LITMIR.BIZ

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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.’

      ‘Like what?’

      ‘That

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