Читать книгу DEAD SILENT - Neil White - Страница 23

Frankie parked his scooter in the same place as he had the day before, near the cottage outside Turners Fold, his helmet chained and padlocked to the footboards. He clambered over the gate again and set off along the two-rut track, looking around as he went, checking that no one could see him. When he got close to where he had been the night before, the spot marked by a stick jammed into the ground, he crawled along the floor to make sure that he couldn’t be seen, his knees swishing through the long grass that gathered against the wall.

He peeped over the wall and smiled when he saw he had the same view, that he’d got it right. The bathroom window was closed now but the curtains to the bedroom were open, like they had been the night before, when he had caught her as she went in after her shower, a towel around her body.

He wanted to get closer now. He had taken a few pictures the night before. He had trained his camera on her but then turned away as her towel slipped down her body. His camera had carried on clicking though, because he knew it was different that way. He wasn’t looking at her body, he knew it was wrong to do that, but his pictures were different. They were just photographs, not really her. Not really any of them. His photographs. Just scrambles of colour.

He reached into his bag and produced his water bottle. He knew he could be there for a long time.

Then he noticed that her car wasn’t there. There was the red sports car, but the house looked dark.

It was time to get closer.

I found Susie waiting for me under the vast timetable at Victoria station as we’d arranged, conspicuous in her heels and short skirt among the backpackers and metropols. I weaved through the travellers; when I caught Susie’s eye, she rushed towards me and grabbed me by the arm.

‘About time,’ she said, her voice tetchy.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘Why the urgency?’

‘Because I can’t smoke in here,’ she said, and she set off towards the exit.

‘Slow down,’ I said, laughing. ‘Don’t you want to know how I’ve got on?’

‘Walk and talk,’ she said. Once we got outside, she pulled a cigarette packet from her handbag and lit up quickly. She blew smoke past me and sighed. ‘Go on, what’s the news?’ she said, suppressing a cough but seeming calmer now.

‘I went to speak to my old editor.’

Susie looked suspicious. ‘You told me that much, but why couldn’t I come along?’

‘Because I didn’t want you to be annoyed if he wasn’t interested.’

‘And is he interested?’

I nodded and smiled. ‘Oh yeah, he’s buying,’ I said, although when a smile broke across her face too, I added quickly, ‘but Claude’s got to come forward. Without him, you are the story, and if it’s just you, you won’t get much more than a new handbag out of it. And it could ruin your life.’

Susie took another long pull on her cigarette, a determined look in her eyes. ‘He’ll come forward,’ she said. ‘Follow me. I know where we need to be.’

She walked off ahead of me, towards the jukebox rumble that drifted onto the street from the Shakespeare, a red-fronted pub opposite the station, though the music couldn’t compete with the constant roar of diesel engines from the stream of buses and taxis. It was a busy corner of London and right now it seemed like everyone—suits and shoppers, groups of old ladies—was leaving, heading for the trains or coach station.

Susie pointed ahead, past a double-decker heading to Brixton. ‘That’s where I first saw him, crossing the road there,’ she said. ‘He was carrying a Sainsbury’s bag, with a newspaper under his arm.’

‘So he was living around here, not just passing through,’ I said.

Susie smiled. ‘You’re sharp.’

‘So why don’t we just go to where he is, if he’s not far away?’ I said, trying hard to keep the frustration out of my voice.

‘Because this is how he wants it.’

‘And how long do we wait?’

‘Until he feels the time is right,’ Susie said.

‘Is he watching us now?’ I asked, looking around.

Susie shrugged. ‘Possibly,’ she said. ‘Probably, even.’ She brandished her phone. ‘He’ll call me, when the time is right.’

I sighed, impatient. I pointed to a small park nearby, really just a triangle of grass behind black railings. ‘We’ll go in there and wait.’

We crossed over and stepped up to the gate, but it was locked. Instead, we had to settle on the wall near to a statue of some old soldier. I tried to give myself a good view down the street towards where Susie had said she’d first seen him, but I couldn’t help wondering again whether this was some elaborate hoax. And for what purpose? Susie looked ill at ease as she sat on the wall. It was low down, really just a base for the railings, and so she had to position her legs side-saddle to protect her modesty. She kicked away an old sandwich carton and then slipped off her coat. I saw her tattoo, barbed wire wrapped around her arm, the black now faded to grey, the sharp outlines made jagged by time.

‘He must have friends down here, someone sheltering him,’ I said. ‘A person couldn’t stay hidden for this long without someone helping him.’

Susie didn’t answer. Instead, she blew smoke into the air as she lit another cigarette.

‘Do you think it might have worked out for you and Claude if he hadn’t been married?’ I asked.

Susie looked up at that, and the sunlight caught the makeup on her face, the powder dry in her creases. ‘Maybe,’ she said, and then she smiled, lost for a moment in some old nostalgic thought. ‘They were good times, you know. He was an old romantic really, despite what you might think of him.’

‘I don’t think anything of him,’ I replied. ‘I just don’t buy that image, that’s all, not when he was a married man.’

‘You make it sound dirty. It wasn’t like that.’

‘Whatever it was like, he was betrothed to someone else.’

‘You don’t strike me as a man high on morals.’

‘Neither are many newspaper editors,’ I said, ‘but their readers might be, and so they’ll write it up to suit. Especially the papers that don’t get the exclusive. You’ll make some money, sure, but the cash will be tarnished, and your life will stop being your own.’

Susie nodded as if she understood, but then she said, ‘It’s not about the money. It’s about Claude getting his life back. We’ll need the money, and that’s why we’re doing it like this, but people will be interested in him, not me.’ Then she sighed, and for the first time I saw a trace of regret flicker into her eyes. ‘If Nancy hadn’t died, do you think our little fling would have mattered?’ she said. ‘So he was a bit of a rat. Most men are, but the person I knew was also tender and caring. That was the memory of Claude Gilbert I carried through the years.’

‘And now?’

‘Just the same. He seems sadder, that’s all, worn out, but still a good man.’

I held up my hand in apology. ‘Okay, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I just don’t like having my time wasted, that’s all.’

‘I can only tell you it from my side,’ she said quietly, and then we both returned to watching the stream of passers-by.

‘Will Claude be able to answer the main question people will ask?’ I said.

Susie looked up. ‘Which is?’

‘If he didn’t kill Nancy, who did?’

Susie let out a breath at that and scratched the side of her mouth with a varnished nail. ‘I’ll let him tell you that.’

We stayed there for over two hours, watching the traffic get busier as time crawled towards the evening rush hour. I scanned the pavements, looking for a glimpse of someone that might be Claude Gilbert, but I couldn’t spot him. Susie smoked incessantly, and the ground around her feet became a collection of brown dog-ends as we made small talk.

‘Why don’t you just ring him?’ I said eventually.

Susie shook her head. ‘That’s not how he wants it. It has to be on his terms.’ She must have spotted my scowl, because she added, ‘I need a drink. I’m sorry it’s not worked out yet, so let me make it my round.’ When I looked at her, she smiled. ‘It’s the least I could do.’

I felt a stab of guilt. Susie knew that, for as long as Claude Gilbert didn’t appear, the story would become about her, the northern girl who loved her murderer on the run, maybe the last mistress before the murder; I knew how much her life would change.

‘No, don’t worry,’ I said, returning the smile. ‘It’s on me.’

Susie looked pleased with that, and we moved away from the rush of Victoria to the peace and quiet of Belgravia.