Neil White - DEAD SILENT

‘They still will,’ I said. ‘The paper won’t shield him.’

‘Claude told me that any jury will have convicted him before he stands trial, because there have been twenty years of lies told about his case. He wants to give his version first, to make people wonder about his guilt. It will go in the paper on the day he surrenders himself, that’s the deal. If not, he won’t come forward.’

I thought about that and saw how it made sense. If he could have his trial with the doubt already there, he might have a chance. But I wasn’t interested in the trial. I wanted the story before his arrest. Someone else could cover the court case.

‘So tell me your story then,’ I prompted.

Susie nodded and straightened her skirt. ‘I saw him in London, like I said. I had been to see an old friend. She lives in Brighton, so we meet up in London. We went to a show, the usual stuff. I went down on the bus and I was waiting to come home, just hanging around Victoria coach station, having a smoke, when I saw him.’

‘How could you be sure it was Claude Gilbert?’ I said. ‘He’s been on the run for more than twenty years, and there are a lot of people in London. It takes just one to recognise him and his life is over.’

‘One did,’ she said. ‘Me. But no one else would have recognised him, or at least only someone who really knew him. It was just the way he walked, sort of upright, as if he thought the whole street should step to one side.’ Susie must have seen the doubt in my eyes. ‘And it wasn’t just his walk,’ she added quickly.

‘What else?’

‘Oh, it was just everything. I knew Claude Gilbert well, and I knew it was him.’ Susie thought for a moment. ‘He does look a lot different though. He’s fat now, has a bushy beard, all grey, with big glasses, and his hair is long and wild, pulled into a ponytail.’

‘Not quite the dashing gent he used to be?’

Susie laughed. ‘No, not really, but I knew it was him straight away. I shouted “Gilly”, because that’s what I used to call him. No one else called him Gilly, and when I shouted it, he looked straight at me, recognised me straight off. He looked shocked, even scared, and just as I started walking towards him, he marched off really quickly.’

‘Did you think about calling the police?’ I said.

Susie looked less comfortable and shifted around on the sofa. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘So they could catch him. He’s a murderer on the run.’

Susie flashed me a thin smile. ‘He didn’t do it,’ she said quietly. ‘The murder, I mean.’

‘Because he told you? He’s had more than twenty years to get his story straight.’

‘Because I know him, that’s all,’ she said. ‘I know what people thought of him—that he was a show-off—but in private he was a gentle man, tender, not the person he was in public. He couldn’t have murdered his wife.’

‘But he lied to her by sleeping with you,’ I said, before I could stop myself.

‘Being an old flirt doesn’t make him a murderer,’ she said tersely, her face flushing quickly. ‘It wasn’t like that anyway.’

‘What was it like?’

She sighed, and I saw regret in her eyes.

‘He dazzled me, I suppose,’ she said. ‘He took me to places I couldn’t afford, wouldn’t think about going to. I was flattered. People like Claude Gilbert didn’t go out with people like me. He went to public school and spoke properly. I was just a silly girl from Blackley who went to the local comp and who wanted to be a typist.’

‘But he was married.’

‘Yes, he was,’ she replied, her voice stronger now, ‘and so, yes, he lied to his wife. He told me he loved me, and I suppose that was a lie too, back then. But that doesn’t make him a killer.’

‘Was it going on when his wife was killed?’

Susie shook her head. ‘It had ended a few months before.’

‘And were you a couple for long?’

‘Just a few weeks.’

‘Were there others for Claude?’

Susie looked down. ‘Yes, a few. I didn’t know back then, but he’s told me about them now.’ She took a deep breath and looked back up again. ‘This is why I trust him,’ she said. ‘He’s being honest now, because he wants to get his life back.’

I thought about what she said, how she was so certain. I heard Laura’s hairdryer switch off upstairs, Bobby’s chatter filling the gap.

I looked back at Susie. ‘There’s a flaw to your thinking.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if he didn’t do it, why did he run?’ I said. ‘Some people think he was killed as well, buried somewhere and they just haven’t found the body. That’s the only scenario that doesn’t make him a killer. But if he is alive, then he ran, and he made sure he wasn’t found again. That, in most people’s eyes, makes him guilty.’

‘I can only tell you what I know, Mr Garrett,’ Susie said. ‘He is alive, I have met him, and he wants to come home.’

I paused to pull at my lip, just a way of hiding my excitement. But I knew not to get excited. This could be a con-trick, or a delusion.

‘I’m not asking you anything the papers won’t ask,’ I said. ‘Claude Gilbert gets more sightings than Bigfoot, but he still hasn’t been caught. Whoever runs the exclusive will have their rival papers mocking the story.’

‘If Claude comes forward, there’ll be no mocking,’ Susie said.

I couldn’t disagree with that.

‘So, until I turned up today, what do you think had happened to him?’ Susie asked.

I thought back through the stories I’d read, the debunked sightings, the endless speculation. ‘The smart money says that he is living in some exotic country, protected by powerful friends, but people always prefer the exciting versions. That’s why we get rumours about shadowy men on grassy knolls, or secret agents killing princesses in Parisian road tunnels. He hit his pregnant wife and buried her in the garden, alive. He was a criminal lawyer, and so he knew what he faced if he was caught. He emptied his bank account and he ran.’

‘But what if I’m telling the truth, that he didn’t kill Nancy?’

I leant forward. ‘To be honest with you, it doesn’t make a damn jot of difference.’ When she looked surprised, I added, ‘Whatever Claude says, an editor will shape it into ifs and maybes, just to protect the paper, because that’s the editor’s job. Mine will simply be to write the story.’

‘So you will write the story?’ she asked, her eyes brightening for a moment.

I felt the smile creep onto my face, couldn’t stop it. ‘Provided that your story with Claude Gilbert comes out too,’ I said. ‘Full disclosure. Everything about your relationship.’

‘But I thought it would all be about Claude,’ she said, suddenly wary. ‘Everyone will hate me. I was sleeping with a murdered woman’s husband.’

‘Full story or no story,’ I replied. ‘You’ve told me that Claude Gilbert wants to come out of hiding. But what if he chokes and disappears, or if it turns out that I’m being conned, that this person isn’t Claude Gilbert? You’re my back-up story, and I’m not going into this without one.’

Susie put her bag back onto her knees and gripped the handles as she thought about it, then she slowly nodded her agreement.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘We’ll talk in more detail now.’

‘And then what?’

‘By the sound of it, we do whatever Claude wants us to do.’

Susie was about to say something when she looked towards the stairs. As I looked around, I saw that Laura had come into the room. Bobby stood behind her, uncertain.

Susie gave Laura a nervous smile. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for coming so early.’

Laura smiled back. ‘It’s okay. Are you here with a story?’