Dead Silent

by Neil White

  ‘Some might say that’s very convenient for you,’ Joe said.

  Mike looked surprised and wiped the wetness from his cheeks. ‘It doesn’t feel convenient,’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re a suspect in Hazel’s case, and so you know we’ll take your DNA. You don’t know what evidence we have in Nancy’s case, and so you give us an account that blames someone else. But there are problems with your story.’

  ‘It’s not a story.’

  ‘The first problem is that Nancy Gilbert’s child wasn’t yours,’ Joe said.

  Mike jolted in his chair and he gripped the edge of the table.

  ‘Do you think we hadn’t considered a jealous rage, the possibility that she was carrying someone else’s child?’ Joe said. ‘Checks were done, and it was Claude’s child.’

  The detective’s voice seemed to swirl around Mike, as if he was talking from another room, all faint echoes.

  ‘But she told me it was mine,’ Mike said, almost to himself.

  ‘She got it wrong then, because it wasn’t. Maybe her and Claude got on better than you thought. If you killed her to stop Mary finding out about your child, then you made a mistake. It was Claude’s baby.’

  Mike shook his head, his eyes scared now. ‘No, this isn’t right. Nancy told me, she was sure.’

  ‘And there’s something else too,’ Joe said. When Mike looked at him, confused now, Joe bent down for something that he had stored under the table. It was a large brown paper bag; when Joe put it on the table, it made a loud clunking noise.

  Mike looked at the bag, and then back at the detective. ‘What’s in there?’

  Joe reached in and pulled out another bag, this time clear plastic, sealed with a red tie. Joe held it up. Mike could see red smears on the inside of the bag, and there looked to be a piece of metal, heavy and long, with a bandage wrapped around one end.

  Mike had seen it before, twenty-two years earlier. His lip started to quiver. What was going on? He didn’t understand.

  ‘We found this in your garage,’ Joe said.

  Mike tried to say something but then he realised that he didn’t know what to say.

  ‘It was wrapped up in a towel, covered in blood,’ Joe continued. ‘Fresh blood. Hazel’s, we reckon.’

  Mike’s hands became clammy.

  ‘Do you want that lawyer now?’

  Mike nodded, and then the room seemed to fade out as he slithered slowly to the floor.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  The clock had crept just past midnight by the time I got the call from Claude. I was directed to a shale car park fringed by blackberry bushes, next to the canal that runs through Blackley. It was the site of an old textile factory, but was now an employeess’ car park for a nearby firm of solicitors, one of the new accident-claim factories. It was quiet as I stepped out of the Triumph. I zipped up my jacket to my neck and thrust my hands in my pockets. The only other car there was an old blue Nissan with misted windows, and the slight rock of the suspension told me that it wouldn’t pay to walk over that way.

  The canal was once a vital trade link, when the cotton came in from Liverpool and was transformed into cloth, the waterway clogged with coal-powered barges and the air heavy with smoke and noise. The canals fell as silent as the mills when the textile trade died, and now just tourist barges patrol them on walking-pace tours of Lancashire, the waterway running through the town via a series of locks and aqueducts high above the valley floor, the views over Blackley making it a popular overnight mooring spot.

  As I looked over at the town, I saw that the full moon was being taken over by clouds, but there was still enough gleam to turn the slate roofs silver and render the disused mill chimneys in silhouette; the skyline of lost industry was replaced by the new Blackley as the crumbling brick fingers were interspersed by sparkling new minarets, the call to prayer taking over from the din of machinery. The circular swirls of orange streetlights marked out the new estates and cul-de-sacs that had sprung up, so different to the regular up and downs of the nearby terraced streets, the traditional mill housing.

  I looked both ways when I reached the towpath. Claude’s directions had been simple: go onto the path and turn right, but I wanted to check both ways to make sure that there would be no nasty surprises behind me. There was no one there, just the long black ribbon of the canal that curved out of sight a few hundred yards away. No cigarette glow or shifting shadows.

  My feet clicked on the cobbled towpath as I started walking. Narrow stone bridges crossed the water every fifty yards or so, making the path curve around the supports and creating patches of dense blackness on my route. Straggly bushes filled the banks and encroached onto the path, and the cobbles were slippery with moss. I could hear the occasional siren in the distance, sometimes the whine of a small car being driven too fast, and there was the pop-pop of a motorbike nearby, but my ears were mainly filled with the sound of my footsteps and the occasional lap of the water against the canal sides.

  I thought about turning back. Claude wanted to stage-manage his homecoming, I understood that, and it was good for the story, but he was being too secretive. The flutters in my chest and the way the hairs on my arms prickled against my jacket told me that something wasn’t right, but I knew I had to bring him out that night. Harry was going with the story in the morning, and it was too late to turn back. And where was Susie? I’d tried calling her, but all I got was an automated voice telling me that the number was unavailable.

  The shadows in the bushes seemed to move as I walked, the soft rustle of the leaves in the breeze making me even more nervous. I tried to peer through them, to see behind them, looking for a threat, maybe the moonlight catching the glint of someone’s eyes, but there was nothing. A bridge got closer and I realised that there would be a few yards where I wouldn’t be able to see anything at all. I slowed down to listen out, but there was nothing. I ducked down to get under the bridge and felt moisture drip onto my neck from the cold stones. There was little but the black outline of the canal edge to warn me where the path ended and the water began.

  I stopped for a moment and looked around. All I could see ahead was darkness as the path got further from the bright lights of Blackley. I couldn’t go too much further. The towpath disappeared into the shadows of a wharf building a hundred yards ahead, the wooden canopy stretching across the canal. It had once protected the cotton from the elements as it was loaded and unloaded on huge winches, but now it just created an impenetrable blackness as the path curved round to a series of locks, the huge wooden gates taking the water lower down as the canal headed west.

  There was a thrash of branches, and I jumped and gasped, but then a bird sailed over the canal and went towards a five-storey derelict mill on the other side of the canal. I took some deep breaths and then watched as a bat darted across the canal, swooping and then turning. Brambles trailed against my trousers as I set off again.

  My phone rang, its electronic chirrup suddenly deafening. I looked at the number and recognised it as Claude’s.

  ‘Where the fuck are you?’ I asked, my voice low and angry. I was getting tired of the games. ‘I’m on the canal path, like you said.’

  ‘Can you see the wharf ahead?’ he said.

  ‘Of course I can. Stop playing games.’

  ‘Jack, I’ve got to take precautions.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Trust me, Jack,’ he replied. ‘People know what you are doing. I’m not coming out until I can be sure that no one is following you. I’m protecting you, Jack. And me.’

  I looked back and saw just an empty towpath.

  ‘There’s no one here,’ I said.

  ‘Go into the wharf and wait for me there,’ he said, and then his phone switched off.

  I sighed and walked onward.

  Mike Dobson didn’t react when the door to the consultation room opened. A few hours had passed since the last interview, because the doctor had been called to make sure that he was fit to cont
inue.

  He had been taken there to wait for his solicitor, but he had spent the time with his hands clamped over his ears, trying to silence the thumping in his head.

  ‘Mr Dobson?’

  The voice seemed faint. He looked up. He expected it to be Roach again—he had been waiting outside the interview room—but there was someone else in front of him. A young man in T-shirt and jeans with bleached tips in his hair.

  ‘I’m your legal representative,’ he said. ‘Craig Selby.’

  Mike squinted, tried to focus on him, but it was as if they were in separate rooms; his voice was distant, his movements sluggish, the colours washed out.

  ‘You look surprised, Mr Dobson,’ the rep said, and looked down at himself. ‘It’s my turn on the night rota. We don’t sit in our suits, waiting for the call. I was in bed, and so this was the best I could do. If you want, I’ll go home and put on a suit.’

  Mike shook his head and held up his hand. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve never been in this situation before.’

  ‘Yes, we need to talk about that,’ he said.

  Mike sat back and looked at Selby, trying to focus. He took a few deep breaths, narrowed his eyes. The sounds of the room started to rush back in: Selby’s breathing, the tap of his pen against the folder he held in one hand.

  ‘I didn’t kill her,’ Mike said. ‘The girl last night, I mean.’

  ‘Hazel?’

  Mike nodded. ‘She was alive when I left her.’

  Selby sat down on the opposite side of the table. ‘The police haven’t told me much, so right now, stay quiet.’

  ‘But I want to tell you,’ Mike said.

  Selby shook his head. ‘No, you don’t. Stay quiet for now. All they’ve told me is that they’ve found the murder weapon in your garage.’

  ‘It’s a metal pipe,’ Mike said.

  ‘Was it in your garage?’

  ‘So they said.’

  ‘It sounds like you’re in some deep shit, Mr Dobson, and so trust me on this. We’ll work out what to say once we know everything else. That will all come out during the interviews.’

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Mike said.

  ‘It’s not about you liking it. It’s about getting you through it.’

  ‘But I thought I had to tell you what happened and you advised me,’ Mike said. ‘We don’t sit around and plan lies.’

  Selby threw his folder onto the table. ‘You’ve been arrested for murder, Mr Dobson. This is the real world now, not some fantasy ethical world where everyone follows the rules. You’re talking about the rest of your life in a prison cell. If you want that, fine, you go in there and tell them your story, how you were with the dead girl, how that metal pipe was in your garage, and how it’s all some almighty coincidence. Go in there and be as lucid as you want and then, when you’re looking through the bars of your cell every day until you die, pat yourself on the back and say what a good boy you’ve been.’

  ‘I just want to tell the truth,’ Mike said, perplexed.

  ‘You aren’t thinking straight.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Selby said, banging his fist on the table. ‘We’ll get a doctor to say that, don’t worry. And we’ll get those interviews excluded so that the jury will never hear them.’

  Mike shook his head. ‘I’m not hiding any more.’

  ‘It’s not about hiding.’

  ‘What is your job?’ Mike asked.

  The rep looked surprised. ‘To advise you, of course.’

  ‘And I can choose not to follow the advice?’

  Selby faltered, and then said, ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  Mike nodded. ‘You don’t have to stay.’

  ‘I want to stay.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s a murder,’ Selby said, ‘and you don’t walk away from a murder.’

  Mike snorted a laugh. ‘The pay cheque’s bigger, I suppose.’ When Selby didn’t respond, Mike said, ‘So let me tell my story. I’m not running any more.’

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  I was plunged into darkness as I progressed further into the shadow of the wharf. I could still see the canal stretching ahead, the arms of the locks visible against the metallic sheen of the water, but all else was in blackness and I had to edge forward, my hands outstretched. I heard a fluttering sound, and looked up to see a pigeon in one of the vertical shafts in the sloping canopy, a large metal pulley wheel overhead. My hands found the wall and I started to feel my way along, the large stone blocks rough on my hands. I winced as my fingers found the edge of a broken window.

  I sucked on my fingers and tasted blood. I cursed Claude Gilbert and wrapped a handkerchief around the cut before inching forward again. I kicked a beer can, the clatter making me jump, and then used my feet to tap against the wall, looking for a way in. I hit only stone for a few steps, and then the sound changed to a thud that echoed—wood. I had found a door. I stepped forward and gave it a push, but it didn’t give. I ran my hands over it, feeling for the point at which it changed to stone again. Instead, I felt it begin to lean inwards. My fingers reached the edge of the door and found that there was a gap between it and the door frame.

  I pushed at the wood and inserted my foot into the gap, working to widen it until I was able to squeeze my body through. Once inside, my way forward was illuminated by the glow of the moon through the windows on the other side of the building, though the light served to create more shadows, highlighting more potential threats. I could see the outline of graffiti on the walls and, walking forward, I stumbled on discarded bricks and was almost tripped to the floor by some metal brackets still attached to the ground. Remnants of cables hung from the ceiling like Spanish moss and pieces of broken glass blinked the light back at me as I made my way carefully along.

  I reached for my phone and held it out, so that the screen cast some light on the way ahead. There were holes in the concrete in places, where pipes had been ripped up, and it looked like I was one wrong step from a broken ankle.

  ‘Claude?’ I shouted, but the word just echoed around the empty space.

  I stopped, frustrated. I tried calling him again, but his phone was switched off now. I muttered expletives to myself and again used the light from the screen to help me find my way around.

  It took me five minutes to thread my way through, weaving past the huge iron pillars that held up the building. I had to duck to avoid the cogs of some old black machinery bolted to an oak beam that ran across the room, all the time moving towards the silver halo of an open door ahead. I fell to my knees twice; by the time I reached the other side of the building, I was bleeding from a cut to my hand and my right knee was grazed. Then I was outside again, looking out over Blackley once more, and still no sign of Claude.

  I sat down. All I could do was wait.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Laura climbed out of bed when she heard the knocking. She checked the clock. Just past one. When she had gone to bed, she had hoped that the next voice she would hear would be the inane chatter of the radio DJ when her alarm sounded.

  She peered out of her curtains. There was a Mini there, racing green, and a man at her front door. She didn’t recognise him, but she could only see the top of a hat and long hair streaming from it, unkempt and grey.

  She looked down at her clothes—loose-fitting pyjamas—and got changed quickly, throwing on some jeans and an old sweatshirt. She didn’t know who was there, but it must be urgent if it was this late.

  When Laura got downstairs, she shouted through the door, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I’m looking for Jack,’ came the reply from the other side of the door. The voice was deep, with a hint of public school in the accent.

  Laura looked at the door, unsure what to do. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I just need to see Jack,’ came the voice again.

  She opened the door slowly and was faced with a man, scruffy, wearing a long overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat, with flushed cheeks above
a grey beard. His hands and coat looked dirty.

  ‘I’m supposed to meet Jack Garrett here,’ he said.

  ‘Who are you?’

  He smiled. ‘Claude Gilbert. I think Jack has been talking about me.’

  Laura’s hand shot to her mouth. Her mind raced with the descriptions of Claude Gilbert she remembered from the headlines and tried to match it with the person in front of her.

  ‘You’re really Claude?’

  He looked around, as if someone might be listening, and then he leant forward and raised his finger to his lips. ‘Quiet please,’ he said, and winked. ‘Not everyone knows.’

  Laura opened her door. As he walked in, stale whisky drifted past her nose.

  ‘But he’s gone to meet you,’ she said, closing the door behind him.

  He looked surprised. ‘He must have got mixed up. I called him back and left him a message, told him that I would come here.’

  ‘Why the change of plan?’ Laura asked.

  ‘There were some people there,’ he said. ‘I became scared. I’m sorry.’

  Laura looked towards the stairs and thought of Bobby, unsure what to do. Claude Gilbert was in her house. Jack was out there looking for him, the figure in his big story. But he was a fugitive, a wanted murderer. She couldn’t let him walk out.

  What would Jack say though? She would ruin his big day, the press conference arranged for the morning.

  She closed her eyes for a moment to offer a silent apology to Jack, and then said, ‘I can’t let you do this.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Be here, in my house,’ she said. ‘Did Jack tell you what I do for a living?’

  Claude sat down on a chair, and groaned as he relaxed. ‘He didn’t need to. I worked it out.’