by Neil White
‘Just get to the point.’
‘Which is why I would enjoy sending these pictures. I could sit back and watch your life being destroyed.’
‘All right, I get it!’ Gerald snapped. ‘Wrap it up in whatever you want but it’s just a sleazy blackmail plot.’
‘We’ve all got bills to pay, Gerald, but I will do something else for you.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll blame someone else for it, because you weren’t the only person in the park last night.’
‘How are you going to do that?’
‘Give me something I can lay a trap with. The knife would be best.’
‘I’ve cleaned it,’ he said. Then his eyes widened. ‘I wiped it off with a rag. It’s in the garage, under something. I was going to bury it somewhere later, or burn it.’
Proctor grinned. ‘Perfect.’
Forty-five
Joe checked his watch. Proctor had been in the house for nearly half an hour. Who else was there? One of Proctor’s clients? Or was it an accomplice?
The front door of the house opened. Joe cursed and stepped backwards. He hid behind the branches of a laurel bush that were spreading through a hole in a fence. Proctor came out. He was whistling. He skipped down the stone steps and went to his car. He looked back up to the window, where a man was staring down at him. Proctor waved and then got into his car. The man in the window didn’t move as he watched Proctor drive away.
A few minutes went by while Joe thought about what to do. Whoever was in that house seemed pivotal somehow, because Proctor had made the house his first trip of the day. And he’d lost Proctor, the sound of his engine long since faded into the steady drone of traffic noise.
The door opened again, and this time the man in the window was rushing down the steps towards a car parked further along, a red Jaguar, old-style.
Once the noise of the Jaguar disappeared as Proctor’s had, Joe stepped out of the ginnel.
Now what should he do? Both Proctor and the man had left so there was no chance of Joe following. But Proctor had headed straight for the house, and whatever Proctor had visited for, it had made the man rush off. The answers must be in that house and Joe was in no mood to wait for events to reveal themselves. It could end up with Joe waiting on the wrong side of prison bars.
The street was busy with cars and buses, the sort of road that people drove along to get somewhere else rather than a destination in itself. No one would notice Joe walking to the house. There was a shale path running alongside it, a cut-through to the council estate on the other side, visible as brick blights beyond a line of concrete bollards. Joe thrust his hands into his pockets and headed for the path. He tried to look casual, his shoes scuffing the loose stones, but he was becoming conspicuous in his attempts. Just stay natural, he told himself, but what was natural in this situation?
He reached the back of the house without being seen and looked for a sign that someone else was in there, but everything looked dark.
The garden was bordered by a stone wall around six feet high. There was a gate under a stone archway. He pushed at it, but it just rattled in the frame, bolted on the other side.
Joe glanced quickly both ways and then launched himself at the wall. He hauled himself up, his feet pushing up on the uneven stonework and with his arms over the top. It scraped his stomach as he straddled it before he dropped onto the other side.
His shoes made a loud smack as he landed. He took deep breaths and sank to his haunches. Someone in the house next door would be able to see him if they looked out of the window. He waited for a shout but there was nothing.
The garden was a long rectangle, with a gravel path running between two brick planters, decking and chairs at the other end, pushed up against the wall. The chairs would give him another route out of the house if he were disturbed. He could vault the wall, using a chair to give him the help up, and disappear into the estate behind, where the intruder would be put down to some addict.
Satisfied that he hadn’t been spotted, he ran along the path that bordered the garden until he was flat against the house. He leaned over with his hands on his thighs and sucked in air. This wasn’t him, creeping around gardens. As he straightened, he knew that he was about to go a step further.
He walked slowly up to the back door, old and wooden, painted green, with flakes that pointed outwards like jagged fingers. There were small lattice windowpanes, dusty and cobwebbed, not double-glazed. Joe pressed his face against the glass to see how it was locked. The tarnished brass of a key stuck out of the lock. That made it easy.
Joe slipped off his jacket and screwed it into a ball before placing it against one of the panes. He closed his eyes for a moment, knowing that he was about to take the step that could end his career. But the stakes were higher than that.
The glass made hardly a sound when Joe punched his jacket, cushioning the blow but with enough force left to shatter the pane nearest the key. He reached in before he could change his mind and turned the key. When it clicked, he pushed at the door. It opened with a creak. The bottom of the door scraped on the broken glass. He stepped inside.
He’d crossed the line. All he could do now was keep on going.
He was in the kitchen. The glass crunched underfoot as he set off. He needed to find out more. He just didn’t know what he was looking for.
The kitchen door opened into a hallway lined by old tiles, black and white squares and surrounded by a coloured border. The stairs ran from near the front door, by the entrance to the room that overlooked the road. There was a room at the back that looked out over the garden: a dining room.
Joe stepped quickly across the hallway and into the back room. Sun streamed in through the French doors. It was a room to relax in, with a sagging chair in each corner. The walls were covered in pictures and photographs of a woman in her forties, with a teenage girl alongside. They were the most recent. The other pictures of them made Joe feel like he was winding back time as he turned; the woman became younger, slimmer, her hair longer, the girl became a young child and then a toddler. There were paintings stuck to all the surfaces, childlike, a small family group with the people drawn like rectangles, and a boat under a yellow circle of a sun. There were no pictures of the man, though.
There was a small desk in a corner, with the large monitor linked to a computer that was blinking a blue light underneath, the fans blowing lightly. There was nothing showing on the screen.
Joe went over to it and nudged the mouse. The screen flickered into a life. The desktop image was the same as one of the photographs on the wall, the woman and the teenage girl, hugging each other in front of the gleam of a reservoir. There was no password required.
Computers hold people’s secrets, those dark places they visit when home alone, thinking that no one was watching. There is always a trail, though, even though it often takes an expert to find it, because no internet visit is invisible. Someone, somewhere, is always watching.
Joe went to the browser history first. It had been cleared. That might be routine. Or the man might be hiding something.
The email software was next. Joe was transfixed as it loaded in.
The inbox was full. The man was called Gerald King. A lot of it was rubbish. Emails from camping and angling sites, an astronomy site. It was mundane.
But there was one sequence of conversation that came from a sender titled only ‘anonymous’. When Joe moved the mouse down, it highlighted a large number of messages. There had been quite some conversation.
He went to the top one first. It was a short message: You got the wrong one.
Joe went down the list, clicking as he went, his mouth opening wider as he read. He couldn’t believe what he was reading.
He swallowed, his fingers trembling on the mouse. There was one with an attachment. Joe paused before opening the email, not wanting to see what he thought he might find.
It was a picture message entitled ‘Katie’.
Joe groaned and closed his eye
s as the image filled the screen. He felt the blood rush round his head, warming his cheeks.
The picture was of the same teenage girl as in the photographs, except this time she was lying on the ground. Her mouth was open in a grimace, faint bruises visible around her neck. Her eyes were closed, her shirt torn open, her small bra pushed up to show her breasts, her head against stone steps.
Joe had to clench his teeth to stop the bile rising. It wasn’t the image itself – he’d seen plenty of crime scene photographs – but what he knew it represented. The murder of a teenage girl, strangled, the girl so full of life in the photographs on the walls so lifeless on the screen.
Joe was so engrossed in the image he hadn’t heard the turn of the key, or the soft footsteps along the tiled hallway. He gasped as someone gripped his hood and forced his head onto the desk.
Forty-six
Sam was back in his car, the traffic streaming past, some of it slowing down so that people could look at the crime scene, the tape acting like an advertising banner. Was the killer in one of the cars, cruising past to enjoy his work? Sam glanced into the faces of those passing now and again, hoping to see something he recognised, like satisfaction, but he saw nothing more than intrigue.
He was searching the internet on his phone, his notepad open on his knees. It seemed an easier place to start than the police computer. Some of the uniformed police officers were watching him, especially the younger ones, in their eyes the hope that they’d end up on the Murder Squad. It was long hours and often unglamorous, but there is no higher reward than catching a killer. That moment of arrest beats everything, even though it’s only the start of the journey, with a court case and potential pitfalls ahead. Sitting in his car close to a main road didn’t seem like much, but it was the case coming together, and he relished that part of it.
He’d put the name of the grassy area into the search bar, and he found something sixteen pages in. Katie King, a schoolgirl murdered just over seven years earlier.
He clicked on the link and brought up an old newspaper article. It was lacking in detail, mainly an appeal for information. Katie had been at her boyfriend’s house but they’d argued. She was fifteen, and the usual routine was that he’d walk her home. Not always the whole way, but at least so far that he could watch her until she turned into her driveway. That changed on the night she died. They’d fallen out over something trivial and Katie had stormed off. The walk home was a long one and it rained, so she took a short cut through the green. Her body was found the following day. She’d been strangled and her clothes partially removed. The article didn’t say whether there’d been a sexual assault.
The most recent hit Sam could find was a fresh appeal for information three years earlier, but no sign that anyone had ever been caught.
Sam put his head back, frustrated. That was too remote a connection. Every park or open space in Manchester has probably had a murder at some point. Open spaces in the city attract killers because they provide privacy and darkness.
There was movement ahead. It was Brabham, walking towards him, tugging on his lip, looking thoughtful. It looked as though there had been a development. Sam stepped out of his car.
‘I found something but it’s too old,’ Sam said, holding up his phone as Brabham came up to him. ‘A girl killed here just over seven years ago. Katie King, but apart from that, nothing.’
Brabham put his hands on his hips so that his suit jacket splayed out. ‘We’ve got a name,’ he said. ‘The hire car parked on the main road was hired out to a Mark Proctor. His occupation is listed as financial services.’
The space around Sam went quiet, like a door had been closed. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, his hand reaching out for the support of the car. Sam knew the implications of what had been said; they rushed at him like a gale.
‘Mark Proctor? Are you sure?’
Brabham looked surprised. ‘You sound like you know the name?’
Sam was confused. He went as if to say something, but couldn’t think what to say. He looked back towards the green.
‘His name came up in relation to something else,’ Sam said eventually. Unconvincingly. ‘I’ll go back to the incident room, try to find it.’
‘Can you remember what?’
‘No, not off the top of my head. If I go back there, it might trigger it.’
‘You sure? I was going to Proctor’s house. I wondered if you fancied coming along.’
‘No, no, I’ll need to do this,’ Sam said, and climbed back in to his car. ‘It might be crucial.’
When he was back in the driving seat, he wiped his forehead as Brabham walked towards his own car. He was sweating. He looked back towards the green. It looked different, threatening somehow, the shadows created by the trees darker.
Oh Joe, what have you done?
Forty-seven
Joe gasped. The computer keyboard dug into his face, the desk banged against the wall. The man was screaming, not making any sense, loud in his ears. Joe pushed back using the edge of the desk. He needed to get away.
As Joe strained, the man’s grip slackened, as if he was losing his balance. One more heave backwards and the man stumbled, so Joe kept on back-pedalling across the room, grunting with exertion. The room filled with noise. The clatter of a chair. The man’s screams. A shout of pain. Two bodies stumbling, Joe on top.
A chair leg caught Joe in a rib, made him cry out, but he had no time to pause. The man was underneath him. Joe kicked back with his heel, catching the man on his shin, making him slacken his grip. Joe rolled away and scrambled to his feet. He leaned against the wall, panting from exertion.
He looked down at the man on the floor. He was holding his leg and lying in a foetal position. He turned to glare up at Joe. ‘Who are you? Why are you in my house?’
‘I’m the man who’s leaving,’ Joe said, and moved along the wall.
‘Wait, don’t!’ the man said, and he rolled over so he could get to his knees. ‘I’m not going to attack you,’ he said, and there was defeat in his voice. He swallowed and closed his eyes. A tear escaped. ‘Are you the police?’
‘No, I’m just a man looking for answers.’ Joe pushed himself away from the wall. He was wary of the man but he didn’t seem dangerous. ‘Are you working with Proctor? I saw him here earlier.’
The man opened his eyes and shook his head, incredulity on his face. ‘No, not ever.’
‘So why was he here?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘I know what Mark Proctor is capable of,’ Joe said.
‘How do you know?’
Joe wondered whether he should tell him, but the picture that had been emailed and the photographs on the wall told him one thing: the man’s daughter had been murdered.
‘Mark Proctor murdered my sister,’ Joe said.
The man’s mouth gaped open. ‘When was this?’
‘Seventeen years ago.’
The man stayed silent, staring ahead, until he said, ‘What was her name?’
‘Eleanor. We called her Ellie. Proctor killed her on her way home from school, strangled her and discarded her like rubbish.’
‘I’m Gerald King. That’s my daughter in the photographs. Katie. Like your sister, killed and left as if she was nothing. Seven years ago now.’
‘Tell me about her.’
‘Loving, kind, sweet, trusting.’ He wiped his eye.
Joe went over to the dining table and pulled out a chair. ‘Don’t sit on the floor, Gerald.’
He got to his feet and sat down opposite.
‘How did she die?’ Joe said.
‘Katie had gone to a youth club with her boyfriend. She went every Tuesday. It was late April so it got dark fairly early, and it was dark when she left. I told her to call me if her boyfriend couldn’t walk her, so that I could pick her up, but I’d been working late that night. She argued with her boyfriend. Katie didn’t call me, she called her mum. I’d have left work to collect her, but Nicola, that’s my wife, well,
she’d been drinking. She’d started drinking more. Katie needed her less and Nicola felt a bit redundant, I think, so a glass of wine every night turned into a bottle. Katie rang home, her friends had gone on to a party so she was on her own, but Nicola couldn’t collect her because she’d been drinking. So Katie walked home on her own. She never made it. Found on the green at Worsley. Strangled. Her clothes were all messed around with, her jeans round her knees, but the police said she hadn’t been, well, you know…’
The green at Worsley. Where the man was killed the night before.
Gerald paused to wipe his eyes. ‘We should have been there for her, but we weren’t.’
