Dead Silent

by Neil White

  She stepped forward. ‘I’m sorry, Claude, but it’s over.’

  ‘And you’re not prepared to wait for the big exclusive?’

  Laura shook her head. ‘You know what they say, never off duty. I’m going to have to arrest you for the murder of your wife.’ She gripped his wrist and reached into her pocket for her phone. ‘You have the right to remain silent…’

  There was a quick movement from Claude and Laura gasped in pain as something hot was sprayed in her face. She stepped away and rubbed her eyes but that made it worse; her eyes were burning, and she stepped away, stumbling slightly.

  Then something hit her on the side of the head and she headed towards the floor.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  I tried to be as quiet as I could when I went in. I had waited for Claude until it was obvious he wasn’t going to show up, and now it was nearly two o’clock and I wasn’t in the mood for an argument about noise.

  I was surprised to find the door unlocked. I thought I had secured it when I left, but nothing looked untoward as I went inside, although something in the air made my nose itch and my eyes smart.

  I sat down with a slump and rubbed my face with my hands. Claude wasn’t there, and he wasn’t answering his phone. Neither was Susie. The front pages would be filled with my story on Claude, but now there was no Claude. It was too late to do anything about that, and all I could do now was pray that Claude would call me again.

  I thought back to when I was in Claude’s apartment, when one call would have brought the police running. Instead I got greedy, thought of the bigger payday when I should have thought of the story.

  I looked at the ceiling and thought of the warm bed, Laura in there, but I didn’t want to go upstairs and wake her, which is what would happen if my phone rang.

  I lay back on the sofa and pulled my coat over my body, my phone next to my head. It was going to be a long night.

  Laura was squeezed into the back seat of Claude’s Mini, her hands tied behind her back, rope binding her ankles together. The car was old, she could tell that from the vinyl seats and the fusty smell of cigarettes. The fumes from the exhaust seemed to filter into the car, and Claude was driving too fast, every bump in the road jarring her back. It was starting to rain and one of the wiper blades didn’t work, so that Claude had to lean forward to get a good view.

  She struggled against the ropes, but they were fastened tight, and he had clicked the seatbelt shut. She couldn’t get her hands free to undo it.

  Laura looked at her lap and concentrated. She had to stay calm. Bobby was on his own in the house. She needed to get back. But it was hard to stay focused with the pain in her cheek from Claude’s punch. And her eyes were still smarting from whatever he had sprayed into her eyes. Her face was swelling and her vision was blurred.

  Why had it happened? Laura couldn’t work it out. And where was Jack? He had gone to the meet. Had something gone wrong there?

  Laura looked at Claude in the rearview mirror, and then kicked out at the seat in front, her bound feet having little impact. ‘What the fuck are you doing, Claude?’ she said. ‘You were going to be arrested tomorrow anyway. Dobson is under arrest. He killed that girl last night. It’s all working out for you. Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Things have changed,’ he said.

  ‘Like what?’

  He didn’t say anything, and so Laura kicked out at the seat again, angry, frustrated.

  ‘Take me back,’ she shouted. She was about to blurt out that she had a son in the house on his own, but then she realised that it might make him go back—but for the wrong reasons. Every mile they drove took them further from Bobby; he was safer that way.

  Claude didn’t answer and remained silent for a few more miles. Laura tried to get a sense of where they were going, but she was still new to the North and so her knowledge of the area wasn’t that good, although she could see that they were heading for the countryside, not the town.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she said.

  Claude looked at the mirror. ‘You do ask a lot of questions.’

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ she said. ‘That’s what I do.’

  ‘Bully for you.’

  Laura looked out of the window again and tried to stay calm. She had to work out how to get away from him.

  ‘To meet Susie,’ he said eventually. When Laura looked back at him, he said, ‘That’s where we’re going,’ and then he reached into his jacket and produced a whisky flask. He raised it to his mouth and then offered it to Laura. There was dirt jammed under his fingernails.

  ‘Do you think you should, when you’re driving?’

  ‘Do you think I’m bothered about drink driving tonight?’

  ‘It might make your arrest come around sooner than you’d want,’ she said.

  He raised the flask in salute and took a drink. ‘You better hope for that then.’

  ‘Why? How much worse is it going to get?’

  He chuckled to himself. ‘Aren’t surprises better if they stay that way?’

  Laura turned away and tried to get her bearings as they travelled. She had to find her way out of this and to do that she needed to summon help. They had headed out of Turners Fold on one of the back roads that ran behind a golf course, and now they were snaking over one of the hills on an unlit road that would eventually take them into the Ribble Valley, a vast area of rolling green fields and old stone hamlets.

  ‘Where’s Susie?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Where I’m taking you,’ Claude said.

  Laura felt a wave of anger. ‘Stop fucking around now, Claude,’ she said. ‘If you’re going to run again, just do it, but you’ve no need to take me with you.’

  Claude glanced at her in the mirror. ‘It’s not about running.’

  ‘What is it about?’

  He gripped the wheel and leant forward so that he could see out of the windscreen properly, his concentration on the road, until eventually he said, ‘I’ve been betrayed.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘You know by whom,’ he said. ‘Your Jack, your precious little Jack.’

  Laura was confused. ‘I don’t understand. He did what you wanted.’

  Claude laughed, filled with bitterness. ‘Did he? What, precisely, did I ask him to do?’

  ‘Write your story, and point the finger towards Mike Dobson.’

  ‘Yes, write the story,’ Claude said, and he banged the steering wheel with his hand. ‘So why the fuck did he go after Alan Lake?’

  ‘Because he is a good journalist, and so he follows the story.’

  ‘How very noble of him,’ Claude said sarcastically. ‘But now Dobson is talking, it is royally fucked up, thanks to your boyfriend.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Follow the trail,’ he said, spitting out the words. ‘Roach got Dobson to talk, and it only happened in one of two ways: either you told Roach all about me, or else your Jack got Lake wound up so much that he sent Roach in there, ordered Dobson to spill the beans. Either way, it all comes back to your boyfriend and his fucking big mouth.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Laura said. ‘I didn’t say anything to Roach about you.’

  ‘Someone told him, and there is only Jack and you in the fucking loop, and so it’s all gone wrong.’

  ‘But why does Dobson talking affect things?’ Laura said. ‘If you’re innocent, come forward and prove it.’

  He pulled into a short dirt track that threw Laura around in her seat. Long grass brushed noisily against the underside of the car. When Claude came to a halt, Laura saw that they were parked in front of a farm gate.

  He stayed in his seat and stared out of the window. ‘Sometimes you expect people to protect themselves, but they don’t, and it makes me angry.’

  ‘Why? What do you mean?’

  Claude turned round to her, his teeth gritted, dirty yellow through his beard. ‘Second chances,’ he said, his voice angry. ‘We all deserve them, no matter what we’ve done.’ He wiped hi
s eyes and tracked dirt across his cheek. ‘We do things we regret, in the heat of the moment, and then you get to a point where you can’t change things. It’s the rat instinct, which is what we are, deep down. We come out fighting when we’re cornered, and when the fighting’s done, when the danger’s gone, you’re left with nothing, and so you keep on running, to make sure you don’t get cornered again.’

  ‘Who have you been fighting, Claude?’

  Claude seemed to slump for a moment. ‘Just me,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve spent my whole life fighting myself, my jungle instincts. Then you get a second chance, but your past is always there. You can’t reinvent it.’

  ‘So this is it now, it’s just about revenge? Taking me, hurting me, just to strike back at Jack, because you blame him for your scheme going wrong?’

  ‘Makes me sound cheap, doesn’t it?’ he said, and then he climbed out of the car and opened the gate, before he reached back into the car and grabbed Laura’s hair. ‘We walk from here,’ he said, and he dragged her out of the passenger door.

  Laura yelped in pain and then fell in a heap as she landed outside, her face into the damp grass. It was cold and she was already shivering as she tried to pull herself to her knees.

  He pulled out a knife from his pocket. Laura tried to shuffle away, but he grabbed the rope around her ankles and dragged her along the floor towards him. Laura felt small stones scrape her back and then she saw the flash of the blade.

  She screamed out, waiting for the pain, but then she felt her ankles break apart and she realised that he had cut the rope that bound them.

  ‘Don’t say that I’m not a gentleman,’ he said, and reached for her elbow to help her to her feet.

  Laura looked around once she was standing, to work out where they were. The moon blinked through the clouds and threw silver dust over the fields. In the distance she could see the twinkle of water. The air was fresh across her cheeks and she blinked a few times as the breeze cooled her stinging eyes. Spots of rain hit her on the forehead.

  ‘We’re going that way,’ he said, pointing towards the water ahead. He grabbed her arm and began to push her forward.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Laura said.

  ‘I don’t like being wronged,’ Claude said, his smile visible in the darkness. Laura could smell whisky and cigarettes.

  ‘I haven’t wronged you,’ she pointed out.

  ‘So you say,’ he said. ‘But if it wasn’t you, it must be Jack’s fault. All he had to do was raise some doubts, but no, he’s a real crusader, isn’t he? A real champ.’ He stopped and pulled her round, so that she stood in front of him. ‘It was a blip, one mistake. Thirty years of a good life, and then Nancy, bang. Everything gone, just like that,’ and he clicked his fingers. ‘This was the chance to get it back, some of the good life. Maybe another thirty years. Not any more.’

  ‘But you could just leave,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand. Why risk being caught just to hurt Jack?’

  ‘Because they’ll be too busy looking for you to go after me, even when my face is on the front pages.’

  He set off walking again, pushing Laura ahead of him.

  Laura thought fast, tried to work out how she could get away. What did he mean, look for her? She could walk to the nearest village in half an hour, she reckoned, so there would be no search. She would be home before Bobby woke. He might never know.

  He meant that something else was going to happen.

  She looked round, trying to see where she could run to, but she felt his grip tighten on her arm and then the cold steel of the knife against her back.

  They ended up by a bend in the river, the water rippling over stones, no lights visible as far as the eye could see, the surface dappled by raindrops. There was an old tree root in front of her, and the ground dropped away on the other side.

  ‘I can’t go down there,’ she said, looking down. ‘I’ll need my hands to support me.’

  ‘No need,’ Claude said, and he shoved her hard from behind.

  Laura fell, and it felt like slow motion. It was a drop of only a few feet, but she couldn’t put her arms out to break the fall, and so all she could do was twist her body and wait for the impact. Her shoulder took the blow and she cried out as a jarring pain shot down her side. Laura stayed down, wheezing with pain, cold shingle against her cheek. When she opened her eyes, she could see the sheen of the river beside her, bubbling gently, broken only by the gentle patter of the rain.

  She heard something and she twisted her head to see Claude clambering over the tree root. Laura knew she didn’t have long and so she quickly twisted onto her side and hoisted her knees to her chest. She threw her hands down her back and then strained as she tried to fit her arms around her hips. She didn’t think she would be able to manage it but, with one last desperate effort, her hips popped free and her hands were in the crook of her knees.

  Claude jumped down onto the shingle next to her, but she carried on. She was curled in a ball now, and he would have to carry her or untie the rope to make her secure once more. Laura expected a blow, a kick maybe, but he just watched her, taking sips from the hip flask, as if he was enjoying the struggle.

  She pulled her knees as far up as they would go and then dragged her hands downwards, hoping to work them around her ankles. Laura could feel the curve of her spine ache with the pressure, as if it were ready to pop out; she imagined being stuck like that, and the thought made her strain one last time, screeching with effort. Then her wrists were in front of her, her muscles throbbing with the effort.

  Claude put his flask away and started to clap. ‘Well done,’ he said, grinning, and then he reached down and grabbed her arm before pulling her back to her feet, the knife jammed against her neck, just under her ear. He turned her round so that Laura was looking along the river, facing a shadow further down the bank. Laura could see the rough edges of stone cast in shadow.

  ‘Susie’s in there,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t take me there,’ Laura said, and she pulled against him. ‘Just go, Claude. We’re miles from anywhere. I’m tied up, for Christ’s sake. You could be wherever you need to be before I get to the nearest town.’

  ‘But you’ve seen me.’

  ‘So has Susie,’ she said. ‘Is she going with you?’

  He shook his head. ‘I had a free life before she came along. I was poor, but no one knew where I was. So no, she is not coming with me.’

  Before she could say anything else, he pushed her forward so that she almost stumbled on the river bank. ‘Go to it,’ he snarled.

  She looked up and the knife went to her neck again. Laura thought it best to do as he said. She didn’t know what lay ahead, or even what was behind this, but if she swung at him and missed, she might find it too hard to defend herself against his knife.

  As they got to the shelter, Laura saw that there was soil piled up near the entrance, the outline detectable in the moonlight. She tried to peer into the interior, but it was too dark, only faint shadows visible.

  ‘Where’s Susie?’ Laura said, suddenly stopping.

  ‘You’ll see soon enough.’

  ‘What have you done with her?’

  ‘The same as I’m doing with you,’ Claude said, and then he gave Laura a sharp jab in the back to propel her forward, and she stumbled onto the soil as it rose up.

  Then it came to her. The soil, the darkness, no sign of Susie.

  Laura turned and got to her knees, to try and move away, get out of the shelter, but she felt a push in her chest. She tumbled backwards over the soft soil, tried to put her arms out to balance herself, but her hands were tied together, so when she felt the ground fall away, she had no choice but to fall with it.

  Laura braced herself, waited for the floor, cold soil against her back, but it wasn’t there—she kept on falling, a few feet more than she was expecting. Her shoulder took the brunt once more.

  Her fall was broken by something soft, but the breath was still punched out of her.
She tried to turn over, but her ribs sent jabs of pain through her body. Then she heard movement above her, dragging and grunting. Laura looked up. She could see the edge of what looked like a hole, and above that the moonlight.

  Laura tried to roll over to scramble to her knees, but then she heard Claude give a final groan of effort. As she looked up, the moonlight disappeared as something moved across its path. She screamed and something hit her. It was heavy and it slammed down, hit her head hard, knocked her onto her back and then stopped inches above her face, as if it had caught on a ledge. Laura hit out at it. It was a sheet of metal, riveted along a joint in the middle, and it pinned her to the ground. There was more noise from above, like rocks clanging loudly, and then she heard Claude shout, ‘Jack didn’t have to go that far.’

  ‘Let me out!’ she screamed.

  ‘He went too far,’ he shouted again. ‘He only had to raise the doubt.’

  Laura kicked out again, but heard only more bangs in response, like rocks and dirt landing on the metal. She tried to push against it with her bound hands but it was too heavy. Her head was filled with the noises above, the thuds becoming fainter with each second.

  She tried to assess the situation, her heart racing, her mind trying to process what was happening. But it was all going too quickly.

  She was on her back, a metal sheet just inches from her nose. It was pitch black, so that she had no sense of the space she was in, except that she couldn’t sit up. She felt the panic rise and tried to move herself along, to see where she could go, but her feet hit something—the edge of the hole she thought. She squirmed the other way and her head hit dirt. Six inches spare at either end. There were still noises above, but they were soft and muffled.

  Laura closed her eyes. Stay calm, she told herself. She had to work her way out of this. But the terror was surging through her, the confined space, the darkness; her chest was tight, her throat constricted. She wanted to kick and thrash, as if that would somehow get her out, but she fought the impulse, taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly. She had to stay in control.

  Laura reached to one side and her bound hands crept slowly across the dirt, fingers feeling in the soil until they hit something soft. It was fabric and, running her hands along it, she could feel that the cloth was coarse. As Laura felt higher, she found a loop, and then she yelped as she felt flesh, cold and soft. She realised that the loop was for a belt. Laura swallowed hard and took some deep breaths. She remembered her landing; something broke her fall. Now she knew why. Someone was in there with her.