me that I wasn’t being followed any more.

  ‘How far did you get with him?’ I asked.

  ‘Not very,’ she said. ‘He was in prison, and it’s hard to work out what he would gain, because the retrial could have gone even worse.’ She folded her arms. ‘You mentioned an affair to Bill Hunter?’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘You know you did.’

  I shrugged. ‘Just something Claude said.’

  ‘Do you have a name?’

  I tried not to give anything away as I looked at her. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Just the ramblings of an old man trying to work out why it happened. You would know about it if it was true, right?’

  Rachel nodded slowly, not willing to concede a weakness.

  ‘Did Bill Hunter also mention Frankie Cass?’ I said. ‘He lives across the road.’

  Rachel’s eyes narrowed as she thought back through the boxes of paper she had waded through. ‘I don’t know anything about a Frankie,’ she said eventually.

  ‘I’m not surprised. I think he will talk to anyone but the police,’ I said.

  ‘And so he’s spoken to you.’

  I nodded. ‘He lives on his own in a big house opposite the murder scene, in an attic room mainly, with a view into Gilbert’s garden. His room is covered in newspaper articles about the Gilbert case, and to judge by the photographs on the wall, it seems he spent his life taking pictures of Mrs Gilbert when she was alive. Now he lives alone in that big, dark house, which is either rat-bait or pristine, depending on which part of the house you are in.’

  ‘Which is the pristine part?’ Rachel asked, her eyes keen now.

  ‘His mother’s bedroom,’ I replied. ‘Or, at least, his long departed mother’s. Her old bedroom is preserved like a pink shrine.’

  Rachel looked thoughtful. ‘I didn’t know about Frankie.’

  ‘Maybe he’s just some local nutcase,’ I said.

  Rachel didn’t respond.

  I leant forward. ‘Are you interested in Frankie now?’ I asked. ‘Because if you are, you’re wondering whether Claude is telling the truth—that he didn’t kill Nancy.’

  That seemed to bring Rachel round.

  ‘Claude Gilbert killed his wife,’ she said. ‘It’s obvious to anyone who looked at the case carefully. She dies, he flies.’

  ‘He gives a different version,’ I said.

  ‘I bet he does.’

  ‘He makes sen
se.’

  ‘He was a lawyer,’ Rachel countered. ‘His job was to look jurors in the eye and convince them of the truth of his story. The real truth didn’t matter.’

  ‘You sound so cynical for someone so young.’

  Rachel shook her head. ‘I just see it how it is.’ She put her head back and flicked her hair, so that it flowed loosely over her shoulders. ‘So tell me,’ she said. ‘What is Claude’s story?’

  ‘He left his wife, went abroad for a holiday and, while he was away, he read about his wife’s murder.’

  ‘So why didn’t he give himself up? He could prove when he left the country.’

  ‘Because he’s a coward,’ I said. ‘He stayed away, hoping the real killer would be found, and then, when he realised that he was the one they were looking for, he kept on running.’

  Rachel thought about that for a few seconds. ‘Why would he leave his wife in the middle of a court case?’

  I thought about Mike Dobson, and how I wasn’t ready to give him up yet. I might be talking to the police, but my story was still the top of my list, for as long as I could keep Laura out of trouble.

  ‘Because he was a bad husband whose marriage was falling apart,’ I said. ‘Gilbert was just a coward with bad timing.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘and I still think you’re holding out on me. You’ve given me nothing, except that you think you’ve met him. Give me something real, something we don’t know.’

  I took a deep breath and wondered how much else I should say. I thought about Claude’s address, but the police would be able to prove that he had been there if I did. And if they could prove it was Claude Gilbert, then they could come after me. It was turning into a glorious summer and I wasn’t ready to go to jail.

  I shook my head. ‘You’ve got everything.’

  ‘I haven’t got Claude Gilbert,’ Rachel replied.

  ‘You will have soon, and for that, Laura stays out of it. She doesn’t know anything else, and if you give her a hard time, maybe I’ll tell Claude to stay away, because if you have just one agenda—to catch him and put him in a cell—then he might as well keep on running.’

  I put a ten pound note on the table. ‘Put that towards the coffee.’ The chair clattered on the cobbles as I stood up to walk away. I heard Rachel talk into her telephone as I went. Now I knew that the police would be watching me, I had to find out more about Mike Dobson, before anyone else did.