Dead Silent (43 page)

‘And how did you know Dobson had talked?’ Joe asked.

I turned to Joe. ‘Alan Lake,’ I said. ‘Chief Inspector Roach got Dobson to talk and let Lake know. Alan Lake made sure that Claude knew all about it, because he needed Claude to run again.’

Joe looked confused. ‘Why?’

‘Alan Lake and Roach are Claude’s landlords. They helped him because Claude knew Lake’s worst secret, and Roach was just cashing in. If Claude came out of hiding, they were both in trouble, so they made sure that Claude knew Dobson was talking, that his gamble had failed, to make him go on the run again.’

Joe looked surprised, his eyes wide.

‘Have I got it right so far, Claude?’ I asked.

He waved me away and took a sip of his whisky.

‘So you gambled on Dobson’s silence, the perfect red herring,’ Joe said, ‘because you took Dobson for some local small-fry who would be scared of the consequences.’ Joe stepped closer to Claude. ‘But Dobson has something you don’t have, and that’s balls, Claude, and a conscience. What he let you do has haunted him for over twenty years. He couldn’t stay quiet once he got the chance to talk.’

Claude started a sarcastic hand clap, but stopped when Joe looked down at him and said, ‘What were you hoping for? To come home and stake a claim in your inheritance, your father on his deathbed, happy at the return of his innocent son?’

Claude twitched slightly, and then he shrugged and took another pull out of the bottle. ‘How did you know about the inheritance?’ he said eventually.

I watched Claude, remembering what Lake had said.

‘If they can get you declared dead,’ Joe said, ‘your share would go to them.’ Joe smiled. ‘They sound as greedy as you.’

‘Father believed in the law,’ Claude said. ‘You would have to convict me to convince him of anything.’

Joe knelt down, so that he was next to me, his breaths hot in my ear.

‘It was a plant,’ Joe said, every word uttered slowly.

Claude looked confused for a moment. ‘What do you mean, a plant?’

‘The story about your father,’ Joe said. ‘He is ill, that’s all true, but he isn’t in dispute with your sisters. He contacted the police. He did it quietly, so no one would know. A word in the Chief Constable’s ear, and so it gets delegated to me. But your father knows you, Claude. He knows what a shallow little man you really are, how only money would bring you out of hiding. He knows that his death could make you rich, if you got a share of the pot, and so he agreed that the press could publish his illness, padded with the news that your sisters were trying to get you declared dead so that they could take your slice.’

Claude’s cheeks had gone pale behind the beard.

‘It was all bullshit,’ Joe said. ‘You’re already written out of your father’s will. He knows you killed Nancy, and you are an ulcer on the family name. Your sisters were dragged down by you—they were only ever
your
sisters, not people in their own right. Bad news, Claude, you were never going to get anything, though you didn’t know that.’ Joe straightened. ‘So this is it, Claude. You should have stuck with the cards you had, because the house didn’t even have a hand. You couldn’t resist though, and I knew that. Once a gambler, always a gambler. That’s how it works. You couldn’t resist one final turn of the cards, and you came up with twenty-two.’

‘You’re lying,’ Claude said.

Joe smiled. ‘Am I? Secrets had been kept for more than twenty years. Mike Dobson wasn’t going to say anything
about Nancy until you forced him. Nancy hadn’t told anyone else about the affair. We looked at her private life and we came up with virtually nothing. Mike Dobson was nothing to her. He was a stop-gap, a time-filler and, worse than that, Claude, Nancy was carrying your child.’

Claude took a deep breath and wiped his hand across his forehead. He looked down. ‘My child?’

Joe nodded. ‘You heard it right, Claude. Nancy was carrying your child, not his. All you had to do back then was work it out together. You were sleeping around. Nancy was sleeping around. You took the wrong choice. One whack across the back of her head and you ended her life, and ruined yours. And Dobson’s, and all those people who loved Nancy.’

A tear left Claude’s eye and tracked through the mud to rest on his beard.

‘Tell me this,’ Joe said. ‘Why couldn’t you resist? You could have kept on running. Why wait until money came into the picture?’

Claude looked at Joe, and then across to me. He wiped his eye and his shoulders slumped. ‘I am sick of running,’ he said quietly, and then tugged at his coat, threadbare around the elbows. ‘Sick of living like this. We can all have regrets.’

‘You’ve got self-pity, Claude,’ Joe said. ‘There is a difference. If you had regrets, you would say you were sorry.’

‘How did you know I was alive?’ Claude said.

‘We didn’t,’ Joe said. ‘It was a bluff. And you bought it.’

‘So where is Laura?’ I said.

Claude looked at me for a few seconds, and then looked down. ‘I said it before, that silence should be observed when under interrogation.’

‘Claude!
Tell me.
Save another life.’

Claude sighed. ‘Too late,’ he said, and took a swig from his whisky bottle.

I stepped forward and gripped his collar. ‘What do you mean, too late?’

Claude didn’t respond.

‘Tell me!’

Claude shook his head and then held out his hands. ‘Cuff me.’

I looked at Joe. I could taste bile, my stomach churning as my mind filled with images of Laura, of where she might be.

‘Claude, please, tell me where Laura is,’ I pleaded.

Claude lowered his hands, and then he smiled. ‘Maybe there is time for one more turn of the cards,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ Joe said.

‘I go to my car. You give me your radios, your car keys, and your phone,’ and he pointed at Joe. ‘You let me drive away. I might even go in your car. I’ll call Jack and tell him where he can find Laura and Susie.’ He waved his phone. ‘But I ring just the once. If the phone is engaged because you’re calling your station, you’ll miss the call.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Joe said. ‘We can’t just let you go again.’

‘Then it’s your gamble that you’ll find them in time,’ Claude said.

‘What do you mean
in time?’
I asked.

‘Like it sounds,’ Claude replied. ‘Think about a life,’ he said to Joe, ‘not the feather in your cap.’

‘It’s not about my ego,’ Joe said.

‘So let me go.’

Joe looked at me, and I looked back at Claude. Joe held out his phone to Claude.

‘You will ring us?’ Joe said.

‘My word is my bond,’ Claude said, and reached out with his hand to take the phone from Joe, but then Joe grabbed his wrist and threw him to the floor. He dragged him out of the shelter and pulled him towards the river.

‘Deal’s off,’ Joe said.

‘Joe!’ I shouted. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Sit there,’ Joe said to Claude, and then he turned back to me. ‘Dig.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Where Claude was sitting,’ Joe said. ‘The soil was too soft after days of sunshine. And his hands when he reached out for my phone were black with dirt, ingrained into the skin.’ Joe turned back towards Claude. ‘If he wanted to run, he’d have done so before we came here. He hasn’t run because he doesn’t know where to go. This was his old courting stop, this fishing shelter.’

Claude hung his head.

I went to my knees and began to scrabble at the soil. It was loose in my hands. There were tears streaming down my face, my lips in a grimace. ‘Don’t be in there, Laura,’ I said, and then I thrust my hands deeper into the dirt, throwing it back like a dog digging out a bone.

The shivering had stopped, but that didn’t register. The water had got higher, so that there were only a few inches between the water and the metal. Laura’s head was as far up as it would go, sucking at the little air that was left, the water cold, making her skin shrink tight against her skull. The rusty metal was rough against her nose. She couldn’t feel her hands any more.

She flung her hands towards Susie, for a hand to hold, but she couldn’t even feel her own hands any more. Laura pushed at Susie, but she was just a heavy bundle of wet clothes.

Laura couldn’t cry. This was it. The end. Bobby left behind.

For a moment, she forgot where she was. She was floating upwards, away from the water, dry and warm, a dream of
summer, soft licks of sunshine. But, when she relaxed, she was woken up with a cough as the dirty water seeped over her lips and into her throat.

She thrust her head upwards but it was met by metal, and she coughed some more, but this time she couldn’t spit out the water. And more came in, a gritty silt creeping over her lips and tickling her nostrils. She tried to inhale but it made her choke as she took in more water. Her chest was starting to hurt as she strained for a breath, as her body coughed and racked, but she couldn’t find the air—every deep breath just sucked in more water.

Her hands pushed against the metal, but it was futile. She tried to say goodbye. To her mother. Her father. To Bobby and to Jack. It wasn’t meant to end like this. She still had living to do, but it had been stolen from her.

Laura sank back into the water, knew that the space had filled. There was nothing else to fight. She had lost. The game had ended. She smiled, let the water roar in. Her chest bucked towards the metal. This was it. She saw the light. It was above her. A growing light that spread across the water.

My hands were black with mud and I was on my knees, scraping it back, throwing it out of the hole. I was two feet down, wet, dirty. I looked back at Claude. He was watching us dig, and I thought I detected a slight smile, as if he was waiting for us to realise we were in the wrong place.

Joe was next to me, digging too, his clothes filthy.

‘She’s not here,’ I cried out, as I clawed at the ground desperately.

‘Keep going,’ Joe yelled.

So I did, my hands starting to bleed, driving through the soil, water seeping through my fingers.

Then my hands hit something hard. I looked at Joe, who
had seen how my fingers had jarred, and he moved nearer to me. He burrowed quickly, uncovering a patch of metal, brown and old.

‘Under here,’ he said.

I closed my eyes for a moment. I hoped not. Water covered the surface and, even as Joe swept his hand over it, moving more soil, water quickly submerged it again.

‘Jack, dig!’ he shouted.

I started again, working across now, getting all the dirt from the metal, desperately hurling wet soil over my shoulder.

It took us a few minutes to expose it, a wide piece of iron, riveted down the middle, covered in water that bubbled around the edges.

‘Lift it,’ Joe said, and I threw myself to the floor, my fingers clawing at the edge of the metal. It was heavy and it was hard to get in a good position to lift it. We had to get out of the hole and lie on our stomachs, our fingers wedged under the edges. I could feel the water inside, freezing cold against my fingers. Joe counted down so that we could lift together.

It took a few seconds for it to budge, but then we managed it, both us roaring with effort as we strained, the metal sheet moving slowly upwards.

I saw her toes first, bobbing in the water as we disturbed the surface. I slid forward through a small gap to get in the hole, scrambling over the mud piled up at the side, the metal sheet above me, Joe holding it in place. My face hit the water and I almost gasped with the cold, but I wasn’t going to stop.

There wasn’t much room to move in there, but I found the ground and kept on pushing forward until I was squeezed in between Susie and Laura. I could hear Joe straining to hold on to the metal sheet, but I had found some inner strength, was determined to move it.

I scrambled to my knees and tried to take the weight of the metal sheet with my hands, my head out of the water now, and I shouted with exertion as I pushed upwards. My feet slipped on the floor but I wasn’t going to stop, and I heaved the metal higher until it was upright, jammed into the mud. I was in water up to my knees and I could feel Laura and Susie banging against my shins, both of them lifeless.

I pushed at the metal. It stayed vertical for a few seconds, wedged into the ground, and then it started to topple, moving slowly backwards towards the wall behind, landing with a loud bang that echoed around the stone walls.

I looked down and saw Laura’s face in the water next to Susie’s. Laura was bobbing, her wrists bound.

I reached down, grabbed at the rope between her wrists and pulled hard.

Laura’s arms came up, but she was heavy, and so I had to get my head under her wrists so that I could use my shoulders. I looked down and saw that her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open. I started to lift her, straining, shouting, until her head emerged from the water, her hair hanging down, her skin shiny and wet, but she was a dead weight, her clothes sodden, her skin cold. I reached down and wedged my arms under hers. It felt like our last embrace, her hands behind my neck, my face next to hers as I pulled her up, her cheeks icy. I was screaming her name, terrified, and then her body cleared the water and she was in my arms.

I turned her around and put her against the mud, face down, and I held her, to say goodbye, hot, angry tears streaming down my face, through the mud and the cold water.

Then Joe grabbed Laura and pulled her away from me, so that she slithered away from the hole and onto the mud outside the shelter.

I went to her, to make sure I was with her to the end, while Joe slid into the hole to pull at Susie.

I held Laura in my arms, tears streaming down my face, my mind filled with what this would do to Bobby. I saw that Joe had pulled Susie out, and he was looking at her head, laying her down. I saw the deep gash on her temple, and how rigid and pale she looked.

But Laura wasn’t like that. She was flaccid and cold, her lips blue, her skin pale.

Claude stood up and began to step backwards, away from the scene.

‘Stay there!’ Joe shouted.

‘Ignore him,’ I pleaded to Joe. ‘Help me, with Laura.’

Joe looked at me, and then down at Laura.