by Neil White
Evans flushed at Joe’s sarcasm. Before she was able to reply, a door opened at the side of court and the magistrates walked in – two pensioners in suits and a young woman too glammed up for a courtroom. Everyone rose and gave their ritual bow, and then the court was filled with the noise of a key jangling in a lock. Joe turned towards the back of the courtroom and looked at the dock. A bedraggled man in his fifties appeared behind the toughened glass screen, handcuffed to a security guard, the first overnight drunk of the day, his sweatshirt and jogging bottoms showing the rigours of a night in a cell.
As the court clerk started to speak, to check the man’s name and date of birth, Joe realised that he needed Ronnie Bagley, just for a distraction from the everyday trawls through broken lives.
He went to sit down, but as he did, he saw the detectives talking in whispers, nodding, staring over at him. They stood to go and, as they left the courtroom, Joe got the unerring sense that his involvement in the case had somehow become more important.
Six
Joe looked up at his mother’s house and his fingers gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.
From the outside, the house was a quiet semi-detached with large windows and a small garden wall, a driveway running towards a garage with a battered wooden door. He knew what it would be like inside: birthday banners, cakes, family fun. Except that it was all faked, all designed to keep up the façade that everything was fine, that they were a happy family. Only those in the family knew how deeply fractured they had been by Ellie’s murder. His father sank into a depression that he never got over and sought comfort in a bottle. A stroke ended his life five years later. Joe’s mother had carried on the drinking where he left off, and since then the house had started to decay.
His parents had bought the house from the council at the height of a property boom, expecting it to be an investment, but they’d never had the income to maintain it. The other ones on the street received the regular touch-ups from the council, but his mother’s house had grass growing from the gutters, so that water poured out when it rained, and window frames that were starting to look rotten, the paint almost gone. He had tried to get her to hire a decorator, had even turned up himself one day with a paintbrush, but she hadn’t wanted anything touching. It was as if she couldn’t stand the thought of moving on, even though there was Ruby to consider.
The concern for the house was for a different day. What was waiting for him in it was part of the charade, and so he got ready to smile, to pretend that he didn’t want to be another year older, the number forever getting bigger. But it’s what they did, the Parker family. They celebrated everything together, as if they would somehow fall apart if they didn’t join together for the big events.
It was more than that, though. It was about Ellie. Every day since then had been about his sister.
The memories came back, and they hurt, as always, the dark blanket ready to smother him. His birthday was always about holding back the grief. He had expected the steady roll of time to take away some of the pain, but instead it had become magnified. It was his own fault, because he fought to keep her memory alive and felt angry when he thought he was about to forget and move on.
He glanced in the rear-view mirror. He had to be ready, best smile, but he knew that whenever he walked into the family home, the grief seemed as raw as it had been back then. Especially on his birthday, the anniversary of when she died.
No, that was wrong. It wasn’t as clinical as that. She hadn’t died. She had been killed. Cold and brutal.
He shouldn’t dwell on it though. His diary had been kept light, because it was the same every year, his birthdays following a pattern, as his mother tried to make it a celebration, despite knowing the day wouldn’t stay like that.
The day was warm as he stepped out of the car. Manchester was damp too often, plagued by grey skies from whatever rain Ireland hadn’t managed to soak up. This was one of those rare late-spring days, when the birds sang and the Pennine hills that loomed over the city seemed to glow rather than brood. The metal gate let out a clink as he opened it, and as he walked up the drive and the twin tracks of paving slabs along the side of the house, his sister, Ruby, appeared at the window. She waved. He waved back and then got his best smile ready as he saw her outline through the glass in the door.
Ruby was all teenage excitement and long limbs. At just thirteen, there was a large gap between them.
‘Happy birthday,’ she squealed, and then planted a kiss on his cheek. ‘I thought you were never going to arrive.’
‘How could I miss this?’ he said, and laughed, despite himself.
She led the way, pulling on his hand, and as he got into the house he was assaulted by the sights and smells of his childhood: the aroma of home-baking coming from the kitchen, the holiday kitsch ornaments on a shelf next to the television: an ashtray from Malta, a bell from Spain, some shot glasses from various places in Scotland. There were photos of him and his brother on the mantelpiece, along with pictures of Ellie, his first baby sister.
He focused on Ellie’s picture. His birthday celebration was always early, the morning for him, because the rest of the day was for Ellie. She had died on his eighteenth birthday, raped and strangled and left in undergrowth not far from her school. So every birthday he had was about Ellie, and so they had to get him out of the way first.
It struck him how much Ruby was like Ellie. It was the way she smiled, sort of mischievous, a glint to her eyes, her tooth biting her lip. It took him by surprise sometimes. He felt that kick of sadness and had to remind himself that Ruby was her own person, wasn’t just a substitute for the sister he had lost.
‘You made it then?’
It was his brother, Sam.
‘It is my party,’ Joe said, as he turned around. ‘I’m supposed to be late. It’s fashionable.’
Sam flickered a smile. ‘Happy birthday, brother.’
He was a detective, although he wasn’t like most Joe knew. Sam was quiet and thoughtful, slim, with his hair neat and short, but he was nervy, his eyes shielded by glasses. He was the family conscience, the one who tried to keep everyone together, as if life was a series of obligations. So on birthdays, holidays, and sometimes just because there was a good weather forecast, the same small group was asked to turn out and mumble at each other.
‘Yeah, thanks,’ Joe said. ‘Where’s Mum?’
‘In the back room, fixing food. You know how it is. Just let her stay busy.’
‘What time are you going to the cemetery?’
‘Aren’t you coming?’
Joe sighed. It was the same old argument. ‘I’m working.’
Sam didn’t say anything at first. He glowered for a few seconds, cricked his neck, and then said, ‘It wouldn’t hurt one year. Just for Mum.’
Joe stepped closer, so Ruby couldn’t hear him, and spoke in a whisper. ‘I think of Ellie all the time, but I prefer to think of her in happier times, like when it’s her birthday, not on the day she died. I want to remember her for the right things, not how it ended.’
‘That’s bullshit.’
Before Joe could respond, his mother came into the room, a plate of sandwiches in her hand. As she put them down next to the sausage rolls and scotch eggs, the plate rattled against the table. The shake to her hand was getting worse.
Her smile was weak as she came towards him. Joe could tell she was trying too hard. He had to lean down to let her put a kiss to his cheek. Her lips felt cold, and she trembled more than she used to.
‘Don’t you look handsome,’ she said, taking his hand, her fingers cold and brittle in his. ‘My youngest boy, thirty-three. Who would have thought it? It makes me feel old.’
‘Worry when you start to look it,’ he said, making her laugh.
It was a lie, they both knew it, but it made her feel better. For years, he thought she hadn’t changed. Her style hadn’t altered – skirts and jumpers. Her hair was still cut short and only the colour had changed, as the grey started t
o take over before being replaced by a series of light browns. Some looked natural, others didn’t. Now she was starting to look like the woman she would become. Older, more frail. There were broken veins under her eyes and her cheeks were acquiring a permanent flush. Joe knew it was the booze, but there was no point in saying anything. She drank to reach oblivion when she needed it, and Joe knew that his birthdays were always the toughest. She put herself under pressure to make it a good day for him, even though he had told her often that it didn’t matter. But if they didn’t do this it would become solely about Ellie, and she needed the drink to get her through the day.
‘Come this way,’ Ruby said, interrupting, pulling him to a chair by the fire. Even though it was May and warm outside, the fire was on a low heat.
He let Ruby lead him, and sat there as they sang him ‘Happy Birthday’. Joe did his best to look cheerful, for Ruby’s sake, and then Ruby disappeared to bring in the small pile of presents. He made a show of delight as he unwrapped them, laughing at the jokes on the cards, expressing all the right amount of gratitude for each gift. Shirt, a mug, beer and socks.
‘Happy birthday,’ his mother said, and a tear rolled down her cheek.
‘I’ve got to go soon,’ Joe said, and then winced at the hurt that flashed across her eyes for a second. He wished he could take the words back, but they were out now.
‘So which low-life is more important than your family today?’ Sam said.
‘It sounds like you’re the one who’s still on duty,’ Joe said, sighing. ‘Try not being a copper for a day. You might like it.’
‘Go on, tell me how they’re just people, like you and me.’
‘Let’s not have this conversation again.’
‘I’ve seen how your clients really are, when they’re spitting and snarling in their handcuffs. You get the cleaned-up version, when they’re pleading for bail or whatever.’
‘They are still people.’
‘Don’t fight, boys.’ It was their mother.
They both smiled at her, trying to make it out like it was all a joke, just a brotherly wrestle, except that the passing years had made it more verbal than physical.
‘His work is more important,’ Sam said.
‘Joe’s work is important,’ she said. ‘I’m very proud of him.’
Sam clenched his jaw. He locked them up, Joe set them free, but in her world success was measured by the price of your suit, not the good work that you did.
‘I’ll call in later, I promise,’ Joe said.
His mother’s smile was even more forced. She knew he was avoiding the graveyard trip.
Sam’s phone rang. He turned away as he answered but Joe listened in anyway.
‘I’m not working today,’ Sam said. He listened, and then his voice seemed to raise a notch when he said, ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
When he turned back around Joe said, ‘What is it?’
Sam looked back at his phone and said, ‘I’ve got to go in. They want to speak to me about a murder case.’
‘I thought you were on the financial unit?’
‘I am,’ Sam said.
‘So why a murder?’
‘I don’t know.’
Joe didn’t get an answer when he reached for a sandwich and said, ‘It’s not good when work gets in the way, is it?’
Seven
Sam Parker checked his tie in the rear-view mirror and straightened it, but it just became more twisted than before. He straightened it again, so that it ended up how it had started. Sam didn’t feel ready to go in so soon after visiting Ellie’s grave, but an inspector on the Murder Squad had summoned him. He couldn’t ignore it. The Murder Squad wasn’t the official name, it was now the Major Incident Team, but Sam knew that the egos preferred the old moniker.
He looked up at the building. Stanmoss police station was old and built in redbrick with wings at either end. Rings of sandstone wrapped around it, so that it looked like it was wrapped in gold, although it looked jaded, with the brickwork bearing decades of traffic fumes like fatigue.
Try to stay calm, he told himself, it might be nothing. But if a murder case needed a financial investigation, this could be his opportunity to impress.
It would be better on a different day though. All through his career he had worked towards this moment, a brief glimpse into the Murder Squad, but the memory of the cemetery took away any sense of satisfaction. Ellie was always there, the little sister he had last seen as he went to university that day. A clingy, cute fifteen-year-old, snatched away from her life by someone who cared about it so little. It was corny, he knew it, but Ellie needed someone to fight for justice. And not just for her, but the people like her, the ones who left their homes but never made it back.
One more deep breath. Whatever this involved, it was just another case. Murders and frauds are the same. It’s about what stands out as unusual, a change from the routine. A different spending pattern, or a different route to work.
Sam had done his share of frauds. They were a lot of effort for not much reward. People went to jail, but not for long. Sometimes it felt like it was worth it, like when a pursuit of the paper trail led to houses bought by laundered money, so the fraudster lost his gains. But most of the time it was just people trying to work out ways to provide money for gambling, or to entertain the women they had lied to about their money. Perhaps this was his chance to get involved with something bigger, the reason why he had joined the police. This was for Ellie.
He jumped at the sound of his phone. The screen said it was a withheld number. He thought about not answering, because he guessed it was the call he had been getting for a few weeks, but it was the number he gave out to witnesses so he knew he had to answer.
‘Hello, DC Sam Parker.’
There was a pause, and for a moment he thought it might be an automated message, a promise of compensation if he had ever tripped or had a car crash. But it wasn’t. The sounds came as they always did. A struggle, cries, muffled grunts of exertion, and then the sound of a scream, cut short by a slap and followed by sobs.
He clicked it off and thrust the phone back into his pocket. His guess was that it was the soundtrack from some post-midnight horror film, because it was recorded. He put it down to being a detective, being targeted by people who hadn’t enjoyed his work. He had seized a lot of dirty money from a lot of bad people, and some of them got angry.
The calls weren’t every day, but they came in flurries, so that he might go for a few days without a call, and then he would receive four or five a day for a few days, the message never changing.
Sam let the sun perk him back up as he stepped out of the car, and then checked his appearance again in the reflection as he walked slowly towards the front door. His suit was grey and sharp – he’d gone home to get changed – with a cornflower blue shirt and dark blue tie. It made it look like he was going for a job interview, but that was how he felt.
The door echoed as it closed and he roamed high-ceilinged corridors lit by dirty strip-lights, the covers filled with dirt and dust, the radiators thick with years of paint. He was looking for something that resembled an Incident Room, but most of the rooms seemed empty, used as storerooms, with boxes piled high and desks dismantled, ready to be taken away. As he walked, he started to think that someone was playing a joke on him, but then he heard soft mumbles of conversation. He followed the noise, and as he turned a corner he saw an open door ahead. The shirts and ties visible ahead told him that he had found the Murder Squad.
Sam swallowed as he got closer, and as he tapped on the door, everyone turned to look.
The room was filled with desks in clusters, screens flickering on each one, casting blue reflections over files and notebooks. There were bits of paperwork stuck to the wall and on white noticeboards, with dates and names scrawled on in green.
No one spoke, so Sam said, ‘I’m DC Parker. I’m here to see DI Evans.’
Everyone looked towards the back of the room, to a woman speaki
ng on the telephone. She glanced up at him and then carried on with her conversation, so he took in what was around him. There were posters on each wall of four teenagers, two of them not even eighteen. He recognised them because they were posted in every police station in the county. In the Incident Room, they felt more prominent, alongside more pictures and larger images from the posters.
The sounds in the room seemed to recede as he got closer to them, to look more carefully, the chatter replaced by that crushing sadness whenever he thought of what the families must be enduring. Four young women from different parts of Manchester, with no connection between them that had been made public, and all of them missing, presumed dead. The last woman went missing two months earlier. There must be a pattern. It was just a question of seeing it.
But they were all so very different. Two of them were white, one of them tall and redheaded, the other brunette, her hair long and curly. There was a young black girl, only fifteen, although the flirt to her smile made her seem older, along with an Indian girl, the dark lushness of her hair giving a glow to her photograph. What weren’t people seeing?
There were footsteps behind him. DI Evans. He turned to her. She was small and petite, with short grey hair and some steel to her smile.
‘Sam Parker?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and when he saw the slight flare of the nostrils, he added, ‘ma’am.’
‘I’m Mary Evans,’ she said. ‘Call me Mary in here. I’m glad you could make it.’
‘I know, I’m sorry,’ he said, guessing that he had already taken too long. ‘I’m on a rest day.’
‘You’re here now. Follow me.’
She walked past him and led him away from the Incident Room, along the corridor to a smaller room that seemed to serve as her office. There was a dirty coffee cup and a framed picture of a young woman. The office looked temporary though, because there were lever arch folders in a pile by a cabinet that were browned with age, as if she’d had to clear out the remnants of the previous occupant before she could use the room. The papers on her desk were strewn around, and he had to fight the urge to reach over and stack them neatly, so that she would find it easier to read them.