Читать книгу DEAD SILENT - Neil White - Страница 21

The early morning train to London was busy, filled with pensioners on cheap advance bookings. The journey was shorter than it used to be, just a couple of hours from Lancashire to the bright lights, and the aisles were busy as people tottered to the buffet car to relieve the monotony. A group of Scottish students swapped boyfriend-talk on the opposite table and the air was filled with the smell of sandwiches. I looked up as I saw Susie making her way towards me, two coffees in her hands, a magazine tucked under her arm.

‘I thought we might have gone first class,’ she said as she lowered herself into her seat. ‘We’re going to make some big money from this.’

‘You wouldn’t like first class,’ I said. ‘You get free coffee, but you’ll also get businessmen trying to impress the rest of the carriage.’

Susie smiled and slid one of the coffees over to me.

‘When do I get to meet Claude?’ I asked.

Susie didn’t answer at first, as she fiddled with the lid on her coffee. ‘Whenever he calls,’ she replied eventually.

‘But you know where he lives. Why can’t we just go there?’

‘Like I told you, he needs to know that you’re on your own, that he can trust you,’ Susie said.

‘You can vouch for that.’

‘How do I know someone hasn’t been following us since we met this morning?’ When I didn’t answer, she said, ‘We just go to where I’ve been told to go and we hang around. Claude will find us, don’t worry.’

I thought about the prospect of meeting Claude Gilbert, and it was hard not to smile. I took a drink of coffee, and then said, ‘Claude comes second though. I need to see someone first.’

‘How do I know you’re not speaking to the police?’ she said, shocked.

‘You don’t,’ I replied. ‘But these stories don’t sell themselves. I’m trusting you, and so you’ve got to trust me.’

Susie considered this before saying, ‘But will they let you write it up how Claude wants it?’

I looked out of the window as I thought about that. The truthful answer was that they would go with what they think will sell papers and they wouldn’t give a damn about Claude, but maybe it was too early for a lesson in the cold world of journalism. Fugitives don’t get copy approval.

‘If it is Claude, then yes,’ I lied, ‘but the story might change if he goes to prison.’

‘But he won’t,’ Susie said. ‘He didn’t kill Nancy.’

I turned away again and looked at the reflection of my cup in mid-air, a ghost against the backyards of some Midlands town that we were racing through, the landscape getting brighter. I could see Susie in the reflection too, but as London got closer, the cold reality of having to sell her story to a ruthless press started to sink in, and so I began to wonder whether her story really made sense, that Claude Gilbert could have been undiscovered all these years—but I was willing to gamble my reputation on the chance that I was about to write the best story of my career.

Mike Dobson lay alone in bed while Mary cleaned the kitchen downstairs. He thought he could still smell the night before on him, the latex on his fingers, her cigarette smoke in his hair. And it seemed like Mary knew. He didn’t know how, but she always seemed different after he went for a drive. Maybe it was the way that he no longer pawed her or tried to tease out a response, hoping that their sex life would reignite just once and become something more than it had been for most of their marriage. Or perhaps the flush to his cheeks gave him away.

Mary always cleaned the house afterwards. At least that’s how it seemed.

He turned over and looked towards the window. He could see the tops of the sycamore trees in the park nearby, giving the roofs a frame, and birds swirled overhead. It felt like freedom out there. In here, it was stifling.

He closed his eyes. It had once been good with Mary, but they had been younger then. She had been the quiet girl who worked on the tills when he had his first job in a supermarket. He had loved her the first moment he saw her, from the nervous way she toyed with her hair to the way she blushed when he tried to make a joke. But their sex life had always been the same, all shy and coy, as if, for Mary, it had only ever been about the closeness afterwards.

They should have had children, and maybe that would have changed things, but they had found it difficult. For a while it became all about producing children, so the fertile days turned into an obligation, and as they failed, as all Mary’s friends got families, Mary became colder.

It was just the way it was, he knew that, but Mary hadn’t seen it that way.

He hadn’t meant to look outside of the marriage, but it had come along when he wasn’t expecting it.

He put the pillow around his ears and tried to stop himself thinking of it. It had gone on too long now. He prayed for the day when he could get through a summer and not see her face, red, bloody, or hear her shouts. But the memories hit him like a punch each time.

He heard a car pull up outside, and he wondered again whether it was a police car, that gnawing dread of discovery back again, but then he heard the loud chatter of his neighbour.

He threw back the sheets and sat on the edge of the bed. As he looked around the room he saw a shadow just disappear from view, like someone skipping through the doorway. He ran his hand across his forehead. He had the sweats again. He always got them at this time of year, when the scents brought everything back. He needed to get out of the house. He had to sell things, it was what he did, but the fake smiles were wearing grooves into his cheeks. To make money he had to overprice, but the internet and lack of credit made people shop around.

Maybe it wouldn’t matter, he told himself. So what if he lost all of this? He could go abroad, sell cold beers and hot pies to expat Brits in a Spanish seafront bar; for a moment, as he thought of it, his life seemed to have a point. But then his mood darkened again. He knew that he couldn’t. He felt tied to Blackley, as if events beyond his control would occur if he went elsewhere and the life he wanted to leave behind would just drag him straight back.

He climbed out of bed and went to the shower. He had to start another day.