by M K Farrar
Now someone else was out there, wanting to kill her. Should he warn her? Tell her to watch her back?
“Don’t you dare tell her.”
Nicholas recognised the voice instantly, and his heart lurched into his throat.
He glanced over his shoulder to find his brother leaning against the wall, his arms folded over his chest. He looked exactly the same as the last time Nicholas had seen him.
Danny?
Danny had always been younger than him, but now the age difference was noticeable. Of course, Nicholas had continued to age, while Danny hadn’t, because Danny was dead.
Danny hissed from behind his shoulder. “She doesn’t deserve your help.”
He had to warn her, didn’t he? No, he didn’t. He didn’t have to warn her at all. Hadn’t he wanted her punished?
But I have punished her. I took her husband.
Danny turned and slammed his hand down on the nearest table. Nicholas jumped, but no one else in the room seemed to hear the bang. The detective had noticed Nicholas’s reaction, though, she’d seen him start, but didn’t understand the reason behind it. He saw her curiosity, tinged with unease, as she stared at him, her pretty ocean-coloured eyes narrowed. She knew he’d heard something, but she didn’t know what.
He resisted the urge to spin around and tell Danny to shut up. If he did that, they’d think he was insane, and they’d never take him seriously.
M Cimi was going to kill the detective. It would probably happen soon, long before Nicholas would get out of here and be able to do it himself. Nicholas should be happy, it should be what he wanted, but now she was sitting here with him, he was filled with a sense of unease. She was a mother. If she died, there would be another child who would grow up in the system. He’d taken away the child’s father, and while he’d planned on taking Erica’s eyes, he hadn’t planned to kill her, had he? Cimi wanted her dead, though. Nicholas didn’t know why, but he did.
Warn her. Tell her he’s coming after her next.
The words buzzed inside him like wasps around a disturbed nest. He had an opportunity here to do something right for once in his life. He knew exactly what those letters meant. Hadn’t he been the one to reach out to her in the first place? What had been his reason for doing that if he hadn’t wanted to help? Was it just so he could insert himself back into her life again, to make sure he was remembered, and not left here languishing in this hellhole while she continued with her life?
“Are you still with us, Nicholas?”
DI Swift’s cool tone broke through his thoughts, and he cleared his throat. “Yes, I’m still with you.”
“Because you looked distracted. Something you’ve thought of that you’d like to tell me, perhaps?”
Tell her, tell her!
“Don’t you dare tell her, Nicholas,” Danny growled. “Let the bitch get what’s coming to her.”
Nicholas clenched his fists, and a strange whining came from deep within his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that when he opened them again, Danny wouldn’t be there. Could anyone else see him? No, of course they couldn’t. Thinking such a thing was mad. But wasn’t seeing your dead brother also crazy? He was sure he’d heard somewhere that people didn’t consciously know when they were mad. It was a gradual thing that crept in slowly, convincing your mind that the insane things it was being shown were real. Nicholas knew that he shouldn’t be seeing his dead brother in prison—even if he was alive, he wouldn’t have been able to get in—yet here he was.
What did it mean? Was Danny really here, or was Nicholas crazy? There was no other possibility.
When he opened his eyes, his brother was still standing there, staring at him in a combination of disapproval and disappointment.
“I’m not going to just vanish, Nicholas,” Danny said. “I’m here to help you.”
“Nicholas?” Erica asked again, her eyebrows raised.
“It’s nothing. I don’t have anything more to tell you.”
“That’s not true, is it? You called me directly because you’re receiving letters and you believe they’re linked to some of my investigations. But you’ve been receiving these letters for months, so why suddenly call me now? What did the letter say that prompted that call?”
That she’s next.
“Keep your mouth shut,” Danny hissed. “I mean it.”
His brother couldn’t control him anymore. Danny was dead, and he’d been dead for years. Nicholas knew this, but still the Danny standing behind him felt as real as he ever had. Nicholas had always been frightened by what his brother was capable of. Danny had buried their mother’s body without barely batting an eyelid, while Nicholas had hidden in his room with his hands over his head, rocking in the corner. They might not have been the one to kill her, but Nicholas sometimes wondered if Danny would have killed her anyway, if she hadn’t died on her own. It had affected Danny, though, even if he’d acted as though he hadn’t given a shit. The drinking had started, and his temper had got worse. And look how things had ended for him.
For both of them.
DI Swift could have changed things for them, and she hadn’t. If Danny had lived that day, maybe Nicholas’s life would have gone down a different route, too.
“Nicholas?” The detective’s voice again. “Are you all right?”
Nicholas forced himself to straighten in his chair. “I’m done here. Come back with a signed agreement that gets me a reduced sentence and we’ll talk again.”
“It’s not a decision I can make. I don’t have the authority. I’d need to take it higher up the chain and put the request in to a senior detective.”
He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “What are you waiting for?” He raised his voice. “Officer. I’m done.”
He clamped his lips shut, determined not to say another word.
The door opened, and Officer Bache stepped in. His line of sight was on DI Swift instead of Nicholas, but Nicholas knew Bache would take any opportunity to get him in trouble again.
“Everything okay in here, Detective?”
DI Swift nodded to the officer and spoke the time of the end of the interview into the recorder before switching it off and getting to her feet. “Looks like we’re finished.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Nicholas Bailey was hiding something. She couldn’t say for certain what it was, but he was on edge and wired. There was little doubt in her mind that Nicholas suffered from mental health issues—what kind of person would do the things he had in the past if they were mentally well?—but this felt different. It was almost as though there were more people in the room than just the two of them and the prison officer outside the door.
Erica stepped into the corridor outside the room and turned to the officer. “Can you take me to see Governor Hughes?”
“He might be busy.”
“Well, he’s going to have to make time.”
Officer Bache rolled his eyes, but he jerked his head down the corridor. “This way.”
She followed him down until they reached an office door with ‘Governor Nigel Hughes’ on it.
The prison officer knocked and then entered. She heard him explain who she was and what she was doing there to the governor. Then he stepped out again and nodded for her to go in.
Erica entered to find an overweight man in his sixties sitting behind a desk.
“DI Swift,” he said, not getting up to greet her. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m going to need Nicholas Bailey’s cell turned. He says he’s been receiving letters from the suspect in a case I’ve been investigating, but that he’s destroyed them, but in the next breath he says he’s got a letter he can give me. He must have it somewhere.”
The governor shrugged. “It wouldn’t be unusual for a prisoner to destroy mail, especially if it contained something they didn’t want other people to see.”
“Like what? Surely the letters are checked before they’re handed over to the prisoners?”
“They a
re, but not in detail. We have almost a thousand prisoners here. It would be impossible to read everything word for word, and of course we’re not allowed to check anything that’s of a legal matter.”
“These letters weren’t of a legal matter. They were letters from a killer to a killer.”
Governor Hughes linked his fingers together. “Okay, we can get that done.”
“There’s one more thing,” she said. “I don’t want Bailey to know that we’ve gone through his cell.”
“Why not?”
“I want him to think he’s got the upper hand, at least for the moment. Watch his incoming mail, though. Anything that’s addressed to him needs to be treated as evidence in a case. I want it bagged up and for you to call me immediately.”
“Okay, we can do that.”
“Thank you.”
“Prisoners get an hour of outdoor exercise each day. We could search the cell then.”
“You’d need to take photographs before you search it, make sure everything is put back just as it is. If you find any letters, take photographs, and then put them back again.”
Ideally, she’d like to take any letters and have them forensically analysed, but doing so would mean no more information from Nicholas. He’d clam up on them. If there were things in the letters that he had destroyed that might prove important, they would only know about it if Nicholas told them. He wouldn’t do that if he thought he could no longer trust her.
It was a gamble, though. Perhaps she’d be better with the letters than Nicholas’s confidence. If they got a fingerprint from it that matched one on file, they’d be able to pin down their suspect.
Was she making a mistake?
Internally, she warred with herself. If Nicholas saw they’d betrayed his trust, he might even find a way to warn the person he was in contact with. They might lose this lead for good.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Erica sucked in a breath to calm her nerves and knocked on her boss’s door.
“Yes?” he called out from inside.
Erica opened the door and entered. “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
He frowned and put down his pen. “That sounds serious.”
“It is.”
Gibbs gestured to the chair on the other side of his desk as an indication for her to sit. She did so.
He put his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers to his lips. “So, what is it you need to talk to me about?”
“I went to the prison today...to speak to Nicholas Bailey.”
Gibbs sat up straighter. “What? Why?”
“He phoned me and asked me to come in and see him. He believes he has information on the cases I’ve been working on, and one of DI Carlton’s cases. I had my suspicions that they were all connected, and Nicholas Bailey has confirmed it for me.”
“How could they possibly be connected?”
“Through me. Someone is copying my past cases. Someone tried to cut Brandon’s Skehan’s eye out, and before that, he must have strangled Naomi Conrad in her bed, though her body wasn’t discovered until after the attack on Brandon Skehan. Then the same person burned a body down on the canal path on the Isle of Dogs.”
“And you can be certain the same person is responsible for all three? Do you have forensics linking the three crimes?”
Erica twisted her hands together in her lap. “No, sir. I don’t.”
“So how can you be sure?”
“Because the person responsible has been writing to Nicholas Bailey about the crimes.”
Gibbs frowned. “Shouldn’t that have been picked up by the prison staff when they were checking the incoming post?”
“The letters were written in a way that it wasn’t obvious.”
“Then how can you be certain?”
“Because he knew, sir. He confirmed what I was already thinking. How could he have possibly made the connection otherwise?”
“The news?”
She shook her head. “No, I believe him.”
Gibbs huffed out a breath of frustration. “You should have sent someone else. You’re too emotionally involved with Nicholas Bailey.”
“I couldn’t. I was the only person he would speak to.”
He rubbed his fingers over his lips. There was still a shadow that hung about him from the stroke—not a shadow, a ghost. A slight weakness to the side that had been most badly affected, a droop to his eyelid and the way that side of his mouth didn’t lift properly when he smiled. Luckily for Gibbs, smiling wasn’t something he did too often anyway.
“I understand that. I just worry about you, Swift. It’s all a bit much, after everything you’ve been through.”
“Thank you, sir, but I’m strong. I’ve had to be. And if this helps catch whoever is playing games with us, then I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“I know you are. Don’t push yourself to do anything that’s going to be damaging to you, or put yourself in a situation where you think there’s the chance of you losing control. This isn’t worth losing you as a detective.”
“I won’t do anything stupid, sir.”
Did he think she’d hurt Bailey? Maybe it was an understandable concern. Hadn’t she thought about it often enough? In the early days, when she’d been consumed by rage and grief, she’d pictured herself wrapping her hands around Bailey’s throat and squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. She’d wanted to punch and kick and claw, and make him feel every drop of pain that she had.
Now she had some distance, and while she would never forgive Bailey for what he’d done to their family, she no longer felt consumed by her emotions. Her main focus was catching whoever had killed Naomi and attacked Brandon and set fire to the as yet unnamed body by the canal. They would do it again, she was sure. Which of her past cases would he choose from next? There had been plenty over the course of her career.
She couldn’t do anything to bring Chris back, but she could prevent more people being killed, and that was what she needed to focus on.
“You don’t need to worry about me, sir. I promise.”
He exhaled a long breath. “I do worry, and that’s not going to change, but I do trust that you know yourself well enough to understand your own motivations.”
“My only motivation is finding our suspect.”
His lips twitched, and she realised he’d tried to smile.
“That’s what I thought.”
“I have the prison guards searching his cell for the letters, but I haven’t heard from them yet. But Bailey says he’ll let us have one of the letters he’s kept—one that’ll tell us who’s next on this psychopath’s list—and help us catch him. Of course, that doesn’t come without a caveat attached to it.”
“Which is?”
“He wants a reduced sentence.”
“Not going to happen.”
“Then someone else is going to die. We have nothing, sir. No leads at all. This could finally give us something to catch that son of a bitch.”
Gibbs thought for a moment. “This is something I’m going to have to take higher up the food chain,” he said. “It’s not a decision I can make alone.”
“But you will support it,” she pressed.
He fixed her in place through eye contact alone. “You really want to help the man who murdered your husband get out of prison early?”
She made sure she wasn’t the first to break it. “If it means saving lives and putting another murderer behind bars, then yes, sir. I do.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Abi Kebell had been working at the prison for almost five years now. Her friends thought it was a strange career for a woman to want to follow, but Abi couldn’t understand what the problem was. It was a steady job that paid the bills, and she enjoyed it. Her friends imagined she spent the day getting spat at and suffering abuse from the prisoners, but it wasn’t like that at all. Of course, there were days when that happened, but that was normally when someone new was brought in and they wer
e still raging against the world. She didn’t get it any worse than her male counterparts.
Anyway, some of her fellow officers were worse than the prisoners. She’d overheard Officer Bache say more than once that the only good prisoner was a dead prisoner. Sure, she got the odd catcall or suggestive comment, but it was no worse than she’d experience on a night out in town. After she got to know the prisoners—especially the long-timers –she found they were perfectly respectful towards her.
Nicholas Bailey sat alone at one of the eight tables that were positioned at equal distances from each other in a rectangle in the middle of the library. He huddled over a book in the same way a school student might hunch over a paper during a test, suspicious and protective.
She’d heard about what Bailey had done to get himself put inside here in the first place. If she hadn’t already known, she would never have thought him capable of such a horrific thing. He was tall and lanky, and walked with his shoulders hunched and head down. He barely made eye contact with anyone, and had a shy but polite way of speaking when he was spoken to. She couldn’t imagine him with a knife in his hand, gouging out peoples’ eyes. And he’d pushed a police officer’s husband under a Tube train, too.
A shudder crept its way over her shoulders and she gave herself a shake. It wasn’t like her to get unsettled by someone. She wasn’t the type of person to be easily spooked. She’d happily watch a horror film on her own and then go up to bed in the dark.
Bailey looked up from his book, and for a moment she thought he was going to look directly at her. But instead, he glanced over his shoulder and muttered something unintelligible. His head tilted to one side, as though he was listening to a reply, and then he shook his head and went back to his book.
Abi froze. Who was he talking to? Her line of sight skittered to the point Bailey had been focused on. She half expected to find someone standing there that she hadn’t noticed before, but the space was empty. There were a number of other prisoners milling around the library, either sitting at one of the other tables or browsing the shelves. Plenty of the inmates took this time inside to further their educations. The other inmates interacted with each other, however. Even if one of them was sitting down, they might get a friendly punch on the shoulder from someone else, or another prisoner might join them on the same table, or talk to them while they were checking out books on the shelves. Occasionally, they got too loud, and Abi would find herself having to shush them like a regular librarian. They were generally pretty good about her telling them off, even if they might throw the odd comment to raise a chuckle from their peers.
