Stronger Than Death

by Andrew Lowe

  ‘Do these names mean anything to you?’ said Sawyer. ‘Susan Bishop. Sam Palmer. Simon Brock.’

  She shook her head. ‘I think I’ve read one of Simon Brock’s novels, but I didn’t know him personally or anything. Same with the others.’

  ‘How about Roy Tyler?’

  ‘No.’ Kim stood up and moved to the window, guiding herself by the table edges. ‘Beautiful day out there. I was planning on doing some gardening.’ She turned. ‘Is that allowed?’

  Sawyer nodded. ‘Your protection officer might hover a bit. Comment on the greenness of your fingers.’

  She smiled. ‘Some people see autumn as the melancholy season, but it’s actually rather magical. It’s nature taking stock, clearing the path for renewal, making a break from the past. And then winter is the repose before the rebirth of spring. Strange to think that this will be the last autumn I get to see the world like this. The green turning to gold. The dying light.’ She caught herself. ‘Sorry. It’s my frustrated inner artist. Like all artists, I’m a bit obsessed with light.’

  ‘Edward Hopper,’ said Sawyer.

  Kim nodded, delighted. ‘Yes! He said that he wanted “to paint sunlight on the side of a house”. I suppose he was talking about the elusive nature of light. How difficult it is to recreate.’ She turned, and held out the egg-shaped attack alarm given to her by the protection officer. ‘Detectives, I would like you all to leave now, please. And take this. I don’t wish to be protected. I’m not afraid.’

  41

  Sawyer and Shepherd drove through the clattering rain into Buxton town centre. They parked at the police building and ran inside, heads bowed. The lift door was open as they entered reception, drenched and steaming.

  As they rode up to the first floor, Sawyer checked his phone. No messages from Eva. He sighed and glanced at Shepherd, crammed into the corner between two uniforms. ‘I should have seen it earlier.’

  ‘Seen what?’

  ‘The organ donation thing. We would have moved quicker if I’d called it.’

  Shepherd shook his head. ‘Doesn’t sound like a Stoic talking to me. Regret. Looking back.’

  ‘I saw it, but I couldn’t see past it, couldn’t make the connections. It’s like my brain was fogged over.’

  ‘Lot on your mind?’

  Sawyer didn’t answer. The uniforms exchanged a look.

  The lift opened. Sawyer and Shepherd strode out across the MIT floor, brushing water from their jackets.

  ‘The boss in on a Sunday?’ said Shepherd, nodding at Keating’s office. Their DCI was at his desk, in discussion with Stephen Bloom.

  ‘Press conference prep. Call a briefing when he’s done.’

  Sawyer ducked into his office and closed the door. He hitched off his soggy jacket and hung it on the back of the chair. Outside, the rain had already given way to a mid-morning blush of sunshine. A different-coloured traffic light on the way from Longnor, and they wouldn’t have got wet. He sat down, and tuned in to his drifting thoughts. Tiny margins. Choices. Consequences. Chaos theory. Micro decisions, reaching out and shaping the future.

  He opened his laptop and logged in to the Police National Database. He typed ‘REBECCA MORTON’ into the search box and filtered out the hits by age and location. He cross-referenced the results with the address given by Walker.

  Keating took up a spot by the whiteboard. ‘Press conference at 1pm. We’ll be focusing on the vans, looking for sightings around the victims’ homes and where the bodies were found. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of the blackout on the knowledge gleaned from the nurse, Amy Scott. She’s under protection, but I’d rather keep the odds in our favour. And on top of the risks, if he is targeting the two remaining recipients of Tyler’s organs, then it’s obviously better that he doesn’t know we have them under observation.’

  Shepherd tapped the victim photos. ‘We know that he isn’t shy about approaching their homes. With a bit of luck, we’ll spot him staking out or watching. Then we can arrest and it will all unravel without any more bodies.’

  ‘Kim Lyons and Jamie Ingram are both refusing close protection,’ said Sawyer. ‘But we have OPs outside their homes. They’re both aware. Ingram won’t accept anything, but I convinced Kim Lyons to at least keep her attack alarm. I’m concerned about Ingram, as he’s a runner. He’s shared his regime with us, though, and he knows to vary his routine and route. DCs overseeing both observation points. Fleming with Lyons, Walker with Ingram.’

  Shepherd looked around the room and found Sally O’Callaghan. ‘Where are we with forensics?’

  She sighed. ‘Nothing yet from the fibres at the Brock scene. We have a DNA match from the gum but no match on NDNAD.’

  ‘Moran? Any CCTV from the Amy Scott document drop site, or her home? Kid’s school?’

  ‘No cameras at the drop site or around her road. Plenty by the school but nobody standing out.’

  Myers cleared his throat. ‘Did some work on Tyler and the lorry crash. No connections with Maureen Warren. As I said, her husband died ten years ago, no kids. The couple who died are a bit more interesting, though. Faye and Tony Hansen. Faye’s sister, Sophie, and her partner Andrew. In their fifties now. Got back from a holiday yesterday. I was going to speak to them this morning.’

  ‘Why interesting?’ said Sawyer.

  ‘Looks like they married four years before the crash that killed Faye. Census data shows they’ve lived in the same house near Leek since then. Twenty-nine years.’

  ‘This is the interesting bit coming up, right?’ said Sawyer.

  Myers gave a wry smile. ‘They registered two births. One in 1988, one in 1986. Girls. Nicola and Grace. And then, in 1991, five days after the crash that killed Sophie’s sister, they registered a boy at Leek Registration Office. Joseph.

  ‘Adds up,’ said Keating. ‘But I’m still not interested.’

  ‘You checked the hospitals,’ said Sawyer. ‘A week or so before the registration.’ Myers nodded. ‘Sophie Dawson wasn’t admitted to any of them.’

  Shepherd squinted, working it out. ‘The baby wasn’t hers?’

  ‘It was her sister’s,’ said Sawyer. ‘Joseph Dawson was delivered on the day of the crash. He survived his mother’s death.’

  ‘Looks like they became his guardians,’ said Myers.

  Sawyer beamed at him. ‘This is interesting. No need to go see them. I’ll cover it with DS Shepherd later.’ Sawyer gazed out at the others and held a few seconds of silence. ‘Lorry crash kills a young couple. The woman is pregnant. The baby survives, gets taken in by her sister. He grows up. He hunts down the man responsible for the crash, but discovers that he’s died.’

  ‘He’s denied his revenge,’ said Shepherd.

  Sawyer nodded. ‘But he can’t bear the idea that the driver has donated his organs. In his mind, he’s still “alive” inside the recipients. In a way, he’s cheated death. And so the only way to get justice, to rebalance the universe, is to neutralise the organs, by killing the recipients. And, for extra satisfaction, he works out a pure and efficient method to deliver the killing blows directly to the offending organs. In a sense, he gets to kill the man responsible for his parents’ death multiple times. Revenge might be sweet when served cold, but it’s even sweeter if you can space it out into multiple servings.’

  ‘But the people with the organs…’ said Walker. ‘They’re innocent.’

  Sawyer shook his head. ‘For him, that’s irrelevant. They’re just collateral. He has them cover themselves to give them a bit of dignity in death, but that’s as far as he’ll go.’

  Keating perched on the edge of a desk. ‘So, how can we be so sure that this is all directly related to the lorry crash? It still might be someone else who has a different beef with Tyler.’

  ‘I checked with PND,’ said Sawyer. ‘About Rebecca Morton. Tyler’s girlfriend. She tried to ease the sentence by confessing she had distracted him with a hand-job. The BBC piece we found on Tyler’s organ donation is coy on that, but the det
ails were widely reported at the time. Rebecca Morton was found dead in a garage in Wembley, four weeks ago. She was a junkie, so I imagine the Met will focus on her dealer network. She’d been tied to a chair. Bled to death.’

  Shepherd winced. ‘Messy?’

  ‘No. Wound cauterised. Not a speck of forensics.’

  ‘Stabbed?’ said Keating.

  Sawyer let his gaze wander to the window. ‘He cut off her hand.’

  42

  Sophie Dawson led Sawyer and Shepherd into the sitting room, while her husband bundled their dog—a majestic red setter—into the kitchen.

  She smiled. ‘Sorry about the fuss. He’s not normally this unsettled. Only just out of kennels.’

  ‘Where did you go?’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Had a week in Iceland! Now the girls are grown up, we have a bit more free time. So we’re going to all the places we didn’t manage when they were younger.’

  She was a compact and petite woman who had held her looks well into middle age: neat blonde hair tucked over one ear; searching, sympathetic eyes. She was flustered and a little sweaty, in downtime dress: grey fleece, battered jeans.

  Andrew Dawson followed them into the room. He had a similar outdoors look, but had gone for a darker fleece. He was large and rounded, with ruddy cheeks and wispy grey eyebrows. Together, they had a comical, twin-like appearance. Little and large.

  ‘We’ve just come back from our walk,’ said Andrew. His breath was laboured, almost a rasp. ‘Can I get you a drink of something?’

  Sawyer held up a hand. ‘We’re good, thanks. Sorry to bother you on a Sunday.’

  Sophie fussed with the sofa, brushing it down. ‘I’ve told him not to get up on here.’

  ‘You mean the dog?’ said Shepherd, smiling.

  Sophie looked at him, missing the joke. ‘Yes. Hopefully he’ll stop moulting now the weather is getting chillier. Are you sure we can’t make you some tea or coffee?’

  ‘Absolutely fine,’ said Sawyer.

  Sophie gestured to the sofa. ‘Please, sit down. Is everything okay? How can we help?’

  Andrew and Sophie took to an armchair each; Sawyer and Shepherd sank into the spongey sofa.

  Sawyer looked around the room. Clean and uncluttered. No chintz. Dining table with two placemats and settings; blocked fireplace; work desk and iMac. Farrow & Ball tones. The furniture looked high-end, not flatpack.

  ‘What do you do?’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Family business,’ said Andrew, taking a sip from a glass of water. ‘Property refitting and conversions. Occasional original builds.’ He mopped his brow with a handkerchief. Sawyer was worried that he was about to keel over.

  ‘We also own a rental cottage up near Chatsworth,’ says Sophie. ‘Andrew’s parents’ old home.’

  ‘You’ve lived here in Leek for some time?’ said Sawyer.

  Andrew nodded. ‘Almost thirty years.’

  ‘We wanted to talk to you about something that happened quite some time ago. We think it might be related to an ongoing case.’

  Shepherd sat forward. ‘It’s about your sister, Mrs Dawson. Faye.’

  Her shoulders sagged and she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they seemed glazed and remote. ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘I’m very sorry about what happened to Faye and Tony,’ said Sawyer. ‘But I need to find out a bit more about Joseph. Her son.’

  Sophie dropped her head. Andrew got up and perched on the edge of her armchair. He wrapped an arm around his wife. ‘How is he? Is he in trouble?’

  ‘We’d like answers to those questions ourselves, Mr Dawson.’

  Sophie raised her head again. Her gaze had hardened. ‘We gave him his father’s middle name. Joseph. They told us that Faye had already gone, by the time they got her to A&E. Tony died at the scene. It was a terrible, terrible crash. The man wasn’t paying attention. Joseph had to have CPR when he first came out, and he was on a ventilator. Spent the first three months of his life alone, in hospital.’

  ‘Controlled environment,’ said Andrew.

  Shepherd glanced at Sawyer. ‘Can you tell us a bit about your life with Joseph? Are you still in touch?’

  Andrew took over, his tone harsher. ‘No, we’re not. He chose to go his own way.’

  ‘We became his guardians,’ said Sophie. ‘After what happened.’ She grimaced. ‘He was so small. Hard to believe that he could have survived. Joseph had a special diet. Nutritional support. Health visitors in and out. I was grieving for my sister and we had two young daughters to look after.’

  ‘Nicola and Grace,’ said Sawyer.

  Sophie looked up and smiled. ‘Yes. They have their own lives now.’

  Shepherd nodded. ‘Grandchildren?’

  She laughed and shook her head. ‘Oh, now you are ageing us!’

  Andrew reached for Sophie’s hand. He squeezed and patted her wrist. ‘We had a bit of Empty Nest Syndrome, didn’t we? But life is good now. Why are you interested in Joseph?’

  ‘Tell me more about him,’ said Sawyer. ‘What happened in the years after the crash?’

  Sophie gulped in a breath, steeling herself. ‘We did what we had to. Legally adopted him as guardians. The girls were delighted to have a little brother.’

  ‘A new toy,’ said Andrew, with a faint smile.

  Sophie nodded. ‘We got through it. Joseph was a little sickly in those early years, but he filled out. He was always the smallest boy in the group, though. Toddler, juniors, big school. Still. Joseph was clever, wasn’t he?’ She looked up to Andrew; his smile broadened for her benefit. ‘He used to love the library. He would get out so many books.’

  ‘I never believed he actually read them,’ said Andrew.

  ‘He did! He used to talk to me about them, on the way to school.’ She drifted, reaching for her memories. A sadness flashed across her eyes. ‘He loved science fiction, and real science. He started to read lots of true crime when he was a teenager. He bought a few of his favourite books when he started to get his own money. We still have them. Top shelf over there. All books that Joseph bought for himself.’

  Sawyer stood up and walked over to the bookcase.

  ‘What was he like as a person?’ said Shepherd. ‘Was he kind? Funny?’

  ‘Of course!’ Sophie was adamant, almost outraged. ‘He was a delight. He was a little obsessive about his routines. Always concerned if things changed too much, or the rules of a situation weren’t clear. I would imagine, these days, he might be diagnosed with something or other. But, yes. He was a lively young boy. A pleasure to live with.’

  Sawyer ran his finger across the spines on the top shelf. Philip K. Dick. Isaac Asimov. Heinlein. Vonnegut. The Stainless Steel Rat. The majority were books by JG Ballard: a short story anthology, plus a run of his early novels. Concrete Island, The Unlimited Dream Company, High-Rise, Crash.

  ‘When did you tell him about his real parents?’ said Sawyer.

  Sophie dropped her head.

  Andrew sighed. ‘We left it rather late, I’m afraid. When he was sixteen, we gave him some money that we’d kept aside from Faye and Tony’s will, and told him that he wasn’t our biological son. He took it very badly. Said he felt his life had been a lie, that he was going to “start again”. We were shocked. There was a lot of resentment and rage flying around.’

  ‘What about the crash?’ said Sawyer. ‘Did you tell him the details?’

  Sophie looked up. ‘No. We just said that they’d died in a car accident. He refused to listen to anything else. We tried. The girls were graduating. Grace was going through tough times herself, trying to find a job, a way in the world. Joseph withdrew and he left home not soon after. He said he would be in touch, but… nothing since.’

  ‘My God,’ said Andrew. ‘That was over ten years ago.’

  Sophie pulled a tissue from a box on the table and dabbed at her eyes. ‘Grace moved back in for a year or so. Nicola came back for a while, too. Everything moved on. We still look at the news, fearful
that we’re going to see that something’s happened to him.’

  ‘Do you have any photos of Joseph?’ said Shepherd.

  ‘We have a few things from his school days,’ said Andrew. ‘Family holidays. He stopped going away with us when he was around fourteen, though.’

  In the kitchen, the dog scrabbled and whined. Andrew hauled himself to his feet and waddled to the door. He paused, but didn’t turn, resting against the dining table. ‘So, go on. What’s happened to him? Just tell us. We would like to know. He was a part of our lives for so long.’

  ‘We’re pretty sure he’s alive and well,’ said Shepherd.

  ‘Oh, that’s good to hear,’ said Sophie. ‘It would be lovely to see him again. To try and heal those old wounds. I would give anything to speak to him.’

  ‘So would we,’ said Sawyer.

  43

  Sawyer dodged the press conference and gave Myers and a group of DCs the job of finding Joseph Dawson. The name was broad, and they would need to trawl through the electoral roll, social networks, arrest records. Refine by age, location. Trace and eliminate. The clearest photograph was a shot of Joseph on a beach with Grace and Nicola; he stood astride an elaborate sandcastle in red-and-black striped trunks, holding a blue spade aloft, mouth open in triumph. The girls stood either side, smiling for the camera. Joseph was the shorter of the three by some distance, and skinny to the point of skeletal, with a mop of dark hair swept aside by the sea breeze. Andrew Dawson had said he was twelve, maybe thirteen in the picture, but he looked much younger.

  Sawyer closed the window blind, shutting out the gloomy afternoon, already agitating for nightfall. He slumped into his office chair and flipped open his laptop. Among his new emails was a PDF of Rebecca Morton’s case file from the Met. On the opening page, there was an arrest photograph clipped to the corner, taken a few months before her death. Possession, Offering to Supply. Rebecca was gaunt and long-necked, with a tangle of gravy-brown hair. She stared out at him, bored and dubious.