Kitabı oku: «LOST SOULS»
NEIL WHITE
Lost Souls
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Copyright © Neil White 2008
Neil White asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781847560186
Ebook Edition © 2008 ISBN: 9780007328987
Version: 2018-07-25
Dedication
To Alison
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Other Works
About the Publisher
Chapter One
The old man turned away and closed his eyes, clamped his hands over his ears, but the images were still there, searing, sickening. He tried to shut them out, screwed up his eyes and started to pace. It was no good. He ended up where he started each time, next to her.
She was tied to a chair, her arms behind her back, her wrists strapped tightly to the thin spindles. Blood covered her face and painted her shirt in splatter patterns. He looked at his hands. They were sticky with her blood.
He closed his eyes again, but the sounds were harder to shut out. Wherever he paced, whenever he couldn’t see her, the noises were still there, like echoes, constant reminders.
He stopped to take some deep breaths. The woman he wanted to remember was the one he had known in life. She had been fun, vibrant, a face full of smiles. That was the image he wanted to keep, not the one in this room, her face a grotesque mask, nothing left of the person he’d known.
He couldn’t shake the image away. He had seen her face in life; and now he had seen it in death. And it was worse than that, because he had seen her die, her eyes wide open, in pain, in fear, the knife getting closer. She had known what lay ahead of her.
He started to walk around the room faster, tears running down his face. He clenched and unclenched his fingers, looked up and then covered his ears as he walked, as he tried to stifle the sounds that once again crashed through his head. He had heard her last word, forced out through clenched teeth. It had come out as a guttural moan, but he had known what it was. It was no. She had tried to say no.
He took a deep breath and stopped pacing. He turned to look at her. She was still the same. He put his head back and sobbed, and then he sank to his knees.
He stayed like that, rocking slightly as he sniffed back the last of his tears.
After a few minutes he stood up and slowly walked over to the chair. He put his hand on the woman’s cheek and gently stroked it, her skin soft under his fingers. But she felt cold. He leaned forward and kissed her on the top of her head.
‘I’m sorry, so very sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I tried to warn you. I really tried.’
The old man stepped away and looked down at his feet. He could feel the tears trickle down his cheeks, his skin parchment-thin, and as he touched them the blood washed away from his fingertips. He muttered a few words to himself, a private prayer, before reaching for the telephone.
‘Police please.’
He waited to be put through, and when he heard the voice at the other end of the line, he calmly said, ‘My name is Eric Randle, and I want to report a murder.’
Chapter Two
North or south, murders are the same.
DC Laura McGanity blew into her frozen hands and, just for a moment, dreamt of London. Two weeks earlier it had been her home, but already that seemed like a lifetime ago. She had only moved to Lancashire, a mere two hundred miles from the capital, but it felt like a foreign country as the frigid air blew in from the hills that surrounded the town. She paced along the yellow crime-scene tape and it snapped loudly as it blew in the early-morning wind. She shivered and wrapped her scarf tighter round herself.
It wasn’t just the weather that felt alien. It was the quietness. She was standing by an open-plan lawn in a neat suburban cul-de-sac, with the hills of the West Pennine Moors as a backdrop, painted silver as the rising sun caught the dew-coated grass, just the snap of the crime-scene tape to break her concentration. She missed the London lights, the buzz, even the noise. In comparison, Blackley was like a constant hush.
Laura had been brought up in the south and trained by the Met, but love had brought her north. She had arrived in a small town, concrete and graffiti replaced by moorland grasses and dry-stone walls. She knew she couldn’t afford a mistake. Her transfer north had been a risk, and she didn’t want to destroy her new career so soon. She had seen the looks in the eyes of the other officers in the station. Wariness. Suspicion. She was the girl from the big city, come to tell them their jobs.
She had to be alert now, because there was no time for distraction. With any murder the first twenty-four hours were the most important. After that, evidence on the killer could be lost. Fingernails got scrubbed, hair got cut, cars got burnt out.
She looked up just as Pete Dawson, the other detective at the scene, approached her. He was holding two steaming mugs of coffee.
‘You look like you need one of these,’ he said.
It seemed to Laura like he barked the words at her, the staccato speech patterns all new, the vowel sounds short and blunt. The London rhythm she was used to had more swagger, more bounce.
She smiled her thanks, and as she wrapped her hands around the mug she asked, ‘Where did you get them?’
He nodded over towards a house on the other side of the road, where Laura could just make out fingers on the edge of the net curtain, the light inside switched off so no one could tell that anyone was watching. ‘She’s been twitching those for half an hour now. I think she’s hoping for an update if she gives us drinks.’
‘Did you tell her anything?’
Pete shook his head. ‘I’m holding out for a fry-up. But be careful. These old mill girls can lip-read.’ When Laura looked at him, confused, he added, ‘So they could still talk over the noise of the machines.’
Laura smiled. She liked Pete. He was one of those necessary cops. Precise minds are great—those who can dissect complex frauds or see leads in cases that look like dead-ends—but sometimes you just need someone to kick down a door, or find a quick way to prise information out of someone. Laura reckoned Pete knew many quick ways. He looked one wrong word from hurting someone, all crew-cut, scowl and scruffy denims. He was normally with the drugs squad, more used to throwing dealers against walls than loitering around murder scenes.
She took a sip of the coffee and sighed. It was hot and strong, and she raised it in thanks to the parted curtains on the other side of the street.
‘You look like you expected more,’ Dawson said, nodding towards the crime-scene tape. ‘Not used to the quiet life yet?’
A week before, Laura might have thought he was having a dig, but she knew him better now. Pete’s smile softened his words and his eyes changed. They became brighter, warmer, and she sensed mischief in them.
But he was right, Laura had expected more activity, the usual commotion of lawns being combed by uniformed officers, or a squad of detectives knocking on doors. Today there was none of that. The body had been taken away, but the first two cops on the scene were still there, an ashen-faced probationer and a police officer not far off retirement. Scenes of Crime officers were inside, their white paper suits visible through the front window, but out in the street Laura felt like she was on sentry duty.
‘It doesn’t seem like the quiet life,’ she replied. ‘I moved north for a better life, and I get this,’ she nodded towards the house, ‘and in the middle of the abductions. It seems pretty dangerous around here.’
Pete shrugged. ‘It’s not always like this. Once we catch the bastard who has been taking those kids all summer, we’ll get more people to work cases like this.’
Laura looked back towards the house. ‘And are we any nearer to catching him?’
‘Every time there’s another one, we’re waiting for the mistake, the breakthrough.’ He shook his head. ‘He hasn’t made one yet.’
The abductions had been the big story in Blackley over the summer. The first one only rippled the nationals—everyone thought it was a runaway—but the next one confirmed a pattern and the media all came to town.
Children had been going missing all summer, snatched in the street. They disappeared for a week, sometimes longer. When they were found, they seemed unharmed, but there were things the eyes couldn’t see.
There had been seven of them so far, all boys: latchkey kids, early teens, cocky and street-sure. But that was a mask, protection from what they missed at home: love, security, attention. They came back with the mask slipped, and they seemed confused, frightened, days lost with no idea about where they’d been or what had happened to them. They’d thought they owned the streets, but now they realised how vulnerable they were, and that the world could be much crueller than they’d imagined.
They were found stumbling around, confused, lost, like they had just woken up. They were clothed, with no marks or injuries. They had to be examined intimately, just to check for a sexual motive, but there’d been nothing so far. They were sent home, back to the arms of their parents. The boys were all hugged a lot closer after that.
The eighth child was out there now, Connor Crabtree, with whoever was taking Blackley’s children. He had last been seen cadging cigarettes in a small car park behind a corner shop, accosting strangers as they went to buy milk or something. That had been six days ago, and no one had seen or heard of him since. The press were on standby, waiting for the inevitable return, something to report; the nation was gripped by the story. The press had even given the kidnapper a name: the Summer Snatcher.
Laura didn’t like the name—it sounded corny, no imagination—but she knew that it helped to keep the story in the news. It was more than just a story in Blackley, though. Everyone knew there would be more. Most parents had stopped their children going out, and the streets seemed quieter once it went dark. But the children being taken were the ones of parents who hadn’t listened, whose lives were too difficult to make room for their children.
There weren’t many clues. There were fibres on the boys, just tiny strands of cloth, from a blanket or something similar, but until they got the source they couldn’t get the match. The first two children had dust on their clothes when they were found, small specks of concrete and traces of asbestos, but nothing specific. The police in Blackley were following leads, just to be visible, but everyone knew they were waiting for the return of Connor Crabtree, hoping it would bring fresh evidence.
Laura shuddered as she thought about her own son, Bobby. Four years old, in a strange town and a long way from his real father. She blinked, felt her eyes itch, took a deep breath. It wasn’t meant to have turned out like this, but Bobby’s father had decided a long time ago that Laura wasn’t going to be the last woman he slept with. He’d left, and Laura had struggled on her own for a while, but when she had fallen in love again she was able to give Bobby a family life once more. But it was hard. She needed to be with Bobby in the mornings. She missed seeing his sleepy face, and she wanted to know that he needed her.
‘What’s your theory about the abductions?’ Laura asked.
Pete considered for a moment, his face thoughtful, his hands jammed into his pockets. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Could be a woman. You know, the kids are looked after and then given up again, some nurturing instinct satisfied.’ He smiled. ‘Not that they’d ever ask me anyway.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve spoken my mind too often.’
‘What do you think about this?’ she asked, nodding towards the murder scene.
He exhaled. ‘I don’t know. Some nutcase is the obvious guess, but there is one thing.’
‘Go on.’
‘The victim knew the killer. There was no break-in, no sign of a struggle anywhere else in the house. No one reported it until the old guy made the call.’
Laura knew there was some sense in what Pete said. This was no domestic or a burglary gone wrong. It was a sadistic execution. A young woman, Jess Goldie, small and frail, barely twenty-five years old, had been strapped to a chair and strangled with a cord. There were no signs of a fight, no evidence of sexual assault. There was just a chair in the middle of the room, a dining-room chair with strong wooden legs, and she was strapped into it, her wrists tightly bound with thin nylon rope.
But that wasn’t what had struck Laura when she first went into the house. It was something else, the sight that had caused the young probationary officer to spend the next hour sitting outside, gulping lungfuls of fresh air in between dry-heaving.
Whoever had killed this young woman had ripped out her tongue and gouged out her eyes.
Laura had methodically examined the scene. She was at work, a detective, so the shock stayed away, her mind too busy to process emotion. It would come to her later, she knew that, maybe when she was in bed or taking a bath, alone and vulnerable.
There was nothing to suggest a struggle, no defensive wounds to the hands, no ripped clothing. But then Laura spotted the marks ringed around the woman’s neck, as if the cord had been pulled many times over. It hadn’t been a quick kill. It had been dragged out, made to last.
She turned to Pete. ‘What did you make of the old boy who called it in?’
Pete stroked his cheeks thoughtfully. ‘Eric Randle? Hard to say. He didn’t look the sort, if there is such a thing, and the only blood on him looked like contact blood. No splashes or spray. But it’s all too neat for me.’
Laura was about to ask something else when she heard a car drive into the cul-de-sac. It pulled up in front of the house, and she watched as a small man in a sharp suit climbed out.
‘Oh great,’ Pete muttered. ‘Now it’s all going to turn to shit. Egan’s here.’
‘Egan?’
‘DI Egan,’ said Pete, his voice low and quiet. ‘Dermot Egan. We call him Dermot Ego. You’ll soon find out why.’
As she watched the figure walk towards the house, Laura sensed that he was right.
Chapter Three
Sam Nixon parked his car and looked out of the windscreen. He used to like sunrise—it made even Blackley look pretty—but the view had lost its charm years ago.
Sam’s office was in the middle of a line of Victorian bay fronts, with stone pillars in each doorway and gold-leaf letters on the windows, legacies of Blackley’s cotton-producing heyday. The town used to rumble with the sounds of clogs and mills, and the mill-owners’ money would end up in the pockets of the lawyers and accountants who spread themselves along this street. Blackley’s life as a Lancashire cotton town had ended a couple of decades earlier, but it was marked by its past like an old soldier by his tattoos.
Sam could see the canal that flowed past the end of the street. The towpath was overgrown with long Pennine grasses, and ripples in the water twinkled like starbursts as they caught the early-morning sun. The old wharf buildings were still there, three-storey stone blocks with large wooden canopies painted robin’s-egg blue that hung over the water, but they were converted into offices now. The sounds of a new day filled the car, the whistles of the morning birds as they swooped from roof to roof, the rustle of leaves and litter as they blew along the towpath. It was heritage Lancashire, lost industry repackaged as character.
But it was the only bright spot. The factories and mill buildings further along the canal were empty, stripped of their pipes and cables by thieves who traded them in for scrap, left to rot with broken windows and paint-splattered walls. Those that were bulldozed away were replaced by housing estates and retail parks.
Blackley was in a valley. A viaduct carried the railway between the hills, high millstone arches that cast shadows and echoed with the sound of the trains that rumbled towards the coast. Redbrick terraced streets ran up the hills around the town centre, steep and tight, the lines broken only by the domes and minarets of the local mosques, the luscious greens and coppers bright dots of colour in a drab Victorian grid.
Beyond those, Sam could see a cluster of tower blocks that overlooked the town centre, bruises of the sixties, dingy and grey, where the lifts reeked of piss and worse, and the landings were scattered with syringes. They had views to the edges of town, but everything looked bleak and wet from up there, whatever the weather.
Sam closed his eyes and sighed. He was a criminal lawyer in Blackley’s largest firm, Parsons & Co. As soon as he hit the office his day would be taken up by dead-beats, drunks, junkies and lowlifes, a daily trudge through the town’s debris. Criminal law was budget law, the most work for the least reward, so he had to put in long hours to keep the firm afloat. He started early and finished late, his day spent fighting hopeless causes in hostile courts, and most evenings wrecked by call-outs to the police station.
He used to enjoy it, the dirt, the grime. A legal service. A social service. Sometimes both, with a touch of court theatre, just the right phrase or the right question, maybe just a look, could mean guilty or not guilty, jail or no jail.
But then the job had worn him down. He had two children he hardly saw, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had hugged his wife.
And he was sleeping badly. He was staying up too late, and when he did finally fall asleep he woke up scared, bad dreams making the day start too soon. They were always the same: he was running through doorways, dark, endless, one after another, someone crying far away. Then he would be falling. He woke the same way each time: a jolt in bed and then bolt upright, drenched in sweat, his heart beating fast.
He opened his eyes and sighed. He rubbed his cheeks, tried to wake himself up. He couldn’t put it off any longer: he had to start the day.
His head was down as he walked towards his office and fumbled for the key. He had to put his briefcase down to search his pockets, and that’s when he saw him.
On the other side of the street was a man, stooped, old and shabbily dressed, his clothes hanging loose from his body. His hands were clutched to his sides as if he were stood to attention, and his eyes were fixed in a stare, unblinking, unwavering.
Sam felt uneasy. The courtroom usually protected him, shrouded in respect and court rules, but defence lawyers pissed people off. Victims, witnesses, sometimes just the moral majority. He felt himself grow nervous, checked his pocket for his phone, ready to call the police if a knife appeared. But the old man just stared at Sam, his face expressionless.
Sam eventually found his key. He took one last look into the street. The old man hadn’t moved. He was still watching him.
Sam made a mental note of the time and turned to go inside.
Chapter Four
As Egan walked towards them, Laura could sense his self-importance. He was jogger-trim, his nose tight and hooked, his hair bottle-dark and cut just too neatly, not a strand out of place. His white shirt was bright and crisp, to emphasise his suntan, she guessed, which seemed more salon than sunshine.
Pete smiled. ‘He’s going to be pissed off about this.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the last time I saw him he was at one of the press conferences for the abducted children, preening himself. There isn’t much airtime in this case, and he’ll want to get in and out quickly. He won’t give up a place on the podium for what might be just a bad domestic.’
Laura looked at Pete. ‘If he’s involved in the abduction cases, why doesn’t he stick with those?’
Pete looked at Laura and said under his breath, ‘I suspect it wasn’t his choice.’
DI Egan looked around as he took in the scene. He almost stepped on Laura’s toes before he noticed her. She saw his quick appraisal, eyes all over her body, ending at her bare ring-finger. Lesbian or prey, in his eyes she could see that she was either one or the other.
He spent too long looking at the identification she had hanging around her neck and then asked, ‘So what do we have, Laura?’ He looked away before she had a chance to answer, so she ended up talking to the back of his head.
‘Deceased is called Jess Goldie. It looks like she died from strangulation, sir, but it wasn’t quick,’ she said, trying to hide the fatigue in her voice. The early start was catching up on her.
Egan started to show interest. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I saw her neck before the doctor arrived, and there were a lot of marks, as if she had been strangled over and over.’
‘What, you mean sex games? You know, strangle, release, strangle, release?’
Laura thought she saw a twinkle of excitement in his eyes. ‘Can’t say I do,’ she replied, weary of cops who saw the quick thrill in everything. ‘She died in her clothes. If it was kinky, it was shy kinky.’
Egan pursed his lips and looked away.
‘And there was something else.’
Egan turned back, his eyebrows raised. ‘Go on.’
Laura glanced at Pete. ‘She’s missing her eyes and tongue.’
‘What do you mean, “missing her eyes and tongue”?’
‘It means that she hasn’t fucking got them any more,’ said Pete, his voice rich with sarcasm. ‘What do you think it means, that she left them on top of the fridge or something?’
Egan spun around, eyes angry, so Laura interrupted. ‘She was tied to a chair, and her eyes and tongue have been cut out.’
Egan continued to stare at Pete, who just stared back. Eventually Egan turned away. He sighed and then began to chew at his lip. Laura sensed that he had just seen this investigation stretching a long way into the future.
‘I bet you could do without this,’ said Pete to Egan, as he raised his eyebrows at Laura. ‘On top of the abductions, I mean.’
Egan’s top lip twitched.
Laura looked down and tried not to smirk. She had quickly figured out that Egan’s eyes were on the career ladder. She had seen his type before: delegate everything and then take all the credit. Look pert and enthusiastic in strategy meetings and then ditch the work onto others. She could guess why Pete hadn’t climbed very far.
‘Is it drugs?’ asked Egan, looking around, trying to change the subject. ‘Some kind of revenge attack?’
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Laura said. She was new to Blackley, but she knew enough to know that this wasn’t a drug neighbourhood. It was full of new-build town-houses, all shiny red bricks, narrow paths and neat double glazing, brightened up with cottage fascias and potted plants. It was a first-time-buyer estate. Drug dealers don’t bother with the housing ladder; they stay low until they can move really high. ‘I checked with intel half an hour ago, and she’s not on our radar. Just a nice, quiet girl, so the neighbours say.’
‘How was she discovered?’
Laura and Pete exchanged glances before Laura replied, ‘The call came around four this morning. Some old boy, Eric Randle, said he went round to check on her. He found her tied to a chair, dead.’
‘Went round to check, at four in the morning?’
‘That’s what I thought.’ Laura raised her eyebrows. ‘Said he’d had a dream.’
Egan smiled, almost in relief. ‘This sounds like a quick one.’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ she said. ‘I saw the body, and I saw him, and he doesn’t seem a likely. But he doesn’t have an alibi.’ Laura thought back to the meeting she’d had with the old man. He hadn’t spoken much, seemed in shock.
‘So is he suspect or witness?’ asked Egan, watching her carefully.
‘Suspect. Everyone is, this early into it.’
‘So did you arrest him?’
Laura noticed the tone of Egan’s voice, slow and deliberate, making sure it had been her decision. He would stand by her only if it looked like she had got it right.
She paused for a moment, thought about what they had in the way of evidence. The old man had been visibly upset, but Laura had checked him out for wounds or scratch marks. Nothing. His clothes had been seized, to check for blood-spray, and he’d agreed to a DNA swab, for elimination purposes she’d told him, along with his fingernail clippings, but nothing in her instincts told her that he was the killer.
‘No,’ she said, after a moment. ‘He’s of interest, but no more than that.’
Egan nodded, a thin smile on his lips, and then headed up the path towards the front door.
‘Crime scenes are still in there,’ she shouted.
Egan stopped, looked back at her. Laura thought he appeared irritated, as if she had somehow insulted him. Before he had a chance to speak, a uniformed officer appeared at her shoulder.
‘We’ve got a neighbour who says she heard something last night.’
Egan looked over and then moved back down the path towards them.
‘Who is it?’
The uniform pointed behind him to a house a few doors away, at the edge of the cul-de-sac. On the doorstep stood a woman in her fifties, wrapped in a quilted dressing gown, her hair messy and eyes bright with fear.
‘What’s she got?’ Egan barked the questions, sounding impatient.
‘She says she heard a car leave very late, well after midnight. It had been parked at the entrance to the cul-de-sac. A nice car, Audi TT, navy blue. When it left, it screeched away.’
‘Did she get the number?’
The uniform held up a scrap of paper. ‘Not last night. But she remembered it this morning when she saw the police arrive because it was one of those personal ones.’
Egan looked down at the piece of paper and grinned. ‘We need to do a vehicle check on this.’
The uniform smiled. Already done it.’
Egan pursed his lips a couple of times, like a nervous tic, and then asked, ‘Who’s the keeper?’
‘Someone called Luke King.’
‘Is he known to us?’
‘His father is.’
‘Go on.’ Egan was sounding impatient again.
‘He’s Jimmy King.’
Egan looked like he’d been slapped.
‘Who is he?’ Laura whispered to Pete.
Pete sighed. ‘Some would say a local businessman, one of the most successful in Lancashire.’
‘And what would others say?’
‘The most ruthless and sadistic person they have ever come across.’
She was going to ask Pete something else when she noticed that Egan had started to pace. She sensed that if Egan was about to feel the strain, she was about to get even busier.
Chapter Five
It was over an hour before anyone else showed up at Sam’s office. It was the same most mornings, quiet until just after eight. He preferred it that way normally, away from the office chatter, but it was different this morning. He was edgy, troubled by the old man outside the office. Every time he looked out of the window, he was there, staring up, watching him work.
And Sam was trying to work. The early-morning office time was important. Being a criminal lawyer could be a full day. All-day courts and all-night police stations, with clients and witnesses to see in between. Sam had a diary full of appointments, although he knew most of those wouldn’t attend. They’d turn up instead on their trial dates, expecting him to defend them when they hadn’t even bothered to tell him their story.
So the early morning was when Sam caught up, the office fresh with the smell of furniture polish after the attentions of the dawn cleaner. He briefed counsel, compiled witness statements from a jumble of notes, or dictated the stream of correspondence demanded by the Legal Services Commission.
The younger lawyers did it differently. They went for visible overtime, working late into the evening, hoping to be noticed. But it made no difference. Only one thing mattered, and that was the figures. How much money was made. No one asked when it was made.
At Parsons & Co, whatever problem needed sorting, there was always a lawyer willing to bill you for it. Crime had always been Sam’s thing, but when Harry Parsons had started out, he’d done everything from divorces to fighting evictions. As the firm grew, it sprouted departments. The criminal department was the most precarious, because the work was so unpredictable. Police budget cuts could lead to fewer arrests, or if a lawyer upset one of the bigger criminal families the department would find itself with fewer clients. The claims department was the money-spinner. It used to help people who called into the office, victims of real accidents. Now it just handled referrals from those claims farmers who advertised on television, the promise of free money slotted in between debt-firm commercials, and now the lawyers settled claims for people they never met.
Harry Parsons himself still worked in the office, but he didn’t venture out much, working instead from a room along a dark corridor of worn carpet and faded paint. A local legend, he’d built up the practice from virtually nothing, but he ran it now from a distance, trusting the departments to deal with the day-to-day domestics. Everyone else was jostling for position: the old man was due to retire in a couple of years, and they were all hoping for a share when he went.
They didn’t have the ace card that Sam held, though: he had married Harry’s daughter, Helena, and given him two grandchildren. As far as Sam was concerned, he was at the head of the queue.
Sam was looking out of the window when he heard the other lawyers and clerks begin to trickle in. They gathered in a room along the corridor and drank coffee, exchanged insults. Sam would wander in when he finished what he was doing. He was on his third cup of coffee and he could already feel his heart thundering, but he needed the kick. He had a morning in court to get through and the broken sleep was getting to him. He looked round when he heard a knock on the door. It was Alison Hill, the newly qualified lawyer in the firm, spending some time in crime until she decided what she wanted to do with her career. She would move on, he had seen the ambition in her eyes, but until then Sam liked seeing her around the office. She wore her hair back in a ponytail, clasped by a black clip, and her blonde locks gleamed. Whenever they met, Sam automatically toyed with his wedding ring, felt himself smile too much. She was tall and elegant, with a bright and easy smile, her green eyes deep and warm.
He nodded towards the window. ‘Do you know him?’
Alison walked over and looked into the street. Sam could smell her perfume, something light and floral.
She shook her head. ‘Never seen him before. Why, is he bothering you?’
He shrugged it off, but as Alison turned away from the window, Sam noticed she had a file in her hand.
‘Everything okay?’ he asked.
Alison looked down, almost as if she had forgotten she was holding it. ‘I’ve got this today, for trial,’ she said.
‘What is it?’
‘Johnny Jones, for assault.’
‘What’s the problem?’
She looked awkward for a moment, and then said, ‘He seems guilty. I’ve looked at every angle and I can’t see a way out. He attacked the karaoke man because he missed his turn. Half the pub saw him do it, and it’s on CCTV.’
‘Sounds like a classy place.’
She grimaced. ‘It reads like the worst night of your life.’
Sam smiled, found himself playing the elder statesman. ‘Don’t worry about Johnny Jones. He’ll be convicted, guaranteed, but he won’t listen to your advice. He’ll want an acquittal out of pity, but he won’t get one. Just call it character-building.’
‘How come? It’s a complete no-hoper.’
‘Would you rather lose a no-hoper or a dead-cert winner?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Nothing you can do will get him an acquittal,’ Sam continued, ‘and the prosecution will give him a hard time for having the trial. He will get the verdict he deserves, and maybe even get the sentence he deserves. But’, Sam raised his eyebrows at her, ‘if you mess up a dead-cert winner, when you have made promises you thought you could keep, you’ll see your client’s eyes every night when you go to sleep, that look in his eyes as he gets taken down the steps. Fear, anger, confusion. Trust me, that’s worse.’
Alison sighed and then smiled. ‘Thanks, Sam.’
‘Any time.’ As she went to leave, Sam said to her, ‘Don’t forget the magic words, when you get to your feet.’
She looked confused. ‘Magic words?’
‘“Client’s instructions.” When you are asked if the “not guilty” plea stands, just say that those are your client’s instructions. It just gives a hint that you don’t believe in what you are doing.’
‘Why should I do that? It won’t help Johnny Jones.’
‘Forget about your client. You’re the one who matters, and for your sake the court needs to know which one of you is the idiot. There is only one thing worse than a lawyer making a hopeless application, and that’s a lawyer not knowing it is hopeless.’
‘Bang on the table, you mean?’
Sam grinned. He remembered that from law school, the old adage that if you are strong on the law, argue the law, and if you are strong on the facts, argue the facts. If you are strong on neither, bang on the table.
‘Bang it hard,’ said Sam. ‘Take every point, regardless of how pointless, just so that the punter thinks you’re a fighter. He won’t know you’re talking nonsense, but if you fight the case he will think you’re the best young lawyer in Blackley.’
Alison nodded, looking more relaxed now. ‘Okay.’
‘Remember, you’re Harry’s golden girl.’
She blushed, although they both knew that there was some truth in that. Helena, Sam’s wife, had once been a lawyer at Parsons, but had given it up when she’d had children. It seemed like Harry saw Alison as Helena’s replacement.
Sam looked back out of the window. The old man was still there.
‘If I get killed today, remember his face.’
‘Can I have your office?’
‘Get out.’
She was laughing as she went.
When he was alone in the room again, Sam watched the street life. The pavement was getting busy with lawyers from other firms, big egos in a forgotten Lancashire town. They barely noticed the drunks who congregated at the end of the street and shared cheap cigarettes and stolen sherry.
He watched the lawyers walk by for a while, waved at the ones who looked up. When he looked beyond them, he noticed that the old man had gone. He checked his watch and then stepped away from the window. He made a note of the time. Like most lawyers, he lived his life in six-minute segments.
Chapter Six
I watched Bobby as he watched television. Parenting was all new to me, but I loved Laura McGanity, and she and Bobby came as a pair.
Ambition had taken me to London a few years earlier, and I had fulfilled that, carved out a small niche in the crime circuit: Jack Garrett, crime reporter. It had come at a price, though, most nights lost chasing down drug raids or shootings, or writing exclusives on scams and gangsters, losing sleep as I waited for the door to crash in.
But then my father was killed a year ago. We had grown apart before that; we were like strangers when I went south, but since his death I had needed to come home to Lancashire. I didn’t know why, couldn’t work it out. Maybe it was as simple as guilt, trying to make up for the years when I had been away, chasing excitement, chasing dreams. Whatever the reason, I was back in Turners Fold, the small Lancashire cotton town where I grew up, all tight alleys and millstone grit; the town I had worked so hard to escape from.
It was harder for Laura, though. We’d met on a case -she was one of the detectives, while I was the reporter prying for a story. She was London to her boots, at home in the noise, the movement, the youngest daughter of a City accountant. I had given up a lot to move up north: my social whirl, my contacts, my new life in the city. But Laura had given up everything familiar.
I sat down next to Bobby. His eyes stayed fixed on the television—SpongeBob SquarePants— and I wondered how the move would affect him. Laura had divorced Geoff, Bobby’s father, not long before we got together and contact had been sporadic at first. As soon as I’d arrived on the scene, things had miraculously improved. But now I had dragged Bobby two hundred miles north, away from the urban clutter of his toddler years and into the open spaces of Lancashire moorland. We had settled in an old stone cottage, with a slate roof and windows like peepholes. At night the cottage seemed to sink into the hillside, the lights from within like cat’s eyes flashing in the dark.
I looked towards the window. I could see old redbrick mill chimneys in the town below us, the lines of terraces like slash marks in the hills. The town-centre streets were still cobbled in places, the edges worn smooth by the Lancashire rain. I’d forgotten about the rain. It was the reason for the cotton industry, the moist air good for working with cloth, but the cotton had gone now, leaving damp streets, dark and foreboding against slate-grey skies. Between the town and us was a rich green hillside, broken by dry-stone walls and clusters of trees. This was the Lancashire that people didn’t expect, the rolling open spaces. Only the brooding shadow of Pendle Hill at the other end of the valley broke the mood.
I checked my watch. Bobby had to be at school in half an hour. It was my turn today, Laura had been snatched away by a murder in Blackley, the next town along.
I felt my fingers drum the table. Was there a story in it? I needed something, because a child was still missing. They usually stayed away for a week, sometimes longer. Connor Crabtree had been gone for six days, and the nationals in town were all on countdown. It made it harder for me. I was just a freelancer, trying to sell stories to newspapers who had their own people at the scene, like I was a dog at the dinner table, waiting for scraps. I did best when the press weren’t there and I could get the early quotes.
I had sold a few stories though, small articles on the people affected by the abductions, and on the town itself, but they were just padding. Now Laura was at a murder scene and I was at home, doing the school run.
‘Are we going to school soon, Jack?’ asked Bobby, his voice quiet, almost a whisper.
I looked around, the sound bringing me back. I checked my watch. ‘Ten minutes,’ I said.
There was a pause, and then Bobby asked, ‘How long is ten minutes?’
I sighed, still not sure how to answer these questions. I’d had no training for this. It had been okay when I was just Mummy’s boyfriend who sometimes stayed over, but this was different. Now we shared the same house, vied for attention from the same woman.
‘A Postman Pat story,’ I said. He looked happy at that and turned back to the television.
As I watched him, I realised that this wasn’t a game any more. Bobby wasn’t just the noise in the house. He had to be nurtured, cared for.
I was about to stand up, to finish getting ready, when Bobby said, ‘Where’s Mummy?’
I stopped, thought about that. As always with children, a version of the truth was best. ‘You know she’s a police lady,’ I said, my voice soft.
Bobby nodded.
‘Well, sometimes police ladies have to go and help people. That’s where she is, helping someone.’
Bobby turned to look at me again. He didn’t look convinced, and already I sensed that his parents’ divorce had toughened him up too much for a boy of four. I found myself smiling, though. I could see so much of Laura in him. From the flickers of dimples to his mop of dark hair, stuck up around his crown, and the twinkle of mischief in his eyes.
I winked at him and ruffled his hair. This needed to work, I thought to myself, as much for Bobby as anyone else.
But then I remembered Laura, how she had looked this morning as she threw on her clothes in silhouette, the smell of her warm in my bed, the soft brush of her lips as she’d kissed me goodbye. No, I needed it to work for me, not just for Bobby.
As I thought about Laura, I realised that I needed to start looking for some more work. I’d built up crime contacts in London, people who would look at the stories I was selling, loose tongues in the police stations and hospitals. I was back at the start again, building up an address book, looking out for the angle the local papers might not report. The abductions would end eventually, but we had a mortgage to pay until then. Laura was at a murder. And where there is a murder, there is always a story.
I picked up my phone and dialled her number. After a few rings I heard her voice.
‘I can’t talk about the case,’ she said quickly.
I laughed. ‘Maybe I was calling to hear your voice.’
‘You heard it this morning.’
‘I’m a reporter, Laura. I’ve got to report, and I’ve got a source on the inside.’
‘Sorry, Jack, that ended when you saw me naked. It’s a rule of mine.’
I whistled. ‘Quite a price, but worth every penny.’
I heard a soft giggle, but when she asked about Bobby I knew that I’d had my final answer on the subject.
‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. The school is new to all the kids. Bobby will be no different.’
‘What are you doing today?’
‘I don’t know. I might have a creep around Blackley, see what I can find. Apparently there’s been a murder.’
‘Jack!’
I laughed. ‘If you won’t tell me anything, I’ll just have to find out myself
‘How long will you be out?’
I sensed the worry in her voice. Bobby needed collecting from school.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be back.’
I sensed her relax. ‘Okay, thanks, Jack,’ she said. There was a pause, and then, ‘I’m sorry about all this.’
‘I knew you didn’t do nine-to-five when we met,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s good for me. I’ve gone straight to the school run and skipped the dirty nappies.’
She laughed. ‘I love you, Jack.’
‘I’ve always loved you,’ I replied, and then the phone went dead.
I looked down at Bobby, who had been watching me as I spoke. I nudged him lightly on the arm. ‘Come on, soldier. Let’s get you to school.’
And the glow I felt when he smiled at me took me by surprise.
Laura had gone to a quiet corner of the police canteen to answer her phone, but when she ended the call she turned round to see a grinning Pete holding two mugs of coffee. He was keeping her caffeine levels high.
‘That was beautiful,’ he said. ‘I feel all warm inside.’
Laura blushed and grabbed a cup from him. The canteen was small and busy, the tables filled by the extra uniforms, the footsoldiers, drafted in to help with the murder inquiry. The abductions were still the main focus though. There were posters on every wall and on the door, glossy blow-ups of a small business card, a simple image of large hands over a small head, protective, caring. One had been found in the pocket of each abducted child. The press knew about them but had agreed not to report them. In return they got daily updates. Every police officer in Blackley knew about them too, and had been told to keep a lookout. Every time someone was searched, their wallet and pockets were checked. If someone was brought into custody, their property was double-checked.
‘C’mon,’ Pete said. ‘Leave the bacon for these boys. Egan is about to address his generals.’
It felt quiet in the Incident Room when they walked in. Egan had pulled in a few more muscleheads from the proactive team, those officers who liked patrolling the alleys, watching the active criminals; burglars and dealers would be getting an easier time for the next few days. They found some seats at the back of the room, and as Laura sat back in her chair she looked around.
The police station was showing its age. The walls had been painted many times over, the current version of cream uneven and flaking, with large radiators beneath sash windows. The ceiling was high so everything below it looked jumbled, untidy, just a clutter of desks and paper. There was talk of a new station being built on the edge of town, but that was years away yet.
Egan paced at the front of the room and stroked his chin. He looked tense. He had watched Laura and Pete walk in, the last ones to arrive.
Egan turned to address the room, announced his presence with a cough and started with a summary of the case so far: how Jess’s body had been found, the usual list of inquiries. Boyfriends. Money. Stalker. He was a flipchart cop. He had done all the leadership stuff, put pictures of the dead woman on the wall, jotted down suspects and ideas. The others in the room had short attention spans, and Laura could sense their restlessness, as if they knew they wouldn’t get the resources to do the job properly. They had to get lucky, and quickly.
And it might take luck, because crime scenes had already reported back and the forensic sweep was looking slim. There were DNA tests to run, fingerprints to compare, but, for a bloody murder scene like that, nothing stood out yet. No bloody handprints on the walls or the doors, or any footwear marks on the floor. The evidence might be there once everything was looked at, but nothing instant had shown up.
Egan paused to look at Laura. ‘You spoke with the old man. How was he?’
‘Tired and emotional, I suppose. I told him I would call on him later to get a statement. Neighbours confirmed that he was banging on the door not long before the call was made, so we didn’t think we had enough to bring him in this morning.’
‘But what did you think?’
‘I don’t know. He was there, he was upset, but other than that, I’m not sure.’
‘Still no alibi?’
Laura shook her head. ‘None. Just that he was at home, dreaming about her.’
Egan looked eager at that. ‘Eric Randle has to be our target suspect. I want to know everything about him by the end of today. Where he worked, who he knows, where he goes. I want someone to keep an eye on his house. See who goes in and who goes out.’ And then he pointed at Laura and Pete. ‘And you two can go get his statement. Once you leave, he might think that’s it.’
Laura and Pete exchanged glances. It seemed mundane after the pressure of the murder scene.
‘What about Luke King?’ asked Pete. ‘He was in the area and left in the middle of the night.’
‘Make some discreet inquiries,’ answered Egan. ‘That’s your job once you’ve finished with Randle.’
Pete seemed unconvinced. ‘How long do we wait if he realises we’re watching him?’ he asked. ‘There may be the deceased’s DNA on him right now. If we wait, it’ll be gone.’
Egan took a deep breath, looked as if he was trying to control himself.
‘I’m aware of that, but he has no idea that we know about him yet. Let’s just keep an eye on him, see what he does.’
Pete didn’t reply. He just clenched his jaw and stared at Egan.
Laura knew what Egan really meant: that if they got it wrong against a powerful family, only a confession would save them from a shift back into uniform, riding the Saturday night van for six months, fighting drunks.
Egan split everyone up into teams of two, gave them all a task, and then broke up the meeting.
As the room had emptied, Laura watched Pete as he walked past Egan.
And what are you going to be doing, Dermot?’
Egan looked him up and down, and then said curtly, ‘Taking responsibility,’ before he turned and walked out of the room.
When he had left, Laura asked, ‘Do you two have a history?’
A smile played on Pete’s lips for a few seconds. ‘Just flashpoints,’ he said.
He sounded calm, but Laura noticed an angry flush on his cheekbones. ‘You know what it’s like with cops,’ he continued. ‘You think you’ve got trust, but as soon as the shit hits the fan, cops like Egan point the finger like they’ve just seen the end of the fucking rainbow.’ He nodded towards the door. ‘C’mon, I’ll tell you about it another time.’
Laura made a mental note to find out one day. The day was getting long enough without having to spend it dodging bruised egos.
‘But what if he’s right about Luke King?’ she said. ‘Maybe Eric Randle should come first.’
‘Yeah, if he’s right he’ll take his applause. But if he’s wrong he’ll make sure we cop the flack. Just me and the new girl.’
They were turning to walk out of the room together when someone shouted from the back of the room, ‘What’s the old boy’s name again? The one who called it in?’
Laura turned around. Yusuf, a young Asian officer with a soul patch on his chin and thin-rimmed glasses, was sitting in front of a computer screen. ‘Eric Randle,’ she shouted back.
‘In his sixties? Scruffy? Lives on the Ashcroft estate?’
Laura nodded.
‘I might be wrong,’ he continued, looking up now, ‘but I think his name came up in the abduction cases, when the children first started disappearing.’
Laura snapped a look back at Pete. They raised their eyebrows at the same time. This was about to get very interesting.
Ücretsiz ön izlemeyi tamamladınız.
