Edge of Crime: A Collection of Crime Stories

by John Moralee

  “Uh - a Land Rover. A black one. He had rock-climbing equipment in the back. That’s where he got the rope and tape. Does that ... does that help?”

  *

  There were four betting shops within the town. Boone had their security tapes for Wednesday examined around the time Greg had robbed the customer’s car. The local police helped identify a likely suspect. He was a mean-looking skinhead wearing a bomber jacket and Doc Martens, the standard footwear for thugs.

  “That’s Taz,” the policeman said. “He’s a junkie and dealer. If the kid ripped him off, he was in serious trouble. The man’s a violent nutter.”

  “Bring him in,” Boone said.

  *

  Taz asked for his lawyer as soon as they arrested him. He called him on his mobile phone. The thug looked like he couldn’t afford a bath, never mind a lawyer, but his lawyer soon arrived at the station, fast enough to suggest Taz had him on retainer.

  “What’s this about?” the lawyer asked.

  “It’s about your client and the murders of three teenagers.”

  “My client did not kill anyone and therefore will not be making a statement.”

  “Taz, I don’t need you to make a statement. I already have enough evidence to convict you.”

  She put the iPod on the desk in front of him. His eyes flashed with recognition.

  “This was found in the house of one of the dead boys. He stole it from you on Wednesday along with a sports bag containing twenty thousand pounds worth of drugs. Surprisingly, you bought this iPod with your own debit card last month, so don’t even think of denying it is yours. You were also seen in The Sound and Fury on Friday night, the same place where the victims were. You recognised the kid who’d been outside the betting shop when you went in. How dare he steal from you? You wanted your drugs back, so you followed him after he left the pub –”

  “No,” Taz said. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t kill nobody. I was there watching the gig, yeah, but I went home with a red-headed grunge chick. You can check with her. I was with her all night.”

  He folded his arms, looking smug and arrogant.

  “Her name, address ...”

  “I don’t know her name. Never asked. She lives in a student flat with a bunch of hot girls. They must’ve heard us. She’s a screamer.”

  *

  Taz’s alibi was confirmed. The girl and her flatmates confirmed that Taz had been in their flat at 2 a.m. and had stayed the night. There was another problem. Taz didn’t own a black Land Rover. His car was a Nissan.

  “Could the kid be lying?” Hollis asked her. They were having lunch in a greasy spoon café.

  “I was wondering if he’d made it all up about a mysterious man in a blue anorak, but we had the area where Jamey said they parked the van checked. There were at least three types of tread in the dirt. One matches the van. One matched an expensive make of tyre commonly found on Land Rovers and other 4x4s. The last was narrow, from a motorbike.”

  “Three vehicles. How do we know the tracks are recent?”

  “It rained on Friday afternoon, which would have wiped the ground clean of old marks, but it hasn’t rained since then, so the prints were all made when the ground was wet.”

  “This Taz. He has a solid alibi, which makes me think he had someone else follow the kids to the woods. Perhaps this motorbike rider? The accomplice follows them, then returns at two a.m. in a Land Rover?”

  “Taz has a mobile phone. I bet he called his accomplice from The Sound and Fury when he saw the thief there.”

  Taz’s phone records showed he had made two calls during the evening to another mobile. It was registered as belonging to Terry Hughes.

  Six years ago, Hughes had been a chemistry student at a good English university but he had been expelled for making speed in the chemistry lab. He had returned to Wales without a degree but evidently with knowledge of how to make money for himself. He lived in a large farmhouse and described himself as an entrepreneur. He was well-known to the local police, but had never been convicted of a crime. He was smart. He used a number of dealers to sell his product, including Taz. It wasn’t Taz’s drugs that had been stolen, but his employer’s.

  Terry Hughes owned a black Land Rover.

  “Let’s get him in a line up.”

  *

  Jamey looked around nervously as he entered the small room. “I don’t understand. You said you’ve arrested him already, so why do I have to do this?”

  “The suspect won’t confess so we need you to have a look at him in a line up. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  A line up of men dressed in blue anoraks entered the room. Hughes was the fourth man. Jamey looked at them for over a minute before whispering, “Number four.” He was asked to say it louder for the tape. He did. “Can I go home now?”

  “We’ll just need a statement, recorded on video.” Boone led Jamey out of the room. She took him into another room, where the equipment was set up. She read him his rights before starting the formal interview. Once Jamey had recounted the details of that night in every detail, Boone thanked him. He was about to stand up when she said, “Just a few more questions, Jamey. Why do you think he went back to the van after he got his drugs back?”

  “To kill the other witnesses.”

  “You see, that doesn’t make sense. He had no reason to kill them. He had his drugs back. It wasn’t like they would go to the police. What could they say? They stole some drugs off a drug dealer? That would put them in trouble. He’s guilty of false imprisonment and drug dealing – which he will be charge with - but he didn’t murder anyone. That was someone else. We found tyre marks from a motorbike at the scene. They match a bike stolen on Friday night. I had that bike examined, Jamey. Your fingerprints were on it. A friend of yours owned the bike. On-line he calls himself Darkman. He already told us you came to see him on Saturday morning, with your face all bruised up. You borrowed his bike, asking him not to tell anyone. You intended to bring it back so nobody would know you’d taken it, but for some reason you didn’t. He had to report it stolen when you didn’t return it. You rode that bike to where the van was parked, but you didn’t rescue your friends. I wondered why – until the DNA report answered that question. Greg slept with Holly and Candice on that night, but you didn’t sleep with either of them. He slept with your girlfriend Candice. You were mad at him, so you decided not to untie them. Instead, you killed them.”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  “The evidence proves you went back to the van.”

  “Yes, I went back to the van. But only to release them. I was honestly going to untie them. But when I took the gag off Greg, the first thing he said was ‘Did you tell him where the stuff was?’ and when I told him I had, he gave me a look like it was all my fault. I decided to punish them – but not to kill them, I swear. I left them in the back of the van, tied up because I was angry at them all. Candice wasn’t my girlfriend. She was into Greg just like Holly. They used to have sex in front of me like I wasn’t even there. They wouldn’t let me join in, though. They didn’t like me. They had treated me like a fifth wheel for so long I decided to leave them tied up for a while. Payback. But when I was driving home, I lost control of the vehicle and it went off the road into the water. I managed to get out but the van sank under the water before I could save them. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to kill them. It was an accident.”

  “Jamey, there were no skid marks. The van was deliberately driven off the road and aimed at the deepest part of the lake. The clothes you were wearing weren’t in that dirty water. There was a toolbox on the floor near the accelerator and the side window was open. You started the van up and steered it through the window while riding the bike you’d borrowed. You got the van up to the right speed, but then you let go. I bet you lost control of the bike, crashing it, breaking your ribs. You didn’t want to bike connected to the van, so you abandoned it later. It wasn’t an accident and I can prove that. You murdered th
em all.”

  He glared at her then. “It wasn’t murder. It was justice. They all deserved to die.”

  *

  “Boss, he’s a cold-hearted kid,” Hollis said after she had formally charged Jamey with the the murders. “I hope he gets life.”

  Boone nodded in agreement. It was getting late. She wanted to go home to her daughter and hug her and forget about her day, but she still had a ton of paperwork to complete. But then she remembered she was the boss now.

  It could wait until tomorrow.

  On the Road

  Nobody in the car said anything until they were on the road. They were very still, very quiet. It was as if their bodies were there but their minds were elsewhere. Evan knew they were all thinking about Larry and Angela. When Evan heard someone sigh it took him a few seconds before he realised that he was doing it. His sigh formed a snaking vapour inside the cold SUV. The air inside the car was just too cold to be called comfortable. The a/c was on but ineffective. Nadia sat beside him, huddled inside her black raincoat, her hands tucked inside the sleeves of her grey sweater like the heads of turtles. She was chewing her lower lip, deep in thought. His wife did not seem to notice the trees and signs rushing by.

  “They were good friends,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Good friends.”

  Will and Michelle murmured agreement.

  More silence.

  Evan could see a white band of light between the dark clouds and the shadowed country that seemed unnaturally bright and painful to his eyes. He reached up and lowered the sun visor, which made little difference because the white band was too low to be blocked. Wishing he had some sunglasses in the glove compartment, he changed lanes, pulling behind a truck. That killed the light, for the time being. Unfortunately, he had to lower his speed to stay behind it.

  He kept steady at forty for the three miles before it turned off onto a road heading for the mountains. Increasing to the speed limit, he drove straight on.

  There was no much traffic on the road. The light was not so bad now – it was not as fierce. The sun must have changed its angle, not that he could see it. The weather report had said it would clear by tomorrow.

  Today, the clouds were low and black, threatening a storm. It began raining lightly. Flattened raindrops moved slowly, inexorably, up the windshield, as if defying gravity. Sometimes he felt like he was one of those raindrops, struggling against the natural order.

  He checked the rear-view mirror.

  In the back were Michelle and Will, staring straight ahead, their faces expressionless. Will was smoking a cigarette, a habit he had picked up in high school over twenty-five years earlier, when he thought it was cool way of impressing girls. It had worked, Evan remembered, since Will had never been short of a beautiful girlfriend, a different one every week. Non-smoking Evan had often wondered if he would have been more successful with girls if he had started on the cancer sticks. He doubted it. He lacked the willpower to start smoking. He had tried a couple of times, but had given up the moment his eyes watered and the back of his throat felt like someone was cleaning it with Drano. These days Will was always hacking up brown phlegm in the mornings - something Evan did not envy. Will’s face looked grey and lifeless. Michelle gave her husband a disapproving look but said nothing. Evan wistfully wished Nadia had stayed as thin and young-looking as Michelle, but two children had made her look her age, forty-five. Michelle looked thirty-something. Her flawless skin seemed to radiate vitality like a model’s in a make-up commercial. She saw him looking at her. He felt embarrassed and looked away – but he looked back after a few seconds. She held his gaze for a second, one corner of her mouth forming a hint of a smile, then she lowered her eyes and her face returned to a neutral mask.

  Evan resumed looking ahead. There was a sign coming up for New England College. It was 11 miles. When Evan and Nadia were young, eager graduates, looking for somewhere to live and work, New England College possessed several noteworthy writers among its alumni and teaching staff. The college’s reputation for fostering talent was the main reason why Evan and Nadia had applied for teaching positions there. They hoped it would allow them to continue their education while simultaneously receiving a living wage. In the early 1980s they moved to an idyllic university town free of the distractions of the outside world. It seemed perfect – at first. However, they soon discovered most of the faculty were much older than they were, with little in common except an interest in literature, so their social lives were non-existent. It was boring being the only young staff members. They had more in common with the students than other staff – until two more young, married couples joined the college.

  Will and Michelle were quite, intellectual types, the kind of people who would have been eaten alive in the real world, but were happy in academia.

  Larry and Angela were different. They were more extrovert, more fun, more world-wise. It was usually Larry and Angela who arranged dinner parties and social functions. Angela was a brilliant hostess. Larry was the life of any party. Evan was not surprised when Larry and Angela’s social circle expanded like a supernova. Without Larry and Angela, the college would not have received millions of dollars in support from rich alumni. They practically built the extension to the library by themselves.

  But now …

  Evan sighed again. “I think we should talk about Larry and Angela.”

  Nobody replied.

  “Nadia?”

  Nadia looked away.

  “Come on, we must talk. We can’t just forget about it. We have to talk about their deaths … the funeral … everything. Now.”

  “Why?” Nadia mumbled.

  “Because,” he said.

  “Because?” The weariness in her tone was palpable. “That’s a kid’s argument, Evan. Because. Because what?”

  “We can’t keep not talking about it. We’ve known them for twenty years. They were our friends.”

  “Yes. Our friends. That’s why I don’t want to talk,” she said. “Don’t you understand that?”

  He understood. But he had to talk.

  The silence was killing him.

  *

  “I know this is strange,” he said, “but I keep thinking about the funeral. I keep thinking of all the people who will be there. The students. The faculty. Larry’s parents and sisters. Angela’s dad. Will it be a Catholic or Jewish service or both? Do they put two coffins on display side by side or what? Will it be open caskets? Will it -”

  “Shut up!” Nadia shouted. He flinched. Nadia was breathing heavily, her face flushed. “Can’t you just wait until we’re at the funeral? Why must you always know things in advance?”

  “I was just saying what I was thinking about, honey. I hate this … this silence. This waiting. You know what I’m like on the road ...”

  Driving was sometimes hypnotic for Evan, the sheer boredom and monotony opening doorways into his mind. He had nearly crashed twice when he drifted off, thinking of other things. One time Nadia had been in the car. She’d described afterwards how scared she had been when he’d started to veer off the highway in a trance. Only her frantic shouts had snapped him out of it.

  “There’s no way it’ll be an open casket job,” Will said quietly. “Closed caskets, I guarantee. After the accident, would you want to see the mess?”

  Evan shook his head. “Let’s talk about the accident. People will want to know everything. What are we going to tell them?”

  Will stabbed his cigarette into the ashtray, leaning forward to rest his arms on the back of Nadia’s seat. “We tell them we went up to the lodge, like we did every year.”

  “Then what?”

  “Larry and Angela seemed their normal selves. Maybe Larry was a little quieter than usual, but I didn’t think anything was wrong at the time. Angela was looking forward to the climbing the next day. She was always athletic, challenging her body. They were both very fit. That was why they insisted on going first whenever we rock-climbed. We were right behind them in the
morning. You and Nadia were going to go next, remember? Michelle and I were going to be the last ones.”

  Will paused to light another cigarette. Nadia coughed. “Should I open a window?”

  It was too cold to open a window.

  “No,” Evan said. “Larry, can you please quit smoking?”

  Will put the cigarette away. “We all reached the rock face at seven-thirty. It was intimidating, seeing the way the rock had a dangerous overhang, with rocks a thousand feet below. The view from the top was supposed to be awesome – all the mountains – but first you had to get up there. Angela climbed first, with Larry following, while we stayed on the ground, waiting for Angela to reach the top. The first moment I knew something was wrong was when I heard Angela scream. I looked up and saw them both falling. I couldn’t believe it was real. I felt sick when I heard their screams end on impact. Everything was so quiet. I didn’t know why it had happened until Michelle told me.”

  Evan saw Will nudge Michelle.

  “What do you remember?” Will said.

  She answered it a slow, dead voice. “Angela was climbing up the overhang when I saw her slip. But it wasn’t her fault. She slipped because Larry deliberately jumped away from the face, yanking her off. The safety lines would have saved her after thirty feet, but Larry had undone each piton as he climbed, so there was nothing to stop them falling the entire way down. It was horrible. You could see they were dead. There was nothing we could do.”

  “We should have taken a phone with us,” Nadia said. Her voice sounded more dead than Michelle’s. “We should have called 911 immediately.”

  “We didn’t think we needed our phones,” Evan said. “I made a call as soon as we got back to the lodge. It was all we could do.”