Dead Silent (14 page)

He sighed. He couldn’t see her. There was always tonight though. As he thought about that, he felt the excitement begin to flutter in his stomach.

We settled into a café at a crossroads on Lower Belgrave Street. It fancied itself as upmarket, real food having been replaced by cakes and small Italian biscuits. Oil paintings of Tuscan views lined the walls and the air hung heavy with the smell of strong coffee. I saw the relief in the owner’s eyes as we settled at the back, at a table in the shadows. I felt bleary-eyed and smelled of stale beer, and Susie was wearing the same clothes as the day before, so we hardly fitted in with the well-groomed businessmen sitting at a table by the door, their shoes so polished that they reflected the sun streaming through the large windows.

We didn’t talk. I didn’t want to miss Gilbert if he showed up, and so I concentrated on the door, my camera in my hand under the table. Susie had sent a text to let Claude know where we were, her hand shielding the screen from me.

The Italian coffee did a good job of waking me up and when the businessmen moved on we had the café to ourselves. I drank the coffee slowly, not sure when Gilbert would arrive, if he ever would. Over an hour passed as we watched the streets grow gradually quieter, until the morning rush was done and the tables outside were empty.

Then Susie grabbed my hand.

‘He’s here,’ she said in a whisper. I saw the excitement in her eyes and looked quickly towards the doorway.

There was a man at a table outside, the waiter taking out a large coffee to him. I felt my hand tense around my camera and found it hard to suppress a smile. If this was Gilbert, it was obvious that his roguish charm had long since left him. He was tall, I could tell that from the way his legs stretched out under the table, but his once-handsome face was now concealed behind a long beard, mainly grey, and above it I could see the spider’s web of broken veins. His eyebrows were bushy, with grey fingers of hair pointing to the side, but it was the hair on his head that drew the eye. In the pictures from the newspapers, his hair had been dark, thick and lush. Now, it was bushy and wild, straggling down to his shoulders.

It could be Claude. He looked familiar. I pulled my camera out from under the table. Susie started to look round, and then shook her head. ‘No,’ she hissed at me. ‘No pictures, that’s the deal. If you take one, he’ll run.’

‘But his picture will be everywhere once he comes forward,’ I said.

‘Except that he still has an escape route if he changes his mind,’ Susie countered.

I paused for a moment, and then relented and put it back into my pocket. The man outside had picked up
The Times
and was holding it in front of his face, which must have been the signal, because Susie put her hand on mine. ‘You can go speak to him now.’

I rose quickly to my feet and threaded my way through the tables. My mouth was dry with nerves as I drew closer, wondering whether the most infamous fugitive in recent history was really on the other side of the window. I heard the scrape of Susie’s chair as she followed me.

The man looked up at me as I strode to his table and, for a second, I saw doubt in his eyes, mixed with some fear, but then he recovered his composure and folded the newspaper back onto the table. I sat down opposite, Susie behind me.

‘Hello, Claude,’ I said.

His cheeks flushed and his tongue flicked through his beard as he licked at his lips. Then he tutted and wagged his finger. ‘A lot of people make that mistake,’ he said, his voice deep and rich. I had a moment of doubt as I heard traces of Eastern Europe in his accent.

Then Susie leant towards him. ‘Gilly,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’

He swallowed and then whispered, ‘Not here.’ He put his folded newspaper under his arm. ‘Follow me.’

He stood quickly and brushed past my shoulder as he started to walk along Lower Belgrave Street, past the lines of black railings and porches supported by bright white pillars, with black and white chessboard floor tiles, and pinks and violets and purples trailing from window boxes. I rushed to keep up with him, the fast clicks of Susie’s shoes just behind me. His head was down, his steps quick.

I wondered if he was heading for the town park I could see ahead, some trees breaking the building line, but then he ducked quickly through a gate and then down some steps. I looked at the number—forty-six—and made a mental note for the story as I stopped to let Susie catch up. I heard the lock of the door below turn, and spun around to look at her.

‘Is he backing out?’ I said.

‘He won’t,’ she said, her face determined. ‘It’s a big moment for him, that’s all. It’s been a long time.’

I looked down the steps, into the shadows of the small concrete yard. But I hesitated. The person didn’t look much like Claude Gilbert, and all I had were the promises of a chain-smoking long-lost lover.

I walked down the stairs slowly, ready for him to rush out, and then gave a firm rap on the door. There was no answer, so I knelt down to the letterbox.

‘Mr Gilbert, please open the door.’

There was silence for a moment, and then I heard Susie clomp down the steps behind me. She pushed me to one side.

‘Gilly,’ she shouted, her face pressed against the glass panel in the door. ‘Please open up.’

There was silence for a few seconds, and then I heard footsteps and the low rumble of a key being turned. There was another moment of silence and so I turned the handle. The door swung open slowly and I entered the flat.

Laura was distracted as she wrote her statement.

She was in the report-writing room, another glass box, designed to be a quiet space for officers to work, away from the briefings and the CCTV and the chatter. But what should have been a simple write-up of an arrest she had made a couple of days earlier was turning into a patchwork of mistakes and corrections, the page filling up with crossings-out and initials.

She put down her pen and reached into her pocket for a mint; she could taste her tiredness on her breath. Laura knew what the problem was: the visitor from the night before. Laura knew about the pervert who had been watching people’s houses, but she also remembered Joe Kinsella’s warning about Jack’s story. Was Jack getting involved in something that he needed to keep away from?

She leant back in her chair and looked through the glass walls, into the atrium, at the case-builders heading for the morning canteen run, and the police drivers exchanging moans about their lot, the files delivered to court, taking a break before they began the forensic runs, taking samples to the lab.

Laura knew who she was looking for: Joe Kinsella. He had planted the seed, hinted that Jack might be getting in too
deep again. Laura tried to fight the urge to find out more; she suspected that Joe was just drawing her in so that he could find out what Jack knew, but she couldn’t fight the doubts. What was it about Jack’s story that was making Joe so secretive?

She leant back and looked at the ceiling. Who was the woman who had been at the house the day before yesterday, who was now sharing a hotel with Jack? And why were the police watching her?

Laura thought more about what Joe had said, and remembered that there were some spare rooms on the top floor, furthest from the lift.

She closed her file and went to find Joe.

The basement flat smelled musty when I went inside. It was small, with a dark corridor that went past a box of a kitchen and into a living room furnished with a threadbare sofa and a television on a chipped mahogany table, the wallpaper flowered and old.

My quarry was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, its filling spewing out through the ragged cloth on the arms. His fingers were steepled under his nose.

‘Why did you follow Susie last night?’ Claude said quietly, the Balkan accent gone now. ‘I said that I would contact you.’

‘You had already,’ I said, trying to stay calm. ‘You were in the pub last night. You came in just after me.’

He tilted his head. ‘You have a good memory,’ he said, ‘and now you see how easy it has been to stay hidden.’ He gestured towards a chair by the window.

The springs creaked loudly as I sat down. ‘I need to record this interview,’ I said, as I rummaged in my pocket for my voice recorder.

‘No,’ he said, his voice stern. ‘That’s not what we agreed.’

‘And neither was the cat and mouse game around London,’ I said. ‘I know you wanted everything your way, but now I’ve found you, I reckon my rules apply.’

‘Then there is no interview,’ he said.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll be able to report your arrest at least.’

I pressed nine, and hovered with my thumb over the button, holding his gaze and ready to jab it twice more, but his nerve held steady. I remembered that he was a gambler, poker being one of his vices. Was this a bluff?

‘That’s not what you want though, is it?’ he said. ‘You haven’t come to my home just so that you can report what will be all over the internet within the hour.’ He crossed his legs and tapped his lip with his finger, and then he shrugged. ‘If you want to record it, do it your way.’

I turned off my phone and reached for my voice recorder again. I placed it on the arm of the chair. ‘Tell me your story,’ I said.

He smiled at me. ‘I am Josif Petrovic. I lecture in human quantum energy.’ The Balkan accent had returned. ‘I am from a small village in Serbia called Kovaci, near Kraljevo. I grew up in the mountains nearby, and so I learnt about herbs and flowers, and then I went to university in Belgrade. I am an expert in my field.’

I sighed and looked at the ceiling. My attempt to gain control of the situation hadn’t lasted long. I reached out and clicked off the recorder. I let the silence linger for a few seconds before I said, ‘Well played, Claude.’

He acknowledged the compliment with a nod.

I pulled out my notebook and a pen. ‘So let me ask the one big question, Claude: why now?’

He flashed a look at Susie, and then he looked at his lap, at his clasped hands, and I saw his shoulders slump. When
he looked up again, he looked less confident, some of the bravado gone.

‘I’m getting old,’ he said. ‘I’m tired of running and I want to make things right.’

I held out my hands to appease him. ‘Tell me your story.’

Claude sighed and looked at the ceiling. I thought I saw tears in his eyes, and then he looked down to smile at Susie. He took hold of her hand. ‘I knew this day would come,’ he said, his voice soft and quiet. ‘I had a speech prepared, but I can’t remember it now.’

‘I don’t need a speech,’ I said. ‘Just the story.’

He swallowed, and then said, ‘It might not be the story you are expecting to write.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You want to ask me why I killed my wife, and where I went.’

‘Susie told me that it wasn’t like that.’

He gave a small laugh. ‘It would be easier if it was. For me, anyway.’

‘Easier?’ I said, confused.

‘Yes, easier,’ he said. ‘If I had killed Nancy, I would just have my guilt to deal with, but through all of these years, I’ve had to watch as my name was maligned, and Nancy’s killer stayed free. That made it harder, so much harder.’ He waved his hand at me. ‘And the story wouldn’t be as good for you if I was guilty.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because the story would be about my capture, nothing more,’ he said. ‘For you, there would be some television interviews, but they won’t pay, and the exclusive in one of the Sundays would sort out some bills, but it would become someone else’s story, book deals done with people who knew me. You would just sink into a bit-part role, a postscript.
No, the real headline is not who found Claude, but who killed Nancy.’

‘All I’ve heard so far is Susie’s gut feeling,’ I said. ‘And if you didn’t kill Nancy, why did you go on the run?’

He looked at me and pulled at his beard. ‘Because no one would have believed me,’ he said eventually. He leant forward in his chair. ‘I’ve got a much better story for you, and it will be all your story if you write it.’

I held out my hands. I was listening. But my fingers were trembling.

‘Clear my name,’ he said.

I looked at Susie, who was staring at Claude. ‘People have tried in the past,’ I said. ‘There have been theories, and some wild ones. I’ll be just another crackpot.’

He nodded. He understood. ‘But none have had my story,’ he said, his voice firmer now. ‘Help me prove my innocence, and I’ll go north with you. Press conference, exclusive rights, the whole lot. That’s why you’re here.’ He nodded towards Susie. ‘That’s why she brought you down.’

‘But what if you run out on me?’

He held out his hands and smiled. ‘Then you have this, our meeting. But I’m done running.’

As Laura walked along the landing on the top floor of the station, with views down into the atrium three floors below, she saw that it wasn’t Joe in the office on the other side of the glass wall, but Rachel Mason, the icy blonde. She was hunched over some papers on her desk and speaking quietly into her phone. Laura hovered in the doorway to listen in to what she was saying, but could catch only murmurs.

Rachel must have sensed her presence, because she turned round and looked at Laura. Her eyes were cold, and Laura noticed that she closed her file with the other hand, the one that had been open on the desk. Laura knew she ought to move away from the door, but she knew that Joe had played her the day before, dropping hints about Jack being in danger, knowing that she would come back. And so she was there, just as he wanted.

Except that he wasn’t there.

Rachel ended her call and swivelled round in her chair.

‘Morning, Laura,’ she said, the smile that flashed onto her lips not reaching her eyes. ‘What can I do for you?’

Laura walked into the room and saw the boxes in the corner, filled with paperwork. Some of it looked old, the edges yellowed and dusty.

‘I just came for a chat,’ Laura said. ‘Yesterday was the first time in a while that I’ve seen Joe, and it’s good to catch up.’