Dead Silent

by Neil White

  Laura slammed on her brakes and looked up at the house. The camera was on the window sill, pointing into the street. She turned to see what it was pointing at. The detectives had been round to all the local businesses to look at their CCTV tapes, and she had heard the mutters that most were dummy boxes. She had watched them do the door-to-doors and had heard nothing about any footage from any of the houses.

  What was the camera looking at? There was nothing there except wasteland and derelict streets populated by prostitutes and their clients.

  Then she got it, and she started to smile. It was the prostitutes that the camera was watching.

  Laura jumped out of the car and banged on the front door of the house. There was no reply and so she banged again, louder this time, and heard footsteps shuffle along the hallway. When the door opened, Laura saw a short man with flaking skin peering at her through thick glasses, a small piece of tape holding the frames together. He was wearing a faded checked shirt and baggy stonewashed jeans that looked like they had jumped right out of the eighties.

  ‘I spoke to your people before,’ he said.

  Laura noticed the wariness in his voice. ‘Did you mention the camera?’ she asked.

  He faltered at that and his eyes flickered upwards, as if he could see it through the ceiling.

  ‘That’s right, up there,’ she said, pointing. ‘I can see it in your window, right now.’

  His tongue did a little dance between his lips and then he said, ‘It wasn’t turned on last night. There’s nothing to see.’

  ‘I want to look, just to check,’ she said, stepping forward, bluffing him.

  He shook his head and barred her way.

  Laura stepped back. ‘Okay, it’s like this,’ she said, her hands on her belt. ‘You get off on watching men having sex with drug addicts. If that’s your thing, fine, we all have needs, but I’m going to pass this on to the team working the murder. You can delete all your stuff if you want, but the experts will still be able to recover it. You can take a hammer to your hard drive, I suppose, but if another girl out there dies, I hope you can live with that.’

  Laura saw that he had gone pale.

  ‘I’m going somewhere now, and I’ll be going off duty soon, but expect a knock on your door.’

  He swallowed, and still seemed incapable of speech.

  Laura smiled politely. ‘If it turns out that you did leave your camera on last night, try and find a gold Mercedes. Put it on a disk and bring it to the station. Ask for Joe Kinsella. It might stop someone from crawling over your computer, looking at all the stuff you’re not supposed to have.’

  He nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and Laura thought his mouth sounded dry as she turned to walk back to the car.

  Now she had to get to the park before Mike Dobson decided that he wasn’t in a waiting mood.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Mike Dobson clutched his phone to his chest. He’d made the call, but where was the reporter? What if Garrett didn’t come?

  His thoughts spun around, as if they were trying to work their way out of his head. He had been in the park all afternoon, looking at the chimneys of Nancy’s house. It was never Claude’s house to him, but Nancy’s, the place where they had passed all those hours. Where he had spent Nancy’s last hours. He moaned and clutched his head. It was his last taste of freedom, he knew that, and so he had spent it with a bottle of vodka. The first mouthful had been sour and made his chest burn, but he had persisted with it. He had drunk less than half of it, but that didn’t mean that he could avoid squinting as the daylight assaulted him too quickly, his pupils sluggish. He should have drunk less; he realised now that he wanted to remember the day, the sun on his face in an open park, to feel it, not numb it.

  His phone buzzed again. It would be his boss, wanting to know why he had missed three sales appointments, worried that some lucky punter had missed out on the chance to buy overpriced plastic guttering. He almost laughed. Is that what his life had amounted to, paying the bills by bullying people in their own homes to buy things they didn’t want? Fuck him. None of it mattered any more. It never really had. He could tell his boss exactly where he was. He was at the end.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of wings fluttering in a bush behind him, and then the sound of engines from outside the park. He expected the wail of sirens, but there was just the noise of ordinary lives and the high-pitched laughter of college kids on the patch of grass a few yards away. Were they laughing about him, a middle-aged man on a park bench, a bottle of vodka next to him?

  He opened his eyes quickly, sensing someone watching him. He looked around, but there was no one there. He tried to peer into the bushes—was someone there? But he couldn’t see anything.

  He knew he had to keep moving, he had to keep his mind clear so that he could decide what best to do. He would tell the reporter his story, so that everyone would understand, but it wasn’t safe to sit in one place in the meantime. If he kept on walking round the park, he would still be able to see the reporter as he came through the gates. He creaked to his feet and set off walking along the tarmac path that would take him around a large pond, where the houses higher up the hill looked down over the park. He stole another glance at the chimneys of the Gilbert house. His head was filled with the clip of his leather soles on the tarmac.

  He tried to think about the night before as he walked. Hazel, that was her name, he knew that now, but why had he never asked her? Was she only ever Nancy to him? He had kept quiet for more than twenty years now, and he saw how his life had meant nothing in the end—just one long memory of one awful night. And why would Hazel be dead? He could remember things now, like driving into Blackley, Hazel in the passenger seat, it was coming back to him. And she was Hazel to him now. Why not before?

  But Nancy was dead, and he still heard her noises, the soft thumps, sometimes cries.

  What would he do next? The police were looking for him, and they would take samples from him. Blood, hair, fingerprints, DNA. What else would they find out when they ran him through the computers? What else would it match up with?

  He rubbed the sweat out of his eyes and looked down. He watched his feet walk onwards, one shoe forward at a time, just the constant movement towards…what? His arrest? The end of his life? Every step was one step closer. And what about Mary? What would she do now?

  He looked up at that thought. He couldn’t think about Mary. He had to think about himself now. He hadn’t killed Hazel, he was certain of that. But would it matter if he had? He had taken one life. Would one more make him worse, or just the same?

  He blinked as the sunlight bounced off the pond and saw someone in the distance. A woman. She looked familiar, but she was just in silhouette. He thought back through his clients. Maybe she looked like one of them. Brunette hair over her shoulders, tall and shapely.

  He looked down at his shirt as she came closer. He could see dirt trails on the white cotton. It shouldn’t be like that. As he looked up again, he saw that she was still there, on the path, watching him as he drew nearer. Maybe it was the bottle hanging loosely in his hand that made her stare. He looked up the hill and saw the Gilbert house again, and he heard something, like a soft laugh. He shook his head to get rid of the noise, but it echoed through his brain.

  Something wasn’t right, he sensed it. The breeze blew the scent of summer towards him, cut grass and flower beds, and he thought of Nancy again. For every day of every year, his life had always been about Nancy. Her cries, the bangs, and the images of her, glimpsed as movement at the edge of his vision.

  He took one last deep breath and straightened himself. The woman was getting closer. She was definitely watching him, the sun behind her, her face in shadow. He felt dirty, his clothes wet from perspiration.

  Then he stopped; he recognised her. The bottle slipped from his hand and smashed on the floor. She stepped closer, and he felt his chin tremble and beads of sweat burst onto his forehead.

  It was her, the policew
oman, the one who had warned him. She had waited for him to go to her. He looked down at his hands as he flexed and unflexed his fingers, and he thought they shimmered in the sunshine. When he looked up, he thought the horizon looked indistinct, paler than it had before.

  He turned around to see people running towards him from the other end of the park.

  He looked back to the policewoman and tried to suck in some air, just to stop the world from shifting under his feet. Then, as a tear rolled down his cheek, he stepped towards her and held out his hands. The cold metal of the handcuffs snapped tightly around his wrist, and he felt his knees give way as he slumped to the floor.

  I was taking a break from the story when Harry rang. I was standing at the window, watching the fields acquire orange fringes as the sun slipped lower into the horizon.

  ‘Harry, don’t worry, it’s all under control,’ I said, before he had the chance to say anything.

  He started with a cough and then said, ‘We’ve got the front page, with pages four and five on standby, so it better be under control.’ His gravelly voice was loud in my ear. ‘You haven’t got long, Jack. I’ve got a conference room booked at the Lowry Hotel in Manchester for ten o’clock tomorrow. I’ll be on the first train, so don’t be late. Bring him in through the kitchens. I’ll clear it with the staff tomorrow.’

  ‘No tricks this time,’ I said.

  Harry chuckled.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be able to cope with the North, Harry?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll bring my clogs,’ he said, and hung up.

  I looked back at my laptop and realised that I had to finish the story, and soon. He would need it before eight, because Harry’s job was to fill the paper, and if the story came after the press conference, then it would be old news by the following morning. He wanted the news-stand shock factor, the commuters’ double-take.

  That wasn’t my worry though. I knew the story would be sitting in Harry’s inbox within the next thirty minutes. I was onto the fine-tuning stage now, just taking a short coffee stop so that I could go back to it fresh. It was the silence from Claude that was worrying me.

  I looked at my phone again, as if that would make it ring. It had been a few hours since I had spoken to Susie, and still Claude hadn’t called. I didn’t know where he was and if Claude decided to run away again the whole story paled. The rival papers for the next day would be filled with ridicule, and Harry would never forgive me. The scoop of my career could turn me into a laughing stock, and I wasn’t ready for that.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Mike Dobson looked around his cell. There was no natural light, just neon panels fitted into the ceiling spreading a weak light around the white tiles and concrete floor.

  He had been there a couple of hours, reflecting on his life, on how it hadn’t amounted to much. A sales job and an empty house. There was one way out, the coward’s exit, but they had taken his belt and laces and there were no beams or hooks; the cell door swung open on a long metal rod concealed within the door casing, so he couldn’t even use his shirt sleeve as a noose.

  He couldn’t remember much about the arrest. It came back to him in flashes, faded and distant. The cuffs too tight around his wrist, the journey to the station. He knew the streets, had driven round them all his life, but they seemed altered now, as if he knew he was seeing them for the last time. He remembered the feel of the sun on his face as he came out of the van. How long before he would feel that again? And the clang of the doors as he was taken inside. Sounds suddenly seemed to echo and he was no longer in charge of his life. Questions, signatures, and they had only ever talked about Hazel. No one mentioned Nancy Gilbert.

  He looked at the wall when he heard the screaming from the next cell start up again. Kicks landed as soft thuds against the cell door. It had been going on since he came in. Someone would walk down the corridor and shout for the occupant to be quiet, but that only made it worse.

  Mike put his hands behind his head and lay back on the plastic mattress. It felt cool against the heat coming from his body. He closed his eyes and thought about Hazel. He brought one hand to his face to see if there was anything left of her smell, but there was nothing. He had washed it away, just like he had soaked away the dust and dirt from his suit.

  He sat up when he heard the rattle of a key in his cell door. As it swung open, he saw a man there, tall, in a crisp white shirt, with a perma-tan and bright teeth, his boots polished to a gleam and his black trousers pressed razor-sharp. The man came in and closed the door behind him, although he didn’t lock it.

  ‘Don’t think about running through,’ the man said. ‘There are people at the custody desk and at least two sets of doors that need keys.’

  Mike scuttled back to the wall so that he could feel the coldness of the tiles through the back of his shirt.

  ‘I’m not going to run,’ Mike said. ‘I’ve nowhere to go.’

  ‘Do you know why you’re here?’

  Mike nodded and looked down. ‘Hazel, the girl from last night, so I was told.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  Mike looked at his visitor. ‘Who do you mean?’

  The visitor smiled and sat down on the plastic mattress. ‘You know who I mean.’

  Mike shook his head.

  ‘Nancy,’ the visitor said.

  Mike felt the room start to swirl, the tiles fusing into white streaks; when he looked at his hands, they seemed as if they belonged to someone else, detached from him, as if he had become just an observer of his own body. They knew, he realised. They had always known.

  ‘I found her,’ the visitor said. ‘I was one of the people who dug her up.’

  Mike looked at him, trying to focus, but the visitor sounded distant, drowned out by the rush of blood through his head.

  ‘Are you Roach?’ Mike asked.

  The visitor smiled. ‘You know my name.’

  ‘I read about you,’ Mike said. ‘I followed the story.’

  ‘You had a special interest, Mr Dobson,’ Roach said.

  Mike nodded and tugged on his lip. ‘Tell me something.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘How did she look—Nancy, I mean—when you found her?’ Mike said.

  Roach was silent for a moment, and then he said, ‘She looked scared. Dirty and bloodied. Paint and splinters under her nails.’

  Mike swallowed. His mouth tasted acidic.

  ‘This is your second chance, Mr Dobson,’ Roach said. ‘Make it right, for everyone. Tell them what you know.’

  Mike didn’t say anything for a long time. He didn’t notice when Roach left and his cell became empty again. There was just the sound of his breathing and the regular thumps in his head, the drumbeat of Nancy’s fists on the wood.

  I was running Bobby’s bath when I heard Laura come into the house.

  The story had gone in and Harry had called to hack and cough his approval, but there was still only silence from Claude. So I was distracted as I knelt on the bathroom floor, bubbles all over my forearms and my trousers wet from the water that had splashed over the side. Bobby was in his room, selecting toys for some water fun.

  I looked out of the open window as Bobby climbed into the tub, feeling the last few moments of sun on my face. I heard the heavy clump of Laura’s boots as she came upstairs. She hugged Bobby when she saw him, and then she put her arms around me, her mouth against my neck.

  ‘We got him,’ she whispered. ‘Mike Dobson. He’s in the cells. It’s nothing to do with Nancy Gilbert yet, but I’ve tipped the wink to Joe, told him to make sure he is in the interview, just in case Joe can turn it round to Nancy.’ She gave me a squeeze. ‘Thank you for that.’

  I turned around and cupped her face in my hands. ‘My good deed for the day. I just hope I can repeat it tomorrow.’

  ‘Why tomorrow?’ she asked, but when she saw my raised eyebrows, she nodded in comprehension. ‘Claude comes out, doesn’t he?’

  I nodded. ‘Front page in the morning, and then a press conferen
ce.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘The Lowry, in Manchester.’

  Laura laughed. ‘That will annoy the brass. A different force might get to the arrest first. No appearance on the lunchtime news for the local boys.’

  I smiled. ‘I think it’s so Harry doesn’t have to change trains.’

  ‘Should I do anything?’ she said.

  I shook my head. ‘Just pretend that we haven’t had this conversation.’

  Then I heard my phone ring downstairs. I peeled away from Laura and ran quickly to answer it. When I jabbed at the answer button, Claude’s baritone was loud in my ear.

  ‘You’ve done well, Mr Garrett.’

  ‘Don’t thank me yet,’ I said. ‘Dobson might be back on the streets by midnight.’

  ‘Maybe so, but at least the jury will be able to wonder about him now.’

  ‘So what about you, Claude? Did you get the message from Susie? You go in the paper tomorrow, and we’ve got a press conference.’

  There was silence for a few seconds, and then he said, ‘I suppose now is a good time.’

  ‘Damn right, Claude. If Dobson is charged, then you don’t get your say, because we’ll have to stay quiet until his trial.’

  ‘Perhaps, Mr Garrett. Perhaps.’

  ‘We need to meet.’

  ‘Midnight,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you later.’

  ‘Why so late?’

  He chuckled. ‘It’s Susie,’ he said. ‘You know how women are. She wants one last evening. I’ll call you.’

  And then the phone went silent.

  When I turned round, Laura was there. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

  ‘Nowhere yet,’ I said. ‘I just have to wait here.’

  She smiled. ‘It doesn’t have to be boring.’

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  When the cell door opened again, there were two men standing behind the white shirt of the jailer. They were important, Mike Dobson could tell that from their fake smiles of reassurance. He reckoned junior officers would have been more disapproving. These two were fully-fledged, been-around-the-block sort of officers. Mike almost smiled. They had judged him already, he could tell that.