Dead Silent (19 page)

‘But what about the rubbish?’

‘I don’t mind it,’ he said, nonplussed.

‘This is a big house, Frankie. Do you live here on your own?’ I left the living room and walked down the hall, curious to know what else was in the house.

‘Where are you going?’ I heard him say, as he followed me.

‘You went looking for me,’ I said, ‘which tells me that you want me to write about you. If I do that, I need to see what sort of person you are, whether I can believe anything you want to tell me.’

I went through a door at the end of the hall and found myself in the kitchen. I stepped back and exhaled. The air was sharp with the crisp smell of mould, dishes piled up in the large porcelain sink, the food on them dried-on and old.
There were paper plates on the workspace, alongside a collection of crumbs and smeared butter.

‘Come out of there, please,’ he said.

I turned round to face him. ‘How can you live like this?’

‘This is my house,’ he said, his voice indignant.

I thought I saw some pain in his eyes, embarrassment, and I took the hint. ‘I’m sorry, Frankie,’ I said. ‘But if you’ve got information for my story, I need to see whether I can trust you.’

Frankie recoiled. ‘It’s not about me,’ he said, and he started to back away down the hall.

‘Hey, hey,’ I said, my hands outstretched, my voice filled with apology. ‘Just tell me why you were looking for me.’

He looked down and thought for a few seconds, and when he looked up, he said, ‘I want paying.’

‘For what?’

‘For what I know about Claude Gilbert.’

‘I know everything about Claude Gilbert,’ I said, watching him.

‘Not everything,’ he said.

‘I can’t give you a price if you don’t tell me,’ I said.

‘I want half.’

‘Half of what?’

‘Half of what you get.’

I frowned. ‘No can do, Frankie. It’s going to have to be good to get that, and the story is too old for there to be anything new.’

He turned away from me, and I could hear him muttering to himself as he thought about what to say. I said nothing. If people have a story they want to tell, patience is usually all that is needed to bring it out.

‘Come upstairs,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘I’ve got lots of things about Claude Gilbert up there.’

‘Why don’t you bring it down?’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘I can’t.’

I sighed. He had gone quiet again, staring at me, his brow furrowed, waiting for me to decide.

‘What’s your surname, Frankie?’

‘Cass,’ he said.

‘Okay, Frankie Cass,’ I said eventually. ‘Show me.’

I followed him out of the kitchen, and it seemed as if night had fallen when I walked behind him on the stairs, with what little light there was on the landing blotted out by his frame. The steps creaked as we walked, the carpet covering just the central section. Looking down, I noticed that the wooden edges looked scuffed, in need of more varnish. I could sense that the house had hardly changed in years. The banister felt pitted and the dust made my nose itch.

As we walked along the landing, heading for the next flight of stairs, I asked, ‘Isn’t the house too big for you on your own?’

‘She loved this house.’

‘Your mother?’

Frankie didn’t answer, and so I said, ‘It doesn’t mean you have to be a prisoner here.’

He stepped onto the next set of stairs. ‘I’m not a prisoner,’ he said, and started to climb.

I thought about going back, we were going higher in the house, to the top floor, but instead I did what I always did: I let the story take me. As I followed, his breaths grew shallower with the effort of climbing.

We ended up on a small landing, with three doors leading from it. Frankie went towards the furthest door and opened it. It creaked loudly, and the sunlight that streamed in through the windows made me blink and squint.

Frankie turned to me and tilted his head, a sign that I should go through. I walked past him slowly but once I reached the doorway I stopped and gasped.

‘Jesus Christ, Frankie.’

Laura brought the police car to a halt outside Mike Dobson’s house. It was at the head of a cul-de-sac of new houses, and she smiled to herself when she thought how the battenburg markings on the car would be making the curtains twitch all along the street.

‘What car does he drive?’ Thomas asked, trying to see past Laura and along the drive.

‘Mercedes,’ Laura replied. The only car on the drive was an Audi TT, dark blue, soft-top. ‘Maybe Mrs Dobson will be in,’ she said, as she stepped onto the pavement, squaring her hat as she headed onto the drive.

Laura heard the other car door slam, and then Thomas joined her at her shoulder.

‘What are you going to say?’ Thomas said.

‘You should never let preparation get in the way of spontaneity,’ she said.

‘You’re going to make it up as you go along,’ Thomas said, smiling.

‘Something like that,’ Laura said, and then she gave three short raps on the glass door of the porch. There was a solid wooden door just behind it, and Laura exchanged glances with Thomas as it opened. The woman in front of them was tall, with hair lightened by streaks and curled by tongs.
She wore make-up and had long black eyelashes and a hint of rouge to her cheeks. Her clothes looked too smart to be worn just around the house. Laura spent her spare time in jeans and T-shirts, but Mrs Dobson was turned out in a navy blue silk blouse with gold trim around the buttons and sleek matching trousers, the crease down the leg sharp and bold.

‘Hello, officers,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’

Although her tone was polite, Laura sensed the curtness, that she wanted the police off the drive. Laura got a sense of why Mr Dobson might be buying his affection elsewhere.

‘Is it Mrs Dobson?’ Laura asked. When the smile slipped, just for a fraction, a look of panic in the woman’s eyes, Laura said, ‘We need to speak with your husband.’

The politeness returned, but so did the frost.

‘He’s at work,’ she said.

‘Where’s that?’

‘Why do you want to speak to him?’

‘I can’t discuss that,’ Laura said.

Mrs Dobson paused for a moment, and then said, ‘I do think it would be better if I got him to call you.’

‘When?’

‘I’ll do it straight away, officer,’ she said.

Laura dug into her pocket and handed her one of her business cards. ‘If he could do it today, we’d be most grateful,’ Laura said.

Mrs Dobson looked down at the card, and then back at Laura. For a few seconds, her face remained passive. Then she smiled, although Laura could tell that it was forced.

‘Will do,’ she said, just a touch too jauntily, and then went to close the door.

As they went back down the drive, Thomas glanced back and then said, ‘Why would a man go with a heroin addict on a back street when someone like her waits for him at home?’

‘If a man is the straying type, having Miss World waiting for him won’t stop it,’ Laura said.

I turned around in Frankie’s room, amazed at the walls.

The room was small, maybe ten feet square, with a single bed against one wall, the covers dishevelled, and a dresser against another. There was a computer on a desk, wires coming out of the back in a tangled mess, but it was the walls that drew the eye. They were covered in pictures and clippings, some of the headlines I’d seen myself, brought over by Tony the day before, screaming out the search for Gilbert in bold, black letters. There were photographs pinned on top of them, hundreds of them, the scene the same in most—a view from Frankie’s room towards the Gilbert house.

I looked back at Frankie, who was looking at the pictures himself now, and I detected a greater focus, his eyes more alive now, a soft smile on his lips.

‘Do you save everything connected to the Gilbert case?’ I asked him.

When he turned to me and nodded, he looked proud, and for the first time I saw his teeth as he smiled, bright white against the flush of his cheeks.

‘I saw what happened,’ he said, his gaze earnest, waiting on my response.

‘So why didn’t you tell the police?’ I asked.

He shrank back at that, thrust his hands into the pockets of his jogging bottoms. ‘I couldn’t,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘Why not?’

He stepped away from me and looked at the wall. I could see his shoulders moving as he took some deep breaths.

‘Frankie?’

When he turned back, I saw that his excitement had been
replaced by something else. Wariness? No, it was something more than that. Fear. Frankie was scared.

‘Why are you frightened?’ I said.

He dropped his eyes to the floor before he spoke. ‘Mother told me to keep it quiet,’ he said. ‘She said it would just make trouble for me.’

‘But if it was the truth, why worry?’

I thought Frankie had tears in his eyes. ‘Mother said they would accuse me,’ he said.

‘Why would they accuse you?’ I said, but I knew as soon as he said it that he was right. I remembered Colin Stagg, the London man wrongly accused of a brutal murder based on not much more than being the local misfit, and here was Frankie, with a view of the Gilbert house and his walls turned into a montage of the Nancy Gilbert murder.

I stepped towards the walls and I looked through the stories. I was able to read some, Frankie breathing over my shoulder, his breath stale on my cheek. At first, they were the usual collection of theories, about Gilbert’s gambling, his whereabouts, but then I noticed something for the first time—that the stories were never about Mrs Gilbert, the murder victim. Claude was the story, the celebrity lawyer, the dashing murderer who disappeared into history. The poor woman buried under a collection of planks and half a ton of soil barely got a mention.

And then I looked closer at the photographs pinned to the wall. The clippings were about Claude, but the pictures were different. They were mainly of a woman, her raven hair tied onto her head, stepping out of a car. As I looked along the wall, there were more pictures of her. Cleaning the car. Bending down in the garden, tending to a flower bed. Carrying bags. Walking with a dog. Hanging out washing.

I recognised her. Nancy Gilbert, the forgotten victim.

I turned to Frankie, who was no longer focused on me, but was staring at the photographs, the intensity back in his gaze.

‘You liked her, didn’t you, Frankie?’ I said softly.

He looked at me and then shook his head, stepping away from the wall.

‘I thought you wanted to know about the murder,’ he said, his voice an angry rumble.

‘I do, but I want to know about you and her,’ and I tapped one of the photographs. ‘You were spying on her.’

‘I take a lot of photographs,’ he said, his voice getting defensive.

‘But mainly of Mrs Gilbert,’ I stressed. Then I tried to be more conciliatory. ‘C’mon, Frankie, don’t be shy, we’ve all liked someone, maybe just from afar. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘I’m not ashamed.’

‘You seem it.’

He put the heel of his palms to his forehead, as if he had been struck by a pain in his head, his eyes closed.

‘Are you going to pay me for the story or not?’ he said quietly, his eyes still shut.

‘Just tell me what you know.’

He turned quickly away and sat down on his bed with a slump. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have looked for you. It’s starting again.’

‘What’s starting again?’

‘This!’ he shouted, making me jump, and he waved his hand at the wall. ‘All of this. Claude Gilbert. Nancy Gilbert. I know what happened but no one wants to listen to me.’ He banged his chest with his hand.

I bent down to try and meet his gaze. ‘Tell me, Frankie, and I’ll print it.’

He looked down, his chin in his chest, and I could sense
him thinking it through, his need to tell the story weighed against what he saw as the risk. I left him alone for those moments, allowing him to come to his own decision, then I saw him nod to himself.

‘There were two of them,’ Frankie said.

That surprised me. ‘When?’

‘In the garden,’ he said. ‘I saw them.’

‘Who was in the garden?’

‘The murderers.’

‘Did you tell the police?’

He gave a noncommittal shrug.

‘You can’t remember telling them?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t have believed me.’

‘So why should I?’

‘Because it’s true.’

I watched him as he stared hard at me, his glare intense, his brow furrowed. I pulled my voice recorder out of my pocket and showed it to him. ‘If you tell me about it, I’ll record what you say. Is that all right?’

He nodded.

‘Can I sit down?’ I asked, and went to sit down on the end of the bed. There was something about him that troubled me, an edginess that made him unpredictable. He didn’t answer, but I settled down anyway.

‘Tell me what you saw,’ I said.

He looked at me. ‘In the garden. I saw them. There were two of them.’

‘Two people?’

Frankie nodded solemnly. I got the feeling I always had when I sensed some life was being breathed into a story. It was like a tingle in my cheeks, a flutter in my stomach; I was feeling it right now. I nodded at him to continue, my teeth just lightly chewing at my lip.

‘I like looking out of my window,’ he said. ‘I could see into their garden, Claude’s garden, and I can remember that night. I had my window open and I heard voices, but they were too far away. When I looked, I saw two people digging.’

‘Did you take any photographs?’ I asked, my words coming out in rapid fire, excited now.

Frankie shook his head. ‘It was too dark, and they wouldn’t have come out. But I saw them. Two people digging, right where they found her.’

Frankie’s gaze flicked towards the photographs again, and I realised then why he hadn’t told the police anything.

‘You’d been warned off, hadn’t you?’ I said. I stood up and crossed to the wall and tapped one of the photographs. ‘Nancy had complained about you, about your camera looking at her from your window. Is that right?’

Frankie looked down and nodded. I saw a tear appear on his eyelash.

‘I didn’t mean to upset her,’ he said, his voice breaking. ‘But when they found her, I knew they wouldn’t believe me, and so Mother told me to stay quiet, not to say anything.’