The Killer Inside

by Lindsay Ashford

  ‘Well, not personally, no,’ he replied, ‘but it stands to reason, doesn’t it?’

  Megan blinked. There was no point arguing the toss: clearly he’d decided there was only one way to take this forward and he was sticking to it. She hoped Delva would be able to persuade her editor to keep her name out of any news reports. Otherwise she could kiss goodbye to any further assistance from Dom Wilde. Gathering up her jacket and bag from the grass she said goodbye to the pathologist and gave a curt nod to DS Willis. She took a last look at the shoebox before turning away from the grave. The thought of the tiny, stiff body inside made her stomach lurch.

  Moses Smith. The name on the gravestone echoed through her mind as she drove away from the churchyard. He was the only link; the only clue to this mystery. She would start by finding his death certificate. It shouldn’t be difficult; a quick trawl of the internet should do it. Someone must have buried him. Someone had paid for that that tombstone. And her instincts told her that whoever it was would also know something about the baby.

  Chapter 7

  Delva Lobelo allowed herself to smile as the red light went off. She had managed to get the whole thing on air without dropping Megan in it. The editor had given her a hard time about that but she had fought her corner and won. She had told him she had a duty to protect her sources and had hinted that if she did, there would be more to come. And he was as keen as she was to dish the dirt on Balsall Gate nick, so he knew it was in everyone’s interests to keep schtum.

  ‘Can I get you a coffee?’

  It was Natalie, one of the researchers. Nice kid. Not like some of the arrogant little shits BTV attracted. Natalie was bright but she had respect. You didn’t get the feeling she was counting your wrinkles and marking off the days till she could step into your shoes.

  ‘Thanks.’ Delva switched off her laptop and gathered up the hard copy version of the news she had just read out.

  ‘I’m going to Balsall Gate Prison this afternoon.’ Natalie spoke quietly, as if she was reluctant to push herself forward.

  ‘Are you?’ Delva raised one eyebrow. ‘Who are you visiting?’

  ‘A lifer called Dominic Wilde. I’ve told him I’m a sociology student. He seems quite…well, you know…quite well educated. For a…’ she tailed off with a shrug, as if she was afraid that she was not being politically correct.

  ‘Is this your first visit?’

  Natalie shook her head. ‘I’ve been writing to another one as well. I went to visit him but it was no good. He was only interested in… you know.’ She flushed and looked at her feet.

  ‘Yes, I can imagine,’ Delva said. Natalie was a pretty little thing. She wondered why the producer had chosen her to write to the prisoners in Balsall Gate. It would take a tough cookie to put up with the sort of crap she was likely to get from the inmates. ‘How do you find it, going there?’ she asked. ‘Must be a bit of an ordeal.’

  ‘Oh no,’ the girl smiled brightly. ‘I love it. It’s absolutely fascinating. And I don’t really feel like me because I wear a wig.’

  ‘Really?’ Delva laughed. ‘How do you get the names of the guys you write to?’

  ‘From court, initially,’ Natalie said. ‘That’s how I got the first one – I sat in on his trial and when he was sent down I asked the court usher which prison he’d be going to.’ She flicked a strand of dark hair away from her face. ‘I didn’t have to go to court for this one though.’

  ‘Oh? How come?’

  ‘We’ve got this new guy on the team – Tim – have you met him?’

  Delva shook her head.

  ‘He’s an ex-copper. Knows how to access Home Office records.’ She smiled and her cheeks went pink again. She muttered something else about him but she said it to her feet so Delva couldn’t quite make it out.

  ‘Well,’ Delva said, ‘you could find yourself slap in the middle of a very big story – so keep your antennae up, eh?’

  ‘Actually, I was going to ask you,’ Natalie looked up, her face earnest. ‘How do you think I should play it? Should I ask outright about Carl Kelly? Say I saw it on the news?’

  ‘Hmm,’ Delva rubbed her chin as she considered this. ‘Yes, if you’re fairly subtle about it. You could say something like: “Wasn’t it awful about that baby in the churchyard? Is it true what they were suggesting on the news? That the grave belonged to a victim of a prisoner who died in here the other day?” Then you can sit back and see what he says. I mean, he might clam up, but I don’t think it would make him suspicious in any way.’

  Natalie nodded. ‘Great – thanks.’ She scuttled off to fetch the coffee. When she came back she put it down without a word.

  ‘Thanks, Natalie,’ Delva smiled. ‘And good luck for later.’ She watched her disappear through the studio door. It was a shame someone more senior wasn’t going in her place. It was unlikely this timid girl was going to get the kind of scoop they needed to take the story further. Delva wished she could go herself. She laughed as she visualised the lengths she’d have to go to to disguise her identity. No, she thought, she was going to have to rely on Megan for the information she needed.

  Megan had locked herself in her office with strict instructions to the admin staff to keep Nathan MacNamara away. If anyone else wanted to see her they would have to phone first. The subsequent lack of interruptions allowed her to find out quite a lot about Moses Smith. She had called up his death certificate, which stated that the cause of his demise was blood loss due to stab wounds. She had also found a short newspaper article from the Birmingham Evening Mail dated 16th March 1991, which stated that Moses Smith, a father of one, had been stabbed to death. His partner – rather confusingly, as they were not married – was named Sonia Smith. She was quoted as saying that the murder had been carried out by a gang of three masked men who had broken into the flat while the family were asleep. Her age at the time of the murder was nineteen. The name and age of the child were not given. The article ended with an appeal for information. Apparently Moses and Sonia Smith had not known the identity of any of the men.

  There was no address given for the Smiths, other than the fact that they lived in the Balsall Gate area of the city. Megan tried the electoral roll for 1990, but drew a blank. If Moses Smith was into drugs he was probably the type to move from one place to another without ever getting onto the voters’ register. She wondered where Sonia Smith was. She would be thirty-six or thirty-seven by now. And the child would be at least seventeen. She did a search of birth certificates with father’s name Moses Smith, but found nothing. Could that child be the baby she had found in Moses Smith’s grave? A child whose birth was never registered? Alistair Hodge had said he thought it was a newborn. Perhaps it had been only days old when the murder took place and had died soon after its father. But how? And why would the mother have hidden its body?

  She needed to find Sonia Smith. Her only chance with a name as common as that was the burial records. Someone must own that plot in St Mary’s churchyard and the chances were it was Moses Smith’s partner.

  A couple of phone calls revealed that the records had been transferred to the City Library. She would have to go in person to look the records up, but it was only half a mile from her office. She was about to go out of the door when Delva phoned.

  ‘You will let me know if you find anything, won’t you?’ Delva said when she heard where Megan was off to.

  ‘Of course I will – but don’t hold your breath,’ Megan replied. ‘With a name like Smith the only real chance of finding her is if she’s stayed at the same address since the burial.’

  ‘Hmm, I s’pose that’s pretty unlikely, isn’t it? It’s what? Seventeen years ago?’

  ‘That’s right. And I don’t think I’d want to carry on living in the place where my partner had been murdered, would you?’

  ‘God, no,’ Delva said. ‘Have you got any other ideas?’

  ‘Not really. I’m going to the post-mortem on the baby later this afternoon, though. I’ll be interested to know how
old he really is – both his age when he died and the length of time he’s been dead.’ Megan paused for a moment then said: ‘You didn’t mention my name on the news, did you?’

  ‘No – I promised I wouldn’t, didn’t I?’ There was a trace of irritation in Delva’s voice, as if she was cross with Megan for not trusting her.

  ‘And you didn’t say anything about the strychnine?’

  ‘No.’ There was a definite sigh this time. ‘All I said was that the baby was found in the grave of a man who was murdered more than a decade ago and that one of his alleged killers died yesterday, in Balsall Gate prison, of a suspected drugs overdose.’

  ‘What about Willis’ appeal? He didn’t say anything about me, did he?’

  ‘No. It was a straightforward thirty-second soundbite of him asking for anyone who might know something about the baby to come forward.’

  ‘Okay – thanks,’ Megan said. ‘I’ll call you if I get anything. Promise.’

  It took her less time than she’d thought it would to get her hands on the burial records. Not that she had her hands on them, strictly speaking. She had to wear white gloves to examine the big leather-bound book that had been removed from St Mary’s when the building was deconsecrated. Even though the last entries were only fifteen years old the book smelt musty. The dates on the first few pages were from the nineteen-fifties, which gave an indicaton of how few burials had taken place there over the last decades of the twentieth century. Balsall Gate had once been a thriving community but slum clearance programmes and tower blocks had put paid to that. For as long as Megan could remember, Balsall Gate had been the kind of district you would only live in if you were desperate.

  She found what she was looking for, her gloved finger moving down a page headed ‘March 1991’. There he was: Moses Smith. Interred on March 28th. Plot owned by Sonia Smith of Flat 29, Coniston House, Hartley Street, Balsall Gate.

  With a sigh, Megan shut the book. She remembered Coniston House. It was one of three tower blocks that had been blown up five years ago after the council finally admitted that the flats were uninhabitable. They were riddled with damp and structurally unsafe. She had watched, fascinated, from her office window as they crumbled to dust.

  As she walked out of the library she felt a sudden urge to go and talk it all over with Dominic Wilde. There wasn’t any need, she told herself. Why should he be able to cast any more light on what had happened? As far as she was aware, he had told her everything he knew. She blinked as the realisation came. That she wanted to see him, full stop.

  She told herself that she mustn’t. That it would be madness to stoke this spark of…what? Lust? It didn’t feel like lust. More like a yearning for a kindred spirit. Jonathan’s coming to see you this weekend, she reprimanded herself. But he might not come, a voice in her head hissed back.

  Dom Wilde’s face hovered before her eyes as she crossed the street. And instead of turning right to go back to her office, she took a left. She knew she was abusing the power the Ministry of Justice had granted her: the right to visit the prison for her research without any prior warning. But she put this to the back of her mind, overpowered by the need to see him, to hear his voice. Ten minutes later she was walking through the churchyard, past the grave of Moses Smith with its border of police tape fluttering in the breeze. And five minutes after that she heard the huge wooden door of Balsall Gate jail bang shut behind her.

  Chapter 8

  Dom Wilde didn’t smile when he was escorted into the room. When they were left alone he sat staring at the floor, avoiding eye contact.

  ‘Hi Dom,’ Megan ventured. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Okay.’ Still he didn’t look up. They sat in silence for a few seconds before the penny dropped. He must have seen the report on the television. He had put two and two together: guessed that she was the source of the story. A wave of panic swept through her.

  ‘Dom,’ she began, ‘what you saw on the news…’

  ‘Heard, actually,’ he interrupted her, eyes still fixed on the floor. ‘Radio in my cell.’ It sounded like an accusation, as if he had expected to hear it from her first. All the warmth in him had gone. Clearly he felt she had betrayed his trust. This she couldn’t bear.

  ‘You think I was wrong to go to the grave, then?’ She tried to keep her voice steady.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘But you don’t like the fact that everyone knows what Carl did?’

  She heard him draw in his breath. ‘I don’t know. I suppose it doesn’t matter now he’s dead.’ There was a pause. Finally he looked at her. ‘You could have told me. Warned me.’

  She was mesmerised by his eyes. Liquid grey, like the deepest wells; full of emotions she couldn’t fathom. And looking into them her guilt and fear were shot through with elation, excitement. ‘I’m sorry, Dom: really I am. I don’t know what made me go looking for Moses Smith’s grave. But I never expected to find…’ She bit her lip, knowing it sounded lame.

  To her surprise he put out his hand and grasped hers. ‘It must have been a shock, finding…what you found. I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have come in here accusing you like that.’

  Her eyes stung. She felt inexplicably close to tears. He thought this show of emotion was about finding the baby. He had no idea just how upset that had made her. But it wasn’t that now: it was the fact that he was disappointed with her; that she’d taken advantage of him.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ she said, ‘I should have warned you.’ She could feel the warmth of his fingers squeezing hers. She knew she should pull her hand away. ‘I saw the ground had been disturbed but it was getting dark, so I went back next morning, very early.’ She told him about meeting Delva; about swearing her to secrecy about Carl’s death. And all the time he kept hold of her hand.

  ‘But when you found the baby there was no way of keeping quiet about Carl,’ he nodded. ‘I see that now.’ For a long moment he gazed into her eyes. He had lost that accusing look. She gazed back like someone paralysed. The longer it went on, the more compromised she would be. Never had she overstepped the mark like this. In all the prisons, all the one-to-one sessions with inmates she had held over the years, she had always behaved with absolute propriety. What was it about this man that was making her so reckless?

  ‘Dom,’ she said, smiling as she unwound his fingers from hers, ‘you’re going to get me into trouble.’ She patted his hand before crossing her arms and leaning back in her seat. He smiled and shrugged, his movements mirroring hers. To her relief he seemed untroubled by her pulling away. But she felt as if she’d touched a live, bare wire.

  ‘What did you think when you heard about the baby?’ Her voice sounded high and unnatural. She coughed and tried again. ‘Had Carl ever mentioned a child?’

  He shook his head. ‘All he ever told me was his victim’s name and the fact that he was buried in St Mary’s. I got the impression he didn’t really know him from Adam. He was just some guy who pushed his luck too far and had to be sorted.’

  ‘Did he mention if there were others involved in the murder?’ She watched his expression for tell-tale signs. An awful thought had crossed her mind. Something quite at odds with the way she felt about him. Dom Wilde was in jail because he’d killed a man. So what if it was him? He had, by his own admission, been the last person to see Carl alive. What if he was feeding her this stuff to divert attention from himself? And the hand-holding – had that been part of some plan to soften her up?

  He gave her a blank look. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Were there?’

  She nodded, her eyes fixed on his face. ‘According to the newspaper report there were three of them. There was also a partner in the flat when they broke in. Apparently they left her alone.’ She paused. His expression hadn’t changed from that look of blank puzzlement. The voices in her head were subsiding. She wanted to believe he was being straight with her, wanted it with a ferocity that scared her. ‘They had a child too,’ she said.

  ‘Not the baby…’ he tailed off,
his eyes wide with alarm.

  ‘Who knows?’ she replied. ‘The newspaper article didn’t say how old the child was and I’ve drawn a complete blank with tracing the partner. But who ever the baby belonged to, why was he put on top of Moses Smith’s grave?’

  ‘And was he put there before or after Carl died?’

  Megan told him what the pathologist had said about having the box analysed. ‘If you hadn’t told me about Moses Smith I doubt the baby would ever have been discovered. If someone wanted to draw attention to the link between Carl and Moses they could have made it a lot more obvious.’

  Dom frowned as he weighed this up. ‘It doesn’t make any sense at all, does it?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  ‘The newspaper article you found – what was the date on it?’

  ‘The sixteenth of March 1991. Why?’

  ‘That explains why I never got to hear about it. Carl never told me exactly when it happened. And I thought I’d remember a name like Moses Smith – if I’d read about it in the paper at the time. But I wasn’t living in Brum in ’91’

  She searched his eyes, wondering how he was going to react to what she was about to ask. ‘I need to find out where that dodgy heroin came from, Dom.’ Silence. But he didn’t look away. ‘I want to talk to Carl’s girlfriend,’ she persisted. ‘There’s just a chance he might have said something to her; told her more than he told you.’

  There was a small sigh before he responded. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you know I can’t help you with the first thing, but I have got this.’ He reached into the pocket of his denim shirt: ‘It’s one of his girlfriend’s letters: it’s got her address on it.’ He leaned forward, his head inches from hers. She thought he was going to touch her again and her insides went into meltdown. But whatever he intended was interrupted by the rattle of keys. Megan stuffed the letter into her pocket as the face of Fergus appeared round the door.