“Exactly. Well, she went first, knowing I’d follow, to protect her like.” Miller could see that this man loved the woman he was talking about. His face changed when he spoke about her, and he seemed to adopt a smile in his voice. His eyes gained a certain moistness.
“Sounds like she’s the boss?”
“I let her think so,” said Mick, smiling. That love was back, it poured out when he talked about her. Miller liked this, he was going to be an easy read this one, he thought.
“Sorry, I won’t interrupt again. It’s very unprofessional. Carry on Michael.”
“Right, so, I went out and the guy, Graham, the bloke I killed, he’s toe to toe with this other neighbour who’d just moved in that day as well. It was pretty obvious that Graham was trying to get Kev, that’s the other neighbour, he was trying to get him to give him a crack. So me and Rach split it all up, told this Kev and his wife to go inside and shut up before they get kicked out. So they went inside, and next minute, this Graham starts giving me shit. He’s calling me a scrounger and a scumbag. Rachel told me to go inside, she started nipping my arm so I knew she was being serious - so we went in the house and a few minutes later, the police came. It was all a set-up you see. Graham had wanted the police to come along when it was kicking off, and his plan had failed. He just looked like a knob. So, then he started giving the police a load of shit, and they chucked him in the back of the van! He was calling them allsorts, so they took him off. He was an absolute nightmare, I’m not joking. Weird, weird bloke.”
Miller was writing down notes as he listened. He was interested that Mick had shown absolutely no remorse for his crime, and it was particularly notice-able when describing the man he killed. If, as he’d said, he was here to confess because he felt awful about taking this man’s life, it wasn’t very obvious – if anything he was contradicting himself by calling the victim a weird bloke. Miller’s instincts told him that something was wrong with this man’s story. Something was definitely wrong.
“So this was what - a month before Graham was killed?”
“Roughly, yeah. I’d say it was about a month.”
“So, if it was the night you moved in. What was the date of that incident?”
Mick looked up at the ceiling and thought about the question. Eventually, after a good think, he answered.
“It was a Saturday, eighteenth of May, because I got paid on the fifteenth, and it was just after pay day.”
Miller continued making his notes.
“Tell me what happened on the night that Graham died.”
*****
Suzanne Ashworth was sat inside a police cell. She had absolutely no idea how long she had been there for. It might have been four hours, or it could well have been fourteen. There was no clock in there, there wasn’t even a sky-light or a window with bars over it. She had no idea if it was still daylight outside, or if it had been dark and was now a new day. Suzanne had been asleep a couple of times, but the smelly, thin plastic mattress they gave her wasn’t very comfortable. It was getting noisier and noisier as the time went on. The kind of noise that other prisoners were making suggested that it was after closing time at the pubs. Drunken, nasty, nonsensical screams and shouts, kicks and slaps against the steel cell doors echoed and reverberated around the place. It was a scary place to be if you weren’t familiar with the police cells at weekend. Suzanne couldn’t understand why she’d been left in the cell for so long. If the police wanted to interview her about Graham, that was completely understandable. But what was the idea of just chucking her in a cell and fobbing her off every time she pressed the assistance button? That’s all that had been going through Suzanne’s head.
It had been a very long time since Suzanne Ashworth had been locked up in a police cell. Almost ten years in fact. But today, tonight or whenever it was, possibly even this morning, she felt as though nothing about the cell had changed in all that time. Even the paintwork looked as damp and flakey as she remembered it. The names scratched into the door fascinated her. She spent a long time reading the names and the pathetic comments that had been painstakingly scratched into the paintwork, most probably by fingernails. Well what else could it be? Wondered Suzanne as she imagined the people who had written such refined remarks as “fuck off twats.” She tried to smile as she wondered why that had been the best that the graffiti creator could think of on the night. But she couldn’t smile. There was nothing to smile about, not even stupid, pointless graffiti written over many hours by a brainless moron.
Suzanne knew that she had a lot of explaining to do, and she was starting to doubt that plan A was going to cut it. Suzanne had always had a plan B lined up, just in case. It was her secret of course, none of the others had been enlightened with the details of plan B.
But, based on the rather unorthodox manner in which the police were treating her, Suzanne suspected that this “let her stew in her own sweat” tactic was a pretty clear indication that the police had enough to bring her in, enough to suspect her of something, but very little else after that. No substance. If the best they had was a tactic of letting her sweat until she was ready to confess, she considered, then the police had made a very significant error of judgement.
As the cell alarms continued to beep, and the police officers carried on clanging the cell door shutters and the prisoners persisted on banging and howling and crying and screaming, Suzanne forced herself to drift off once again into a hazy, difficult half-sleep.
*****
Mick was visibly trembling. He took a deep breath, before starting to tell DCI Miller about the circumstances surrounding Graham Ashworth’s death.
“Well, I do this job on the side at weekends, washing up and chopping up veg and stuff for a restaurant in town. I got home about midnight, it was a Friday because I was watching Live at the Apollo that Rachel had recorded for me. So anyway, I’d had a pint at work, finishing off, and then a few cans of beer at home. I was getting into my red wine and feeling pretty chilled out. Everyone was in bed, and I’m just sat in the living room, loving the peace and quiet, just buzzing off the comedians on telly, giving my nose a good pick and all that, you know what I mean. Next thing, I hear all this shouting. Not in the house though, it was outside. So, I paused the telly and listened. I could still hear it, and I heard a scream so I shot up, went to the door to see what was going on. It wasn’t that type of place, you see. Back on the estate, that kind of thing was normal. But it was really weird to hear it on the posh street. When I got to the front door, I could see Graham in the upstairs window over the road, battering the shit out of his missus. He was shouting at her, she was screaming and crying for help, stuff was getting smashed and that. He was proper hitting her. Honestly, I mean battering the living daylights out of her, punching her, ramming her into walls. It made me feel sick. I thought fucking hell, I just didn’t know what to do. My heart was pounding, and I could hear her screaming and pleading with him to stop. I went back inside, got my trainers on, and ran over. The front door was locked so I went round the back, ran upstairs and he was booting her in the face.” Mick stopped for a second, took a drink of water and wiped his mouth with his sleeve before continuing. “I picked up this object, I don’t know what it was, a metal thing, like summat off an old fireplace or summat. It was just lying there, holding a door open. So I lifted it and rammed it against his head, here.” Mick pointed at his temple. “Just to get him to stop kicking her head in. He fell down to the floor, and I went over to Suzanne. I thought she was dead. Graham was making this gurgling noise, but then he just stopped. He started juddering, shaking like, and then he stopped doing that. He was just lay there staring up at the ceiling. It was proper scary, I mean, I’ve never been that scared before. I just fucked off out of there, I couldn’t believe what was going on, I couldn’t believe none of it.” Mick was looking down at the table. “As far as I was concerned, they was both dead. He’d killed her, I’d killed him. That was what I thought, and I just shot off out of there, wondering how the fuck I�
�d just gone from monging out on my settee to killing a bloke in about two minutes flat.”
The tone of Mick’s voice whilst retelling his story concerned Miller. For such a traumatic, scary, spontaneous situation which he was describing, with such an horrific outcome, Miller thought that Mick’s timbre was just too monotonous. Miller got the sense that Mick was fibbing about all this. It all just sounded too flat and rehearsed. Something was missing from the story. Something that would put a bit of meat on the bones.
Despite his suspicion that Mick was talking shit, Miller continued to play his supportive character to the best of his ability.
“That sounds absolutely horrific! I don’t know what I would have done in that situation.” he said, calmly and compassionately.
Mick could have had no idea that Miller’s suspicions were aroused, the detective looked just as kind and warm, and totally interested in what had happened. He looked like he wanted to help. But Miller’s suspicions were most certainly aroused, he could smell a rat. A dead, festering rat.
“It was. Honestly, I shit you not, it was the worst night of my life. I staggered home, I felt like I was going to collapse in the street, my legs were buckling under me. I got in the house, and noticed I was totally covered in blood. I didn’t know how, I’d not really been rolling around with the guy. So I got in the shower and I started panicking, I was like, shall I phone the police, or just leave it. Then I was worrying about my finger prints on the metal thing, then I started thinking about prints on the front door handle, then the gate handle, the back door, on the banister, and God knows what else I’d touched.”
“Where was your wife while all this was happening?”
“She was upstairs, asleep, in bed.”
“Did she not wake up, you coming in and having a shower?”
“Nah, once she’s asleep she’s asleep. She has sleeping tablets.”
“Which ones?” asked Miller. He just wanted to see Mick’s reaction to basic, straight forward questions. It would help him to pick out any peculiarities in his face or voice when talking about real things, and lying.
“Which what?” Mick’s eyes flicked up from the table top and met Miller’s.
“Which sleeping tablets does she have?” Miller was good at playing the good cop. He was like the kindly teacher at school that all the kids wanted to please.
“Oh, er, the Boots ones. Sleep easy.” He’d looked up at the ceiling again as he considered the question. Miller was happy with that.
“So what happened next?”
“I got dressed, put my trackies on, and went back. I can’t remember everything perfect, it’s like in sections of memory. I’d had a few beers you see, and I was absolutely shitting myself.”
“Just tell me what you can remember, please Michael. Take your time, mate.”
“Well, I went back across to the house, just to see if everything was as I’d remembered it. I took a baseball bat from the garage, just in case.”
“In case…”
“In case that Graham had got up, and was ready to stab me or summat. I just didn’t have a clue what was what.”
Miller was absolutely bursting to ask questions, such as why didn’t Mick just phone the police. But he didn’t want to interrupt the flow. He was making mental notes of points that he wanted to bring up later on.
“Go on.”
“So I went in there, crept upstairs. I couldn’t hear anything at all. It was just all silent, and really creepy. That was when I knew for sure that Graham was dead. I’d never seen a dead body before – but it was pretty obvious that he was dead, he’d gone a really funny colour, like that cheap ham from Tesco. It was freaky, totally blew me away, realising that he was really dead, and I’d done it.”
Mick’s index finger had started tapping on the table-top. Tap, tap, tap. His eyes looked up again and met Miller’s. He looked quite genuine, thought Miller, but his tone of voice was just monotonous, and Miller thought that he sounded quite robotic. He nodded at Mick, encouraging him to continue with his story.
“Suzanne didn’t look dead though, she looked as if she was asleep. I went over to her and she was breathing really heavily, she absolutely stunk of booze, spirits. It was rotten, the smell was hanging. She sounded like she was snoring, and trying to say something, but she was totally out of it - I didn’t know if it was the booze or the kicks in the head. Her face and head was all swollen up, and I just started panicking, I didn’t have a clue what I was meant to do. I didn’t think to phone the police, or the ambulance, just didn’t think to. A few days later, after everything had happened, after I’d started calming down a bit, that was all that was going through my mind. I thought fucking hell, if I’d just rung nine nine nine, I’d have been sorted. I could have explained and everything. Got Suzanne off to hospital, checked out properly. But anyway, whether it was the beer or the adrenaline or what, I don’t know, I just panicked. I put the bed sheet all round Graham’s head to stop all the blood getting everywhere, I tied it really tight, then I grabbed Graham’s arms and pulled his body down the stairs. I found his car keys, went out and opened up the back of the car, dropped the seats as silently as I could. Then I went back in, picked Graham up, threw him over my shoulder and chucked his body into the back of the car and locked it up. I was proper paranoid, looking over the street, checking no lights were on. I was trying to be as quiet as possible, but every single little noise sounded proper loud.”
Miller was just nodding, but his friendly smile seemed to have slipped. Mick noticed it, as he got a glance of Miller’s face, and did a double-take. Miller looked slightly solemn, his supportive air seemed to have vanished momentarily. Mick’s finger was still tapping out a rapid beat on the table. And it seemed to be getting faster. He was fidgety, his shoulders seemed to be moving around. It was as though somebody had paused the interview and brought some music into the booth. It was as though Mick was dancing in his seat. Or he was agitated.
“Carry on,” said Miller, nodding.
“So, right, I’d got Graham in the back of the car, I was pretty happy that no-one was watching, no-one had seen anything. So, I went back upstairs, I was shaking by now, proper shaking, I couldn’t have pressed nine nine nine by this point, honestly, that’s how bad my hands were shaking. I’d have just dropped the phone on the floor. I couldn’t think straight. I realised I was just stood, in Suzanne’s house, staring up the stairs, shaking.”
“Do you want to pause now, take a breath of fresh air?” asked Mick’s solicitor.
“No, no, I’m nearly done.”
“You seem quite unwell, reliving this traumatic moment,” said the duty solicitor, his tone of voice sounded quite insistent that his client took a break.
“No. I’ve got to… this has been eating at me for the last month. I need to get it all off my chest.”
“For the tape, my client is refusing advice of a break.”
“Thank you,” said Miller, looking quite irritated by the solicitor’s random interruption. Miller’s attention returned to Mick Crossley.
“So, I snapped out of it, I suddenly came to a bit, I could feel myself sobering up. I went upstairs to where Suzanne was lay out on the floor, I managed to pull her up onto the bed first, then I got her over my shoulder and carried her over to my house, I put her on the settee in the front room. She was trying to argue and that, proper confused she was. So I went in the kitchen and got her a drink of water, and I slipped her two of Rachel’s sleeping tablets, I told her they were pain-killers. She was sobbing, I couldn’t tell what she was saying, and I was thinking I need to get her to the hospital pretty quick. My mind was racing, I was like, should I wake Rachel up and get her sit with her?” Mick took another thirsty gulp at his transparent plastic cup of water, draining the cup. “But then I was like, no – she’ll want to know where I was going, wanting to know what’s happening. So, I stayed there a few minutes, waited for Suzanne to calm down, I was patting her back, gently stroking her head where there was no big lumps. I s
tayed like that about five minutes, ten minutes. All the time, I’m shaking like a shitting dog, I’m thinking any second now, the police are going to bang on the door and it’s all over. But it was silent, there was nothing going on outside, just silence. By the time Suzanne was calmed down a bit and snoring, I put her in the recovery position in case she puked up, and I waited a few more minutes to check she was alright.”
“Go on,” said Miller, after a few seconds of silence from Mick.
“So, that was when I…”
“Come on Mick, you’re doing great. Honestly mate, keep going.” Miller was really beginning to look pissed off, but the friendliness in his voice was unmistakable. The stirring tone of the comment really lifted Mick’s spirits, he had begun to feel as though he’d been losing Miller’s interest, and it was making it difficult to keep focused.
“Right, yeah,” said Mick, continuing to tap his index finger rapidly against the tabletop as he spoke. “So I went back in the house, looked everywhere for a knife, a sharp knife. I needed to get that carpet out of there, it was absolutely covered in blood. I mean, seriously, it was like a bottle of vimto had been poured on it. Anyway, I sorted that, cut round the bed and just a rolled it all up and put it in the back of Graham’s car, right on top of Graham. And then, I just jumped in the front, drove off and that was that.”
“That was what?” asked Miller, intrigued by the psychological importance of Mick’s finger tapping. It told him that the things that were being said were actually true, that he’d actually been involved in all this. But the truth had only started to be spoken about after the event. The finger tapping only began when Crossley began talking about tidying up, moving the body.
Miller watched the finger continue to tap tap tap away and wondered why he’d not done that all the way through the story.
“I set off, went and got rid of Graham’s body.”
“Hmmm, now that’s interesting!” said Miller, with another lift of energy to his voice. “Where is the body?” he asked. “Talk me through this bit slowly please.”
Neighbours From Hell : DCI Miller 2: The gripping Manchester thriller with a killer twist Page 27
