The Backs (2013)

by Bruce, Alison

  Roz seemed too distracted to pay full attention to what her daughter had just said. ‘There aren’t any ghosts here, darling,’ she replied. ‘I’m sorry, Jane,’ she said, and her embarrassment seemed genuine enough.

  Jane clambered to her feet, winking at Reba. ‘The best ghosts are in Scooby Doo, you know. Will I see you tomorrow?’

  Reba grinned. ‘Unless the monster gets you first.’

  FORTY-EIGHT

  KADO Employment occupied both floors. Inside the building was an internal staircase joining the two levels, but the fire door at each end had been locked by the police, in order to keep their search of each storey as separate as possible. In fact, downstairs had been handed back to the Daltons late the same morning. Officially they could now reopen and continue trading until the almost inevitable fallout from Marshall’s death brought down the shutters for the last time. But as they hadn’t been left with a single PC, telephone, diary or timetable, opening the front doors was clearly pointless and the shop front had remained locked and unlit.

  Upstairs had been handed back in the last half hour, and the Daltons’ subsequent comings and goings had been only via the external rear door, which stood at the top of a rusted-metal fire escape. Kincaide already knew this and had parked at the furthest point away where he still had a clear view of the backs of the Milton Road shops. He would know when anyone left the premises.

  Karen and Andrew had arrived in separate vehicles and it therefore seemed logical to Kincaide that one might leave before the other. He’d kept his distance and waited. He didn’t care which of them he got to speak to, as long as it was just one of them.

  Now Andrew Dalton was leaving. Kincaide watched him slip out into the traffic without any backward glance towards his wife or the business, his attention focused only ahead. Kincaide pulled out of his parking space and into the rear alley, leaving his car blocking in her Lexus.

  The door at the top of the fire escape was still ajar, and he hoped he could make it up there before she spotted him and had the chance to slam it in his face.

  In fact, she didn’t notice him at all, and he stood in the doorway for a long minute, watching as she crouched to collect some fallen items of unused stationery.

  ‘We didn’t leave you much stuff, did we?’

  He could sense that he’d startled her, but she calmly rose to her feet and crossed towards him without any sign of nervousness. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You and Drew are in the middle of it now. It’s not like last time, and it’s not going away. Don’t think of trying to blackmail me.’

  She’d halted just a couple of feet in front of him, pursing her lips. ‘We’ll do what’s necessary to minimise damage.’ She blinked, slow and reptilian, with her lids sliding shut, then pausing a moment before snapping open again.

  ‘You don’t have the hold on me that you may think you do.’

  ‘You used our girls, Michael, so—’

  ‘Stop there.’ He took a step closer. ‘I’m going to be specific here. Yes, I slept with two women who both happened to advertise on your site. I was a new DC who made a small mistake, which you and Drew then used against me.’

  ‘You phoned us, remember?’

  ‘Yes, to warn you.’

  ‘Right, and to make sure your name disappeared from our records. What we did was mutually beneficial.’

  ‘And now it’s not. So don’t even try to implicate me. When you wanted that evidence destroyed, I thought I’d helped Jackson avoid a life sentence.’ Was she even listening? He raised his voice. ‘I thought he was guilty, but did you know all along that he wasn’t the killer?’

  ‘Of course not. That card would have pointed straight at us. We thought we were being set up.’

  ‘So who killed her?’

  ‘How should we know? But it wasn’t us, and we weren’t going down for it either.’ She smiled, and it was an expression that said So that’s settled now.

  She reminded him of his wife just then.

  ‘You arrogant fucking bitch.’ He moved closer and grabbed her arm as she tried to step away from him. ‘I’m not altering or destroying anything more for you.’

  ‘How are you in a better position to negotiate than before?’ She smirked. ‘You still have a career, and it’s still there to be ruined.’

  ‘You have had –’ he shoved her away with both hands – ‘all you –’ shove – ‘will have –’ shove – ‘from me.’ With each push she stepped back, but her expression remained defiant. The next time his hand reached out it wasn’t to push her. Instead he snatched a handful of her hair and pulled her towards him.

  He held her close with her face only inches from his own. ‘Are you one of those women who doesn’t know when enough is enough?’ He jerked at the hair closest to her scalp, shaking her and pushing his face right into hers. ‘You and Andrew have fucked it up. Between the police and the tax office, you are losing everything – and you will not take me down with you.’

  ‘Andrew will kill you,’ she hissed.

  ‘No, Karen. I am never going to risk what I have. And the second I think you are a threat, I will tell Jackson what you did. He went down to save your skin, not mine. He’ll make you both pay.’

  He gave her one last push and turned away. She stumbled back against one of the tables. Its feet squealed in protest but she stopped herself from falling. He didn’t look back, though, and the door slammed in his wake.

  The din they had created was more than enough to cover the muted sound of the internal door to the staircase being unlocked from the other side. And Karen Dalton was facing in the wrong direction to notice the handle begin to move.

  FORTY-NINE

  After Jane had let herself back into the house, her hands trembled as she held the kettle under the tap, making ripples spread across the surface of the water that filled it. Then she watched it boil and practised her breathing: in through the nose and gently out through the mouth.

  The steam from the spout rose first in lazy ribbons, then started to thicken. It skimmed the wall, the dampness feeding the mould that blackened the grout between the tiles, with condensation forming beads of wet on the painted wall further along. And it was when it passed over the glass front of the crockery cupboard that she saw his reflection. He was watching her from the hallway.

  ‘Hello, Dan.’ She turned slowly. ‘When did you get here?’

  ‘I came as soon as I discovered you had been to my house. I invited you tomorrow, not today.’

  The kettle clicked itself off. ‘Tea?’

  ‘No. Actually, I think you should come away from the kettle, Jane. Out of the kitchen is probably best.’ He indicated for her to move towards the front of the house. His tone sounded calm, reasonable even, but from that she knew that she should do what she was told.

  Despite an absence of ten years, she could still read him well. She remembered following after him through school, where he’d been popular and sporty and ambitious. He looked like the kid who had it all sorted. She’d trailed behind, unremarkable and inept.

  At school he’d seemed a stranger; at home he’d been her brother – the perfect public image didn’t exist there. She thought she’d known his flaws, and empathized with the disgust he felt towards their parents.

  Now her heart began thumping.

  Of the three of them, she’d usually been the angry one. The exception came only in the moments when Dan’s temper flared. Logic would leave, reasoning with him became impossible, and always the safest route had been to stay clear. Jane had been careful to watch out for the warning signs: Dan brooding, introspective, and festering over some perceived slight.

  She could feel that same energy coming from him now. Like he was about to pounce.

  Despite its probable futility, she needed to say something to him. But her head was empty of words. A silent vacuum. He stopped just short of the front door and turned to look at her. ‘I came to talk to you. I actually want to talk to you.’

  Despite that comment,
he said nothing else at first.

  She heard herself speak. ‘Do you have a plan, Dan?’ It had been an old phrase of hers, and she hoped its familiarity would strike some kind of note.

  There wasn’t even the glimmer of recognition. ‘Shhh, I need to think,’ he told her.

  ‘I thought you wanted to talk?’

  She noticed him move only a fraction of a second before his fist connected with her abdomen. It then felt as though she folded in on herself, and the floor rose to meet her. He’d never hit her before. Ever. But she had no doubt now he wanted her dead.

  Had this version of her brother always been the one fighting for supremacy? Had the infrequent rages been his true face after all? She tried to think but she realized how much she must have forgotten, too. Her whole life spent in this house seemed to be fading.

  She gasped for air and gradually her lungs refilled. She looked up at him and watched her brother’s expressions run through a gamut of tiny changes. She wondered whether she’d become just a shadow in his memory, too. His head tilted to one side and he stared deep into the corner of the hall. His lips were parted and sometimes twitched with ghosts of the words running through his thoughts. An almost imperceptible tremor came at the end. In his mind he’d thought it through, reached the end, and said no.

  Do you have a plan, Dan?

  His eyes flickered, refocused elsewhere and his brain ran the cycle again.

  Do you have a plan, Dan?

  ‘Tell me when I can speak.’

  ‘I’m still thinking.’

  Stubborn Dan; she remembered that now. His terms. At his speed. Well, her last minutes alive would not be spent like that.

  ‘Campbell will be watching, and he’ll see us if we go out. He’ll already know you’re here now.’

  ‘Shut. Up. No one saw me, Jane. No one saw me.’ His weight shifted from foot to foot. ‘Now be quiet.’

  She ignored him. ‘Why kill Becca? That’s what I want to know.’ He kicked out then, but she managed to move aside just enough to protect her ribs with one arm. It still hurt. ‘Becca loved you,’ she persisted.

  ‘Becca was our mother all over again.’

  ‘No, Dan, she wasn’t. You’re kidding yourself. Becca was warm and generous and sad. Becca was sad. Just tell me why you killed her.’

  She thought he’d kick her again then, but he refocused. ‘You have put that well. Yes, she was all of those, wasn’t she? And most of the time she hated Mum too.’ He glanced up the staircase. ‘It’s falling apart,’ he said, but she was sure he didn’t just mean the house. His demeanour had settled into an artificial calm. ‘Mum was going to disappear, just start over and leave the rest of us fucked. I’d already told her I needed help with money, but she turned on me. I wanted to kill her at that moment, and the feeling never went away.

  ‘She told me I had no right to anything.’

  He continued to stare up at the vaulted ceiling above the staircase. ‘This house belongs to this family – not her family but Dad’s. And we have spent every fucking day in her shadow. It wasn’t her moment any more. I had every right.’

  ‘To kill her?’

  ‘Every right to be free from her. Every right to stop her taking any more.’

  ‘What about Becca, Dan?’

  ‘I planned to kill Mum on the night she left. I was the only one who knew what she had planned until one day she drank too much, and screamed it all at Becca. And Becca ran crying to me. I needed no one else to know.’

  ‘And two people can only keep a secret properly when one of them is dead?’

  ‘In the original quote there were three, and two had to die.’ Without warning he stopped speaking then. ‘Come upstairs, Jane.’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘It’s not about money, Jane. It’s about the life they gave me compared to the one I ought to have. Now move.’

  She looked at him and saw only darkness.

  And, at that moment, her mobile began to ring.

  FIFTY

  Goodhew dialled Jane Osborne’s number the moment he stepped back out on to the pavement. It switched to voicemail. ‘Ring me at once, Jane. Or get over to Parkside. It’s urgent.’

  He pulled up Marks’s number, then changed his mind. Instead he sent Jane a follow-up text. ‘I’m coming to your house right now.’

  He was now about the same distance from Parkside as from Pound Hill, but in opposite directions. He grabbed his radio then started running towards Parkside, darting between cyclists and pedestrians.

  He shouted for a car to go to Pound Hill, then he felt his mobile buzz and saw a text box sent from Jane’s number flash on to the screen: ‘Going to see Dad at his studio.’ ‘Scratch that,’ he told the dispatcher and redirected the car to the studio in Newnham Road, though he didn’t even know the number.

  ‘Patch me through to PC Gully.’

  ‘Where are you, Sue?’

  ‘Parkside, just got in.’

  ‘Find Marks. It’s urgent.’ People were turning as he passed them in the street.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Regent Street,’ he shouted. ‘I’m on my way there now. Find all the Osbornes, and bring them in. Then get down to the back car park. We need to go.’

  He cut off the call and ran out into the road, sprinting along the central white line and only heading back across to the pavement when he saw a clear run to Parker’s Piece.

  Five hundred yards ahead of him, a marked car pulled out from the side of Parkside, turned on its lights and sirens, then jumped the lights to race up East Road. He could still hear it in the distance as he pushed open the front door, then rushed straight through and out to the car park at the back.

  Marks was waiting there with DC Young and PCs Gully and Wilkes. Goodhew stopped in front of them, breathing hard. ‘Dan Osborne killed them.’

  For a long moment no one moved. Evidence? Justification? The odds that Goodhew was totally and utterly wrong? All these were questions for which Marks had every right to demand answers.

  Goodhew was grabbing another lungful of air to explain further, but Marks spoke first, barking instructions. ‘Sue, Kelly, get to Pound Hill. Young, to Castle Street. Everyone’s out after Jackson. There’s no one else, dammit . . . Gary, come with me. I’m driving.’

  The vehicles poured from the car park, turning right along East Road, just as the previous car had done. ‘That first marked car was heading for Newnham Road, too.’

  ‘I guessed. Who was it?’

  ‘PC Jarvis. Get an update from him. He should be there about now.’

  Marks wove the car through the other vehicles, jumping a 100-yard queue by cutting through oncoming traffic. They ran the next set of lights just as the radio operator spoke again. ‘It’s PC Jarvis. He’s advised that there’s just one male occupant at the address. State of intoxication.’

  ‘ID?’ Goodhew demanded.

  ‘Gerry Osborne.’

  ‘OK, we’ll take Pound Hill. Advise PCs Gully and Wilkes they are not now required on this one.’

  ‘Ouch, they won’t thank you for that,’ Marks commented. He had just made the left into Newnham Road, where he swung the car in a wide arc across the road, doubling back up Queen’s Road.

  ‘He’s dangerous.’

  ‘Spill, Gary.’

  ‘It’s that thing Kincaide often says: Follow the money. Becca’s death gave Gerry Osborne’s work sudden prominence, so prices went up, and Dan grabbed the opportunity to start working for his dad. He juggled the money around and managed to keep himself out of trouble. When he killed his mother he made sure he got his hands on her share of the money in cash. He’s essentially been laundering that money through the gallery, buying pieces at high prices, pretending that they’ve been bought by a private buyer, then putting the money into Gerry’s account.’

  ‘Minus the gallery’s commission.’

  ‘But that’s fine, because Gerry’s pieces then garnered a reputation for having great sales potential. That translates into a
rtificially higher prices commanded at the next exhibition. It is all the publicity and receipts from the gallery that make it look above board. But that’s just the paper trail. Just look at Mary’s body – even post-mortem he carried on inflicting damage on her.’

  ‘That’s frenzy, not control?’

  ‘But it was carefully planned. It’s only during the killing itself that his emotions overwhelmed him.’

  ‘We’ll need more than that to charge him.’

  ‘But not to bring him in.’

  Marks killed the siren before they turned into Pound Hill, then swung into the road itself. He took the turn at the bottom of the hill and noticed the lone figure of Campbell standing outside his flat. He was facing the Osborne house, but turned his head to look over his shoulder at them.

  Goodhew jumped from the car.

  ‘Is she there?’ he shouted.

  Campbell nodded, then his head seemed to swivel in slow motion as he followed Goodhew’s dash towards the house.

  Marks ran, too, towards the front door.

  From inside Goodhew heard the sound of splintering wood. Marks banged on the door. Goodhew grabbed a broken fence post and ran round to one side of the house.

  Neither of them heard the dispatcher asking for the nearest available car to attend suspicious activity reported at an address in Milton Road. Neither of them, therefore, heard PCs Gully and Wilkes respond.

  Greg Jackson had spent the night in the open. The night hadn’t been so cold and part of him knew that this might be one of his last chances at freedom. Drew had rung him late. ‘They’ll be pulling you in. Nothing to worry about. It’s OK to tell them about Student Services; they already know.’

  But it wasn’t all right. Not at all.

  Drew and Karen had been his only support since prison, but he hadn’t told them everything. Didn’t tell them that once each week he had been visited by one of their girls: Andie. Blonde, hopeful and a little melancholy. Not so different from Becca, in some ways.