Dead Silent (39 page)

And why would they find her? Only three people had seen Claude, as far as she knew, and two of them were underground, trapped under a sheet of metal and a covering of soil.

Laura thought about what she knew about Nancy. It had been a week before she had been dug out, and she had died in her hole. Claude hadn’t come back for her.

Laura opened her eyes. It was a mistake, she knew that straight away. She couldn’t see anything in front of her, just darkness, and she felt the surge of panic again. She fought against it, but it was too hard. It wasn’t like physical pain, where she could focus on something else. There was no escape. It affected her mind, directed her instincts and she shuffled downwards, used her heels on the floor, wondering whether she could dig her way out. Her feet hit the dirt wall, and she tried to gouge at it with her toes, unable to move her feet much, but it was tightly compacted. She could try her hands. If she could get her fingers around the edge of the metal, then maybe the soil on top would be looser.

But there wasn’t much room for Laura to work her arms above her shoulders, her movement restricted by the fact that her wrists were still bound together. She moved to the edge of the hole and slowly worked her arms upwards, her eyes wide with effort, her teeth bared, soft moans escaping. Her fingers snagged on Susie’s top, but there wasn’t enough room to pull her hands back, and so she kept on pushing upwards, the cloth around her fingertips, her touch revealing more of Susie’s cold ribs, until her hands got higher and the cloth slipped away.

Laura stopped to take a few breaths but they came in gulps, her chest hurting. Panic was her enemy but she was losing the battle. She could hear the quiet buzz of insects around her face, but she hoped that it was just her imagination racing in the darkness. It was too early for anything like that. Don’t think about what was happening with Susie. Laura knew she would be either found or dead long before Susie’s organs spewed into the hole.

Then she stopped. There was something against her foot, cold and wet. Was it just the temperature, her toes losing sensation—but then she felt it against her leg, creeping upwards like icy fingers.

The water was creeping in. Was it raining outside? As the water crawled along the floor of the hole, like icy claws, Laura realised something else too: it was rising.

She started to scrape at the soil again, panting, desperate.

I drove into the police station car park too fast, almost clipping a tatty black Vauxhall that had been parked badly. I pulled into the first space I saw and headed quickly for the station entrance. I had no plan, nothing worked out, but I knew that Laura wasn’t at home, and Frankie had told me that Claude had been to the cottage.

As I ran along the tarmac path that took me to the station, I saw Joe Kinsella emerge from the large double doors. He headed towards a man who was loitering outside, squinting at the rain that was just starting to get heavier, but then Joe saw me and stopped.

‘Jack?’ he said, his face concerned. ‘I thought today was the big day?’

‘Claude has gone walkabout,’ I said. ‘And Laura isn’t at home. I don’t know where she is.’

‘I haven’t seen her this morning,’ Joe said.

The man stepped forward. ‘Are you Joe Kinsella?’

Joe looked at the man, who was holding something in his hand. A disk. Joe nodded.

‘A police officer told me to bring this in yesterday,’ the man said, and he held out the disk. ‘It shows the Mercedes drop the girl off.’

He had Joe’s attention now.

‘I checked my computer after the officer left,’ the man said. ‘It looks like I did leave my camera on.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Joe said.

The man went into his pocket and pulled out a business card. ‘DC McGanity,’ he said, ‘although she was in uniform.’

‘Was this yesterday?’ I asked.

He nodded, and then he said, ‘It’s not what you think. It isn’t about the sex or anything. I want you to know that.’

‘It doesn’t matter to me,’ Joe said. ‘I’ve been doing this job long enough not to blush any more.’

‘No, no, you don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I was setting up a name and shame website. I was going to post the photographs and videos, only those that showed the cars. Who would go down there if they were going to be caught on camera? Explain that to the wife.’

‘It’s a dangerous game,’ Joe said. ‘People don’t like their income being affected.’

‘But you don’t know what it’s like living round there,’ he said. ‘Prostitutes and drug dealers everywhere, syringes dropped into your wheelie bin. Can you imagine what it’s like to find a used condom on your doorstep most mornings? I thought that if I drove away the prostitutes, everything else would follow.’

I paced impatiently as Joe looked at the man in front of him.

‘So what did your camera catch from the night Hazel was killed?’ Joe asked.

The man held out the disk again, and Joe took it this time. ‘Like she said, I put it onto a DVD. The gold Mercedes comes in at around ten o’clock. I’ve included the hour before and the hour after, just in case it’s important.’

Joe looked at the disk. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Kev Smith,’ he said. ‘I know I want prostitutes away from my house, but I wouldn’t want them to be hurt. And I don’t want to get in trouble. I’m sorry.’

‘Thanks, Kev, I’ll take a look at this. Keep the original footage. Someone will be around for it later.’

Kev looked pleased at that, but Joe didn’t have time for a long goodbye; he rushed into the station holding the disk, the door slamming back against the wall as he flung it open. I kept close at his shoulder.

‘Something has gone wrong,’ I said. ‘Claude isn’t playing ball, and Laura’s missing.’

Joe rushed through the atrium, heading for a room on the other side. ‘Hazel?’ Joe said. ‘Last night And something else isn’t right,’ Joe said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Mike Dobson. He hasn’t really shown up for us before, just some ordinary bloke, and now he’s saying that he was there when Nancy Gilbert died. But then, just before Claude is due to come home, Dobson is implicated in a prostitute murder. After twenty-two years of nothing. We’re supposed to be picking up Claude today, but now it’s getting too complicated. It doesn’t feel right.’

We settled down into swivel chairs in front of a television. A fan made notices on the wall flutter, mainly mugshots of Blackley’s target criminals, pictures of sullen young men with cropped hair. Joe put the disk into a machine.

‘What has Mike Dobson said?’ I asked, as we waited for the disk to load.

‘About Hazel?’ Joe said. ‘Last night, he was sticking to the same story, that he was with her, but that she was alive when he dropped her off. A night to stew on it might make him come up with something else.’

‘And once you get one lie, more tend to follow,’ I said.

Joe nodded. ‘The more you get, the easier it is to pick
them apart,’ he said, then he pressed play before winding quickly through the footage.

The images were clear and bright, and it seemed that Kev Smith was using a camcorder, not one of the grainy security cameras that disappointed so many searches for evidence. The streetlight outside his house kept the image bright enough for the camera but, as Joe raced through the footage, the parts further away slipped slowly into twilight. Joe tapped the counter in the corner of the screen. ‘He said to look at around ten o’clock.’

When the clock got as far as nine fifty-five, Joe pressed play and we settled down to watch.

There were young women in short skirts on street corners, their handbags over their shoulders, but they were mainly in darkness, so that they appeared on the screen like ghostly shadows. Whenever a car went past, they bent down to catch the driver’s eye. Some slowed down. Some sped up. I wondered how many pieces of bad luck had taken those women to the street corners of Blackley.

Then we saw it. Mike Dobson’s gold Mercedes. It passed right in front of the camera and below the streetlight, although the angle from the bedroom window allowed us to see only the driver. I recognised Dobson from his profile, but it was the other person in the car that interested Joe. The car turned a corner and started to drive away from the camera, towards the waste ground at the top of the street, Hazel’s last resting place. There was a shadow in the passenger seat, just a head over the back of the seat, long hair visible.

‘He’s going to dump her,’ Joe said, his finger tapping on his lip with concentration.

Then the car started to brake and it pulled up alongside the kerb. We exchanged looks of surprise when the passenger door opened and someone stepped out.

‘Is that Hazel?’ I asked.

Joe got closer to the screen so that his face was bathed in blue light. ‘It might be.’

We both watched as Hazel tottered along the pavement and straightened the flowery dress she was found in. She was weaving as she walked, drunk maybe, and then Mike Dobson turned back towards the town centre and sped away to his normal life, where no one knew that he patrolled those streets.

Joe straightened and scratched his head. ‘So it wasn’t him,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Dobson was telling the truth.’

‘It happens sometimes,’ I said.

Joe looked at me, and I could tell there was something on his mind, more than just Hazel.

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘If Dobson’s telling the truth about Hazel, maybe he’s telling the truth about what happened to Nancy Gilbert,’ Joe replied.

‘What did he say?’ I asked, and I suddenly felt cold, not sure if I was about to hear something that I wouldn’t like. My tongue ran over my lips as my mouth went dry.

‘He said he was there when Nancy Gilbert was killed,’ Joe said. ‘Claude hit her, and then persuaded Dobson to help him bury her. Dobson just went along with it, because he was scared.’

‘Maybe it’s a lie, to cover up what evidence you’ve got,’ I said, although I realised that it didn’t sound convincing.

Joe tapped the television screen. ‘This tells me that Dobson isn’t a liar.’

I felt the blood drain from me. My hand shot to my mouth and I started to pace, looking at Joe and then out of the window, my mind trying to process the threats flashing through my head.

‘What’s wrong?’ Joe asked.

‘If Dobson is telling the truth,’ I said, ‘Claude Gilbert is a heartless murderer.’

‘We’ve always known that,’ Joe said. ‘Now, we’ve got a witness.’

Then I saw something on the monitor, like a flash. Then it was there again. Headlights, two quick bursts of light, and then the beams drove slowly towards Hazel.

‘What do you think, a Mini?’ Joe asked as it drew closer.

I couldn’t answer. The car pulled alongside her, and she bent down to talk to the driver, one hand resting on the roof, her chest pushed through the window. Then she walked round to the passenger door and climbed in. The Mini reversed quickly up the street and then performed a U-turn in the road to head away.

As they reached the top of the street, the brake lights came on as the Mini slowed down so that it could drive onto the patch of concrete where she was found.

‘Hazel has just climbed in with her murderer,’ Joe said.

Laura thumped the metal sheet, and then kicked it again. Her fingers were raw from scraping at the soil. Dirt was jammed under her fingernails.

She was sweating, despite the water that settled around her. Flies from Susie buzzed in her ear, so that Laura had to blow at them to keep them away from her nose.

There was a moan, Laura jumped, and then Susie’s head banged on the metal, as if she had tried to sit up. Except that Laura knew she hadn’t, because she couldn’t.

Laura tried to scramble away from her, but she couldn’t get far, only a foot at the most. She wished for a moment that she smoked, just so that she would have a lighter to see what there was in the hole. Or maybe it was better not to see.

Then she remembered that Susie smoked.

Laura closed her eyes and took deep breaths through her nose to get ready for it. Then she extended her arms.

She recoiled when she felt Susie’s body, her arm completely solid now, the muscles tensed by rigor mortis. Laura exhaled to quell the tightness in her chest, and then she reached out once more.

Laura was ready for the feel of Susie this time, and when her fingers brushed her skin, cold like ham, she kept on going,
heading for Susie’s trousers. Susie’s hand was crooked, as if she had been holding something when she died, but Laura could find nothing between the fingers. Laura reached down to the front pocket of Susie’s jeans, but when she ran her hands over it, pressing against her hip, there was nothing there.

Laura took another deep breath and reached across Susie’s lap to feel for her other pocket, her fingers creeping over the denim and the bump of the zip, trying to keep towards the waist. Laura’s body was pressed right up against Susie’s now, but she kept her face averted, trying not to get any more of Susie’s blood on her, although by now it had dried onto her face.

Laura felt some dampness on the inside of Susie’s thighs. It wasn’t the water, which was now a couple of inches deep. It was piss, Laura could tell that, with no body heat to dry it out. She had been smelling that acrid stench for a few hours now.

She groped around Susie’s lap for a lighter, not breathing, their faces too close, and then she felt the hard plastic in Susie’s pocket.

Laura contorted herself to reach into the pocket, and she had to pull Susie closer, so that Susie’s dead face rested against hers, cold lips against her cheek. Her fingers closed around it and she felt the lighter wheel. She extracted it slowly, anxious not to drop it. When it was safely out of the pocket and in her grasp, Laura shuffled quickly away.

Laura didn’t move for a few seconds. Was she getting out of breath quicker? Was the air getting thinner? There was a film of sweat on her forehead, despite the cold. She had to blink to keep it out of her eyes.

She poised with her finger on the lighter wheel, pointed upwards, clasped between her bound hands, and then she
flicked it, expected the flame. But all she got was a puny spark. Her hand was damp with perspiration and she worried about dropping it. She took a tighter grip and tried it again, the wheel rough on her skin, and then, finally, there was a small blue flame.