The Death Collector

by Neil White

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Have the police charged him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So until they do, he won’t earn any money for the firm.’

  ‘You’ve changed,’ Joe said. ‘When you first joined, you were all about justice. Don’t become like them.’ And he flicked a hand towards the people in dark suits heading towards the courthouses.

  ‘I still am about justice, deep down, but I’ve heard the whispers just like you have,’ Gina said. ‘The department doesn’t make enough for the firm and they want the rooms to do something else. If we don’t start billing more, we’re in trouble.’

  ‘I know that, and the whispers are getting louder.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I saw Tom earlier. He laid it out pretty bluntly.’

  ‘So try to forget about the boy,’ she said. ‘If he turns up, what’s the problem? If he never does, where’s the profit?’

  Joe thought about that, and tried to read more into his memories of Carl, but all he could remember was nervousness about a secret he wanted to share only with Joe. ‘Thank you, Gina.’

  She let go of his hand and passed him the two files. ‘You need to be in court in thirty minutes. You better get walking.’

  He took the files from her and looked at the covers. Routine cases. An assault. A shoplifter. The daily drudge. Sometimes amusing, sometimes repetitive, but often fun. It was the courtroom he would miss if he gave it up. The little dramas and the insights into people’s lives that he wouldn’t get otherwise. And it wasn’t just the gritty stuff, the everyday gutter tales. Life behind respectable curtains often carried as many dark hues as those played out at the more embattled ends of the city. The scams carried out to repay gambling debts, or the never-ending neighbour wars over foot-sized strips of land.

  ‘Okay, I’ll forget about Carl,’ Joe said. ‘I’ll do the paperwork and close the file.’

  Gina smiled as he creaked to his feet. ‘It doesn’t mean that we forget about these people,’ she said. ‘I think about Monica all the time. I sit here sometimes, like you do, but you’re the only criminal lawyer in the firm. You’ve got to keep it going for everyone. We’ve all got bills to pay, and that’s why we do the job.’

  ‘I hear you, I’m going,’ he said, raising his hand in submission, smiling now.

  As he walked out of the gardens, Gina was still sitting on the bench. He knew she was right. Honeywells was a business. Carl Jex had been a customer, for the briefest of times, and he would gain nothing by thinking about him.

  Except it was all he could think about as he walked towards the court, the files under his arm. Carl Jex had wanted someone from Honeywells, as if that was some link to whatever secret he had. His mind went back to the dark outline of Carl as he walked along the shadowy lane to his house, the place at which he never arrived.

  For all Joe had said about closing the file, he knew he couldn’t leave it alone.

  Eight

  He sat back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other, and raised his glass to his forehead, the chink of ice cubes cooling the film of sweat, the light amber of the single malt a warm glow in the room. He could see her through the liquid, her body distorted by the glass. The pressure in his head was a constant pounding, his tension almost too much to bear.

  She was cold now. Her limbs had become stiff with rigor mortis. It had set in as he lay across her but he hadn’t left her until he felt all the life in her body slip away, like a slow release, a long hiss.

  This was the risky time, the waiting, with her still on the floor; but he always left them like this. He had to see the change from who they were, so that nothing was left of the person he’d known. It was the only way he could deal with the comedown, dehumanising them in order to keep away the darkness that threatened to swamp him.

  It was different this time though. The police had been to his house. He’d sent them away, told them he wasn’t interested, a shrug, boys will be boys, a peep through the curtains, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t come back. And what of the young man he had seen being taken away? Why had he been looking through his window? Who was he?

  No, things were different and he had to act differently. He couldn’t afford to wait for the rigor mortis to slacken before he disposed of her.

  He smoothed down his trousers, sleek grey mohair with a sharp crease, Italian styling, and tapped his lips with his fingers in a fast rhythm.

  He was distracted by the chime of the large and ornate silver carriage clock on the mantelpiece. She would be along in a moment. He looked towards the window and out at the view along a curving suburban street of bay fronts and mock-Tudor peaks, with grass verges that separated the pavement from the road.

  She was a few minutes late, and he saw the flush of her cheeks as she walked quickly. She was always alone, so he guessed that she was new to the area. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her body was hidden under a drab jumper and jogging pants, her arms folded across her chest, heading to work at a small warehouse a few streets away

  He closed his eyes with frustration. He would never get to know her. This was it, the beginning of the end. He’d always known it would come one day. That’s just the way. He had no escape planned. Where could he go? No one stays on the run for ever, and this was his home. Wherever he looked he could see the memories his parents had left behind. Their furniture. Their paintings. Photographs of them on the bureau in the corner of the room. Their laughter, their talking. And their screaming. He remembered the screaming.

  He clenched his jaw and closed his eyes as he was transported back to their regular Sunday ritual. The music on the record player, the crackle of the fire, both his parents enjoying a whisky from the decanter, the treat before the grind of the working week started. His father the builder, hardworking and tough, hands scarred by his job.

  He shook his head. Nothing good comes from memories. They’re not around any more. He had to deal with the present. With her.

  So what now? He could do the usual thing, but he remembered the face at the window, the flashing lights as they took him away. It was over, he knew it, unless he could get some protection.

  Then it came to him. The plan. He wouldn’t enjoy this, but there was no choice.

  Joe was distracted by the steady tick of the second hand on the clock at the side of the courtroom. The chairman of the Bench, a red-faced man whose neck was spilling over his shirt collar, was berating his client, a shoplifter whose plea of innocence had been ignored. It was the same old collection of last chances and warnings of dire consequences if he should steal again. Joe knew they would be ignored.

  The trial had been brief. Kai Redburn had tried to claim that he was just showing the radio to his friend outside, the plausibility of which had been destroyed when the prosecution used his previous convictions for shoplifting – thirty-eight of them – and the wide-eyed innocent explanation had been seen for what it was: bullshit.

  Joe had tried to warn him, but Kai had summed it up better than Joe had by proclaiming that he had nothing to lose, because who goes to prison now that they’re all full? Kai expected another minor sentence, another warning not to do it again, and that’s what he was getting. His life would drag on for another year of unheeded warnings as he got through each day by hawking stolen items around the pubs near the estates. Razor blades and coffee used to sell well, but with the economy gone to shit, his client did better with cheese and bacon and baby wipes.

  The case was over before Joe realised. There was a noise behind him as Kai left the courtroom. Joe looked up to the Bench; the chairman was leaning back now and talking to the two magistrates on either side. His outrage had all been for show.

  Joe gathered his papers and looked across to the prosecutor, who was scrolling through her laptop as she tried to find the details of the next case.

  She looked up briefly and said, ‘He keeps us all in work.’

  Joe looked towards the court door, which was closing s
lowly. ‘Some of us, I suppose,’ he said, and then followed Kai out of the courtroom.

  Kai was waiting for him outside, pacing up and down the corridor and then holding out his hand to shake. ‘Thanks, man,’ he said, grinning, and then he went, heading for another day that he hadn’t yet worked out how to get through. Whatever occurred to him, Joe doubted it would be legal. The prosecutor had been right – the system ticks over with people like Kai, who was simply one of the small ripples between the bigger cases.

  Joe went to the window and waited for Kai to emerge onto the street, and then watched him as he strolled past the designer shops just off Deansgate. Kai didn’t even glance at them. Those shops would be safe because Kai would be spotted. They were as out of reach for him as a thief as they were for most people with jobs. It was the discount shops where Kai succeeded; although the rewards were smaller, the chances of being caught were lower. He went for safety first, no gambles. Like an easy-access saver account, it was low risk but low return.

  So went his own life, doing this for Kai because he had his own bills to pay, a slog through the low end of the law just to get through another day. He wasn’t sure he was much different to Kai, except that he coated his life in respectability, in a suit, in a profession. Like Gina said, they were all just trying to pay the bills.

  He ran his free hand over his face. His cheeks felt warm and tired, and too little sleep made him feel maudlin.

  It wasn’t just tiredness, though. A lot of the enjoyment had been knocked out of his career when Monica was killed, a sweet young trainee who died because of her connection with the firm, at the hands of a dangerous client Joe should have protected her from. Before then, the job had been fun, but Joe had felt guilty about enjoying it ever since. A memorial bench in a small park wasn’t enough. And now Carl Jex was missing.

  He doubted whether any harm had come to Carl. He was a kid and had spent the night in a police station. The wide-open spaces must have held greater appeal than facing his mother, but her concern niggled at him. Carl was worried about something, and now his mother was too. It was all connected to the Aidan Molloy case, or so it seemed.

  As Joe walked away from the court, he knew where he was going, and why.

  He sidestepped through the lunchtime set, the suits and bustle and busy clicks of heels, and into Crown Square, peering through the tables of the Swiss Restaurant and towards the modern concrete blight of the Crown Court.

  She was there.

  It was like a vigil. A small wooden stand, like a newsagent’s A-board, with AIDAN MOLLOY IS INNOCENT printed on the front like a headline. A woman stood next to it. Her hair was long and dark and she was wearing a bright yellow T-shirt with Free Aidan Molloy written across her chest. She was giving out leaflets, although most people ignored her. Not through ignorance, Joe guessed, as many smiled an apology, but because they’d had the leaflet before. Aidan’s mother was a regular feature outside the court.

  Joe walked towards her, slowly, not sure whether it was the right thing to do. As Gina said, his job was to make money to ensure that everyone’s wages got paid. But he remembered Carl Jex from the night before and his curiosity pulled at him.

  Aidan’s mother looked up as he got closer, her face brightening at the thought of an interested person. He held out his hand for a leaflet and she smiled as she passed it over, her hazel eyes shining.

  ‘He’s innocent,’ she said. Her voice carried a faint Irish lilt, as if it had been a long time since she had lived there.

  He held up the leaflet and said, ‘I’ll read all about it,’ before walking on.

  He looked back at her as he went. Her smile had gone, her face reset into a mask of determination. He was going to go back and ask if she knew anything about Carl Jex, but he knew that it would lead to questions that he had refused to answer for Carl’s own mother.

  Joe looked at the leaflet.

  It was glossy and double-sided. One side was filled with a picture of Aidan Molloy, an awkward-looking young man with too much weight around his cheeks and a thin smile, along with the shouted proclamation of innocence that adorned the A-board behind Aidan’s mother. He turned it over to read the other side.

  I am Mary Molloy and I am the mother of Aidan Molloy.

  Five years ago, Rebecca Scarfield was murdered and taken to Saddleworth Moor. It was a lonely place to be left, an act almost as cruel as the one that killed her. My son is not capable of something like that.

  Aidan is a gentle man, guilty only of having few friends who could speak up for him, but I can. I am his mother, the person who knows him best of all.

  Witnesses lied about my son. They lied about where he had been. They lied about the things he had done. The people telling the lies included not only people who barely knew Aidan, but the police too, the very ones who should be finding the real killer. Those lies were believed by a jury and now my son spends every night in a prison cell, wondering why he is there, wondering when someone will attack him for what they think he did.

  My son is innocent. Campaign for his innocence and help catch the real killer, who is still out there, amongst you.

  God bless my son, and God bless Rebecca Scarfield, for her killer has not yet faced justice.

  It was long on passion but short on facts, an impassioned plea from a desperate mother. It could all be true, but Joe knew too well from his own court experiences that it could be nothing more than disbelief, that clinging onto the idea of injustice was preferable to the reality that her son had murdered someone.

  He had to forget about it. Gina was right. Forget about Carl. Forget about Aidan Molloy. Do the paperwork and move on.

  He stopped as he heard his name being called, and as he looked up he saw his brother, Sam, walking towards him. Kim Reader was just behind him, smiling.

  Joe returned the smile. Sam thought it was meant for him, so he smiled along too, and then said, ‘We were talking about you earlier, and here you are.’

  ‘This is my area of the city,’ Joe said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Just a case that needed to go before a judge, to get some witness summonses.’

  ‘Hope it’s not one of my cases,’ Joe said. ‘I don’t want you making them any stronger,’ and then to Kim, ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, and she moved her bag to her left shoulder, her hand on the strap. She was blushing, glancing at Sam.

  Sam saw the exchange and said to Kim, ‘I’ll let you two talk. Catch me up.’

  Once Sam had walked on a few yards, she said, ‘How are you, Joe?’

  ‘You know, the usual.’

  ‘I haven’t seen much of you.’

  ‘I’ve thought the same of you.’

  ‘You know where to find me,’ she said.

  ‘And you me,’ he said.

  He wanted to say more but didn’t know what. He and Kim had been intimate in the past, a few drunken nights at college, a little flirting across the courtroom, but their timing had always been out. They were never single at the same time, and Joe didn’t do infidelity.

  Instead, he smiled at her dopily until Kim pointed to the leaflet in his hand and asked, ‘You taking the case on?’

  Joe looked back towards Aidan’s mother, who had resumed her position, trying to interest passers-by. ‘I was just interested in what she had to say.’

  Kim followed his gaze. ‘She used to come to our office, asking us to look again at the case, but it’s been gone through so many times. So she started going more public.’

  ‘Those closest to offenders often see things the least clearly,’ Joe said.

  ‘That was my line,’ Kim said, and then smiled ruefully. ‘It’s sad, though. I’m sure she means well, but she needs to move on and accept what he did.’

  ‘Would you, in her shoes?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps when I’ve children of my own, I’ll see things differently.’

  ‘Or less clearly,’ Joe said.

  She moved as if to go, but then hesitat
ed, placing her left hand on his arm and giving it a squeeze. ‘It’s good to see you again, Joe.’

  ‘Yeah, you too.’

  Then he noticed her hand as he looked down. Something wasn’t right. There was a half-smile on her lips. She wasn’t wearing an engagement ring any more.

  Kim let go and started to walk after Sam. Joe was going to say something, but for a moment he couldn’t think of the right words. So he watched her go, talking to Sam as they walked back towards the prosecution offices.

  Joe’s walk back to his own office had more bounce than before. Seeing Kim had given him a spark that had been missing.

  He read the leaflet again. His thoughts returned to Carl Jex and the secrets he had promised to reveal, somehow related to Aidan Molloy. And now, just a few hours later, Carl was missing.