Dead Silent (13 page)

Then she thought of Bobby and ran for the stairs.

I walked quickly towards the camera lens, angry at the intrusion. A figure stepped out from behind the bus shelter, the camera pointed downwards.

‘Sorry, Jack,’ a voice said, and when I got closer, I saw that it was Dave, one of the staff reporters at the
Star
, a public schoolboy turned mockney, his take on East End fashion a flat cap and tight jeans.

‘Did Harry send you?’ I asked, although I knew the answer even before he shrugged and looked sheepish. ‘How did you find me?’

‘Harry thought you were being too cloak and dagger, and so he had me watching you when he met you. As soon as you went back on the tube, I followed.’

I shook my head. His accent had got worse, all mangled vowels. ‘But I was looking around,’ I said. ‘I would have recognised you.’

Dave reached into the canvas bag hanging from his shoulder and pulled out a grey scarf. ‘I just kept my head down with this around my face,’ he said. ‘I was on the next carriage, watching you. You’ve been out of the game too long, Jack, and you’re getting sloppy.’ He put the scarf away and patted me on the shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Jack. I hope I haven’t blown your story.’

‘Doesn’t Harry trust me?’ I frowned.

Dave slumped slightly. ‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘We’re struggling, Jack, all the papers are, and Harry was worried that someone else would hear of the story, whatever it is, and offer more. We wanted something in the bag so we could go first. Harry knows you’re good for your word, but everyone has their price, and what if you got an offer you couldn’t refuse?’

‘I know I’m a journo, but I’ve got honour too,’ I said, angrily. ‘I gave Harry first refusal. He’s still got it, but he’s pushing it.’

Dave said nothing. He was just doing his job.

I blew out, frustrated. ‘C’mon,’ I said. ‘You’ve spoiled my story. The least you could do is buy me a drink.’

As I set off back towards the hotel, Dave ambled alongside, his legs gangly and awkward. I wasn’t in the mood for talking just yet, and we walked past the hotel and on towards Victoria, where the traffic fumes assaulted my nostrils and a hundred different languages made no sense around me.

‘Where are we going?’ Dave asked.

‘To feel the city,’ I said.

I had realised when I first moved to the capital that the way to appreciate the city is not to go with its rhythms, but to stop and watch it rush by. The underground used to excite me, the echo of the trains as they rumbled out of the tunnels, and then the hum as they set off. They reminded me of my success, of how journalism had taken me a long way from home, but once that wore off, I took to walking, so that I could
feel
the city, not simply rush underneath it.

‘Is this another northern way, Jack?’ he said. ‘No public transport?’

‘I’m building up a thirst.’

The route took us towards Westminster, and most of it
wasn’t pretty, just lines of office blocks, the drabness broken only by the occasional theatre or church. If it wasn’t for the stream of red buses, I could have been pretty much anywhere.

‘So, cards on the table,’ Dave said, ‘why are you here?’

I realised then that his brief had been just to follow me and get pictures. Harry hadn’t trusted Dave to know much about the story.

‘Just following a tip,’ I said.

He pulled a face and then asked, ‘How is it up north?’

We had reached Parliament Square and, as we threaded through the tourists outside the splendour of Westminster Abbey, the London Eye turning slowly behind the Parliament silhouette, I thought of Laura, alone in our Lancashire cottage. I had a sudden yearning to be there, away from all this noise and hostility. I wanted to hear nothing but the crackle of branches outside our window and the rustle of the sheets as Laura nestled into the crook of my arm. I wanted to smell her perfume, feel her hair wind around my fingers.

‘It’s good,’ I said.

‘You’re not being very talkative.’

‘You’re here to find out what I know,’ I said. ‘That makes me go quiet.’

Dave sighed at that and kept on walking.

We made small talk as we headed to the South Bank, and for a while we caught the remnants of street theatre, young African men in ragged T-shirts scratching a living by doing football tricks, or mime artists standing motionless in Tudor costumes. We stopped for a few minutes to watch them and take in the view, the murky Thames as the backdrop.

‘I miss this sometimes,’ I said.

Dave looked at me, surprised. ‘You said you liked it in the North.’

‘I do, but it’s so familiar,’ I said. ‘Maybe I never stopped
being the northern boy, dazzled by the bright lights. Should I have asked Laura to leave all this behind? She’s from Pinner, and I know that’s got a small-town feel, but it’s nothing like where I’m from.’

‘Laura?’

‘I met her down here, a detective, and she moved to Lancashire with me.’

‘She must be special,’ Dave said.

‘She is,’ I said.

‘You weren’t like this in the old days,’ Dave said. ‘You’ve gone soft.’

I smiled. ‘Maybe.’ I pointed towards a footbridge that would take us over the river. ‘Let’s go for that drink.’

We sauntered towards Molly Moggs, a small bar on Charing Cross Road, intimate and quaint. Although I didn’t fit into its normal clientele—it was on the edge of the Soho gay scene—it was quiet and good for a drink. Inside the pub, the inevitable drag act hadn’t got going yet; only a skin-and-bones old man in short skirt and lipstick gave a hint of how the pub would finish the night.

I lifted my phone out of my pocket to let Dave know that I was making a call and then pointed him towards the bar. When Laura answered, I thought she sounded distracted.

I told her that my story wasn’t panning out like I had hoped and tried to keep the rest of the bar out of our conversation, but Laura didn’t seem talkative.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It’s good to hear your voice though.’

‘You just don’t seem like you’re talking much.’

‘No, Jack, everything’s fine. I’m just tired, that’s all.’

We exchanged our goodbyes, and a promise that we would have some time together the next day, and then the line went dead.

The city seemed lonely at that point. People rushed past the pub windows, and in the bar young men in suits smooched or gossiped. An old man with wild hair and a long beard came in, and squeezed past me as he made his way to the bar.

Dave headed back with the drinks. ‘Do you fancy hitting a club afterwards?’ he asked, his eyes alive with the thought of a boozy late night.

I thought again of Laura alone in our cottage, just the television for company, the papers for her sergeant’s exam spread across the table.

I shook my head. ‘I need to get back to the hotel,’ I said. ‘I’m tired.’

Dave looked disappointed. ‘You really have changed, Jack,’ he said.

I raised my glass. ‘I know, and I’m happy.’

Laura clicked off the phone. She was convinced she had heard something upstairs. She had checked that the windows were closed and so it must be Bobby.

The noise became louder, something heavy moving along the floor.

She ran upstairs, two steps at a time, and she heard a bang.

‘Bobby!’ she shouted as she rushed into his room, clicking on the light. He was sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes against the light. Then it sounded like someone was in her room, the rumble of feet loud.

Laura bolted towards her room and threw open her bedroom door. Her window was open, the curtains blowing. She had checked it was closed not long before.

She went to the window and tried to see outside. She had no torch and so all she could do was peer into the shadows.
She reached for her phone and dialled 999, a quiver in her voice as she gave out her address. The cottage was isolated and they might catch him on the way down the hill.

Laura ended her call and listened out for movement outside. There was nothing. She looked into the darkness for a few moments, stared at the lights from the small huddle of cottages on the opposite hill, dots of yellow against the purple of the night, the light pollution from Turners Fold in the valley below not reaching them. It was the silence that struck her. For the first time since they had moved north, Jack was a long way from home.

She closed the window, making sure it was locked, and then went back downstairs to wait until the police arrived. She hoped it was someone she knew. She looked at her hands. They were trembling.

Bobby appeared on the landing. ‘What is it, Mummy?’

Laura tried to smile. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Go back to bed.’

The morning came around too quickly. The sun was just blinking through the trees as I waited outside the hotel for Susie. I heard the fast click of her heels before I saw her, and then my face was shrouded in her smoke as she took a long pull on her first cigarette of the day. The coughing that followed rattled her body, her cheeks a mottled purple.

‘Do you always get up at this time?’ I asked, once she had recovered, my voice filled with morning bleariness.

She shook her head. ‘Not since Maisy was a child. It was Gilly’s idea.’

I was surprised. ‘I didn’t know you had a child.’

‘Any reason why you should?’

‘I just thought you might have mentioned her. Most parents do.’

Susie anticipated my next question. ‘No, she’s not Gilly’s child,’ she said. ‘I got married not long after Gilly disappeared, but it didn’t work out.’ She raised an eyebrow at me. ‘I bet that would have added a zero onto the price, Claude Gilbert’s child.’

‘It would have added something,’ I said. ‘So, where do we wait?’

‘Same place as yesterday,’ she replied.

‘I’m patient for a story,’ I said, ‘but this is wearing thin. If he’s not here soon, I go home.’

Susie nodded. ‘Okay, I understand. We’ll go for breakfast later. That might help.’

We went to the same park as the previous day, but it was still locked, and so we settled on a wooden bench that looked towards the entrance to Lower Belgrave Street.

As we waited, Susie asked, ‘Why did you follow me last night?’

I looked at her. I knew there was no point in lying. ‘To see if you led me to Claude.’

‘But that isn’t what we agreed,’ she said. ‘Claude will make himself known.’

‘Yeah, and I’m not sure this was in the agreement either, nursing a hangover with no sign of Claude.’

Susie fell quiet, but I wasn’t in the mood for apologising, and so I had only the passing crowd to entertain me. It seemed different in the morning; quieter, more earnest, everyone with the day ahead, teeming out of the station, heading for work or onward travel. The lights began to flicker into life as the shops began another working day, and I stared into the crowds, looking for a face that didn’t fit. Everyone seemed passive, passionless, concentrating on whatever was streaming through their headphones. I expected Gilbert to stand out, his eyes flitting around him, furtive, alert, always waiting for the recognition.

But there was no one who caught my attention. Just a stream of suits and anonymity.

I checked my watch. Eight thirty. ‘C’mon, let’s go for that breakfast,’ I said. ‘He’s running out of time.’

Laura let the steam from her coffee bathe her face as she held the cup to her chest. She was scouring the fields, looking for some hint of whoever had been in her house, but it was hard to concentrate.

It had been a long night. She’d had no real sleep, just snatches in the chair, too scared to go to bed. She had tried to do some revision for the sergeant’s exam, but the words just swam before her eyes whenever she looked at a page and her head dipped and jerked as she tried to stay awake.

Coffee had kept her going, but now her eyes felt heavy, the skin sore under her eyes, and her legs twitched if she stayed still.

Who had been in the house, and why?

She checked her watch. She had to go to work soon, Bobby to drop off on the way, and then the house would be vulnerable again. Would someone be waiting for her when she got back? If Jack wasn’t home, she would take Bobby and stay away.

Laura cursed herself. She was supposed to be stronger than this, and now she had a whole day to get through on hardly any sleep.

She took a gulp of coffee. She would wait until the caffeine kicked in, and then she would set off.

She turned away from the window and looked at the papers strewn by her chair, revision books and specimen questions scattered over the floor. It would be a long day, and she knew that this wasn’t the best preparation. She jolted when she heard a noise from upstairs, and then cursed as hot coffee spilled over her knuckles. She knew that it was only Bobby, but she was jumpy, unnerved.

Laura sucked at her fingers to cool the heat from the spilled coffee and then headed towards the stairs. She had to start the day, somehow make everything seem normal again.

Mike Dobson joined the rush-hour queue into Blackley.

He worked out of one of the office complexes by the motorway, and so he knew he would be late, but he was
nonetheless drawn to check out the streets he had driven around the other night, just to see if she was there. He’d thought about her ever since the other night, of her promise that they would do more than just pull up by the old viaduct.

The cars that streamed into Blackley snaked their way to work through twisting back streets, around some convoluted one-way system designed to get traffic in and out of the narrow Victorian streets without snarling up, and so for the last part of his journey Mike was taken through the streets he sometimes crawled at night.

Tears formed in his eyes. He should leave Mary, he knew that, but he couldn’t. Fear kept him there, scared of how much Mary might know of his secret, and how much she would strike back if he left her.

He heard a horn behind him, and as he looked up he saw that the queue had moved forward. He raised his hand in apology and set off to rejoin the back of the queue twenty feet further on.

As the car in front sent up small flumes of blue smoke, he looked out of the car window again, glancing up and down the streets, hoping for a glimpse of the girl, maybe on her way to the shops or something, doing something ordinary that would make her more real, not how she was when he saw her last, short skirt and vacant grin.