Hope to Die: A gripping new serial killer thriller (The DS Nathan Cody series)

by David Jackson

  ‘Get away from me! All of you. Leave me alone!’

  Cody assesses the distance between him and Daley. Tries to work out whether he can cover it quickly enough to stop Daley throwing the girl over the side.

  ‘We’re not going anywhere, Colin. It’s over. There’s no point to what you’re doing. No point in harming this little girl. Look at her. Look at how frightened you’re making her.’

  Daley looks at the girl’s face. Sees her tear-stained cheeks and quivering lips.

  Then he looks back at Cody, and Cody knows something is about to happen.

  ‘COLIN!’

  Cody moves. Flies down those steps towards Daley.

  Daley abandons the girl. Drops her like a sack of coal onto the floor of the balcony. Cody feels the relief flood through him.

  But it’s not over.

  Daley jumps over the side of the partition.

  Cody hears the screams, the loud bang as Daley hits the floor below.

  And then Cody does something stupid. He follows Daley off the gallery.

  In mid-air he realises that it’s a longer drop than he thought. He decides this is going to hurt.

  He hits the parquet floor with all the grace of a dead cod. One leg twists under his body, and he feels something go in his ankle.

  He looks up from his prone position. Daley is heading towards the stage, while all around him screaming pupils are scrambling to get out of his way.

  Cody gets to his feet. Pain fires up from his ankle, but he forces himself forwards. He keeps his eyes fixed on Daley. Sees him dodge around a knot of terrified girls, then crash into some discarded chairs and fly headlong into the front of the stage. He gets up again, starts to mount the short flight of steps onto the platform.

  Cody tries to ignore the injury that seems to have set his whole lower body aflame. He puts all his energy into a final burst of speed, and then, like a lion seizing a gazelle from behind, he leaps and wraps his arms around Daley’s trailing leg. He brings his quarry crashing to the wooden stage, then drags him back down the steps.

  Kneeling over the moaning caretaker, Cody tries to find the proper words for arrest and caution, but the agony floods through his system, and all he wants to do is slip into the sweetness of oblivion.

  43

  ‘Right, then,’ says Blunt. ‘Care to tell me what the fuck has been going on?’

  Cody meets the challenging gaze of his superior while he tries to assess how much of the truth she is willing to bear. He decides it’s a minuscule amount.

  ‘We went to talk to Daley again. He did a runner. He went up to the school balcony, then jumped off. I followed.’

  ‘Yes, I have been apprised of the sequence of events. I know all about your little escapade. I know that a whole school population was traumatised, that a child was almost thrown to her death and that one of my detectives is now hobbling about like Long John Silver. What I don’t know, Cody, is why. What on earth led you and your little mob to go on this rampage in the first place?’

  ‘A hunch, ma’am.’

  ‘A hunch.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. It was the fishing weights. Daley is a keen fisherman.’

  ‘And that’s all? That’s what it took for the three of you to descend on the school caretaker like you were about to deal with a riot? It’s a wonder you didn’t take armed backup with you.’

  ‘It all fitted. Daley ticked all the boxes. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting him to react the way he did.’

  ‘Hmm,’ says Blunt. ‘Well, it’s probably a good thing for you that he did.’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘What I’m trying to tell you, Nathan, is that there are a million unanswered questions in my head right now, the majority of which concern the things you are choosing to keep from me. Luckily for you, these questions are outweighed by the fact that Daley decided to do a runner from the law, and nobody goes to extreme measures like that unless they are guilty of something big. So, I’m going to make you an offer.’

  Already Cody isn’t liking the sound of this. ‘An offer?’

  ‘Yes. You for Daley. Nail him to the wall for me, and I’ll forget about giving you the third degree to find out what was behind all this.’

  Cody considers what’s on the table, and tells himself that it doesn’t seem too bad. It was always his intention to see this through. Daley has practically shouted his guilt from the rooftops, and so in theory all that remains is to tie everything up with a bow. Giving a guarantee of that to Blunt, though, is another matter.

  ‘You’re on,’ he says. Then he adds, ‘Not that I’ve anything to hide.’

  ‘Hmm,’ says Blunt again. ‘Are you up to it? Physically, I mean?’ She gestures towards Cody’s foot, which is hurting like a bastard right now.

  ‘I’m fine. It’s just a sprain or something.’

  ‘Pity you didn’t land on your head. Might have knocked some sense into you. What the hell did you think you were doing?’

  ‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. The balcony was higher than I thought.’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to start pulling stunts like that, we’ll have to issue you with a parachute. How’s Daley? Is he fit for interview?’

  ‘He’s fine. Whingeing a bit, but that’s to be expected.’

  ‘Has he lawyered up?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s got Prosser.’

  ‘God, not Prosser the Tosser. He’s such a weasel.’ Blunt leans back in her chair and fixes Cody with an eye containing a glint of mischief. ‘Who do you want on your side of the table?’

  Cody thinks about this. Given the state of things with Webley, the obvious candidate to pair with in the interview is Ferguson. But then shutting Webley out for the foreseeable future wouldn’t be fair on her. Personal problems can’t be allowed to get in the way of the job.

  ‘I’ll take Megan,’ he says.

  Blunt looks a little surprised, causing Cody to worry that rumours have been spreading.

  ‘Right then,’ she says. ‘Off you go, Hopalong. I want somebody’s head on a plate, and right now I don’t care if it’s Daley’s or yours.’

  *

  They take their places. Cody and Webley on one side of the table, Daley and his solicitor on the other. The duty solicitor is a man called Alan Prosser. He is short and bald and tanned, and his overly large grey suit and tiny eyes lend him the appearance of a mole peering myopically into the sunlight.

  Cody doesn’t feel comfortable at all. Despite being dosed to the max with some co-codamol he found in his desk drawer, it still feels as though his foot is resting in a furnace. Every time he shifts in his chair, new spears of pain shoot up his leg and into his torso.

  Cody starts the recording and does the preliminaries. Announces the names of those present and the reason for the interview. He can see how nervous Daley is, but Prosser maintains a sneer of self-confidence.

  ‘So, Colin,’ Cody begins, ‘let’s get straight to it. Why’d you run?’

  Daley scratches the side of his nose. ‘I, er, I don’t know. I panicked, I suppose.’

  ‘Panicked? What was there to panic about?’

  ‘You lot. Three of you, all coming after me.’

  ‘What made you think we were coming after you? When you saw us, all we were doing was talking to your assistant, Jamie Morgan. It’s not like we were battering down the front door of your house.’

  ‘Jamie was pointing in my direction. It was obvious you were looking for me.’

  Cody leans back in his chair. Shakes his head. ‘I still don’t see why you felt the need to leg it. You knew we were investigating a case involving the murder of a teacher at your school. We’d spoken to you before about it. It was only natural that we’d come back again, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know. It looked like . . . You didn’t look friendly. You looked like you were there to arrest me or something.’

  ‘Arrest you? For what?’

  ‘The murders, I guess. What else would it be?’

&nb
sp; ‘The murders? Why would you think we’d be coming to arrest you for those? Did you do them, Colin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is that it, Colin? You committed the murders, and you believed you’d been found out?’

  ‘NO! I didn’t do them. I had nothing to do with them. But I know how you people work.’

  ‘How do we work?’

  ‘You twist things. You bend the facts to fit your theories. You wanted to pin those murders on me.’

  ‘So you ran.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You ran because you thought we were going to fit you up for the murders of three women.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you hear how ridiculous that sounds, Colin? You’re telling us that you believed there was some massive conspiracy theory to pin three murders on you, and so you ran like a bat out of hell?’

  Daley doesn’t reply. Just rubs his hand through his hair.

  ‘And you didn’t just run, did you?’ says Webley. ‘You attacked a little girl.’

  Daley snaps to attention. His eyes blaze as he fixes them on Webley.

  ‘I didn’t attack her.’

  Webley is unfazed by the venomous glare. ‘You snatched that girl out of her seat, and you threatened to throw her from the balcony. I’d say that was an attack, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘No. I would never . . . I wouldn’t have hurt her. I had nowhere to go, no way out. I was just trying to get you to leave me alone.’

  ‘Hardly the right way to do it, though, was it? The poor girl was terrified. She’ll have nightmares about this for a long time to come. Do you realise how much you may have damaged her?’

  ‘No. Please. I . . .’ His voice fades out. He wipes a tear from his eye. ‘It was wrong. What I did there was wrong. I know that, but I wasn’t thinking at the time. It doesn’t make me a killer, though. I could never do that to someone. You have to believe me.’

  Cody speaks again. Despite the suspect’s tears, he’s finding it difficult to dredge up much sympathy for him. Daley is holding too much back. He’s lying through his teeth.

  ‘That’s the problem, isn’t it, Colin? Even if we believed what you’re telling us – and I have to say that personally I think it’s absurd – you need to ask yourself whether a jury would swallow it. Can you imagine it? Your day in court? You’re there, telling a jury of twelve sensible people that the only reason you ran, the only reason you assaulted a young girl and threatened to kill her, the only reason you jumped from that gallery in the school assembly hall, was because you were afraid of being framed by the police for three murders you didn’t commit. That’s it, is it? That’s the best you can do? Because I don’t think any jury in the land would regard that as plausible. Do you?’

  Cody doesn’t give Daley time to answer. He hasn’t finished yet. ‘I’ll tell you what the jury will think. They will listen to the account of how you grabbed hold of a little girl who is only eleven years old, and they will hear how you came within a hair’s breadth of throwing her to her death, and they will say to themselves, “Yup, this guy’s a killer. This guy could easily murder an adult female.” ’

  ‘NO!’ Daley slams his palm on the table, causing his solicitor to jump. ‘I’m not a killer. I couldn’t do that to anyone. You have to believe me.’

  ‘We don’t have to believe anything you tell us, Colin. It’s the jury you’ll have to convince, and right now I think you’ll have a tough job on your hands. You need to come clean. You need to tell us why you ran away.’

  Daley buries his face in his hands. Prosser, his solicitor, leans forward and says, ‘I think my client has already answered that question. Can we move on, please?’

  Cody waits for Daley to show his face again, then throws him a little shrug, as though to say, It’s your funeral, mate.

  44

  Says Webley, ‘Tell us about Saturday, Colin.’

  Daley sniffs. Pulls out a tissue and wipes his nose. ‘Saturday?’

  ‘Yes. Saturday just gone. What did you get up to?’

  ‘Not much. I did some cleaning. Ewan tidied his room. After lunch I went shopping, then I helped Ewan with some homework, and then I painted the bathroom ceiling.’

  ‘What did Ewan do while you were painting?’

  ‘He went to his mate’s house to play on his Xbox.’

  ‘So he wasn’t around while you were painting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did it take long to do the ceiling?’

  ‘Yeah. There was a load of mould up there, because of the damp air. I had to wash it all off, then do a couple of coats to cover it up. Took me ages.’

  ‘So what time did you start and finish?’

  Daley blows air out of the side of his mouth. ‘Started about half three, I suppose. Finished about seven-thirty, thereabouts.’

  ‘Four hours? To paint a ceiling?’

  ‘Like I say, I had to wash it all down first. And I had to leave it to dry between coats.’

  ‘Still, seems like a long time to me. Are you sure you’ve got your facts straight?’

  ‘I’m not making it up. Ask Ewan. First thing he asked about when he came in was the smell of paint.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not denying you painted the ceiling. I do wonder whether it took as long as you said it did, though. I’m wondering whether you just gave it a quick going-over with a roller . . .’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And that maybe you then left the house.’

  ‘NO! I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to say I could have killed that woman in Allerton. Well, I didn’t, see. I was nowhere near Allerton. I was at home, painting my ceiling.’

  Webley takes a deep intake of breath. ‘I’d like to believe you, Colin. I really would. But here’s the problem. Three women have been murdered, all on a Saturday evening. In each case, you’ve got no real alibi. Nobody to prove you were where you claimed to be.’

  A snort of derision from Prosser. ‘I’m sure I could quickly find a dozen people who can’t prove where they were at those times. It means nothing. It certainly doesn’t indicate any culpability for those homicides.’

  Webley is quick to come back. ‘And how many of those dozen have ever threatened to drop a young child from a great height, Mr Prosser? How many of them have already tried to evade questioning? How many have lied to the police about their whereabouts?’

  ‘And,’ Cody adds, ‘how many of them knew at least one of the victims?’

  ‘Only one,’ says Daley. ‘I knew Mary Cowper, and that’s it.’

  ‘Okay, so let’s talk about Mary.’

  ‘You’ve already asked me about her.’

  ‘And now I’d like to ask you again. How well did you know her?’

  ‘I told you. Not very.’

  ‘Did you like her? Dislike her?’

  ‘Neither one thing nor the other. She was just there. Just another teacher. I had very little to do with her.’

  ‘And you never visited her flat?’

  ‘No. Until it was all over the news, I didn’t even know where she lived.’

  ‘So how did you know about Andy Puckleton?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You told us that he was quite close to Mary. How did you know that?’

  ‘I saw them together. They were always huddled in corners, having quiet conversations. Sometimes they’d get in the same car together after school.’

  ‘Did you think they were in some kind of intimate relationship?’

  Prosser laughs. ‘No.’

  Cody keeps his face impassive. ‘Why is that funny, Colin?’

  ‘I just don’t think they were friends in that way.’

  ‘What do you mean? In what sort of way were they friends?’

  ‘Well, not in a physical way.’

  ‘How would you know? Andy Puckleton went back to Mary’s flat on numerous occasions. How would you know what they got up to there?’

  Cody knows the answer, of course, but he wants to hear Daley say it. Wants to know
exactly how much he was aware of.

  ‘I just . . . Look, I’m just guessing, okay?’

  ‘No. No, you’re not guessing, Colin. The first time we spoke, you mentioned that Puckleton was having problems with his beliefs. Only you weren’t referring to his religious faith, were you? And then when I mentioned that he had talked to us about his girlfriend, it came as a complete shock to you. You knew something.’

  Daley clenches his jaw a few times. ‘Okay. So I knew about Andy. To be honest, most people did. He thought it was a secret, but it was all over the school.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘That he’s gay.’

  ‘You know that for a fact?’

  ‘Not exactly. But that’s the rumour.’

  ‘How did you hear it?’

  Daley shrugs. ‘Don’t remember. It wasn’t exactly earth-shattering news. It was just one of those things I heard.’

  ‘He didn’t tell you directly?’

  ‘No. Why would he?’

  ‘You tell me. I don’t know how much of a friend he was to you.’

  Daley’s eyes darken for a fleeting moment. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘I’m not implying anything. I’m just trying to get an idea of how much he talked to you about his personal life.’

  ‘He told me nothing. Like I said, everything I heard was on the grapevine.’

  ‘Do you think he told Mary about his feelings?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Because I imagine that someone as religious as Mary Cowper might have very strong views about homosexuality. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I . . . Possibly.’

  ‘Possibly or definitely?’

  ‘I—’

  Prosser intervenes again. ‘Where the hell is this going? It’s already crystal clear that the police have established no motive whatsoever for the murder of Mary Cowper, or the other two victims for that matter. If you want to play amateur psychologist by conjuring up fanciful theories about the killer being on some kind of crusade against homophobic women, then feel free. But please don’t try to shoehorn my client into that desperate scenario. Mr Daley is a family man. He has also told you repeatedly that he knew nothing about what went on in Mary Cowper’s private life. He certainly wouldn’t know what opinions or prejudices went through her head.’