by Neil White
He threw his bag onto a chair and pulled out his starched winged collar. As he fastened it with a gold stud to his plain white shirt, he looked along the room and shouted out, ‘Anyone seen Kim Reader?’
There were shuffles as people looked up and then went back to their own papers, but then he heard a shout from the other side of the room. ‘She’s gone to court.’
He pulled on his black gown and headed for the door, nodding at Monica for her to follow him.
The clothes felt unfamiliar, the first decade of his career spent patrolling the corridors of the Magistrates Court in a cheap suit. The archaic and formal dress sense of the Crown Court felt uncomfortable and stifling. At least he was spared the indignity of the wig, although as he reached the court corridor, he saw that his discomfort wasn’t shared by the young men who walked quickly, their gowns hanging from their shoulders, the rolled-up bundles of paperwork under their arms, tied up with pink ribbon. The older ones were less urgent; just slower, scruffier versions.
Kim Reader was further along, talking to two men in suits, detectives, although not the same ones as the day before. Kim was elegant in a dark suit and patent heels, her wig bright against the sheen of dark hair that flowed onto her shoulders.
Joe slowed down to pop a mint into his mouth and then turned to Monica. ‘Did you get hold of Ronnie’s mother?’
‘Yes, she said she would be here,’ she replied, and then pointed to a small lady sitting on her own, her handbag on her knees, looking warm in a large brown coat, despite the brightness outside. ‘She would be my guess.’
The old lady glanced up as they got closer, and so Joe went over. ‘Mrs Bagley?’
She nodded.
‘We represent Ronnie.’ When she didn’t answer, Joe asked, ‘Can Ronnie stay with you?’
‘What, you think he might get out?’
‘Probably not,’ Joe said, ‘but I’d rather know in advance, just in case.’
She looked at Joe, and then at Monica. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice hesitant. ‘Fine, all right then. And my name is Winnie.’
‘All right, Winnie, thank you,’ he said, and then went towards Kim Reader.
She looked away from the detectives and smiled as he got closer, moving her papers to her other arm so that they stopped acting as a shield. ‘So, Joe, you still haven’t told me how you muscled Mahones out of this one.’
‘Client’s preference,’ Joe said, nodding a greeting at the two men in suits. They didn’t return it. ‘I’m just Ronnie’s servant. Does he get to walk out today?’
Kim gave a small laugh. ‘Murderers don’t get bail, you know that.’ That brought smiles from the detectives.
‘Perhaps the judge will feel creative,’ Joe said, and then pushed at the door to the courtroom. He had to get some kind of argument ready, if only for the show. Clients expected their lawyer to bang on the table, even when it was pointless.
Monica followed him, escorting Winnie Bagley to the public gallery. He didn’t want Kim to know what he had planned, and he let the door close so that she was left outside with the police. He needed some time on his own in the courtroom first. There were things he needed to find out.
Seventeen
When Sam Parker walked into the Incident Room, his eyes already starting to feel the tiredness from the early start, DI Evans was in a huddle in the corner of the room, talking to two men in dark suits. Sam recognised them from the day before. Sergeants, he guessed, from the way their suits were a little sharper than the rest in the room, in their rolled-up shirtsleeves. Evans looked over as he walked in and then whispered to the men next to her. Both turned to look at Sam.
‘How did you get on with your brother?’ she said. ‘Did you learn anything useful about Ronnie Bagley?’
‘No, nothing, I’m sorry,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Joe won’t talk about his clients, which I guessed. I told him that I’d heard he represented Ronnie Bagley, but he just clammed up. As far as he was concerned, that was the end of the conversation.’
‘A lawyer with morals?’ Evans said, rich with sarcasm, and then, ‘I expected that. It was worth a try.’ As Sam stood there, unsure what to say, Evans exchanged glances with her sergeants and then said, ‘Come into my room.’
Sam followed her into the small office he had been in the day before. It was even untidier, with food wrappers and two coffee cups added to the mess of papers. She pointed to the chair, and when he sat down, she said, ‘Do you want to know why I asked you to come in to tell me that in person?’
‘I did wonder,’ he said. ‘I presumed you wanted to see the whites of my eyes, so you could tell whether I was being too loyal to my brother.’
‘And were you?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Sam said. ‘And I shouldn’t have been asked, ma’am.’
Evans sat back and pursed her lips, making Sam shuffle in his chair, but he held her gaze. Eventually she said, ‘You’re right, I know, I shouldn’t have put you in that position. It was a charade really, a chance to check you out, and your brother turning up for Ronnie gave me that chance.’ She sat forward again and put her arms onto the desk. ‘The real reason I wanted you to come in is because of Ben Grant.’
The name surprised him. ‘What, the Ben Grant?’
‘Is there another? And as it was your moment in the spotlight, you’ll remember it well.’
Sam exhaled loudly. ‘I haven’t been allowed to forget it,’ he said, and straight away his mind flew back to a night shift eight years earlier, just another routine patrol in a marked car, before he became a detective. The whole force had been on high alert after the bodies of three young girls, two aged ten and one nine, had been found in parks around Manchester. Each had been abducted and strangled and raped, their clothes removed, so that they were left naked and bloodied, discarded like rubbish, fly-tipped into the bushes. There were more missing children, their bodies undiscovered, and the atmosphere around the city was tense.
Sam had been driving past a park, just south of the city centre, when he had seen some movement in the bushes furthest away, at the bottom of a railway embankment. It hadn’t been much, just a flash of something pale and the rustle of greenery, but it had been enough for him to spot it.
It could have been something innocuous, like someone needing the toilet, but instinct told him that it was something else. He had jumped out of his car and sprinted over, barking into his radio. As he got closer, Ben Grant emerged slowly from the bushes, his arms out, compliant, and for a moment Sam had wondered whether he had read it wrong, because Grant didn’t try to run or fight. He just turned to Sam, took one last look into the bushes, and then walked slowly towards him.
Sam had got ready with his PAVA spray and barked at Grant to get down. He had expected a bolt through the park, but Grant just sank to his knees and held his hands out to be handcuffed. Sam thought that he heard something near the embankment, that there was some movement on the edge of his vision, but all of his focus had been on Grant.
Once cuffed, Sam had shone his torch into the bushes, and when he saw the light reflect against pale white skin, he had trembled and almost dropped his torch.
The torch beam had reflected against the lifeless legs of a girl, her clothes removed and shoved into a plastic bag. It had been Sam’s first dead body, and as he had struggled to stay calm, his hands shaking, sweat on his face, Grant had remained still, almost serene.
The dead girl was the fourth murdered by Grant that they knew for certain, coaxed into his van, strangled and raped, and the murders turned him from a factory worker into a tabloid hate figure. His notoriety hadn’t just been about the crimes though, as awful as they were. It was the way he enjoyed the attention, grinning and waving towards the cameras that caught him on the short journey to the prison van, and then using his trial to describe how he snatched each girl and murdered her. He didn’t have a defence. He was just insistent on everyone hearing him gloat.
Sam received a commendation, but he saw no pride in it, becau
se anything similar to his own sister’s murder didn’t seem worthy of a celebration.
He looked at Evans. ‘Why Ben Grant? He’s locked up.’
‘You’ve seen the young women on the posters around here?’
‘They’re in every station,’ he said, as he recalled them from the day before and the television appeals and reconstructions.
‘All four missing, presumed dead,’ Evans continued. ‘We thought there was no real link when the first two went missing, that if they were taken by the same person, it was just random, but we think differently now, because there is one thing that links all of them. If we talk about it, it must stay within these walls, because we haven’t gone public, but it involves you.’
Sam’s eyes widened. ‘Me? Well, yes, I understand, of course.’
She lowered her voice as she spoke. ‘They are all connected to someone involved with the Ben Grant case.’
‘Connected? How?’
Evans reached for one of the posters, which had been lying on the floor next to the desk. She pointed to a pretty smiling redhead. ‘Samantha Crane was the first one. One of the detectives on the case was Jimmy Crane. Ben Grant wasn’t even in our thoughts. Samantha was a girl missing from the family of one of our own. That was all that mattered.’ Evans pointed to a young woman in a ball-gown, blonde hair gleaming against the bright blue silk of her dress. ‘Then there was Gilly Henderson. One of the prosecution barristers was Bill Henderson. Still it didn’t click. Ben Grant’s case wasn’t the only one they had worked on together, and why would we think of Ben Grant? He’s locked up and will probably never get out.’
‘So what made you change your mind?’
‘Emily Brooker,’ Evans said, and pointed to a black girl on the poster, her hair curly and long, her teeth bright white, her face fun and flirty. ‘She’s the daughter of one of the crime scene investigators. That was when we worked out the connection. We knew something was going on that involved the police, and so we got a list of all the cases where Emily’s mother and Samantha’s father had worked together. We gave the list to Gilly’s father, the barrister, and when he went back through his briefs, the only match was Ben Grant. We had a link.’
Sam thought about that, then said, ‘Have you spoken to Grant?’
‘We tried, but he won’t speak to us. We can’t force him, because we don’t know if he has any information.’ Evans gave a small laugh, although it was bitter. ‘We could hardly arrest him, because being in prison the whole time makes his alibi pretty strong.’
‘What about the fourth victim, the young Indian woman?’
‘Arshafi Devi,’ Evans said. ‘If we thought for a moment that the connection had been just a strange coincidence, Arshafi took that idea away, because her father was one of the jurors who convicted him. A juror’s daughter? That was a link too far.’
‘When was the last one, Arshafi?’
‘Two months ago,’ Evans said. ‘Like with the other ones, the trail went stale. All we know is that she didn’t go home again, and we don’t know where she had gone that evening. But then something changed, and this is why I wanted to check you out, have a look at you.’
‘Go on,’ Sam said, caution in his voice.
‘Yesterday we got a call. It was the prison. Grant had changed his mind. He would talk to us, at last, but it came with a condition.’
‘What has made him come forward now?’
‘I don’t know,’ Evans said. ‘We’re hoping you can find out.’
Sam was confused. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘His condition is that he will talk, but only to you.’
Eighteen
Joe sat in the courtroom, his forearms on the desk, calm on the surface, but his feet tapped out a fast rhythm. Monica was behind him, watching, learning.
It was almost ten o’clock. The silence was awkward. The usher paid Joe no attention, but the court clerk flushed above the white lace of her formal blouse every time he glanced her way. Kim was further along the front row, reading something on her phone. He knew why she was doing it, so the police couldn’t accuse her of being too cosy with the defence. The shield stayed up when there were other people who could report back.
The courtroom was made up of rows of long wooden desks and flip-down chairs, rising to the dock behind, the public gallery beyond that, two rows of plush red fabric. Ronnie’s mother was there, staring ahead, as if she was disbelieving, unsure of what was going to happen to her son. Joe turned and gave her a small nod of reassurance, a smile, but she didn’t respond.
Joe’s eyes went to the television mounted on the wall. Once a case was before a judge, prisoners made their court appearances by video, although at the moment it showed just a grey curtain and a sign for HMP Manchester in front of it – the official name for Strangeways. A few minutes of silence passed and then Ronnie appeared, wearing a grey sweatshirt. His eyes stared at the camera, red and strained. From the inset image on the screen, all Ronnie could see was the empty judge’s chair.
Joe looked around the courtroom again. It was a statement on how pathetic Ronnie’s life had become. Joe had seen the real excitement of the Crown Court, with gun-toting police officers manning the doors, everyone wary of a hardcore criminal or a revenge attack. Ronnie was facing a life behind bars and the only people to see his first step were his mother, two lawyers, a trainee, and two court employees.
Then there was a noise. Joe turned round and watched as a man entered the room and shuffled along the back row of the public gallery. He sat in the corner, as if he had wanted to be anonymous, but he stared at Joe when it was obvious he had been seen. Joe felt a jolt of recognition. It was the man who had been outside his office the day before, watching, looking up.
‘Do you know him?’ Joe said. When Kim looked up, Joe nodded to the back of the courtroom. ‘The guy sat in the corner.’
Kim turned back and then shook her head. ‘No. Is it important?’
Joe paused as he thought about that, and then shook his head. ‘No, it’s all right.’
Kim pointed to the television screen. ‘They never look how you expect,’ she said. She knew that Ronnie couldn’t hear them. The microphone was showing a mute symbol.
‘What, killers?’ Joe said, turning to look back at Ronnie. ‘He isn’t one yet.’
‘Let’s not play games, Joe. Fight hard when Ronnie can hear you, but between us, let’s be more realistic. Proof of guilt is different to proof of innocence, you know that. I always expect the guilt to be visible, like a stain or something.’
Joe returned the smile, some of his poise returning. It was just a pre-court joust. ‘They don’t wear badges,’ he said. ‘Killers live next door and move amongst us. That’s just how it is. You can’t predict it.’
‘His baby though? Poor thing. How callous can he be?’
‘You’re sounding naive, Kim. With every murder I’ve ever dealt with, I’ve never got the full story. There’s what you can prove, and there is what people will tell me. What really happened is only ever known between two people, and one of those isn’t here.’
Before Kim could respond, Joe said, ‘So how are you going to keep him in custody?’
Kim scoffed. ‘Bail? Are you kidding?’ She leaned further in. ‘He’s a fucking murderer, Joe. You don’t bail murderers.’
Joe had to suppress a smile at the sound of expletives spoken with the refinement of an expensive education. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Watch the judge let him walk instead, because if you don’t agree bail, I’m asking for the case to be thrown out.’
‘Bullshit. You can’t do that.’
‘I know that, and I’ll get shouted down, but I might be able to cement in the judge’s head that it’s a weak case. You know how a judge can wreck a case, that if he decides he doesn’t like it, he will pick it apart, piece by piece, until you’ve nothing left to give to the jury. So your case ends up as a loss, and all because of what I say here.’
Joe could see her thought processes in the flare of her no
strils and the twitch of her lips. She was trying to decide which would turn out worse for her – Ronnie getting out because she agreed it, or the judge turning against the case.
‘You’ve got to justify bail in a murder case, you know that,’ she said.
‘That’s easy. You’ve got a weak case, and until you find the bodies, it will stay that way.’
‘We’ve got enough.’
‘Have you? So this is it? You’re not expecting any more evidence?’
‘Making the case stronger doesn’t mean it’s weak to start off with.’
‘No,’ Joe said, ‘but all you’ve got is a jigsaw. Lose a piece, and you haven’t got enough left to finish it. Take the blood. That’s just one piece of the jigsaw, and Ronnie has an explanation for it.’
‘I bet he has, Joe. And when did this recall happen? Just after you took over the case? Why didn’t he tell the police all that?’
‘That’s Mahones for you,’ Joe said. ‘You can’t punish a man for his bad representation.’
Kim was silent for a while, and then said, ‘So what is it, this explanation for the blood?’
He shook his head. ‘Not yet, but do you agree that if he has got an explanation, your case becomes too weak?’ Joe was trying to persuade her that she had no case. It wouldn’t end it yet, but it might make it easier to persuade Kim to drop the case later if she started out with less confidence. He pointed to the television. ‘You were looking for the stain of guilt. Do you think that person there could have killed his own child? Really?’