Dead Silent (10 page)

He climbed out of bed and went to the shower. He had to start another day.

Lancashire felt like another country as I rode the underground to Canary Wharf, squashed into the carriage and making snake-shapes with my body to find a space between the suits. This had once been my life, working at the
London Star
, my first break in the city before I went freelance. I had travelled to London with my head filled with tales of long lunches in Fleet Street, deadlines met through the fog of flat beer; Tony Davies was to blame for all these stories. When I had arrived there, it was the glass and steel of Canary Wharf that had been my playground instead, most of my journalism done on the telephone. That’s why I went freelance, just so I could feel the big city more, to try and find its heartbeat. And it had worked for a while, the fun of getting to drug raids first, and cultivating police sources. Laura had been one of those sources, before the move to the North.

The good times in London had waned eventually. I struggled to get to the underbelly because I didn’t really know the city. I knew the landmarks, the geography, but the people constantly surprised me. They had a confidence, almost an arrogance, and I realised that I had never stopped being the northern boy, a long way from home.

Canary Wharf looked just as I remembered it when I emerged from the cavernous underground station—flash
and fast and all about the money. But the real London was not far away, the ethnic mix of Poplar, from the window boxes of the London pubs to the takeaways and noise of the East India Dock Road. In the Wharf I brushed past dark suits and good skin, the strong jaws of the successful who I guessed would know nothing of the real Docklands, the hard work replaced by flipcharts and bullshit.

But I wasn’t there for a tourist trip or to wallow in the memories. I was there to meet my old editor, Harry English, still head of the news desk at the
London Star.
I’d given him a wake-up call before I left Lancashire, promised him the first feel of the story, just to get an idea of its value. He was waiting for me on the marble seats opposite the tube station exit. To reach him I had to weave through the crowds of young professionals enjoying their lunch break and a group of salesgirls trying to persuade people to test-drive a Volvo. Times must be hard. It had been a Porsche the last time I had been down there.

Harry grinned when he saw me and then coughed as he clambered to his feet.

‘Jack Garrett,’ he said. ‘Good to see you again.’ He grabbed my hand warmly to give it a firm pump. ‘What have you been up to?’

I patted my stomach. ‘Enjoying more of the high life than you. You look well, Harry,’ I said, and I meant it. He was tall, six feet and more, but he used to be fat, his chest straining his shirts and his face a permanent purple as he cursed his way around the newsroom. He’d shed some of that fat and settled for stocky, and it suited him.

‘I had a heart attack last year,’ he said, his smile waning.

‘I didn’t know,’ I said, shocked. ‘I would have come down.’

‘It’s not the sort of thing that you send postcards about,’ he replied, and then he looked around and curled his lip in
disdain. ‘And so I have to eat out here now, box salads, sometimes that sushi stuff, but that’s just rice as far as I can tell.’

‘Beats dying, Harry.’

He grimaced. ‘Just about,’ he said, and then straightened himself. ‘So what hot story have you got? If it’s about a footballer, forget it. They can get injunctions quicker than I can type the story. Sell their weddings for thousands and then bleat about privacy when they break the vows.’

‘No, it’s not about footballers,’ I said. ‘It’s about Claude Gilbert.’

Harry looked surprised for a moment, and then he chuckled. ‘Not that old has-been,’ he said. ‘The internet ruined that story. We could run a hoax sighting for a couple of days a few years ago, but now some distant relative on the other side of the world can wreck the story before lunchtime on the first day, and it gets splashed all over the rival websites. Unless you can dig him up, no one will bite any more.’

My expression didn’t change, but he must have seen the amusement in my eyes.

‘What have you got on him?’ he asked, his face more serious now.

‘Someone’s told me that she’s involved with him, romantically, and that he wants to come forward.’

He laughed. ‘Do you believe her?’

I shrugged. I wasn’t sure.

‘But you’ve come all the way to London to check it out,’ Harry said, his laughter fading. He watched people going past for a few seconds, and then he asked, ‘Why now? It’s not another Ronnie Biggs, is it, going to jail to die—because I don’t think Claude will get out again like Ronnie did?’

I shook my head. ‘He wants to tell his story before the police come for him. The press decided he was guilty twenty
years ago, and so he wants to give his version before he goes before a jury, just to give himself a fighting chance.’

Harry wasn’t laughing any more. ‘And what if you decide not to go along with his plan?’ he said. ‘You could just expose him and be the man who caught Claude Gilbert.’

‘I’ll see how good his story is first,’ I said. ‘I’m still not sure it’s really him.’

‘And if it isn’t?’

‘The story runs as another hoax,’ I said, ‘and you get a bit of northern brass for your city readers to snigger at. She’s an ex-lover of Gilbert who was seeing him a few months before his wife was buried alive, and she says they’ve rekindled the romance.’

I could see Harry’s mind race through the sales figures, the syndication rights.

‘I can see that there’s an angle, but the hoax is page eight at best, not the front,’ he said. ‘You might just get your train fare back. We need Gilbert himself for the banner headline.’

I smiled. Harry hadn’t yet said anything I hadn’t expected.

‘So, where are you meeting him?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘She hasn’t told me yet,’ I said, and I patted Harry on the arm. ‘I’ll keep my movements quiet for now.’

‘What, you don’t trust me?’ he said, feigning a hurt look.

‘You’re an editor,’ I said. ‘You would shit in your grandmother’s shoes if you thought it would get you good circulation figures, and Claude isn’t going to come forward if there’s someone with a big lens hiding behind a tree.’

‘Okay,’ he said, chuckling again, holding his hands up in submission. ‘What do you want?’

‘An expression of interest,’ I replied. ‘Six-figure sum if it’s true. Exclusive rights.’

‘And picture rights?’

‘That depends on the big number.’

Harry nodded. ‘If you get Claude Gilbert, I’m sure we can sort something out.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a deal.’

‘So what next?’ Harry asked, and he looked pleased with himself.

‘I find Claude Gilbert,’ I replied, and started walking back to the arched entrance of the underground station, the excitement of a guaranteed front page putting a smile on my face.

Frankie parked his scooter in the same place as he had the day before, near the cottage outside Turners Fold, his helmet chained and padlocked to the footboards. He clambered over the gate again and set off along the two-rut track, looking around as he went, checking that no one could see him. When he got close to where he had been the night before, the spot marked by a stick jammed into the ground, he crawled along the floor to make sure that he couldn’t be seen, his knees swishing through the long grass that gathered against the wall.

He peeped over the wall and smiled when he saw he had the same view, that he’d got it right. The bathroom window was closed now but the curtains to the bedroom were open, like they had been the night before, when he had caught her as she went in after her shower, a towel around her body.

He wanted to get closer now. He had taken a few pictures the night before. He had trained his camera on her but then turned away as her towel slipped down her body. His camera had carried on clicking though, because he knew it was different that way. He wasn’t looking at her body, he knew it was wrong to do that, but his pictures were different. They were just photographs, not really her. Not really any of them. His photographs. Just scrambles of colour.

He reached into his bag and produced his water bottle. He knew he could be there for a long time.

Then he noticed that her car wasn’t there. There was the red sports car, but the house looked dark.

It was time to get closer.

I found Susie waiting for me under the vast timetable at Victoria station as we’d arranged, conspicuous in her heels and short skirt among the backpackers and metropols. I weaved through the travellers; when I caught Susie’s eye, she rushed towards me and grabbed me by the arm.

‘About time,’ she said, her voice tetchy.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘Why the urgency?’

‘Because I can’t smoke in here,’ she said, and she set off towards the exit.

‘Slow down,’ I said, laughing. ‘Don’t you want to know how I’ve got on?’

‘Walk and talk,’ she said. Once we got outside, she pulled a cigarette packet from her handbag and lit up quickly. She blew smoke past me and sighed. ‘Go on, what’s the news?’ she said, suppressing a cough but seeming calmer now.

‘I went to speak to my old editor.’

Susie looked suspicious. ‘You told me that much, but why couldn’t I come along?’

‘Because I didn’t want you to be annoyed if he wasn’t interested.’

‘And is he interested?’

I nodded and smiled. ‘Oh yeah, he’s buying,’ I said, although when a smile broke across her face too, I added quickly, ‘but Claude’s got to come forward. Without him,
you
are the story, and if it’s just you, you won’t get much more than a new handbag out of it. And it could ruin your life.’

Susie took another long pull on her cigarette, a determined look in her eyes. ‘He’ll come forward,’ she said. ‘Follow me. I know where we need to be.’

She walked off ahead of me, towards the jukebox rumble that drifted onto the street from the Shakespeare, a red-fronted pub opposite the station, though the music couldn’t compete with the constant roar of diesel engines from the stream of buses and taxis. It was a busy corner of London and right now it seemed like everyone—suits and shoppers, groups of old ladies—was leaving, heading for the trains or coach station.

Susie pointed ahead, past a double-decker heading to Brixton. ‘That’s where I first saw him, crossing the road there,’ she said. ‘He was carrying a Sainsbury’s bag, with a newspaper under his arm.’

‘So he was living around here, not just passing through,’ I said.

Susie smiled. ‘You’re sharp.’

‘So why don’t we just go to where he is, if he’s not far away?’ I said, trying hard to keep the frustration out of my voice.

‘Because this is how he wants it.’

‘And how long do we wait?’

‘Until he feels the time is right,’ Susie said.

‘Is he watching us now?’ I asked, looking around.

Susie shrugged. ‘Possibly,’ she said. ‘Probably, even.’ She brandished her phone. ‘He’ll call me, when the time is right.’

I sighed, impatient. I pointed to a small park nearby, really just a triangle of grass behind black railings. ‘We’ll go in there and wait.’

We crossed over and stepped up to the gate, but it was locked. Instead, we had to settle on the wall near to a statue of some old soldier. I tried to give myself a good view down
the street towards where Susie had said she’d first seen him, but I couldn’t help wondering again whether this was some elaborate hoax. And for what purpose? Susie looked ill at ease as she sat on the wall. It was low down, really just a base for the railings, and so she had to position her legs side-saddle to protect her modesty. She kicked away an old sandwich carton and then slipped off her coat. I saw her tattoo, barbed wire wrapped around her arm, the black now faded to grey, the sharp outlines made jagged by time.

‘He must have friends down here, someone sheltering him,’ I said. ‘A person couldn’t stay hidden for this long without someone helping him.’

Susie didn’t answer. Instead, she blew smoke into the air as she lit another cigarette.

‘Do you think it might have worked out for you and Claude if he hadn’t been married?’ I asked.

Susie looked up at that, and the sunlight caught the makeup on her face, the powder dry in her creases. ‘Maybe,’ she said, and then she smiled, lost for a moment in some old nostalgic thought. ‘They were good times, you know. He was an old romantic really, despite what you might think of him.’

‘I don’t think anything of him,’ I replied. ‘I just don’t buy that image, that’s all, not when he was a married man.’

‘You make it sound dirty. It wasn’t like that.’

‘Whatever it was like, he was betrothed to someone else.’

‘You don’t strike me as a man high on morals.’

‘Neither are many newspaper editors,’ I said, ‘but their readers might be, and so they’ll write it up to suit. Especially the papers that don’t get the exclusive. You’ll make some money, sure, but the cash will be tarnished, and your life will stop being your own.’

Susie nodded as if she understood, but then she said, ‘It’s not about the money. It’s about Claude getting his life back.
We’ll need the money, and that’s why we’re doing it like this, but people will be interested in him, not me.’ Then she sighed, and for the first time I saw a trace of regret flicker into her eyes. ‘If Nancy hadn’t died, do you think our little fling would have mattered?’ she said. ‘So he was a bit of a rat. Most men are, but the person I knew was also tender and caring. That was the memory of Claude Gilbert I carried through the years.’

‘And now?’

‘Just the same. He seems sadder, that’s all, worn out, but still a good man.’

I held up my hand in apology. ‘Okay, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I just don’t like having my time wasted, that’s all.’

‘I can only tell you it from my side,’ she said quietly, and then we both returned to watching the stream of passers-by.

‘Will Claude be able to answer the main question people will ask?’ I said.

Susie looked up. ‘Which is?’

‘If he didn’t kill Nancy, who did?’