Dead Silent (5 page)

As I got closer, I heard mumbles of conversation, and then laughter, and as the allotment came into view I saw three men on deckchairs, a bottle of single malt passing between them.

I realised I had been spotted, because the smiles disappeared and the bottle was put on the floor.

‘I’m looking for Bill Hunter,’ I said.

The three men looked at each other, and then one asked, ‘Who are you?’ He was a tall man, with a beaky nose and a shiny scalp, grey hair cropped short around the ears.

‘My name is Jack Garrett, and I’m a reporter.’

He looked at me, and his eyes narrowed. I thought that I was suddenly unwelcome, but then he asked, ‘Bob Garrett’s lad?’

‘Yes,’ I said, my voice quieter now, caught by surprise.

He turned to his companions and winked. ‘I’ll speak to you boys later,’ he said, prompting them to struggle to their feet and make their way towards the rickety mesh gate. I could smell the whisky as they went past. Once they’d gone, he turned to me and said, ‘I’m Bill Hunter.’ He held out his hand to shake.

His grip was strong and he kept hold of my hand as he said, ‘I remember your father,’ his voice softer than before, some sadness in his eyes. ‘He was a good copper, and he shouldn’t have died like that.’

‘Did you work with him?’ I asked.

‘Not much,’ he said, ‘but I remember when he was killed. How many years ago is it now? Two?’

‘Three,’ I replied.

He shook his head. ‘Time goes too quickly, but I remember it. When I first started out, people didn’t carry guns like they do now. They did in the cities, I suppose, but they never brought their trouble this way.’

‘They came this way eventually though,’ I said, taking a deep breath, the memory bringing a tremble to my voice.

Hunter nodded to himself and patted me on the arm. ‘I’m glad I’m out of it. Everything is so different now, much more dangerous.’ He leant forward and whispered, ‘Ask any of the new ones, and they all say that the job isn’t how they thought it would be, that it’s all about chasing targets, ticking boxes. And when they get a new problem?’ Hunter chuckled. ‘They just invent a new target. But those who are in can’t get out. They’ve got kids and mortgages.’ He gestured towards one
of the deckchairs. ‘Sorry. You didn’t come here to listen to my moans. Sit down.’

I sank into the low chair as Hunter dried one of the cups with an old cloth. I reached up to collect the whisky he had poured for me, the aroma rich and pungent as it wafted out of the enamel cup.

‘So why do you want to know about Claude Gilbert?’ he asked.

I was surprised. ‘How did you guess?’

‘Jack, lad, I’ve been retired for fifteen years now. I’m almost seventy. All the criminals I’ve locked up are either dead, retired, or have given birth to the next generation. The only reason reporters ever look me up is Claude Gilbert.’ He winked at me. ‘I don’t talk to many, but seeing as though it’s you, I’ll tell you what you want to know.’

Laura McGanity looked around at the other officers in the room: they were mostly young, the ambitious ones marked out by the earnest way they sifted through their paperwork, the rest happy just to chat as they started their shift. They were in a room lined by glass walls and filled with computer screens, part of the shiny new police station on the edge of town. The windows looked out over the car park, and the glass walls gave her a view into a large atrium, where the officers ate their canteen food and gossiped.

Some of the officers had decided what they were doing that day, advice forms from the Crown Prosecution Service clutched in their hands, directing the collection of evidence to make the cases fit for court. The younger ones bustled around, anxious to get out of the station, the warm weather beckoning them outside, happy to take whatever the radio threw up that day. The older ones went through the motions, stoked up on coffee and walking round the station holding pieces of paper, their eyes already on the clock.

Laura sighed. She had gotten used to being a detective at the bottom of the pile, following the direction of experienced officers. Now she was the director, a room of young and eager faces looking to her for advice, and it felt suddenly hard. She had no stripes yet, but everyone knew why she
had chosen the starched white shirts and shiny black trousers: brushing up on her community skills was the quickest route to sergeant. In return, Laura was expected to be a mentor, take on some responsibility, but a few of the old guard were just waiting for her to go wrong, happy to see another prospect fail, to justify their own lack of progress.

Her sergeant came in, a woman in her thirties with dark hair cut close to her head and a square jaw, lines starting to etch themselves around her lips from sucking on too many cigarettes. There was a young officer behind her, his cheeks fresh and flushed, eyes flitting nervously around the room. ‘Fresh meat,’ someone whispered, and Laura heard a chuckle.

The sergeant clapped her hands and barked out, ‘Can I just have everyone’s attention?’

The chatter died down.

‘Can we all keep an eye out for the Crawler?’ she shouted. ‘Two more reports last night. They might be false, it seems like any noise gets called in as a peeping Tom, but just be vigilant. He might go on to attack someone, so don’t ignore anyone suspicious. Talk to them. Get their name.’

Everyone mumbled to themselves as they went back to their work, and the sergeant made her way over to Laura.

‘I want you to do me a favour,’ the sergeant said, and she nodded to the young nervous officer in the corner of the room, his shirt hanging off his skinny shoulders. ‘Can you take Thomas with you today? It’s his first day after training school. Do the town centre circuit with him, introduce him to the store detectives, just have him feeling like a cop.’

‘No problem,’ Laura replied, knowing exactly why she had been chosen. Thomas looked young and scared. The older ones would fill him with cynicism, and the crewcut brigade would just teach him bad habits.

Laura remembered her own time as a young constable,
how it was often harder for the women, the men attempting to shield her from the fights, expecting her to spend the day patting old ladies’ hands. But Laura liked the rucks, the excitement, the chases. It was why she joined, for the dirt, a different life to the one she’d had as a child in Pinner.

‘Thomas?’ said Laura, and when he looked up, Laura beckoned him over.

He tried to make himself seem big, his thumbs hooked into his belt, but Laura detected a slight quiver to his voice as he said hello.

‘I’ve got a trip into town, and I need some help. I thought you could come with me.’

Thomas smiled and nodded. ‘Good. Thanks.’

As they made their way out of the station, threading their way through the atrium that was busy with detectives, all serious and intense, Laura wondered whether making sergeant would be worth missing out on all the fun of CID. What would she do if she never got back in there, if she had to carry on wearing the uniform?

That was something she didn’t want to think about.

‘So, what do you want to know about Claude Gilbert?’ Bill Hunter asked.

I took a sip of the whisky and coughed as it went down. Beer was more my thing, wine when I was with Laura, but I didn’t want to be rude.

‘The answers to the two big questions,’ I said. ‘Did he do it, and where did he go?’

Hunter scowled. ‘Of course he did it.’

‘How can you be sure? If I remember it right, not everyone is convinced.’

‘Usually just people looking for attention,’ Hunter said. He took a sip from his cup. I could smell the whisky on his breath as he started to talk. ‘I’ll tell you something about Claude Gilbert: he was nothing but a Daddy’s boy made good.’

‘He was a barrister,’ I replied. ‘Not many of them are working-class heroes.’

‘Yeah, but a lot are decent people too,’ he snapped back. ‘They just had a better start in life than I did. But I’ve no chip on my shoulder. If people treat me well, I have no complaints, but Gilbert wasn’t like that. He was arrogant, even though he didn’t deserve to be. It wasn’t talent that put him in that big old house. It was Daddy, His Honour Judge Gilbert. He gave him what he wanted, and maybe a bit more, but I don’t
think Claude saw it like that. I’ve been cross-examined by Claude, and he spoke to me like I ought to be cleaning his shoes or something. But let me tell you something: he was a loser, right up until the day he disappeared. He gambled, he played around, and most times he either lost or got caught.’

‘But why does that make him a murderer?’

‘Because it makes him desperate,’ Hunter said. ‘He should have been a better person, with his background. Educated at Stonyhurst, and part of some head-boy clique, a group of toffs who played at gangs, just an excuse to bully the new boys. They had all this blood brother nonsense, secret codes, and when they grew up, they carried it on. Gambling parties, and some sex parties, so it was whispered to me, probably drugs too—though the sort of people who were invited aren’t the sort who talk to people like me. But Gilbert was lazy, and not that gifted. He was the one who failed in the clique, ended up at one of the universities that he thought was beneath him, but his father bailed him out eventually, got him a place in chambers. Then Claude learnt how to work the system: plead guilty at the last moment, bill the state for preparing the trial, and he made a lot of money out of being average.’

‘He wasn’t alone in that,’ I said. ‘My father used to talk about how much the lawyers got paid compared to him, and he was the one made to look guilty when he got in the witness box.’

Hunter leant over to pour me some more whisky, but I put my hand over the cup. I had to drive away from there.

‘Your father was right to be cynical,’ Hunter said. ‘I was one of the good guys and I didn’t get too much.’

‘If it helps,’ I said, ‘those days are gone now. Even barristers are feeling the pinch.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Hunter replied. ‘No more sports cars, no second homes in France?’ He scoffed. ‘I’ll hold back the tears. And anyway, even all the money Gilbert had wasn’t good enough for him.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Because he tried to get more by throwing it away in casinos,’ Hunter said. ‘His old school friends had gone to work in the City. This was the eighties, and they were making big money. Claude was stuck on the northern circuit, but he couldn’t say no to the high life when it was there to be had. Claude was richer than most of us, but he was the pauper in his crowd. Even when he started doing television, you know, one of those awful debate programmes, it didn’t change things. It just took him away from home more often, gave him another chat-up line, and he had some big debts by the time he disappeared.’

‘Didn’t everyone live the high life back then?’ I asked. ‘It was the boom before the bust.’

Hunter smiled ruefully. ‘My life didn’t change much. The only change I saw around here was the mills closing down. And maybe that’s what sucked him in: that all around him he saw people losing their jobs, but he had the house and the sports car, and so he thought he was still the high-roller, the big man. There were rumours around court that Claude had talked about giving up the law to become a professional gambler, that he thought he had the knack of the skill games, had even tried counting cards at the blackjack tables, but he didn’t have the brain for it and started to lose money.’

‘Maybe he owed money to the wrong people,’ I said. ‘Lawyers find out things that they shouldn’t know, and gambling debts made him liable to be blackmailed. Maybe he had to pass on information that he was supposed to keep secret.’

‘What, are you saying that Nancy was killed by gangsters?’ Hunter said.

‘Maybe him too,’ I suggested.

Hunter shook his head. ‘I’ve thought about that, but why get rid of the bodies separately? Why be so cruel to Nancy?’

‘If Nancy was buried alive, Gilbert knew he was on a timer,’ I said. ‘Perhaps he had to say what he knew before she died.’

‘I’ve heard that theory, but I don’t believe it,’ Hunter said. ‘They found his car at Newhaven, abandoned. That’s the other end of the country. What gangster would dump the car so far away, as some kind of red herring?’

‘So why do you think the car was there?’ I asked.

‘Because he jumped on a ferry,’ he replied.

I smiled. ‘Maybe that’s why a gangster would dump the car all the way down there, to make you think that.’

‘That would be good in a detective novel, but real criminals don’t work like that,’ Hunter said. ‘Why go all the way down there? Why not the airport?’ He shook his head. ‘Gangsters wouldn’t set up a false trail. They would get rid of the body and leave no trail.’

‘So what about all the sightings?’ I said. ‘Do you think any might be true?’

Hunter leant in. ‘They’ve either been unconfirmed or proved to be false. Any tall, suave stranger in a foreign land was thought to be Claude Gilbert. There was a sighting a couple of years ago, some hobo in New Zealand living out of his car. Someone hawked a photograph around the papers and the media went crazy. But all the locals knew him; he had been there all his life. And there was a man in Goa. A book was even written about him, naming him as Gilbert, but people from England knew him. He was just some busker from Birmingham who had moved out to Goa to get spiritual.’

‘I was told that you never really let go of the case,’ I said.

He looked sheepish for a moment. ‘He’s guilty of a cruel murder, but he was able to just walk away from it,’ he said. ‘I suppose it got to me.’

‘So what do you think happened to him?’ I asked.

Hunter smiled, and I could tell that he was enjoying the audience, that his theory was one he had gone over in his head countless times.

‘I don’t know for sure,’ he said. ‘He got on the ferry, but he had a head start on us by a few days, and life was different then. You paid by cash and so were harder to track. You didn’t have to give up an email address or do it on a computer. All he would have needed was his passport, or any passport, and he would be in Europe straight away. What happened after that is something we’ll never know. Perhaps he had friends who helped him out.’