Dead Silent (28 page)

‘It doesn’t sound like much of it fits Frankie,’ I said, shaking my head.

‘It doesn’t,’ Joe said. ‘But for as long as some of it does, we have to look at him.’

‘Where is he now?’ Laura asked.

‘Cell number six,’ Rachel said, before standing up to go to the bathroom. She had to put her hand out to steady herself.

As she left the room, I asked, ‘So, what do you want to know?’

‘Just about Frankie,’ Joe said. ‘Has he told you anything about his childhood? It seems that his mother was very
private, because no one seems to know much about the family, except that Frankie’s father died when he was a young child, and so it was just her and Frankie in that house. Apart from the complaints about the snooping from across the road, he hasn’t really come up on our radar. Until we can find out something about his past, we don’t know how much of a suspect he is.’

‘Is he talking?’ I asked.

Joe shook his head and looked down. ‘He’s curled up in the corner of his cell, not speaking to anyone. We haven’t arrested him for Nancy’s murder, just the snooping.’

‘So are you looking for evidence that his mother was a tyrant?’ I asked. ‘Or what about a religious maniac, suppressing his desires? That would be convenient.’

‘Don’t be like that, Jack,’ Joe said. ‘I just want to find out what I can. If he’s innocent, then good, but I don’t want to be the one who overlooks him and then has to dig another young woman out of a grave.’

I nodded and held up my hand in apology. Maybe I was wrong to be giving Joe a hard time. He was honest, I knew that, but I was starting to feel sorry for Frankie, despite what he had done; he was being fitted into Nancy’s story just because he was the neighbourhood weirdo, and I felt a certain amount of guilt for having brought up his name when I spoke with Rachel.

‘Frankie didn’t mention his mother in any negative way,’ I said. ‘I just got the feeling that he was lonely.’

Joe nodded, and then his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and listened to the caller for a few seconds before mumbling a response and hanging up.

He looked at me first, and then at Rachel, who had just wandered back into the room, her hand again reaching for her glass.

‘A body’s been found,’ Joe said to her, his face grim. ‘A young girl, a prostitute they think, found bludgeoned in the town centre, near the viaduct.’

‘I thought we were only dealing with Claude Gilbert,’ Rachel complained. Her voice had acquired a slur.

‘We are, but they want me to supervise the scene before the rest of the squad arrive later on,’ he replied. He pointed at the wine bottle, and then at Rachel’s glass. ‘You can’t go to a crime scene stinking of booze. Stay here. I’ll come back for you.’

‘I’ll follow you down,’ I said. I was still willing to chase a story, even if I was wrapped up in Claude Gilbert.

‘It’s police business,’ Joe said firmly.

I shook my head in response and added on a smile. ‘I was telling you, not asking you.’

Joe sighed as he looked at me, but he must have seen the determination in my eyes, because he nodded towards the door. ‘We might as well save the planet on the way,’ he said. ‘We’ll travel in the same car.’

I was smiling as I left the house, my camera and voice recorder stuffed into my pocket. Laura raised her eyebrows at the thought of being locked in with Rachel but, from the way Rachel was going through the wine, I guessed that her conversation would dry up pretty quickly.

Joe was quiet on the way into Blackley

‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

He didn’t answer at first, and I watched the streetlights paint his face in moving stripes of orange as we drove through the town centre.

‘I’m always like this when I get near a murder scene,’ he said.

I laughed. ‘I don’t believe that. You’ve been in the job too long.’

He sighed. ‘Okay, it’s Frankie.’

‘What, you think you’ve locked up an innocent man?’

Joe smiled at that. ‘He’s the town’s peeping Tom, and that’s what he’s been held on. So he’s not innocent.’

‘That’s not why you were at his house though. What happens tomorrow, when you’ve still got nothing more than your theory, where some bits fit, and some bits don’t?’

‘He goes home,’ he said. ‘Where he’s been for the twenty-two years since Nancy Gilbert died. Except this time we’ll watch him.’

I nodded and then looked back through the window at the neon of takeaways and late-night booze shops that lined the route.

‘Will this murder affect your hunt for Claude Gilbert?’ I said.

Joe looked surprised at that. ‘Why should it?’

‘A young woman has been killed. It will affect resources.’

He thought about it. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But when people are killed, the money gets found, and Nancy Gilbert is just as much a murder victim. Tonight is more urgent, I suppose.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I was told that this girl was a prostitute.’

‘Does that make a difference?’ I asked. ‘She’s still a human being.’

‘I didn’t say it was any less tragic,’ he replied, a hint of rebuke in his voice. ‘Prostitutes make easy prey, that’s all, because they put themselves into dangerous situations, and the way they make a living attracts the wrong kind of man. A prostitute murder is often the start of a spree—history has told us that much. We need to catch whoever killed her as quickly as we can, because there might be another dead woman once the sun goes down tomorrow.’

I let out a long breath. I was getting worn down by murder. I had spent most of my reporting life chasing down deaths, accidental or otherwise and, as the tiredness from the day set in, I dreamt for a moment of covering summer fêtes and town councillors cutting ribbons, where a working day meant a happy picture and a few words.

Then that familiar feeling kicked in as we got nearer the scene, that sense of intrigue tainted by tragedy. I was surprised by the inactivity though. There were no flashing lights, nothing to alert any curious onlookers, just two cars parked on a piece of waste concrete, acting as a makeshift cordon, a uniformed officer by each. Joe jumped out and showed his identification, and the two uniformed officers stepped to one side. I went to follow him but he told me to stay by the car, not wanting me to contaminate the scene. I looked around instead. There were CCTV cameras on the top of large poles,
but they were pointing away from the small buzz of police activity. All I could see were the backyards of buildings, some derelict, and some small businesses still clinging to existence—a back-street garage or car alarm centre—and the scene was shrouded in the dark shadows created by the viaduct that overlooked the scene.

I saw that one of the police cars was parked so that headlights faced the body. I caught a glimpse of pale legs and dirty shoes, a flowery dress. No one deserved to die there, not in such an anonymous place. I didn’t know her, but I guessed that life had already dealt her some tough blows—it had to be that way for her to be working on the street. To snatch away any chance of a better life seemed a cruel shot too far.

I turned away and looked back along the road. I could see a small cluster of people in the distance, huddled together, watching, but not wanting to get any closer, just the occasional burst of orange from a cigarette marking them out. I glanced back towards Joe and saw that he was busy, and so I decided to walk over to the bystanders, to seek out a quote. But as I set off walking, they seemed to disappear into the shadows, like inhabitants of a different world not wanting to get caught up in mine. I turned back to the car. In that moment, I sensed how hard it must be for people like Joe to solve murders like this.

I sat back in the car with a slump, overwhelmed by sadness for a moment, at the loss of a young life just on the other side of the police cars. Someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, brought to an end on a patch of overgrown concrete underneath the arches of a worn-out brick viaduct.

Then I saw Joe straighten and look down at the body. He scratched his head and I thought I saw some confusion in his gaze.

It was my turn to be quiet as we headed back. The rest of the murder squad had arrived eventually, the crime scene investigators dragged from their beds, and so Joe could leave the rest of them to it. He kept on looking at me, as if he was waiting for the questions to come. It didn’t seem like a good time to intrude into the young woman’s death, but my reluctance made me worry that I was losing my edge.

‘It was nothing unusual,’ Joe said eventually.

I looked at him. ‘It didn’t seem like that from the way you were looking at the body.’

‘It looked like a bang on the head and strangulation,’ he said.

‘That doesn’t sound normal.’

‘It depends on how you live your life,’ he said. ‘Prostitutes attract predators, and so I expected some sexual element to her body, or some kind of mutilation. There wasn’t any, as far as I could tell. This could have been anything, an unpaid drug debt, or maybe revenge for helping us out over something.’

‘Do you think that’s a possible?’

‘Criminals don’t grass, right, the unwritten law?’ he said. He gave a small laugh and shook his head. ‘That’s the biggest myth going. Sometimes those at the shitty end of life just
want to talk to someone, and so things get said. That’s what most defence lawyers don’t realise when they think they’re keeping big secrets by advising no comment. Their clients have usually told us more in the car on the way in, or in the fingerprint room on the way out.’ Joe smiled. ‘They like spilling the news on the lawyers most of all. Who’s taking drugs, who’s seeing the hookers for the freebies they won’t put through the books. Maybe the dead woman said too much about the wrong person.’

‘Are you sure she’s a prostitute? Maybe she’s been dumped down there to throw you off the scent.’

Joe shook his head. ‘One of the other street girls found her. They knew her, had seen her working, although we don’t know much about her. They think she was called Hazel.’

I didn’t say anything because it seemed like no words could properly explain the sadness of her death, a young woman just discarded in the shadow of the viaduct.

Eventually the lights of my cottage came into view, like small fires against the darkness of the hills around, and I felt some relief that I could surround myself with ordinary life again.

We walked into the house, expecting to be met by the sounds of conversation, but instead there was silence. I looked into the living room and saw Laura nursing a hot drink. I was about to say something when she raised her finger to her lips to hush me quiet. Then she smiled.

I walked over to her, curious, and I saw Rachel Mason sprawled on her back, one arm lolling onto the floor, her head cocked to one side, fast asleep.

I raised my eyebrows and grinned. ‘Did the wine take its toll?’ I whispered.

Laura nodded, not wanting to wake her.

I looked down at Rachel. She looked peaceful, almost
contented, her face losing some of that clench it had when she was awake.

I heard Joe give out a small groan as he came up behind me.

‘Have you got a bucket for my car?’ he said quietly.

‘She can stay here,’ Laura whispered. ‘I’ll just throw a blanket over her.’

‘Are you sure?’ Joe asked, although I could tell that he wasn’t prepared to force the issue.

Laura smiled. ‘Maybe it will make her more human.’

Joe nodded and returned the smile. He waved his car keys as a goodbye and headed for the door, before anyone had time to change their mind.

Once we were alone and things had gone quiet again, apart from the sound of Rachel’s light snores, Laura went to the kitchen so that we could talk, me following behind.

‘How long has she been like that?’ I asked.

‘An hour, maybe more. She just went, like that.’ Laura snapped her fingers. ‘She started to slur and tell me how she was jealous of me, that I had a perfect life, and then she just slumped. So I lifted her legs onto the sofa and let her sleep. How was the murder scene?’

‘Just the usual,’ I said, and as soon as the words came out, I realised what it was that made it such a tragedy: that few people would care much about the dead girl.

I shook away the thought and reached for the almost empty wine bottle. ‘You go up,’ I said. ‘I’ll just look over Claude’s story first.’

Laura gave me a kiss and then went upstairs as I turned on my laptop. I navigated to the file in which I had stored Claude’s story but, when I opened it up, I couldn’t bring myself to touch a key. I still had the image of the dead girl’s legs in my mind, and the quick-money tale of a long-lost barrister just didn’t seem important any more.

I closed the lid and went upstairs. As I walked into the bedroom, I expected to see Laura in bed, perhaps reading a glossy magazine or a book, but instead she was standing naked in front of the mirror.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked, surprised. When Laura looked at me, I held up my hands in apology and added, ‘I’m not complaining.’

Laura looked down at herself.

‘I was just thinking about my age,’ she said, and she peered closer to the mirror. ‘I’ll be forty in a couple of years, and I can just feel myself changing.’ She pulled at her cheeks to smooth out the skin on her face, but then she dropped her hands and scowled. ‘When I stop smiling, the lines don’t drop away, and it’s feeling a little slacker around here,’ she said, running her hands around her stomach and hips.

‘What’s brought this on? Rachel downstairs?’

‘I suppose so,’ she said, and then she sighed. ‘I just see something of myself in her, from ten years ago maybe, young and arrogant, dressing well.’ She blushed. ‘Maybe even turning heads.’

I put my arms around her shoulders and pulled her head into my chest. ‘We’re both getting older,’ I whispered into her hair. I cupped her face in my hands and made her look up at me. ‘We’ll fall apart together,’ I said softly, ‘and we’ll love every minute of it.’

Laura nodded softly, a tender smile on her lips.

‘Take me to bed, Jack,’ she said.