The Death Collector

by Neil White

  Emma nodded and walked quickly over to the opposite corner of the cellar. She found Carl’s coat and put it on. She was slim and the coat was too big for her, so she was able to cover herself up properly. She wrapped it tightly around her body, her mousey hair trailing over the collar.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and ran to the stairs. When she got to the top, she pulled on the door handle, but it was no good. The door was locked. She banged against it with her shoulder, but the door didn’t move. She sat down on the top step with her head in her hands and started to cry. ‘What’s going on?’ she shouted through the tears, and stamped her foot twice, before whimpering with pain.

  Carl let her cry for a while before he said, ‘He thinks you’re dead.’ She stopped crying for a moment and looked down at him. ‘That’s why you’re here. He was going to get rid of you later.’

  ‘Dead? But why?’

  ‘Because you were going to leave him.’

  She shook her head in disbelief. ‘What a fucking mess,’ she said, more to herself than to Carl. Then she looked across the cellar. ‘And why are you here, like that? Is this some kind of sick game?’

  ‘I got too close, so he locked me up. He hasn’t decided what to do with me yet. I think he’s going to kill me but I’m different to you.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’m not a woman.’

  ‘It’s as simple as that?’

  ‘It seems that way.’

  Emma paused as she thought about that. Then she walked over to him and knelt down opposite. She stayed silent for a few minutes and Carl didn’t try to interrupt her thoughts. Eventually she said, ‘So tell me what you know?’

  And Carl did. He explained to her about his father and why he had ended up at the man’s house and then in the cellar, with a dead woman to start off with and how he had watched the man drag Emma down the stairs.

  ‘He must think he killed you, but for some reason he got it wrong.’

  ‘There was something in my drink. One minute we’re dancing, the next I’m down here.’ Her hand went to her throat. ‘It hurts,’ and then, ‘What now?’

  Carl thought about what the man would do when he came back into the cellar, and he knew that there was only one thing he would do: kill her. ‘We need to sit and wait for him to come back, then hopefully surprise him. Can you find anything to break these chains with?’

  Emma went looking through the shelves, lifting up tins of paint and boxes of weedkiller. ‘It’s just household stuff.’ She carried on searching before shouting out in pain, lifting her foot. She winced and bent down. ‘There’s broken glass down here.’

  Carl closed his eyes in apology. The glass he had smashed earlier.

  Emma carried on looking around the shelves until she said, ‘No, nothing.’

  She knelt down next to Carl and pulled the coat closer to herself. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘We wait, I suppose.’

  They both stayed in silence for a few minutes, until Carl said, ‘Who is he?’

  Emma thought about that for a few moments. ‘I don’t know really,’ she said. ‘He told me he was called Declan, but I don’t know if I believe that any more. Most of what he told me wasn’t true. Why should I believe his name?’

  ‘So how did it start?’

  Emma looked at him and said, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My dad went missing because of whatever this Declan does. If I’m going to understand this, I need to know how it works.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘So you won’t understand.’

  ‘My father is missing and I want to know everything about this man, so I can try to understand that at least.’

  When Emma didn’t respond, Carl said, ‘He told me that he’s a collector, whatever that means, and that once he collects, he doesn’t give up.’

  ‘That’s about right,’ Emma said, almost to herself, her lips curled into a snarl. ‘It’s not too difficult to imagine, is it, even for someone of your age. Good old-fashioned flattery, and I fell for it. I feel so stupid.’

  ‘Tell me more.’

  Emma was quiet again for a few minutes, until she said, ‘I work in a pub in the city centre. Nothing special. It’s a cliché, isn’t it, a barmaid going out with a customer? But Declan wasn’t like the usual drunken crowd.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was intelligent, thoughtful, well-dressed. He’s big but there’s something soft about him. No, not soft. Feminine. He always wore nice jumpers and shirts, and it was his shoes I noticed. Always brown brogues, with leather soles. I could tell they were expensive, but nothing flashy. Declan was always expensive but understated. It just marked him out as different.’

  ‘So what made him choose your pub?’

  ‘I don’t know. He just came in one lunchtime and started drinking and talking. I thought at first he was trying to be cool by hanging around with people who he thought were beneath him, but he made an effort. He seemed interested in people, didn’t seem to look down on anyone, and he knew stuff. It’s hard to explain, but he would just seem to know about whatever people were interested in. He seemed to latch onto me straight away. I don’t know what it was. My shifts changed and he started coming in the evenings. Never getting drunk. Just sitting at the end of the bar, drinking quietly, and I would end up talking to him. He was interesting, but it was more than that. He was interested in me. Wanted to know about me.’ She shrugged and looked down, embarrassed. ‘I was flattered. How stupid is that?’

  ‘So you became his girlfriend?’

  She thrust her hands into the coat pockets. ‘Not straight away. I’m married. Two children. I love my husband, I really do, but it was too safe. You’ll understand this when you’re older. He does his thing, I do mine, and we both make sure the children are all right, but I felt taken for granted, ignored, and there was Declan. Always telling me how nice I looked, always interested in me, and I liked it. It’s vain and it’s silly, I know, but when you get complimented all the time you don’t want it to stop. It wasn’t long before he started asking me out.’

  ‘What about your children? I’d be hurt if my mum did that.’

  ‘Don’t judge me, Carl. That’s not fair. You don’t know anything about life. I said no for a long time, months really, but he seemed determined. He got my number from somewhere and would text me constantly. Late at night and in the morning. I fought it for a while but then he told me he wouldn’t accept my refusal, and soon it got to the point where I didn’t want him to stop. You might understand this more when you’re older, but sometimes it’s just nice to hear good things said about you when your life is all about working and making meals and watching television. So eventually, well, I’m sure you can guess.’

  ‘So how did it come to this, where he tried to kill you?’ Carl asked. ‘He said it was because you were going to leave him.’

  Emma wiped away a tear that snaked down her cheek. ‘I had to end it, and he didn’t understand. When I first started seeing him, he was a real gentleman, and it got pretty intense. He told me he could take me away from everything, that all I had to do was give myself up to him. I just couldn’t get enough of him. I thought of him all the time, but then he started to change.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He knew my situation, right, I told him that. I didn’t want to leave my husband, but he wanted me to, and you have no idea how exhilarating it is to have a man want you so much. But then he got more demanding. Too demanding. He wanted me to do things that I didn’t like. Sexual stuff. You wouldn’t understand, you’re too young, and I wouldn’t leave my husband. It sounds hollow, but my family comes first every time. I just wanted to be cherished. Is that so wrong?’

  ‘So what happened?’

  Emma raised a hand to her face and wiped away more tears. ‘I caught him out, just by chance. I had a night off when I was supposed to be at work, about a month ago, and I went for a drink with some friends. We went into a pub and I saw him at the bar, and
he was talking to the barmaid just like he did with me. Attentive, smiling, and I could tell from her face that she was lapping it up, just like I had. I felt such a fool. He had wanted me to give up everything for him, but I was just another woman, part of a game. I almost lost everything because of him.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I told him that I didn’t want anything more to do with him. I was staying with my husband.’ Her toes traced circles on the concrete floor as she thought about it. ‘I’d seen him for what he is, the devil sitting on a married woman’s shoulder, whispering, nudging, persuading her to join him in his soulless life. That’s what he is, an empty shell. He just wants to destroy what other people have and that he knows he never can. He is just dead inside; he knows it and it kills him.’ She shook her head. ‘I told him he had sold his soul. He got angry because he knew it was true.’

  ‘But why were you here last night if you had ended it?’

  ‘Do you think he was going to let me just walk away?’ she said, her voice raised. ‘Everything had to be on his terms. I wasn’t allowed to be in charge. I’ve met him a couple of times since, to end it, but it always come back to the same thing, that he won’t let me leave.’

  ‘Last night?’

  She looked down, embarrassed. ‘I was going to have one last night with him and show him that I could use him, let him know what he was going to miss out on, and then walk away.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I woke up here.’ She looked at Carl and wiped her eyes. ‘So what now?’

  ‘We try to get out. Use that broken glass. Attack him with it.’

  ‘How can I do that? He’s big and strong and I feel awful. I don’t know what he put in my drink.’

  ‘We do have one big advantage though.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘He thinks you’re dead. So he’s going to get a surprise when he realises you’re not.’

  Forty-two

  Mary Molloy was quiet as they headed back to Manchester. Joe had told her what Nicole had confessed – that the police had talked them into putting Aidan’s number plate into the statement – and Mary’s anger increased. She sat with her knees pressed closely together in the passenger seat, her tan leather handbag perched on top with her fingers gripping the handles.

  Joe tried to make small talk but Mary barely responded, just yes and no. It was only when they left some of the clutter of West Yorkshire behind and started up the long motorway rise towards the Pennine tops that she prompted a conversation.

  ‘Can you see how hard it is for Aidan now?’ she said, staring forward, her jaw clenched. ‘You’ve had proof from her that his case was based on lies. Aidan has to live with that every day.’

  ‘I saw,’ Joe said. ‘Angry, resentful, but resigned in some way to his fate, that not much is going to get him out of there.’ He glanced across. ‘A bit like you.’

  Mary looked back, some flare in her eyes, but as she turned away to look out of the passenger window, Joe knew that she was fighting with herself to keep it together. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her brush the long sweep of her hair to one side and wipe at her eye.

  The motorway droned on, all the towns gone and replaced by rolling green hills and meandering lines of drystone walls. The sunlight twinkled on a reservoir surface. Mary turned to look forward.

  ‘It’s hard for Aidan,’ she said quietly. ‘Every day is wrong for him. He is scared and angry. How can anyone live their life like that?’

  Joe noticed how her Irish lilt became more pronounced when she spoke softly. When she was talking tough, her accent became blunted by the years she had spent in England, but when she softened, and became more of the woman she had been before her son’s injustice had toughened her up, a bit more of Ireland returned.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Joe said.

  She fell silent again, lost in the worries she had for her son, Joe’s involvement being one more fight in a life of fighting, and it stayed that way for the rest of the journey.

  The motorway came off the high points and the drive turned into a long descent into grey sprawl, the fast sweep becoming the stop-start of city traffic as Joe turned off. The journey ended with grids of terraced streets whose names were familiar to Joe from filling out criminal legal aid forms. The area was just layers of immigration, first settled by the Irish and slowly fleshed out by families from Asia and then Africa. Joe stopped outside a small terraced house whose bricks had been painted with anti-graffiti paint.

  ‘It’s to stop people daubing things on,’ Mary said, following Joe’s gaze.

  ‘Why don’t you move?’

  ‘Why should I? I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. And neither has Aidan.’ She turned to Joe. Her face looked stern but there was pleading in her eyes. ‘So what now?’

  ‘I just keep digging and see what I can find.’

  ‘I’ve been looking for longer than you,’ Mary said. ‘Why do you think you can do better?’

  ‘I don’t know if I can, but this case has come to me for a reason.’

  Mary looked back at her house. ‘I didn’t want my life to be this hard,’ she said. ‘I’ve done some things I shouldn’t have done, and I’ve taken knocks, but this?’ She shook her head and let out a long sigh. ‘I used to think that it made me more interesting, like who would you want dinner with: Johnny Cash or Cliff Richard? But now? I think I’ve put up with enough.’

  ‘Tell me your story,’ Joe said. ‘What brought you to England?’

  She paused as she thought about that. ‘Escape,’ she said. ‘And Aidan.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s an old, old story.’

  ‘I’d like to hear it.’

  ‘What is there to tell?’

  ‘Where are you from and why are you here?’

  ‘On the edge of Dublin, on the way out to a little place by the sea called Howth.’ Her eyes misted over as she thought back. ‘I was eighteen and got myself a job in a pub. The Green Dolphin. All the men used to pour in there after Mass, and there I was, all innocence and smiles, and in he walked. Fergus. He was tall and dark and his smile was just too easy. I fell for him.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I had to fall for the married one, and you can work out how that went down. Fergus is Aidan’s father.’

  ‘If it’s too private, you don’t have to tell me.’

  ‘I know, but you’ll understand then how I am like I am. I believed what Fergus told me. He made me promises, told me that we were meant to be together, that he didn’t love his wife any more, and I believed him. It feels like it’s always been that way, that those close to me let me down.’ She allowed herself a little smile. ‘There’s a beach nearby, at Dollymount. Sand dunes and grass and a view towards Dublin. I loved it there. We’d all go there, me and my friends, and those dunes were our own little Lovers’ Lane. And Fergus would take me there in his car, this orange Mazda. I can still see it in my head. The feel of its seat under my skin, the squeaky vinyl. That summer was just the best ever. I was besotted.’

  Her eyes had become animated as she talked about it, but then they darkened when she said, ‘It changed when I got pregnant. He became cold, wouldn’t talk to me. He made his peace with his priest and his wife and that’s all that seemed to matter to him. I was nineteen. A single woman carrying a married man’s child.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I did the one thing you aren’t supposed to do if you’re a good Catholic girl from Ireland: I decided to get an abortion. It was the best thing. For me. For Fergus. Even for his wife, so that she wouldn’t see his child being pushed around in a pram.’

  ‘I don’t know much about Ireland,’ Joe said, ‘but that doesn’t sound like an easy thing to do.’

  ‘It wasn’t. Still isn’t. I had to come to England for it, except my mother found out why I was going and, well, things got a little crazy. She screamed at me. My father hit me, the first time he had ever done that. The things they said to me were aw
ful. Truly awful. Child killer, evil little woman, marriage-wrecker, and I expected it, but it hurt the same. My older brother attacked Fergus in the pub. The priest was round all the time, trying to talk me out of it and telling me that the sin of carrying a married man’s child was nowhere near the sin of killing it. I was nineteen, for Christ’s sake, with enough to worry about, and all this on top. I had to leave, get away, just to get some breathing space. They told me that if I had the abortion, I was gone from the family for ever and that they could never forgive me.’ She looked down and swallowed. When she looked up again, she had choked back the tears. ‘So that was it.’

  ‘What, they turned away from you completely?’