by Alex Walters
Now she had begun to believe that Salter was capable of anything. If he really was the driving force, the brains, behind Boyle’s operations, that implied that he was behind all the killings that had taken place in recent weeks. That he’d been systematically, callously picking off the competition. That he’d actively commissioned one murder after another.
She drew the curtains in the small living room and poured the glass of wine she’d been promising herself. She ought to be hungry. She’d eaten nothing since a sandwich she’d grabbed at the office before leaving for the hospital.
But somehow the prospect of food seemed less attractive than the prospect of wine. Not a good sign. Apart from anything else, she needed to keep her wits about her if she was going to have any chance of dealing with Salter. She paused for a moment, considering what dealing with Salter might entail, then swallowed half of the glass in a mouthful.
She re-entered the kitchen and forced herself to make and eat a sandwich, her head already dizzy from the effects of the wine on her previously empty stomach. She felt restless, caught in limbo. She wanted this to end, but knew that any way out was bound to be painful. Pouring more wine, she prowled the house with the air of a caged animal. Twice, she stopped in the living room, tempted to start scouring the walls, the skirting board, the carpets, for any sign that surveillance equipment had been placed in the room. But that would be a sure route to madness. If it had been done by tech support, she’d never find any definitive evidence and would be reduced to examining every last scratch or mark as evidence of infiltration.
Finally, she opened the door to the dining room where Liam lay sleeping. The electric bed had already turned up, less than twenty-four hours after the social worker had ordered it. Marie didn’t know whether this was evidence of local authority efficiency, or a sign that they recognised how quickly Liam’s condition was deteriorating.
His former mobility, the ability at least to do what the social worker called ‘furniture walking’ – progressing around the house finding support as he went – already seemed like a distant memory. On a good day, he could just about stand for a minute or two unaided. On a worse day, like today, he’d almost had to be carried between bed and chair by the carers. The last couple of days he’d spent slumped in the armchair, eyes fixed on the flickering glare of the television screen, with no sign that he was taking anything much in. He woke in the morning, ate breakfast with help from the carers, dozed off mid-morning, had lunch, watched more television in the afternoon, and was helped to bed in the early evening. Already, it was no kind of life.
Now, in the late evening, he was sleeping soundly. She pulled up a chair and sat by the bedside, watching the rise and fall of his chest under the single duvet. Even the sight of the duvet brought a catch to her throat. When she’d first set up the sofa bed down here, she’d dug out some old bedding he’d had when they’d first met, while he was still at art college and she was at university. Those days seemed like little more than a dream now, a set of vibrant images fading against the relentless glare of real life.
His breathing sounded slightly rough. Sue had thought he had a cold and had suggested calling out the GP. But they’d agreed that, in the circumstances, a cold was the last of Liam’s problems, and they couldn’t face the thought that he might get taken into hospital yet again.
He was already beginning to have some difficulty in swallowing and even the ward consultant had agreed that, from here on, Liam would be better off at home unless his condition became very serious. Marie had had a lengthy telephone conversation with the neurologist the previous day. Even now, there seemed to be no definitive prognosis. But it was clear that the rate of progression was accelerating, perhaps even more rapidly than the specialists had expected – though, looking back now, she suspected that their non-committal judgements had always concealed an underlying pessimism about the likely outcome.
In the short time he’d been in hospital, Liam had noticeably lost weight. Even though Sue had visited him there twice a day – significantly exceeding her official remit – to try to help feed him, the ward staff had been unable to offer the level of care he’d experienced at home. And since he’d returned home, it had been increasingly difficult to get him to eat or drink. He’d take a mouthful, then lose interest in the meal. When the carers tried to feed him, often he’d just sit with the food in his mouth for minutes at a time before finally swallowing. She could see him shrinking and weakening almost before her eyes.
She’d asked the consultant whether it was feasible for Liam to be fed automatically. There had been an almost embarrassed pause. ‘It’s not the policy now,’ the doctor had said at last. ‘We call it the PEG system. Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy. But it’s a relatively intrusive process. The view is that it’s appropriate in cases where there’s a decent chance of recovery or significant improvement. A stroke, for example. But in cases like this . . .’ As so often in these discussions, the prognosis had been left hanging in the air.
‘You’ll let him starve to death?’ she’d said bluntly.
‘That’s not quite how it is. PEG feeding can cause its own problems. Infection. Vomiting.’
They’d talked further, but her impression had been that the outcome was already determined. Automatic feeding wasn’t recommended, and – short of a pitched battle with the authorities – it wasn’t likely to be provided. For Marie, the implications of that decision were clear, even if in theory they told her nothing that she didn’t already know. Liam’s condition was terminal. It was likely to be terminal relatively soon. Whether that meant weeks or months or years, she had no idea. But that was the way it was. The way it would be.
She felt numb, and it struck her that there was something wrong with her emotional state. Her partner, the man she’d thought of as the love of her life, was lying dying in front of her. And yet for days her mind had been fixed on bloody Salter. She felt nothing but numb about Liam, and yet she could feel a growing anger burning in her about what Salter had done. Winsor, the Agency psych, would no doubt witter on about transference, and he’d probably be right. There was nothing she could do about Liam’s condition, except look after him as best she could. However much she might rage against the dying of the fucking light, it would change nothing. So maybe it was reasonable to concentrate her energies where she might just conceivably make a difference.
Or perhaps she was just trying to avoid dealing with what was stretched out here in front of her.
Liam gave a small cough and, for a heart-stopping moment, he seemed to cease breathing. Then he coughed again, and the rhythmic motion of his breath continued as before, perhaps slightly wheezier.
She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips. To her slight surprise, he stirred in his sleep and his lips unmistakably kissed her back. His eyes flickered and she heard him murmur, ‘Marie–?’
‘I’m here, love,’ she said. ‘Taking care of you.’ She kissed him again. This time his eyes were closed and there was no response.
She waited, gazing at him. He seemed so calm, she thought. Looking at him like this, you’d never know there was anything wrong.
She sat for a few moments longer, listening to the slight rasp of his breathing. Then she rose, turned off the light in the dining room, and made her own way upstairs to bed.
The second message had come earlier that evening. Unusually, it had been a voicemail, the number withheld, the voice electronically distorted. The instructions, as always, crystal clear. He was a little reassured by that. It suggested that his client was back in control. Perhaps it had been a mistake to read the silence as implying hesitation or uncertainty. He, of all people, knew the benefits of thorough planning.
Nevertheless, he’d been taken aback by the instruction at first. It was a step or two beyond anything done previously. Understandable, no doubt, if he were aware of the full circumstances. But still slipping into territory that seemed riskier, more uncertain, perhaps more questionable.
He was surprised,
in fact, to find that a part of him had recoiled at the instruction. An instinctive reaction. The kind of emotion he thought he had cauterised in his drive towards professionalism. Sentimentality. But he supposed that, ultimately, he was only human. However, much he might discipline himself, he still had to overcome the same weaknesses as others. That was part of the challenge.
It was important for him to see this task in the same light. As a challenge. A challenge in more than one way, given the target. He knew he had already come to grips with one part of that challenge. The rest would not be problematic. When the moment came, he would be in control.
He had kept her under surveillance all day. It hadn’t been difficult. She was good, but he was better. He’d trailed her to that hospital, speculating about what might have been discussed there. He’d trailed her back on the tube, keeping in the darkness as she’d walked up the main street back to her house. She’d stopped at one point, looking back, clearly suspecting that someone might be following her. He’d wondered momentarily whether he’d failed, whether he’d allowed himself to be seen. But she was bound to be anxious about the possibility of surveillance. A minute or two later, she continued on his way, and he was confident that he hadn’t been spotted.
He’d left his own car parked in the next street from her house. This was an area where, once the local residents had departed for work, other commuters from further afield parked to use the local tube station. He watched her go into the house, and then returned to his car. No one registered his presence as he started the ignition and pulled away.
The previous day he’d cased the house itself. He’d been armed with a clipboard, some official-looking papers, and a story about the local authority planning department if anyone had thought to question his presence in the alley behind the rear garden. But of course no one had. This was commuter land. Most of the locals would be out at work at this time, other than the odd young mother or retired elderly man. Her house was one of the few occupied. He’d parked his car further along the same street on that occasion, and had watched the comings and goings of the uniformed carers. In mid-morning, he’d watched them bring the young man out briefly in his wheelchair – apparently just a turn around the block to give him a breath of air.
These houses were little more than slightly extended two-up, two-downs, built around the turn of the last century to house the workers in the Abbey Mills over the river. The mill complex was a craft and heritage centre now, cluttered with bijou restaurants and bars, and the area was supposedly ‘up and coming’, though he doubted it would ever really get there. For his purposes, the size and design of the houses made it relatively easy to work out their interior layout. As always, he could plan his movements in advance.
But he continued to feel a degree of unease. It was the same feeling he’d had for days. He had no evidence to support it. His own role was, by definition, one of detachment and deniability. He’d didn’t know what was going on and he didn’t want to. But something felt wrong. He still had the sense that something was slipping out of control, and he didn’t want to be around when that happened.
Just this one, then. Just the one, and then a long break.
28
At first, it felt like déjà vu. It was as if she was back in the north, in that bland estate house, reliving the night when she’d faced the intruder.
She had woken, suddenly, deep into the night, unsure what had disturbed her. Her mouth was dry from the after-effects of the unfinished bottle of wine. Her brain was struggling to disentangle the dissolving remnants of some dream from the reality of the darkness into which she’d awakened.
She sat up, fumbling on the bedside table for the glass of water she’d left there. She took a mouthful, then lay back, turning over in the double bed, preparing to go back to sleep.
The same as the previous time, she thought, her mind suddenly alert.
The chill in the air. The sense that the house was colder than it should rightly have been.
She was losing her marbles. This house wasn’t the same as the place in Chester. That was a newly built eco-friendly box, every part of it sealed to help save the planet, or at least to minimise the heating bills. She’d noticed the cold that night because it was so unusual. In that house, even in the small hours with the heating off, the house had still retained its residual warmth.
This place was different. It was a jerry-built nineteenth century worker’s cottage, draughts coming in from all directions. She knew full well that in the middle of a late autumn night the place could easily turn into an ice box. There was no reason to think that anything was wrong.
Even so, her mind was fully alert by now, and she knew she’d struggle to get back to sleep. Better to get up, make herself some hot milk, settle down to watch some late-night TV or read a book. Relax herself again, if relaxation were even possible. With everything that was happening, it probably wasn’t surprising that her sleep was disrupted. She remembered that other time she’d woken in the night, in Jake Morton’s quayside flat. The night he had been murdered. The night that all this had started.
She climbed out of bed, turned on the bedside lamp, and pulled on her dressing gown. It was cold, certainly, but no colder than she’d expect at this time of the year. She made her way slowly downstairs and into the kitchen. She realised that, just for a moment as she turned on the kitchen light, she’d held her breath, half-expecting to see the kitchen door standing open. But it was closed, of course. Still closed and locked. Irritated at her own foolishness, she tried the handle but the door didn’t give.
She took some milk from the fridge and poured it into a saucepan, standing by the cooker as the milk heated. From this room, she couldn’t even hear the rumble of the passing cars on the High Street.
She tipped the warm milk into a mug, and began to make her way through into the sitting room, contemplating whether it was worth turning on the heating. She hadn’t switched on the light in the hallway, and, as she flicked off the kitchen light, the house was momentarily plunged back into darkness.
She froze.
As she stood in the kitchen doorway, she was looking directly towards the front door. The bottom half of the door was plain wood, but the upper half comprised two parallel stained-glass panels.
Framed in the panels, silhouetted against the orange of the street light opposite, there was a figure. A figure standing motionless, apparently facing the door, like a caller who had just rung the doorbell.
She held her breath and glanced down at her watch. Two thirty-five. Not the time for casual callers. Not the time for Jehovah’s Witnesses or unemployed young men flogging sub-standard dishcloths.
She would almost certainly be invisible to whoever was out there. Nevertheless, he – and she somehow had no doubt that it was he – would have seen the kitchen light extinguished and would know that someone was here.
Her mobile phone was in her handbag upstairs. The landline phone was in the living room. She could probably make it safely through into there, but there was no way of knowing whether the line had been disconnected.
She was weighing up her options, knowing that she had to make a move, when, to her surprise, the figure turned and moved back away from the door, apparently heading back down the short path to the street.
She released her breath. Just a coincidence? Some small-hours drunk who had made his way to the wrong house? Not so far-fetched among these rows of identical terraces.
Or someone who was considering trying to enter the house from another direction?
Now that the figure had moved away from the door, she decided that her best option was to head upstairs. She could find her phone, keep watch on the street from the upstairs window, call the police if there was any sign of anything wrong.
Moving as silently as she could, her eyes still fixed on the glass panels in the door, she reached the stairs and dashed up two at a time. In the bedroom, she left the lights off and fumbled in her handbag for the phone. Clutching it tightly in her hand, she made
her way across the darkened room to the window. Carefully, she eased back the curtain.
At first, she thought the street was deserted. The road was lined with parked cars, and the rows of houses cast deep shadows, broken only by the evenly spaced orange glare of the street lights.
The man was standing just beyond the glare of one of the lights, perhaps only fifteen or twenty yards down the road. He was dressed in a dark coat, a baseball-cap pulled low over his face, but he seemed to be staring back towards her.
Even at that distance, there was something familiar about the figure. Something that sent a chill finger down her spine.
As she watched, the figure stepped slowly forward, moving into the glowing circle, with the air of an actor entering the spotlight. As he did so, he removed his cap and raised his face to look in her direction. In that instant, she became certain.
Joe Morrissey.
Joe Morrissey. The man who had worked for weeks by her side in her first undercover role. The man she had chattered amiably to over pints in the pub. The man who, at first, had been her only companion when she’d first gone out into the field.
The man who, months before, had lured her out to a deserted beach and tried to kill her.
Salter had intervened and apparently saved her life. She had discovered, then, that Morrissey was a psychopath and a hired killer. A pro and a good one. She’d assumed that he’d been hired by Kerridge. But, in retrospect, murder – at least, that kind of cold-blooded, businesslike murder – obviously wasn’t Kerridge’s style. It was Boyle, and presumably Salter, who’d been polishing off potential witnesses.
So maybe Morrissey had been Salter’s man all the time. Salter had claimed he’d turned up in the nick of time because he’d been on her tail all day. But maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe he’d been able to arrive just in time because he’d already known exactly where Morrissey was going to take her. Maybe that was why he’d waited so long before calling out the authorities to pick up Morrissey.
