DEAD SILENT. Neil White
but Gilbert wasn’t like that. He was arrogant, even though he didn’t deserve to be. It wasn’t talent that put him in that big old house. It was Daddy, His Honour Judge Gilbert. He gave him what he wanted, and maybe a bit more, but I don’t think Claude saw it like that. I’ve been cross-examined by Claude, and he spoke to me like I ought to be cleaning his shoes or something. But let me tell you something: he was a loser, right up until the day he disappeared. He gambled, he played around, and most times he either lost or got caught.’
‘But why does that make him a murderer?’
‘Because it makes him desperate,’ Hunter said. ‘He should have been a better person, with his background. Educated at Stonyhurst, and part of some head-boy clique, a group of toffs who played at gangs, just an excuse to bully the new boys. They had all this blood brother nonsense, secret codes, and when they grew up, they carried it on. Gambling parties, and some sex parties, so it was whispered to me, probably drugs too—though the sort of people who were invited aren’t the sort who talk to people like me. But Gilbert was lazy, and not that gifted. He was the one who failed in the clique, ended up at one of the universities that he thought was beneath him, but his father bailed him out eventually, got him a place in chambers. Then Claude learnt how to work the system: plead guilty at the last moment, bill the state for preparing the trial, and he made a lot of money out of being average.’
‘He wasn’t alone in that,’ I said. ‘My father used to talk about how much the lawyers got paid compared to him, and he was the one made to look guilty when he got in the witness box.’
Hunter leant over to pour me some more whisky, but I put my hand over the cup. I had to drive away from there.
‘Your father was right to be cynical,’ Hunter said. ‘I was one of the good guys and I didn’t get too much.’
‘If it helps,’ I said, ‘those days are gone now. Even barristers are feeling the pinch.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Hunter replied. ‘No more sports cars, no second homes in France?’ He scoffed. ‘I’ll hold back the tears. And anyway, even all the money Gilbert had wasn’t good enough for him.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Because he tried to get more by throwing it away in casinos,’ Hunter said. ‘His old school friends had gone to work in the City. This was the eighties, and they were making big money. Claude was stuck on the northern circuit, but he couldn’t say no to the high life when it was there to be had. Claude was richer than most of us, but he was the pauper in his crowd. Even when he started doing television, you know, one of those awful debate programmes, it didn’t change things. It just took him away from home more often, gave him another chat-up line, and he had some big debts by the time he disappeared.’
‘Didn’t everyone live the high life back then?’ I asked. ‘It was the boom before the bust.’
Hunter smiled ruefully. ‘My life didn’t change much. The only change I saw around here was the mills closing down. And maybe that’s what sucked him in: that all around him he saw people losing their jobs, but he had the house and the sports car, and so he thought he was still the high-roller, the big man. There were rumours around court that Claude had talked about giving up the law to become a professional gambler, that he thought he had the knack of the skill games, had even tried counting cards at the blackjack tables, but he didn’t have the brain for it and started to lose money.’
‘Maybe he owed money to the wrong people,’ I said. ‘Lawyers find out things that they shouldn’t know, and gambling debts made him liable to be blackmailed. Maybe he had to pass on information that he was supposed to keep secret.’
‘What, are you saying that Nancy was killed by gangsters?’ Hunter said.
‘Maybe him too,’ I suggested.
Hunter shook his head. ‘I’ve thought about that, but why get rid of the bodies separately? Why be so cruel to Nancy?’
‘If Nancy was buried alive, Gilbert knew he was on a timer,’ I said. ‘Perhaps he had to say what he knew before she died.’
‘I’ve heard that theory, but I don’t believe it,’ Hunter said. ‘They found his car at Newhaven, abandoned. That’s the other end of the country. What gangster would dump the car so far away, as some kind of red herring?’
‘So why do you think the car was there?’ I asked.
‘Because he jumped on a ferry,’ he replied.
I smiled. ‘Maybe that’s why a gangster would dump the car all the way down there, to make you think that.’
‘That would be good in a detective novel, but real criminals don’t work like that,’ Hunter said. ‘Why go all the way down there? Why not the airport?’ He shook his head. ‘Gangsters wouldn’t set up a false trail. They would get rid of the body and leave no trail.’
‘So what about all the sightings?’ I said. ‘Do you think any might be true?’
Hunter leant in. ‘They’ve either been unconfirmed or proved to be false. Any tall, suave stranger in a foreign land was thought to be Claude Gilbert. There was a sighting a couple of years ago, some hobo in New Zealand living out of his car. Someone hawked a photograph around the papers and the media went crazy. But all the locals knew him; he had been there all his life. And there was a man in Goa. A book was even written about him, naming him as Gilbert, but people from England knew him. He was just some busker from Birmingham who had moved out to Goa to get spiritual.’
‘I was told that you never really let go of the case,’ I said.
He looked sheepish for a moment. ‘He’s guilty of a cruel murder, but he was able to just walk away from it,’ he said. ‘I suppose it got to me.’
‘So what do you think happened to him?’ I asked.
Hunter smiled, and I could tell that he was enjoying the audience, that his theory was one he had gone over in his head countless times.
‘I don’t know for sure,’ he said. ‘He got on the ferry, but he had a head start on us by a few days, and life was different then. You paid by cash and so were harder to track. You didn’t have to give up an email address or do it on a computer. All he would have needed was his passport, or any passport, and he would be in Europe straight away. What happened after that is something we’ll never know. Perhaps he had friends who helped him out.’
‘His old school friends? The head-boy clique?’
‘I don’t know, and you would be a brave man to print it; those people have got the money to ruin you,’ Hunter said. ‘But if you want my theory, I’ll tell you: Claude Gilbert is dead.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘You sound pretty certain,’ I said, and hoped that he wasn’t, because that would be the end of my story, apart from some human interest piece on a female hoaxer.
‘He boarded a ferry, I’m certain of it, and that’s why his car was left behind,’ Hunter said. ‘Remember that he wouldn’t know his wife’s body would be found. It’s a long voyage from Newhaven to France, plenty of time to think about things. Where was he going? How would he live? How much had he left behind?’ Hunter shrugged. ‘So he jumped.’
‘Killed himself?’ I queried.
Hunter nodded. ‘Gilbert was a cowardly man. He hid behind his father, and then behind his wig and gown. He buried his wife because he couldn’t cope with the killing part, and so he let Mother Nature do the job. But when it came to it, to the thought of life on his own, maybe even some guilt, he couldn’t cope.’ He raised his cup in salute. ‘I think he ended up in the English Channel somewhere, drowned by his own misery.’
But if that was true, I thought to myself, who was in London trying to get me to broker a newspaper exclusive?