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 his parting to his collar. His arm was around Susie’s shoulders, his jacket pulled to one side to reveal the bright red braces over the brilliant white shirt. He leered towards the camera, a cigarette wedged into his grin.
‘Okay, so you met him once,’ I said. ‘He was on television. How do I know that this isn’t just a shot you took when you were out one night, a souvenir of meeting a star?’
‘You don’t,’ Susie replied. ‘All you can do is trust me. I know where Claude Gilbert is, and he wants to come home.’
Wants to come home. My mind saw the front pages for a moment, the bold print under the red banner of whichever national wrote the biggest cheque. I exhaled and tapped the photograph on my knee.
‘So, are you interested?’ she asked.
I flashed my best smile. ‘Of course I’m interested,’ I said. ‘It’s the story of the year, if it’s true.’
Susie looked happier with that, and she settled back in the sofa.
‘But I need to know more,’ I said. ‘Where has he been, and where is he now?’
‘London.’
‘That’s not very specific. How long have you been in contact with him?’
‘A few months,’ Susie said. ‘I saw him, purely by chance, and since then, we’ve sort of rekindled things, and I’ve persuaded him to come forward.’
I watched her, tried to detect whether I was being conned. I let the silence hang, but there was no response from Susie. Liars fill the gaps to persuade the listener of the truth. Susie sat there and looked at me, waiting for my next question.
‘But why does he want to use me to come forward?’ I asked.
‘Because if he turns up at a police station, they’ll lock him up.’
‘They still will,’ I said. ‘The paper won’t shield him.’
‘Claude told me that any jury will have convicted him before he stands trial, because there have been twenty years of lies told about his case. He wants to give his version first, to make people wonder about his guilt. It will go in the paper on the day he surrenders himself, that’s the deal. If not, he won’t come forward.’
I thought about that and saw how it made
