Читать книгу DEAD SILENT - Neil White - Страница 19

I was sitting in my garden as I flicked through the newspaper articles Tony had dropped through my door. I had views over Turners Fold to distract me, the strips of grey terraced houses and small fingers of chimneys sitting between the slopes, and towards the jagged lines of drystone walls dividing up the hills, black and white dots of cattle sprinkled as far as I could see.

I took a sip from my wine glass and noticed how Claude Gilbert’s house looked different in the old black and white photographs, the garden slightly overgrown, less formal. I smiled as I held up a photograph of Claude, the one that had spread to the nationals, his dark hair thick, a superior smirk. Did he really want to come home? I plucked an article from the bottom of the pile and saw that the picture used was the full photograph, with Nancy Gilbert sitting next to him, an austere look on her face. The photographs used later were more relaxed shots, showing her laughing and happy, as if they were meant to prick the general conscience—the public wouldn’t warm to the hunt if she was some uptight rich bitch.

As I read the articles, I saw nothing new, just stuff that had been rehashed countless times since. I slipped the cuttings back into the envelope when I heard the hum of car tyres and watched as Laura’s charcoal-grey Golf crunched onto the gravel outside our gate. As she stepped out of the car, her white shirt open at the neck, I raised my wine glass. ‘It’s open,’ I said.

‘So I see,’ she replied, and gave me a weary smile. When she joined me at the table, a glass in one hand, she put her arm around my neck and her head on my shoulder. I could feel the collar of her stiff white shirt, and, as I reached behind and felt her legs, my hands brushed over the coarse regulation black trousers and my fingers crackled with static.

‘It still seems strange, seeing you in your uniform,’ I said, as I got the waft of her perfume mixed in with the sweat of the cells. I had put Bobby to bed, but from the shouting I could hear drifting through the open window he must have heard the car. ‘I’ll go say goodnight in a minute,’ she said sleepily. ‘I just need to slow down for five minutes.’

‘Life tough at the top?’

‘I’ll tell you when I get there,’ she said, and stretched out a yawn. ‘I’ll need to do some revision soon though. It feels like I’ve forgotten how to study. I wasn’t the best at it in university, but I must have done it at some point.’

‘I was a crammer,’ I said. ‘Go out until Easter, and then just rush it through at the end.’

‘But you were younger then. So was I. This is a sergeant’s exam. I’m supposed to know the stuff already.’

‘You’ll do it easily,’ I said. ‘It’s just about staying cool enough to remember what you already know.’

She sighed. ‘I’m already the old stager.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was holding the hand of a new one today,’ Laura said. ‘He didn’t look old enough to be crossing the road on his own.’

‘I’m sure someone said that about you once,’ I said.

Laura grimaced. ‘That’s why I don’t like it. It just feels like it’s all slipping by too fast.’ She squeezed me and then murmured in my ear, ‘Will you still love me when I pass my exams?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ll have to stay in this uniform for a while longer,’ she said, ‘at least until I can go back into CID.’

I turned to face her, and sneaked a soft kiss. ‘I like it,’ I said, and then I raised my eyebrows mischievously. ‘Could we, you know, just once, in the uniform?’

‘And the handcuffs?’ She tapped my nose playfully. ‘I’ll try not to make them too tight,’ she said, and then she peeled away from me. ‘I’m going to say goodnight to Bobby.’

I grabbed her hand. ‘Before you go, I’ve got a scenario for you,’ I said. ‘Think of it as revision.’

Laura turned and looked at me. ‘Go on.’

‘Someone is wanted by the police. If there was a sighting of him, would I be obliged to report it?’

‘Who is it?’

I shook my head. ‘No names.’

She paused at that and tapped her lip with her finger. ‘I’m trying to think of what crime it would be if you didn’t.’ After a few more seconds, she said: ‘It would depend on what you did with the information. If you alerted him to help him get away, or gave him shelter, then yes, but if you just failed to report it, I’m not sure we could do much.’

I nodded to myself. ‘That’s what I thought,’ I said quietly, and let go of her hand.

As I took a sip of wine, I realised that Laura was staring at me.

‘Is it something to do with the woman who was here this morning?’ she said.

‘I don’t reveal my sources, you know that,’ I replied.

‘I don’t need to pass my sergeant’s exam to work out that she’s connected,’ she said. ‘But is it anything that will get you into trouble?’

I raised my glass and smiled. ‘I’ll tell you when I find out more. There is one thing I have to do though.’

‘Which is what?’

‘Go to London,’ I said.

‘And what will you do when you get there?’

Laura looked at me strangely when I said, ‘Hopefully, make us rich.’

Frankie stared through his binoculars from behind a stone wall, his knees in long grass.

He had ridden into Turners Fold and asked questions about the reporter in the old red sports car. He got lucky, because the third person he asked knew where Jack Garrett lived.

It had been a long time since he had been in Turners Fold. It had once been on his cycle route, the long pull out of Blackley, and then a fast green run into Turners Fold, freewheeling along a road bordered by straggly grass verges and drystone walls until he hit the fringes of the town, as the country views turned into small-town huddles. He used to like sitting by the canal and eating ice cream as the barges drifted past, and the people on board always waved back at him as he sat by the bridge, dipping his feet into the water as he rested his legs.

But that had been a long time ago, when his mother had been alive. She would run him a bath for when he got back, sweaty and tired, always hungry, and he would tell her what he had seen. He missed that more than anything. It was all part of her being around, more than just someone to clean for him or make his meals. He’d had someone to share his secrets with, the things he could see from his window, who wouldn’t laugh at him for thinking like he did.

It was an easier ride now. His Vespa purred up the hills, and so he was able to take in the views as he got higher and the air became fresher.

Frankie had seen the car before he reached the house, the red Triumph parked on a small patch of pink gravel at the front of a grey cottage, its stones large and worn, the old slates on the roof jagged and uneven. He had pulled into a small track by a farm gate and then switched off the scooter’s engine and clambered over the gate, binoculars in his hand. He had walked along the wall until he could get a good view of the house, to see who else was there before he spoke to the reporter.

He knelt down so that the lenses just peeked over the wall. He saw the reporter, a glass of wine in his hand, but then Frankie was jolted when he saw who else was there.

He ducked down quickly. She was a police officer—he could tell that from the stiff trousers and the white shirt—and that scared him. He didn’t want the police at his house.

But she had looked pretty, and so he got to his knees and looked again towards the house.

He liked the way she smiled as she leant over the reporter and then gave a giggle. She was just back from work and it had been a warm day. She would be taking a shower soon. He scanned the house with his binoculars, looking for the bathroom, and then he found it. There was frosted glass in the window, but the top pane was partly open and he could see the clear glass of a shower cubicle.

His hand scrambled around in his bag as he nudged the notepads and yesterday’s newspapers aside, until he found his camera. It felt hot in his hand. He closed his eyes for a moment and apologised. To his mother. To the policewoman at the cottage. And to himself. He knew he shouldn’t, that it was wrong to look at naked women, his mother had told him that. But he wanted to see her. As long as she didn’t know he was there, where was the harm in that?

He watched as she went inside and then, as the light went on in the bathroom, he trained his camera on the window, waiting.