DEAD SILENT. Neil White

house was quiet as he walked downstairs. There was a window open and the curtains fluttered as he walked into the living room. Pristine cream carpets, lilies in vases, pale-coloured potpourri in a white dish. The breakfast table was immaculate, as always, with a jug of juice in the centre of the table, cereal in plastic containers and napkins in silver rings; his dining room looked like a seaside guest house. He heard a noise outside and saw a group of smiling children going to school, their mothers exchanging small talk or pushing small toddlers in prams. His house seemed suddenly quiet and empty.

      He checked his watch. His first appointment was getting closer. What would Mary do? Another empty day. It had been easier when they were younger, clinging to the hope of children, a family, but that had faded as each month brought bad news. As they’d got older, all her friends had had children and built lives of their own. But they had remained as they were and every day the house seemed to get a little quieter. How had his life got to this?

      But he knew why. It seemed like it all came back to that day, when everything had changed for him.

      Don’t think about it, he said to himself. He closed his eyes for a moment as the memories filtered back, the familiar kick to the stomach, the reminder. Then he thought he saw her, just for a second, like someone disappearing round a corner. A quick flick of her hair, and that laugh, muffled, her hand over her mouth, like she had been caught out, her delight in her eyes.

      He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands. His fingers had bunched up into a fist, just as they always did when he thought of her.

      He shook his head, angry with himself. He reached for his briefcase; it was by the front door, as always, next to the samples of PVC guttering. Another day of persuasion ahead of him, of sales patter and tricks.

      Mike faltered when he saw someone approach his front door. He felt that rush of blood, part fear, part relief, and he thought he heard a giggle, and turned to see the flick of brunette hair disappear just out of sight. He peered through the glass pane and saw a blue shirt. His heartbeat slowed down. Unexpected visitors always made him nervous, never sure if the moment he dreaded had just arrived: the heavy knock of the police, the cold metal of the cuffs around his wrists.

      It wasn’t that. It was just a parcel, some ornament for the house Mary had ordered. He smiled his thanks and took the parcel, his hand trembling, his sweat leaving fingermarks on the cardboard.

      He checked his watch. It was time to go.

       Chapter Three

      I bolted up the stairs to fetch my voice recorder. I had started to write a novel, a modern-day tale about life and love’s lost chances, but I had got only as far as the first two chapters before I realised that I didn’t know what to write next. The voice recorder was next to my bed for the inspiration that would come in the middle of the night, but it had been elusive so far.

      Laura stopped drying her hair when I went in. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

      ‘Someone with a story,’ I said.

      ‘We’ve all got a story.’

      ‘This one’s a little different,’ I replied.

      Laura gave me a suspicious look, and then turned the hairdryer back on. I got the impression that she didn’t want to hear any more.

      I picked up the voice recorder and went back downstairs. Susie was standing by the oak sideboard underneath one of the windows, looking at our family photographs.

      ‘Your boy is cute,’ she said.

      I smiled. ‘He gets his good looks from his mother,’ I replied, skirting the issue. I waved the voice recorder. ‘I’m ready for your story.’

      Susie sat down again, her bag going on the seat next to her. ‘Where do you want me to start?’

      ‘The beginning,’ I said. ‘Tell me how you know Claude Gilbert.’

      Susie blushed slightly. ‘I’m an ex-girlfriend of his.’

      That surprised me. I knew some of the background to Claude Gilbert’s story, most people did. He was local legal aristocracy, with a judge for a father and two lawyers for sisters. He had started to make forays into television, invited onto discussion shows back when there were actual discussions—so different to the American imitations of today, where people with no morals fight about morality. But it was his wife’s death and his disappearance that turned him into headline news: the missing top lawyer, the old school cad, dashing good looks and a touch of cut glass about his accent. Susie struck me as too different to Gilbert, too earthy somehow.

      ‘Were you his girlfriend before or after his wedding?’ I said.

      Susie looked away. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

      That meant after, I thought to myself. And I’d heard about Gilbert, read the rumours, the tabloid gossip.

      ‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘You were a law clerk.’

      ‘How did you know?’ she asked, gazing back at me in surprise.

      ‘An educated guess,’ I said, and gave her a rueful smile. ‘What legal experience did you have?’

      ‘Not much. I used to be one of the typists.’

      ‘And don’t tell me: you had the best legs.’

      ‘No, that’s not fair, I worked hard,’ Susie replied, offended.

      ‘I’ve hung around enough Crown Courts to know how it works,’ I said. ‘The local law firms employ glamorous young women to carry the file and bill by the hour, just to pat the hands of criminals and soften the blows with a sweet smile.’

      ‘You make it sound dirty.’

      I shook my head. ‘It’s good marketing, that’s all, and don’t knock it. Do you think your social life would have been what it was if you had stayed in the typing pool? Would you have been wined and dined by the barristers, invited to the chambers parties or taken to the best wine bars, just as a small thank you for the work?’

      ‘It was more than marketing,’ she said, blushing. ‘We got on, Claude and me.’

      ‘Or maybe he was just touting for work, or flirting, or maybe even a mix of the two?’

      Susie looked down, deflated. ‘You’re not interested, I can tell.’

      ‘Oh, I’m interested all right,’ I said, smiling. ‘You say you’ve got a message from Claude Gilbert. Well, that’s one out of the blue and so if you want me to write a story about it, I have to prove that it was from him, and not from some chancer hoping for a quick pound. The first question people will ask is why the message comes through you, and so how well you knew him is part of the story. Someone who once shared drunken fumbles at chambers parties is not enough. Were you ever a couple, a proper couple, seen out together, things like that?’

      Susie shook her head slowly, and when she looked back up again, she seemed embarrassed. ‘You guessed right, it was when he was married. Before, you know, Nancy was found. We saw each other when we could, but it was hard. He was a busy man.’

      ‘And a married one,’ I said.

      Susie reached into her bag. ‘Here,’ she said, and thrust an old photograph towards me. ‘That’s me with Claude.’

      The photograph was faded, and a white line ran across one corner where it had been folded over, but it was easy to recognise Susie. The woman in front of me was just a worn-down version of the one in the picture, now with redness to her eyes and the blush of broken veins in her cheeks. The photograph had been taken in a nightclub or wine bar, to judge by the purple neon strips at the top of the picture. The man next to her was unmistakably Claude Gilbert, the handsome face that had adorned a thousand front pages, the eighties-styled thick locks that flowed in dark waves from