The Death Collector

by Neil White

  When he was alone in the room, he went to his mother. As he looked down, he saw how she had died. Her blouse was torn in the struggle, but already there were bruises on her neck.

  He lay next to her, his head on her breast and his arm across her, not long enough to reach all the way.

  All she’d had to do was leave.

  He opened his eyes quickly. His heart was beating fast and there was sweat around his collar. His life became a lie from then on. His mother had gone missing, or so the story had gone. His father had provided the narrative – she was an alcoholic, had been depressed, and one day she left the house and never came back. That was what he was told to say, and he couldn’t afford to lose both his parents.

  The young man in his cellar had made everything different. He had to plan the rest of his day. He had made some preparations, knowing it would come eventually, but still it was hard to think that he’d be leaving the house. So much had happened there.

  There were still things he had to do first. He reached for his phone and went to his contact list. He dialled. When he heard the familiar voice, he said, ‘I need an address.’

  When he said whose address he wanted, there was silence for a few seconds, and then agreement, quiet and sullen.

  He tapped his cheek with his phone when he hung up.

  Those who hurt him got hurt back. That was how it worked.

  Forty-five

  Hugh and Joe headed out of the city, on their way to see Rebecca Scarfield’s husband. Joe had spoken to Mary, and she’d told him that he worked for a car dealership. Joe had called ahead, to make sure he was there.

  As Hugh drove, Joe turned to him and said, ‘Hunter is a dominant figure in all of this.’

  They were in Hugh’s old champagne-coloured Mercedes coupé, a relic from the eighties that he had clung onto for no other reason than it had never let him down, with cream leather seats and a polished walnut steering wheel. No iPod docks or Bluetooth.

  Hugh didn’t respond at first. He just gripped the steering wheel and stared through the windscreen.

  Eventually, he said, ‘Hunter was a big part of the case. They used him in all the press conferences and reconstructions. He liked the cameras, and the attention. I think he fancied himself as someone the television people would use when he retired, like some kind of consultant.’ He frowned. ‘I remember one television reconstruction where he strode across some wasteland towards the camera, in a black shirt and long black trenchcoat, as if it was an audition, not an appeal for information.’

  ‘Vain?’

  ‘And some. But it wasn’t just vanity. It was about power, and I don’t mean the power you get from promotions. It was the power over people, like he enjoyed their thrall. Now he’s just like me, a figure from a different time.’

  ‘I caught the back end of those times when I was training, but that was just Friday drinking,’ Joe said.

  ‘I remember those well,’ Hugh said, rolling his eyes. ‘That’s what has changed. For all their bluster, and ours, we were all playing the same game. It was the Friday tradition back then, everyone to the pub for the afternoon, even though they were supposed to be on duty. A little cellar bar near St Ann’s Square, and that would be the start of the weekend. We’d trade blows and spin tall tales and Hunter would sit in the middle on a high stool as the other detectives, his gang, boasted and bragged and drank.’

  ‘I’ve heard some of the tales,’ Joe said. ‘I never knew if they were just urban myths.’

  Hugh raised his eyebrows. ‘No, they’re not. And you’ll have just heard the pub stories, the ones they boast about. The worst cases were the ones you never hear about. It was a different world, and Hunter was part of it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Hugh said. ‘Beatings, sleep deprivation, threats against family. I heard of one instance where someone was hung out of a second-floor window.’

  ‘They can’t be true.’

  ‘I heard too many things from too many clients to think otherwise. Spend some time with old retired detectives and you work out that you’ll only hear the stories they’re prepared to share. Even I could work out the little bribes and deals, information exchanged for lesser charges, especially with the Drugs Squad. I’d be waiting for my client to have his flash and dabs, photographs and fingerprints, and he would emerge from some small room with a detective behind him, holding a pad full of notes.’

  Joe gave a small laugh. ‘Junkies just lose themselves, don’t they? They help the police to keep them off their backs for all the thefts and burglaries and then they end up in court, happy to go to jail just to get away from their dealer for a while.’

  ‘But legal empires are built on the back of them.’

  ‘So is it better now, or then?’

  Hugh pondered on that for a few seconds. ‘There are some winners, some losers. The police are more professional now, but sometimes it pays to deal with criminals on their own terms. Crack some heads, kick down some doors. Everyone knew where they stood. Now, the criminals have the power.’

  ‘Problem was that the lines got too blurred, so I heard. People were convicted of crimes they hadn’t done. Aidan Molloy was only five years ago. Perhaps the times haven’t changed as much as you think.’

  ‘Times have. I’m just not sure Hunter has.’

  Joe looked back out of the window. ‘That is what I’ll miss about the job. For every bit of crap and bureaucracy, there is some human drama that is interesting, an anecdote you can tell.’

  Hugh glanced over quickly. ‘Are you really thinking of walking away?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. I could learn to do some civil law, work in one of those accident factories by the motorway.’

  ‘You’d suffocate.’

  ‘I know that, but I’ve still got bills to pay.’

  They carried on in silence for a while until Hugh said, ‘If you stop practising, just make sure you give it up for something worthwhile. Don’t leave it too late. Like I did.’

  ‘You? You had it all.’

  ‘Just a shell, Joe, just a shell. A nice house, two lovely children, a wife who kept everything together, financial security, but none of it means anything if you’re not there to see it. Your children just want you there, to show you things, to tell you about their day. And Patricia too.’

  ‘So why are you here? Go see your kids.’

  ‘That battle has been lost. This is a battle I can still win.’

  ‘Aidan Molloy? This is what it’s all about for you, making up in some way for whatever went on before, proving your worth?’

  ‘Isn’t it for you, Joe? You’re using him to get back your spark. So what are you going to do?’

  ‘We look into Hunter.’

  ‘But what difference will that make?’

  ‘It might persuade some of these witnesses to break cover, if it gives them the chance to show how it was Hunter who manipulated things, changed them, told them what to say. We need someone who can give us more dirt on him. If we can find more cases where he has done it, then it might give the witnesses more confidence.’

  ‘Someone on the inside?’ Hugh said.

  ‘Why not? It makes most sense.’

  They drove in silence the rest of the way, until Hugh came to a stop. ‘Here we are.’

  Joe took a deep breath. They were outside a glass cube, with used cars lined up outside and new ones parked up inside. He wasn’t looking forward to this. He turned to Hugh. ‘Are you coming in?’

  Hugh looked towards the showroom, his arms on his steering wheel, and shook his head. ‘No, thank you. I’ll sit this one out. I’ll wait in the car.’

  Joe followed his gaze. ‘It’s times like this when you realise the hurt the job creates. We’re dealing with people’s lives – not just a game, some theatre show.’

  ‘It’s Aidan’s life too, don’t forget that.’

  ‘Good point,’ Joe said, and stepped out of the car.

  There were no other
customers there as Joe walked inside. A smart young woman in a blue suit was sitting at a desk. She smiled and asked if she could help. Joe asked to speak to Roy Scarfield. When he came down from an office on the floor above, Joe handed him his card and suggested they spoke in private. Roy tapped the card against his knuckles and told Joe to follow him.

  Roy was tall and slim, his hair cropped short and greying in patches. He had that car salesman swagger, clearly he thought that he could persuade anyone of anything.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ Joe said, as they went into his office. It was a small room with a view over the showroom. Missives from head office fluttered on a corkboard. ‘I want to talk about Rebecca, if you’re okay with that, and Aidan Molloy.’

  Roy sat down and his jaw tightened. He looked at the business card and then at Joe again. He gestured for Joe to sit down, and said, ‘Why? Are you his lawyer now?’

  ‘Yes. I’m looking into whether I can help Aidan with an appeal,’ he said. He owed it to Roy not to feed him a line. Before Roy could ask him to leave, he added quickly, ‘I’m not going to spend my time with someone who I think is guilty.’

  ‘The jury said he was guilty.’

  ‘I know, and if I thought they’d got it right, I’d walk away and let Aidan Molloy rot in his cell.’

  He scowled. ‘Lawyers don’t do that.’

  ‘This one does.’

  Roy picked up a pen and started to tap it on the desk. Eventually, he said, ‘So why do you think I’d be interested in helping you?’

  ‘You’ll want Rebecca’s killer locked up.’

  ‘He is. In Wakefield Prison.’

  ‘I hope you’re right, but my worry is that if he isn’t, Aidan Molloy has wasted five years of his life.’

  Roy pursed his lips at that. ‘But why is anything I have to say important?’ he said. ‘It wasn’t back then. I was just the poor sap they put in front of the cameras. That made me a suspect in many eyes and for as long as Aidan’s mother campaigns, people wonder whether it was in fact me. Who am I but the jealous husband? For every bit of Aidan’s case they start to unravel, it comes back to me. But just so you know – it wasn’t me. I can look you in the eye and say that and I can look my children in the eyes and say that I had no part in her death.’

  Joe knew there was some truth in what he said. If there was even a chance he could direct some blame towards Roy, he ought to do it. The law isn’t about truth. It’s about proof, and that can be undone by doubt, whether there was any truth in the doubt or not.

  But this time Joe wasn’t working an ordinary case. If this was going to be his farewell at Honeywells, he wanted to remove the shadow of Aidan’s case before he left.

  ‘I’m not thinking of pushing any blame towards you,’ Joe said.

  ‘So why do I matter all of a sudden?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This. Your visit. Why are you interested in anything I have to say? No one was back then.’ Roy shook his head, his anger increasing. ‘Three weeks that trial lasted, and do you know how many times the prosecuting QC spoke to me, the victim’s husband? None. That’s how many. He spoke to Rebecca’s parents, because that was sucking up to the assistant chief constable, but I didn’t seem to matter.’

  Joe sighed. Some senior barristers were like that. For them it was all about maintaining independence and not being swayed by emotive voices. Or so they said. Joe was sure that it was just one more case for them. Why get into the emotional stuff when you can get someone else to do it?

  ‘It isn’t right,’ Joe said. ‘But who knows more about Rebecca than you? This case is very much about Rebecca.’

  ‘Yeah, right, like I knew her at all,’ Roy said. He leaned forward, his arms on the desk. He spoke quietly but there was menace in his tone. ‘Rebecca was sleeping around. Okay, I get that. I’ve met someone else, moved on from that hurt, but knowing that the little bastard who was fucking her also took her away from me – and not just me but my two children – well, let’s just say that I don’t have much desire to set him free.’

  ‘What if the only thing he did wrong was to get involved with Rebecca? He doesn’t deserve a life sentence for that.’

  Roy didn’t answer that. Instead, he just breathed heavily through his nose and sat back again.

  Joe spotted a framed picture on a shelf behind. There was a woman in it but she was nothing like the pictures he had seen of Rebecca in the file. Rebecca had been a redhead, her hair long and bright, her skin pale. The woman in the picture was darker, Mediterranean-looking. Roy was wearing a ring. He had remarried.

  ‘So what is there that makes you think that he might not have done it?’ Roy said eventually.

  ‘I spoke to Aidan today,’ Joe said. ‘I believed in him. I’ve read what he said back then, that he was driving around on the night Rebecca died because he thought she was seeing someone else.’

  ‘Yeah, so he said in the trial. Then again, he said a lot of things, and changed his story whenever something else came up.’

  ‘He was scared and he panicked. He didn’t want anyone to know he had been seeing Rebecca. She was married and he knew it was wrong.’

  ‘So he’s a liar.’

  ‘Yes, he lied about being involved with her, but that shouldn’t get him a life sentence. And there are other things, too.’ Joe hadn’t wanted to disclose too much, but he wanted Roy to open up. ‘Like the couple who saw the car pulling away. They might have got it wrong.’

  Roy looked down. When he looked up again, some of the anger had gone from his eyes. ‘Have you any idea what it’s like to lose someone like that, where you can’t help but think you’re somehow to blame and that if you had behaved differently, she might still be alive?’

  There it was. The slap that came back to him when he least expected it. Ellie flooded into his mind. He saw her walking home from school on his eighteenth birthday, turning into the wooded path, wearing headphones, oblivious to the man loitering further along. Just a man in a hooded top. Except Joe had seen him. He had watched him as he followed Ellie and he had done nothing. She was going to be all right. Everyone used that path.

  Ellie never made it home and Joe had learned to cope with the guilt by blocking out the pain and replacing it with a desire to find her killer. Every morning he called the custody desks around Manchester, the pretence of trying to pick up clients hiding the need to know about any rapists who had been locked up. He became a lawyer because it gave him access to people like Ellie’s killer. He dreamed that one day he would meet him.

  But he wasn’t going to say any of that to Roy Scarfield.

  ‘I can only begin to imagine, Roy, and I’m sorry for your loss,’ he said, focusing hard on keeping his tone even.

  Roy shrugged and blew out a long sigh. ‘I think there might have been someone else,’ he said.

  Joe raised his eyebrows. ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘It had been going on too long for it to have just been Aidan Molloy.’ He sat back in a slump. ‘Sometimes you can only see it when your mind works backwards and you look again at things. Her sister told me she was lonely. How could that be? I’d given her two beautiful children. All of my family adored her and we had friends too.’

  ‘Her friends or your friends?’

  ‘Just other couples we knew. Like my old football friends and their wives. It was our social circle. And does it matter?’

  ‘Sometimes people want their own world, and not just to be a part of someone else’s.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘But you were telling me that her sister knew she was lonely. I’m just guessing at why she might have been. And why Aidan might not have been the first.’

  ‘She started going out more,’ Roy said, sadness creeping into his voice. ‘She said she was seeing friends, but she wasn’t. There always seemed to be someone leaving her workplace, so there was another leaving do, another excuse to stay out. She started isolating herself more from me, as if she no longer wanted to hear wha
t I had to say, and she wouldn’t say anything to me either. We co-existed, that’s the best way I can describe it. A co-existence.’

  ‘So who was he? This other man?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Roy said. ‘I’m not even sure there was one, but Aidan said he had been seeing her for around four months. Rebecca had been distant from me for much longer than that. A couple of years, maybe.’ Then he frowned.

  ‘What is it?’ Joe said.

  ‘Just memories. Suspicions. Things that didn’t seem right at the time. She was marked sometimes.’

  ‘Marked?’

  ‘Yes, like deep scratches, as if they had been inflicted deliberately. I don’t think I was supposed to know, because they were always somewhere private, like the inside of her thigh, but I would catch her looking sometimes. I asked her once but she always had an excuse. Aidan Molloy couldn’t have done something like that. He wasn’t man enough. He was a wimp, a coward, and that’s why he did what he did. He couldn’t deal with Rebecca trying to dump him, and that was what she was trying to do. She wanted to come back here, to her family. He was an escape, that’s all, and he just couldn’t see it.’