Dark Corners

by Alex Walters

  'From what you told me, I can understand why he might worry.' They both knew that the one blot of Murrain's record was an attack on the father of a boy Murrain had believed responsible for his own son's death. It had nearly ended his career, but—much more devastatingly for Murrain—it had prevented his son's killers from ever being brought to justice. 'That's why he's so punctilious about everything?'

  'Punctilious bordering on obsessive sometimes,' Milton agreed. 'You've seen him lining stuff up on his desk. Even the way he parks his car. That's part of it. That—and, you know, his feelings.' She knew now this was something no-one in the team liked to acknowledge openly. Milton had taken her aside when she'd first joined and explained that Murrain's approach could be, well, distinctive—that he sometimes relied on sensations or instincts that seemed more than straightforwardly rational. At the time, she'd been unsure how to take the comments, but now she believed Murrain's unique insights had helped save her life. 'He can't control those. When they happen, what they mean. How significant they are. That gnaws away at him. Particularly when he's faced with a case like this. He wants to know and he can't.'

  'You think he's OK, though?'

  'For the moment. But he won't want to fail. Not on this one.'

  'None of us does,' she agreed. 'On that note, it might be time to make ourselves scarce.'

  Milton could see she was looking thoughtfully over his shoulder, but he resisted the urge to turn his head. 'What is it?'

  'There's a guy over there who's clearly keen to be the centre of attention. No idea who he is, but I recognise a couple of his acolytes.' The group around the large bearded man had been expanding as she'd watched, and two women—one roughly Donovan's own age, the other a little older—had just finished buying drinks from the bar. 'One of them runs a stationery shop up the high street here. Can't quite place the other one. But I interviewed them both a couple of days ago.'

  'OK. Let's slip out discreetly before we find ourselves facing a lynch mob.' He smiled. 'Not sure this was quite what either of us had in mind when I asked you for a drink, was it?'

  'It's been fine.'

  'Not sure it has. I'll try to do better next time.'

  'Next time?' She could see his face reddening. 'Of course you will.' She glanced over his shoulder at the laughing crowd of drinkers. 'Though maybe somewhere else, eh?'

  'Definitely somewhere else.' He led them through the thickening crowd, keeping as far from the bar as possible. It wasn't until they were outside that he turned back. 'And, well, thanks.'

  'For what?'

  'For coming.' He stopped, fumbling for his car keys and then looked her in the eye for the first time since they'd left the pub. 'And for listening. I needed it.'

  CHAPTER NINE

  Two years earlier

  She stepped out of the main doors of the administrative block into the warm summer afternoon. They’d had a week or so of cloud and rain, but the sun had finally reappeared. For the first time it had begun to feel like summer. Her own office was a few doors along from Greg Perry’s but all she wanted to do was get out into the open air. She gazed out across the well-tended prison estate. Rows of neat housing, closely-cut lawns, flowerbeds blossoming in the sunshine. More like an upmarket holiday camp than a prison. But that was the intention. To allow prisoners to grow accustomed to something resembling the real world. The security levels were low, designed primarily to keep the curious out rather than the prisoners in.

  As she made her way down the steps, she saw Carl sitting on one of the park benches. Her first instinct was to turn away but she forced herself to walk over to him.

  'I’ve just been talking to the Governor,' she said slowly. 'I’m going to call a halt now. In our sessions, I mean.'

  She couldn’t read his expression. It might have been disappointment or relief. 'You think that’s the right thing to do?'

  'I’m sure it is. You need to concentrate on the future.'

  For a moment, she was certain he was going to disagree. But, finally, he nodded. 'You’re probably right. I needed to try but, well—'

  'We haven’t got very far?'

  'I don’t know.' His gaze had shifted away from her. 'What I said the other day. What I remembered—' He stopped. 'What I thought I remembered.'

  'You’re not certain?'

  'It comes and goes. For a moment, it seems vivid. That morning, just as I described it to you. Then it’s like some dream I can barely remember at all. And what I said—'

  'Go on.'

  'I don’t know what that means.' He shook his head, and she could sense some anger there now. Directed not at her but at himself. 'It’s so bloody frustrating. I felt we were getting somewhere.'

  'And now I’m saying we should stop.'

  'I just wish we had more time. Christ, I’ve been inside for twenty years and just when we start to make some progress—'

  'You get released? Don’t you want that?'

  'I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like out there.'

  'That’s why you need to focus on that now. That’s what matters. Not what did or didn’t happen in the past.'

  'You’re the expert,' he said. 'Is this it, then? The last time I see you?'

  'No, of course not. We’ll help you work with probation. There’s plenty of stuff still to do.'

  'I’ll see you around then.'

  It felt almost like an awkward lovers' farewell, she thought. 'Yes,' she said. 'I’ll see you around.'

  Feeling her emotions welling up, she turned hurriedly towards the car-park. Behind her, she could hear Carl humming to himself, semi-tunefully. The sound of someone feigning unconcern, she thought.

  Tell him to buy me an acre of land...

  ***

  She knew as soon as she entered the house that something felt strange. Even when she thought about it later—much later—she could never pin down the source of her unease in that moment. Something in the air, something that felt different. Some missing sound she’d never noticed before and would never be able to recognise again. A familiar scent.

  Perhaps nothing more than a mother’s instincts.

  She could hear the familiar sound of the television from the sitting room. The unfailingly cheery tones of some game-show host mouthing the same pat phrases he trotted out every evening at this time. The same shepherded audience applause.

  But something made Kate stop in the hallway and take a breath. Something felt like a cold hand clutched around her stomach. Something told her that, however miserable she might be feeling after her dealings with Greg Perry and with Carl, the fates weren't finished with her yet.

  Elizabeth was in front of the TV, her eyes fixed on the flickering screen. Nothing was out of place. The sofa and the carpet and the table-top were clear. The room had been tidied, recently. Her mother fussing round as she always did.

  But the resulting order didn’t usually survive untouched for more than a few minutes.

  'Where’s Jack?' Her voice louder and sharper than she'd intended.

  Elizabeth looked up in surprise. 'What?'

  Don’t jump to conclusions, she told herself. Don’t be stupid. There are a thousand and one possible explanations.

  'I said: where’s Jack?'

  'I wasn't expecting you back yet,' Elizabeth said. 'I thought—'

  'For Christ’s sake,' she said, her voice rising, 'where’s Jack?'

  Her mother’s mouth dropped open, her expression a mixture of puzzlement and concern. 'Well, I thought—'

  'Just tell me,' Kate said. 'Tell me!'

  'He told me he was meeting you. He said it was all arranged—'

  'Who did? Who told you that?'

  'Well, Graeme. He took me by surprise, turning up like that out of the blue. He said you were giving it another go and you’d arranged it together. A treat for Jack. For his birthday—'

  Kate could feel the panic welling up again. 'What fucking treat? Tell me.'

  Elizabeth looked bewildered now. 'You were taking him to the cinema and t
hen for a meal. He said it was an early showing so you'd asked him to pick Jack up so you could meet them straight from work —'

  But Kate was no longer listening. She’d already left the room. She crossed the hallway, picked up the phone and, scarcely aware of what she was doing, began to dial 9-9-9.

  Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she could heart the tune repeating and repeating.

  And he shall be a true lover of mine...

  Then suddenly the fear and the despair overwhelmed her and she felt herself folding, crouching, the telephone still clutched unnoticed in her hands, as she began to scream and scream.

  PART TWO

  Now

  CHAPTER TEN

  'Where’d you want this?'

  Kate Forester stared at the cardboard box for a few seconds, feeling as if the question was impossible to answer. Most of the boxes had been clearly, if not always helpfully, labelled. It had all seemed to make sense back at her mother’s. She'd confidently scrawled a destination on each of the boxes. Bedroom. Kitchen. Living Room. Everything in its place and a place for everything.

  Except that some of the labels were just plain wrong, or at least only partially accurate. Kitchen utensils had ended up in the living room boxes, and there was bedroom stuff apparently destined for the kitchen. And because this place was significantly smaller than Elizabeth’s, there wasn’t a perfect match between the two houses. She hadn’t been consciously aware of it at the time, but she realised now that, faced with any difficult choices about where to allocate items, she’d simply stuffed them into the nearest available box. Sufficient unto the day, and all that. Except that now the day was here.

  The box in front of her didn’t seem to be labelled at all. She couldn’t understand that. She could have sworn she’d labelled all the bloody boxes, however tentatively.

  'Oh, God, I don’t know,' she said. 'If they’re not labelled, stick them in the sitting room and I’ll go through them later.'

  'Right you are. Nearly done now, anyway.'

  There were two removal men, both young. Younger than she was, anyway, though that seemed increasingly common. Even the bloody prison governors were getting younger. Tim Hulse, her new boss, looked like a teenager. But that just made her wonder what she was looking like these day, after everything she’d been though.

  The main thing was to get a grip. That was what this was all about. Making a new start. Remembering what it was like to be alive. Keeping control.

  'What about this one, love?' The removal men were unfailingly cheerful, undaunted by a day of lugging her possessions on and off the lorry parked outside. This one was brandishing a large standard lamp, as if about to deploy it as a weapon.

  'In the living room again, I guess,' she said. Jesus, he’d called her 'love'. That was what you called middle-aged housewives, wasn’t it? She knew she was already long past the age when she might have registered on these lads' sexual radar.

  He disappeared down the hallway past her. His colleague appeared in the doorway a moment later carrying another large cardboard box. 'Bedroom,' he said, nodding down towards the label. 'Last one.'

  'That’s good,' she said, sincerely. 'Do you want a drink before you head back?'

  'Suppose a beer’s out of the question? No, seriously, wouldn’t say no to a cuppa, love.'

  She watched his tightly-bejeaned backside as he lifted the box carefully up the narrow stairway. Not in a lustful way, she told herself. Just with a slight wistfulness for a past that seemed to be receding with increasing rapidity.

  She’d made sure to bring the kettle and associated tea-making items with her in the car rather than trusting them to the vagaries of the removal firm. While she waited for the kettle to boil, she gazed out of the kitchen window. It wasn’t much of a view—just a small postage-stamp of a garden, flanked by battered wooden fences, with a rough-hewn stone wall along the bottom end.

  The real views were at the front. There was a larger front garden and, beyond that, a road and the canal. On the far side of the canal, past another row of houses, the land fell away towards the river valley. From the sitting room and front bedroom, there were views of the hills and then, in the distance, another valley and some far off Pennine town she couldn’t even name.

  In a few months she’d no doubt come to appreciate the real value of the location. For the moment, she felt barely able to think beyond today. She had another couple of days' leave before she was due to go back to work, and she intended to fill those with unpacking and sorting through this stuff.

  The main thing was to keep moving. It was the routine she needed. She went through the familiar ritual of dropping teabags into clean mugs, pouring on the boiling water. Even that mundane activity felt strangely satisfying after all these months.

  'Right. All done.' The removal men were standing at the kitchen door, one holding a clipboard. 'Just need you to confirm we’ve not stolen all your worldly goods.'

  She handed over the two mugs of tea and took the paperwork in return, signing it in the places he’d marked.

  'Nice place,' the lead removal man said. 'On your own here, are you?'

  'It’s a long story.'

  'Ah.' He took a deep swallow of his tea, clearly recognising this wasn’t a topic to pursue. 'Wouldn’t mind a place like this. Me and the girlfriend are saving, but almost everything seems out of our price range. Thanks for the tea. Thirsty work.'

  'Thanks for all your help. Makes a big difference having a couple of cheerful types like you.'

  'Stressful business, moving. Still, you can get properly settled in now.'

  'I hope so,' she said. She gazed out of the window at the small sunlit garden. She could imagine a child running about out there, playing securely in that confined space. 'I really hope so.'

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Murrain finally managed to escape the MIR just after eight. He'd sent the other lingering members of the team home an hour or so before, even finally managing to prise Paul Wanstead away from his desk. There was always a temptation in this kind of investigation to believe that, if you carried on for just another five minutes, something would turn up—the key fact, some critical connection, the clue that would finally open up the case. Well, it might happen, Murrain thought, but most likely if it did we'd all be too tired to spot it.

  Murrain himself had spent the last thirty minutes on the phone to the Head of Communications. She had at least left the office, but, in Murrain's experience, never actually seemed to stop working. In the past, he'd received e-mails from her timed in the small hours of the morning. It wasn't healthy, but he had to acknowledge that she was always ahead of the game. Now, she was preparing to draft a statement for release to the media over the weekend.

  'We've nothing to tell them,' he'd pointed out.

  'All the more reason why we need to tell them something,' she'd said, with her usual irresistible logic.

  The truth was that all they could really say was that the investigation was proceeding, that they were pursuing various avenues of enquiry, and that they were making satisfactory progress. At least two-thirds of that was true, Murrain reflected. That had been the gist of several previous statements they'd released, but the Comms Team were adept at finding new ways of saying essentially the same thing. And that, by and large, had been the outcome of their telephone conversation this evening.

  At that time in the evening, the traffic was relatively light heading west. As Murrain pulled up at the lights at the junction with the A6, his phone buzzed on the seat beside him. He activated the hands-free.

  'Kenny? It's Joe. Sorry to disturb you. Just thought I'd call for a quick catch-up as I missed you earlier.'

  'I hear you've been out on the town,' Murrain said. 'Had a good evening?'

  There was a moment's silence and Murrain recognised that his words had emerged more ironically than he'd intended. And he'd been the one warning Wanstead to keep his mouth shut. No doubt Milton was aware that others might be gossiping.

  'Just a quick one,
' Milton said, finally. 'Place down in the village. Thought it might be good to get a feel for the place.' He sounded defensive.

  'Good idea. Anyway, we all need a break, Joe. You're putting in the hours on this one.'

  'We all are. Sounds like you're only just on your way back.'

  'I got stuck with Comms,' Murrain said. 'Yet another content-free statement to the media tomorrow.'

  'If it helps keep them off our backs, I won't be sorry.'

  'Too right. How was the pub, anyway?'

  'Busy. People don't seem too fazed what's happened. Not yet, anyway.' He paused. 'We left in a bit of a hurry. Was a bit afraid we might be recognised.'

  'Can't imagine it,' Murrain said. 'One flatfoot looks pretty much like another to the general public.' The lights changed, and he pulled away left into the main road.

  'There was a little cluster of people I recognised. Couple of the local shop owners—people I'd interviewed. There was some large guy with a beard who seemed to be running things. I'd seen him before but couldn't think where. Just came to me that he was in the care home near where the body of found. I didn't interview him myself, but I saw some of his staff.'

  'Finlan Brody,' Murrain confirmed. 'Yes, I met him. Heart of the community type.'

  'Didn't seem short of an ego, anyway. Seemed to be a bunch of people gathering round him. More coming in even as we slipped out.'

  Murrain felt a sharp stab of pain just behind his eyes. For the briefest of seconds, he caught an image, crystal clear. A face. But then it was gone, and he could scarcely remember anything about it. The car behind him sounded its horn and he realised that, momentarily, he'd allowed the car to slip out of its lane. He blinked, shocked by the unaccustomed intensity of what he'd felt.

  'You okay, boss?'

  'Sorry. Yes, Joe. Fine. Somebody tried to cut me up.' He wasn't sure why he didn't just tell Milton the truth. But he needed to come to grips with what he'd just felt.