by Neil White
‘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.
Laura glanced at me curiously as Bobby ran across the room, pulling on his school coat and grabbing his bag.
‘I’m taking him to school, Jack. I won’t be long.’
I waved as they went, and when we were alone in the house once more, Susie looked at me and asked, ‘Do you keep secrets from her?’
‘Don’t you think I should keep this secret, for your benefit?’
Susie thought about that, and then she nodded her agreement.
My motive wasn’t to protect Susie though. It was to protect Laura, because she is a police officer, a damn good one, honourable and honest. If she heard the story, she would see it as her duty to pass it on. And what if Susie was lying? It would make Laura look stupid.
But, as I looked at Susie and took in the determination in her eyes, I was starting to believe her, and I felt a tremble of excitement at the prospect of the story.
Chapter Four
Susie refused my offer of a lift back to Blackley, and so I took her into Turners Fold to catch her bus. As I watched her clatter along the pavement in her heels, a freshly-lit cigarette glowing in her fingers, walking into what counted as rush hour around here—pensioners shuffling to the post office and young mothers meandering home after the school run—I could tell that the big meet-up was going to be on her and Claude Gilbert’s terms. I wasn’t happy about that, but sometimes you’ve just got to roll with the early blows, because in the end the story will come out on my terms.
Once Susie was out of sight, I dialled the number of an old friend, Tony Davies. He had been my mentor when I was a young reporter on The Valley Post, at the start of my career before the bright London lights pulled me in, and was now seeing out his days writing features for the weekend edition.
‘I need help on something,’ I said when he answered. ‘But I need to keep this quiet. Can you come to me? I’m outside. It won’t take long.’
‘Are you still in that red Stag?’
I looked at the dashboard. A 1973 Triumph Stag in Calypso Red. Nothing special in the history of cars, but it had once been my father’s pride and joy, the sports car for the working man. ‘For now,’ I said.
Tony’s phone went dead. I watched the people go by and waited for him to appear.
Turners Fold i
sn’t large, just a collection of terraced streets and old mill buildings, some derelict, some converted into business units, disused chimneys pointing out of the valley. The town is cut in half by a canal and criss-crossed by metal bridges, and the predominant colour of the town is grey, built from millstone grit blocks, the modern shop fronts squeezed into buildings designed for Victorian England, when the town had hummed to the sound of cotton and was smothered in smoke, the air clean only when the mills shut down for a week in summer and the railway took everyone to the coast.
But it was where I grew up, for better or worse, the town that gave me flattened vowels and a dose of northern cynicism. It seemed to me that Turners Fold deserved better than its lot, its life and character crumbling year by year, because it seemed like the only way to succeed was to leave. Just for a moment, I sensed the shadow of my father. He’d been a policeman in Turners Fold before he died, and he had walked these streets, known everybody’s name, or so it had seemed. What would he have made of Susie Bingham? Not much, was my guess. He had been absorbed by my mother, who was all curls and dark eyes, a natural beauty—although I have to fight to keep that memory, her final year tainted by the cancer that took her away.
I had been back in Turners Fold a couple of years now, but I didn’t feel rooted there. Sometimes I looked for old faces whenever I was in town, old school friends or sweethearts, just to find out where they had gone with their lives, but it seemed like most of the people I saw were just worn down and wondering why their lives had turned out like they had. Then I saw Tony, a shuffle to his walk and a shiny pink scalp heading out of the Post building. He saw me and waved. I leant across the passenger seat to let him in.
‘You’re wearing a jumper, for Christ’s sake,’ I said to him. ‘It’s a bloody heatwave.’
‘Fashion is all about consistency,’ he replied, grinning, showing his buckled front teeth, the result of a bad rugby tackle many years before. ‘Like you, in this car. If you’re trying to remain incognito, this car isn’t the best way.’
‘My father cherished this car,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry, Jack, I didn’t mean—’