DEAD SILENT. Neil White

‘He didn’t look old enough to be crossing the road on his own.’

      ‘I’m sure someone said that about you once,’ I said.

      Laura grimaced. ‘That’s why I don’t like it. It just feels like it’s all slipping by too fast.’ She squeezed me and then murmured in my ear, ‘Will you still love me when I pass my exams?’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘I’ll have to stay in this uniform for a while longer,’ she said, ‘at least until I can go back into CID.’

      I turned to face her, and sneaked a soft kiss. ‘I like it,’ I said, and then I raised my eyebrows mischievously. ‘Could we, you know, just once, in the uniform?’

      ‘And the handcuffs?’ She tapped my nose playfully. ‘I’ll try not to make them too tight,’ she said, and then she peeled away from me. ‘I’m going to say goodnight to Bobby.’

      I grabbed her hand. ‘Before you go, I’ve got a scenario for you,’ I said. ‘Think of it as revision.’

      Laura turned and looked at me. ‘Go on.’

      ‘Someone is wanted by the police. If there was a sighting of him, would I be obliged to report it?’

      ‘Who is it?’

      I shook my head. ‘No names.’

      She paused at that and tapped her lip with her finger. ‘I’m trying to think of what crime it would be if you didn’t.’ After a few more seconds, she said: ‘It would depend on what you did with the information. If you alerted him to help him get away, or gave him shelter, then yes, but if you just failed to report it, I’m not sure we could do much.’

      I nodded to myself. ‘That’s what I thought,’ I said quietly, and let go of her hand.

      As I took a sip of wine, I realised that Laura was staring at me.

      ‘Is it something to do with the woman who was here this morning?’ she said.

      ‘I don’t reveal my sources, you know that,’ I replied.

      ‘I don’t need to pass my sergeant’s exam to work out that she’s connected,’ she said. ‘But is it anything that will get you into trouble?’

      I raised my glass and smiled. ‘I’ll tell you when I find out more. There is one thing I have to do though.’

      ‘Which is what?’

      ‘Go to London,’ I said.

      ‘And what will you do when you get there?’

      Laura looked at me strangely when I said, ‘Hopefully, make us rich.’

      Frankie stared through his binoculars from behind a stone wall, his knees in long grass.

      He had ridden into Turners Fold and asked questions about the reporter in the old red sports car. He got lucky, because the third person he asked knew where Jack Garrett lived.

      It had been a long time since he had been in Turners Fold. It had once been on his cycle route, the long pull out of Blackley, and then a fast green run into Turners Fold, freewheeling along a road bordered by straggly grass verges and drystone walls until he hit the fringes of the town, as the country views turned into small-town huddles. He used to like sitting by the canal and eating ice cream as the barges drifted past, and the people on board always waved back at him as he sat by the bridge, dipping his feet into the water as he rested his legs.

      But that had been a long time ago, when his mother had been alive. She would run him a bath for when he got back, sweaty and tired, always hungry, and he would tell her what he had seen. He missed that more than anything. It was all part of her being around, more than just someone to clean for him or make his meals. He’d had someone to share his secrets with, the things he could see from his window, who wouldn’t laugh at him for thinking like he did.

      It was an easier ride now. His Vespa purred up the hills, and so he was able to take in the views as he got higher and the air became fresher.

      Frankie had seen the car before he reached the house, the red Triumph parked on a small patch of pink gravel at the front of a grey cottage, its stones large and worn, the old slates on the roof jagged and uneven. He had pulled into a small track by a farm gate and then switched off the scooter’s engine and clambered over the gate, binoculars in his hand. He had walked along the wall until he could get a good view of the house, to see who else was there before he spoke to the reporter.

      He knelt down so that the lenses just peeked over the wall. He saw the reporter, a glass of wine in his hand, but then Frankie was jolted when he saw who else was there.

      He ducked down quickly. She was a police officer—he could tell that from the stiff trousers and the white shirt—and that scared him. He didn’t want the police at his house.

      But she had looked pretty, and so he got to his knees and looked again towards the house.

      He liked the way she smiled as she leant over the reporter and then gave a giggle. She was just back from work and it had been a warm day. She would be taking a shower soon. He scanned the house with his binoculars, looking for the bathroom, and then he found it. There was frosted glass in the window, but the top pane was partly open and he could see the clear glass of a shower cubicle.

      His hand scrambled around in his bag as he nudged the notepads and yesterday’s newspapers aside, until he found his camera. It felt hot in his hand. He closed his eyes for a moment and apologised. To his mother. To the policewoman at the cottage. And to himself. He knew he shouldn’t, that it was wrong to look at naked women, his mother had told him that. But he wanted to see her. As long as she didn’t know he was there, where was the harm in that?

      He watched as she went inside and then, as the light went on in the bathroom, he trained his camera on the window, waiting.

       Chapter Fifteen

      Mike Dobson drove slowly around the Mill Bank area of Blackley, an eye on his mirror for the police. The streets ran through mainly open spaces now, from which rows of terraces had long since been cleared, ready for the urban regeneration that had never happened. The grass grew long and wild, nature reclaiming the land, fluttering through those piles of bricks and grit that hadn’t been taken away by the diggers, security fences stretching along their edges, protecting the tyre-fitters and builders’ merchants with jagged silver spikes.

      There were still some rows of houses, but the windows were mostly blocked by steel shutters, awaiting the attention of the bulldozers. Water trickled onto the street from one, the pipes ripped away by scrappers, and the walls hosted the garish scrawls of graffiti artists.

      The streets were busy with women though, the balmy weather making it easier to work, but the roads were quiet, traffic still too light. Mike’s car bounced into the potholes as he crawled along and the women peered into his car, smiling, their teeth browned by drug use and decay.

      But he didn’t want them. He was looking for someone else.

      He did a couple of circuits before he saw her, standing on a corner, well away from the other girls. He felt a small tremor of anticipation. It had been a couple of months now, but whenever he went looking she was the one he sought out. She was different from the rest—nicely spoken, almost polite, a couple of wrong turns in her life bringing her to this point—but it was her looks that drew him. Her hair was long and dark and she had an easy smile, but it wasn’t just that. She looked like Nancy and, whenever Mike saw her, it was like Nancy was back, from the way she tossed her hair as she walked, to the provocative rise of her eyebrows when she smiled.

      He slowed down as he reached her. She bent down to peer into his car and he leant across the passenger seat, puffing slightly as his stomach strained against the seatbelt.

      ‘Looking for business?’ she drawled,