The Domino Killer

by Neil White

  ‘I’m done,’ Charlotte said, yawning.

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ Sam said. ‘Did you find anything?’

  She shook her head. ‘Just a few hours delivering bad news. I’ll keep an eye on his Facebook page tonight, see whether anyone posts anything suspicious, but so far it’s just been people in shock. Henry Mason is just what we thought: an ordinary guy.’

  ‘Any of Mason’s friends know Keith Welsby?’

  ‘No, none. If there’s a connection, no one’s pointed it out yet.’ She stood up and took her suit jacket from the back of the chair. ‘What about you?’

  ‘The same. I’ve gone back through the bank statements and it reads just like a couple trying to keep a lifestyle afloat with money they don’t really have, but what’s strange about that?’

  ‘No unusual payments?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was going through a mid-life crisis, with a thing for young girls. Any large cash withdrawals or cheques cashed? Blackmail or something?’

  ‘What, you think that might have some link with Keith Welsby?’ Sam said.

  ‘He was a teacher. Was Henry Mason after one of his pupils and Welsby found out? Did a pupil confide in him, and rather than confront Mason, Welsby decided to blackmail him? Mason stopped the blackmail by killing him?’

  ‘That’s a good theory for explaining Welsby’s death, but how does it lead to Henry Mason’s murder?’

  Charlotte let out a long tired breath. ‘Oh God, I don’t know. My head is mashed. I’ll have a think about that overnight.’

  Sam logged off. ‘I’m done too. We’ll see what the morning brings.’

  He picked up his jacket and left the station with Charlotte, into the dark car park, the floodlight broken, as always.

  He was about to climb into his car when his phone rang. It was Alice.

  ‘A development?’ Charlotte said.

  ‘No, family. Have a good evening.’ He pressed answer. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Your mother called. Ruby’s left. She’s gone to Joe’s.’

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Yeah, I know, but she sounded pretty upset.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll go over. I won’t be late.’

  He hung up and wiped his eyes. The day had been long enough. He could do without Ruby making it longer.

  Joe wasn’t surprised when the buzzer to his apartment sounded and Sam’s voice came over the intercom. He pressed the button and gave Sam a few seconds to get through before opening the door.

  Ruby looked up, her mouth open.

  ‘I didn’t call him,’ Joe said. ‘He might just be worried.’

  She stayed silent as the sound of footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. When Sam burst in, he was out of breath. Ruby looked up and folded her arms.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Sam said.

  ‘I’m staying with Joe,’ she said.

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘Stop me.’

  Joe held his hands in the air. ‘Hey, hey, everyone calm down.’

  ‘I’m not here for an argument,’ Sam said.

  ‘So stop arguing,’ Joe said, and then, his voice weary, ‘We’ve been through it. She can stay here for the moment, tonight at least.’

  Sam thought about that, before he sighed and pointed towards the door that led to the balcony. ‘We need to talk.’

  Joe led the way. As he pulled on the door, Ruby said, ‘Can I use your shower? I’ll get out of your way if you’re going to talk about me.’

  ‘Help yourself,’ Joe said. ‘Fresh towels in the basket in there.’ And then he stepped out of the living room and into the cool evening breeze.

  The hush of the apartment was replaced by the noise of the city. The clink of glasses and echoes of laughter drifted over from a restaurant on the other side of the canal – an open-air place that thrived on sunny days – and the roads provided a steady hum of tyres.

  Sam put his hands on his hips. ‘So how long are you going to let her stay?’

  Joe placed his hands on the rail and stared into the night. The canal twinkled, the willow trees in silhouette against the steel gleam of the water and the glare from the restaurant behind.

  ‘Not long,’ Joe said, his voice distant. ‘What use am I for personal guidance?’

  ‘What about Mum?’ Sam said. ‘We can’t leave her on her own up there. Caring for Ruby is just about the only thing that keeps her stable. If we take that from her, who knows what will happen.’

  ‘I’m not doing this because of Mum,’ Joe said. ‘Ruby turned up. What could I do? Send her away into the city? You know what it’s like out there. Ruby is headstrong and she’d sleep on the streets to spite us. At least this way we know where she is.’

  ‘But we can’t take her away from Mum.’

  ‘Okay, let her stay here tonight at least. I’ll persuade her to go home tomorrow.’

  ‘And if she doesn’t?’

  ‘We’ll worry about that tomorrow.’

  Sam fell silent again as he looked at the scene from the balcony. ‘We should look out for her more. I feel like we’re letting her down.’

  ‘No, circumstances have let her down. We do what we can. Go home, look out for your own girls.’

  ‘Okay, thanks,’ Sam said. He looked back into the apartment, where Ruby’s bag was discarded on the floor. ‘If you need any help, you know where to find me.’

  Sam turned to go, but Joe reached out and grabbed his arm. Sam stopped.

  ‘What is it?’ Sam said.

  Joe wondered how much he could tell his brother. Sam was a policeman and he knew Joe’s secret, the only person he’d confided in. Sam would stop him, tell him that there was a different way to go about things.

  But what about the promise he’d made to himself? If he walked away from that, Proctor would walk away from it too. It had driven him through his career, the steady gnaw of revenge, how he wanted just one chance to even things up.

  Joe knew he needed to be stopped, or he would lose everything he had. His apartment. His job. His life. The view he treasured. He would come out of prison in sixteen years or so with no future. All he had to do was say the words and Sam would know what to do.

  Joe closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he let go of Sam’s arm and said, ‘Thank you for coming. Ruby will appreciate it when she’s older.’

  Sam’s eyes narrowed, but then he said, ‘No worries, Joe. Look after yourself.’

  Joe stayed on the balcony and listened as Sam left. When Sam appeared on the paved canal bank below, Joe watched as his outline grew faint in the dusk light and, once he rounded the corner and went out of sight, Joe turned back into the apartment. Ruby was back in the living room, drying her hair with a towel. As he watched her, he felt everything change. She’d come to him for help when things had got bad at home. He was her big brother, and he and Sam were the nearest things to a father she had. He’d never thought about being arrested for killing Ellie’s murderer, but he’d never been confronted with him. Now the time to act had arrived, he realised that it wasn’t just about the material things but his family too. If he went to prison for killing Proctor, wouldn’t that mean that Proctor had stolen something else from them? If he acted on his promise, Ruby would lose him, and she’d lost enough in her life.

  There had to be another way. He didn’t have to kill Proctor to get his revenge. All he had to do was make Proctor pay for it. The problem was the lack of evidence against him. He had to think like a lawyer, not a brother seeking revenge. If he tipped off the police, Proctor might be able to get rid of evidence. No, he had to do more than that: he had to find evidence. Joe had waited many years to get Ellie’s murderer. He couldn’t stand to watch him walk away from it.

  Joe was going to get Proctor, but he would do it his way.

  Twenty-one

  The workshop had been his sanctuary all the through the night. He’d curled up with his memories, wrapped up in a large blanket. He tended to his candles, his fl
ickering angels, replacing those that burnt out. He’d been listening out for the crash of the door, the sound of heavy boots, but nothing so far. His wife knew not to disturb him, this was where he lived with his secrets, but the police wouldn’t care about that.

  Things were changing. He sensed it like a scent in the wind. He’d given something up: a small bit of control, because he’d been directed to act. It had spoiled everything. So he’d watched the flames dwindle on the large church candles, the wicks like sand in a timer, burning to pools of wax, everything distorted and messy.

  The morning announced itself with a chill, the walls slick with condensation, his breaths coming out as a slight mist. He gathered his blanket around his shoulders. The night had been long.

  He blew out the remaining candles and let the morning light take over, muted by the curtain still over the window. He blinked as he opened the door, the creak loud, and pulled his blanket tighter. As he walked up the path to the house, birds sang the welcome to the new day. He didn’t feel their brightness.

  Everything was quiet in the house. The burglar alarm buzzed. A tap dripped. Other than that, there was nothing. It was too big for just the two of them but Helena wouldn’t leave. The place was filled with memories. He didn’t mind that. Cause and effect, that’s what memories are, the impact of an event embedded into the mind. And more than the mind. Every room took them back to when they met. Her sorrow. How she’d held onto him as she sobbed.

  Cause and effect. Ripples.

  Helena was still in bed. The alarm would sound soon and she’d go through her morning routines. They’d talk, just polite pleasantries, like two strangers forced to share a space. But he needed her. Her presence was like a diversion. It made his life look normal. She concealed him.

  She would be getting ready to go to work shortly. He didn’t want to be there when she got up.

  He left the house, blinking at the morning sun. His eyes felt heavy. He had to get his control back.

  And at that thought, he felt the first simmer of anger. If nothing else, he could hit back at those who could hurt him. If his life was changing, so must the lives of others.

  Joe was impatient as he waited on his balcony. He’d been ready for fifteen minutes but Ruby was still taking her time. The morning was underway outside, the streets already clogged, the trains and trams busy over the bridges. Where was she? It was school she was going to, not a night out.

  His fingers drummed on the balcony rail, impatient to get the day underway so that he could find out more about Mark Proctor. Even the view failed to calm him, as it usually would.

  There was a noise behind him. The swish of the balcony door. Ruby was there, a canvas bag slung over one shoulder. She was wearing make-up and her hair looked like it had been curled. He was about to say something, knowing that she was dressed like that because their mother wasn’t there to tell her otherwise, but he didn’t want to fall out with her. Was it really that important?

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you to school.’

  He was silent as they walked through the apartment building, and in the lift on the way to the underground car park. He passed a few people in the building who were leaving for work. Some of them cast a suspicious eye over Ruby, a dolled-up schoolgirl leaving an apartment complex with a single man. Joe didn’t have the energy to disabuse them of their suspicions.

  As they walked through the car park, Ruby’s shoes clomped loudly, the soles thick and heavy.

  ‘What’s wrong with you today?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing,’ Joe replied, and pressed his key fob to open the car door. ‘Just not used to being a taxi this early.’

  Ruby climbed in with a slump and her arms were folded by the time Joe joined her.

  He turned towards her. ‘I’m sorry, but this is one of the reasons why you have to go home. What if I’d been called to the police station? How would you get to school then?’

  She shrugged. ‘Get the bus.’

  ‘Do you want to get the bus now?’

  Ruby paused, and then shook her head.

  ‘Exactly,’ Joe said, and started the engine.

  Ruby sulked and looked at her phone, as if she was messaging someone. He turned off the engine and put his forearms on the wheel. He looked across at her.

  ‘What?’ Ruby said, without looking up.

  He sighed. ‘Nothing. Just looking at you, all grown up. It’s gone so quickly.’

  ‘Stop it, you’re getting all weird,’ she said.

  ‘You know that if anything happened to you, we’d be devastated. That’s why I need to know you’re safe. I don’t know if I can do that as well as Mum.’

  ‘Devastated?’ Ruby said, and lowered her phone. ‘I’d want much more than that. I’d want you outside the town hall with candles.’

  ‘It’s not funny,’ he said.

  ‘So stop saying stupid stuff. We’re going to be late.’

  Joe turned the engine back on and reversed out of his space. He drove up the ramp, towards the bright sheet of daylight, and turned onto the road as if to go towards Ruby’s school. Just as he joined the slow-moving traffic, there was someone ahead staring straight at his car, standing, rooted to the spot, his hands in his pockets. Except he was against the sun so Joe could only get the outline, like a cutout figure.

  Joe lowered his sun visor to get a better view, just to make sure, but by the time he could see with less glare, the person had gone.

  Ruby turned to look. ‘Who was that?’ she said. ‘He looked like he was watching us.’

  ‘No, I’m sure he wasn’t,’ Joe said, unconvinced.

  ‘I saw him before.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I was getting ready. I could see him near the corner, looking up at the apartment.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

  ‘Because there are a lot of apartments. He could have been waiting for anyone.’

  Joe’s hands tensed around the steering wheel. Who was waiting outside his apartment building? And why?

  Twenty-two

  Sam had already been up for nearly two hours. He didn’t want to wish away the childhood of his two daughters, Emily and Amy, but he longed for them to acquire adult sleeping patterns.

  He’d opted to get up so that Alice could get some sleep, but it left him needing coffee. The girls were at the breakfast table, chirping away to each other and munching on cereal. He could see them through the glass in the door, but he enjoyed listening to them more. Aged two and four, it was the last precious few months before school started; Emily spoke garbled nonsense as Amy used her younger sister as a sounding board for whatever she had planned for the day ahead. It would all change when Amy started school. Sam had seen what happened then, from the moans of his colleagues. Regular birthday parties meant weekends lost in play centres, and then the arguments over homework. What lay ahead was an end to this magic, and he knew he would miss it.

  It was different for Alice. Sam knew she was feeling cooped up in the house and that she was thinking of going back to work once Emily started school, or even a college course. Anything but stay at home all day, was how Sam interpreted it. He understood completely. He needed to work. Alice deserved that too.

  There was the steady thump of feet on the stairs, and then Alice came into the kitchen. Her hair was dishevelled and there were lines on one side of her face where she had been lying on a crease in the sheet.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said in a drawl.

  He looked up and down her body in an exaggerated way. ‘But sexy,’ he said. And he meant it. She’d cut her blonde hair into a much shorter style, elfin-like, which suited her sharp features: the cute point of her chin, the outline of her cheekbones, her eyes wide and blue. He’d fallen for her the first time he saw her, a sudden rush of adolescent desire, and the wonder had never left him, that someone as beautiful as Alice would be with him.

  It drew a smile from her, and she went to him and put her arms round his waist. She buried her face in
to his chest and he kissed the top of her head, enjoying the feel of her body against his. He reached round her to put his cup down before putting one arm around her shoulders, the other on her bottom, the silkiness of her short nightdress creating static on his hands.