Dead Silent (24 page)

‘There’s no proof—just guesswork, and rumours from retired coppers who’ve had too many drinks at the golf club, telling tall tales of the old days,’ Rachel said. ‘So Joe and I were brought in quietly, once we got the report that Susie Bingham was touting the Claude Gilbert angle. No one was to know.’

‘It’s different this time,’ I said.

‘Why is it?’

‘Because he wants to come home.’

Rachel gasped, and I saw her cup waver in her hands. I could see the press conference in her eyes, Rachel Mason announcing the arrest in her best new suit.

‘It’s on his terms,’ I added.

‘He’s a wanted man. He doesn’t have terms.’

‘He does, because he’s not in a cell,’ I said. ‘He can just disappear again. And his terms must be better than no terms.’

Rachel played with her spoon for a few seconds while she looked into her coffee; then she said, ‘What terms are they?’

‘That I prove his innocence first.’

Rachel laughed, but it was sharp and shrill. ‘Did you believe him?’

I chewed on my lip as I tried to give a truthful answer. ‘I don’t know,’ was the best one I could come up with. ‘Were there any other suspects?’

Rachel shook her head. ‘The only credible one was some gangland thing, and so Alan Lake was an obvious one. You know, the sculptor?’

My face remained impassive. Rachel had spoken as if I wouldn’t know about Alan Lake, which told me that I wasn’t being followed any more.

‘How far did you get with him?’ I asked.

‘Not very,’ she said. ‘He was in prison, and it’s hard to work out what he would gain, because the retrial could have gone even worse.’ She folded her arms. ‘You mentioned an affair to Bill Hunter?’

‘Did I?’

‘You know you did.’

I shrugged. ‘Just something Claude said.’

‘Do you have a name?’

I tried not to give anything away as I looked at her. ‘No,’ I
said. ‘Just the ramblings of an old man trying to work out why it happened. You would know about it if it was true, right?’

Rachel nodded slowly, not willing to concede a weakness.

‘Did Bill Hunter also mention Frankie Cass?’ I said. ‘He lives across the road.’

Rachel’s eyes narrowed as she thought back through the boxes of paper she had waded through. ‘I don’t know anything about a Frankie,’ she said eventually.

‘I’m not surprised. I think he will talk to anyone but the police,’ I said.

‘And so he’s spoken to you.’

I nodded. ‘He lives on his own in a big house opposite the murder scene, in an attic room mainly, with a view into Gilbert’s garden. His room is covered in newspaper articles about the Gilbert case, and to judge by the photographs on the wall, it seems he spent his life taking pictures of Mrs Gilbert when she was alive. Now he lives alone in that big, dark house, which is either rat-bait or pristine, depending on which part of the house you are in.’

‘Which is the pristine part?’ Rachel asked, her eyes keen now.

‘His mother’s bedroom,’ I replied. ‘Or, at least, his long departed mother’s. Her old bedroom is preserved like a pink shrine.’

Rachel looked thoughtful. ‘I didn’t know about Frankie.’

‘Maybe he’s just some local nutcase,’ I said.

Rachel didn’t respond.

I leant forward. ‘Are you interested in Frankie now?’ I asked. ‘Because if you are, you’re wondering whether Claude is telling the truth—that he didn’t kill Nancy.’

That seemed to bring Rachel round.

‘Claude Gilbert killed his wife,’ she said. ‘It’s obvious to anyone who looked at the case carefully. She dies, he flies.’

‘He gives a different version,’ I said.

‘I bet he does.’

‘He makes sense.’

‘He was a lawyer,’ Rachel countered. ‘His job was to look jurors in the eye and convince them of the truth of his story. The real truth didn’t matter.’

‘You sound so cynical for someone so young.’

Rachel shook her head. ‘I just see it how it is.’ She put her head back and flicked her hair, so that it flowed loosely over her shoulders. ‘So tell me,’ she said. ‘What
is
Claude’s story?’

‘He left his wife, went abroad for a holiday and, while he was away, he read about his wife’s murder.’

‘So why didn’t he give himself up? He could prove when he left the country.’

‘Because he’s a coward,’ I said. ‘He stayed away, hoping the real killer would be found, and then, when he realised that he was the one they were looking for, he kept on running.’

Rachel thought about that for a few seconds. ‘Why would he leave his wife in the middle of a court case?’

I thought about Mike Dobson, and how I wasn’t ready to give him up yet. I might be talking to the police, but my story was still the top of my list, for as long as I could keep Laura out of trouble.

‘Because he was a bad husband whose marriage was falling apart,’ I said. ‘Gilbert was just a coward with bad timing.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘and I still think you’re holding out on me. You’ve given me nothing, except that you think you’ve met him. Give me something real, something we don’t know.’

I took a deep breath and wondered how much else I should say. I thought about Claude’s address, but the police would be able to prove that he had been there if I did. And if they could prove it was Claude Gilbert, then they could come
after me. It was turning into a glorious summer and I wasn’t ready to go to jail.

I shook my head. ‘You’ve got everything.’

‘I haven’t got Claude Gilbert,’ Rachel replied.

‘You will have soon, and for that, Laura stays out of it. She doesn’t know anything else, and if you give her a hard time, maybe I’ll tell Claude to stay away, because if you have just one agenda—to catch him and put him in a cell—then he might as well keep on running.’

I put a ten pound note on the table. ‘Put that towards the coffee.’ The chair clattered on the cobbles as I stood up to walk away. I heard Rachel talk into her telephone as I went. Now I knew that the police would be watching me, I had to find out more about Mike Dobson, before anyone else did.

Mike Dobson’s hands were tight around the steering wheel and he could feel the tension in his jaw as he ground his teeth.

He glanced towards the glove box and felt a rush of excitement. It made his foot press a little harder on the pedal and so he had to slow down, worried about the speed cameras.

It wasn’t rush hour, and the streets of Blackley weren’t busy with cars. He wondered whether he should wait until later, but the tightness of his chest and the warmth in his cheeks told him that it had to be now. The police were looking out for punters, it was true, but they would be looking for the late-night crawlers, the ones who were easy to spot. It was early for the girls to be working, but the warm weather made it easier for them to hang around.

The brightness of the town centre petered out into the grubby fronts of tyre-fitters and plumbers’ merchants, and then he slowed down as he swung his car into the circuit of derelict terraces. He opened both windows and crawled along, checking in every direction for her, looking for that flick of dark hair and those skinny legs, his eyes flitting around constantly, checking the rearview mirror, always alert for the black uniforms hiding behind the unmarked car windscreen.

He did two circuits and he couldn’t see her. He knew he
was attracting attention, the car always did that, and so he pulled into the side of the road and kept watch instead. He was in a street that was dimly lit in winter, located near to an old scout hut surrounded by razor wire and an old basketball court that formed a magnet for young men doing street-level drug deals in the dark. But this was summer time, and so the days were long. The dealers operated indoors in summer, where indiscreet handovers would be less obvious.

He stayed there for over an hour, just watching the street trade. There was a steady flow of taxi drivers talking to pale-faced young women in miniskirts, but still there was no sign of her.

He was about to head back to his empty house, feeling like she was never going to show, when finally he saw her, emerging from a doorway along a street filled with boarded-up buildings, wiping her hand. There was a taxi parked on the road, a green Nissan Bluebird, and the driver drove off quickly; Mike guessed that the ride hadn’t cost her hard cash.

He closed his eyes and tried not to think of that. He wanted the afternoon to be special, he had waited a long time for it, and didn’t want the remnants of another man with them.

He started his engine and moved his car slowly towards her. As he got closer, she looked at him and he saw a spark of recognition, although her vision looked unfocused. He leant across the passenger seat and she bent down to the open window. The smell of cheap booze drifted into the car.

‘You again,’ she drawled.

He looked down at her fingers. They were gripping the car door, as if she was trying to stop herself from falling over. There were beads of sweat on her chest.

‘I told you I would come and see you again,’ he said, his cheeks red with embarrassment.

She shrugged and opened the car door, stumbling slightly as she climbed in. ‘Why?’

‘To spend some time with you,’ he replied.

She gave a little laugh, although it came with a slur. ‘This isn’t normal boy-girl stuff, you know,’ she said, mocking him.

He nodded. ‘I’ll pay for it, like always.’ He reached into his pocket and showed her the notes in his wallet. ‘I’ll give you two hundred pounds if you’ll spend a few hours with me.’

She looked at it and took a deep breath. ‘It’s a lot of money,’ she said. She looked away and opened her bag to produce her cigarettes.

‘Not yet,’ he said.

As she looked at him, he saw how glazed her eyes were. He fought to hold back his anger. He had sought her out, had even brought her something, and she was like this, so early in the day.

‘I don’t want the car to smell,’ he said. And Nancy didn’t smoke, he thought to himself.

She shrugged and closed her bag, and then looked straight ahead. ‘No funny stuff, you know that,’ she said.

He nodded.

‘So where do we go?’

‘Just for a drive.’

She glanced along the street and licked her lips. ‘Can I trust you?’

‘You have up to now.’

She paused as she thought about it, and then smiled. ‘You seem like a nice guy. Okay.’

Dobson nodded and then pulled slowly away from the kerb.

I decided to take a detour and go back to Frankie’s house.

For all Rachel Mason’s certainty that Claude Gilbert was a killer, I had spotted her interest when I mentioned Frankie Cass. And, if nothing else, she would want to know what he had been keen to tell everyone else. If he was going to be arrested, I wanted to get the arrest picture, and maybe a quote.

But I felt no pleasure in being right as I drove up the hill to his house. There were two police cars outside and a silver Mondeo in front of them. I parked behind the squad cars and looked up his drive, letting out a groan when I saw Frankie being led out of the house. Rachel was holding on to one arm, his hands cuffed in front of him, a uniformed officer on the other side of him. I jumped out of my car and walked quickly towards them.

Rachel noticed me as I got closer. ‘Am I going to start seeing you wherever I go?’ she said, a look of irritation flashing across her eyes.

‘It’s my story.’

‘It’s more than a story,’ she said, and continued taking Frankie down the drive. As he passed me, he shot me a look that was both confused and hurt. I had betrayed him.

‘But why are you arresting him?’

Rachel stopped for a moment. ‘You saw his bedroom.’

‘You know I did.’

Rachel smiled. ‘If you’d looked closer, you would have seen that not all the photos were of Nancy Gilbert.’ She rattled his cuffs, making Frankie wince. ‘It looks like we’ve found the person creeping around people’s houses. You know, the Crawler, or whatever the papers call him.’ She led Frankie away towards a waiting car.

Oh great, I thought. That was Frankie, and I missed it, a guaranteed quick story, just to keep my byline out there.

As I turned to watch them go, Rachel shouted over her shoulder, ‘It’s not always about you, Mr Garrett.’

I put my hands on my hips, watching as Frankie was pushed into the police car, and then I turned and headed towards the front door. It creaked open slowly as I pushed it. I could hear people talking inside, just soft mutters, but the sound stopped as I went into the house. A shadow entered the hallway ahead of me. I let my eyes adjust to the dim lighting, and then I saw a face I hadn’t seen for a few months: Joe Kinsella.

I nodded a greeting. ‘I heard you were around, Joe. It’s been a while. How are things?’

He didn’t look surprised to see me. In fact, I couldn’t work out what he was thinking, as he gave me that usual enigmatic look of his, all dreamy eyes and soft-focus smile.

‘You keep popping up in the wrong places,’ he said.

‘So are you thinking he’s a suspect in the Claude Gilbert story too?’ I said. ‘Bit of a cliché, isn’t it? Lone oddball with a mother-fixation as the murderer?’

He took my arm to lead me further along the hallway. ‘Is this an interview, or off the record?’ he asked, his voice quiet.

‘Off the record,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you if that changes.’

He seemed happy with that. ‘Keep the Claude Gilbert connection quiet for now,’ he said.

‘Why is that?’

‘Because I’m asking,’ he replied. ‘And you call them clichés. We call them patterns.’

‘Frankie just misses his mother,’ I said.

‘Maybe, and so did Ed Gein,’ Joe said. ‘The voyeurism stuff will keep him busy for a day, and we can have a proper look around.’

‘Are you sure it’s him?’

‘We suspect it,’ he said, a half-smile on his face. ‘We received information that he’s been taking secret photographs of women.’

I closed my eyes for a moment and offered Frankie a silent apology. ‘And so you get to have a look around his house, just to see what he’s got on the Gilbert case?’

‘It’s a fringe benefit.’