by Neil White
‘Why the hell has Claude Gilbert become so interesting all of a sudden, after all this time?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Laura replied, ‘but he told me that I have to pass on what you know.’
I looked at her. ‘Why did he say that?’
‘Because I’m a copper, and it’s what I’m supposed to do.’
‘But you’ve told me now. The confidence has gone the other way.’
Laura took a deep breath. ‘I know.’
Then I realised what the problem was. ‘You’re going to tell him, aren’t you?’
Laura nodded slowly, and I thought I could see tears brimming onto her eyelashes.
‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ she said, a quiver to her voice. ‘I can guess how much this story means to you, but I’ve got to do what’s right for me as well. It might feel as if I’m putting my job before you, but it’s not like that, I promise.’
I put my arms around her and pulled her into my body. I felt her tears on my chest.
‘Do I tell you I love you enough?’ I said.
Her hand ran across my chest. She sniffled. ‘You can never say it enough,’ she said quietly. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Just something Susie said,’ I replied. ‘She reckons I hold back because my parents died. If I do, I’m sorry.’ I kissed her on the top of her head, took a deep breath of the scent of her hair. ‘Don’t worry about Joe Kinsella. You’re a policewoman. You are what you are. I don’t want you to stop being that.’ I pulled away and cupped her face in my hands, and then kissed away the tear that was running down her cheek. ‘Do what you need to do, but first I’ve got to tell you something.’
‘Don’t, Jack,’ she warned me. ‘If you tell me, I’ll have to tell Joe.’
‘I know that, but do you think you’ll be believed if you say you didn’t know?’ When Laura looked down again, I said, ‘There’s your answer. You tell Joe, and then no one can say you held it back.’
Laura nodded slowly.
‘I met him,’ I said.
Laura looked up at me, confused at first, and then her mouth started to open, her eyes wide. ‘Claude Gilbert?’
I nodded, and then started to smile.
‘You met Claude Gilbert?’ she repeated, and then she began to laugh. ‘Jesus Christ, Jack, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you writing the story? And where is he, if you found him?’
I grimaced, not looking forward to saying again what I had said to Tony. ‘I walked away,’ I said.
‘What!’
‘Claude wants to prove his innocence before he comes out of hiding.’
Laura looked sceptical. ‘That will be a tough one.’
‘He’s given me a name, and a story that would help him,’ I said, and so I told her all about Mike Dobson and the affair, and the escape to France, and the baby.
‘So where do you start?’ Laura asked.
‘With anyone who wants to speak to me. There’s already someone who seems pretty keen.’
‘You be careful, Jack,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not sure all is what it seems.’
And with that, she kissed me, a soft, moist, tear-dampened kiss, and we slid slowly down the sheets again.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Morning found me outside Frankie’s house, a three-storey block of blackened millstone, with large bay windows at the front and side, and double wooden front doors. The path from the gate curved between the two low walls that held back the flower beds. Except that there were no flowers. Brambles blocked the tarmac path and grass sprouted through in places. The gate creaked as I opened it, the latch stiff. My footsteps echoed between the walls and the overhanging rhododendron bushes, and I had to duck in places to make my way to the house.
As I got nearer, the garden opened out, and I saw that the lawns were long and sweeping, like those at the Gilbert house; but these were unkempt and overgrown, the green broken by the yellow speckles of buttercups. Rose bushes filled the beds in front of the windows, but the petals lay fallen on the soil, the heads brown.
I looked up at the house. There were no signs of life, the windows gloomy, grubby net curtains hanging in each one. I went to the doors and knocked but the sound came back as deadened thuds.
I stepped back and looked up at the windows again. I couldn’t see anyone, not so much as the twitch of a net curtain. I stepped forward to bang on the door again and then turned to look around me. As I looked back towards the road, I saw that Frankie’s house was more elevated than the Gilbert house; I reckoned I would be able to see into the garden if the bushes were trimmed back.
There was still no answer, so I scribbled ‘Call me’ onto the back of a business card and posted it through the letterbox.
I hadn’t gone too far down the path before I heard something behind me. When I turned around, I saw a man in the doorway, staring at me. He was tall, late thirties, with unkempt dark hair and bright rosy cheeks, as if he had been sitting in front of the fire all morning.
I started to walk back towards him. ‘Frankie?’ I asked.
He nodded, but looked nervous.
‘I’m Jack Garrett,’ I said, as I got to the door. ‘You were looking for me the other day.’
He nodded again.
‘So why didn’t you answer the door?’
He was still not saying anything.
I peered past him, along a dark hallway.
‘Shall we talk inside?’ I suggested. When he didn’t answer, I added, ‘It’s about Claude Gilbert,’ trying to nudge him into a conversation. ‘You can tell me about Claude Gilbert.’
He started to say something but stammered, and then he moved out of the way so I could go into the house.
As I walked past him, I put my sleeve to my nose as the smell from the house hit me, like old rotting rubbish. I heard the door close behind me.
As Laura walked into the briefing room, she saw Thomas in the corner, looking at some incident logs that related to an arrest she had been involved in the day before, where a husband had beaten his wife until she was left cowering in a corner, blood streaming from a nose that hadn’t looked straight. There had been numerous incidents before, but the victim had always refused to make a statement. Now she finally had, but the prisoner hadn’t got past the interview stage before his wife had arrived at the front desk to make a new one that exonerated him.
‘Hello, Laura,’ Thomas said, brighter than he had been earlier in the week. Maybe that nervousness was starting to fade. Laura remembered that transition from the early part of her career.
Laura smiled her greeting, but she knew that she appeared distracted, her conversation with Jack the night before still preying on her mind.
She went to a spare computer and logged on. Her fingers hovered nervously over the keys, scared to type in the name of Mike Dobson. Misusing a police computer would get Laura the sack, and maybe even a court appearance, and she knew it would look as if she was helping Jack with information. But she didn’t want to go to Joe Kinsella with half a story. If she was going to give up Jack’s findings, she wanted it to be with something reliable, and not the ramblings of some imposter whose address or pseudonym Jack wouldn’t disclose.
She closed her eyes. Everything told her not to get involved, to just pass on the name to Joe Kinsella, let him do the running, but Laura still wanted to stay loyal to Jack. There was no prospect of the London Met kicking in the door of a Belgravia apartment on the word of a reporter. Different force, different targets, with nothing to gain except more paperwork.
Laura let her fingers drift across the keys to find something on Mike Dobson. She wasn’t hopeful—he would be a middle-aged insurance salesman and probably led a blameless life.
The list was small, just three. One was a teenager, another one a serial burglar in his forties. The first was too young to be Nancy Gilbert’s lover, and the second maybe a rough edge too far—though people find love in strange places. The mistake Laura had made with her husband told her that, all muscles and bright smile, and too ha
ppy to share it around. He had given her Bobby and also a mistrust of men. Laura looked at the burglar again, but when she brought up his record she saw that he received two years for robbery in March 1988, a couple of months before Nancy died. That was back in the good old days, when prison was tough and people didn’t walk out of jail after just a few weeks just because there was no room at the inn. A bunch of crooks climbed onto the roof of Strangeways the year after and changed all that, but back then, in early 1988, Mike Dobson the burglar had the best alibi of all. He was behind bars.
But as Laura looked at the remaining Mike Dobson, she realised that he was about the right age, early fifties, and his life wasn’t blameless. He didn’t have a record, but the force monitored kerb-crawlers, just so that they could send out a few letters when the local residents complained, and his name came up as the owner of a vehicle that had been spotted patrolling the red light zone. He had avoided the warning letter so far, but by good fortune alone.
Laura smiled at that. If he was married, he would soon forget about the purpose of Laura’s visit once the door clicked closed and he was left alone to explain himself to his wife.
Laura looked over at Thomas. ‘Do you fancy a home visit to offer some community advice?’
Thomas nodded and then reached for his jacket and hat, both still pristine. It was too nice to stay indoors.
As they left the room and walked into the atrium, she glanced upwards and saw a figure on the top-floor balcony. It was Rachel Mason, the sunlight streaming in through the high windows, catching her hair and making it gleam. Laura looked away, but she could feel the woman’s eyes tracking her as she made her way to the station exit.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Frankie loomed large over me. He was dressed in black, saggy jogging bottoms and a ragged T-shirt. The hallway was dark, and his hair stuck up at odd angles, as if he had just spent a few minutes rubbing his fingers through it. He was caught in silhouette by the light that crept in through the stained glass panels over the doors.
‘Go in there,’ he said, pointing towards the room at the front of the house that looked towards the Gilbert house. His voice was deep, too deep, so that it sounded distorted, like an old 45 played on 33.
As I entered the living room, the smell became stronger.
‘Bloody hell, Frankie, what the hell have you been doing in here?’ I said, before I could stop myself.
Although the windows were dirty, and the net curtains old and grey, there was enough light to illuminate the scene. Old newspapers and magazines were piled up against one wall, stacked into uneven towers reaching almost to the ceiling, like newsprint Jenga, and they looked like they could topple over at any moment. And then there was the kitchen rubbish—old cereal boxes and carrier bags overflowing with pieces of paper and rotting food. Against the other wall were black binbags, knotted together. I kicked one, just to gauge what might be inside. It was heavy, dense, and when I peered inside, I could see dirty rags.
‘I don’t have a washing machine,’ Frankie said.
I looked around, and then looked down at his clothes. There were sweat rings under his arms and food stains on his pants. I guessed he didn’t have a table either.
‘I just buy more clothes when I need them,’ he said, by way of explanation.
‘But this is a health hazard,’ I said.
Frankie’s shrug was his only reply.
I tried to work him out. Tony was right, there was something not quite right about him, although I couldn’t pin it down to something I could recognise. He looked alert, but his eyes seemed to stare, his brow permanently furrowed, and his movements seemed slow and deliberate.
‘Do you collect these things?’ I asked. ‘The newspapers, the boxes?’
‘I might need them someday,’ he said. ‘I keep them so I have them when I need them.’
‘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 t
hrough. I walked past him slowly but once I reached the doorway I stopped and gasped.
‘Jesus Christ, Frankie.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
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.