by Neil White
The canal and roads were far below him, the people just small figures on the pavement. He leaned back against the roof, the tiles digging into him, the night air cooling his light coating of sweat.
How had it all got to this? All of these years, it had been him in charge. Now, someone was getting the better of him. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
A friend had been murdered, someone who needed a quick injection of cash, and had accepted Proctor’s offer of payment in exchange for collecting something. Proctor had set off before him once they’d swapped cars, and had been waiting further along. He’d watched as the man stepped out of the shadows and crept towards the brick folly, a nearby light catching the glint of metal. There’d been a frenzy of movement and then the man was running and his friend lay on the floor. As the man bolted back to his car, Proctor saw his face. The man’s identity changed everything.
He wrapped his arms around himself. It was going to be a long, cold night, but he needed to take one last look and enjoy a final night of calm. In the morning, it was time to hurt those who’d hurt him.
Joe got a taxi to Melissa’s apartment building.
He’d texted her first, just to ask her if he could go there. He needed to be somewhere that his family didn’t know about, and a hotel would create a credit-card trail.
‘Couldn’t keep away?’ she whispered, as he walked along the corridor to her apartment. She put her finger to her lips as he went inside. ‘Carrie has just gone to her room. I don’t want her to hear you.’
Joe rushed past her.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
Joe took her hands in his and said, ‘We need to talk.’ He led her to the chair, so that they were sitting opposite.
‘Joe, what is it? You’re scaring me.’
‘I need you to know that I felt something. I hope you did too.’
Melissa sat back and crossed her legs. Tears brimmed onto her eyelashes. ‘This didn’t take long, did it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The brush-off. The goodbye.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Don’t worry, this is for me, not you. Yes, I felt something, but now your ego has been buffed up, you’re free to go.’
Joe leaned forward and took her hands again. He dipped his head to catch her gaze. ‘This is not the brush-off,’ he said. ‘But I haven’t been totally open with you; I should have been more honest. I’m sorry. It’s difficult.’
‘There’s someone else?’
‘No one else. That’s not what this is about.’ He looked directly into her eyes and said, ‘I’m going to tell you things now that you won’t understand. Or perhaps you will, I don’t know, but I’m deadly serious.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You were right when you said I was devoting a lot of time to Mark’s case, more than you’d expect for a burglary. I’m a good lawyer, but I’m not that thorough. I can promise you one thing though: I wasn’t using you. I’ve surprised myself, but I’m here now because I care about you. You’ve got to trust me on this.’
‘Joe, just say it.’
His mouth was dry. He swallowed. ‘Seventeen years ago, my younger sister was murdered. Followed down a woodland path not far from our home and strangled. It was on my eighteenth birthday.’
Melissa’s hands gripped his tighter. ‘Oh Joe, I’m sorry.’
‘Your brother killed her.’
Melissa’s mouth opened, her eyes widened. She dropped her hands and one went over her mouth. She turned away.
‘Mark killed her?’ A pause. ‘Can you be sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
Melissa stayed silent as she thought about what Joe had said, sometimes looking up as if she was about to say something, before realising that words couldn’t make sense of what he’d said.
Eventually, she said, ‘Tell me the story.’
So he did. He told her everything. What he’d done on his eighteenth birthday, and the secret he’d lived with ever since. His certainty when he saw Mark at the police station.
‘This week has been the strangest week,’ Joe said. ‘It’s the moment I’ve been waiting for, ever since then, but now it’s arrived it doesn’t feel like I expected. And now it’s all gone wrong. I’m in trouble, Melissa.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I followed your brother tonight. After I left here, my little sister Ruby told me your brother had approached her outside the school.’ Joe blew out. ‘Waiting for my other little sister, who’s had to live in the shadow of what your brother did all of her life.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘To taunt me, I’m guessing.’
‘But why?’
‘Because he’s always known who I am.’
‘You sound angry with me,’ she said. ‘Yes, he’s my brother, but he’s not me.’
‘I’m not angry with you. I’m just angry. You don’t have to apologise for him. Once I heard that, though, I waited outside his house. I was going to follow through with my threat, was trying to build up to it.’
‘Threat?’
‘To kill him.’
‘You were going to kill my brother?’ She shook her head violently. ‘I don’t speak to him, but he’s still my brother, and still my parents’ son. For them, and for your sake, don’t do it. Joe, you’re better than that. You don’t have it in you. I can see it in your eyes, in your tenderness. You’re a good man, I can tell. And my parents…’ She exhaled. ‘You said you’re in trouble. Have you…?’
‘No, I haven’t. Your brother is still alive, but someone else isn’t so lucky.’ He got to his feet and went to the window. He watched the lights outside, the steady stream of cars on a distant road, the beam from a canal boat. ‘I waited outside his house and I followed him. He went to a green in Worsley. I parked close by and watched him.’
‘Why? What were you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. That’s just it. I had no plan, no idea. I was just watching him. Except it wasn’t him. It was his car and his clothes, but I hadn’t seen him up close. When I got into the park, the man who I thought was your brother was dead. There was blood everywhere. I got some on me, on my clothes. I stepped in it, so there will be traces in my car. Someone might have seen me running away from the scene.’
‘What, you didn’t stay and report it?’
‘I panicked,’ Joe said, turning around. ‘I know it’s no excuse, but this is something new for me; you can’t rehearse how you’d react.’
‘So who was he, the dead man?’
‘I have no idea, but I think your brother does. He must have sent him as a decoy.’
‘What, you think Mark knew he might be killed?’
‘He must have suspected it.’
Melissa thought about that for a few seconds. ‘You can’t go home. Stay here. Just for tonight.’
Joe was about to protest that it wasn’t fair on her, but he knew she’d see it for the lie it was. He’d gone there for that very reason. He was in trouble and he’d turned to her for help.
Forty-two
Sam woke up and got straight out of bed.
‘What is it?’ Alice mumbled, her face buried deep in the pillow.
‘Last night. The online chat on that site.’
Alice lifted her head. ‘It’s not even six o’clock.’
‘Sometimes these things need a few hours to settle in, as if the sleep sorts it all out,’ he said.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Online.’
Alice groaned and put the pillow over her head.
Sam reached down for his clothes, still on the floor from the night before. As he lifted his trousers, his phone fell out. A light was flashing.
It was a text from Charlotte: Can you pick me up? My car’s got a flat. It had come in fifteen minutes earlier. That was an early start.
He called her. When she answered, he said, ‘Something happened?’
‘Didn’t Brabham ring you?’ Charlotte said, crunching on her breakfast.
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘There’s another murder.’
Sam pinched his nose and wiped his eyes. ‘Give me thirty minutes,’ and he clicked off. ‘There’s another body.’
‘There’s always another body somewhere,’ Alice said. ‘What time will you be back this time? Before midnight?’
He didn’t respond but got dressed quickly. It was a sad reality that a dead body meant long hours. And they didn’t get shorter when a suspect was found, because then the interviews went on and on, the time of day irrelevant.
Before he left the bedroom, Alice held out her arm. He bent down to her, and when she pulled him closer, he kissed her, the taste of sleep on her lips.
‘I’ll be back when I can,’ he said.
Before he left, he looked in on Ruby. She was sprawled along the sofa. He made a promise to himself that he would spend some time with her, once he was able to grab some for himself.
The drive to Charlotte’s house was spent trying to become more alert, the heat turned down low in the car, the blowers on, using the cold air to get rid of the last traces of tiredness. When she climbed in, the car was filled with perfume.
‘Where am I going?’
‘Worsley,’ she said, and yawned.
‘That’s not in our division.’
‘There are some similarities to our case apparently, so Brabham wants to check for a link.’
As he drove, Sam said, ‘I think I got something about the website. I was thinking about it before I went to bed and my brain must have somehow sorted it out when I was asleep.’
‘I’m interested,’ she said.
‘I received a reply from vodkagirl last night. We had a brief chat, and pretty quickly she wanted a picture of me.’
Charlotte smiled. ‘You’ve been out of the dating game too long.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Dating is all about photos now. If I chat to a bloke online, and I do, they soon get to wanting to see me naked. It’s almost as if they’re not bothered about meeting me but just want to stay in front of a screen all night, tossing themselves off.’
‘And?’
‘I tell them to get lost.’ Then she blushed. ‘Most times anyway. But even when I’m not interested, it doesn’t stop the cock pictures from coming in.’
‘But if you want to exploit someone, you have to get their secrets. Take Bruce from yesterday. He said vodkagirl wanted to know his darkest secrets, something to share.’
‘Yeah, I got that, and I mentioned about the paedophile-hunter, the guy who lured them to a meeting with a camera.’
‘But what if it’s more than that?’ Sam said. ‘There was something else Bruce said. Vodkagirl had told him that a teacher had abused her, trapped her in a storeroom and tried to take her virginity. She said she was looking for someone to understand her feelings but described it as abuse.’
‘And?’
‘It was meant to turn Bruce on but also make him be a hero, by describing the teacher as her abuser. And what was Keith Welsby?’
‘A teacher,’ Charlotte said, starting to smile.
‘That’s right,’ Sam said. ‘Was that the demand? Kill my abuser and you can have me?’
‘That’s extreme,’ she said. ‘Who’d go for that?’
‘A man who has desires burning him up so that he can’t control them any more. Dreams of children. Like Henry Mason.’
Charlotte shook her head. ‘No, it’s too far. Murdering someone is a big step.’
‘But what if vodkagirl has his secrets? What if he’s sent things to her, pictures of himself, or disclosed things he should have kept to himself?’
Charlotte didn’t respond straight away, until she turned to smile. ‘I like it. So vodkagirl either blackmails Henry Mason into murdering Keith Welsby because of secrets he disclosed, or else persuades him to be her hero, and then she will be all his?’
‘That’s what I’m thinking.’
‘And Henry Mason turned up to meet an underage girl, his duty done, and what he got was his own murder.’ She frowned. ‘One problem, though: who killed Henry Mason?’
‘The person behind the profile. Who else?’
‘Brabham won’t be happy.’
‘Why? Method and motive solved. We just need to find out who’s behind the profile.’
‘Because it stops the domino effect pretty quickly,’ she said. ‘No more big-time press conferences on this case, and it means this new murder will have nothing to do with ours.’
‘Perhaps someone shouldn’t have spoken to the press so soon.’
They parked close to the crime scene, in front of a restaurant that had been squashed into a low-rise building fronted in white pebbledash.
The area had been closed off for a few hours, the call coming in during the night, but a lot of the work had been held off until daylight to avoid the risk of contaminating the scene; a crucial piece of evidence could be hidden in the dark and be taken away on the sole of someone’s shoe, like a cigarette butt or a piece of paper.
‘Where’s Brabham?’ Sam said.
Charlotte looked around before she pointed to a cluster of people and the glare of a television spotlight. ‘Looks like he saw the lenses and went straight over.’
Sam watched until the cluster broke up, the interview done. Brabham stepped away but he paused before he made his way to his squad. He was talking to a young female journalist, smiling and touching her arm, something more than a brief quote. As he moved on and she turned to watch, Sam recognised her: Lauren Spicer, the young reporter who’d tried to get a quote from him a couple of mornings before.
‘You were right,’ Sam said. When Charlotte looked confused, he added, ‘The young reporter got her scoop from Brabham.’
‘But who’s using who?’ Charlotte said.
‘That’s their problem,’ Sam said, as he looked around. There was a small cobbled footbridge that rose over the canal. Trees hung over the water further along, near to a large building with a fake Tudor front. A barge puttered along in bright reds and greens, with flowers spilling out of boxes on its roof, steered by a man in a wispy beard and denim cap, happy living in his cliché.
‘It’s a similar location,’ Sam said. ‘A local attraction to make sure the body will be discovered at some point, but quiet too. The houses nearby are the sort where people don’t look out much, hidden behind high hedges. The road that passes is too far away to make for good eyewitnesses, and it’s a major route to the motorway.’
‘It’s a park too,’ Charlotte said. ‘The local plods are probably called here most weekends in the summer, a magnet for those too old to stay indoors but not old enough for the pubs. So who would pay any attention to shouts and screams, except perhaps for a weary call to the local station?’
Crime scene tape was drawn in a wide arc around the green. Someone hovered nearby with flowers even though the victim hadn’t been identified; wanting to be seen on the news, was Sam’s guess. There was a small huddle of detectives in forensic suits at the edge of the crime scene tape.
Sam and Charlotte walked towards them. As they got closer, Sam said, ‘So what have you got?’
One of the crime scene technicians pulled her hood down, her dark hair plastered to her head. ‘A dead man in park and some sort of rendezvous,’ she said. ‘Stab wounds. Under the ear, the chest, a couple in the ribs.’
‘The method is different, then,’ Sam said. ‘How long has he been there?’
‘A few hours, most likely overnight. Rigor mortis has set in and the pool of blood has congealed.’
‘Do we know who he is?’
‘No, not yet. He was dressed casually. Hoodie and jeans. No flowers. It could be a feud over something. There’s a hire car parked on the road just through there,’ and she gestured towards the canal. ‘The keys are in his pocket and it’s been there all night. That’s why it looks like a rendezvous, because he made a special trip. The local car hire place hasn’t opened yet, so we can’t get details of the hirer. Nothing obvious on his perso
n.’
‘Any sign of a struggle?’
‘No, nothing. No other injuries apart from the stab wounds. My guess is that he was approached from behind and there was a frenzied attack. There are easier ways to kill someone, if that was the intention.’
Sam pointed at the brick monument and said, ‘What is this thing? It looks like someone started to build a tower and stopped, so stuck a birdbath inside.’