Dead Silent

by Neil White

  Laura checked her watch. She had time to see Frankie Cass, to find out what he wanted.

  She made her way to the stairs and down to the cell complex, two corridors of windowless box rooms that stretched away from the custody desk.

  The custody suite was accessed through two sets of large locked doors, like an air lock, usually occupied by bored-looking solicitors’ clerks waiting for their turn in the interview room. Her swipe card took her through, and she saw that the custody area was quiet. It was centred around a high desk made from polished wood, two custody sergeants behind it, responsible for a corridor of cells each. When it was busy, it seemed like it needed to be bigger, with sullen prisoners jostling the desk as their solicitors did their best to get their paperwork completed, flanked by the investigating officers, and with a holding cell next to the entrance overflowing with new arrivals. But when it was quiet, it was somewhere for the sergeants and civilian jailers to talk away the day, their eyes on the clock to make sure they didn’t miss a review or spot-check.

  Laura’s eyes went straight to the custody list on the wall behind the desk, seven names written in green on a whiteboard, bold and clear so that any officer could check the board to see whether any of their own suspects were in easy reach. Most criminals either stop completely or keep getting caught. Not many got better at it.

  As Laura looked at the board, she saw that Frankie was still in a cell, his name top of the list, writ large. One of the custody sergeants glanced up from his screen and then folded his arms.

  Custody sergeants were a strange breed, responsible for the prisoners in the cells, not catching criminals, and so they acted more like border guards, paying close attention to who came through. Laura sensed that she was trespassing.

  ‘He’s asking for me,’ she said, jabbing her finger towards Frankie’s name.

  ‘Not for much longer,’ he said. ‘Frankie Cass is going home in a few minutes.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because Kinsella didn’t pull his finger out soon enough, or pass it on.’

  ‘Joe got dragged into the murder last night,’ Laura said.

  The sergeant pointed at the clock behind him. ‘It doesn’t stop that from ticking. Cass has stewed in there all night, and so he’s going home.’

  ‘Just let me see what he wants.’

  The sergeant pursed his lips and seemed to think for a few seconds, though Laura sensed that he was just exercising his power, that he had already made his decision. ‘Through the hatch, and make it quick.’ He pointed. ‘Number six.’

  Laura peeled away from the desk and walked down the corridor. She felt the air become oppressive as the people within sweated out the drugs and the booze, the stink of dirty humanity seeping out from under the solid metal doors. As she got to cell number six, she lifted the metal bar that kept the hatch in place and let it drop down so that she could put her face through.

  She took a deep breath as the smell of the cell hit her. It was too warm—it was always that way, to stop prisoners needing blankets, so they had one less thing to wrap around their necks—and so she got the full strength of Frankie’s smell: warm feet and dirty clothes. He was curled up on a plastic mattress on a raised platform, the wall tiled white, with an aluminium toilet in the corner. There was no seat or paper.

  ‘Frankie, I’m Laura McGanity,’ she said. ‘You asked for me.’

  He didn’t move or give any hint that he knew she was there. He just stared at the wall opposite, his hands clamped between his legs, as if he was trying to knot himself up.

  ‘Is it about the night Mrs Gilbert died?’ she said.

  He stirred slightly at that.

  ‘Who was there?’ she asked.

  Laura thought he was going to stay silent, but he turned his head slowly towards her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For taking pictures.’

  Laura was surprised at that. ‘Pictures?’

  He nodded. ‘I took some pictures of you. I’m sorry.’

  Laura was shocked. Then she remembered the noise in the house, the sensation of being watched, the noises outside, and tried to control her anger.

  ‘That was you that night, wasn’t it, Frankie?’ she said. ‘You came to my home.’

  His gaze dropped. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Laura thought about slamming the hatch closed, trying not to think about what pictures might have been taken. Or, more importantly, who might have seen them.

  ‘Just tell me about the night Nancy Gilbert died,’ she said, cajoling, trying to keep a lid on her temper.

  ‘She told me not to tell the police.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  Frankie nodded.

  ‘But time has passed now,’ Laura said, ‘and the man who killed Nancy still hasn’t been caught. You liked her, didn’t you, Frankie?’

  He nodded and blushed.

  ‘So help us find out who killed her.’

  ‘I don’t know who killed her.’

  ‘But you told Jack that two people were there.’

  He thought for a few seconds, and then he said, ‘She told me not to tell the police.’ He turned over to face the wall.

  Laura sighed with frustration and closed the hatch, the clang echoing in the corridor. Someone in the cell next door began to kick at the door and shout for their solicitor. Laura thumped it back and walked back to the custody desk.

  The sergeant barely looked at her as she left. Back in the atrium, she glanced upwards to the top floor. Joe Kinsella was there again, leaning against the rail and watching the growing crowd downstairs. Then Laura saw the stream of blonde hair behind him. Rachel had done well to make it in so early. Frankie couldn’t have been the person to break in, which made the list of suspects very short. The burglary team might be right, that no one had broken in. Maybe the thief had been in the house all along. And if that was Rachel’s game, Laura knew that she would have to play by her own rules.

  Then she heard a voice behind her.

  ‘PC McGanity?’

  Laura turned around and saw a tall man with a broad chest and deep tan, his shirt crisp and white, his decorated pips marking out his rank. Chief Inspector.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said, and he directed Laura towards one of the rooms on the first floor.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Mike Dobson smiled as he lay back in his bed and looked out of his window, the curtains open, the sky blue, broken only by the occasional wisp of cloud. It felt like it had been a long time coming, this feeling of contentment, of belonging. It was another sunny day, but he hadn’t heard the knocking, or been disturbed by the feeling of someone watching him, just at the edge of his vision. Mary was cleaning downstairs, as always.

  He checked his watch. He had an hour before his first appointment. He could take some time to enjoy the morning.

  He looked at the ceiling, noticing that the paint looked faded, perhaps in need of a touch-up. He thought of how often he had looked at the ceiling with Mary alongside him. Years, he knew that. He knew that Mary was proud of their house, from the way that she cleaned it constantly. It was tidy, contemporary, her imprint on the world.

  No, it was more than that. It was their home. He should do more to make it feel that way.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the roar of the vacuum cleaner. He would make it right by Mary.

  Laura was shown into the Chief Inspector’s office. It had the same view as most of the rooms in the station, a balcony and then a drop into the atrium below, but his office had been lined with oak panelling along one wall, with water-colours of Pendle Hill hung on it, and a red leather chair dominated one corner. There seemed to be a hush here that wasn’t present anywhere else, and Laura’s stomach fluttered with nerves as she sat down.

  He smiled, his teeth bright white against the depth of his summer tan. Capped, would be Laura’s guess.

  ‘I’m Chief Inspector Roach,’ he said, his voice
calm, reassuring.

  Laura’s mind raced as she tried to recall where she had heard the name before, and then it came to her. Paul Roach. He had found Nancy Gilbert. She reddened. She knew what the talk was going to be about: Claude Gilbert. Or, more likely, Jack’s story about Claude.

  She smiled and said nothing.

  ‘Has your boyfriend mentioned me?’ he said.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Have you got more than one boyfriend, McGanity?’ he said, a growl to his voice. When Laura flushed, he said, ‘Defendants who lie in court do that, meet a direct question with one of their own. Gives them thinking time. Don’t try it with me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said, flustered. ‘I’m just confused, that’s all.’ Laura looked the Chief Inspector in the eye. ‘We have an understanding. I tell him nothing. He tells me nothing.’ When he raised his eyebrows, she elaborated. ‘It can’t be any other way, not in this job.’

  He nodded for a few seconds, and then said, ‘He’s looking for Claude Gilbert. He came to see me the other day.’

  Laura thought about Joe Kinsella and his admonishment that no one else was to know why he was in Blackley, that there were leaks higher up. So she said nothing.

  ‘If he thinks he’s found Claude, you must come to see me,’ Roach said.

  ‘Why is that?’ she asked, her eyes filled with innocence.

  ‘I found Nancy Gilbert,’ he said. ‘I’d like to complete the story.’

  Laura thought that there ought to be a ‘we’ in the story, that he hadn’t been alone, but it wasn’t the time to pick fault.

  ‘I will, sir.’

  He watched her for a few seconds, and then he nodded his head, as if that was enough to dismiss her.

  As she stood to go, he said, ‘Don’t let me find out that you’ve been holding out on me. You didn’t look surprised when I said Claude Gilbert’s name.’

  Laura gave a respectful nod and then left the office. Back on the balcony, the hush of Roach’s office replaced by the hubbub of the atrium below, she closed her eyes. She could hear laughter and, as she opened her eyes and looked down, she saw something being handed round, sheets of paper, a picture on them. Thomas was trying to take them from people, but they were being passed between tables faster than he could keep up.

  He must have sensed that she was there because he looked up and stopped what he was doing. The people around him looked up in turn and then went quiet, the laughter in the atrium dying down into an embarrassed hush.

  Laura turned and went quickly down the stairs. Rushing into the atrium, she grabbed one of the pictures and felt her cheeks flush: it was her, getting changed in her house, naked.

  Laura looked around, her jaw set, tears of anger in her eyes, but no one met her gaze.

  ‘I tried to get them all,’ Thomas said.

  Laura looked up and saw Rachel Mason looking down at her, a smile on her face. Rachel gave Laura a nod and then stepped back out of sight.

  ‘We need to get down to the murder scene,’ she said to Thomas. But as she turned and walked away, aware of the murmurs growing behind her, Laura knew there was somewhere else she had to go first.

  Chapter Fifty

  Laura looked angry as she walked towards me. I’d received her text message just a few minutes before, saying that she had some information for me. She had parked in the town centre, just down the road from the court, where her police car wouldn’t look out of place.

  But there was someone else in the police car.

  Laura saw me looking. ‘That’s Thomas. Don’t worry about him. He’s too busy enjoying the buzz of a murder.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

  She stared straight ahead, but I could see the tension in the way her jaw clenched.

  ‘I’ve always kept my work from you, you know that,’ she said. ‘I’ve been your source when it helped me, but I’ve never given up a secret.’

  ‘And I’ve never given up a source,’ I replied.

  Laura laughed, but it was a bitter sound. ‘You wouldn’t need to,’ she said. ‘All the signs will point back to me.’

  ‘So don’t say what you’re about to say.’

  Laura shook her head, and then I saw her wipe her eye. I reached forward, put my hand on her shoulder tenderly, but she shrugged me off.

  ‘I don’t do this,’ she snapped at me. ‘I’m a police officer, and I’ve promised to uphold the law, to keep the secrets that shouldn’t get out, but whatever you’re involved with keeps coming into my house, where I was asleep. Where Bobby was asleep. That changes things.’

  ‘My story brought that on, not anything you did,’ I said. ‘I love what you do. It makes me proud. No, you make me proud. Don’t compromise yourself.’

  Laura shook her head and looked back at the car. ‘It changes me,’ she said. ‘It makes me fight back.’

  I said nothing until Laura turned to me again, and part of me was willing her to stay quiet, but I needed to know what she was going to say. Perhaps I needed to know it so much that I didn’t think enough of how it might affect her.

  ‘You want Mike Dobson,’ she said. ‘Here are his details.’ She handed me a Post-it note with an address written on it in her neat script.

  ‘How did you get this?’

  ‘Detective work,’ Laura said. ‘It’s what I do.’

  ‘So why are you giving it to me?’

  ‘Because that uptight bitch who camped on our sofa last night went through your things. She’s laughing at us. And now she’s sent pictures of me around the station, taken by that little pervert.’

  I didn’t need to ask what sort of pictures they were; I wished I had told Laura about them.

  I looked at the piece of paper, and then at Laura. ‘Can you prove Rachel took my papers?’

  She scoffed. ‘Of course I can’t, but I know. So I’ve swapped sides for today.’

  I held up the piece of paper. ‘You could get in trouble for this.’

  ‘I thought you said you don’t reveal your sources.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘So who will know?’

  I gripped her arm. ‘You will know, Laura, that’s the point. You’re crossing a line here, leaking information to me.’

  ‘It’s a one-off. Just do your best to keep me out of it.’ She looked at the piece of paper between my fingers. ‘Are you going to do anything with it?’

  ‘I’ve no choice. I’ll go speak with him.’

  ‘Be careful, Jack.’

  I leant forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I will.’

  Mike Dobson’s house wasn’t difficult to find, just a short cruise around the town centre and then into an estate of typical new housing, with open-plan lawns and raised brick planters. It was the sort of place my father would have aspired to, with the bricks standing out brightly against the worn-out fronts of the terraced houses that lined the hills behind.

  Dobson’s house stood proudly at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, with the curtains in the window neatly pulled back and tied up, the vase of flowers on the sill perfectly centred.

  I rang the doorbell and waited.

  There was a long pause before anyone answered, but there was a car on the driveway, and so I was determined to wait. Eventually a face appeared on the other side of the glass and the door opened.

  My mind moved fast as I looked at the man in front of me, trying to compare him to what little I had seen in Frankie’s photographs, but it was impossible. Twenty-two years had passed and most of those hung around his cheeks and jawline, with the colour in his hair now coming from a bottle.

  ‘Mr Dobson?’

  He nodded slowly.

  ‘I’m a reporter,’ I said. ‘I want to talk to you about your job.’

  He looked surprised. ‘My job? I sell guttering and plastic fascias.’ He looked down the drive. ‘Is this some kind of consumer special?’

  ‘It’s not about the job you’ve got now,’ I said. ‘It’s a job you used to have. Twenty years ago, maybe a little
more.’

  I saw him stiffen. ‘I can’t talk about my customers,’ he said, his voice wary.

  ‘Why do you think it’s to do with a customer?’

  He cocked his head and his eyes narrowed. ‘Tell me what you want.’

  ‘Claude Gilbert was one of your clients, wasn’t he, Mr Dobson?’ I said.

  I knew I’d hit the mark. His hand gripped the door frame and he paled and swayed.

  ‘Mr Dobson?’

  He turned to go inside. I regarded the open door as an invitation. Dobson walked down a short hallway and then into his living room. I followed him in to see that he had slumped onto a long brown sofa that took over the room, opposite a mock-Victorian fireplace. He glanced at the view outside, towards the other houses that crowded around the turning circle at the end of the cul-de-sac.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, although his voice sounded faint, as if he wouldn’t be able to listen to my answer.

  ‘I’m writing a story on Claude Gilbert, just checking that the official version is the right one—that it was Claude who killed his wife. I came across some photographs.’

  He turned to me when I said that. ‘Photographs?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of someone with Mrs Gilbert, in her bedroom,’ I said. His jaw clenched as he looked at me. ‘It seemed that there was a local voyeur who had taken a shine to her, and in the photographs it wasn’t Claude having sex with Mrs Gilbert.’

  Dobson looked down and ran his hands over his face. ‘So what do you want with me?’ he said, his voice muffled through his fingers.

  ‘I want to speak to the other person in the photograph,’ I said, and watched for the reaction.

  He looked at me and swallowed, as if his mouth had gone dry. ‘Do you still have the photographs?’

  I nodded. Luckily, they hadn’t been with the laptop when the papers were taken.

  He sat back and exhaled loudly.

  ‘This is going to print, Mr Dobson, and so this is your one chance to give your side of things,’ I said. It was the usual newspaper blackmail—that the story was already there and was going to be published, and so an exclusive interview was damage limitation. I leant forward and spoke quietly, unsure who else was in the house. ‘It was going on when she died, I know that, and that it was your little secret.’ I paused. ‘And hers.’