Dead Silent (38 page)

‘But you’ve seen me.’

‘So has Susie,’ she said. ‘Is she going with you?’

He shook his head. ‘I had a free life before she came along. I was poor, but no one knew where I was. So no, she is not coming with me.’

Before she could say anything else, he pushed her forward so that she almost stumbled on the river bank. ‘Go to it,’ he snarled.

She looked up and the knife went to her neck again. Laura thought it best to do as he said. She didn’t know what lay ahead, or even what was behind this, but if she swung at him and missed, she might find it too hard to defend herself against his knife.

As they got to the shelter, Laura saw that there was soil piled up near the entrance, the outline detectable in the moonlight. She tried to peer into the interior, but it was too dark, only faint shadows visible.

‘Where’s Susie?’ Laura said, suddenly stopping.

‘You’ll see soon enough.’

‘What have you done with her?’

‘The same as I’m doing with you,’ Claude said, and then he gave Laura a sharp jab in the back to propel her forward, and she stumbled onto the soil as it rose up.

Then it came to her. The soil, the darkness, no sign of Susie.

Laura turned and got to her knees, to try and move away, get out of the shelter, but she felt a push in her chest. She tumbled backwards over the soft soil, tried to put her arms out to balance herself, but her hands were tied together, so when she felt the ground fall away, she had no choice but to fall with it.

Laura braced herself, waited for the floor, cold soil against her back, but it wasn’t there—she kept on falling, a few feet more than she was expecting. Her shoulder took the brunt once more.

Her fall was broken by something soft, but the breath was still punched out of her. She tried to turn over, but her ribs sent jabs of pain through her body. Then she heard movement above her, dragging and grunting. Laura looked up. She could see the edge of what looked like a hole, and above that the moonlight.

Laura tried to roll over to scramble to her knees, but then she heard Claude give a final groan of effort. As she looked up, the moonlight disappeared as something moved across its path. She screamed and something hit her. It was heavy and it slammed down, hit her head hard, knocked her onto her back and then stopped inches above her face, as if it had caught on a ledge. Laura hit out at it. It was a sheet of metal, riveted along a joint in the middle, and it pinned her to the ground. There was more noise from above, like rocks clanging loudly, and then she heard Claude shout, ‘Jack didn’t have to go that far.’

‘Let me out!’ she screamed.

‘He went too far,’ he shouted again. ‘He only had to raise the doubt.’

Laura kicked out again, but heard only more bangs in response, like rocks and dirt landing on the metal. She tried to push against it with her bound hands but it was too heavy.
Her head was filled with the noises above, the thuds becoming fainter with each second.

She tried to assess the situation, her heart racing, her mind trying to process what was happening. But it was all going too quickly.

She was on her back, a metal sheet just inches from her nose. It was pitch black, so that she had no sense of the space she was in, except that she couldn’t sit up. She felt the panic rise and tried to move herself along, to see where she could go, but her feet hit something—the edge of the hole she thought. She squirmed the other way and her head hit dirt. Six inches spare at either end. There were still noises above, but they were soft and muffled.

Laura closed her eyes. Stay calm, she told herself. She had to work her way out of this. But the terror was surging through her, the confined space, the darkness; her chest was tight, her throat constricted. She wanted to kick and thrash, as if that would somehow get her out, but she fought the impulse, taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly. She had to stay in control.

Laura reached to one side and her bound hands crept slowly across the dirt, fingers feeling in the soil until they hit something soft. It was fabric and, running her hands along it, she could feel that the cloth was coarse. As Laura felt higher, she found a loop, and then she yelped as she felt flesh, cold and soft. She realised that the loop was for a belt. Laura swallowed hard and took some deep breaths. She remembered her landing; something broke her fall. Now she knew why. Someone was in there with her.

She tried to move away but didn’t have the room. She counted to ten, tried to calm down, and then she reached out again. She felt the stomach, and then she ran her hand further up. It was a woman, Laura could tell from the rise
and fall of her contours, and then her fingers felt the tangle of hair.

Laura knew straight away. It was brittle, like Susie’s dyed blonde hair. She moved the hair away and felt something sticky. Blood was her guess. Susie’s cheeks were cold, and Laura strained to lift her hands to Susie’s mouth to try and feel the warm whisper of her breath. There was nothing.

Laura screamed, the noise loud in her ears, echoing back off the metal lid; but she knew that no one above could hear her. Claude had dug a hole for her and now he had gone on the run. But she screamed just the same, screeching as loud as she could until her throat hurt.

And when she stopped and gasped for breath, she realised that all was silent. No one would ever hear her.

I was jolted awake by the ringing of my phone, loud in my ear. I scrambled around for it, knocking it onto the floor at first, and finally answered in a tired mumble.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s Tony.’

I looked at the clock. It was later than I thought. Nearly eight o’clock. I squinted at the daylight. Rain speckled the windows. So that was the summer. As always, over before the solstice.

‘What can I do for you?’ I asked.

‘I’m just calling to congratulate on the front page,’ he said. ‘It’s good stuff, Jack, with your byline nice and large. You’re going to be in demand for a while. This could be award time, finding Claude Gilbert.’

I didn’t speak at first. I thought about Claude, I had found him and lost him. And then I thought about Harry. I had let him down.

‘Jack?’

‘Huh? Sorry, Tony, I’m just tired, that’s all.’

‘That’s okay,’ he said, and then, ‘but you didn’t use any of my stuff.’

‘What stuff?’

‘The papers I brought round the other night. There was
some good material in there. Perhaps they’re saving it for a follow-up?’

I sighed and rubbed my face. ‘I’m sorry, Tony. I owe you an apology. Someone went through my papers that night, and we had a police officer on the sofa. Your papers went. I wrote the story from memory.’

‘What do you mean,
went?’

‘Just that. The police were here, trying to find out what I knew, getting heavy, but then I went to a murder scene. One of the detectives stayed behind, and the next morning, your papers were gone.’

‘The police didn’t take your papers,’ Tony said.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because Alan Lake would be in custody—and Chief Inspector Roach.’

That woke me up. ‘It’s too early for puzzles. What do you mean?’

‘Did you read what I left?’

‘I’m sorry, Tony, but I didn’t get round to it.’

‘That’s a shame,’ Tony said. ‘I can get it again, if you need it. It will make for a good follow-up.’

‘You’re being cryptic,’ I said. ‘What do you mean about Alan Lake and Paul Roach?’

Tony chuckled. ‘They were more than just Claude’s last client and the cop who dug up Nancy. They were also Claude’s landlords.’

Tony’s words weren’t registering. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The address on Lower Belgrave Street, where Claude lived, as Josif Petrovic,’ he said. ‘Alan Lake and Roach own it. Or at least their company does. Northern Works Limited. I wanted to know how Claude could rent somewhere and stay hidden, and so I made some enquiries at the Land Registry, and then at Companies House, like I told you. I called the company
secretary, Lake’s accountant, told him that I was interested in buying it. He told me that the flat wasn’t for sale, that Lake used it as his London crash pad whenever he needed to go down to the capital. He paid rent to the company and then set it off against his personal tax bill. But he never paid enough on it to make it profitable, and so his company didn’t pay corporation tax. All the time, the flat increased in value, part-funded by the taxman.’

‘Except that Claude was living there,’ I said.

‘It seems that way,’ Tony said. ‘I don’t know what Claude has on Lake or Roach to make them help him out, but it must be something good, because there’s nothing in it for Lake. Even less for Roach. It’s career-ending for him.’

I blew out. ‘Wow, that is good stuff. Now I know why Lake was getting twitchy.’

I thanked him for the information, and then headed upstairs to wake Laura. It was getting near school time, and I thought she would have been up by now.

I walked into the bedroom and stopped. Laura wasn’t there. I remembered the unlocked front door. Where was she?

I heard a noise behind me and turned to see Bobby, his hair ruffled, coming out of his bedroom.

He looked up at me as I stared at him. Something was wrong. Laura would never leave Bobby alone in the house. Not ever.

He must have sensed my thoughts, because he began to look frightened. I went to my knees to reassure him.

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘We need to go out quickly, Bobby. We’re in a rush.’

He looked at me as if he didn’t believe me. I took him back into his room to get him ready, the routine stuff, so that he wouldn’t guess what was going on. Once he was dressed, I took him outside.

My stomach took a jolt when I saw that Laura’s car was still there. And I saw something else. A Vespa, pulled onto its stand. Frankie was sitting on it, his coat pulled over his head to shelter him from the rain, his feet pulled up onto the footboards.

‘Bobby, get in the car,’ I said. Once he was in there, I walked across to Frankie. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

He pulled his coat down. ‘I like watching Laura,’ he said, an arrogant smirk on his face. ‘She’s pretty.’

‘Don’t push me,’ I said, teeth gritted. ‘I am really not in the fucking mood.’

He sat upright on the scooter and pulled on the crash helmet, grinning as he fastened the strap. ‘I saw her,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I saw her last night.’

‘Who, Laura?’

‘Not just Laura. She was with someone else. An old man.’

A chill rippled through my body. An old man. Claude? Had he been here, with Laura?

‘He took her to his car.’

‘What do you mean,
took her?’
I said, and gripped his arm.

‘I followed them,’ Frankie continued, his cheeks flushing slightly, pulling his arm out of my grip. ‘I was here, you see, hoping for another picture. The police took my others, and Laura is special. I like her. I wanted some more, but you’ve started closing your curtains.’

I remembered the flash from the night before.

‘You give me what’s mine, and I’ll tell you more,’ he said. ‘But not before,’ and then he pressed down hard on the kickstart pedal. ‘I’ve seen him before,’ he shouted over the engine noise.

I coughed as I was shrouded in two-stroke fumes, and then Frankie clunked his Vespa into first gear before setting off, his tyres sluicing through the water gathering in the road.

I was left alone, rain wetting my clothes, Bobby watching me from the car.

Susie moved. It was a twitch, like a kick of the leg. Her foot banged on the metal sheet. Laura took some deep breaths.

The cold had been tough, and her bare feet were numb. She thought about Bobby. Had Claude gone back for him?

No, don’t think about that, she told herself.

Then Susie moved once more.

Laura knew that she was dead; she had heard about this from mortuary assistants, spasms after death, something to do with rigor mortis and the contraction of the muscles. She did her best not to think about the dead body next to her.

Then she heard a light buzz. She thought about that. Susie might have been dead for a couple of hours before she was thrown in here, maybe more, so that Claude would have time to dig the hole. So Susie had been left out in the open, dead, blood on her head. Enough time for the flies to land. And the spasm must have disturbed them.

She blew at the buzzing to get the fly away, but its drone was loud under the metal. Then she heard another.

Laura knew how it would happen. The flies land and lay their eggs. The maggots come out. They turn into flies, and the cycle gets repeated over and over. They will burrow into the body, feed on Susie, break her down into flesh and mush.

Laura gagged, tried to turn over so that she wouldn’t choke on her vomit, but her shoulders jammed against the metal. Her mouth filled with the acid taste. How long would it take? Would it happen to Susie as she lay next to her?

She kept her eyes shut, it was the only way she could pretend that she wasn’t trapped. She had to remain still, not think about where she was. If she thought about it, she would
thrash again, her hands and legs banging uselessly against the metal, unable to sit up or move sideways. That would use up oxygen. There was blood on her toes from where she had kicked out.

Pretend to be in bed, she told herself. Relax. Lie down. No need to sit up. Then Susie groaned, a long drawn-out moan.

Laura grimaced, tried not to think about it, but she felt drawn to reach out, to touch Susie. Maybe Susie was just unconscious, or in a coma?

Laura’s bound hands crawled along the small space between them, straining her shoulder until she felt Susie’s cold arm. It felt stiff. She pushed against it in the vain hope that she could wake her, but the arm was rigid, tensed.

Laura turned her face away. Susie was dead, she knew that now. Rigor mortis had set in. Claude wasn’t going to come back for Susie. For either of them.

Tears of desperation flashed into Laura’s eyes, a sob stuck in her throat, and she wished for death. Make it quick. Then she thought of Bobby and realised that she needed to get out, that she couldn’t stand the thought of him growing up without her. How long would the oxygen last? Three days without water was a maximum, she had read that somewhere. How airtight was the hole? She would be dead within three days if no one found her. Less, if the air gave out, but Laura knew the soil above was loose and freshly dug. That would let some air through. But if she was going to die in there, make it quick. Don’t let her lie next to Susie as she decomposed, unable to move or get away, surrounded by her own piss and shit.