by Neil White
Joe followed the gesture and saw a pub on the main street, draped in St George bunting with a couple of bench tables outside. There was a view along the main street, and Joe guessed that the moorland crispness was just enough to take away the traffic fumes. It was Ronnie’s drink though, not Joe’s, and so he found somewhere to pull over. ‘Can you drive?’ he said to Monica.
She looked surprised. ‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ Joe said. ’Take Mrs Bagley home and then come back here.’
Joe stepped out of the car and was joined on the pavement by Ronnie. As Monica drove his car away, Joe turned to Ronnie and said, ‘You need to know that I’m not going to come running every time you call me.’
‘But you’re preparing my case.’
‘That doesn’t make me your babysitter. I’m the lawyer here, not you, and so what I say goes. If I need you to give me some information, you give it. If I call, you come running. Do we understand each other?’
Ronnie shrugged, his expression sulky.
‘If I’m not there, call Monica Taylor.’
‘Is that her name?’
‘She’s the trainee. She’ll pass everything on, so don’t worry, I’ll be making the decisions, but it will be quicker that way.’
As they walked into the pub Ronnie became more agitated, looking around, swallowing.
‘You look like you really want this drink,’ Joe said.
‘Yes, I do. Can we start preparing now?’
‘Why not,’ Joe said, but then he looked around, his voice a whisper. ‘But wait until we get outside.’
The pub was dark inside, with deep red carpets and paintings screwed to the walls. There was a smell of food in the air, pub fare, and there was a decent lunchtime trade. An old man with a newspaper. A group of workmen in dayglo bibs eating from plates piled high with chips. A woman with dark hair staring quietly into her drink.
Joe ordered the drinks and then followed Ronnie back outside. They settled on the wooden benches, Joe’s orange juice on the table in front of him. He watched as Ronnie took a long, slow sip of his drink, a creamy bitter.
‘So, Ronnie, how was it last night?’
He looked into his drink for a few seconds, and then said, ‘I thought I’d be able to handle it, but…’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘Do you ever think about it, when your clients go to prison?’
Joe thought on how to answer that. The truth was yes, he did, because he took it as a failure, but Joe knew the system wasn’t perfect, not by a long way, but it tried its hardest to work. Prison was part of that game, and once the prison van pulled away, he consoled himself with the thought that justice had taken its course.
‘Yes, all the time,’ Joe said.
‘Until you’ve experienced it, you can’t really know,’ Ronnie said, his eyes down. ‘It’s the noises, echoes. The floors are all so hard, and the walls, so every sound seems to bounce around. You can’t just hide away, because it feels like it’s coming right at you.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I thought I could do it.’
‘So make sure you keep in touch,’ Joe said. ‘If you don’t want to go back there, we need to plan your case properly. And your mother looked pleased to have you back.’
‘That’s a lie and you know it. She’s doing it because you asked.’ Ronnie took another drink. ‘So what now?’
‘You spend tonight with your mother. If I need to speak to you, I’ll call you, so keep that phone charged up. I don’t know when I’ll need you.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to get my team together later and plan for everything.’
‘I need to ask you one thing,’ Ronnie said, looking Joe in the eye.
Joe held his gaze. He knew what was coming.
‘Do you think I did it? That I killed Carrie and my baby?’
Joe had been right. The quest for reassurance, that someone was fighting for him.
‘It doesn’t matter what I think,’ Joe replied. ‘It’s about the evidence, about whether you should be convicted.’
‘But I’m entitled to know, because you must have an opinion, and if it’s about me, I should know it.’
Joe considered what to say, and then he shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think you did it.’
Then Joe looked away, because the truth was that he didn’t know, and what frightened him most of all was that if Ronnie had done something so callous, killed his own child to cover up another crime, the lack of remorse in his eyes made him a very dangerous person.
Twenty-One
Sam sat at a desk by a window, the only vacant one, because there was no blind to stop the sun from bleaching out the computer screen, and already the heat of the steady glare was sticking his shirt to his back. It gave him a view over the Incident Room, so he could work out who might help him, and who would do their best to not. Squads like this were always that three-way mix of jaded old-timers, canteen braggers, and those with talent on the rise. The canteen braggers were the ones to avoid, who thought that noise and fake camaraderie, wrapped up in tight pastel shirts, were the keys to success.
Sam watched the movement in the room for a few minutes, to judge who was liked and who wasn’t, looking for the smiles that quickly disappeared when the joke ended, and then logged into the police computer. He found the summaries of each case.
There was nothing remarkable about them, nor anything unusual about the girls. They were all a similar age, mid to late teens. Not children, but not really women either. All disappeared, with no warning, no trace. There must have been a weapon if they had been abducted, like a knife and a threat. The call logs for each night they disappeared had been collated, and as he scrolled through them he saw there had been no reports of struggles or screams. That made the connection seem more obvious, because it was another link. Not just Ben Grant, but also the way in which they disappeared.
People went missing and it wasn’t always foul play, Sam knew that, but these seemed different. In most cases, you could look to a reason. A history of running away or run-ins with the police. Drugs. Perhaps a boyfriend or the wrong crowd. If there were no calls about a fight or screams, they were either runaways or else they went willingly. But, in these cases, runaways didn’t seem likely. Their backgrounds showed no signs of anything being wrong. They weren’t from bad families. There were no concealed drug problems or boyfriends who made the family nervous. All they knew was that their daughters went out one evening and never returned. There were headlines for a few days, with media appeals and soundbites from those closest to them, and then the story dwindled as news of each missing person faded, rehashed only when there was another disappearance.
Sam remembered how they had been swamped after Ellie’s murder, and that was before instant headlines on the internet were the norm. Cameras outside the gate, reporters shouting for a quote, their deadlines more important than the family’s grief. But how could a few words summarise what they felt? The victims in these cases were not children, but the first two were pretty and white, and that had got the press interested.
He thought again of Ellie. Her murder had shaped his adult life. He had been a university student when she was killed, studying English, but Ellie’s death changed everything. He dropped out so that he could look after his parents, the eldest boy. That was the year his career changed, because he saw what the police did for his family, and he joined within twelve months. If any good had come from it, the fact that he had done the right thing in his career was it.
It had been different for Joe, almost as if Ellie’s death was something he wanted to get away from. It had always been Sam, not Joe, who had been there for his parents, held their hands through their darkest time, helped them somehow carry on with their lives. Joe just headed off to university and left everything behind. Sam had resented that at first, but maturity had taught him that people dealt with grief in different ways. Ellie’s killer had done despicable things to her in her final moments, and to Sam it had seemed that Joe’s way of coping with
that had been to try not to dwell on it.
Sam tried to focus on the case again. Four attractive young women, with long flowing hair and bright smiles, but there was nothing else to link them apart from the Ben Grant case. They were from different parts of Manchester, different backgrounds, and none of them were friends. If it hadn’t been for the Ben Grant connection, it would have seemed like just random bad luck that they came across whoever made them disappear. None of them had given any clue about where they were going. Two had just left the house and never returned. One had gone missing after running an errand. Another had lied about where she was going.
There was a noise in front of him. He looked up. It was one of the detectives he had noticed the day before. He was in just a shirt, his jacket draped over a chair, but he needed a larger one, because his biceps pushed against his sleeves. He was carrying a tray filled with cups. ‘Hello, new boy,’ he said.
He glanced back at the room when he said it, so Sam knew that he was about to be the butt of a joke.
‘It’s not “new boy”,’ Sam said, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘My name is Sam Parker. And you are?’
‘You can call me Ged,’ he said, and put the tray on the desk, making the cups clatter. ‘Fresher’s privilege. You get to make us all a drink.’
Sam looked behind him. Some of the men were watching, waiting for his reaction. It was a test, he knew that, to see how he would fit in. Sam wasn’t interested in canteen politics. He was either good enough or he wasn’t.
‘I’ll tell you what, big boy,’ Sam said. ‘Seeing as though I’m the guest, why don’t you be a good host and make me one. You just need to find me a cup.’ There was a moment of discomfort and then someone sniggered. Sam looked back towards his screen, smiling. At least someone had enjoyed it.
Then there was the sound of a phone slamming down. Everyone looked round. It was DI Evans, and her jaw was clenched hard. She stared at Sam, and for a moment he wondered what he had done wrong.
‘He’s out!’ she shouted.
‘Bagley?’ someone asked.
‘Yes, this morning. The judge gave the prosecutor a hard time and so she buckled and let him go.’ She kicked at the leg of a desk. Everyone stayed silent, although all eyes turned to Sam.
He was about to say something when Evans shook her head. ‘No need. It’s not your fault.’ She was taking deep breaths through her nose. She closed her eyes. ‘Fuck!’
Sam went back to the screen, as refuge rather than interest. The detective who had spoken to him before was staring at him more intently, holding the tray he had brought over.
He felt the excitement of the investigation fade, replaced by resentment. He shuffled and went red, but it wasn’t embarrassment. It was frustration. It was about Joe, as always, not him.
Twenty-Two
Joe waited in his office for Gina and Monica to join him.
He was standing by the window, gazing towards the park, his mind occupied with how he was going to organise Ronnie’s case, when he noticed something. There was someone sitting on a bench on the side furthest away. The same man as before, the one who had turned up at court, in a grey V-neck, his legs crossed, facing towards the flowerbeds, but his head was cocked towards the office.
There was a creak behind him, and as he turned, he saw that it was Gina. Monica was a few steps behind, bringing with her the aroma of fresh coffee, a tray of drinks balanced on her arm.
Joe looked back to the window, to point out the person he had seen to Gina, but the bench was now empty.
Gina took the chair nearest to Joe’s desk and said, ‘How did it go with Ronnie?’
Joe thought about that for a few seconds and then said, as he took a cup from her, ‘Monica, what do you think?’
‘I thought he’d be more pleased to be out. I mean, he loosened a bit after that drink, but when we dropped him at his mother’s house, he seemed, well…’
‘Hesitant?’ Joe said.
‘Yes, that’s it, as if he didn’t really want to go in.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ he said, and Monica blushed, pleased to hear that she had assessed it correctly. ‘We need to know more about Ronnie Bagley. Can you do that, Gina? Try to tap some of your police sources.’
‘I can, but the prosecution can’t spring any traps, you know that,’ Gina said. ‘Whatever they are going to use, they have to show us.’
‘I’d rather know before they tell us, so that we’re ready to fight back. We might even find something out that helps us, like a reason why he comes across badly. He doesn’t come across as dangerous, but it feels like he’s holding something back all the time. We have to accept that juries might not like him. We can put him in a suit, but he’ll look uncomfortable, and if he gives evidence, he’ll come across as surly.’
‘Do we know why Mahones told him to stay silent in his interviews?’ Gina said. ‘It makes him look guilty from the off. All he had to say was that he didn’t know where Carrie had gone.’
‘Not yet,’ Joe said. ‘Stick to what he tells us. If we tip them off, they might alter their notes, to make their advice look better. We can spring that just before the trial.’
‘What if he told them he did it, that he had killed Carrie and his daughter?’ Monica said.
‘Then we feel happy that he hasn’t told me that yet.’
Monica sat down. ‘That doesn’t make me feel good. I believe him, because I think he would seem different somehow, if he had killed his daughter. I don’t mean I like him, but I believe him.’
‘If you stay in criminal law, clients will shock you for the rest of your career, whether you believe in them or not,’ Joe said. ‘But you can’t let it affect what you do. If you can’t cope with that thought, then you’re in the wrong line of business. You will free rapists and killers, and make excuses for all the low-lifes who won’t care about the misery they cause. Tough. That’s the bargain you make with yourself when you take on the job.’
‘Can we stop the philosophical debate for a moment,’ Gina said, impatience in her voice. ‘How are we approaching Ronnie’s case?’
‘We have to dismantle it,’ Joe said. ‘The clues aren’t obvious. There’s no body in the basement, no eyewitnesses. The prosecution have had to build the case and make it fit in with their version of events. We have to take each strand of their case and unravel it, because we can’t rely on Ronnie to talk his way out of it. By the time Ronnie steps into the witness box, if he does, our case will be as good as it gets, because when Ronnie starts talking, it will just get worse. He will have to admit violence, and he will have to explain away his confession. So we need to knock down the prosecution case so that the judge throws it out before it even gets to Ronnie’s turn.’
‘So how do we go about that?’ Gina said.
‘The blood is the first problem. We’ve got smears, not blood spatter analysis, but it makes it sound like mopping up. The police seized more things with brown stains on them that they think might be blood, which includes a saw. If it is blood, and it is Carrie’s, they’ve got a theory about the bodies being disposed of.’
‘It could be worse than that,’ Monica said quietly. ‘It could be little Grace’s blood.’
That made everyone pause, until Joe said, ‘So let’s hope it isn’t, not just for Ronnie’s sake, because he goes straight to jail if it is Grace’s, but for our own. There are some things I don’t want to think about. Until then, we defend him. If it is Carrie’s blood on that saw, we need another explanation for it. Gina, I want you to talk to him about it. If it is blood and it is Carrie’s, we need a damn good story for why her blood ended up all over that blade. The prosecution’s case, that there is only one possible explanation is all speculation. We need to provide some different options.’
‘But it’s cumulative, all the strands pulled together,’ Gina said.
‘I know that, but a number of explanations gives a number of possible outcomes. Our job is to create doubt, that’s all.’
Joe started
to pace, thinking about the case. It was the part he liked best, when he saw the challenge, the evidence against him.
‘Monica?’
She sat up in her seat, attentive.
‘Hit the experts’ directory,’ Joe said, his voice more urgent. ‘Find someone who can examine blood. Could it be old blood? We don’t need to prove how old it is, just that it could have been there longer than the prosecution say. We need to destroy the case so that Ronnie doesn’t have to get in the witness box.’
As Monica made some notes, Joe turned back to Gina. ‘We need to find Carrie. That’s the most important thing. If we can prove that she might not be dead, there is no case at all. The police have spoken to her family and friends. Speak to people who might want to avoid the police, like anyone she’s been in trouble with. Trawl the gutters. Speak to people in the red light areas. We need to check she hasn’t just run away and is holed up somewhere, earning money.’
‘What about you?’ Gina said.
‘I’m going to speak to the landlord tomorrow. The other angle is that there might be more than one suspect. The landlord is a witness, not a suspect, but I might be able to change that. Or he might know of other people who visited Carrie, perhaps when Ronnie was out. She was a drinker and had no money. She might have found other ways to pay for the booze.’
‘Wouldn’t the police have uncovered that?’ Monica said.
‘You’d think so, but the police tend to look at proving a theory, whereas we are looking at disproving it. We have to be more creative.’
‘You need to be careful,’ Gina said. ‘You could destroy the landlord’s reputation if people end up thinking it is him.’
‘Right now, it’s Ronnie I’m concerned about.’
‘Why are you leaving it until tomorrow?’
‘Because there’s someone I need to see.’
‘In relation to Ronnie’s case?’
Joe nodded. ‘There’s something that’s bothering me, about the prosecutor this morning.’