by Alex Walters
Murrain called after her, but before he could move she was already out of the garden and heading along the canal. He knew he should catch up with her, stop her and insist she return to the house. But he also knew, in his heart, that she was right. He could feel it, that familiar insistent buzzing, telling him they needed to act. Whatever was happening here, every second was vital. There was no point in waiting for a back-up team to arrive if all they found were more bodies.
Instinct. It was Murrain’s joke, the line he often used to deflect attention from his working methods. But, at a moment like this, he had nothing else. He waited a moment longer, then, leaving Milton with Wickham, he followed Kate out into the darkness.
***
Kate paused as she reached the canal-side. She didn’t know what had happened back at the house. But she knew it was Brody she was looking for. He had Jack. He had Luke. Kate didn’t know why or where, but she knew it was true.
Where would he have gone, if he wasn’t in the house. He'd know the area, know that the road to the left led down into the village centre, and he would have wanted to avoid that. Kate’s best guess was that he would have headed along the canal, but which way?
The canal path to the right led to a brightly-lit pub, a favourite of the narrow-boat users, visible once you walked a few yards up the tow-path. The path to the left led into darkness and, fairly soon, open country. Another quarter of a mile or so the canal descended through a flight of locks. Then you reached the river valley, which the canal crossed through a dramatic aqueduct, a testimony to the remarkable ambition of the Victorian era.
That way, it had to be that way.
She stumbled along the muddy tow-path, her eyes gradually adjusting to the darkness. Even away from the residential parts of the village, the blackness was far from complete, low clouds reflecting the pale orange glow of the distant Manchester lights. She made her way cautiously down past the endless locks, trying not to lose her footing on the uneven ground. She should have stopped to find herself a torch, but had been afraid that Murrain would try to stop her. She still couldn’t understand why he hadn’t.
After a few hundred yards the ground levelled and she was able to make her way more easily along the path. The canal was a black trench to her right, the water invisible in the darkness. To her right, there were stone walls, then undergrowth, a patch of woodland, patchy darkness.
Suddenly she was at the edge of the valley, the land falling away on both sides, the narrow stone ramparts of the aqueduct stretched out ahead. She was struck by the emptiness and distance, the wind buffeting her face and body. Across the valley she could see the scatterings of light from farm buildings and houses, and beyond that the denser glow of a neighbouring village.
She’d been for walks down here once or twice at weekends, and even in the calm of a sunlit afternoon the place had terrified her. She had no head for heights, and something about the sheer drop on each side of the aqueduct combined with the blackness of the canal itself had felt oddly unnerving. She’d tried to walk along the tow-path but it had felt like walking a tight-rope and she hadn’t made it more than a quarter of the way along before turning back. The thought of crossing the aqueduct in the rain-soaked night seemed unbearable.
There was something out along the aqueduct, though. In the windy darkness, at first it was nothing more than a lighter blur, a cluster of pale shapes by the canal.
She took a few tentative steps out on to the stone pathway, feeling the tight clutch of fear in her stomach. The wind was even stronger now, blasting past her ears, whipping the breath from her mouth. She walked another ten or fifteen yards, her hand grasping tightly to the stone wall which felt much too low for its purpose. She felt as if, at any moment, the gale might pick her up bodily and toss her over the parapet into the emptiness below.
Then the blurred shape ahead began to make sense, and the breath was wrenched from her body for quite another reason.
There were three of them. Three pale bodies in the darkness.
Three figures.
Three figures perched like birds on a telegraph wire, sitting on the stone wall of the aqueduct, as casually as if they were sightseers admiring the view.
One larger figure in the centre, two smaller ones on each side. A parody of a loving family group.
Brody. Luke. And Jack.
Sitting on the edge of the aqueduct, nothing between them and the sheer drop down to the valley floor below.
Any fear Kate felt for her own safety had dissolved as soon as she realised what she was seeing. Now, she felt nothing but sheer terror for Jack and for Luke.
She glanced back, hoping that, somehow, help might be at hand but she could see nothing. Somewhere in the distance she thought she detected the flicker of a blue light, but if back-up had finally arrived it was much too far away to help her now. She turned back and focused intently on the three figures, motionless on the edge of the wall.
As she did so, the blasting wind unexpectedly dropped and the night fell eerily silent, as if the elements themselves were holding their breath. In the sudden quiet, Kate became uncomfortably aware of her own movements, the sounds as her feet crunched on the gravel, her hand rasped against the wall.
Finally, Kate was close enough to hear Brody’s voice. He was speaking softly, the voice of a kindly uncle telling a bedtime story to children slowly drifting into sleep, though she could make out none of the words. Just a steady rhythmic monotone.
Afterwards, Kate couldn’t be sure what happened. Her memory had blurred the detail, the moments too terrifying to recall. Brody had continued speaking in the same gentle unvarying voice, but she had seen or sensed some movement, some tremor in his body that she knew meant the moment had come. That he was about to drop into that pitiless void.
She had thrown herself forward instinctively, making a grab for Jack’s coat. For an awful moment, she couldn’t get a grip of the thick fabric and thought Brody was going to drag the small body with her. Then, suddenly, mercifully, she was holding Jack tight, dragging him back from the wall, pulling him down with her into the safe shelter of the stonework. She had no idea how Brody had managed to keep the boy so calm while she had sat with him on the wall. Now, he was sobbing, choking back a scream.
It was only then she remembered Luke.
There was nothing she could have done, she told herself, her head buried in the warmth of Jack’s back. She’d had time to grab only one of the boys, and of course, without even considering the matter, she’d reached for her own son. No-one could blame her for that.
But she had killed Luke. She had sent him to his death.
Her arms still wrapped around Jack’s sobbing body, she lifted her head. Murrain was prone on the path beside her, his own arms wound in the same way around Luke’s crying figure.
'Instinct,' Murrain said, breathlessly. 'It’s all I have.'
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
'If you think you need some kind of counselling,' Murrain said, slowly, stirring his coffee, 'I’m sure we can organise it. I can’t imagine what sort of impact all this must have had.'
Kate Forester was sitting on the sofa, her body clenched as if she were wary of being physically struck. 'I don’t think I’m even at that stage. I just feel numb.'
'I’m not surprised,' Murrain said. 'We’re still struggling to work it out.' He sat in silence for a few moments. He felt that Kate wanted to talk and he was content to let her. It seemed to be helping her, and it was helping him to make sense of what was emerging. And, if he was honest, he had his own traumas to work through. Small beer compared with what Kate had faced, but troubling enough.
'Brody killed that boy,' she said, finally. 'He killed that boy in the holiday centre, and they let Kevin take the blame—' She trailed off, for a moment.
'I'm not sure we'll ever prove it definitively, but it looks that way,' Murrain said. 'We've confirmed that they were both working there at the time—Graeme Ellis and your colleague Gregory Perry. Two of a kind. A nasty kind, by all
accounts. It was just a student job for them but probably a good place to find their young victims. It doesn't even seem to have been a sexual thing. Not primarily, anyway.' He shrugged. 'You probably understand this kind of stuff better than I do. It seems to have been about humiliation. Control, like you said. It looks as if there were some complaints about their behaviour at the time, but nothing was done. There's no way now of knowing exactly what happened with Ben Wallasey. Some game that went too far, presumably. No-one made the connection later but Perry was actually called as a witness at the trial. He was one of those who'd turned up, along with a couple of other convenient witnesses, and supposedly found Wickham with the dead boy.'
She shuddered. 'Greg knew Ellis all the time. Knew everything about Graeme and Kevin.' She stopped. 'But how come they both ended up in the Service. That can't have been premeditated, surely?' Her tone suggested she'd been worrying at these issues, but hadn't resolved them.
Murrain wondered quite how far her thinking had so far taken her. 'I think it was probably just coincidence at first,' he said. 'Perry was the bright one. He'd applied to the Prison Service as a fast-track governor after university. I don't know what his motives were or whether it was accident or design he ended up working in the YOI, but I'm guessing it suited his purposes. They were advertising for officers. Ellis had dropped out of university, but he applied for the officer role and got the job, maybe with Perry's help. Surprised they passed all the security checks, but I guess things weren't as rigorous in those days. And neither had any kind of record. Like I say, my impression is that Perry was the smarter of the two—he seems to have been adept at digging himself out of trouble at least—but Ellis was maybe nastier and more manipulative. And, I suspect, less in control of his own urges.'
'But why pursue Kevin after all those years?'
'I imagine they came across Kevin by accident initially. Perry would have recognised him, whatever name he was using. I imagine Perry saw him as a vulnerability, a loose end they'd not tied up. They were safe as long as Kevin didn't recall what had happened that day. Kevin was attacked in the YOI and reckons it was set up. I think Perry and Ellis instigated that, but maybe it didn't go the way they'd planned. After that, Kevin became smarter and probably the authorities realised he needed to be better protected. That was probably their last chance to deal with it that way.'
There was another silence. 'What about Ryan?' she said.
'Something else we'll never prove, I'm afraid. From what I understand from Kevin, he talked to Ryan more openly than he had to any other officer.'
She smiled faintly. 'That was Ryan. But Kevin wouldn't have been able to tell him anything.'
'I imagine not,' Murrain said. 'But Perry and Ellis might have been concerned at anyone getting close to Kevin.'
'You really think they might have silenced Ryan for that?'
'Probably not in itself, no. But I suspect he was gathering evidence on other activities that Ellis and Perry were up to. From what I understand, Ellis was dismissed subsequently for "inappropriate behaviour". Looks like Perry was smarter and came away with his record unblemished.'
'That was what Tim Hulse implied,' she said. 'And he shafted Tim later for similar reasons. You think they did the same to Tim?'
'What I do know is that Hulse had already gathered and submitted a detailed portfolio of evidence about Gregory Perry. It was already too late for Perry though he wouldn't have known that at time of Hulse's death. From what I'm told, there was enough in the material that Hulse had collected not just to dismiss Perry but maybe even to put him inside himself. Not an attractive prospect for a former prison governor, I imagine.' He paused and looked at her. 'And I imagine it wasn't coincidence that you ended up dealing with Kevin's case in the months before his release. My impression is that Perry was skilled at manipulating events to his own ends.'
She nodded, her eyes dull. 'When I was looking for promotion, he approached me about working with him at the Open. Reckoned he'd heard good things about me on the grapevine.'
'That way, I guess he could keep an eye on you and Kevin in the months before his release. Assess the level of risk to him and Ellis.'
'What about Greg? Surely, he'll give you a route to proving some of this?'
Murrain leaned forward, conscious that what he was about to say would be news to her. 'Perry's gone missing. Disappeared the same day that Ellis killed himself. That morning, he'd been informed by HR that he was being suspended from duty pending the investigation of a number of allegations. His phone records suggest he'd phoned Ellis to tell him the game was up. Our investigations were getting close to Ellis as well, but that phone call may be what pushed Ellis over the edge.' Murrain realised only after he'd spoken that the metaphor was all too appropriate. 'But my guess is Ellis was already getting out of control. We're fairly sure he was responsible for Ethan Dunn's death—we've found traces of Dunn's DNA in Ellis's van. Again, we don't know the whole story. But we think we may be able to link him to at least one other child murder in the region. And maybe others.'
'They were trying to frame Kevin?'
Murrain shrugged. 'I'm not sure it was that pre-meditated. I think it was mostly an urge that Ellis just couldn't control. He liked controlling people, manipulating them—not just children but women too. It was all one big awful game to him.'
She nodded, her eyes blank. 'That was what he did to me. Or tried to do.'
'We don't know what exactly happened with Ethan Dunn, any more than we know what happened with Ben Wallasey. But it looks as if, after Ethan Dunn's killing, Perry saw it as an opportunity to put Kevin in the frame. If Kevin was identified as Dunn's murderer—or probably even if he just became our prime suspect—that would take Ellis out of the frame and mean that no-one was likely to revisit Kevin's original conviction.' He paused, giving her a moment to take in what he was saying.' As for Gregory Perry, we've had a report that his car's been found abandoned. On the North Wales coast. Near the site of a former holiday centre.' He shrugged. 'We're still looking, but I have a feeling that we won't find him. Not alive anyway.'
'I thought he was a friend,' Kate said. Her voice drifted away. She was still staring blankly over Murrain’s shoulder at nothing in particular. 'What about Kevin? What happens to him?'
'The case has been reopened. There’s enough to raise doubts about the original conviction. Between these four walls, it looks as if corners were cut in the original investigation. I think as a minimum, there’ll be a retrial. He may even just be given a pardon. There are various worm-filled cans here than I suspect the powers-that-be may prefer to remain unopened.'
Somewhere in the next room, Murrain could hear the sound of the television. Jack, seemingly none the worse for his ordeal, was watching some noisy children’s programme. Murrain wondered whether Kate was in a fit state to take proper care of the boy, but he couldn’t bring himself to take any steps that might result in their being separated.
He took another mouthful of his coffee, allowing the silence to build, expecting that Kate would want to continue talking. But she sat staring into space, watching nothing and no-one.
So much for her wanting to talk, he thought. So much for instinct.
'Look, I’d better go,' he said, at last. 'You sure you’ll be OK?'
'Yes, I’m fine,' she said, in a tone that suggested the opposite. 'Don’t worry.'
'Think about that counselling,' he said. 'And I’ll call in again. Keep you updated.'
'Thanks,' she said. 'That’s kind of you.'
***
By the time Murrain arrived back at the MIR, Wanstead was already beginning to arrange its closure. There was plenty of work still to complete on the case but it was mainly administration which they could carry out just as effectively back at the ranch. There was something poignant about seeing all the equipment, which had so recently been critical to their work, being prepared for packing.
'Marty Winston called,' Wanstead said. 'Offers his congratulations.'
'For what?
' Murrain said. 'We've got more dead bodies than the last act of Hamlet, and we still don't know for certain who did what.'
'We're pretty sure who killed Ethan Dunn,' Wanstead pointed out. 'And we know the killer is well and truly dead. That's all Winston cares about. And you're a hero. That's always good PR.'
Murrain snorted. 'Some hero.'
'There'd be another child dead without you,' Wanstead said.
'I'm still not sure that Ellis intended to take the two boys with him. He didn't make any effort to hold on to them when he dropped. It was almost like he was just saying goodbye.'
'Still, two terrified kids out there in the dark. If you and Forester hadn't gone down there—'
'Just lucky,' Murrain said. 'Right place at the right time.'
'But that's your knack, isn't it, Kenny? When the rest of us are lost in the mire, you know what's what.'
'I wish that were true, Paul. You know as well as I do I've been wrong too many times. Sometimes when it mattered the most.' He sat down at his desk, knowing there was no merit in pursuing that chain of thought. 'How's Luke's mother taken it?'
'Difficult to know,' Wanstead said. He gestured towards Marie Donovan, who was sitting chatting to Joe Milton at the far end of the room. 'Love's young dream over there went out to see her. Reckoned she'd come through it OK. Though wasn't sure she'd really taken in what nearly happened to Luke. More shocked by the revelations about Kevin Wickham than anything, apparently.'
'Which revelation? That he might have been a killer, or that he most probably isn't?'
'Either. Both. Must be a shock that you've let someone into your life without knowing who they really are, whatever the outcome.'