The Darkness Around Her

by The Darkness Around Her (retail) (epub)

  ‘Rosie never told you anything about Sean that would justify him needing to silence her?’

  ‘No, and Rosie seemed all right with him. She moaned about him being a bit strict, because he wasn’t her real dad, but that’s it.’

  ‘Have you heard of Lizzie Barnsley?’

  Victoria thought hard. ‘No, I don’t know her. Is this to do with Rosie’s murder?’

  ‘Lizzie was murdered on New Year’s Day, just after midnight. I’m working for the law firm that represents the man accused of her murder.’

  ‘Hang on, is that the murder on the canal?’

  ‘That’s her.’

  ‘Yeah, I know who you mean. When I saw the picture in the paper, I thought she looked familiar. It’s a small town, and you recognise people. What has it got to do with Rosie though?’

  ‘Perhaps the same person was responsible for both murders?’

  ‘Oh, I get you.’ Victoria thought about that as she pulled a cigarette from her pocket. She lit it and took a long drag, watching Jayne through the smoke. ‘Are you saying your client might have killed Rosie?’

  ‘No, exactly the opposite, but the two might be connected. Is the name Peter Box familiar?’

  She shook her head. ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Not even back then?’

  ‘Nope.’ Another long pull on the cigarette. ‘I’ve just answered your questions. Now you can answer mine: this name you mentioned, Peter Box, did he kill Lizzie? Or Rosie?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jayne held out her hands. ‘I’m being honest because I really just don’t know.’

  ‘That will have to do, I suppose.’

  Jayne dug out her business card from her pocket again and handed it back. ‘Keep it this time. If you hear of anything, let me know.’

  Victoria took it from her and tapped it against her knuckles. ‘Will do.’

  As Jayne left, she looked back at the house. She hadn’t made any progress, except to learn that there was no link between Lizzie and Rosie. That meant that any link had to be between Peter and Sean. She just didn’t know whether there was enough time to find it.

  Twenty-eight

  Dan was lying back, trying to make the stresses of the day disappear when the door buzzer sounded. He groaned as he shuffled over to the security monitor. When he saw it was Jayne, he jabbed at the button to unlock the entrance door.

  By the time she bounded in, closing the door with a clatter and sitting down on the sofa, he’d gone to the fridge and pulled out the wine bottle he’d opened not long before. She was carrying a bag, which she dumped on the floor, along with her coat. ‘You’re working me hard today. On the way back from Bill’s house I went to see Victoria Mason, one of Rosie’s friends, to find out more about her and Sean.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She said he was just a normal guy. A little embarrassing as a stepdad, tried a bit too hard to be cool, but nothing suspicious about him.’

  ‘And Sean Martin still gets away with that act.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘It matters to Pat, so yes, it does.’

  ‘He knows we’re watching him.’ She raised her phone. ‘He liked my Facebook page. You said you wanted to see how he reacted. You’ve got your answer.’

  ‘How do you feel about that?’

  ‘What, having a killer following me, and making sure I know it? Oh, just fantastic.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I can keep you out of it.’

  ‘No way. Not after speaking to Bill.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t.’

  ‘What do you mean? Am I getting too expensive?’

  ‘No. It’s because the trial has started and I don’t want a distraction.’

  ‘It was your idea to follow him. Anyway, it was interesting.’

  ‘When I’m in the middle of a murder trial –’ He realised he was repeating the same old complaint. ‘I’ll rephrase that. When I’m in the middle of the first murder trial I’m doing on my own, I could do without something extra.’

  ‘Ignore it then.’

  ‘I wish I could, but I’ve been to see Murdoch about it.’

  ‘Why? You dismissed it all at Bill’s house.’

  ‘I didn’t want to give him any false hope, but in trials I can’t rule anything out. All I wanted was the information that the police had been given another line of enquiry and didn’t pursue it. Whether there’s any truth in it doesn’t really matter. It adds weight to the defence that they fixated on Peter and relied on bodged forensics.’

  ‘How long have they known?’

  ‘Right back to the beginning. They just ignored it.’

  ‘You’ll be glad I brought this with me then,’ she said as she reached into the bag to pull out the folder from Bill’s house. ‘We could go through it together.’

  Dan groaned and then laughed. ‘Why did I get you involved in this?’

  ‘Just ignore it then. We can watch television, if that’s what you want. Pretend you’ve never seen Bill’s clippings, and when you see him at court, tell him you’ve decided not to use it but wish him all the best.’ She went over to the coffee table and put the folder there, patting it with her hand. ‘There, just pretend you can’t see it.’

  Dan rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘I said the truth of it is irrelevant, but you’re going to make me do this.’

  Jayne smiled. ‘You’ve got to know the truth, whether you use it or not, and I spent a long time with Bill. I think he might actually have something.’

  ‘Really?’

  She pulled a face. ‘Well, I’m a sucker for the conspiracy programmes and murder mystery stuff.’

  ‘What has he got, apart from big numbers?’

  ‘I wonder whether there might be a different pattern to how he sees it. For Bill, there are three types of victims. First, there are those who died by being pushed into the canal…’

  Dan raised an eyebrow. ‘Or fallen in, drunk.’

  ‘It’s Bill’s theory, not mine.’

  ‘Sorry, go on.’

  ‘The majority of the deaths are clustered around Manchester city centre, mostly around Canal Street.’

  ‘Close to the nightlife.’

  ‘Exactly. Taking a short cut in the dark when they weren’t at their sharpest, most likely. Same as Tom, I suppose. He ended up in the Bridgewater Canal, and Bill thinks it’s foul play. Perhaps he was mugged or attacked or got into a fight, but maybe he just stepped off the edge and cracked his head on the way down, like the police thought. He’s only managed to get the big numbers by casting the net wider.’ Jayne took the elastic band from the bundle with a twang and lifted some papers before putting them to one side. ‘But the further away he’s moved from Manchester, the more he’s included those who were attacked or murdered around the canals, and then those who went missing.’

  ‘What’s your theory?’

  ‘Bill has concentrated on how close they were to the canals, but in every programme I’ve ever watched, they say focus on the victim or how they died, not where they are found. We should filter them differently. Sex attacks. Gang fights or muggings. Women who have gone missing who are similar in profile to Lizzie.’

  ‘I see where you’re coming from,’ Dan said, flicking through Bill’s folder with more interest. ‘They’ve got to be relevant to Lizzie. We’d have to show a theme, a pattern, not just throw random numbers at the jury. But how strict do we make it? Lizzie Barnsley was found by a dog walker and she’d been killed only a few hours earlier, but there was no sexual assault.’

  ‘Men who attack women always have a sexual motive, even if it is power rather than sex.’

  ‘Let’s do our own list then and see if we can spot patterns Bill hasn’t. He’s too close to it. List women who were attacked or killed, whether or not there was an obvious sexual motive. And then the people who drowned in the canal where it could be accidental, so we can discard those. Get rid of the male victims too. And then a list of the missing women.’

  They went through Bill’s
folder, checking with each other about each case, moving papers around as they decided which category to put them into.

  ‘We don’t have to be precise, remember,’ Dan said. ‘We’re not trying to catch a killer. We’re trying to throw some doubt around, that’s all, and this will just let the jurors play at being detectives. They won’t have time to scrutinise the list.’

  ‘Perhaps Bill was right, then. Just go for the big figure and ignore the detail.’

  ‘No, stick with this for now, we’re doing okay.’ He stood back. ‘What have we got?’

  The papers were arranged in columns, covering the living-room floor.

  Jayne went to the fridge. ‘My glass is empty.’ She poured herself a drink and refilled Dan’s glass. ‘This list here.’ She pointed to the column nearest to the kitchen. ‘This is our key list: women between twenty and forty. Some were attacked and murdered. Some were sexually assaulted and survived. Twenty in total. Twenty-two, if we include Rosie and Lizzie. Rosie is younger than the other women, but she’s connected to Peter and Sean.’

  ‘That’s a lot.’

  ‘It is. Eight fatalities. Twelve reported sex attacks, over twenty years.’

  ‘And limited to the ones Bill has discovered.’

  ‘Exactly. Now, of the seventeen women who’ve disappeared, twelve are women between twenty and forty.’

  ‘Why under forty? Why are you drawing the line there?’

  ‘I thought if the victim profile was important, age might be too. Lizzie was in her mid-twenties. We’ve got to make the jury think the victims are similar.’

  Dan shook his head and looked at the pile. ‘Across the north, and over the course of twenty years, it’s too random. No chance the judge will let them in.’

  ‘Can he do that?’

  ‘If he thinks I’m just fishing for a connection and that there’s no real link to the case, he can rule it out. More prejudicial than probative and all that.’

  ‘But how can it be prejudicial if it helps Peter?’

  ‘Prejudice cuts both ways. For the prosecution, too, which is why I can’t start spouting random stuff.’

  ‘But we’ve got a good number, and Bill might be right, that it’s all about the number. And we haven’t been too random. We’ve discarded men and those who might have drowned by falling in.’

  ‘Twenty years,’ Dan repeated. ‘Are the figures that out of line? I’m trying to think of what I’d do if I were a sexual predator. I’d hang around parks and canals. They’re quiet, often leading to fields, which provide a good escape route.’

  ‘What you’re saying is that these kinds of attacks are more likely in places like canals?’

  ‘Exactly. Which means that the judge is more likely to say that they have no relevance and exclude them.’ Dan furrowed his brow. ‘There is one category though: the missing ones.’

  ‘But what have they got to do with Peter Box? Lizzie wasn’t missing.’

  ‘An abduction gone wrong, possibly?’

  Jayne swirled her drink in her glass. ‘I see what you mean. If a murderer was patrolling the canals, they wouldn’t get away with it for so long if the bodies were found easily, because there’d be forensic evidence or eye-witnesses eventually.’

  ‘Exactly. If we mention survivors, those people might have given descriptions that show they can’t be the same person. The same where a body was found, as there might be forensic results that show they were killed by different people. Bill was relying on newspaper clippings, not evidence. But missing persons? No bodies means no forensics, and if we want to put doubt into the minds of the jurors, we should make them think someone is getting away with murder. We do that by looking at those who went missing. Lizzie was killed by the canal, but was that because she fought?’ He frowned. ‘But there is one problem.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘You’ve just made my night a lot longer.’ He raised his glass. ‘We need more of this.’

  Twenty-nine

  Pat almost didn’t see the gateway.

  He’d been driving along a country lane bordered by hawthorn hedges when he saw the gap. He swerved to a stop and switched off his lights, but not before they illuminated the building squatting on the other side of the field. For a moment it was dark. Then headlights from a car passing on the motorway above swept the area.

  He was in the countryside a few miles outside Highford, the rural quiet broken only by the slow click of his engine as it cooled and the smooth hum of traffic. The nearest village was a couple of miles away.

  As he stared ahead, the half-moon came out from behind a cloud and gave him a clearer view of the field he would have to cross. It was damp and rutted, large tufts of grass hiding whatever would make a mess of his shoes.

  His breath misted before him as he put on coat, scarf and gloves. He felt the cold more than he used to, as if his whole being was becoming thinner.

  His feet crunched on gravel. He opened the boot to take out the spade that he’d picked up from the garage before he’d left the house.

  Pat pushed the metal gate, and it creaked open on rusted hinges. He trudged across the field, the grass trailing against his trousers.

  There was a canal on the other side of the field, a long slow curve as it made its way through the sheep farms that occupied the land between Highford and Whitton. The field rose steadily, so that his breath became laboured as he walked, his hand clutching his chest. The air he sucked in chilled him, but he could see what he was aiming for: a small stone structure, a ruined cottage, its outline visible against the distant sweep of headlights. The orange glow of the next village along was in the distance, but it served merely to highlight how isolated he was. The motorway blocked the view ahead and behind him was just a line of dark hills.

  He gasped as he pushed on and the field got more uneven as he got closer to the water. The further away he got from his car, the more alone he felt.

  As he reached the edge of the canal, he stopped. He bent over, his hands on his legs, as he struggled to breathe. He’d taken the easiest route across the field, and the disused building was further along, but he felt like he’d been for a long hike.

  The derelict cottage looked more ominous as he got closer. He’d driven past it countless times and never thought anything of it, but in his book Sean had written how he and Trudy used to love cruising along the canal and picnicking on the bank, fantasising about buying an old cottage and bringing it back to life. It was the postscript to the story that sealed it, because in it Sean described how progress had ruined their dream by running a motorway past it, taking away the tranquillity.

  Sean’s taunt during the celebratory party had come back to him, where he’d leaned in, sweat on his upper lip, and hissed, ‘By the western corner, just under the surface, below the mason’s mark – an itch you can’t scratch.’

  A mason’s mark. Somewhere old. It made so much sense. He didn’t know whether Dan would be able to use whatever he found, or even if he’d find anything, but his quest had become more important than that somehow. It had become about his own mental peace, as if he was the one needing redemption. He needed to know.

  The ground became more uneven, and he almost tripped over a rock embedded in the ground. That forced him to go slower. He couldn’t afford to injure himself and be left out in the field all night. Spring had arrived but the nights were still cold, particularly away from the warmth of the town and in the path of the winds that rolled over the hilltops. He was determined to keep going though.

  He stopped when he got to the cottage and pressed his hands against the stone. It had long since fallen into disrepair and nature was slowly taking it over. The roof had gone, slate thieves wouldn’t leave the tiles there for too long, along with all the pipes and guttering.

  He hadn’t brought a torch, and he cursed himself for that.

  He glanced into the house through the shell of a window. The inside was swallowed up by darkness. It looked like it might have been a kitchen, as he could just make out the
edge of a cupboard, but beyond that it was all black.

  For a moment, a headlight from the motorway made the walls and doorways inside bend and move.

  Pat stepped away, his heart beating fast, his chest aching.

  He was scared. He should go back to his car and go home, where Eileen would pour him a whiskey and he could seek solace in the glow of the fire. He could tell Dan about his suspicions in the morning.

  But it seemed stupid not to look now he was here. He couldn’t just leave, not when it was the question that had haunted him ever since Sean’s release party. He thought about his phone and whether he could use the screen as a light, but then he remembered that he hadn’t brought it with him. It had been part of his promise to Eileen, that he wouldn’t be wedded to it like he had been before, always waiting for a call from a police station. It was turned off and in his study.

  He peered again at the cottage. He tried to work out which corner of the cottage was the most westerly and went to it. The moon wasn’t strong enough to allow him to see properly, so he felt along the stones with his hands. But then another set of headlights swept the cottage and he saw it – scratches embedded in a cornerstone, a mason’s mark, an inverted triangle on top of another triangle, making a shape like an egg-timer.

  He grinned, despite the cold and the ache in his chest. This was the place, right where he was standing.

  The ground was overgrown with weeds and nettles that spread right into the wall. He pulled those away first, pausing to take ragged breaths. Once he’d cleared that, he dragged his spade along the ground, feeling for a slight bump or indentation. After a few metres, he stopped and sighed. He was wasting his time; the whole area was uneven.

  He was about to give in when he had another thought. If he could just remove the turf, it might reveal something.

  He took a deep breath and thrust the spade into the ground, the soil soft and moist and heavy. Pat strained as he removed the first large clod and then went along the ground with his spade, marking out a straight line, the house in front of him. He started to remove turf along the line, digging methodically.