The Death Collector

by Neil White

  ‘Before Aidan, where did she work?’

  ‘Just in the library. Nice and quiet, except when the kids wanted to hog the computers.’

  ‘And it was no one there?’

  ‘They were all women who worked there, so no.’

  Joe nodded slowly. ‘I’m sorry for bringing all this up again. I’m sure it must be painful. And I hope you’re right, because it means that the right person is in prison.’

  Roy clenched his jaw. ‘And if he isn’t the right person?’

  ‘I aim to find out who it is and get Aidan out of that cell. Then perhaps I’ll have done something useful with my career.’

  Forty-six

  Carl closed his eyes as he thought about what would happen next. He felt hope for the first time since the man had locked him up. There was someone else to help him. An adult.

  The cellar had been returned to darkness, the lamp turned off so that the man didn’t spot it as he returned home. Emma was still wrapped up in Carl’s coat, leaning against him for some extra warmth, but she would have to give it up when he returned. Her skin felt cold against his, goose bumps on her legs, and she was shivering. All they were doing was waiting. Carl couldn’t do much, his arms still chained behind his back. They had tried to find a way to undo it but there were no tools in there. It was a high-quality bike lock threaded through some chain and needed more than the pieces of broken glass strewn across the floor. There wasn’t even anything they could have used as a screwdriver, so that she could have taken the lock from the door and raise the alarm. It was just an empty cell. So it was all down to Emma.

  ‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ she said, her arms round her knees.

  ‘You’ve got to,’ Carl said, suddenly desperate. ‘He thinks you’re dead. If he finds out that you’re not, he’ll just kill you all over again.’

  She was quiet, and then, ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘Can you use it?’

  There was the soft tinkle as Emma tapped the broken glass on the floor. ‘I’m going to have to.’

  She had torn some of the lining from Carl’s coat to wrap around one end, so that she would have some protection as she fought with it.

  ‘Just grip the base of the glass and shove it hard into his neck,’ Carl said. ‘You’ll have the element of surprise. Get right under the ear, cut off the blood supply to the brain. He’ll die straight away.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘My biology teacher told us. You’ve got to make it good. He’s got to die or we’ll never get out.’

  Emma put her head to her knees. ‘I’ve never hurt anyone. Not physically, not on purpose. This is so extreme.’

  ‘So is dying. And that’s what waits for you if you don’t do it.’ Carl was trying to stay calm, he needed to keep Emma with him, but he knew he was making her take all the risks. He spoke quietly when he said, ‘You can’t die. You’ve got children. They need you. That’s your choice. Do it for your children, if no one else.’

  A pause, and then, ‘All right. For them.’

  They sat in silence for a few more minutes until there was the sound of a car outside. Emma tensed.

  ‘Quick, we need to be back where we were before,’ Carl said. ‘Throw my coat into the corner.’

  Emma helped Carl to his feet and placed the noose loosely around his neck, so that he’d be able to pull his head out if there was a way of helping her. She put the gag back in place and scuttled across to where she thought she had been lying before. She gasped as she took off the coat, the cold air hitting her naked body. She tried her best to adopt the same position, one arm pointing along the floor, the other down her leg.

  Then there was silence.

  The engine was turned off. Carl listened to the slow crunch of the man’s footsteps outside as he made his way to the front door. Carl tried to slow down his breathing, but his chest was pumping hard, nervous, scared. The front door clicked and then slammed, followed by the steady thumps of his feet on the wooden hallway.

  The man didn’t come down the stairs straight away. Carl willed him to, so that they could try to end this, but there were just everyday sounds upstairs. The hiss of the kettle. The ping of the microwave. The radio was turned on, a local channel filled with chat and the occasional song. Nothing modern. Emma stayed in her place and more than an hour passed before the cellar door opened, the time measured by the sound of the news bulletins floating down to them. Carl tensed and closed his eyes. He wanted to cry out for his mother, but he couldn’t give anything anyway. The man began his slow journey into the darkness of the cellar, the light from the hallway framing his body.

  The light stayed off. Carl was pleased. The man wouldn’t see the light rise and fall of Emma’s body as she breathed, or the tenseness in her limbs as she waited to pounce. Carl knew the broken glass was curled into her palm, so that it wouldn’t catch a glint from the light that filtered down from the hallway.

  Carl groaned, but it was deliberate, to let the man know that he was feeling low, to keep his concentration on him and away from Emma on the floor.

  The man stepped over her, the rise and fall of his leg caught in silhouette. That made Carl angry. He had treated her like discarded rubbish, like Emma was just something he had to clear up.

  When the man reached him, he pulled down Carl’s gag with one hand. Carl made a show of stretching his mouth and swallowing, as if he had been desperate for hours for the release.

  ‘Let me go, please,’ Carl said, his voice low.

  ‘I can’t do that,’ the man said. ‘I thought you’d be dead by now.’

  Carl shook his head. ‘I want to survive this.’

  The man stepped closer, his face right in front of Carl’s. ‘No one leaves. Haven’t you got that yet?’

  ‘Why not?’ Carl said. He had to keep him talking, so that his attention was on him.

  Emma moved. She was pushing herself up from the floor, slowly, quietly, her body framed in the faint light.

  ‘You could still leave,’ Carl said, as Emma stood up and turned towards him, her movement exaggerated and careful. The broken glass was held out like a dagger. ‘They’ll track you down to here anyway. You could just let me go and run.’

  Emma crept forward, hunched over, just a few feet behind him now. Her arm was raised.

  Carl swallowed. ‘What difference does it make if you kill me?’ he said, his voice getting faster. ‘I could tell them what you told me, why you did it.’

  The man cocked his head, looked almost amused.

  Emma screamed as she lunged at him.

  He turned, surprised.

  Emma’s arm came down hard, twice. She screeched with effort. He cried out and fell towards Carl but Emma kept on coming, slashing at him, the broken glass like flashes of brightness in the dark. There was a splash of something on Carl’s face, sticky and warm.

  ‘Keep going!’ Carl shouted, and pulled his head out of the noose and kicked out. The man shouted out in pain. He was stumbling backwards. Carl ran forward, kicking out some more, screaming obscenities. The man fell to the floor. Carl was stamping, his foot finding the man’s stomach.

  Emma pushed past Carl and raised her arm high for one more strike down when the man kicked out towards her. His shoe smashed into her left knee and she cried out in pain. Her leg crumpled, her hand on her knee, shouting, desperate and scared now. There was a tinkle as the broken glass skittered across the floor.

  The man moved quickly, scrambling up and pushing his shoulder into Carl’s midriff and charging him. Carl was propelled across the floor until the wall stopped him, the scene ahead blurring as his head banged against the bricks. He slumped down, groaning.

  Emma was on the floor, crying out. The man rushed towards her, snarling. He straddled her. His hands went round her neck.

  ‘Emma!’ Carl screamed, trying to get onto his knees to help her, but his head was still dazed, so that he stumbled back onto his side, every movement made harder by the chains around his wrists.


  Emma was on her back as the man pushed down on her.

  Carl was crying out, scared. He tried to shuffle towards them, but he was too dazed. Emma was lashing out with her fists, trying to knock him off, her head thrashing, her good leg kicking out, but it was no use. The man was using all of his strength to pin her down, his hands tight around her throat. A stream of saliva hung down from his mouth as he bared his teeth in a grimace. He was winning the fight. Emma’s struggle became less frantic, more laboured. Carl got to his knees again, his head forward, sucking in breaths, trying to clear his vision.

  Carl ran towards them, kicking out, but the man ignored them.

  ‘No, don’t!’ Carl screamed.

  The man was screaming too, in effort, in anger. Emma’s feet were kicking against the floor but he just carried on, until after a few more seconds her body went still.

  Carl sank to his knees, his forehead on the cold floor, and sobbed.

  The man sat back on his heels, his hands on his thighs, his face upwards, breathing hard, gulping in air. There was blood on his face, glistening in the light that shone from the hallway.

  After a few minutes, his head dropped forward, his chest not rising and falling as much, and then he pushed himself upright slowly, as if he was exhausted.

  He went to Carl and grabbed him by the hair. ‘You’re next,’ he hissed into Carl’s ear, and threw him to the floor.

  The man staggered towards the stairs, his footsteps unsteady, using his hand for support against the wall as he went upwards. Before he closed the door and thrust Carl back into darkness, there were wide red streaks visible along the wall.

  Silence didn’t fall on the cellar this time. It rang with the sound of Carl’s cries, lying on his side, deep sobs wracking his body. Emma was dead. And the man was right. He was next.

  Forty-seven

  Joe threw down his keys as he walked into his apartment, Hugh behind him. Sam had called again, wanting to see him privately. Joe had chosen the apartment, where he wouldn’t be disturbed.

  He pointed towards the balcony doors and said to Hugh, ‘Shall we go outside?’

  Hugh looked around. ‘Yes. I’d rather sit somewhere with a view.’

  ‘Are you saying my apartment is austere?’

  ‘Functional.’

  ‘Cold?’

  ‘Lacking a warm glow.’

  There was a buzz on the intercom, and a quick check of the camera revealed it to be Sam. Joe buzzed for him to come up and opened the apartment door so that Sam could walk right in.

  Hugh led the way, Joe following, and as they settled on the chairs on the balcony the door to the apartment clicked shut. Sam had arrived.

  When he appeared, his work suit was looser than usual, with his tie pulled down and his top button undone. He looked at Hugh and said, ‘I thought we’d be alone.’

  ‘Hugh is helping me with Aidan’s case,’ Joe said. ‘He was Aidan’s lawyer first time round.’ He pulled out a chair. ‘Sit down.’

  Sam followed the instruction, nodding politely at Hugh.

  Joe gestured towards Hugh. ‘Have you two met?’

  Sam thought about that for a moment, and a flicker of his eyelashes betrayed the return of his memory. ‘A few years ago, when I was a younger cop.’

  ‘And you remembered?’ Hugh said, beaming.

  ‘Yes, but not for the reasons you might like. You weren’t courteous to me at all. A bit pompous, in fact, beaming in your suit like I was just someone to trick.’

  ‘And were you? Tricked, I mean?’

  ‘Some mugger walked away from what he had done, knocked an old lady over for her purse and left her frightened for the rest of her life.’

  Hugh’s smile faded slightly. ‘I was doing my job,’ he said. ‘By the sounds of it, a bit better than you.’

  ‘I know we all have jobs to do,’ Sam said. ‘It just seems like mine is the one that ought to go the smoothest, because right is on my side, isn’t it?’

  Joe sat back down again and said, ‘That is probably a good place to start.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Joe rested his arm on the balcony rail. ‘I know what drives you, Sam. Ellie, justice, doing the right thing. I wish I could be that noble sometimes. You do your job because you think you’re on the right side. But what if you came across a case where the wrong thing had been done, where there had been a grave injustice, and all due to the actions of someone from your side? What would be the right thing then?’

  ‘Are you talking about Aidan Molloy?’ Sam said, his eyes narrowed.

  ‘Humour me.’

  Sam sighed. ‘Okay, if you really want my opinion, that isn’t going to happen. If a case goes anywhere, it has got to convince a lot of people. Us, the prosecution, and then a judge. If there is something wrong, it will be found out.’

  ‘But if it is founded on lies, and the lies are believed, who would know?’

  ‘That’s always been the way, Joe, but don’t get all precious,’ Sam said, his tiredness making him react to the argument he’d had with Joe too many times. ‘I don’t know how often I’ve seen people get away with bad things just because people like you have presented some fake alternative that explains the evidence. It just isn’t right that you get it the easy way.’

  ‘You allege it, so you prove it. That’s how it should be.’

  ‘All I know is that we have to have some degree of certainty before we take anyone to court. All you need to do is spin a bit of doubt, so everything is weighted in your favour.’

  ‘I’m talking about something different this time.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘What if we could show with some certainty that a person was innocent, and that police lies had put that person in prison?’

  ‘That’s a pretty serious thing to say, Joe.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And this is about Aidan Molloy?’

  Joe nodded. ‘I’m still looking at it.’

  Sam paused as he thought about that. ‘I’m here for the same reason.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Joe said, confused.

  ‘You’ve heard about me finding David Jex on the moors?’

  ‘Hell of a coincidence.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so, but that’s just how things are sometimes.’

  Sam rubbed his eyes. Joe knew he was just creating a space for his thoughts. Eventually, Sam said, ‘If you’re going to accuse a police officer of telling lies to get Aidan convicted, you need good proof, solid unassailable proof.’

  ‘And if I had it?’

  ‘I’d take it higher.’

  ‘What if that was part of the problem?’

  ‘You need to stop talking in riddles,’ Sam said. ‘We’re sharing here. If you won’t tell me, just let me go home and I can spend some time with my family.’

  Joe exchanged glances with Hugh, who gave a small nod of his head.

  ‘How much do you remember about the Aidan Molloy case?’ Joe said.

  ‘He was convicted of killing the assistant chief’s daughter,’ Sam said. ‘That raised his profile, and his mother is always in the paper, and campaigning and leafleting.’

  ‘Mary Molloy,’ Joe said, nodding. ‘She’s a powerful woman. Has never stopped fighting for her son.’

  ‘But since when was justice about who had the loudest voice?’

  ‘It’s not. It’s about getting the right person for the right crime. Aidan is the wrong person, and the reason for that is someone in your force.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘DCI Hunter.’

  Sam started to respond, but then stopped, surprised. ‘Hunter?’

  Joe nodded slowly, letting Sam’s thoughts catch up.

  ‘So tell me,’ Sam said.

  ‘He convinced witnesses to change their stories to fit his theory that Aidan had done it. I’ve spoken to two of them. A young couple. One admitted it, more or less, and I think I can get her to repeat it in court. There is no other evidence. No DNA. No saliva. No blood spatter. It is all ba
sed on eyewitness evidence and items that could be planted.’