style="font-size:15px;"> Susie shrugged. ‘Possibly,’ she said. ‘Probably, even.’ She brandished her phone. ‘He’ll call me, when the time is right.’
I sighed, impatient. I pointed to a small park nearby, really just a triangle of grass behind black railings. ‘We’ll go in there and wait.’
We crossed over and stepped up to the gate, but it was locked. Instead, we had to settle on the wall near to a statue of some old soldier. I tried to give myself a good view down the street towards where Susie had said she’d first seen him, but I couldn’t help wondering again whether this was some elaborate hoax. And for what purpose? Susie looked ill at ease as she sat on the wall. It was low down, really just a base for the railings, and so she had to position her legs side-saddle to protect her modesty. She kicked away an old sandwich carton and then slipped off her coat. I saw her tattoo, barbed wire wrapped around her arm, the black now faded to grey, the sharp outlines made jagged by time.
‘He must have friends down here, someone sheltering him,’ I said. ‘A person couldn’t stay hidden for this long without someone helping him.’
Susie didn’t answer. Instead, she blew smoke into the air as she lit another cigarette.
‘Do you think it might have worked out for you and Claude if he hadn’t been married?’ I asked.
Susie looked up at that, and the sunlight caught the makeup on her face, the powder dry in her creases. ‘Maybe,’ she said, and then she smiled, lost for a moment in some old nostalgic thought. ‘They were good times, you know. He was an old romantic really, despite what you might think of him.’
‘I don’t think anything of him,’ I replied. ‘I just don’t buy that image, that’s all, not when he was a married man.’
‘You make it sound dirty. It wasn’t like that.’
‘Whatever it was like, he was betrothed to someone else.’
‘You don’t strike me as a man high on morals.’
‘Neither are many newspaper editors,’ I said, ‘but their readers might be, and so they’ll write it up to suit. Especially the papers that don’t get the exclusive. You’ll make some money, sure, but the cash will be tarnished, and your life will stop being your own.’
Susie nodded as if she understood, but then she said, ‘It’s not about the money. It’s about Claude getting his life back. We’ll need the money, and that’s why we’re doing it like this, but people will be interested in him, not me.’ Then she sighed, and for the first time I saw a trace of regret flicker into her eyes. ‘If Nancy hadn’t died, do you think our little fling would have mattered?’ she said. ‘So he was a bit of a rat. Most men are, but the person I knew was also tender and caring. That was the memory of Claude Gilbert I carried through the years.’
‘And now?’
‘Just the same. He seems sadder, that’s all, worn out, but still a good man.’
I held up my hand in apology. ‘Okay, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I just don’t like having my time wasted, that’s all.’
‘I can only tell you it from my side,’ she said quietly, and then we both returned to watching the stream of passers-by.
‘Will Claude be able to answer the main question people will ask?’ I said.
Susie looked up. ‘Which is?’
‘If he didn’t kill Nancy, who did?’
Susie let out a breath at that and scratched the side of her mouth with a varnished nail. ‘I’ll let him tell you that.’
We stayed there for over two hours, watching the traffic get busier as time crawled towards the evening rush hour. I scanned the pavements, looking for a glimpse of someone that might be Claude Gilbert, but I couldn’t spot him. Susie smoked incessantly, and the ground around her feet became a collection of brown dog-ends as we made small talk.
‘Why don’t you just ring him?’ I said eventually.
Susie shook her head. ‘That’s not how he wants it. It has to be on his terms.’ She must have spotted my scowl, because she added, ‘I need a drink. I’m sorry it’s not worked out yet, so let me make it my round.’ When I looked at her, she smiled. ‘It’s the least I could do.’
I felt a stab of guilt. Susie knew that, for as long as Claude Gilbert didn’t appear, the story would become about her, the northern girl who loved her murderer on the run, maybe the last mistress before the murder; I knew how much her life would change.
‘No, don’t worry,’ I said, returning the smile. ‘It’s on me.’
Susie looked pleased with that, and we moved away from the rush of Victoria to the peace and quiet of Belgravia.
Back at the police station, Laura was showing Thomas how to watch the CCTV from one of the local supermarkets. It was never a case of click and play, Laura knew that, with every system needing different software. It showed nine different views, like a grainy Celebrity Squares, and isolating one camera view seemed more difficult than it needed to be, just to catch the pensioner dropping the bottle of cheap sherry into the tartan trolley.
She turned as she heard a cough from the doorway and saw a face she hadn’t seen for a few months, his hair cropped army-short, a folder under his arm. Laura felt her cheeks flush red.
‘DC McGanity,’ he said, and then he looked down at her uniform. ‘Sorry, is it plain old constable now?’
‘Joe Kinsella,’ she said, laughing, and her eyes followed his glance downwards, to the shine on her black trousers and her stumpy black boots. ‘Sometimes you’ve got to move sideways to find the route up,’ she said. ‘Enough about me. What are you doing in Blackley?’
‘Looking for you,’ he said.
Laura raised her eyebrows. ‘This sounds ominous,’ she said. ‘Where’s the rest of the squad?’
Joe worked on the Major Incident Team, based at headquarters a few miles away. Whenever there was a death that seemed too much for the local police, they descended on Blackley and took over the station. But Laura hadn’t heard of any recent murders.
‘It’s just me and Rachel,’ Joe said, indicating the woman standing behind him. ‘This is Rachel Mason,’ and he gestured towards Laura. ‘This is Laura McGanity. We worked a case together recently.’
Laura straightened herself as Rachel looked her up and down, just a quick glance and a smile, but the warmth didn’t make it to the eyes. Rachel was trim in a smart grey suit, cut closely to her body, with a shirt that gaped open at the breast. Her hair was Abba-blonde, sleek and straight and over her shoulders, her skin pale and smooth. Her ice-cold, blue-eyed stare told Laura that Rachel Mason had little interest in Joe catching up with old friends.
‘So the rest of the pressed-shirts have stayed at headquarters,’ Laura said.
‘For
