DEAD SILENT. Neil White

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       Chapter Fourteen

      I was sitting in my garden as I flicked through the newspaper articles Tony had dropped through my door. I had views over Turners Fold to distract me, the strips of grey terraced houses and small fingers of chimneys sitting between the slopes, and towards the jagged lines of drystone walls dividing up the hills, black and white dots of cattle sprinkled as far as I could see.

      I took a sip from my wine glass and noticed how Claude Gilbert’s house looked different in the old black and white photographs, the garden slightly overgrown, less formal. I smiled as I held up a photograph of Claude, the one that had spread to the nationals, his dark hair thick, a superior smirk. Did he really want to come home? I plucked an article from the bottom of the pile and saw that the picture used was the full photograph, with Nancy Gilbert sitting next to him, an austere look on her face. The photographs used later were more relaxed shots, showing her laughing and happy, as if they were meant to prick the general conscience—the public wouldn’t warm to the hunt if she was some uptight rich bitch.

      As I read the articles, I saw nothing new, just stuff that had been rehashed countless times since. I slipped the cuttings back into the envelope when I heard the hum of car tyres and watched as Laura’s charcoal-grey Golf crunched onto the gravel outside our gate. As she stepped out of the car, her white shirt open at the neck, I raised my wine glass. ‘It’s open,’ I said.

      ‘So I see,’ she replied, and gave me a weary smile. When she joined me at the table, a glass in one hand, she put her arm around my neck and her head on my shoulder. I could feel the collar of her stiff white shirt, and, as I reached behind and felt her legs, my hands brushed over the coarse regulation black trousers and my fingers crackled with static.

      ‘It still seems strange, seeing you in your uniform,’ I said, as I got the waft of her perfume mixed in with the sweat of the cells. I had put Bobby to bed, but from the shouting I could hear drifting through the open window he must have heard the car. ‘I’ll go say goodnight in a minute,’ she said sleepily. ‘I just need to slow down for five minutes.’

      ‘Life tough at the top?’

      ‘I’ll tell you when I get there,’ she said, and stretched out a yawn. ‘I’ll need to do some revision soon though. It feels like I’ve forgotten how to study. I wasn’t the best at it in university, but I must have done it at some point.’

      ‘I was a crammer,’ I said. ‘Go out until Easter, and then just rush it through at the end.’

      ‘But you were younger then. So was I. This is a sergeant’s exam. I’m supposed to know the stuff already.’

      ‘You’ll do it easily,’ I said. ‘It’s just about staying cool enough to remember what you already know.’

      She sighed. ‘I’m already the old stager.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘I was holding the hand of a new one today,’ Laura said. ‘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.

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