Next to Die

by Neil White

  ‘No. I need to talk to the family again, just to finally rule out another possible explanation. We get enough routine runaways each year to make sure we don’t jump to conclusions. They usually turn up around Piccadilly in a short skirt, but they are not normally from families like this. We need to brief them before we put them in front of the cameras, because they’ve got to be able to stop any questions.’

  ‘Is someone with them now?’

  ‘Yes, the FLO. We’ll see if she’s got anything to tell us.’

  Sam nodded. The Family Liaison Officers were seen by some as hand-holders, but they were experienced detectives sent in to be a constant presence. Most murders happen within the family, and so the FLO look out for things that make them suspicious, all under the guise of sympathy and quiet reassurance.

  Sam knew what would come next. They would take apart Julie’s room, and then take apart her life. Her friends would be spoken to, her college, her computers checked. All her intimate secrets would be revealed.

  ‘Were there any leads from any of the other girls when you went through their stuff?’ Sam said.

  Evans shook her head. ‘We hoped the computers might show up something, like some stalking or grooming, but nothing has turned up.’

  ‘So what do you think, ma’am?’

  ‘My guess?’ Evans said. ‘They’ve been snatched, except they haven’t turned up yet, which is unusual. If someone has gone missing and been killed, they usually turn up in woods somewhere.’

  Sam’s jaw clenched and he felt the jab of grief rush at him. Just a casual remark, cop to cop, but she was there again. Ellie. He had to learn to lock her away, although it always felt like a betrayal when he thought like that.

  He followed Evans out of the back of the station to the car park, where they got into her silver Astra. As they set off, Evans said, ‘Don’t say anything. We’ve got to look grimly determined when we pass the reporters.’

  Sam stared straight ahead as the car emerged onto the street. Some of the reporters turned round, but as there were no sirens and lights it didn’t interest them too much. Once they were clear of the press, Evans said, ‘I’ll keep the family talking. I want you to search Julie’s room, and I mean a proper search.’

  ‘If Julie is dead, that room will be all they have left,’ Sam said.

  ‘So don’t disturb anything. Just make sure that you look everywhere. Under the mattress, in all of her drawers. Look for any kind of a diary, the kind of thing that she might have hidden away. Scraps of paper. Go through her computer. Just find anything that gives us an idea that she had secrets.’

  Sam tried not to smile as Evans drove away from the station. He was at the heart of the investigation. Now it was up to him to impress, whatever enemies he might have made in the squad. He knew he was seeking some kind of redemption for Ellie, that he was the older brother who lived every day with some residual guilt for not protecting her. But if that stopped another murderer from going free, his reasons were not important. All that mattered was that no one else died.

  Twenty-Eight

  When Joe got back to the office he went quickly to the top floor, to where Gina worked in a cramped room with the slope of the roof as a wall, just across the corridor from where the trainees and clerks flirted and joked and sometimes worked.

  He walked straight in, breathless from the rush up the stairs, but then he raised his hand in apology when he saw that she was on the phone.

  Gina put her hand over the receiver. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘I went to see a man about his evidence.’

  She held up her hand to indicate that she had to finish her call. He paced as she said her goodbyes. When she hung up, Gina said, ‘I’m trying to line up a QC for the trial. I know it’s early, but like you said, we need to try to scare off the prosecution early.’

  As Joe nodded approvingly, she asked, ‘So what’s got you all excited?’

  ‘I’ve got our back-up plan.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Our main defence has to be that Carrie and Grace are still alive. That’s what I want you to focus on. Search for her. Speak to anyone who knew her and just follow the trail. If she’s run away because Ronnie hit her, then she won’t want to be found. Try to get funding for an enquiry agent, someone who will sit outside a house all night in case one of Carrie’s friends is keeping her hidden.’

  ‘And if we can’t find them?’ Gina said.

  ‘Rely on whichever blood expert Monica comes up with.’

  ‘But Ronnie gives an explanation for it.’

  ‘Yes, and it sounds like he’s making excuses,’ Joe said. ‘We have to keep picking at the prosecution case so that Ronnie doesn’t have to make his excuses. We need to get the case thrown out, not rely on Ronnie to explain himself out of it.’

  ‘Got any ideas who we should use?’

  Joe thought about that. ‘Concentrate on a lab we haven’t used before.’

  ‘Why? They might give us an opinion we don’t like.’

  ‘They won’t, because they will want to please us, so that we give them more work. The ones we normally use won’t mind giving an unfavourable opinion, because they give us enough of the right ones. Someone new will see this as a chance to show us what they can do. Find someone who trades on their own, not as a research spin-off or part of a big consultancy. If they don’t need our money, they won’t give us what we want.’

  ‘Sometimes this job makes me feel dirty.’

  ‘You’re not in the search for truth anymore,’ Joe said. ‘You’re in the doubt-building business. Truth doesn’t come into it.’

  ‘So is that your back-up plan? A blood expert who’ll give dodgy opinions?’

  ‘No,’ Joe said, and then he grinned. ‘Like I said, I’ve been to see someone.’

  ‘I get the feeling I’m not going to like this.’

  ‘We want to show that Carrie and Grace are alive, but if the jury thinks that they’re dead, we have to provide other possibilities. It doesn’t have to be Ronnie.’ When Gina didn’t respond, Joe added, ‘Terry Day, Ronnie’s landlord.’

  Gina sat back and frowned.

  ‘What’s that look of disapproval for?’

  ‘I might work for you now, but I was a cop for thirty years.’

  ‘Go on, give it to me,’ Joe said, his eyes rolling. ‘Lay the guilt trip.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘He’s a witness. You can’t keep on approaching him directly.’ When Joe went for his pocket, Gina waved her hand. ‘Don’t get the voice recorder out. It doesn’t record how you behave, just the words you use. It won’t work for everything.’

  ‘Come on, Gina, it’s not just that, is it? You’re getting a pang of conscience about Terry Day, I can see it.’

  ‘Well, maybe, because Ronnie’s landlord might just be an innocent in all this, and from my time working with victims and witnesses, what they all say is that the criminal process left them feeling dirty, as if they were somehow to blame.’

  ‘And it bothers you that we’re going to throw a few red herrings around?’

  ‘Yes, it always has, but you know that. To you, it’s just a tactic, something opportunistic. To Terry Day, it will be a stain that will hang around him for the rest of his life, and even if Ronnie is convicted, in ten years’ time someone will try to claim that it was a miscarriage of justice, and so Terry Day will be brought up again.’ She sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Joe, I know I’m supposed to think differently now, because I work for you, but I saw the effect of defence tactics on witnesses and victims, and it’s not pretty.’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ Joe said. ‘It’s human, don’t lose that, but we’ve got a case to win, and we’ve got to do it.’

  There were a few moments of silence, then Gina said, ‘So what do we do then, about Terry Day?’

  ‘We find out what we can. I want to know about his past, his full adult life. If there is anything about him – and I mean anything – that we can use, I need to know about it.’
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  ‘Do we have his convictions yet?’

  ‘Too early. We’ll need to do our own digging, and you’re the best person for the job. Use that soft voice you used when you were still in the police. Ask around. People open up to you.’

  Gina shook her head and then laughed. ‘Okay. It will get me away from here for a while.’

  ‘Remember you’re not a cop anymore. This is even dirtier.’

  ‘And what about Monica?’

  ‘I’ll let her work with Ronnie. He seemed to like her.’ And then he left the room.

  As Joe headed for the stairs, he felt his cockiness slip. His thoughts weren’t too far from Gina’s. All he had done was train himself not to listen to them.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. He looked at the screen and saw an unfamiliar number.

  ‘Joe Parker,’ he said.

  There was a small laugh. ‘You sound very official.’

  It was Kim Reader, using her office phone.

  ‘Hang on, let me get back into my room,’ he said, and walked quickly through the building until he was able to close his office door for some privacy.

  ‘Sorry, Kim. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m just calling to apologise for last night.’

  ‘You’ve no need.’

  ‘I have. We’ve been friends for a long time, and sometimes more than that, and I just… well, work got in the way of that.’

  ‘I saw it the other way round, that our friendship got in the way of work. I was exploiting our friendship, and so I should be the one who is apologising.’

  ‘I didn’t see it like that.’

  ‘We can’t rewrite our history, Kim, and talk about work and pretend that our past doesn’t exist. It’s the same with our present. We can’t just meet up and ignore the Bagley case.’

  ‘Why not? We should be able to meet up as old friends and talk about something other than work.’

  Her voice was hesitant, and Joe was silent for a moment as he listened to the words she hadn’t said but which hung heavy in the conversation. The invitation, the desire to meet again. Before he could stop himself, he said, ‘I would like that. Tonight.’

  ‘Good. I’d like that too. Not the same place though.’

  Joe could hear the smile in her voice. ‘What, you’re not a real ale fan? Okay, you pick.’

  ‘How about Duke 92?’

  Right across the road from his apartment. ‘Not there,’ he said. ‘Meet in The Ox and we’ll go from there.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Kim said, before hanging up.

  He stared at the handset. He knew he was heading towards something that was wrong, but there had been no part of him that wanted to say no.

  The phone on his desk rang. When he picked it up, it was Marion, from reception.

  ‘Mr Bagley is here.’

  ‘Send him up.’

  Twenty-Nine

  Sam walked behind DI Evans as she approached the door to Julie McGovern’s home.

  The house was large and detached, with gravel in place of what had once been a front garden, and fake Tudor beams fastened to the first floor. There were some reporters by the gate, blocking the way, so that anyone entering or leaving had to work their way through the scrum. As the front door opened, the sound of camera shutters disturbed the peace, desperate to capture the delivery of bad news.

  The Family Liaison Officer opened the door. She was an older woman, a detective seeing out her career, where her experience became expertise.

  Once they were safely inside, Evans said quietly, ‘How are they?’

  ‘Julie’s mother is upstairs, sitting on the girl’s bed, crying. Her father is pacing, trying to be strong, but getting angrier all the time.’

  ‘Get the mother downstairs. We need to search Julie’s room.’

  The FLO turned and went upstairs, and so Evans went into the main room. Sam followed.

  The faked ageing of the house continued on the inside, done out like a cottage, with wooden flooring, a blackened fireplace, yellow walls and flowers in rustic vases dotted around the room. It looked like something from a magazine article, rural in a suburban setting.

  Julie’s father turned as they went in.

  ‘You took your time,’ he barked, his hands on his hips, a purple tinge to his cheeks, dressed in grey trousers and a yellow golfing top.

  Evans paused before she answered, and when she spoke, her voice was calm. ‘We are setting up search teams and speaking to all of her friends.’

  ‘And is there any news?’

  Evans paused. ‘Not yet.’

  A woman walked in. Julie’s mother. She was wearing a grey T-shirt and saggy jogging bottoms. Her face looked bleached out and her eyes were red. She looked at her husband but he turned away from her, so she went to sit down. The FLO walked in and gestured with her head towards the stairs that the coast was clear.

  ‘This is DC Sam Parker,’ Evans said. ‘He’s going to look through your daughter’s things.’ Sam nodded a greeting to them. ‘Are you all right with that?’

  Mrs McGovern was about to say something, but Sam stopped her by saying that he would be respectful. She smiled thinly, her eyes watering, and so he went towards the stairs.

  Julie’s bedroom was at the back of the house, overlooking a long lawn shaped in curves, with a greenhouse at one end and bright bursts of flowers in the beds. The room itself was the curious age-mix of a young woman still at home, with remnants of her childhood slowly replaced by her adult life. There were stuffed bears on the pillow and a statue of a ballerina on the dresser, with a make-up bag and a box of tampons further along.

  Sam went to the dresser first, feeling to the back of the drawers, ignoring the expected contents and trying instead for anything unusual, like paper or a notebook. Nothing there.

  The other drawers were just the same. Jumpers and T-shirts and jeans and shorts. He took out the bottom one to look in the space between the drawer and the floor, where she might keep her secret things, but it was just that – an empty space. He straightened and went towards the bed, clicking on the computer as he went past it. There was a shelf above it, lined with Harry Potter and Twilight books. He lifted out each book to check for anything in them, but they were just books. He lifted the mattress. Nothing there.

  Julie’s computer sat on a desk by the window. It was tidy, but more than just neatness. It seemed like there was attention to detail. When he looked at most desks, they made him uneasy, because there were usually papers strewn across, or pens lying haphazardly. Julie’s was different. The mouse mat was placed in the centre of the desk, exactly in the middle and parallel. There were two pens, one blue and one black, lined up next to each other. A notepad was on the corner, perfectly positioned. Sam was no psychologist, but it didn’t seem like the desk of someone who would do something rash or impulsive. Julie wanted order in her life, some kind of plan.

  There were two drawers in the desk. Neither was locked. Sam looked in the top one. There was a pencil case to one side and next to it an address book.

  He lifted out the address book and placed it on the desk. He would look through it at the station.

  The computer had finished its whirring and was showing a desktop picture of three girls in an embrace, all grinning at the camera, Julie in the middle. Three happy teenagers, looking forward to life.

  Sam went to the email software first. He scanned the messages but there wasn’t anything that aroused suspicion. He was looking for any discussions about Julie feeling low, or any meet-ups planned for the night before. There were just receipts for a few online purchases and routine chatter between friends. He scanned through the documents folder but nothing stood out as unusual. He went to the computer folders, to see whether she had hidden anything away, but none of the folder titles gave any hints.

  He clicked on the internet browser and checked the history, looking to see where she had looked on the internet, whether she had visited any suicide websites or suspicious forums. Or even whether s
he had been trying to find accommodation somewhere. A hotel or hostel. It was blank, cleared out. That struck Sam as unusual. He expected teenagers to be a little secretive about their internet history, but it meant that Julie had cleared it before she went out. Was that relevant? The computer experts would go through the hard drive later, to look for what she had searched for, or the trail of her chat programs, but that would take time.

  None of that was good. If there was something that hinted at deeper problems, then she could end up as a runaway, someone who would go through difficult times but would be alive. But as the alternatives run out, you are left with just one: that she had been abducted and murdered.

  He stopped when he heard a shout from downstairs. He went to the landing and looked over the rail. It was Evans.

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’

  Evans came up the stairs and spoke in a whisper. ‘I’ve just heard from the prison. Ben Grant has said yes. Now is the time. Can you do it?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, you can trust me.’ And in that moment, as the words came out, for the first time he really meant it.

  Thirty

  ‘Ronnie, come in,’ Joe said, and pointed to the chair in front of his desk.

  As he walked into the office, Ronnie seemed uncomfortable. He looked towards the paintings on the walls, pictures of old Manchester hung against bright stripes of gold and white, like an Edwardian drawing room. There were law books in a bookcase, All England Law Reports going back through the years, but they were just for show. The textbooks Joe actually used were accessed through his computer.

  The room was intended to impress, because criminal clients don’t want to put up with the guy above the estate agency. They want to think they have the best lawyer, and so a plush office in a city centre building goes part way to convincing them.

  There was a creak as Ronnie sat down. Joe sat opposite, the barrier of the desk between them. Some firms went for sofas, so the client could be put at ease. Joe didn’t agree with that, because his clients wouldn’t get an easy time in the witness box. They had to answer questions under pressure, and that started in his office.