by Ryan Casey
“Wait, shouldn’t we call for…?”
“Let’s just have a quick look around, okay? See what we can find.”
“If you say so, I guess.”
“Good girl. You’re learning.”
“Piss off.”
The farther they walked down the corridor, the messier it got. Things creaked, and sudden movements glimmered in the light of their torches. Damp, sticky glass cracked under their feet. It was an industrial jungle, filled with mysterious old cures and undiscovered secrets. A man-made Amazon gone to waste.
As they progressed farther into the mouth of the beast, Cassy began to cough. Brian glared at her. “Keep it down,” he whispered.
“Weed.”
Brian’s eyebrows twitched. “You’ve done what?”
Cassy held her hand to her face and covered her mouth to prevent further coughing. “No, weed. I can’t handle weed. There’s someone been smoking in here.”
Brian twitched his nostrils like a sniffer dog, and the ghastly dull smell hit him. How hadn’t he smelt it before? Was a decline in the sense of smell another thing the curse of middle age stripped away?
“We’ll go a bit further in, and see…”
“Brian,” Cassy whispered. She stared somewhere beyond him and switched off her torch.
“What’s up?”
“Look. Up there.”
Brian squinted ahead and kept his torch low. At first, he didn’t see anything. Then a miniscule light, flickering just in the distance, became visible.
He turned back to Cassy. “How shall we go about this?”
“I thought you were the fucking expert?”
Brian gulped and lowered his torch even more. The person had to have seen them. It had to be Danny.
“We’ll go in quiet,” Brian said. “Keep your light off. Anything happens, we turn them on straight away and blind the bastard. Okay?”
Cassy turned back to the door they’d come through. “You sure we shouldn’t call for backup now?”
Brian mulled the thought in his head. Call for backup or get it done with? “We’re here now. Let’s get it done with.”
Brian took lead and started walking. He waited for the sound of Cassy’s footsteps behind him. No chance he was venturing too far into this dark abyss alone.
The light grew even closer as broken glass cracked beneath Brian’s feet. Had he seen them? Was he even there?
Then, the light went out.
Brian stopped walking, and Cassy edged into his back. What now? Did he turn the torch on, or what? Danny could be anywhere, waiting to ambush them…
Fuck it. He pulled up his torch and aimed it in the direction of the light.
That’s when he saw him lying there.
Thick vomit trickled out of his mouth. A bottle of pills rested between his limp fingers.
“Call a fucking ambulance,” Brian said as he rushed over to Danny’s lifeless body and eased his neck upright.
A solitary spliff lay on the floor as the lit end gradually burned out.
Chapter Eight
Brian couldn’t get the image of Danny Stocks out of his head that night. Bottle of pills in his hand. Lone spliff burning out beside his fingertips.
He couldn’t sleep. He knew what he had to do if he wanted to sleep, but he didn’t want to do it. Nobody in their right mind would want to do it. But it wasn’t about want. It wasn’t a choice.
He should’ve felt triumphant about their discovery of Danny, but a part of him couldn’t help but sympathise.
Danny was to spend the night–maybe longer–in hospital, on suicide watch. Any form of interviewing was postponed until the doctor considered him “fit for questioning”. Just what they needed.
If only they’d got to the hospital quicker. If only they hadn’t taken a detour back to the station on the way back from the Watson household, they could’ve had him. Now, they just had to hope.
Brian took a sip of whisky and cringed. He hated the stuff, but he had to keep up the image at work. Keep it on his breath. The recovering alcoholic.
His phone vibrated. Who would be calling him at eleven p.m.? He grabbed it from his cluttered bedside table and lifted it to his ear the second he saw the name on the screen: Vanessa. Shit. He was drunk, too. Was he drunk? Shit.
“‘Ness, I, erm…Hi.” Smooth, Brian. Real smooth.
“Sorry to call you so late,” she said. “I just…Well, I heard about it on the news. The boy you found. Is that it? Is it over?”
He hadn’t spoken to his wife since Christmas, and now she was ringing up and asking about the case. That meant the media were all over the events. The powers above keeping the press sweet after a recently strained relationship.
“Hard to say. We won’t know more until we have a chat with the boy. But it doesn’t look great for him, in my opinion, anyway. Running off and trying to kill himself. Either depressed that his girlfriend’s gone, or something more complicated.”
Vanessa sighed. He pictured her twiddling with her long, silvery blonde hair as she always did when she was on the phone. “How you doing?” she asked.
“Good.” Brian gripped the bottle of whisky in his other hand. “And you? How’s Davey?”
“We’re good. He’s good. He got a new toy car today. Can’t wait to show you.”
“I bet. I bet he loves it.”
A moment’s silence passed before Vanessa started speaking again. “Listen, I was wondering if you wanted to meet up for a coffee tomorrow?”
“I…A coffee? Course, course, that’d be…Will Davey be…?”
“Just me and you,” Vanessa cut in. “I wanted to talk about, um, the divorce. Get things moving further with that. If that’s okay?”
“Oh…yeah.” Brian’s enthusiasm deflated. He cleared his throat to mask the disappointment in his voice. “I mean, yeah. I’m busy lately. Probably better if Davey and I hang out when I’m a bit more focused…or something like that.” He gritted his teeth after saying the words. They sounded as if an alien was speaking through him.
“That sounds very mature of you, Brian. You have a lot of making up to do. If you’re busy, then maybe now isn’t the best time.”
He knew what she was implying by the way she said “busy”. Judgmental cow. But who was he to argue, lying here with empty bottles around the room, whisky in his hand? Still, only he judged himself. What he did in his spare time was nobody else’s business. No doctor’s. No therapist’s. Nobody’s.
“What time would be best for you tomorrow?” Vanessa asked.
“One-ish, perhaps? Lunch?”
Vanessa kept quiet for a few seconds. “All right,” she finally said. “One it is. Be there, Brian, seriously. Goodnight.”
“Good–”
The phone cut out. He pressed it against his cheek for a few moments, then popped it back on his bedside table, next to the turned down photo. He started to turn the photo up, have a look at them again, just to remember. Just to remember how it was.
He stopped himself. He screwed the bottle cap on the whisky before walking to the bathroom cubicle. He pulled the flimsy light cord and saw his bushy stubble staring back at him, ready for a shave.
He picked up the razor blade. The sense of dread welled in his stomach. You know you have to do it. You know you’ll feel better if you do it. You know you’ll be out of control if you don’t do it…
He closed his eyes and squeezed the handle of the razor. He didn’t have to do it. He was seeing Vanessa tomorrow–he would feel better then. She would make him feel better.
“I wanted to talk about the divorce…”
He pressed the razorblade against his forearm and clenched his jaw. Almost over, almost over…
The tang of whisky seared the back of his throat as the metal cut into his flesh, but soon he would be okay again and he’d be able to sleep, and everything would be back to normal.
The drunken detective. He wished it were as simple as the cliché.
Brian’s breath frosted like steam from an engine as he walked down to the police station the following day. He smelt of sour whisky. His clothes stuck to his skin, but he hadn’t found the time to take a shower. He’d done the usual–dabbed a bit of whisky under his armpits and on his neck, just to give off the strong boozy smell. He’d cleaned the wound on his arm and wrapped a bandage around it, but soon after that, he’d fallen to sleep. Maybe back in the day, he would’ve made an effort to impress his colleagues. But as age progressed, it was becoming less and less important.
As he walked inside the station, Amanda, the desk officer, did a double take and nudged the work experience intern by her side. Both of them had a little giggle and avoided eye contact with Brian. Perfect. He must have done a good job of looking the drunken mess. Then again, Amanda always seemed to find something to laugh about, like a high schooler who never quite matured.
Cassy scanned Brian from head to toe as he walked through the chatter of the main office. “You okay?”
“Fine,” he said. “Just fine. Is the boy here?”
Cassy nodded reluctantly and pointed towards the interview room doors. “Came out of hospital this morning. Asked him if he wanted to pop down for a little chat, and he seemed okay with that. His grandma–your new girlfriend–she’s been on the phone, but you know what she’s like with me. So I couldn’t say much to her, y’know?”
Brian pulled off his coat and threw it onto his desk. DS Stephen Molfer jumped as the coat knocked over his pot of stationary, sending a bunch of freshly sharpened pencils to the floor. He glared at Brian with narrowed eyes.
“At least it’ll get you off your arse,” Brian said, and some of the other officers laughed as Molfer got down on his hands and knees.
Brian turned back to Cassy with a smile on his face. Cassy, however, was not smiling.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Brian asked.
Cassy sighed. “The press. They’re all over this.” She grabbed the copy of the Lancashire News from the desk and held it up. BOYFRIEND SUICIDE ATTEMPT AS MURDER TWISTS.
Brian punched the paper out of his face and started walking towards the briefing room. “Murder ‘twists?’ What does that even mean?”
Cassy scrambled to pick up some notes and ran to catch up. “I dunno. But the press seems well-informed.”
Brian looked around the room at the officers at their desks. “Not surprised. Just the way things go. I bet half of these young rats are earning an extra few quid a day from the press. The problem with rats is, someday they get caught.”
“Do you think I’m a young rat?” Cassy asked, raising her eyebrows like an innocent puppy.
“For that, darling, you’d have to be young.”
She punched Brian in the arm before leading the way to the briefing room. Brian winced with pain. Nobody noticed, and he was completely content with that.
DI Price already sat in the middle chair, arms folded and cheeks more inflamed than ever. White hairs sprouted out of his nostrils like weeds in a garden, unstoppable and never-ending. He looked at his watch as Brian and Cassy entered. “On time for once. Maybe you’ll actually make some progress today, right?”
Brian bit his lip. “That’s certainly my intention.”
“None of that cockiness with me,” Price said. “Take a seat.”
Brian sat down at the corner of the table, Cassy beside him. DC Peters was clean-shaven and fresher looking than yesterday. He was perched in front of a laptop, keying in notes from a black notepad.
“H.O.L.M.E.S. up and running again?”
“For now. Got a few complaints through to the ACS. He says we’re using it wrong. I’d like to see him come down here and bloody use it right.”
“Don’t you get lippy, Peters, or I’ll make you spew again,” Price said. A few of the officers around the table snorted and sniggered. “McDone, the lad’s in the interview rooms. The boyfriend. Looking a bit fidgety for my liking. Stares into space like a fucking junkie. Not sure I like him.”
“DS Emerson and I will have a chat with him. He tried to kill himself last night. If that’s not a sign of guilt, then I’d like to know what it is. We have a clear motive for his attempted suicide. Now we just need to work out whether he might have a motive for something much darker.”
Price offered a slight nod in agreement. “We’ll have to interview under caution. He’s free to leave at any time. You’d best hurry up. Thanks to the press, I’d expect the girl’s parents’ll be paying us a visit today.”
“What are you trying to say?” Brian asked.
Price stood up and began rubbing out some old notes on the whiteboard with his dusty sleeve. “What I’m trying to say is that you’d better find out as much about this kid as you can, before the parents come in here and bloody kill him, or before he decides he’s had enough and takes off. Well, what are you waiting for?”
Brian and Cassy scrambled to their feet on cue as the rest of the officers, tired-eyed, remained slouched in their chairs.
“Carter, any word from forensics on Nicola’s body?”
DC Carter, a bulky man with a face like a bulldog, shook his head. “No word. Forensics staff is down to the minimum. Can only do one thing at a time.”
“And the CCTV?” Brian asked. “Pennison?”
DC Pennison shrugged and held out his hands. “Council CCTV doesn’t cover the crime scene. A complete blind spot, which is very handy for a seedy area like Foster Road.”
Typical. Forensics was taking its time, and CCTV was a dead end. Two leads down the pan, all thanks to inadequate council budgeting. “Right. We’ll go speak to Daniel. The rest of you, make sure the system is up to date, and check in on Scott and the Watsons. We need to make sure that lad doesn’t think he’s got away with things too easy, in case he does anything silly again. Get on the phone–I want an official statement from the boy, okay? A few of you get back down to Foster Road and expand the house calls. We need every single house in that surrounding area accounted for. Price will split you into groups. Understood?”
Pennison and Carter nodded as Peters continued to key into the laptop. Brian and Cassy walked to the door.
“Oh, McDone?” Price said.
Brian turned back to face him. “Yes?”
“Get a shower. You fucking stink.”
Chapter Nine
Danny Stocks wasn’t alone.
One of the duty solicitors, Jonny Marsden, moved up to the desk and held out a hand to Cassy and Brian. He was short and plump, with a ring of hair above his ears and a pair of wonky glasses gripping his shiny head. Danny, his hair matted and greasy, stared into the distance. Brian pulled a chair out for Cassy then one for himself before opening up his diary and getting comfortable. He clicked the record button on the tape recorder as Danny scratched at his arms.
“DS McDone and DS Emerson interviewing Mr. Daniel Stocks as an exceptional witness in the Nicola Watson case.”
Danny blinked.
“Also present is duty solicitor Jonny Marsden, who is representing Mr. Stocks.” Brian nodded and smiled in Marsden’s direction, who returned a nod out of politeness. Fucking sap.
“Mr. Stocks, firstly, I should make you aware of your rights. You–”
“He’s very aware of his rights,” Jonny snapped. “He knows very well he doesn’t have to be here so soon after his incident. And he knows very well that he can leave whenever he wants.”
Brian attempted a smile. These duty solicitors always had to stick their noses in where they weren’t wanted, regardless of whether it was in the case’s best interests or not. All they cared about was their paycheck. “Thank you, Mr. Marsden. Mr. Stocks, can I call you Daniel?”
He looked at Brian. “Danny.” His voice sounded weak.
“Danny. As you’re aware, you’re being treated as a witness in the Nicola Watson case, hence the need for recording. We have reason to believe you were the last person to see her alive. First of all, and I hope you’ll excuse m
e if I’m blunt, but I don’t particularly care. Why the big show yesterday?”
Danny opened his mouth, but Marsden leaned forward and interrupted. “Mr. Stocks would appreciate a bit of sympathy on his behalf. He is still in a fragile state of mind after recent events, and your aggressive line of questioning, especially targeted at a witness, is only going to upset matters.” Marsden’s raspy, forced-posh voice indicated he was probably from Blackburn, really. Stupid bastard.
Danny, looking between Brian and Cassy, sat back into his seat and closed his mouth.
“Why did you do a runner yesterday, Danny?” Brian asked.
Danny reached for a pen on the table and twirled it with his finger. His grey eyes were vacant, his body rigid underneath his green Converse t-shirt. Dandruff dangled from his thin, greasy hair.
Marsden leaned forward again. “Detective, I would appreciate it if you–”
“It’s all right, I can speak for myself.” Danny glared at the duty solicitor then turned his attention back to Brian and Cassy. “I needed to get away from all this shit.”
Brian took down some notes. “Your grandma didn’t see you yesterday morning when you went missing. It all just seems a little too convenient for me. How did you know about any of ‘this shit’ if you had nothing to do with your girlfriend’s death?”
Danny shook his head at Jonny. “I thought this was…? I don’t see why that matters.”
“It matters if you want to clear your name, because the way I see it, you’re not in the best position, son–”
“All right, Scott told me. He called me as soon as he found out she was dead. And the night before, me and Nicola, we…Well, I saw her. Scott just thought I should know, so I ran. My…my girlfriend was dead. Someone told me my girlfriend was dead, so I needed some space. Satisfied?”
Brian shuffled in his chair. Scott Watson hadn’t told them anything about contacting Danny Stocks. “Right. You realise how this looks right now though, don’t you? You realise you’re our main lead. You realise you, the main lead, did a runner when the news came out and tried to kill yourself.” He reached into his pocket and slammed the camera down in front of Danny. “You realise that you, the main lead, were one of the very last people to see Nicola Watson before she was killed. So talk.”