The Killer Inside

by Lindsay Ashford

  ‘Are you okay, Dom?’ she asked, as she settled into the armchair opposite him.

  ‘A bit tired,’ he replied. His lips turned up slightly at the edges. It was a ghost of his usual grin. ‘It all kicked off again last night – didn’t get much sleep.’

  ‘What was the problem? Was it because of Carl?’

  He nodded. ‘It always happens when there’s a death in here. Doesn’t make any difference if it’s a suicide or an overdose. It freaks people out, you know?’

  ‘I can imagine.’ She leaned forward in her chair, her eyes searching his. ‘Dom, I know this must be really hard for you, because Carl was a mate. It must be doubly hard because you were the one who helped him get off drugs in the first place.’ She hesitated, wondering if he was up to being questioned. ‘There’s something I need to ask you, though.’ His eyes met hers. The weariness in them was tempered with the warmth he’d always shown her in the past.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘It’s okay.’ He coughed and swallowed. ‘I’m okay. Really.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well,’ she began, ‘what you said before, about there being nobody on this earth who might have driven Carl to suicide – what if it wasn’t that?’

  He blinked. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Did Carl have any enemies in here? Anyone who might have wanted him dead?’ She watched his face change. The brow furrowed and the eyes narrowed. It was a look of incomprehension.

  ‘You think he was murdered?’

  ‘It’s possible, yes,’ she nodded. ‘I’m going to tell you what the post-mortem revealed, but no one else in the prison knows yet, so you didn’t hear it from me, all right?’

  ‘Yes, okay…’ Her words seemed to have knocked him off balance. ‘What happened?’

  When she told him about the strychnine his eyes widened. His look of disbelief changed to revulsion when she explained that agonising muscle spasms would have caused the fixed grin on Carl Kelly’s face.

  ‘Christ, if only I’d been there!’ He shook his head. ‘What a bloody awful way to die.’

  ‘There was nothing you could have done,’ she said gently. ‘It only takes a tiny amount of the stuff to kill someone. And the effect is irreversible.’

  He sat for a moment, his head bowed, staring at his hands. She had never seen him looking so lost, so vulnerable. She felt an almost irresistible urge to put her hand on his shoulder. But she fought it. To touch a prisoner, to step over the professional boundary, was an absolute no-no. Never before had she felt like doing this. But she had never met a prisoner quite like him before.

  Here was a man who had been locked up for thirteen years in the most appalling conditions and yet there was some untainted, almost innocent quality about him. Two years ago, when she had first set eyes on him, her initial impression was of a powerful, muscular man who was not to be messed with. It had come as a surprise to learn that he was a counsellor – and a good one at that. But there had been a moment, just a week into her research here, when she had glimpsed what lay beneath the tough exterior. Fergus had been escorting her to the counselling room when a message had been relayed that Dom Wilde was with an inmate on the wing they were passing through. Fergus had taken her to the cell and lifted the viewing panel, allowing her to see what was going on inside.

  A distraught man was slumped on a bunk with tears streaming down his face. As she watched, Dom reached out and took his hand. It was obvious from the manner in which he did it that this was the gesture of a man who was not afraid to be seen showing compassion.

  Now here she was again, looking at him. His head was bent and his eyes closed. This time he was the one who needed compassion. She leaned closer, until there was only an inch or two between their heads.

  Suddenly his eyes snapped open. ‘Why do you think it was murder? I mean, it could’ve just been a dodgy batch of brown…’

  Her face flushed as she straightened up in her chair. ‘Yes… I…er…’ She felt as if he’d caught her doing something underhand. She blinked and took a breath. ‘I know that’s the obvious conclusion, but if it was a batch of the stuff you’d expect more deaths, wouldn’t you? If not in the prison itself, then in the wider community.’

  He considered this. ‘Yes, I suppose you would. You’ve checked, then?’

  ‘I’ve talked to the police about it, yes. Not that they were very forthcoming.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he shook his head. ‘I’ve seen it time and time again. They don’t give a stuff about deaths in prison.’

  ‘Well, they certainly didn’t buy my theory about Carl,’ she said. ‘But the more I think about it, the less far-fetched it seems to be. The question is, who would want to kill him?’

  ‘No one I can think of. He hadn’t had any recent run-ins with anyone. Like I said, he was keeping his nose clean. Didn’t want to screw up his chances of getting a transfer to an open prison.’

  ‘What about that incident you were telling me about earlier? The attack on a prison officer in the laundry – was Carl involved in that?’

  ‘He was there, yeah,’ Dom nodded, ‘but he didn’t actually do anything.’

  ‘But he didn’t help the guy who was attacked? He walked out with the others?’

  ‘Well, yeah, but there were ten of them in there. Why pick on him for revenge? And anyway, it was ages ago – why wait till now?’

  Megan shrugged. ‘Well, no. It doesn’t add up, does it? It’s just that if the screws are bringing drugs in for the prisoners and a screw wanted revenge on someone…’ Her eyebrows framed the question.

  He shrugged back, but said nothing.

  ‘I was talking to one of them before I came to you,’ she said. ‘His name’s Al. He as good as told me he was bent.’

  ‘Megan…’ Dom tailed off with a sigh. ‘Please don’t ask me to name names. I can’t risk it, you know? I know I said I’d help you but that was before…’ He shook his head and lowered his eyes, as if he was ashamed of what he was about to say. ‘I might not always show it, but I’m desperate to get out of this dump. I’ve wasted so many years of my life and I don’t want to throw any more down the pan. I want to be able to walk in the fresh air, get a job and somewhere decent to live. And I want to find my daughter.’ He pressed his lips tight, as if just saying the word caused him physical pain. ‘Do you know what I’m trying to say? It’s different now. Carl’s death has upped the ante. If I start dishing the dirt now I can see myself leaving this place in a pine box.’

  ‘Okay, Dom,’ she whispered. ‘I hear what you’re saying. But just tell me one thing, will you – and you don’t have to say anything – just nod or shake your head. Do you think Carl got that lethal dose of drugs from one of the prison officers in here?’

  ‘I can answer that,’ he nodded. ‘And I can tell you this: there are at least half a dozen screws bringing gear into this place on a regular basis. They want paying in cash from the outside. Carl didn’t have anyone on the outside to do that for him. Not any more. In the beginning, when I first met him, he had a pal – someone he used to deal for – who owed him a few favours and made sure he got supplies. But a couple of months after I got here he told me his pal had been shot in some turf war. Bit of a silver lining in that, ‘cos it helped him kick the habit, not having a regular supplier any more. Not sure he would’ve got himself clean if it hadn’t been for that.’

  ‘What about that girlfriend you told me about? Could she have been getting hold of drugs or money for him?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Why? Did he talk about her? Did he tell you why she’d decided to hook up with someone like him?’

  He shook his head. ‘He didn’t tell me that much about her. I know she had big plans for when he got out, though.’ His face creased into frown lines. ‘I was chuffed for him and all that but it surprised me, because she hadn’t been coming to see him for very long. And she wasn’t the usual type you get writing to guys in prison, you know? They tend to be ol
der and, well, sadder, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘But this girl was young and attractive, you say?’

  ‘She was, yes. But Carl was a good-looking guy as well. I guess they just clicked. And why would she have been so keen if she knew he was back on drugs? Why would she want to set up home with a smackhead?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Megan considered this for a moment. ‘What about that other thing you told me – about the guy he killed in a fight over drugs?’

  ‘That was a long time ago. More than fifteen years, I think he said. It’s like the thing in the laundry – why wait that long for revenge?’

  ‘What if someone’s been biding their time? Maybe a mate of the dead man who’s been in prison and only just got out? Did he ever say the name of the person he killed?’

  Dom screwed his face up. ‘He did, yeah. It was something weird out of the Bible. Let me think… Noah, or Ezekiel or something…’ He scratched his head. ‘No, I’ve got it: Moses – that was it. Moses Smith.’

  The sun was setting as Megan walked away from the prison. It set the shinier gravestones in St Mary’s churchyard ablaze with colour. There were some huge, elaborate memorials; towering angels with chipped wings and noses, harking back to a time when this was a prosperous, respectable area of Birmingham.

  She was searching for the last resting place of Moses Smith. There was no particularly good reason for this. But she had to pass through the graveyard anyway and she felt impelled to find something, anything, that connected to Carl Kelly’s past. She had felt the same about the Birmingham prostitutes whose killer she had brought to justice just over a year ago. Like Carl, they were vulnerable people on the fringes of society. And – also like him – they were regarded by the tabloid-reading public as deserving whatever gruesome fate befell them. One thing that had struck her during the many post-mortems she had attended was that in death, everyone is equal. If some rock star or politician had been found dead from strychnine poisoning the press would be howling for an explanation. In her view, Carl Kelly was no less important.

  It took longer than she expected to find the grave. The stone was smaller than average and the inscription was almost obscured by a stand of rose bay willow herb that had seeded itself directly in front of the black granite slab. All that was visible was “RIP Mos”. She bent down to push the pink-headed stalks aside. Now she could read it all. There wasn’t much: “RIP Moses ‘Mo’ Smith, 13.1.60 – 14.3.91.”

  As she straightened up she noticed something else. There was a rectangular patch of bare earth at the centre of the grave. All around the grass grew thick and coarse, but in the middle of Moses Smith’s plot, the ground had been disturbed. She stood staring at it in the fading light. Had someone else been buried here recently? His wife, perhaps? It seemed unlikely that burials would still be taking place when the church itself was derelict. And anyway, the patch looked too small for that. It was barely three feet long and only a couple of feet wide. Not even big enough for the wooden caskets they put people’s ashes in. So what had happened? Had someone deliberately interfered with the grave? And if so, why? Could it have something to do with Carl Kelly’s death?

  She shivered as the dying rays of the sun lit up the clods of earth at her feet. The police would have to be told about this. And if they wouldn’t listen she would come back here tomorrow with a camera. And a trowel.

  Chapter 5

  There wasn’t time to go home. Megan was due to meet her friend Delva Lobelo for drinks at one of the bars overlooking the canal basin. She’d planned to shower and change, to wash the vile smell of the prison from her skin and her hair. But she’d spent longer than she intended with Dom Wilde.

  The walk back from the prison took her to the rear entrance of Heartland University’s Department of Investigative Psychology. She paused when she reached the reserved space where her car was parked. Glancing up at the windows of the building she noticed that there were still a few students in the library. What was the betting one of them was Nathan MacNamara? She knew that part of the reason she didn’t want to go back to her office to check the phone messages and emails that had no doubt piled up during her afternoon at the prison was because of him. It was getting ridiculous. It was as if he could sense her presence in the building. She was going to have to ask the admin people to intercept him if they saw him coming along the corridor. With a heavy sigh she climbed into the car. She would just have to put off checking the emails until she got back home.

  But there was one thing she wouldn’t put off. Before driving out of the car park she punched out the number of West Midlands Police on her mobile. She was halfway across the city before the switchboard managed to locate DS Willis.

  ‘A disturbed grave? At St Mary’s?’

  She could tell from the inflection in his voice that he had her down as a timewaster. The unkempt graveyard of a derelict church was a prime target for local louts. Why should what Megan had spotted be anything other than a random act of vandalism? The fact of the grave being that of Carl Kelly’s alleged victim failed to impress him. Kelly had never been convicted of murder and he wasn’t interested in what he obviously regarded as tale-telling by a fellow inmate.

  With a grunt Megan ended the call. Put that way, it did sound pretty flimsy. But there was something about the way the grave had been disturbed; it was all so…neat. Why would some bored teenager bother to dig a perfect rectangle on the top of someone’s grave? Far more effective, surely, to spray graffiti on a tombstone or knock the head off an angel. She could almost imagine kids exhuming a body for a gruesome prank, but they couldn’t possibly have got a coffin out of a hole that size. She frowned as she searched for a parking space along the canal basin. It didn’t add up. There had to be an explanation, but it wasn’t going to come to her tonight.

  There was a large mirror at the entrance to the bar and she winced at the site of her reflection. Her long black hair was windswept and her olive skin looked sallow in the fluorescent light. She darted into the ladies and rummaged in her bag for one of the many lipsticks that lurked at the bottom. Her fingers closed round the silver tube of a Body Shop number called Pink Ginger. It did an instant brightening job on her face. Glancing down, she adjusted the long silk scarf that had slipped into two unequal tails on the walk from the prison. Great things, scarves, she thought, for hiding a bulging tum.

  Pulling a wry face at herself in the mirror, she reached for the door. She’d long since stopped worrying about what she looked like next to Delva, who was a statuesque West African with Naomi Campbell cheekbones. The last time the two of them had been out together they’d been called ‘an exotic pair’. The comment had come from an elderly man who was somewhat the worse for drink and he had incorrectly guessed that Megan was Brazilian. People usually had her down as southern European. Her mixed Welsh/Indian heritage was an unusual one and she liked the way it kept people guessing.

  She walked through to the bar and immediately caught sight of Delva’s braided hair, which twisted round her head like a sculpture. She was chatting to the barman, who was beaming at her, no doubt revelling in the kudos of serving someone he’d seen on the telly. Delva was anchorwoman on the local news channel and she had just finished her shift. In a red linen pencil skirt and cropped jacket, she looked as if she’d just stepped off the catwalk. No matter how hectic her day had been, Delva’s clothes were always immaculate. Megan wasn’t sure how she did it. She supposed that being on camera every day made her ultra-conscious of her appearance.

  But Delva’s personality was the total opposite of the model-girl image. Off screen, when she opened her mouth the first thing you were likely to hear was her amazing, throaty laugh. It was so loud and so deep that it took people by surprise. It was the kind of laugh that made it almost impossible for those who heard it to keep a straight face. Megan heard it now, booming across the room as Delva caught sight of her.

  ‘Hiya –what you having? He’s making me a Pink Lady!’ Delva guffawed at the barman, who grinned back as he poured a
lurid-coloured liquid into a silver cocktail shaker.

  ‘Well, I er…’ Megan hesitated. She felt like a drink to loosen her up after the prison visit. ‘I think I’ll have a small Pinot Grigio.’

  ‘Oh come on! It’s Happy Hour!’ Delva batted her on the bottom with her Louis Vuitton handbag.

  ‘Oh, go on then!’ Megan sank onto a bar stool, suddenly aware of how tired she felt. But a few sips of Pink Lady seemed to have a remarkable effect on her state of mind. She and Delva moved to one of the little booths at the far side of the bar where they could chat without being overheard. Delva started regaling her with tales of the latest shenanigans in the newsroom and Megan found herself almost crying with laughter. It was like listening to an episode of Drop The Dead Donkey.

  ‘Anyway,’ Delva said, downing the last of her cocktail, ‘tell me about Jonathan. How’s it going?’

  ‘Well,’ Megan said, rolling her eyes, ‘he’s in Australia at the moment as an expert witness in a murder trial. And the week before that he was in Bosnia, so I haven’t seen much of him lately.’

  ‘Bosnia? What was he doing there?’

  ‘He was with a team of forensic anthropologists, trying to identify victims found in a mass grave. It’s an ongoing thing – he’s supposed to be going back there as soon as the trial in Australia’s over and done with.’

  ‘Ugh – rather him than me.’ Delva shuddered. ‘It must be awful. ’

  Megan nodded. She had started seeing Jonathan Andrews while they were both working on a murder case in Wales. As one of only two professors of forensic dentistry in the world, he was in great demand. He was based in Cardiff, so getting together wasn’t easy. He also had a teenage daughter from his marriage, which had ended when the girl was three years old. Juggling his job and seeing his child left little time for a relationship.