Her sergeant came in, a woman in her thirties with dark hair cut close to her head and a square jaw, lines starting to etch themselves around her lips from sucking on too many cigarettes. There was a young officer behind her, his cheeks fresh and flushed, eyes flitting nervously around the room. *Fresh meat,' someone whispered, and Laura heard a chuckle.

The sergeant clapped her hands and barked out, *Can I just have everyone's attention?'

The chatter died down.

*Can we all keep an eye out for the Crawler?' she shouted. *Two more reports last night. They might be false, it seems like any noise gets called in as a peeping Tom, but just be vigilant. He might go on to attack someone, so don't ignore anyone suspicious. Talk to them. Get their name.'

Everyone mumbled to themselves as they went back to their work, and the sergeant made her way over to Laura.

*I want you to do me a favour,' the sergeant said, and she nodded to the young nervous officer in the corner of the room, his shirt hanging off his skinny shoulders. *Can you take Thomas with you today? It's his first day after training school. Do the town centre circuit with him, introduce him to the store detectives, just have him feeling like a cop.'

*No problem,' Laura replied, knowing exactly why she had been chosen. Thomas looked young and scared. The older ones would fill him with cynicism, and the crewcut brigade would just teach him bad habits.

Laura remembered her own time as a young constable, how it was often harder for the women, the men attempting to shield her from the fights, expecting her to spend the day patting old ladies' hands. But Laura liked the rucks, the excitement, the chases. It was why she joined, for the dirt, a different life to the one she'd had as a child in Pinner.

*Thomas?' said Laura, and when he looked up, Laura beckoned him over.

He tried to make himself seem big, his thumbs hooked into his belt, but Laura detected a slight quiver to his voice as he said hello.

*I've got a trip into town, and I need some help. I thought you could come with me.'

Thomas smiled and nodded. *Good. Thanks.'

As they made their way out of the station, threading their way through the atrium that was busy with detectives, all serious and intense, Laura wondered whether making sergeant would be worth missing out on all the fun of CID. What would she do if she never got back in there, if she had to carry on wearing the uniform?

That was something she didn't want to think about.

Chapter Eight.

*So, what do you want to know about Claude Gilbert?' Bill Hunter asked.

I took a sip of the whisky and coughed as it went down. Beer was more my thing, wine when I was with Laura, but I didn't want to be rude.

*The answers to the two big questions,' I said. *Did he do it, and where did he go?'

Hunter scowled. *Of course he did it.'

*How can you be sure? If I remember it right, not everyone is convinced.'

*Usually just people looking for attention,' Hunter said. He took a sip from his cup. I could smell the whisky on his breath as he started to talk. *I'll tell you something about Claude Gilbert: he was nothing but a Daddy's boy made good.'

*He was a barrister,' I replied. *Not many of them are working-class heroes.'

*Yeah, but a lot are decent people too,' he snapped back. *They just had a better start in life than I did. But I've no chip on my shoulder. If people treat me well, I have no complaints, 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?

Chapter Nine.

Frankie Cass was looking out of his window, as always. In winter, the hills that overlooked Blackley glistened like sugar when it was cold, the parallel strips of stone terraces like slashes in the ice, but he preferred it like this, in the summer, when it was warm enough to open his window and let the sounds from outside waft into his room. Birds sometimes rested in the sycamore and horse chestnut trees outside his window, and in spring he watched the gardens around come alive with flowers.

He checked his watch. It would be change of shift soon at the rest home across the road. There had been some new staff members, pretty young girls. Polish, he thought, or Romanian, judging from their accents as they walked past his house, laughing and talking, their speech fast and clipped. Sometimes they didn't bother to close the curtains when they got changed in or out of their white uniforms. If it was hot, they showered.

His tongue flicked to his lips as his binocular lenses crawled along the wall, looking for a glimpse, a flash of skin.

He heard the car before he saw it. It was the way the engine strained that caught his attention as it battled to climb the steep hill. He swung the binoculars to the road and smiled. A convertible, bright red, a seventies relic, the number plate showing white on black. He scribbled down the number and made a note of the time, before watching as the driver climbed out. He saw the camera and notebook and made another note: reporter.

He raised the binoculars to his eyes again. He would keep watch. It's what he did.

Claude Gilbert's house wasn't what I expected.

I had always known of the story-most people did around Blackley and Turners Fold-but I'd never had cause to visit the house. It was on a road that climbed a steep crescent away from the town centre, the houses large and imposing, shielded by trees and bushes, just the high slate roofs visible and the occasional bay window.

The Stag didn't enjoy the climb though; I could hear every rattle with the roof down, every scream of the engine. But it made it, and once I'd switched it off, the only thing I could hear was the ticking of the engine as it cooled down. There was no one else around, and as I looked over my shoulder, I realised that Blackley had disappeared behind the high walls and the trees.

I looked over at Claude Gilbert's house. The walls were taller than me, with ivy creeping along the top and only the tips of conifers visible from where I had parked. I took a few pictures and then I walked towards the gates, but I was surprised when I got there. I had expected some closed-off shell of a house, the centre of national notoriety, but from the sign on the gate I saw that time had moved on and the house had a new life: Blackley View Residential Care. I looked around again, and I noticed signs on other gates or fixed between trees. Accountants. Surveyors. A housing association. It seemed like no one lived on the street any more, all the grand old houses of Blackley given up for business use. The good money must have moved out of town, to the rolling fields and old stone hamlets of the Ribble Valley.

I gave the gate a push and it swung open slowly, screeching on its hinges and coming to a halt as it brushed against the gravel on the drive. The Gilbert house was different to the others on the street. Rather than blackened millstone, it was painted in a sandstone colour, the corners picked out in white, just like in the photographs I had seen whenever the story had been reported. The paint looked jaded though, the windows flaky and worn out.

As I got closer to the house, I saw the alterations. There was a ramp to the modern front doors, which swished open as I approached them. As I stepped inside, I saw that a grand old hallway had been transformed into an entrance lobby, laid out with plain chairs and low tables on a thick flower-patterned carpet. Stairs swept imposingly up to the next floor, the balustrade thick and strong with twisted spines, but the elegance was undermined by the stair-lift that ran along the wall and disappeared around the bend at the top.

I heard movement, and when I looked, I saw a woman walking briskly towards me, middle aged, her hair dyed dark brown and her figure trim in a tight white tunic. She smiled and asked if she could help. I checked out her name badge, and I saw that she was the assistant manager.

*Hello, Mrs Kydd. My name is Jack Garrett. I'm a reporter.'

Her smile faded. *What can I do for you, Mr Garrett?'

*I'm doing a piece on Claude Gilbert,' I said, and gave her an apologetic smile. *I know you'll get this a lot, but the story starts here.'

*We do get this a lot,' she said, her tone brusque. *We can't just keep on giving up our time to show reporters around.'

*I know that,' I replied, trying to be conciliatory, *but I promise I'll include a picture of the sign. Call it free advertising.'

*They all say that too,' she said, and then she shook her head in resignation. *C'mon on then. I'm on a break, so let's get rid of you.' She set off towards a room just off the hallway. As I followed her in, I saw that the edges were crowded with high-backed chairs, all centred around a large television against one wall. There were a few old people in them, wrapped up in cardigans despite the stifling heat generated by large radiators. A couple of them watched the television, the volume almost deafening, but the others just looked down at their laps.

I smiled a greeting, and one old lady glanced at me, a twinkle in her eyes, but no one else seemed to notice I was there. Or perhaps they didn't care.

Mrs Kydd led me to a corner of the room that overlooked the garden, visible through a large conservatory that ran the full width of the house. I could see two long lawns outside, a wide path between, and a glass and steel summer house in the corner of the garden.

*This is where Mrs Gilbert was attacked,' Mrs Kydd said, pointing to a spot by an old cast-iron radiator.

*How did they know?'

*There was blood on the skirting boards and walls. There wasn't much, as if he had tried to cover his tracks, but there were a few small spots and streaks that he missed.'

*It sounds like you know the story,' I said.

*I work here, and so I've read about it,' she replied. *And writers turn up. They all like to talk about it, all of them thinking they've got a new theory.'

I raised my eyebrows at the dig, and she smiled at me, pleased that I'd spotted it. I took some pictures, trying to get the garden in the background, to show the route to her death.

*Does it bother the residents, you know, what happened here?' I asked.

Mrs Kydd shook her head. *Our residents get well looked after, and it's a nice home. They know about it, but to most of them it is just another news story. They were all middle aged and older when it happened, so maybe it doesn't hold the attention like it does with the younger ones.' She smiled. *And it's only the fact that he got away that makes the story interesting.'

I didn't disagree, because that was the interest that would sell the story.

I looked back towards the garden. *Is that where the body was found?'

Mrs Kydd looked over her shoulder. *You might as well see that as well,' she said.

I followed her outside, through the conservatory and then down another ramp, relieved to be in the natural warmth of summer rather than the suffocating artificial heat inside.

As we walked along the garden path, I looked around, tried to imagine how it must have been back then. Although I could see the chimneys and roofs of the nearby buildings, I saw that the height of the boundary wall just about stopped anyone from seeing into the garden. The road ran along one side, and on the other the land dropped away to a park, so that the house stood proudly on a hill. Claude Gilbert would have been able to drag his wife all the way down here without being spotted.

*What happened to the house after Gilbert disappeared?' I asked.

*I don't know much about that,' she replied, turning towards me. *Only what I've read in the papers.'