The Death Collector

by Neil White

  ‘Ordered,’ the superintendent said. ‘Hunter doesn’t ask. He orders.’

  Evan stayed quiet. She had made her point, and Sam was grateful.

  The superintendent twirled in his chair. He looked out of the window for a few seconds before he turned back to face Sam. ‘We need to manage it then,’ he said. ‘You gave him authority and he was acting under direction, pursuing many lines of inquiry. The fact that Sam was alone won’t come out until the trial.’

  ‘If there is one,’ Evans said. ‘We need to catch the bastard first and, thanks to Sam, we’ve got more chance than we did this time yesterday.’

  ‘That’s the line, then,’ the superintendent said. ‘Sam was no Lone Ranger. He was acting under orders, waiting until the end of the night, to see if the killer returned to the scene. If it was meant as a display, some kind of marker, the killer would think we’d missed it and might have come back with a spade of his own. It was a bluff, a piece of misdirection. When he didn’t show, we dug ourselves.’

  ‘It sounds good,’ Evans said.

  ‘Sam?’

  He nodded. ‘I didn’t do it for the glory. I did it because it wasn’t being done right.’

  The superintendent nodded, satisfied. ‘It’s hard to be happy, because it’s one of our own on the moors, but well done.’

  Sam smiled. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  The superintendent got to his feet. He held out his hand to shake. Sam took it. ‘Thank you, Sam. Just remember the line. Bluff and misdirection. It makes us look cunning. I like it.’

  The superintendent left the room. Evans closed the door and let out a sigh of relief. ‘That could have gone badly,’ she said. ‘He’s all about image, not results.’

  Sam stared at the closed door for a few seconds before he said, ‘How does someone lose their way like that?’

  ‘Simple. They never had a proper way. It was only ever about the slippery pole. Some people are born to climb, kissing every arse they pass on the way up. Promise me one thing, Sam.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t be like him. Or like them.’ And she pointed to the room next door, to the Incident Room. ‘All puffed chests and back slaps.’

  Sam smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  Before he left the room, Evans said, ‘If this bluff is going to work, you had to be on duty last night, so right now, from this minute, you’re off-duty. We’re not paying you overtime for a lone crusade.’

  ‘So I have to go home?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, but you should. You look tired.’

  He left the room, grateful for avoiding censure, and leaned against the wall in the corridor. He closed his eyes and exhaled loudly. More important than avoiding disciplinary action, he had been right.

  He opened his eyes and looked towards the Incident Room door. The chatter seemed louder now, the detectives on the phone or discussing the case. He thought about what Evans had said.

  In that moment, he felt more apart from the others in the Incident Room than he ever had.

  ‘Emma?’ Carl said, but it came out muffled through the gag.

  She yelped and then groaned, holding her forehead. ‘Where am I?’ she said, her voice croaky. She coughed. ‘My throat hurts. There was something in that drink.’

  Carl grunted through the gag, to attract her attention. He stamped his foot.

  She cried out and shouted, ‘Who’s there?’ Her voice echoed.

  ‘Over here,’ he tried to say, but again it was muffled.

  She started to cry. ‘I’m cold. Where am I?’ A pause. ‘I’ve got no clothes.’

  He stamped his foot again.

  There was silence, and Carl knew she was trying to work out her situation. The night before, she had expected some kind of romantic evening and now she was waking up cold and naked in a cellar, with someone grunting at her from the darkness.

  ‘Please, over here, help me,’ Carl said, his voice lowered, trying to speak more slowly, the words coming through clearer this time.

  There was a pause, and then Emma shuffled across the floor towards him. She was reaching out with her hands, sweeping the floor in wide arcs, until her fingers hit his feet.

  She yelped and jumped back. There were a few moments of silence, and then she said, ‘Who are you?’ There was fear in her voice. ‘You’re watching me. I can’t see you.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Carl said. ‘Please.’

  There was another pause, and then she started towards him again, her hands on his feet. She started to work her hands up his legs, then his body, towards his arms. She was silent as she searched him, until they finished their slow journey and she felt the cold metal of the chain around his wrists.

  She stopped. ‘What’s this?’ she said, stepping back.

  Carl shook his head urgently and said, ‘Help me,’ the words still muffled.

  Her cold hands went back along Carl’s arms and towards his neck. There was a gasp when she felt the rope, and when her fingers hit the gag, she reached round to the back and pulled at the knot, fumbling in the darkness, weak and tired, until the cloth went slack. She pulled it away and yanked out the rag that had been rammed into his mouth.

  ‘Thank you,’ Carl said, swallowing hard, trying to work his mouth back into some kind of normality.

  ‘Where am I?’ she said, stepping away from him.

  ‘You came here last night, to see a man.’

  There was a pause and then she said, ‘I’ve got no clothes on. I’m cold. And what happened to me? My throat hurts.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be dead.’

  ‘What? I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s what he does, the man who lives here. No one leaves.’

  Thirty-seven

  The journey across the Pennines was busier than normal, with extra traffic streaming onto the motorway from the direction of the moors. The radio had said that there was a police operation there and Joe guessed that the road had been blocked off. He had called Mary Molloy. She was surprised but she wasn’t going to let Joe blunder into the case unsupervised. She wanted to meet him in Wakefield. Joe couldn’t say no.

  He dropped down into one of the small towns on the Yorkshire edge of the Pennine hills, where the couple lived, his satnav leading him to a small stone terrace on a cobbled road that ended in a high wall. The rise was steep, the houses leaning against each other for support. Joe had to park on a different street, the cars hogging their own piece of precious parking space so that there was no space left for visitors.

  He hesitated before he knocked on their door, his hand poised, knuckles clenched. There was someone inside, given away by the murmur of the television, and he knew he was about to make them relive an awful memory. They had discovered a dead body. It would have been traumatic, not helped by the ordeal of a court appearance, and he was about to make them dredge it all back up again. He hadn’t even spoken to Aidan Molloy yet, and there he was, traversing the north, chasing a case he didn’t really have. Except that Joe wasn’t doing it for Aidan. He was doing it for himself, he knew that. Did he have the right to be so selfish?

  He knocked on the door, a short rap, before he talked himself out of it.

  When the door opened, a young woman was there, wiping her hands on a cloth, a little boy hiding behind her legs, perhaps only three. He stared up at Joe, confused, suddenly shy. Cooking smells drifted from inside, spicy and hot.

  ‘Nicole Grant? My name is Joe Parker,’ he said, and he handed over a business card. She looked at it, confused. ‘I’ve come from Manchester to talk to you about the Aidan Molloy case.’

  Nicola paled. ‘Why didn’t you call first?’ she said, brushing away a loose strand of blonde hair, the rest of it tied up at the back.

  The truthful answer was that Joe knew she would refuse or call the police. He had no instructions to talk about Aidan’s case, but Carl Jex gave him justification.

  ‘It’s urgent, and important.’

  Nicole hesitated, looking back into the house, suddenly flustere
d, until she moved away from the door and said, ‘You better come in then.’

  When Joe went inside, she asked him if he wanted a drink, her politeness kicking in. He asked for coffee. A hot drink would give him twenty minutes at least. He walked into the living room, where there were toys strewn across the floor and crayons on a table. He sat down and waited, the young boy now watching him warily from the corner of the room.

  As Joe looked around, he could tell that they weren’t used to dealing with lawyers. Many people dragged into court cases were those who lived in the same world inhabited by the defendants, made victims by their lives on the wrong side of everything. But sometimes, and only sometimes, people who preferred an ordinary life found themselves pulled into the whirl of criminal proceedings, usually just the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  When Nicole came back in, holding a cup, she said, ‘Sorry about the mess.’ She handed Joe his drink and began to pick up toys, throwing them into a hamper in the corner of the room.

  ‘There’s no need, honestly,’ Joe said, smiling, trying to put her at ease. ‘You’ve got a nice house. Children bring something to it.’

  ‘Chaos?’ she said.

  ‘Happy chaos,’ he said, smiling, and he meant it. His job had taken him to some of the worst homes you could imagine, seeing clients in their houses with empty booze bottles lying around and dog faeces spread over the floor. Nicole’s house was nothing more than a family home, with all the noise that it brings, a welcome change from the clinical emptiness of Joe’s own apartment.

  Nicole went to shout up the stairs for her husband, and a rumble of feet through the ceiling told Joe that her husband Dan was on his way. The little boy sat in a chair opposite and stared.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Joe said to him.

  ‘Matthew.’

  ‘That’s a nice name,’ Joe said, and was then rescued by Nicole’s reappearance, his repertoire of child-talk exhausted.

  Nicole told Matthew to play upstairs as Dan came into the room, pulling on a jumper, his hair wet.

  ‘I’ve just finished work, sorry. An early shift.’ He held out his hand and Joe stood to shake it. Dan’s hands were hard and calloused, his grip hard, as if to say that Joe shouldn’t forget who was the man of the house. His face was ruddy, from outside work was Joe’s guess, his hair shaved to stubble.

  As Nicole sat in a chair at the side of the room, Dan stayed on his feet and leaned against a stone fireplace. ‘So what’s this about?’

  ‘Aidan Molloy. I’m from the law firm that represented him.’

  Dan looked across at Nicole and said, ‘We’ve nothing else to say about it. We said it in court back then. It’s years ago.’

  Joe spotted the family dynamic, that Dan would speak for both of them.

  ‘I’ve been getting some good information that suggests that the police got it wrong, that Aidan Molloy is innocent,’ Joe said. It was a lie, but he wanted them to talk.

  ‘That’s nothing to do with us,’ Dan said. ‘All we did was tell the police what we saw.’

  ‘Which was what?’

  ‘A car, and then our headlights flashed against some skin. It was her, Rebecca. What else can we say? We called the police and that was it.’

  ‘Did you get a good look at the driver?’

  ‘I’ve been through this before and if you’re genuine you’ll know what I said.’

  ‘I’ve been doing this job for long enough to know that not everything goes in the statement.’

  Dan stayed silent for a while, which told Joe that there was more, although when he spoke he said, ‘No, we didn’t see the driver. He was pulling away. We saw just the back of the car.’

  ‘What sort of car was it?’

  Dan exchanged glances with Nicole before he said, ‘A blue hatchback. An Astra, I thought.’

  ‘Is that what you thought, Nicole?’ Joe said, turning to her. He had noticed that she wasn’t looking up as Dan spoke, and he was still talking for both of them.

  ‘Hey!’ Dan said angrily. ‘We’re not in the witness box. This is our home.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Joe said, raising his hand. ‘It’s just that I know different people often see the same thing differently.’

  ‘That’s what you do, you lawyers,’ Dan said. ‘That’s what the police said back then. Lawyers like you would try and trip us up and make us look like we were unsure so that he got away with it.’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t do it.’

  ‘We saw what we saw and the murderer is in prison. Why is it that all these murders are always miscarriages? Why can’t there just be one guilty one?’

  Joe looked across at Nicole. She was looking back at him, but she wasn’t showing the same level of anger as her husband. Instead, she seemed uncomfortable, looking down at her hands.

  ‘Are you sure the right man is in prison?’ Joe said to her. ‘Could you be wrong? It was dark, you got a quick glimpse, the car was driving away quickly.’

  ‘It wasn’t just on us,’ Dan said, his anger rising. ‘Leave. I want you to go. We’ve had all this before.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘Some young lad. He didn’t say how he knew about us. Just came over on the bus.’

  ‘Can you remember what he was called?’ Joe said, even though he guessed who he would be.

  ‘No. Why should I? Now go, please, or I’ll throw you out.’

  Nicole looked up. ‘He was called Carl,’ she said.

  ‘And what did you do when he came round?’ Joe said.

  ‘We told DCI Hunter.’

  ‘Carl has gone missing,’ Joe said. ‘He’s one of my clients and he’s only fifteen. He was looking into the case and thought he was getting close to the truth.’

  ‘Missing?’

  ‘He didn’t go home, no one knows where he’s been, so I’m trying to find out how close to the truth he got.’

  Dan went towards the front door. ‘The jury saw the truth. So it’s time for you to go and let us get on with our lives.’ He opened it. ‘Goodbye.’

  Nicole didn’t look up as Joe went towards the door. As it closed behind him and Joe was back on the street, he knew that the trip had been useful. They had been defensive, which told him that they were hiding something.

  All Joe had to do was find out what.

  The Incident Room fell quiet when Sam walked in. He didn’t know what to expect. He felt like he had done something good, but it was hard to feel like the hero when a colleague’s body had been discovered.

  Everyone looked up. There was a pause, before someone started to clap at the back of the room. Within a few seconds, everyone had joined in. Someone stepped forward and slapped him on the back. No one was smiling, but he could see their appreciation, that a mystery about one of their friends had been resolved, and they were grateful.

  It felt like the first time they had really noticed him.

  He went over to where Charlotte was sitting. She sat back and folded her arms. ‘So that’s what you were up to yesterday,’ she said, pretending to be hurt.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d enjoy midnight digging. You got it right though: X marked the spot.’

  ‘And if we solve one murder, we will probably solve the other.’

  ‘That’s the hope.’ He looked around. ‘So what now?’

  ‘We’re having to go through all his old investigations, just to see if anyone had made a threat against him.’

  ‘It goes with the job sometimes, but I’ve never known a threat be carried out.’

  ‘No, me neither,’ Charlotte said. She looked over Sam’s shoulder and said, ‘Uh-oh, trouble.’

  Sam turned round. It was Hunter, Weaver following. They both made straight over to him.

  Hunter was grinding his teeth as he got closer. ‘We need to talk,’ he said, and jerked his thumb back towards the door.

  Sam sighed. It looked like whatever was going to be said, Hunter wanted to keep it private.

  They walked out together, Hunter moving quic
kly. Weaver walked behind, but he didn’t have the same urgency. They rounded the corner at one end, where most of the rooms were vacant, ready for the sale of the building.

  Hunter pointed towards an office, banged on the frosted glass and went inside. The room was empty, apart from four desks that were gathering dust, the walls scarred by sticky tape, discarded pieces of paper gathered against one wall. Hunter went to the window, his hands on his hips so that his jacket splayed outwards.

  Sam leaned against the wall as Weaver came in, avoiding Sam’s gaze. This was no official meeting. It was Hunter letting off steam, angry with Sam but knowing he could do nothing about it, because Sam had been proved right.