by Neil White
She turned back towards him. ‘Come on, I’ll be late.’
Joe smiled and caught her up.
They talked about her school day ahead as they clumped across the wooden bridge over the stream, and then the path curved towards her school and became stones and mud, the banks of trees higher on each side, barriers between the housing estates that bordered it.
They were close to where Ellie was found. Bluebells grew in clusters and ferns made the route through the trees a tangle. There were some tracks, made by school kids seeking short cuts to the housing estate further along, and probably used by Ellie’s killer to escape.
Joe’s gut tightened and his jaw clenched.
This was the reason he’d come and he felt a burst of guilt. He hadn’t walked with Ruby to spend time with her. Instead, he wanted to imagine Ellie on the ground so that he could feel the anger that was never far beneath the surface. He’d learned how to bury it so he could cope with his own guilt for allowing her to walk down the path to her death, but he needed that anger again.
Ruby was still talking, and Joe knew that she was doing it on purpose, filling the air with talk of her own life as they passed where Ellie’s ended. Ruby’s desperation to be seen as her own person was evident, and she was right, that she was born as a replacement for the girl the family had lost.
Joe resisted the urge to stop where Ellie had been found, her clothes dishevelled, her knickers torn and rolled down, her skin covered in scratches and bruises. When they got to the end of the track, Ruby turned to go towards her school.
‘Thank you,’ Joe said.
‘What for?’
‘For letting me spend time with you. You should come down to the apartment more.’
Ruby shrugged. ‘I might.’ And then she was walking, her bag over her shoulder as she made her way towards school.
Joe sat on the street sign and watched as the kids filled the pavements – some in cliques, others just walking alone, all of them getting ready for whatever their adult lives had in store for them.
He looked along the road, seeking the spot where his younger self had been all those years earlier, as Ellie’s murderer rested his foot where Joe was sitting now.
Joe’s fists clenched in his pockets. He’d got the anger he’d been looking for, the reminder about why he did the job.
Ellie’s murder had driven him into criminal law, and his brother Sam into the police force.
Sam had chosen his career out of a desire to seek justice for Ellie, and his admiration for how the police had helped the Parker family on that dark day and the weeks that followed. Joe followed his career because it was the one area of law where he stood the greatest chance of seeing her killer again. It was why he called round the Manchester police stations every morning and kept on eye on who was appearing in the remand courts, always wanting to know whether a child rapist or murderer had been arrested. There was always a chance he would kill again, and perhaps this time be caught.
And Joe had promised one thing to himself, and to Ellie: if he found her murderer, he would kill him.
Six
Sam rushed towards the station doors. The crime scene had been taken over by the forensic teams. The results would take a while to come through, but there were still enquiries to be made. The first step was identifying the victim.
The squad operated out of a station in a small town that served as the last stop before the moors, in an old Victorian building awaiting sale – glazed red brick and high windows – on one of the roads that headed out to the Pennines. The radiators clanked in winter as they fought hard to heat the place, and although most of the rooms were empty he preferred it to the newer stations. He’d worked from enough modern buildings to know that what they made up for in comfort they lost in atmosphere. Sam preferred the older stations, where the cells told the history of the city with knocks and chips in the doors and graffiti scratched into the tiles.
The day would be all about procedure, the first few hours of a murder inquiry the most important. The scene had been preserved and the results had to be collected. Roles would be assigned: exhibits officer, disclosure officer, family liaison officer. Before then, people were following their own ideas, hoping to find something to raise at the briefing.
As he approached the doors, a woman stepped towards him. He hadn’t noticed her; she must have been waiting in the shadows created by the station entrance. Young and tall, smartly dressed in a dark blue trouser suit, she said, ‘Are you on the murder team, about the dead man in the park?’
Sam paused. It might be a witness. ‘Yes, I am. Can I help you?’
‘It is a man, isn’t it?’
‘Who are you?’
The woman reached into her pocket and produced a business card. She passed it over and said, ‘Lauren Spicer. I’m a reporter. Just avoiding the pack at the scene.’
‘We have a press officer for media enquiries, you know that,’ Sam said, and headed towards the door.
Lauren stepped in front of him. ‘It’s good for your career to talk to me,’ she said. Her gaze was direct, her smile cocky.
‘How so?’
‘Because I can make sure your cases get all the attention.’
‘You speak highly of yourself.’
‘I’m good,’ she said. ‘Look at me now. Do you see any other reporters hanging out here? I’m just trying to stay ahead of the game.’
‘And you’re the one not getting any quotes,’ Sam said, and stepped around her. ‘Speak to the press officer,’ he said, and he went inside.
When he walked into the Incident Room, one of the detectives at the desks by the window looked up and said, ‘Who’s the hot stuff you were chatting up?’
‘Just a reporter taking short cuts,’ Sam said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Looking at incident logs, checking for any reports of a husband who hasn’t returned home, or of someone seeing a man covered in blood, but it’s quiet so far. Nothing from last night. You?’
‘Flowers,’ Sam said, as he went to his usual terminal in front of the window. ‘They were bought from somewhere, and it’s likely to be somewhere local.’
He glanced outside as he waited for his computer to boot up. The reporter was still there. She looked up at him and waved. He turned away.
The room was quiet but wouldn’t be for long. He looked at the pictures on the wall: photographs from open cases. Three murders that were about to be pushed back. One an old man found beaten to death in his flat, his battered skull bleeding out in front of his three-bar fire. Another was a woman found strangled in her bed as she read a book. The theory for the first was a burglary gone wrong and the second killed by her ex-husband, except the man’s new lover had given him an alibi they couldn’t disprove.
The third one was the case he’d mentioned to Brabham earlier. A teacher, Keith Welsby, stabbed and left sitting at a picnic table by the canal in Mossley. A quiet man who sought out a deserted spot one evening. No known motive. Another case to end up in the Cold Case Unit, one more unexplained death to be dusted down occasionally until it faded from memory.
Sam returned to the current case and searched for florists on the internet, starting with the ones in the city centre. Although the victim might have worked out of one of the many business parks on the edge of Manchester, it seemed sensible to start in the middle and work outwards, following the road towards the park. And if they knew where he bought the flowers, it would help them work backwards and follow his route back to where it started.
The results of his calls were better than he expected. Perhaps Monday nights weren’t big on romance. Most of the shops sold calla lilies, but only three had sold some the day before. Even better, only one had sold some to a man in a suit.
Sam grabbed his coat and headed for the door.
When he got outside, Lauren Spicer came towards him again. ‘Have you got some news for me?’
‘Nice try,’ Sam said. ‘And don’t follow me. I’m chasing something from a different case.
’
She accepted his lie with a shrug and went back to leaning against the wall.
It was a short drive to the florist’s, a small shop on a corner along a road that was mostly given up to buses. Buckets of flowers brightened a drab exterior, the signs made dirty by passing traffic.
The bell over the door tinkled as he went in. A young woman with blonde hair shaped into a bob came from the back room, secateurs in hand. Sam pulled out his identification. ‘DC Parker,’ he said. ‘Greater Manchester Police. I called earlier.’
She smiled. ‘I guessed when I saw you. Come through.’
Sam followed her into the room at the back. His nose twitched. The air was thick with scent. It was part sweet, part fusty, almost stagnant, the fragrance of the flowers competing with the smell of damp stalks. There were rolls of paper on a shelf. It was the same as the paper on the flowers in the park, green with silver dots.
‘I’m Debbie,’ she said, sitting on a stool and reaching for a coffee. ‘What’s it all about?’
‘I just need to know about the man who bought your lilies yesterday,’ he said. ‘Does he come in often?’
‘No. I haven’t seen him before.’
‘How did he seem?’
Debbie looked into her coffee as she thought. ‘Nervous, but a lot of men are like that. He knew what he wanted, though, which is less usual.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When men come in, they usually look around and seem a bit lost. If I didn’t help them, they’d just grab the first bunch they saw. So I help them. I ask them who the flowers are for and the occasion. This man came in and was very specific. Calla lilies. Nothing else. No discussion.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Average, really. In his forties. I remember his hair, though. It looked dyed, just a bit too dark, and he was wearing an earring. He was a bit, you know, oldest swinger in town.’
‘How did he pay?’
‘Cash.’
Sam was disappointed. A credit card would have given up a name.
‘I can show you him, if you want,’ Debbie said, and pointed to a monitor with a video player whirring beneath it. ‘We were losing money from the till so I got this last year. He’s on it. I looked for him after you called. He was easy to find because I was just about to close up.’
Sam suppressed his smile, it seemed inappropriate somehow.
‘Yes, that would help,’ he said, his tone more neutral than he felt.
Sam brought his chair forward as Debbie pressed a button on the machine. The screen flashed and then it showed images of the shop from different angles.
On the screen, a man entered. The shot from above the door didn’t show much of his face, just the swirl of his hair where he’d tried to cover a bald patch. It got his patent shoes, though, and the tie looked the same. The man walked straight to the counter and placed both hands on it. Sam concentrated on the image in the top right of the screen. Something was bothering him about the image, but he couldn’t quite work it out.
The man spoke to Debbie, who went out from behind the counter and to a bucket in the corner of the shop, just behind the window displays. She lifted out some lilies and held them up, as if seeking his approval. The man didn’t even look. He nodded his agreement as he rifled through his wallet, pulling out two notes and handing them over as Debbie wrapped the flowers in paper.
He didn’t say anything else. No attempts at conversation. He just paid and left, the flowers in his hand.
Sam tried to see where he went, hoping that he might go to a car, but he walked out of shot. He kept watching, though. If he’d been in a car, he would set off shortly, and he’d gone out of the shop and turned right. The direction of the park was left. He would pass it in his car.
Four minutes passed before Sam saw it, a guess from the way the car seemed to be pulling away from a parking space rather than merely driving past. A light saloon, silver or maybe light blue, possibly a Mondeo.
‘Can I take that?’ he said, gesturing towards the video.
‘Yeah, sure,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some spare tapes.’
‘I’ll be back to take a statement. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Is it to do with the murder case?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I saw all the police at the park before.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t say,’ Sam said.
‘Which confirms it,’ she said, her eyes wide. ‘Is he the killer? Should I be worried?’
‘Thank you for this,’ he said, ignoring her question and left the shop, the tape in his hand.
He’d got their first break.
Seven
Joe was late getting into work.
His time with Ruby had put him behind schedule and when he walked into the building his client was sitting in the reception area, looking impatient.
Honeywells didn’t like its criminal clients. It was mainly a commercial and civil firm, but had maintained a criminal practice out of a promise to the firm’s founder. Even so, the criminal clients used a separate entrance, and it was a struggle at times; Joe was the only lawyer in the criminal department, helped by Gina, his legal clerk.
The firm was spread over two buildings, with its Georgian pillars and high sash windows overlooking neat public gardens. Joe’s clients used the first entrance, where the reception was plush but without vases of flowers or items of decoration; they were just something else to steal or get smashed. There was a time when a solicitor’s waiting room was a place of reflection, nervous clients waiting for their appointment. A lawyer’s stock had fallen since those days. Now, it was just another place to carry on their battles. Fights had broken out more than once.
Joe’s practice was changing, though. He was starting to attract clients who couldn’t get legal aid but didn’t mind paying hugely inflated fees, his reputation growing after some high-profile cases. The other departments were sending clients his way too, but mainly driving cases or the errant sons of wealthy clients.
They rankled Joe, because his client base had always been those who somehow got lost somewhere in their lives. The drunks, the druggies, the thieves and fraudsters. Joe wasn’t so naive that he thought that all of his clients were victims of their backgrounds. Too many preferred the small victories of criminality over an honest living. Like those who peddled drugs for status, or the builders who persuaded lonely pensioners that their roof was about to cave in, and then marched them down to the bank to withdraw thousands of pounds to pay for some lead flashing around the chimney stack. Joe had little time for those, but he did his job just the same.
His new clients were different; they seemed to think they were too rich to be guilty. Even the nastiest criminal knew that a prosecution was part of the price they paid for their lifestyle choice. His newfound wealthy clients thought the law didn’t apply to them in the same way, because the outcome of a case was just another thing they could afford. Like a new watch or a sports car, and all done with Joe’s help.
But they filled the tills so that Joe could still do the other criminal work.
Joe smiled a greeting at his client, who was sitting in reception with a file of papers perched on his knee.
That irritated Joe straight away. There are two types of clients to avoid: those who turn up with jumbles of papers in a carrier bag, usually a sign that they think somewhere in the mess of papers is proof of some higher conspiracy, and those who insist on carrying the papers around in files of their own. It was the client’s way of saying that he was in charge, that he was watching Joe.
His client returned the greeting but checked his watch at the same time. Joe spotted the gesture. There was no need to check, because there was a clock above the reception desk.
‘I’ll be ten minutes,’ Joe said, and then trotted up the stairs.
Gina was waiting for him when he went into his office. She raised her eyebrows and tapped her watch.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I had to see Ruby.’
She must have detected something in his voice, because she said, ‘Everything okay?’
‘Just an early start,’ he said, and threw the file onto the desk, the papers he’d completed at the police station.
Joe depended on Gina. A former senior detective, she became his paralegal once she retired from the Force, Joe wanting her keen mind and an eye for the truth. She’d been one of the best cops he’d come across, too good to see out her working years pottering around in her garden.
He took the file Gina was holding and went to sit down. His secretary, Karen, appeared with a cup of coffee, as always. He didn’t like being waited on, but the partners in the firm liked to emphasise what they saw as the great divide: lawyers on the well-paid side and everyone else just glad to have a job.
