Dead Silent (22 page)

I had grown up surrounded by police officers, and I knew how they risked their lives and the modesty of the rewards. So Chief Inspector Roach’s house came as a surprise.

It was a detached house set in a large plot, pillars on either side of the front door and a wide brickwork driveway with two cars on the drive, a red Jaguar and a small Mercedes sports car. The wall was low, the black metal gate only around five feet high, I could have vaulted it with a pretty short runup, but still Roach felt the need for an intercom. I pressed and said who I was, that I wanted to write an article on Claude Gilbert, and so I needed to speak to one of the cops who found Nancy. There was a buzz, followed by the slow creep of the gates opening.

The door opened before I got to the front step, and a tall man in cream trousers and a ghastly yellow V-neck stood in the doorway, looking like he was on his way to the golf course.

‘Chief Inspector?’

He nodded and held out his hand to shake. ‘Jack Garrett, did you say?’

‘Thank you for seeing me at short notice,’ I gushed, pumping his hand. ‘I know you’re a busy man.’ Like most people like him, I knew he wouldn’t spot the bullshit if it was wrapped up as flattery.

‘What are you writing about again?’ he asked, as he led me into his house.

He knew what I was writing about, it had got me admitted to his house, but I guessed he wanted fluffing up again.

‘Claude Gilbert, and the people behind the story,’ I said. ‘It isn’t complete without a quote from you, Chief Inspector.’ I glanced around as I went in. The house was bright, with glossy floral wallpaper and polished oak floors that ran throughout the ground floor. ‘How long have you been Chief Inspector?’

‘Five years now,’ he said, showing me into his living room, an open space dominated by a cream leather sofa that filled a corner of the room, opposite a huge television screen and a large white fireplace.

‘What do you find most rewarding about the job?’ I asked, knowing that he would talk for as long as he thought the interview was about him.

‘It’s a joy just to serve the community,’ he said, checking that I was writing it down. ‘To work with Blackley’s diverse communities, to deliver change and go forward. Those are the challenges of the day and I relish the opportunity to tackle them.’

I almost groaned. It was corporate spiel and I realised then how he had got so high in the ranks. Good cops don’t get promoted any more. Good cops just do the job and catch criminals. To get on now, you’ve got to learn the jargon. It seemed like Roach had memorised it.

‘Have you read my book?’ he said.

I skirted around the issue, not having been aware of it until Hunter had mentioned it earlier. I saw a framed book cover on a wall:
Claude Gilbert—The Untold Story.

‘A man of many talents,’ I said. ‘That’s next on my reading list.’

‘Most of what I have to say is in that book. Buy a copy,’ he said.

‘Most?’ I asked. ‘What did you miss out?’

He smiled. ‘Which paper do you work for?’

‘Freelance.’

‘I have a good relationship with the local papers,’ he said. ‘I like to think that it wouldn’t be disturbed by the story you are writing. What’s your angle?’

It was my turn to smile.

‘Buy a copy,’ I said. ‘It’s going in one of the nationals.’

He pursed his lips and flicked at something on his knee as he crossed one leg over the other.

‘What’s your theory?’ I said, trying to retrieve the conversation.

‘There isn’t a theory,’ he said. ‘Just the inescapable facts: Nancy was buried alive, and Claude ran away with the money. There aren’t too many conclusions you can reach.’

‘Is there any way that Claude could be innocent?’ I asked.

Roach shook his head. ‘There were no other suspects.’

‘Alan Lake’s name has cropped up,’ I said. ‘Did anyone look into him?’

Roach took a deep breath at the mention of Lake’s name. ‘Why Alan Lake?’ he asked, his fingers tapping on his nose now.

‘Just a theory I’ve heard.’

He shook his head. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘Alan Lake is a respectable member of society now.’

‘I didn’t know you exchanged postcards,’ I said.

He scratched his cheek with his forefinger, a nervous reaction. ‘Mr Lake has been a big supporter of the police since he turned his life around.’ He sat up and leant forward, his eyes trying to look into mine, but I just examined my notes again, ignoring the close quarters. ‘Is this article about me, or Alan Lake?’ he said.

‘It’s like the direction of the river,’ I said. When he looked confused, I continued, ‘When it sets out, it doesn’t have a destination in mind. It works it out, finds its own route.’

Roach got to his feet. ‘Time to go, Mr Garrett.’

He towered over me now, looking down at me, a hint that my time in his house was done.

‘Okay, thank you for your time,’ I said, putting my notepad back into my pocket. ‘It’s been useful,’ and then I smiled my most insincere smile, just to show that I wasn’t to be cowed. I liked cops, my father was one, but I didn’t think my father would have liked Roach. What people don’t realise is that any response is worth adding to the story. Roach had just given himself a part, particularly if the story drifted towards Alan Lake.

He followed me to the door, but when I emerged back into the sunshine, the door slammed loudly behind me. I returned to my car, happy that his response was worth writing up; as I glanced back through his latticed windows, the thin lead strips ill-matched against the white PVC, I saw that he was talking animatedly into the phone.

I climbed into my car and set off quickly, just to make sure that he didn’t get my registration number. I could do without one of those random police stops that always seem to happen in a less than random way, although I guessed that my 1973 Triumph Stag in Calypso Red didn’t provide much of a disguise.

I knew I had just one more stop to make: Alan Lake.

When Laura arrived back at the station, she heard someone call her name. The atrium was quiet, the canteen staff long gone, just a few officers taking a break with a drink from one of the vending machines. Laura looked up and saw Rachel leaning over the railing outside her temporary office, gesturing with a twitch of the head that she wanted to talk. Laura told Thomas to wait in the briefing room and headed for the stairs.

The climb to the second floor was a long one, and Laura ran her hand along the rail as if it would slow her down gradually before she reached the room. As she had expected, Joe wasn’t there.

Laura composed herself. The meeting with Mike Dobson was still fresh in her mind, and she wondered whether Joe and Rachel knew more than they were letting on.

‘Hello, Laura,’ Rachel Mason said, her smile quick and perfunctory. ‘Take a seat.’

Laura shook her head and leant against the door jamb. ‘I’m okay here, thanks.’

Rachel shrugged. ‘Please yourself.’

There was silence for a few seconds as the two women looked at each other, until Laura broke it by saying, ‘You called me up here?’

‘Okay,’ Rachel said, testily. ‘I’ll start with the same question as before: are you going to tell me what your boyfriend is doing?’

‘You’ll have to ask him that,’ Laura replied.

Rachel sat back in her chair. ‘I can tell you don’t think much of me.’

‘When did this become about you?’

‘When I ended up sitting closer to Joe Kinsella than you,’ Rachel said.

Laura felt herself blush. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh no?’ Rachel said, her eyebrows raised. ‘Maybe my hunches aren’t that good, but I saw the look in your eyes when you saw him again. It put a real bounce in your step for a few seconds.’ She tapped a pen on the edge of the desk. ‘I’m not competition, Laura. He’s not my type.’

‘Too intellectual?’ Laura asked caustically.

‘Too old,’ came the reply. ‘But I do want to meet your other love, Jack Garrett.’

‘What if he doesn’t want to meet you?’

Rachel smiled. ‘That will be between me and him, because you wouldn’t get in our way, would you?’ When Laura took a deep breath, Rachel added, ‘I’ll be in that coffee house by the cathedral in an hour. If you ask him to meet me, he might just get an exclusive.’

Laura folded her arms.

‘Thank you, PC McGanity,’ Rachel said, and then returned to her paperwork, an unsubtle hint that the meeting was over.

The Alan Lake house was as I expected it. I had made some calls and it had been described as a glass and steel newbuild. I could have drawn it before I’d even seen it, large windows built into the slope of a hill and a turf roof, doing its best
to disguise itself. I could guess the brief to the architect: they wanted something different, a statement of their individuality, without intruding on the landscape. Except that they ended up with the same glass and steel box built by everyone else who tried to be different. And maybe I’m being a little
too
green, but if you don’t want your house to spoil the landscape, try not building it in the first place.

The Triumph rattled on towards the house until I drew it to a halt next to the raised decking at the front. I looked back and admired the view, the rooftops of Blackley just visible, although I still couldn’t help but think that the spot would have been considerably more blissful before Alan Lake poured tons of concrete into the ground.

I tried to call Claude Gilbert, but he wasn’t answering his phone; I was starting to question the wisdom of walking away from him.

As I stepped out of the car, Alan Lake came out of the house and waved a greeting, although the way he walked towards me told me that it was more of a warning that I’d been spotted than a welcome to the house. He held his shoulders back and walked with that Manchester swagger—like a waddle—and his fringe was long and trailed into his eyes. Its grey hue as it caught the sunshine told me that the dye was in need of a top-up.

‘I don’t think we’ve met before,’ he said, his voice nasal. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I’m a reporter,’ I said. ‘I hope you don’t mind me cold-calling, but I didn’t have your number.’

As I climbed the deck steps to greet him, he seemed to diminish in front of me. He was small, around five six, but wiry with it, his cheekbones pressing against his skin. When we shook hands, his grip was firm and the veins bulged on his hands.

He nodded graciously and smiled. ‘No, it’s fine. Good to see you.’ He gestured towards the house. ‘Come on in.’

I’d read up on Alan Lake after Tony’s visit the night before. He’d made his name as a hoodlum during the Manchester buzz of the late eighties, piggy-backing on the music scene, the long fringes and the drugs at a time when all the college kids from the northern suburbs claimed to be ‘mad for it’ and replaced their rounded tones with a Mancunian whine. In reality, Lake had been nothing more than a street-level drug dealer who was handy with his fists, but because he preferred the bright lights of the local clubs to hanging around in alleyways, he became a face, some celebrity clients adding to his status. He got some hardman kudos when he went to prison and drifted back to his native Blackley when his status made bad men jealous.

As I went into the house, the green of the countryside turned into the pristine white of an art gallery, with large monochrome pictures on the wall, nude portraits of a reclining woman, and pieces of sculpture mounted on plinths. I sat down on a large sofa in the middle of the living room, and glanced up to see a large wooden balcony overlooking the space I was in.

‘Who do you work for?’

‘I’m freelance.’

He cast his hand towards the pieces of sculpture in the room. One was a hand that reached for the sky, but a chain came up with it and pulled it back, the tendons stretched out on the wrist as the hand strained upwards. ‘Do you like them?’

I considered it for a few seconds, just to be polite, and then I said, ‘I’m a reporter, not a critic.’

‘Do you understand them?’ he said, his eyes watching me carefully.

‘That’s the first refuge for those seeking to avoid real opinion,’ I said. ‘It casts the weakness onto the other side.’

Or maybe he was making sure that I knew about his dangerous past.

‘It doesn’t sound like I’ll get a good write-up,’ he said dryly, and I spotted some annoyance in the way he pursed his lips. He was more used to the fawning—people telling him how he had captured pain, laid bare the tortured soul of the captive man.

‘Don’t worry about your art,’ I said. ‘I’m here for a different story.’

‘Go on,’ he said, and I saw that his smile had become strained, his eyes a little darker.

‘Claude Gilbert,’ I said. ‘He was one of your former barristers, so I hear.’

His eyelids flickered for a few seconds and then he took a deep breath, impatience clouding his expression. ‘I’ve nothing to say about Claude Gilbert.’

‘I’m surprised at that, because his disappearance delayed your trial and kept you locked up,’ I said. ‘Although it helped you out in the end, I suppose, when the retrial went your way.’

‘You need to be careful what you say,’ he said. ‘Because if you know that, you know that I was in prison when his wife was buried alive. It was nothing to do with me.’

I heard a noise and looked up. There was a woman looking down from the balcony, elegant and dark, much taller than Lake, her figure clad in tight black leggings and matching polo neck, her hair straight and cascading onto her shoulders.

‘Don’t worry about Adrianne,’ he said, flicking his hand towards her. ‘We’ve no secrets. You see, it’s all been written before.’ As if that were a stage cue, Adrianne started to glide
down the stairs that swept down in a wide curve and then strode haughtily towards Lake. It was obvious that she was a former model—I could tell that from the poised way she walked—and when she sat next to him, he smiled at me, his hand on her leg. It looked like Adrianne was his greatest prize. ‘And don’t you think I’ve had this conversation too many times now?’ he said. ‘You won’t catch me out with an ambiguous quote. And I sue people. Remember that.’

‘I just want your side of things, how you felt when Gilbert went missing,’ I said.