by Neil White
He thought he would feel afraid, but he didn’t. You become what you pretend to be, and his life had turned into a lie. Now, he felt relief, not fear; he was almost glad that the hunt was over. He stood up and held out his hands.
‘Is it time, gentlemen?’ he asked.
They exchanged quick glances before the gaoler said, ‘Mr Dobson, come this way please.’
Mike followed them along the corridor until he reached the custody desk. No one spoke to him until the custody sergeant put a clipboard on the desk, and Mike saw where he had signed it when he was first brought in, his signature shaky.
‘Are you sure you don’t want a solicitor?’ one of the suits said, the older one, his Lancashire accent blunt and broad, his moustache neat and trimmed.
Mike shook his head. ‘I want to tell my story.’
‘This is a serious allegation, Mr Dobson. I really think you ought to have a lawyer with you.’
‘I know that,’ Mike said, ‘but I want to tell you what happened.’
The sergeant looked at the two men and shrugged. ‘It’s his choice, gentlemen. You need to get him to an interview room.’ Mike guessed the subtext: before he changes his mind.
Mike was taken to a small room along a different corridor, windowless again, with just enough space for a wooden table and four chairs. There was a machine in the corner with blinking blue lights, and a red plastic strip ran around the room, like the sort he’d seen on buses to tell the driver to stop; a sticker saying ‘do not press’ indicated that it was a panic alarm.
‘This is a digital recorder,’ one of the suits explained, the older one, pointing at the machine in the corner. ‘We don’t use tapes any more.’
Then the younger of the two men introduced himself. Joe Kinsella. He was more casual, with no tie and no shine to his shoes. He seemed gentle, his voice soft. The other man was Alan Nesbitt. There were bold creases ironed into the arms of his shirt that matched the sharp parting in his hair. Call me Alan, he said. Mike smiled. They were being very pleasant to him.
When the recording started, Mike just nodded in the right places, that he understood the caution, that he had waived his right to legal advice, and then he said his name boldly when the time came. They told him it was just a routine interview, to get his story, to check whether they would look further into it.
When they asked him to tell them what he knew about Hazel, Mike looked at Joe Kinsella. ‘Have you ever been lonely?’ he asked.
Alan started to say that their personal lives weren’t relevant, but Joe held out his hand to stop him.
‘What do you mean?’ Joe said.
‘If you’ve been lonely, you might understand what I’m talking about when I tell you my story,’ Mike said. ‘And I don’t mean just having a few empty hours to kill, but real, never-ending loneliness, where your life stretches ahead of you and you just cannot see it ever getting any better.’
‘Did Hazel stop you being lonely?’ Joe said.
Mike shook his head. ‘No, not Hazel,’ he said, and he leant forward, more animated now. ‘She was a sweet girl, I enjoyed spending time with her, but she reminded me of someone.’
‘Who did she remind you of, Mike?’
Mike looked at the two detectives and listened to their breathing, and knew that he had their attention.
‘Hazel reminded me of the woman I killed,’ Mike said, and then he sat back, his arms folded.
Mike saw Alan react to that. A widening of the eyes, and then a few fast blinks.
‘Who did you kill?’ Joe asked. Mike looked at Joe. He had hardly reacted.
‘You know who I killed,’ Mike said. ‘That’s why the policewoman spoke to me. That’s why the reporter has been looking for me.’
Mike watched as Joe scribbled something in his notebook. Joe was left-handed, he noticed, and he crooked his wrist over so that he could write. Mike tried to read it, but the writing was small and untidy.
‘Tell me who,’ Joe repeated.
‘I’ll say the words if you want,’ he said, and he put both of his hands on the table. ‘It was Nancy Gilbert.’
Even Joe Kinsella reacted to that. His eyes widened with surprise and, when Joe looked to his colleague, Mike added, ‘Claude Gilbert’s wife.’
Joe’s brow furrowed for a moment, and then he leant across the table, closing the space between them. ‘Tell me about it.’
Mike nodded and breathed out slowly, a tear suddenly appearing on his cheek.
‘I’ve been waiting to do this for twenty-two years.’
Chapter Sixty
I was watching television, except that I wasn’t really. There was some reality programme on, desperate people hoping for celebrity, but it was just voices and flickering lights to me.
I was sprawled along the sofa, Laura lying next to me, her head on my chest. Bobby had been in bed for a couple of hours and I was watching the clock tick onwards, worried that the midnight meeting would get called off.
Laura looked up at me. ‘It will be fine,’ she said, and she stroked my chest.
I smiled. ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’
‘Because you’ve been twirling my hair around your finger for the past five minutes.’ She gave me a playful poke in the ribs.
I laughed and let go of her hair. ‘Maybe I just like touching it.’
‘I can tell the difference,’ she said, and then she straddled me, so that her hair was in my face. She moved her head gently, playfully, her hair tickling my cheeks, and I pulled her towards me until I felt the soft push of her lips.
‘I need someone to take my mind off things,’ I whispered. ‘Can you do that?’
‘That’ll take care of the first minute,’ she said. ‘What about the rest of the evening?’
It was my turn to give a playful poke, which turned into a tickle, and then a wrestle, until she stopped and sat up. She looked around, her face serious.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Did you see that?’
‘See what?’
‘A flash. I’m sure I saw a flash.’
I looked towards the window. ‘Maybe there’s lightning somewhere,’ I said. ‘It feels muggy tonight.’
I stood up and went to open the front door, looking up into the sky. It was warm outside, and it seemed like clouds were building up, but it didn’t feel quite ready for lightning. I stared around, but there was nothing there but the blackened outlines of the hills around the cottage.
I turned around, saw that Laura was now sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms folded on top.
‘Nothing there,’ I said.
Laura shook her head. ‘There was something. I’ll go outside and check.’
‘No, no, I’ll do it,’ I said, going to get my shoes.
I stepped outside carefully, looking around. I heard Laura draw the curtains in the living room, but that just made things darker. I tried to peer into the shadows.
‘Frankie?’ I shouted, but there was no response.
I sighed with frustration and went back into the house. Frankie would have to wait until tomorrow.
‘So how did you know Nancy?’ Joe asked.
Mike didn’t say anything at first. He thought back to that time more than twenty years ago, all those spoiled memories.
‘We were in love,’ he said eventually.
‘How did you meet?’
‘I sold insurance back then,’ Mike said. ‘I did house calls to collect the premiums. Nancy was on my books. She was a good client, and she had a lot to insure, so I was friendly and tried to spend time with her.’
‘And her being attractive must have helped,’ Joe said.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘You make it sound cheap, and it was anything but that. She was pretty, but women like her don’t look at men like me. She was well spoken, had a rich husband, she lived in a big house. I was an insurance salesman in a cheap suit making out like I was doing well, but I lived in a box of a house and drove a Ford Escort. But t
hen, as we got to know each other, that started to matter less. I realised that for all she had, Nancy felt like she had nothing that really mattered, because she was lonely. Claude was never there for her. He was a womaniser, Nancy knew that, but she dreamed that one day he would settle down. Divorcing Claude wouldn’t be easy. She had a lot to give up. A beautiful house, the respect of her friends. And he was a lawyer. What was I? Not much, was how I saw it. Nancy used to say that Claude liked being a lawyer because he could ruin people just because he felt like it.’
‘How did that make you feel?’ Joe said.
‘It didn’t make me feel anything. Nancy used to say that it was his way of telling her that he would ruin her if she tried to divorce him, that, as a lawyer, he had the power. So she carried on waiting for Claude to grow up. But men like Claude Gilbert never settle down. Not really. We used to talk when I did my insurance round, and I realised how lonely I’d become. I started to dread going home, and all I could think about was Nancy.’
‘What does this have to do with Hazel?’ Alan asked, but Joe held out his hand to stall him.
‘So how did you become lovers?’ Joe said.
Mike bit his lip and wiped a stray tear from his cheek.
‘Like most people do,’ he said, his voice thick. ‘There was just something there. A connection. A bond. You can try and deny it, make out that you’re just good friends, but you soon find yourself at a point where something is going to happen, with those looks that we held for too long, things like that.’ He gave a small laugh. ‘I can’t remember now how we crossed the line. One minute we were staring at each other over a coffee, and then we were kissing. The first time, we didn’t even get undressed. It was in the kitchen, and it was all too quick. It was just like all the clichés, I suppose. Clothes being torn, fireworks on the floor. Nancy was a different woman, like she had been holding it all in for too long.’
‘When was this?’ Joe asked.
‘It started in the summer before she died. And it wasn’t a constant thing. We would have a few weeks when we avoided each other, tried to think of our marriages, but that never lasted. We were always pulled together somehow.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘I loved her. I started calling round in the afternoon. We went for drives in the country, and long lazy walks, and picnics by the river in an old stone shelter. I took the girl there—you know, Hazel, the dead girl.’
‘Why did you take her there?’
‘Because it was a special place for me.’
‘So how did you end up killing Nancy?’ Joe asked.
Mike looked down and took a deep breath. His fingernails dug into the table, and when he looked up again his vision was blurred by the tears in his eyes.
‘By walking away,’ he said, and then he licked his lips as the sounds of that night filled his head. ‘The baby changed everything. We thought we’d been careful, but when Nancy found out she was pregnant, we guessed it was probably mine, and we didn’t know what to do. We thought about coming clean, telling everyone, but Nancy was scared of Claude. She talked about bringing up the child as Claude’s. The child would have a good home, everything it needed financially, and maybe it would calm Claude down, stop him gambling or womanising.’
‘That can’t have been a nice thought, someone else bringing up your child,’ Joe said. ‘Have you got any children of your own?’
Mike looked at Joe and then shook his head. ‘You’re hoping I’ll say I got angry, or jealous, I can tell. I’m a salesman, I can read people. I have to be able to anticipate their moods, to know what to say to make them buy something they don’t want.’
‘And you know how to tell a lie to get the sale,’ Joe responded.
Mike sat back and folded his arms. He considered Joe, whose stare was measured, calculating.
‘No, it didn’t make me angry,’ Mike said. ‘It made me confused, and scared too. I was in a cold marriage, but I didn’t want to hurt Mary. I didn’t know what the hell to do. A married woman was carrying my child. How the hell do you work yourself out of that one?’
‘So you killed her?’ Joe said. ‘That’s an extreme way of solving your problems.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘So tell me, what was it like?’
Mike’s fingers started to drum on the table. He took some deep breaths, to keep his control so that he could tell his story.
‘We decided to meet up, to sort it out,’ Mike said. ‘Claude was at the casino, or so we thought, and so I went to her house. It was a rough hour. She was crying. I was crying. I wanted us to be together. Nancy wanted her marriage to work with Claude. And maybe I wasn’t a big deal to her. I was just a man in the right place. It was just one big rucking mess, and we were right in the middle of it all, trying to work out how to deal with it.’
‘What decision did you reach?’
‘We didn’t get that far.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because Claude appeared.’
Chapter Sixty-One
‘Claude must have been hiding and listening,’ Mike said. ‘He just seemed to step out of the shadows. He was holding some kind of cosh, lead piping wrapped in bandage or something, and he swung it hard.’
Mike wiped his hand across his eyes, his teeth clenched, anger in his voice now.
‘Poor Nancy didn’t even have time to look around,’ Mike said. ‘It got her right on the back of the head, knocked her face hard into the table. Blood flew over me, went onto the table, everywhere. Nancy just slithered onto the floor. She wasn’t moving.’
‘I thought you said you killed Nancy,’ Joe said, scribbling notes.
Mike looked at Joe and nodded slowly. ‘I did, because she wasn’t dead then. But I didn’t know that.’
‘So what did you do?’
Mike looked up as a tear tumbled from his lash. ‘I panicked. Claude was waving the cosh around, saying he was going to hit me next, but as Nancy stayed on the floor he started to panic too. I don’t know if he meant to hit her that hard. Maybe he was just listening and became angry, couldn’t control himself, but as Nancy bled on the floor he became frantic. I became frantic. I wanted to leave, but he said that if anyone found out then everything would come out. Her affair with me, the baby, and so Mary…’ He stopped and looked at the ceiling. ‘…Mary would find out.’
Joe looked surprised at that. ‘Mr Dobson, the woman you claim you loved is lying in a pool of blood on the floor, and you decide to say nothing?’
Mike banged his fist on the table. Alan jumped, but Joe stayed still, his eyes on Mike all the time.
‘I know that it sounds like the wrong thing now,’ Mike said, his teeth gritted, ‘and it was the wrong thing, but I wasn’t fucking thinking straight. I’d seen what happened to Nancy, but we had spent the night talking about what we were going to do.’ He ran his hands over his face. ‘I was going to lose her anyway,’ he said, more distant now. ‘I didn’t mean as much to her. I was a stop-gap, a replacement Claude, some below-stairs affair. So why ruin everything for something I couldn’t change? I thought she was dead, for Christ’s sake. Claude talked me into saying nothing, but that’s what he does, isn’t it? He’s a lawyer. I sell insurance, or double-glazing, or plastic guttering, but Claude sold lies, and sold them well. I was sucked into them. He would live with the guilt, not me. He’d hit her. All I had was the loss.’ Mike put his head down and wiped his eyes. ‘We decided to bury her.’
‘Why bury her in the garden?’
Mike’s chin trembled as he looked at the floor, and his hands wiped the tears into grubby streaks across his cheeks before he looked up again.
‘Because it meant we didn’t have to carry her anywhere.’
‘What did you think Gilbert was going to do after that?’ Joe asked.
‘I don’t think he knew,’ Mike said. ‘It just sort of happened. Maybe he was going to dump her out at sea and forge a suicide letter. Perhaps that’s why he put her in a cavity, because he would know the forensic stuff, and so some time away would give him the
chance to work something out. Then he would just dig out the soil again, and she would be there, under the boards.’
‘Except that she wasn’t dead.’
Mike shook his head. ‘No, she wasn’t dead, but we didn’t know that then. She hadn’t moved for a while, and there was blood everywhere, and so we dug and then we ripped out the planks from the shed. We carried her out and then took off her clothes so there would be nothing from us on her and just, well, we just dropped her into the hole.’
Joe leant forward and spoke with his voice low. ‘So what happened next?’
Mike put his hand over his mouth and sucked in air. He thought he was going to be sick, his stomach turning over fast.
‘I heard the banging,’ he said. ‘It started off light at first, and I thought it was the soil landing on the planks, or maybe it was my pulse—but it got louder.’ He had to take a few short breaths and he licked his lips. ‘I realised then that she was alive and I wanted to get her out of there, but Claude said that it was too late to go back, that it would be attempted murder and my life would be over anyway, that we would go to prison together, that we had to keep going.’ He shook his head, his eyes filled with disbelief. ‘We filled that hole and I walked away, so that she would die down there.’
Joe and Alan exchanged glances, both quietened for a moment, before they turned back to Mike as he started to talk again.
‘I thought I could still hear the knocks coming from under the soil when I walked out of the garden,’ Mike said, his words coming out in a rush, the tears pouring faster now. ‘I left Nancy in there to die because I am a coward. I was too scared to do the right thing when Claude hit her, because I was too scared to face Mary, because I didn’t want to hurt her if she didn’t need to know. And then when I knew Nancy was still alive I became scared for myself, that I would go to prison for the rest of my life. I was naive and cowardly and frightened, thinking that I could go back to my life. But you know what? I couldn’t. The knocking stayed with me, that fucking bang-bang-bang, because all the time I could imagine Nancy underground, frightened, panicking, clawing at the wood, carrying my baby, the child I knew I would never have with Mary…because, you know, you have to actually get close to have a chance.’