“I’ll visit you as much as I can,” he whispered. Sykes barely noticed him. Dawson got into the car and started it up. He reversed from the clearing and drove the car away.
Miller stood facing the sun. He waved to Dawson as he drove down the hill, past Dixon in the Panda car. He turned away when he could no longer see the Mercedes. He placed his hands in his pockets and looked off into the distance, down onto the town of Horwich. He could feel a tear form in his eye and let it roll down his cheek freely. It had been the worst day he had ever experienced, both professionally or otherwise. Another tear came and traced the track of the first.
Then he heard the gun go off.
Sykes was slumped on the deckchair, the top and back of his head was missing. His hand still clutched the gun, twitching violently.
“Aww fuck,” muttered Miller as he began sprinting away from the horrific scene, back towards Dixon in the Panda.
Chapter Thirty Four
MCP Headquarters, 5.40pm
Miller decided that he was going to finish the day with a bottle of Glenfiddich and twenty Marlboro. He’d decided that as he sat in the Panda car while Dixon drove them back down the hill. He couldn’t wait to feel that warm satisfying heat from the malt as it rushed down his throat, through his chest and fizzled out in his gut. He couldn’t stand the overpowering desire to taste the choking smoke as it hit the back of his throat. He was determined that he was going to get shit-faced pissed.
But he also had a nagging regret about the way that he had left his wife without an explanation earlier. It felt like it was such a long time ago. She would know about Karen by now, she’d probably have worked it out from the TV news. Miller needed to comfort Clare, and that need was growing stronger.
But first, he needed to finish everything else that had to be done, and he wanted it to be done quickly. Dixon was left to see the necessary people while Miller worked out what was being released to the press. He looked at the clock above Ellis’s desk. It was time.
Miller met Dixon in the corridor. He smiled politely at his superior who looked extremely dissatisfied.
“Everything sorted?” Dixon gave a disapproving nod.
“Okay then, let’s do it.” Miller breezed on ahead of Dixon, straight into the conference room. Dixon had to stride quickly to keep up with him.
As he entered the conference hall the noise quickly ceased. Miller could feel the nervous expectation in the room. He’d never seen the hall so full, nor had he ever known it to feel so tense, or sad. He stepped up onto the stage and looked at the expectant faces. Dixon stepped up just behind him. Miller sat in his seat. He could see the countless faces wondering what he was doing here, especially as he sat there in his scruffs. The cameras began flashing and filming.
“Thank you everybody. We have a major announcement today. If we can all show some respect, that would be greatly appreciated.” Said Dixon. He nodded sombrely in Miller’s direction.
Miller began to speak.
“Ladies and Gentlemen. Today is not only one of the saddest days in my life, but it is also one of the darkest days in the history of the Manchester City Police Force. It is with deep regret that I announce to you all that our dear colleague, Acting Detective Chief Inspector Karen Ellis is dead.” Miller’s voice struggled through reading his mate’s name out, the emotion was clear in his shaking and stuttering.
The gathered media personnel already knew this. But this was the official announcement. It was now okay to go public with the story.
“Will you all please join me in one minute’s silence as a mark of respect.” Miller and Dixon stood and looked down at their shoes, leading the rest of the people in the crowded hall. Miller felt a tear break free from his eye. He wanted to wipe it away but he couldn’t. It began sliding down his face.
When the minute was over, he looked around the room and thanked everybody for their show of respect. The camera bulbs began flashing at the tear that had left its track down DCI Miller’s cheek. He and Dixon sat back down on their seats. He began his memorised statement.
“Karen Ellis was shot dead today as she went about her duties. She had set off this morning to interview a witness in the Radcliffe area with her colleagues Detective Constable Worthington and Detective Constable Chapman. Detective Sergeant Saunders was travelling in a separate car, as was Karen Ellis. As the officers drove along Radcliffe Road in Little Lever, Detective Constable Chapman was in collision with another vehicle which was pulling erratically out of Avenham Close. I’m sure most of you will have seen the television pictures of the two cars. By what I can only describe as a freak and tragic coincidence, the car that Detective Constable Chapman crashed into was being driven by the man we have all known as “Pop” for the past twelve days. This fact, incidentally has only been discovered in the last couple of hours, after the fatal shooting of Acting Detective Chief Inspector Ellis. What happened next has horrified everybody. In a bid to escape, panicking that his cover had been blown, Pop grabbed Karen Ellis, we believe in the hope of taking her hostage and to flee the scene. It was around this time that the gun was fired. Pop then got into his own car with another hostage, a neighbour, and drove away, it appears that the vehicle he had originally been driving belonged to somebody else, possibly in a bid to keep eye witness reports off his trail. Our officers pursued him but lost sight of the car after a short chase. Roughly one hour later, the gunman’s neighbour, who had also been used as a hostage, walked into Horwich police station and revealed the gun-man’s hideout.”
The reporters, researchers and journalists were frantically trying to get everything that Miller was saying.
“So, the conclusion of today’s horrendous events, is that “Pop” or to use his real name of Peter Sykes of Avenham Close, Little Lever, Bolton, has confessed to all of the crimes, and before I could bring him into custody, has committed suicide with the same weapon that killed Karen Ellis. That’s all I have for you at the moment. No question’s today please.”
The Journalists all respected Miller’s request. There was no shouting, no rowdiness. There was just a dignified quiet. They too were sad that Ellis had died. They were sad also, that Pop’s campaign was finished. They were stunned that Pop had committed that atrocious crime, and that he then turned the gun on himself. That he basically chickened out, that he never faced up to what he did.
Everybody walked out of the conference hall in a state of shock. The whole Pop story should never have ended like this, it didn’t seem right. It just felt as though Pop had tricked everybody, every single one of the millions of people who had invested such affection and trust in him.
EPILOGUE
Dear D.C.I Miller,
It seems so long ago now. I know it’s only six months, but honestly, sometimes it actually seems like years.
The memories of that day are still dangerously raw. Healing wounds you might say, though that sounds incredibly indulgent. Many people were affected by those events. People whose lives changed beyond recognition, and not for the better I might add. Because of me. I know that you are one of those affected.
I think of Karen Ellis everyday. Well, more to the point I think of her husband, her baby, her friends. I think about her parents too. I think of you Mr Miller, of the other officers who were her friends. I feel so much guilt about it, but as time has gone on and my life seems to have changed so dramatically, I can’t help but think that maybe I’m being a little tough on myself.
Mr Miller, you have made me think about a few things. I used to have a question that I wanted to be answered so much that it actually made my head ache. That question was to my daughter. To Sarah. For years I had wanted more than anything in the world to be able to ask her, “When I stood in your room for nearly three hours asking you what was wrong, why did you not tell me? Why could you only tell me in a note that was to be read after your death?”
I know I’ll never find the answer, though I have probably considered a thousand. I know that I wouldn’t have known what to do if she
had. If she’d told me that. Of course I’ve played the scenario out in my head more times than I could ever remember. I’d confront him. I’d kill him. I’d make sure that he never touched another person again. I’d make him pay.
But for whose benefit? For Sarah’s?
No. That’s the honest answer. I could make him die the ugliest, nastiest, most unspeakably torturous death that rational, clear thinking decent minds could never even imagine.
But then I would have to go home. Then I’d have to see Sarah, look at that dark horrible cloud that would hang above her head from the moment she awoke until the second that she fell asleep. That’s when I’d know that whatever it was that I’d done was never, ever going to take her pain away. Nor mine.
It’s a question that has been eating away at me from the moment I walked along that path by the lake where I found her body. But I have a new question now, one that has taken over from Sarah’s. The question is to Peter. I just want to know why he loaded that gun so secretly. I knew he wanted to kill one, or ten or whatever, but he should have told me. If he’d asked, then I’d have let him. Everything would have turned out so much differently. But I don’t believe that. I don’t really think it was loaded for the purpose he said. I truly think he was going to kill himself with it. He’d already said that he couldn’t face the prospect of dying in a hospice bed, feeling the pain of his life slipping away. He told me that he just couldn’t cope with the prospect of Margaret sitting by him, watching, waiting for him to die.
Maybe that was why the gun was loaded, to use as a suicide tool. It’s a possibility, though it begs the question - why didn’t he keep it empty until it was time? Or was it time? Was he planning to kill himself on that Friday afternoon anyway? Was the prospect of my impending arrest the final straw for him?
You see, he loved Sarah so much. It crushed him when she died, probably just as hard as it did me. I think that his feelings went largely ignored. But he had to be strong all the way through that. We all did, though we were strong to differing degrees.
It was a chaotic time - Sarah was dead, my wife Alison, of course died just a week or so after Sarah’s funeral. Lisa was understandably confused as she tried to grieve for her sister and her mother at once, of course we weren’t about to tell her what exactly had happened. She thought for years that her beloved mother, and her adoring sister had been in a car crash.
Well, what would you have said?
Lisa had so much to deal with, and at such a tender age. Peter was the boss at this time. He ran me, my life. He had to let himself in and make me get out of bed of a morning. He tried desperately to keep everything together in our house and his own. Peter had always been like an extra Dad to them both, he really was.
He was my manager. He managed me for years, making sure that I was making a go of it. I cry when I think of what he must have been going through all the while. He was our guardian angel, Peter. He pulled and dragged me through those first couple of years kicking and screaming.
I can believe that he wanted to kill one, especially after I’d started and he’d been diagnosed. I should have offered. I feel selfish for never letting him feel that sense of accomplishment. I should have offered.
I just want to know for sure. I’d just like to fully understand the reason for Karen Ellis’s death.
But as I said, I’m beginning to rationalise my feelings. I’m starting to think that maybe I shouldn’t carry the full burden for the tragic consequences. So that’s what I intend to do. I intend to move on, just like you told me to Mr Miller. You have spared me from spending the rest of my life in prison, something that I was prepared to do, but ultimately something that I didn’t really want to do.
So, after I left Peter sitting there, crying into his phone, after you waved to me like an old friend might as I drove Peter’s Mercedes away, I did a little stock-take. I decided that I had spent far too long feeling angry, full of self pity. I decided that I had nothing left but the rest of my life. As I drove through the police road block, the TV crews and all those onlookers at the bottom of the Close, and pulled up outside my house, I decided that I was going to at least try and live the rest of my life.
Margaret and I are living together now. Not like that, just as mates. Total, one hundred per cent support is what they offered me and Lisa, unconditionally. And I intend to repay that. Margaret is one of the greatest people I have ever known, and her heart is broken, once again. We share a twenty-five year bond. We have been great friends. We have shared so much heart ache in the recent times - so much joy in the earlier years. So yes, Margaret and I are trying to rebuild our broken lives. The fact that we are doing it together makes perfect sense to us. We grieve for our loved ones together, we laugh about the happy days together. We understand each other, where we are, what we are going through.
Where do we go from here then? Well, that’s been the subject of a lot of discussion. We’re going to take our time, take it steady. See how it goes.
Maybe we’ll leave Avenham Close now. Make new memories, new friends somewhere else, somewhere that we are unknown, and our history is unknown. It’ll be hard leaving these people, these memories, but I can’t stop thinking that it’s time to wipe the slate. Time to move on.
With the prospect of leading fresh lives, the past may get easier to leave behind. I don’t know. I’m just so glad that I achieved my goals, specifically - my goals were reached in Peter’s name, and in Karen Ellis’s memory. When they announced the new mandatory life sentences for paedophiles, I wept.
I wept for Peter, for Karen Ellis, for Eric Wallace and for the hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect victims of paedophiles in this country. I wept for Lisa, for Alison and Sarah. But I also wept for myself. I think I’ve started to come to terms with things, which I really never thought would be possible.
Despite Karen Ellis’s appalling death, the public’s conscience had been aroused by my killings, my phone calls, my arrest and “suicide.” And they demanded action. They did it, all of them.
Like everything that I have achieved in my life since that fateful morning by the lake, this is all down to one man. Peter. I’ll love him forever.
I hope that you don’t mind me hand delivering this letter to your house. I will wait until you leave for work before I post it through. I thought that it was the decent thing to do to write and thank you for giving me a second chance at life. I am determined to make the most of it. I hope that you will burn or shred this letter now, and once again, from the very bottom of my heart, thank you Mr Miller.
Yours truly,
George
The End
© Copyright 2014
By Steven Suttie
ALSO BY STEVEN SUTTIE
MILLER #2 NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL
The Haughton Park development just outside Manchester is an exclusive new suburb of expensive homes for professional families. When the developer fails to sell half of the properties, the project is thrown into financial chaos.The local council steps in with a workable solution. They propose to use the unsold homes as social housing for homeless families, in return for the much needed cash injection that the developer needs to pay the bills.
It’s a win-win situation. Or is it?
Many of the home-owners are up-in-arms at the proposal. They don’t want the place over-run with 'scrubbers.' They start a media campaign to stop the plans. But they are defeated. The homeless families are given temporary accommodation on the swish development.
Mum of four Rachel Birdsworth is one of the new residents, and she’s determined to get past these stupid class differences. She does her very best to get along with everybody and make new friends. It all starts off quite well. But when she realizes that the home-owner across the road is a wife-beating bully, and that his wife is a virtual prisoner in the home, she wants to help. But this kind of help has deadly consequences.
DCI Andrew Miller is back, trying to get to the bottom of what exactly has happened over at Haughton Park in this heart
-stopping, dark thriller from One Man Crusade author Steven Suttie.
"Totally gripping"
"Can't put it down"
"Found myself laughing a lot even though it was a gritty thriller. Fantastic!!"
ALSO BY STEVEN SUTTIE
MILLER #3 ROAD TO NOWHERE
Off-Duty Police Sergeant Jason Knight from Bolton police station has disappeared whilst cycling in the Lancashire countryside. His wife raised the alarm. Jason is not the kind of man who would go missing. Something is very clearly wrong. The disappearance quickly becomes a full-scale alert, and counter-terror police are on standby, monitoring the situation extremely closely.
DCI Andrew Miller is drafted in urgently to try and figure out what the hell is going on, and why Knight might suddenly disappear. It's a race against time to find the popular, well respected Sergeant.
Meanwhile, the local press are calling for Miller's resignation following the infamous "Neighbours From Hell" trial, and newspaper revelations that suggest Miller could be responsible for an apparent miscarriage of justice.
If Andy Miller thought that he already had enough on his plate - he's about to discover that there's plenty of room for more, in this fast-paced, gritty thriller set in Manchester and The Trough of Bowland, in the heart of Lancashire.
“5 Star Must-Read!”
“UN-PUTDOWNABLE!”
“Road To Nowhere is yet another highly enjoyable and gripping read.”
ALSO BY STEVEN SUTTIE
One Man Crusade : DCI Miller 1: The Serial Killer Nobody Wants Caught Page 38
