Next to Die

by Neil White

  ‘Exactly,’ Gina said.

  Joe grinned. ‘I like it.’ He turned to Monica. ‘How were Terry’s neighbours?’

  ‘Interesting,’ Monica said. ‘Terry Day isn’t popular on that street.’

  ‘Tell me more,’ Joe said. He had gleaned that himself, but had been lacking in detail.

  Monica opened the notepad she had taken with her. ‘He’s awarded himself the job of some kind of neighbourhood warden. Except that it isn’t anything official, and the hardest thing is finding out any facts about his background, because it’s all gossip. Most people haven’t been there very long. It’s turned into a rental area, and there’s a high turnover of tenants. The gossip is that he has lived there all of his life. The house used to belong to his parents, but when they died it was too big for him. He retreated to the top floor and let out the other floors, and it appears that he wasn’t a great landlord. Most of his tenants used to bitch about him to the neighbours.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About being creepy. One of the neighbours across the road used to be one of his tenants, until another flat came free. She moved out because he was odd. When she first started renting, he used to let rooms, like in a shared house, but he wouldn’t allow them use of the kitchen. He put a small stove in each room, like a camping stove, and they had to wash their plates in the bathroom sink. She said that wherever she turned, he always seemed to be there, just watching. After that, people kept on leaving and so he turned them into flats.’

  ‘What does he do for a living?’

  ‘Nothing, it seems. There are rumours that he lives off a big inheritance. He cycles into town and just hangs around cafés and pubs. When he’s not doing that, he bangs on neighbours’ doors, harassing them about some problem or other. Bikes left on the pavement, a late party, things like that.’

  ‘A local oddball. Nothing wrong with that,’ Joe said, pacing now, knowing that there was something extra.

  ‘How about a deceitful fantasist?’ Monica said.

  Joe stopped. His eyes widened. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He had a reputation as some kind of war hero,’ Monica said. ‘He used to go to the Remembrance Sunday marches every year, in his blazer and his beret. No one else on the street has been there long enough to remember him as a young man, and so they thought he was a Falklands veteran or something. He’s, what, mid-fifties? So he used to walk round, ordering people about, and they put up with it, because he had that military bearing.’

  Joe started to smile. He could see where this was going.

  ‘You’re right to smile, Joe,’ Gina said, taking up the story. ‘It all came crashing down for him. I met a few people like him in my police days, those who lied about their exploits just for the attention. They’d get a weekend in the cells, until we found out they had nothing to do with the crime. The problem is that they get greedy with their fantasies, because even they get bored with the one they have created for themselves. That’s what happened to Terry Day. He enjoyed his fantasies but boasted too much about his adventures and started to wear too many medals. And none of it was real. All he had was a blazer and second-hand medals, but someone took a picture of him and sent it to the paper, wondering about this local war hero with a chest full of glory. He was everyone’s favourite veteran for a couple of days, until some real soldiers saw it and realised he was a fake.’

  Gina looked towards Monica, who responded by pulling a sheet of paper from an envelope she had been holding in her hand.

  ‘We went to the local library,’ Monica said. ‘They remembered the story, because in towns like Marton, they remember the gossip. They found the back issue of the local paper and let me copy it.’

  She put the piece of paper on the desk.

  Joe picked it up to read.

  The main photograph was a picture of the man he had disturbed earlier in the day, except that he was more smartly dressed. The Terry Day he had met had been in scruffy jogging bottoms and his hair unkempt. The Terry Day in the photograph wore a sand-coloured beret with a dagger and flames insignia and a smart navy blazer, pride burning in the set of his jaw and the stare of his eyes through dark-rimmed frames. Across the breast pocket was an array of medals, and it looked impressive, a testament to bravery that was in excess of the men marching behind him. Old men wearing poppies, their expressions a mix of pride and sadness, the day about remembering those less lucky than they had been.

  Underneath the picture was a list of medals worn by Terry Day. They ranged from the South Atlantic Medal to the NATO medal, along with medals for distinguished service and meritorious service, and many others. Seventeen in total, all lined up. Marton’s own war hero.

  ‘None of it is true,’ Monica said. ‘He was trying to impress a woman in the next street and it seems like he got carried away, began to enjoy the attention. He made up war stories in the pubs and cafés, but once everyone found out, life got pretty tough for him. He was shunned. He goes to the same pubs, but he sits on his own.’

  ‘This is good,’ Joe said.

  ‘But being a liar doesn’t make him a murderer,’ Gina said.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Joe said. ‘It makes him untruthful though.’

  ‘So we keep on looking into Terry?’ Monica said.

  ‘And don’t stop until there’s nothing left to know,’ Joe said, looking at the piece of paper again, smiling. The case had just got a little better.

  Thirty-Seven

  Joe looked around as he got close to the pub. It wasn’t a usual meeting place for him, but he didn’t want to go any place where he would be seen. He was in The Ox, a white-painted corner pub near the Science Museum, so that the street was filled with tourists and school groups, not the lawyers and accountants who fleshed out the pubs along Deansgate.

  Kim Reader was already in the bar when he walked in. She was sitting in front of the window, the light blocked out by dark stained glass, which made the inside of the pub look gloomy. There were tables outside, filled with some of the after-work crowd, but it seemed that Kim had thought the same thing he had – that it was better not to be seen together.

  Kim was staring down at the table, drinking from a bottle. When he slid in alongside her, squeaking on a burgundy leather bench, she looked up.

  ‘I thought you were standing me up,’ she said, and then she smiled.

  ‘No, never,’ he said, grinning. ‘Do you want another? You can put it in your hospitality disclosure book, if you want.’

  Kim thought about that, and said, ‘Why not?’ before draining it.

  When he returned from the bar, two bottles in his hands, he said, ‘So how was your day?’

  ‘The same as all of them,’ she said. ‘Not enough time to do what I’d like to do.’

  They talked through their day for a while, each of them avoiding Ronnie’s case. For Kim, it was all office politics. Who had upset her over something trivial, the pressure to do more as staff numbers went down. For Joe, it was talk of business worries, of how getting paid for being a criminal lawyer was getting harder each year.

  Then Kim said, ‘Let’s get it out of the way. It spoiled last night. We might as well deal with it now. Ronnie Bagley.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It will come up, it is bound to, so let’s talk about it now. Then we can have a drink as old friends. Nothing goes beyond this table though.’

  ‘That depends on what you tell me,’ he said. When Kim frowned, he added, ‘You can’t expect me to hold back something that will help Ronnie.’

  ‘Okay, I understand, but don’t worry, there’s nothing I know that you don’t or won’t.’

  ‘Let me try this then. Do you think he’s guilty?’

  ‘I’ve never prosecuted anyone I didn’t think was guilty.’

  Joe raised his eyebrows. ‘Never?’

  There was a pause, and then, ‘Well, that depends on how you look at it, because there are different ways to believe in a case. Sometimes you have got to trust what the witnesses say. If the
y are telling the truth, then yes, I believe someone is guilty. Put another way: I’ve never prosecuted someone I thought was innocent.’

  ‘What about during a trial? I’ve lost cases I thought I had won.’

  ‘You’re talking about innocence, not guilt.’

  ‘No, you are,’ Joe said. ‘I didn’t use the word “innocent”. I’m talking about whether you think someone can be proved guilty.’

  ‘That’s your conscience speaking, Joe,’ she said. ‘It’s how you rationalise what you do. To you, guilt is a concept, that if we can’t prove that a person did something bad, then it is some kind of moral vacuum, but real life isn’t like that. Guilt is an emotion, not a verdict.’

  ‘So you prosecute emotionally?’

  ‘It’s hard not to.’ Kim leaned closer to Joe, her elbows on the table. ‘Let me tell you about something you won’t see, and that is how many times we have to say no to cases against really bad people just because we know that we won’t get it past a jury, because a witness won’t get involved, or because we can’t get funding for a crucial forensic report. Those are the cases that keep me awake, not the Ronnie Bagleys of the world, where at least we have a go. Juries sometimes get it wrong. Hell, sometimes we do, because we miss something or don’t spot a defence tactic, but at least we tried.’

  ‘So you think Ronnie is guilty?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely, and I mean guilt as in he did it, not whether we are sure to convict him. What about you?’

  ‘Just between us, never to leave this table?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Joe smiled. ‘I’ve got my work cut out, I know that, but I just don’t think he killed them both. I don’t see that shadow around him. The evidence tells me that he’s guilty, but sometimes the evidence is not what it seems.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Joe took a drink. He wondered whether he should say anything about Terry Day. He would have to disclose what he had discovered at some point, as the law doesn’t allow surprise attacks anymore, but was The Ox the right venue for it to happen?

  Or he could find out whether Kim already knew.

  ‘What about Terry Day?’ he said.

  Kim paused as her mind flicked through the witness list. ‘The landlord? What about him?’

  ‘How do you know he didn’t do it? He’s alone in the house with her all day. She used to drink a lot. Perhaps he did it.’

  ‘The landlord’s in the clear,’ Kim said. ‘He’s got no record. A decent man.’

  ‘So you’ve nothing to show that he isn’t always truthful? Some man living on the top floor of some rundown building, a bit of an oddball?’

  Kim sat back. ‘Have you got anything to show that?’

  Joe had got the answer he needed, that Kim didn’t know what the neighbours saw, and he didn’t want to let his client down by spilling secrets because he was faced with the long lashes of an ex-girlfriend.

  ‘Just a notion,’ he said, and then, to change the subject, ‘It was good to see you last night.’

  ‘Yeah, you too.’

  She flushed, and there it was. Unfinished business. Joe saw it in the small flare of her eyes, the dark shadow of her pupils.

  ‘There is one thing though,’ he said. ‘I don’t mess around with people in relationships.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I said.’

  Kim tapped the side of the bottle with her fingernail. ‘Can I be honest with you, Joe?’

  ‘I want you to be.’

  ‘You’ve always been about bad timing. I know for you we were perhaps just a couple of fun times, notches on your bedpost, but I don’t give myself up easily. I did for you, and, well, it was a big deal. Then I had to watch you carry on as if we were just drunken moments. Maybe we were the right people but at the wrong time.’

  Joe was surprised. ‘Yes, maybe,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you felt like that. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Knowing doesn’t matter. If you didn’t feel it, there was no point in knowing it.’ She patted his hand and took a drink. ‘Don’t worry, I’m no stalker. I knew we would both meet other people. I was with someone when you turned up in Manchester, and then you were with someone when I was single. It’s just the way things are. This is how we turned out. I thought of you though, more than I should have done.’

  ‘How do you know I didn’t think of you?’

  Kim gave him a look of reproach. ‘I don’t mean something you could use when you felt horny and alone. I mean something more than that. Something in here,’ and she patted her chest.

  ‘It’s not that though,’ Joe said. ‘It doesn’t matter what you feel; if you were happy with Sean, none of it would matter.’

  ‘How do you know I’m not happy with Sean?’

  ‘Because you wouldn’t be here now, with me, talking about your feelings, if you were.’

  ‘We’re just two people who never see each other,’ she said, and then she shook her head. ‘Can we talk about something else, because we’re staying as just friends, aren’t we?’

  ‘It seems that way.’

  ‘And if I wasn’t with Sean?’

  ‘Don’t promise to leave him, just to make me feel better,’ Joe said, and as he looked at her, he recovered the memory of her from their student days. Her kiss. Her passion. ‘If I come for you, you won’t turn me away, will you?’

  ‘No, I won’t. I’ll be there for you, Joe. I have always been there for you.’

  He slid out of the bench seat. He had to use the gents, and, more importantly, he needed to work out what was going on.

  The toilet was empty. Just a line of cracked porcelain urinals and an old sink on one wall. He settled himself in front of one of the urinals and thought about the conversation he’d just had with Kim. He felt that buzz of something about to happen, but he wanted to step back from it. Kim was with someone else.

  He didn’t pay any attention to the sound of the door behind him. He was zipping himself up as footsteps made soft sounds on the tiled floor. As he turned to go to the sink there was a sudden movement. The noise of clothes, the slide of footwear, and then a grunt of effort followed by an explosion in his head.

  Everything went quiet, and the world tilted, his legs not going where he expected them to go. He was falling, and as he watched as the floor got closer, he knew that his arms weren’t out and that his face was going to break his fall.

  Then there was just darkness.

  Thirty-Eight

  Sam’s daughters were in bed by the time he arrived home, Alice with them upstairs. That happened too often. He could hear Alice reading a story. He listened for a moment. It was a story for Emily, Green Eggs and Ham.

  He thought about a beer, but he knew that there was no solace there. His father had tried his own escape down that route, and it ended in a stroke and a grave plot alongside Ellie. He threw his keys onto the kitchen top and put his head in his hands, and for a moment he enjoyed the stillness. The meeting with Ben Grant had made him feel dirty, that Grant had somehow managed to invade his life by talking about his sisters, and his wife.

  He stood upright and leaned back against the wall, his head resting on the tiles. It was the part of policing he hated most, the way he brought things home. Even when he was doing the financial cases it was the same; he would wonder whether he had missed something, a link to an account that would reveal the undisclosed assets or the villa in Spain that was supposed to be a secret. And for what? So he could be taunted by sickos like Ben Grant while his own children went to bed without seeing their father? He was trying to do the right thing, that was all, a job that should make his children proud and feel protected, but it meant long hours. He couldn’t just leave in the middle of an investigation, because there would always be those who would work for as long as they could. Sometimes it was just to get noticed. Other times, it was because they cared about the job. So it meant nights like these, where he got home to find his children saying farewell to the day.

  He shouldn’t t
hink like that, though. It was destructive, a sign that Ben Grant was winning. He heard Alice come downstairs slowly, and as she hit the bottom, there were the shuffles of little feet on the wooden floor, followed by a squeal as his eldest girl saw him in the kitchen and ran towards him in a pink sleepsuit.

  He knelt down to pick her up. She smelled of bubbles and talcum powder and so much innocence. She put her arms round him and gave him a toddler squeeze, where it was all cheek against cheek. She giggled some more as he tickled her and tried to inject some fun into his evening, but his day hung too heavy. Alice pecked him on the cheek. She was in late-evening baggy pants, her hair pulled back. She looked tired.

  ‘Emily heard you,’ Alice said. ‘I knew I wouldn’t get her to sleep until she’d said hello.’

  That made him smile. ‘I’m glad,’ he said. ‘Sorry I’m late. It’s hectic.’

  ‘How is it going?’

  Sam was about to tell her about where he had been that afternoon, to see Ben Grant, to tell her what a vile human being he was, but then he remembered Grant’s taunts, how Alice would enjoy hearing about him, that it would excite her.

  ‘All routine stuff. Nothing much happening.’

  She took Emily from him. ‘There’s a microwave meal in the fridge if you’re hungry.’

  And so went the rhythms of their life. Sam brought in the money, Alice kept their home life afloat. He wasn’t always sure that was how she wanted it, but his job had been too good to give up when their first child came along, and it made more sense for Alice to be at home rather than paying for childcare. But recently he had detected some boredom, and he worried that she spent too much time waiting for him to come home.

  Their life was routine, but life was like that, long stretches of the mundane broken up by moments of happiness.

  ‘Is Amy asleep?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll just go and say goodnight anyway.’ He pulled at his tie as he walked up the stairs. As he went into Amy’s bedroom, he saw she was on her front, her knees pulled up, foetal, her hair a thin blonde sprawl that flowed onto the sheet. Soft toys lined her cot, a world of innocence. He stroked her hair. He was about to lean down to kiss her when his phone chirped in his pocket.