Next to Die

by Neil White

  Joe picked up his phone and called for Monica to join him.

  ‘Do you want a drink, Ronnie? Just tea or coffee though.’

  He shook his head. ‘Can I smoke?’

  Joe thought about saying no, but then remembered how Ronnie had been all too keen to swap firms. He didn’t want to risk another defection over some passive smoking. Joe went to the window to open it, and Ronnie rummaged in his pocket for his cigarettes. Joe was about to lift the sash when he saw him. In the park, on a bench, looking up. Same as before. The man in the courtroom. As soon as Joe caught his eye, he got to his feet and started to walk away.

  ‘Wait there,’ Joe said to Ronnie, and then rushed out of his room, bolting down the corridor and the stairs. As he emerged onto the street, he looked along, up and down. There wasn’t anyone walking away. He went towards the park, the gate clanging loudly as he pushed through it and headed towards the bench where he had seen the person. It was empty.

  Joe put his hands on his hips, feeling exasperated. Someone had been watching the office again.

  He trudged back across the road and into his office. Ronnie was still sitting in the chair when he walked back into the room, but the blinds were crooked, as if he had been looking out. Monica was there too, sitting on a chair at the side of the room, her legs crossed, a notepad open in front of her.

  ‘What had you seen?’ Ronnie asked.

  Joe was panting from the rush up and down the stairs. ‘I saw a client I needed to see, that’s all.’

  Ronnie sat upright. ‘So this is where we start, is it? What do you think about my case?’

  Joe looked towards the pile of papers on the edge of the desk. ‘Yes, this is it.’ He tried to keep the focus on Ronnie’s case. ‘How are you feeling, Ronnie? You’ve got a long haul ahead.’

  ‘Tired,’ he said, which surprised Joe. Ronnie didn’t seem happy to be out of prison. He hadn’t at any point. Most people would have stayed in prison until their trial. Ronnie seemed to treat his time inside as if it was a momentary inconvenience.

  ‘So what’s our defence?’ Ronnie asked.

  ‘If you didn’t kill Carrie and Grace —’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Ronnie interrupted.

  Joe held up his hand. ‘If you didn’t kill them, the fact that they are still alive is our defence.’

  ‘Can you prove that?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Joe said. ‘We’re going to try.’

  Ronnie looked down.

  ‘What’s wrong, Ronnie?’ Joe said. ‘They are still alive, right?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t kill them,’ he said. He looked over at Monica. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’

  Monica glanced at Joe, and then said, ‘Our job is to defend you. That’s what we’ll do.’

  ‘We need to prepare for the worst though,’ Joe said. ‘What if Carrie and Grace are dead? The jury might think that, so we have to look at other suspects. Tell me about your landlord, Terry Day.’

  ‘No.’

  Joe was surprised. ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘Just that,’ Ronnie said, his lips pursed. ‘Leave Terry out of it.’

  ‘There is enough evidence to convince a jury that Carrie and Grace are dead,’ Joe said. ‘If it wasn’t you, then it must have been someone else. What about the lonely man on the top floor who listens out for arguments? Did he go downstairs to comfort her, because he was worried about her, and things got out of hand? Did he come on to her? Did Carrie come on to him?’

  ‘No, Carrie wouldn’t.’ Ronnie’s voice was getting angry.

  ‘Why not? You’re out at work all day, and she’s lonely because life is hard. You’ve got a young baby and things aren’t good between you. Did she miss the physical side, the strength of a man? Did Carrie come on to him and he pushed her away, making her bang her head?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Or maybe he saw her and knew how lonely she was. He heard the argument and saw it was his chance. He went down there. He comforted her. He read too much into it and tried it on and they fought. He killed her. And he had to get rid of her before you came home.’

  Ronnie was shaking his head violently. ‘No, no,’ he said, wagging his finger at Joe. ‘What about Grace, my daughter? Where does she fit into it?’

  ‘The same way the prosecution say it fits into your case, Ronnie. People panic. If he killed Carrie, he couldn’t leave Grace on her own. He had to make it look like Carrie had run away, so that people would think that she had left you. When you walked into that police station, it was his chance. Someone else would get the blame, not him.’

  Ronnie sat back and looked down, clamped his hands under his thighs. ‘We can’t do that. We can’t blame Terry.’

  ‘It’s a case theory, that’s all,’ Joe said. ‘It doesn’t have to be true, as long as it might be.’

  ‘It’s not my case theory,’ Ronnie snapped. ‘Leave Terry Day out of this.’

  Joe thought about that. He was the lawyer and he was the one who made the decisions, but he couldn’t ignore his client.

  ‘So if we don’t go after Terry Day, all we can do is pick at the prosecution case, except that it’s a decent one. If we ignore Terry Day, your defence gets weaker.’

  Ronnie shrugged.

  ‘Okay,’ Joe said. ‘Let’s go through it. The bloodstains. How hard did you hit Carrie?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do you mean, how hard? It was a punch. How hard is a punch?’

  ‘And did she stay on her feet?’

  Ronnie thought about that. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How can you not know? It’s the first time you hit her, so you say.’

  ‘Like I said, I don’t know.’

  Joe slammed his hand on the desk, making Ronnie jump. ‘“I don’t know” won’t work, Ronnie.’ His voice was angry. ‘Carrie is missing. Grace is missing. Carrie’s blood was on the door and on the walls, smears where you wiped it up. The jury will think it was from when she was killed, so if we can’t come up with an alternative theory, you’re finished.’

  Ronnie looked at the ceiling and closed his eyes. He squeezed them tight, as if holding back tears, but when he looked down again, his eyes were dry.

  ‘I punched her, that’s all,’ he said, his voice soft.

  ‘Why?’ Joe said. ‘What had she done that made you snap?’

  ‘She was, well…’ Ronnie shook his head. ‘I found out she had been having men round when I was at work. To, well, you know, entertain them. That was the argument Terry Day heard.’

  ‘She worked as a prostitute?’

  Ronnie nodded slowly.

  Joe made a note in his notebook. ‘Who were her clients?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t her pimp, you know. I was just some poor sap who went to work as she fucked men in our bed to get vodka money.’

  ‘Who was her pimp? Who organised it?’

  ‘She didn’t say. The argument was too angry to get into the detail.’

  ‘And you hit her.’

  ‘Yes. I’m not proud of it, but she was taunting me. I just lost it. Can you imagine what it must be like to find that out?’

  Joe swung round slowly in his chair as he thought about that, facing out of the window. He had felt the red-hot stab of infidelity, but not on the scale mentioned by Ronnie. He glanced towards the park, just checking, but there was no one there.

  He turned back to face Ronnie. ‘This could go two ways, you know that?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It might be enough. Did you want Carrie to stop?’

  ‘Yeah, of course. Who wouldn’t? Sleeping with men, with Grace in the flat. It was wrong.’

  ‘And you asked her to stop?’

  ‘I told her to stop.’

  ‘So perhaps Carrie had handed in her notice, so to speak?’ Joe said. ‘And there we have it, another case theory. Her pimp hits her, or one of his men, and kills her accidentally. They panic and get rid of the body. But there is one thing that stands out in all of this.’

  ‘Go on.’ Ro
nnie was grinding his teeth as Joe looked at him.

  ‘If this might be true, you have to accept that whoever killed Carrie also killed your daughter.’

  Ronnie took a deep breath. ‘I understand.’

  ‘And there’s the other side to it,’ Joe said.

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘That you were so angry at what Carrie was doing, how she was sleeping with men when you were out at work, that you attacked her. It might give you an explanation, but it also gives you a motive.’

  ‘For killing my own daughter?’ Ronnie sat back and folded his arms, scowling. ‘How sick do you think I am?’

  ‘How long had she been a prostitute, Ronnie?’

  Ronnie started to shake his head slowly. ‘Not long, I don’t think.’

  ‘You don’t pick up an application form at the job centre. If she was working from home, she knew her way around. So maybe Grace isn’t yours,’ Joe said, and he watched as the blood rose in Ronnie’s cheeks. ‘Is that what happened? She argued and taunted you, and then it came out that Grace was a punter’s child? So you flew in a rage and then took it out on poor Grace, that sweet, defenceless little girl.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘No, Ronnie, I’m not. I’m just giving you a flavour of what you’ve got ahead if we go with this case theory. For all that it explains away the evidence, it gives you a motive. A damn strong one.’

  Ronnie didn’t answer.

  Joe dipped his head to try to catch Ronnie’s gaze. ‘Ronnie?’

  He looked up.

  Joe softened. ‘I’ve told you nothing you haven’t thought yourself, have I?’

  Ronnie pulled a face. ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘We find out more about Carrie, about how she worked, and who sent her clients. If we can find some people to testify about how she was moving in dangerous circles, we have a case theory.’

  Ronnie looked more encouraged.

  ‘It won’t be easy, though, remember that. Expecting prostitutes to give evidence against a violent pimp, to help out someone they’ve never met, who plied her trade in a warm flat, not under the arches around Piccadilly, will be hard.’

  ‘But it’s all we’ve got,’ Ronnie said.

  ‘Yes, it’s all we’ve got.’

  Thirty-One

  Sam took a deep breath. Ben Grant was in the room ahead. He remembered his instructions. Let Grant do the talking and don’t give anything away. Grant wanted Sam, but Sam didn’t want to fuel his fantasies. Let Grant masturbate over someone else’s words.

  It had been the trial when Sam had last seen Grant, with Sam as a policeman in his parade dress in the witness box, Grant watching from the dock. Sam had not detected hatred from him, no resentment at being caught. Grant had seemed amused by the trial, his moment on the front pages, a tabloid anti-hero, but that only fuelled his arrogance. What would hurt Grant more would be when someone even more vile came along, making Grant’s chapter in a true crime compilation a few pages shorter.

  The guard opened the door and Sam walked in. Ben Grant was standing by the window, his hands on the window ledge, watching the slow drift of the clouds painting white trails across the blue of late spring.

  Sam set his notebook on the table and pulled back the chair. Grant knew he was there. It was just part of his game. It was only when Sam sat down that Grant turned.

  Grant looked at Sam, and then at the notebook, before a smile spread slowly across his face. ‘It’s good to see you again, after all these years.’ He tilted his head. ‘I had to ask for you, because I knew they wouldn’t send a woman. They think it’s control, because it’s denying me, like a game.’

  ‘It’s not always about you,’ Sam said, looking at his notebook, trying to sound disinterested, writing the date and time at the top. ‘I came because you asked for me, but don’t read too much into it.’ When Grant pursed his lips, Sam smiled. ‘That’s right, you’re not so important anymore.’

  Grant leaned against a wall, his arms folded, his jaw clenched.

  Sam looked up and saw how he had changed. Remnants of the famous image were still there, the police photograph showing a round, boyish face and a small flick of dark hair across his forehead, with small eyes staring from behind dark-framed glasses, but there had been some changes too. Grant had lost some weight and the hair had grey tinges and was now cropped short. The glasses were gone too. He looked less of a threat, but Sam knew that size could be misleading.

  Grant flicked his hand towards the window. ‘You’re thinking that I was dreaming of freedom when you came in. That’s what makes you sleep better, isn’t it, that monsters like me are kept away.’ It was his voice that had always been the biggest surprise. It was quiet, soft, almost with a hiss and the slightest hint of a lisp, but his eyes remained fixed, staring, his head tilted forward.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking anything.’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Grant said, shaking his head. ‘You see those bars as protection, maybe even revenge. I don’t. They are reminders of how many of us there are out there.’

  ‘“Us”?’

  ‘Beasts,’ Grant said, and a malevolent grin spread across his face, his voice acquiring a deeper snarl. ‘That’s the word you like, I suppose, because it makes me seem less human, as though I’m not like you.’

  ‘You are nothing like me,’ Sam said. He was trying to keep the hostility out of his voice, but it was hard, because thoughts of Ellie kept coming back to him, the victim of someone just like Ben Grant. ‘Sit down, please.’

  Grant stayed on his feet for a few seconds, but then relented and scraped the chair on the floor as he sat down. He sat bolt upright, his hands on his legs. ‘So what do you want to know, Sam? You don’t mind first names, do you? You can call me Ben.’

  Sam thought about what he could say about the missing girls, but then he thought of a different way to broach it. ‘What do you know about Carrie Smith?’

  Grant’s eyelids fluttered for eyes a moment. ‘Carrie?’

  ‘Yes, Carrie. She was your most frequent visitor.’

  ‘You’ve just said it. She was my most frequent visitor. There you are, no secrets in this place.’

  ‘She’s gone missing.’

  ‘You say dead,’ Grant said, his tongue darting across his lip. ‘I read the papers. Ronnie has been charged with her murder. And Grace. Poor little thing. Never quite got to that perfect age.’

  ‘Do you know Ronnie?’ Sam asked, ignoring Grant’s attempt to goad him.

  Grant didn’t say anything for a while. He rocked on the chair, staring at Sam, his eyes narrowing, a smile always just twitching at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘You insisted it was me,’ Sam said. ‘I’m here, so talk. What do you know?’

  ‘I’ll come to that,’ Grant said. ‘Let me tell you a story first.’

  ‘I’m not here to listen to you reminisce,’ Sam said. ‘If you haven’t got any information, I’ll go. I’m not here for your ego. I’m here to cover our backs, that’s all, so that if this is the one occasion when you had something to say that was worth writing down, I can make a note.’

  Grant’s eyes were suddenly wide and fierce. ‘Fuck that, Detective. You’re here because I demanded it, and if you don’t speak to me with some respect, then I stay silent, and so remember that protecting yourself isn’t just about turning up. It’s about listening, and treating me with the fucking awe that you feel.’

  There it was, Sam thought, the quick flip of the murderer, the menace just beneath the surface.

  ‘Awe?’ Sam said.

  ‘Yes, awe,’ Grant snapped. ‘I can guess your excitement today, coming back into my world. Tonight, you will go home and say, “Guess who I spoke to today”, and that pretty wife of yours will be so impressed that the answer is Ben Grant, and that’s why you’ll tell her, to impress her. She will want to know about me. What am I like? Did I scare you?’ He tapped his fingers quickly on the table, like a drum roll. ‘And she will get herself a little turned on by i
t, and so when she climbs on you tonight, all wet and horny for the first time in a while, she won’t be thinking of you. She will be thinking of this meeting, of me, wondering what it would be like to be here, locked in a room with me. So enjoy it, Detective.’

  Sam leaned forward, both of his arms on the desk, his fingers clamped into tight fists. ‘Or maybe I will look at my daughters and thank God that you are in here, so that they are a little bit safer.’

  As soon as the words came out, Sam knew he had given away too much. Grant’s eyes narrowed and a small flush crept up his cheeks.

  ‘What are they like, your little girls?’ Grant said, smiling, his mouth just a thin mean slit. ‘Would they be my type?’

  Sam took some deep breaths. Stay in control, he told himself.

  ‘You don’t know anything, Grant,’ Sam said, and closed his notebook. ‘Carrie will stay missing. That’s fine. I don’t want to be here. You can get your kicks with someone else.’

  As Sam got to his feet and went towards the door, Grant said, ‘Things have changed now.’

  Sam stopped. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Another girl has gone missing. She looks nice. Long dark hair. Likes horse riding. Good family.’

  Sam turned round.

  ‘You’re not here about Carrie, I know that,’ Grant said. ‘You want to know about the missing girls.’

  ‘How do you know about her family?’

  ‘I saw the news. I’ve got a television in my cell.’

  ‘There’s only been a release of her name and a photograph. How do you know the rest?’

  ‘I knew her father,’ Grant continued. ‘He’s a councillor, and a magistrate, and so he will have the ear of your Chief Constable and have strong words about you if you walk away now.’ Grant smirked. ‘So sit back down and indulge me, if you want to find her. She might still be alive, but not for long. Don’t you be the one who messes things up.’

  Sam knew Grant was playing with him, making him think that he knew more about Julie McGovern’s disappearance. A formal press conference had not been held yet. There had been just enough information released to make the news bulletins on television and radio, a name and a photograph and her last known location, hoping that it might be enough to generate the right phone call. The media buzz would give the news conference proper coverage, and then it would hit the social networks. Launching a public appeal needed the brains of an advertiser.