The Domino Killer

by Neil White

  ‘So what have you got on today?’ he said.

  ‘Much of the usual,’ she said, her voice muffled. ‘I might take the girls into town.’

  ‘You’ll never get these times back, you do know that.’ He started to lift up her nightdress, wanting to feel her naked skin under his hand.

  She laughed and pulled away. ‘Easy, tiger,’ she said, and reached round him to flick on the kettle.

  Sam smiled. ‘I’ve got to go anyway.’

  ‘We could meet up later. My parents could have the girls for an hour.’

  ‘The first days of a murder case are hectic,’ he said, but when her smile faded he added, ‘I’ll try though.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ she said.

  He kissed her and then opened the kitchen door to say goodbye to Emily and Amy. They shrieked and waved and then he was gone.

  It felt suddenly quiet when he got outside. The calm of his suburban street, a bulb of a cul-de-sac. He said hello to his neighbour, who was climbing into his four-wheel drive, ready for the journey along the flat streets. His neighbour waved back. Sam had lived next door to this man for six years and didn’t even know his surname.

  As he sat in his car, getting ready to set off, he remembered how Joe had been the night before: distant but somehow trying to reach out. Joe had touched his arm, as if to ask him to stay, but then held back, the moment gone. Something wasn’t right.

  He pulled out his phone and texted Joe: Everything okay?

  Sam waited for a reply, under the pretence of looking for some music to put on in the car. After a few minutes, Joe replied, Need to talk.

  Sam had been right. He texted back, Meet me at the station.

  He turned on the engine and set off, disquieted by the uneasy feeling that the day was going to become stranger than it had started.

  Twenty-three

  Joe waited for Sam outside the police station. His car window was open to let in some sounds; he didn’t know what lay ahead for the day and wanted to savour it. All he could hear was the steady hum of traffic noise. All those cars filled with people who had started the day with no worries. He was jealous of them, and longed for how he’d felt just a couple of days earlier, when Mark Proctor had been just a hooded figure in his past. A ghost, a shadow. Becoming real had changed everything.

  He thought about leaving and not telling Sam anything, but movement in his rear-view mirror caught his eye. Sam’s stride was purposeful, his jacket over his arm.

  Joe clicked the unlock button and carried on looking forward as Sam climbed in.

  ‘Is this about Ruby?’ Sam said.

  Joe thought of how to answer that. This was the moment when he could still walk away from it and leave Sam out of it. He looked at Sam and saw the weary contentment in his eyes. The early mornings, the family routines, the very ordinariness of his life. Joe didn’t want to take that away from him.

  But Sam needed to know. Ellie’s murder had shaped Sam’s career as much as it had determined his own.

  Joe shook his head. ‘No, it’s not about Ruby. Nothing as simple as that.’

  ‘So go on, talk to me.’

  Joe spotted Sam glance at his watch.

  ‘It’s about Ellie,’ Joe said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Go back a couple of years. Do you remember how I told you that I’d seen a man follow Ellie down the path where she was found and that I’d done nothing about it, hadn’t told anyone?’

  Sam’s jaw clenched. ‘Of course I remember,’ he said. ‘How could I forget that my own brother had kept quiet about my sister’s murderer just because he was scared he’d cop for some blame?’

  ‘I was scared,’ Joe said. ‘I was just a kid.’

  ‘You were eighteen that day. You’d become a man, or at least that was the theory.’

  Joe closed his eyes for a moment and put his fingers to his forehead. ‘I didn’t come here to have an argument.’

  ‘So what is it?’ Sam said. ‘Did you wake up this morning with some kind of delayed guilt trip?’

  ‘And whatever happened to understanding human frailty?’ Joe said, his voice rising, his eyes opening again. ‘Maybe you’ve been in the police too long. Not everything is black and white. People do stupid things or make wrong decisions. I should know, I deal with it every day. Yes, I got it wrong, but let’s just say that knowing I could have stopped my little sister getting murdered isn’t exactly a great feeling.’ He banged his hand on the steering wheel. ‘Forget it. Go on, go inside.’

  Sam went for the door handle, but just as he pulled on the lever Joe reached out and grabbed him by the forearm.

  Sam looked round. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The man I saw,’ Joe said, taking a deep breath. ‘Do you remember what I told you I would do if I ever saw him again?’

  ‘Yes, I do. You said you’d kill him.’

  Joe stayed silent.

  Sam’s brow creased. Realisation grew in his eyes. ‘You’ve seen him?’ he said, his mouth dropping open.

  Joe paused, knowing that once he said the word, everything would change for Sam. But he deserved the truth.

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  Sam sat back in the car seat and looked out of the window. Joe let the silence grow. After a few minutes, Sam turned back to him and said, ‘Where?’

  ‘At a police station early yesterday morning. He’d been arrested for burglary at the car compound. His name is Mark Proctor.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s him? It was a long time ago.’

  ‘I know all of that, and it was a fleeting glimpse from a distance, and his hood was up. I know exactly how I would defend him if he were arrested. There is no way he’d be charged; a novice lawyer could get him off, but I knew it was him straight away. His face has been burnt into my memory. There is no way I’d get it wrong. I was certain, absolutely positive. It wasn’t just a sighting. It was an emotion too, the knowledge that he was in front of me, talking to me, oblivious. Ellie’s killer, after all these years.’

  Sam put his hand to his forehead and closed his eyes. His look of weary contentment was gone, replaced by something much deeper, the pain of what had been done seventeen years earlier. He opened his eyes. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Yesterday, I thought I could kill him.’

  Sam snorted in derision. ‘Don’t be so stupid. What good will that do?’ When Joe didn’t respond, Sam added, ‘You’ll throw away your life just to take away his. And don’t forget he’ll die an innocent man, because you won’t be able to prove that he killed Ellie. None of us can. So all your noble act will do is make you a cold-blooded killer, murdering an innocent man, and no one will care what you believed.’

  ‘Like I said, that was yesterday.’

  ‘And today?’

  ‘I just want to make it right, but the system is all skewed. He’ll never pay for what he did, and for as long as he’s alive, someone else is at risk. What if he’s done it again? People like him often do.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t know how the system is twisted, because it always seems to be in favour of people like this guy, this Mark Proctor, whoever he is. People like you exploit it, for profit. That’s how it’s always been.’

  ‘This is different. This isn’t about you and me now. It’s about Ellie.’

  ‘Don’t turn the guilt onto me,’ Sam snapped. ‘If you’d shown more courage all those years ago, we might not be having this conversation.’

  ‘I know that,’ Joe said. ‘I think about that all the time. So let me put it right.’

  ‘You’ve given me his name,’ Sam said. ‘The minute I go in there, I report it.’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s too early. Gina told me how little evidence there was. Do you think your Cold Case Unit will be interested in my recollection? Of course they won’t. It’s too vague, too late, I know that. So we need more than just his name. We need to investigate him so that the
y take it seriously.’

  ‘How come this is becoming a “we”?’

  ‘Ellie was our sister,’ Joe said. ‘Let’s work together on this one, find out more about him. I’m looking into him from my side. You find out what you can from yours. Once we get enough, take the lot to the Cold Case Unit.’

  Sam reached for the handle and threw open the door. ‘How do I know that you’re not just trying to find out about him so that you can carry out your threat, that you’re not sure about Mark Proctor so you want me to shore up your doubts?’

  ‘You don’t,’ Joe said.

  Sam slammed the car door and marched towards the police station entrance.

  Joe’s fingers were white with tightness as he gripped the steering wheel and stared after his brother.

  He started the engine, his jaw clenched. There was someone else who needed to be told about Mark Proctor, and this would be even more difficult.

  Twenty-four

  Sam’s mind was reeling as he walked through the station, Joe’s words spinning in his mind. Until that moment, the day had been all about the murder of Henry Mason, the tense start of another investigation. Now, everything had changed. It was about Ellie’s killer. Could he have been under arrest so recently? Could it be so convenient?

  He was sure Joe was wrong. Joe spent his working life finding doubts in certainties, but yet saw no doubt when there must be uncertainties. It was so long ago. People change. They get older or fatter or greyer. Sometimes they change hardly at all, but seventeen years? How could he be so sure?

  The Incident Room was busy when he walked in, dragging him back into the day, like someone turning up the volume slowly, the meeting with Joe fading slightly. The atmosphere was filled with that hushed clamour, everyone on the phones but trying not to disturb each other.

  Sam walked over to the terminal he used by the window and logged on, throwing his jacket around the back of the chair.

  Charlotte was sitting opposite. She threw a newspaper onto his desk. The Manchester Press. ‘Have you seen the front page?’

  Sam looked down and said, ‘Oh yeah,’ without taking it in.

  ‘Try reading it this time.’

  Sam sighed.

  Charlotte folded her arms. ‘Everything all right?’

  He looked to her as his computer whirred itself awake. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit distracted.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Sam couldn’t say what was really on his mind. ‘It’s about Ruby,’ he said, deflecting. ‘She’s staying at Joe’s for a while and I’m worried about Mum.’

  ‘Teenage girls can be worse than boys,’ Charlotte said. ‘Check out the paper.’

  Sam looked down again, but he read it this time. THE DOMINO KILLER was emblazoned on the front page, with pictures of Keith Welsby and Henry Mason underneath, along with a blank rectangle containing just a question mark.

  ‘What the hell?’ He checked the byline. Lauren Spicer, the reporter who’d been hanging around the day before. ‘Who’s leaked?’

  ‘It wasn’t me, and I’m guessing it wasn’t you,’ Charlotte said. ‘But look who’s giving the quotes: our dear Chief Inspector Brabham.’

  Sam read quickly. Brabham was quoted giving a summary of what had been said at an earlier press conference, except he scoffed at the suggestion of the name Domino Killer, telling the reporter that ‘giving titles to people who kill gives them notoriety’.

  ‘He was the first person to use the name,’ Sam said.

  ‘Exactly, but it gets his face in the paper. Look at his suit today.’

  Sam looked over. Brabham was always smart, but today his suit looked new, tight to his body, and Sam thought he could see creases in his shirt where it had been folded in its wrapper.

  ‘What, you think Brabham leaked a name so he could deny it?’ Sam said.

  ‘Have you heard anyone else use the name?’

  ‘But it doesn’t even make sense. There are only two deaths. That’s not a domino effect.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to make sense,’ Charlotte said. ‘It just has to keep his profile high.’

  Sam rubbed his eyes. He felt tired already.

  ‘Here, I’ll get you a drink,’ she said, and grabbed the mug from his desk, rings around the inside from coffees drunk but not washed away properly.

  As soon as she was out of sight, Sam’s mind flashed back to what Joe had told him. He typed in the name ‘Mark Proctor’, and the entry from two nights ago came up.

  It was the only entry against his name. His life before his recent arrest was invisible. No history, no intelligence, just the report from a bizarre incident two nights earlier, when he broke into the police compound to take his car back, before setting it alight.

  Sam read the confidential report, the one completed by the officer in the case but never seen by the defence. Mark Proctor was a respectable man. A financial adviser. Married. No convictions. Why would he be breaking into the compound?

  Sam knew there was only one answer: he had something to hide.

  He went to the witness statements next, already uploaded onto the police server.

  It had been a routine stop. Proctor had been driving home when he passed a traffic patrol car. They have cameras that scan oncoming traffic; if a car flashes up as not being on the insurance database, it’s pulled over.

  The statement was brief. Proctor hadn’t said much; just waited until the recovery truck arrived and then walked off as his car was taken away, his ticket in his hand.

  A few hours later, the car was ablaze and Proctor was in the back of a police van. Joe had turned up and his client had said nothing. And now Joe was convinced that he was responsible for Ellie’s murder.

  Sam needed to find out more about Mark Proctor, if for no other reason than to persuade Joe that he had nothing to do with Ellie, so that he didn’t do anything stupid.

  Then something occurred to him. The murder of Henry Mason. Proctor had been driving his car at around that time. It was tenuous, but it gave Sam an excuse to look further into it.

  He went back to the witness statement and found a mobile number listed on the back of it.

  Sam picked up the phone and dialled. It rang out for a while, until a sleepy voice said, ‘Hello?’

  ‘PC Wilkins?’

  A pause, and then, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry to disturb you at home. It’s DC Parker from the Major Incident Team. We’re looking into a murder the night before last, and I understand you stopped someone in a car.’

  There was the rustle of bedclothes and then the voice became clearer. ‘I stopped a few people in cars. I’m a traffic officer.’

  ‘This was a car you impounded.’

  A short laugh. ‘The guy who pinched his own car back from the compound? Yeah, a strange one, that.’

  ‘What can you tell me?’

  ‘Not much. Just a routine stop. He tried to charm us at first, you know, all the “yes officer, no officer” stuff you get, best buddy act, but it didn’t get anywhere with me. I’ve heard it all before.’

  ‘How did he come across?’

  ‘Nice guy, if I’m honest. All we want is to do our job and get no grief, and he didn’t give us any.’ A pause, and then, ‘There was one thing, though.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘All the time I was speaking to him, he was pleasant and friendly, understood that I was just doing my duty, but as I pulled away, once the tow-truck had taken the car away, I spotted him in my mirror, and he was staring as I went. Just like that, his arms by his side, staring. It seemed a bit weird.’

  Sam frowned. ‘Okay, thank you.’ And he hung up.

  Before he had chance to think any more about it, Charlotte arrived and put the cup on his desk. ‘We’ve had a development,’ she said.

  He clicked off the screen. ‘Go on.’

  ‘They’ve found some suspect web searches on Henry Mason’s computer: Lolita. Underage babes. Preteen. All the nasty stuff you’d expect.’

  ‘Any images?’

/>   ‘Not yet, but you don’t come across search terms like that accidentally; he’d gone looking. Is that behind the fractured marriage: he’d been looking away from home but for someone younger than his wife?’

  ‘Younger than all wives, by the sound of it,’ Sam said. ‘But it didn’t look like that in the park. You know how paedophiles work. They do everything in secret, gain the trust of their victims. They don’t hang around in parks with flowers, like someone on a date.’