DEAD SILENT

But I had learnt one other thing: it pays to listen first before I turn people away, because just as many people don’t realise how good a story can be, who see a rough-cut diamond as cheap quartz.

I opened the door and stepped aside. ‘Come in.’

Susie nodded and then clomped past.

Bobby went quiet as Susie entered, suddenly shy. As I followed her in, I nodded towards the stairs. ‘Can you tell Mummy I’ve got a visitor?’ As Bobby trotted off on his errand, I gestured for Susie to sit down.

She put her coat onto the back of the sofa. ‘I like your house,’ she said, looking around. ‘I’ve always wanted a house like this. Cosy and dark.’

I smiled to show that I knew what she meant. The windows to the cottage were small, like jail views, the sunlight not penetrating far into the room, only enough to catch the dust-swirls and light up the table in the corner where I write up my stories.

‘We like it,’ I said, putting a pad of paper on my knee, a pen in my hand. ‘And if we’re talking home life, where do you live?’

‘Just a small flat in Blackley,’ she said. ‘Nothing special.’ She went to get another cigarette out of her packet, and I noticed a tremble to her fingers. I gave a small shake of my head, and so she put the cigarette away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude, but I’m a bit nervous.’

‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘Just tell me why you’re here.’

Susie smiled and looked embarrassed. The powder on her face creased and, as she showed her teeth, I saw a smudge of pink lipstick on the yellowed enamel. I’d guessed Susie’s age at over sixty when she’d first arrived, but she seemed younger now that she was out of the sunlight. She sat forward and put her bag on her knee. She looked like she was unsure how to start. I raised my eyebrows. Just say it, that was the hint.

‘It’s about Claude Gilbert,’ she blurted out.

I opened my mouth to say something, and then I stopped. I looked at her. She didn’t laugh or give any hint that it was a joke.

‘I’ve met Claude Gilbert,’ she said.

‘The Claude Gilbert?’ I asked, and I couldn’t stop the smile.

Susie nodded, and her hands tightened around the handles on her handbag. ‘You don’t look like you believe me.’

And I didn’t.

Blackley was famous for three things: cotton, football, and for being the home of Claude Gilbert, a barrister and part-time television pundit who murdered his pregnant wife and then disappeared. It was the way he did it that caught the public imagination: a blow to the head and then buried alive.

‘Claude Gilbert? I haven’t heard that name in a while,’ I said, and then I tried to let her down gently. ‘There are Claude Gilbert sightings all the time. And do you know what the tabloids do with them? They store them, that’s what, just waiting for the quiet news days, when a false sighting will fill a page, the same old speculation trotted out. Newspaper offices are full of stories like that, guaranteed headlines, most of it padding. Ex-girlfriends of Ian Huntley, old lodgers of Fred West, all just waiting for the newspaper rainy day.’

‘But this isn’t just a sighting,’ she said, frustration creeping into her voice. ‘This is a message from him.’

‘A message?’

She nodded.

That surprised me. From Claude Gilbert? I looked at her, saw the blush to her cheeks. I wasn’t sure if it was shame or the walk up the hill. The Claude Gilbert story attracted attention-seekers, those after the front-page spot, but Susie seemed different. Most people thought Claude was dead, but no one really knew for sure. If he was alive, he had to come out eventually or be caught. And anyway, perhaps the truth didn’t matter as much with the Claude Gilbert story. A good hoax sighting will still fill half a page somewhere, even if it was only in one of the weekly gossip magazines.

‘Wait there,’ I said, and shot off to get my voice recorder.

Chapter Two

Mike Dobson peered into the bathroom, the door slightly ajar. The shower had been running for a long time, and he could see Mary through the steam, her head hanging down under the jets, her shoulders slumped, the water running down her body until it streamed from the ends of her fingers.

He looked away quickly, not wanting to be caught, and leant back against the door frame. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He glanced towards the bed, too large, cold and empty. Was middle-age meant to be this lonely?

But he fought the feeling, tried not to think about it. He knew it would end like it always did: a drive to the back streets, always looking out for the police, then over in an instant, a grope in his back seat, the crinkle of the condom, then quick release; forty pounds gone and just the shameful churn in his stomach as a reminder.

His wife must have sensed his presence, because she shouted out: ‘Close the door.’

He clicked it shut and then returned to the large mirror in the bedroom, a mock-gothic oval. There was a spotlight over it and he stepped back to button his shirt, a white collar over red pinstripe, and put on his tie, not fond of what he saw in the glare. His cheeks were sagging into jowls and the lines around his eyes no longer disappeared when he stopped smiling. He flicked at his hair. It was creeping backwards, showing more forehead than a year ago, and some more colour was needed—the grey roots were showing through.

He looked towards the window as the water stopped and waited for the bathroom door to open. He could see the houses just outside his cul-de-sac, local authority housing, dark red brick and double-glazing, most of the gardens overgrown, with beaten-up cars parked outside and a satellite dish on every house. He had grown up on that estate, but it had been different back then. He wasn’t sure when it had changed. Maybe the eighties, when a generation had got left behind and had to watch as everyone else got richer.

Mike enjoyed the view normally. His house was different, a large newbuild, five bedrooms, the showhome of an estate built on the site of a former warehouse, but they’d had no children, and so four of the bedrooms were either empty or used for storage.

The bathroom door opened. Mary appeared, a large towel wrapped around her body, her face flushed, her hair flat and darkened by the water. She looked down as she walked over to the dresser and started to rummage through her drawers, looking for underwear.

‘Don’t watch me,’ she said, not looking at him.

‘I’m not watching.’

‘You do,’ she said, her voice flat, emotionless. ‘You do it all the time.’

He felt the burn of his cheeks. She had made him feel dirty again. ‘I’m going downstairs,’ he said.

She looked at the floor, her hands still, her body tense, and he could tell that she was waiting for him to leave the room.

‘I’ll make you breakfast,’ he said.

Mary shook her head. ‘I’ve set the table already. I’ll eat when you’ve gone.’

Mike took a deep breath and left the bedroom.

The house was quiet as he walked downstairs. There was a window open and the curtains fluttered as he walked into the living room. Pristine cream carpets, lilies in vases, pale-coloured potpourri in a white dish. The breakfast table was immaculate, as always, with a jug of juice in the centre of the table, cereal in plastic containers and napkins in silver rings; his dining room looked like a seaside guest house. He heard a noise outside and saw a group of smiling children going to school, their mothers exchanging small talk or pushing small toddlers in prams. His house seemed suddenly quiet and empty.

He checked his watch. His first appointment was getting closer. What would Mary do? Another empty day. It had been easier when they were younger, clinging to the hope of children, a family, but that had faded as each month brought bad news. As they’d got older, all her friends had had children and built lives of their own. But they had remained as they were and every day the house seemed to get a little quieter. How had his life got to this?

But he knew why. It seemed like it all came back to that day, when everything had changed for him.

Don’t think about it, he said to himself. He closed his eyes for a moment as the memories filtered back, the familiar kick to the stomach, the reminder. Then he thought he saw her, just for a second, like someone disappearing round a corner. A quick flick of her hair, and that laugh, muffled, her hand over her mouth, like she had been caught out, her delight in her eyes.

He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands. His fingers had bunched up into a fist, just as they always did when he thought of her.

He shook his head, angry with himself. He reached for his briefcase; it was by the front door, as always, next to the samples of PVC guttering. Another day of persuasion ahead of him, of sales patter and tricks.

Mike faltered when he saw someone approach his front door. He felt that rush of blood, part fear, part relief, and he thought he heard a giggle, and turned to see the flick of brunette hair disappear just out of sight. He peered through the glass pane and saw a blue shirt. His heartbeat slowed down. Unexpected visitors always made him nervous, never sure if the moment he dreaded had just arrived: the heavy knock of the police, the cold metal of the cuffs around his wrists.

It wasn’t that. It was just a parcel, some ornament for the house Mary had ordered. He smiled his thanks and took the parcel, his hand trembling, his sweat leaving fingermarks on the cardboard.

He checked his watch. It was time to go.

Chapter Three

I bolted up the stairs to fetch my voice recorder. I had started to write a novel, a modern-day tale about life and love’s lost chances, but I had got only as far as the first two chapters before I realised that I didn’t know what to write next. The voice recorder was next to my bed for the inspiration that would come in the middle of the night, but it had been elusive so far.

Laura stopped drying her hair when I went in. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

‘Someone with a story,’ I said.

‘We’ve all got a story.’

‘This one’s a little different,’ I replied.

Laura gave me a suspicious look, and then turned the hairdryer back on. I got the impression that she didn’t want to hear any more.

I picked up the voice recorder and went back downstairs. Susie was standing by the oak sideboard underneath one of the windows, looking at our family photographs.

‘Your boy is cute,’ she said.

I smiled. ‘He gets his good looks from his mother,’ I replied, skirting the issue. I waved the voice recorder. ‘I’m ready for your story.’

Susie sat down again, her bag going on the seat next to her. ‘Where do you want me to start?’

‘The beginning,’ I said. ‘Tell me how you know Claude Gilbert.’

Susie blushed slightly. ‘I’m an ex-girlfriend of his.’

That surprised me. I knew some of the background to Claude Gilbert’s story, most people did. He was local legal aristocracy, with a judge for a father and two lawyers for sisters. He had started to make forays into television, invited onto discussion shows back when there were actual discussions—so different to the American imitations of today, where people with no morals fight about morality. But it was his wife’s death and his disappearance that turned him into headline news: the missing top lawyer, the old school cad, dashing good looks and a touch of cut glass about his accent. Susie struck me as too different to Gilbert, too earthy somehow.

‘Were you his girlfriend before or after his wedding?’ I said.

Susie looked away. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

That meant after, I thought to myself. And I’d heard about Gilbert, read the rumours, the tabloid gossip.

‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘You were a law clerk.’

‘How did you know?’ she asked, gazing back at me in surprise.

‘An educated guess,’ I said, and gave her a rueful smile. ‘What legal experience did you have?’

‘Not much. I used to be one of the typists.’

‘And don’t tell me: you had the best legs.’

‘No, that’s not fair, I worked hard,’ Susie replied, offended.

‘I’ve hung around enough Crown Courts to know how it works,’ I said. ‘The local law firms employ glamorous young women to carry the file and bill by the hour, just to pat the hands of criminals and soften the blows with a sweet smile.’

‘You make it sound dirty.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s good marketing, that’s all, and don’t knock it. Do you think your social life would have been what it was if you had stayed in the typing pool? Would you have been wined and dined by the barristers, invited to the chambers parties or taken to the best wine bars, just as a small thank you for the work?’

‘It was more than marketing,’ she said, blushing. ‘We got on, Claude and me.’

‘Or maybe he was just touting for work, or flirting, or maybe even a mix of the two?’

Susie looked down, deflated. ‘You’re not interested, I can tell.’

‘Oh, I’m interested all right,’ I said, smiling. ‘You say you’ve got a message from Claude Gilbert. Well, that’s one out of the blue and so if you want me to write a story about it, I have to prove that it was from him, and not from some chancer hoping for a quick pound. The first question people will ask is why the message comes through you, and so how well you knew him is part of the story. Someone who once shared drunken fumbles at chambers parties is not enough. Were you ever a couple, a proper couple, seen out together, things like that?’

Susie shook her head slowly, and when she looked back up again, she seemed embarrassed. ‘You guessed right, it was when he was married. Before, you know, Nancy was found. We saw each other when we could, but it was hard. He was a busy man.’

‘And a married one,’ I said.

Susie reached into her bag. ‘Here,’ she said, and thrust an old photograph towards me. ‘That’s me with Claude.’

The photograph was faded, and a white line ran across one corner where it had been folded over, but it was easy to recognise Susie. The woman in front of me was just a worn-down version of the one in the picture, now with redness to her eyes and the blush of broken veins in her cheeks. The photograph had been taken in a nightclub or wine bar, to judge by the purple neon strips at the top of the picture. The man next to her was unmistakably Claude Gilbert, the handsome face that had adorned a thousand front pages, the eighties-styled thick locks that flowed in dark waves from his parting to his collar. His arm was around Susie’s shoulders, his jacket pulled to one side to reveal the bright red braces over the brilliant white shirt. He leered towards the camera, a cigarette wedged into his grin.

‘Okay, so you met him once,’ I said. ‘He was on television. How do I know that this isn’t just a shot you took when you were out one night, a souvenir of meeting a star?’

‘You don’t,’ Susie replied. ‘All you can do is trust me. I know where Claude Gilbert is, and he wants to come home.’

Wants to come home. My mind saw the front pages for a moment, the bold print under the red banner of whichever national wrote the biggest cheque. I exhaled and tapped the photograph on my knee.

‘So, are you interested?’ she asked.

I flashed my best smile. ‘Of course I’m interested,’ I said. ‘It’s the story of the year, if it’s true.’

Susie looked happier with that, and she settled back in the sofa.

‘But I need to know more,’ I said. ‘Where has he been, and where is he now?’

‘London.’

‘That’s not very specific. How long have you been in contact with him?’

‘A few months,’ Susie said. ‘I saw him, purely by chance, and since then, we’ve sort of rekindled things, and I’ve persuaded him to come forward.’

I watched her, tried to detect whether I was being conned. I let the silence hang, but there was no response from Susie. Liars fill the gaps to persuade the listener of the truth. Susie sat there and looked at me, waiting for my next question.

‘But why does he want to use me to come forward?’ I asked.

‘Because if he turns up at a police station, they’ll lock him up.’

‘They still will,’ I said. ‘The paper won’t shield him.’

‘Claude told me that any jury will have convicted him before he stands trial, because there have been twenty years of lies told about his case. He wants to give his version first, to make people wonder about his guilt. It will go in the paper on the day he surrenders himself, that’s the deal. If not, he won’t come forward.’

I thought about that and saw how it made sense. If he could have his trial with the doubt already there, he might have a chance. But I wasn’t interested in the trial. I wanted the story before his arrest. Someone else could cover the court case.

‘So tell me your story then,’ I prompted.

Susie nodded and straightened her skirt. ‘I saw him in London, like I said. I had been to see an old friend. She lives in Brighton, so we meet up in London. We went to a show, the usual stuff. I went down on the bus and I was waiting to come home, just hanging around Victoria coach station, having a smoke, when I saw him.’

‘How could you be sure it was Claude Gilbert?’ I said. ‘He’s been on the run for more than twenty years, and there are a lot of people in London. It takes just one to recognise him and his life is over.’

‘One did,’ she said. ‘Me. But no one else would have recognised him, or at least only someone who really knew him. It was just the way he walked, sort of upright, as if he thought the whole street should step to one side.’ Susie must have seen the doubt in my eyes. ‘And it wasn’t just his walk,’ she added quickly.

‘What else?’

‘Oh, it was just everything. I knew Claude Gilbert well, and I knew it was him.’ Susie thought for a moment. ‘He does look a lot different though. He’s fat now, has a bushy beard, all grey, with big glasses, and his hair is long and wild, pulled into a ponytail.’

‘Not quite the dashing gent he used to be?’

Susie laughed. ‘No, not really, but I knew it was him straight away. I shouted “Gilly”, because that’s what I used to call him. No one else called him Gilly, and when I shouted it, he looked straight at me, recognised me straight off. He looked shocked, even scared, and just as I started walking towards him, he marched off really quickly.’

‘Did you think about calling the police?’ I said.

Susie looked less comfortable and shifted around on the sofa. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘So they could catch him. He’s a murderer on the run.’

Susie flashed me a thin smile. ‘He didn’t do it,’ she said quietly. ‘The murder, I mean.’

‘Because he told you? He’s had more than twenty years to get his story straight.’

‘Because I know him, that’s all,’ she said. ‘I know what people thought of him—that he was a show-off—but in private he was a gentle man, tender, not the person he was in public. He couldn’t have murdered his wife.’

‘But he lied to her by sleeping with you,’ I said, before I could stop myself.

‘Being an old flirt doesn’t make him a murderer,’ she said tersely, her face flushing quickly. ‘It wasn’t like that anyway.’

‘What was it like?’

She sighed, and I saw regret in her eyes.

‘He dazzled me, I suppose,’ she said. ‘He took me to places I couldn’t afford, wouldn’t think about going to. I was flattered. People like Claude Gilbert didn’t go out with people like me. He went to public school and spoke properly. I was just a silly girl from Blackley who went to the local comp and who wanted to be a typist.’

‘But he was married.’

‘Yes, he was,’ she replied, her voice stronger now, ‘and so, yes, he lied to his wife. He told me he loved me, and I suppose that was a lie too, back then. But that doesn’t make him a killer.’

‘Was it going on when his wife was killed?’

Susie shook her head. ‘It had ended a few months before.’

‘And were you a couple for long?’

‘Just a few weeks.’

‘Were there others for Claude?’

Susie looked down. ‘Yes, a few. I didn’t know back then, but he’s told me about them now.’ She took a deep breath and looked back up again. ‘This is why I trust him,’ she said. ‘He’s being honest now, because he wants to get his life back.’

I thought about what she said, how she was so certain. I heard Laura’s hairdryer switch off upstairs, Bobby’s chatter filling the gap.

I looked back at Susie. ‘There’s a flaw to your thinking.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if he didn’t do it, why did he run?’ I said. ‘Some people think he was killed as well, buried somewhere and they just haven’t found the body. That’s the only scenario that doesn’t make him a killer. But if he is alive, then he ran, and he made sure he wasn’t found again. That, in most people’s eyes, makes him guilty.’

‘I can only tell you what I know, Mr Garrett,’ Susie said. ‘He is alive, I have met him, and he wants to come home.’

I paused to pull at my lip, just a way of hiding my excitement. But I knew not to get excited. This could be a con-trick, or a delusion.

‘I’m not asking you anything the papers won’t ask,’ I said. ‘Claude Gilbert gets more sightings than Bigfoot, but he still hasn’t been caught. Whoever runs the exclusive will have their rival papers mocking the story.’

‘If Claude comes forward, there’ll be no mocking,’ Susie said.

I couldn’t disagree with that.

‘So, until I turned up today, what do you think had happened to him?’ Susie asked.

I thought back through the stories I’d read, the debunked sightings, the endless speculation. ‘The smart money says that he is living in some exotic country, protected by powerful friends, but people always prefer the exciting versions. That’s why we get rumours about shadowy men on grassy knolls, or secret agents killing princesses in Parisian road tunnels. He hit his pregnant wife and buried her in the garden, alive. He was a criminal lawyer, and so he knew what he faced if he was caught. He emptied his bank account and he ran.’

‘But what if I’m telling the truth, that he didn’t kill Nancy?’

I leant forward. ‘To be honest with you, it doesn’t make a damn jot of difference.’ When she looked surprised, I added, ‘Whatever Claude says, an editor will shape it into ifs and maybes, just to protect the paper, because that’s the editor’s job. Mine will simply be to write the story.’

‘So you will write the story?’ she asked, her eyes brightening for a moment.

I felt the smile creep onto my face, couldn’t stop it. ‘Provided that your story with Claude Gilbert comes out too,’ I said. ‘Full disclosure. Everything about your relationship.’

‘But I thought it would all be about Claude,’ she said, suddenly wary. ‘Everyone will hate me. I was sleeping with a murdered woman’s husband.’

‘Full story or no story,’ I replied. ‘You’ve told me that Claude Gilbert wants to come out of hiding. But what if he chokes and disappears, or if it turns out that I’m being conned, that this person isn’t Claude Gilbert? You’re my back-up story, and I’m not going into this without one.’

Susie put her bag back onto her knees and gripped the handles as she thought about it, then she slowly nodded her agreement.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘We’ll talk in more detail now.’

‘And then what?’

‘By the sound of it, we do whatever Claude wants us to do.’

Susie was about to say something when she looked towards the stairs. As I looked around, I saw that Laura had come into the room. Bobby stood behind her, uncertain.

Susie gave Laura a nervous smile. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for coming so early.’

Laura smiled back. ‘It’s okay. Are you here with a story?’

Susie leant forward and was about to say something when she caught my small shake of the head, a warning not to say anything. She looked troubled for a moment, but then she sat back and remained silent.