by Neil White
I wondered how they would feel if they knew that I had spoken to their long-lost brother? Happy that he was still alive, or maybe angry that a portion of their inheritance was to be denied them? Perhaps they had known all along.
I pushed the papers away as the last of the beer slipped out of the bottle. Tony’s big surprise could wait until I was alert enough to enjoy it. I left the table and headed for the stairs, collecting a wine glass on the way.
I couldn’t see Laura at first for the steam, and so I perched on the side of the bath and found the wine bottle instead. As I poured, she asked, ‘How has your day been?’
I wondered what I should tell her. How would it make her feel if she knew about Frankie’s pictures—perhaps Joe would make sure they stayed private?
‘The story isn’t finished yet,’ was my reply.
‘How did it go with Rachel Mason?’ Laura asked.
‘she gave a little, and I gave a little,’ I replied. ‘I think we have an understanding.’
I heard the movement of water and Laura reared up out of the mist. Her hair was slicked back and wet, her body pink and glistening.
I reached out my hand to her face, but I was interrupted by a loud banging on the front door.
‘Who the hell is that?’ she asked.
I stood up. ‘I don’t know, but I’ll be pissed off with them when I get down there.’
I marched out of the bathroom, hearing Laura slide back into the water as I skipped down the stairs.
Chapter Forty-Four
Mike Dobson slowly clicked the door closed as he crept into his house, anxious not to wake Mary.
He went to the washing machine first and stripped off, his eyes darting to the ceiling, worried that Mary would hear him. He could still smell her on him. The perfume, the cigarettes, the sweat. He let out a sigh of relief when he heard the motor start and the first gushes of water started to fill the machine. As he looked, he could see his shirt and suit against the glass. She was gone.
He crept upstairs to the bathroom and took a shower, the hot water sluicing away what was left of her, and he tried to bring himself back to normality. But as his head hung down, he imagined he could hear the knocking again. He opened his eyes quickly and stepped out of the shower. He stared at himself in the mirror, at his stomach, his hairline. He looked haunted, his eyes surrounded by sagging skin and dark rings, and that’s how he felt—twenty-two years of guilt etched into every line on his face. Those years had gone so quickly, and he had turned into this fat middle-aged man, lonely in his own home, his nights spent patrolling the back streets of his home town, always waiting for the knock on the door.
The memories came back stronger each summer, as the days grew long and the sun stuck the shirt to his back. It was how he remembered it back then. A balmy summer in the late eighties, the rest of the country worried about newagers and getting on the housing ladder, but he was just wrapped up in a few blissful summer months. Long afternoons by the stream, her head in his lap, her warm smile, twirling daisies between his fingers. It had faded in winter, but spring had brought them together again. He could feel the lazy trail of her fingers down his cheek.
He stepped away from the mirror and dried himself. As he stepped out of the bathroom, he got a sense anew of his home’s perfection, the vanilla scent of candles that had been burning earlier in the evening catching his nostrils, and he imagined the flowers on the table, the curtains tied back so that they hung just right, the folds even and tidy. Everything was smart and ordered.
Mike thought of the homes he visited when he was doing his sales visits. Young families with children, brightly coloured plastic around the house, crumbs and debris, the scars of a busy home ground into the carpet. But he saw the happiness, heard the noise of the family.
He walked slowly along the landing and a passing car swept its headlight beam over the curtains as he entered the bedroom, lighting up the room for a few seconds so that he could make out Mary, her hair fanned over the pillow.
He climbed into bed and turned away from her. He was desperate for sleep, his legs twitching with fatigue, but he knew he wouldn’t get any that night. Mike tried closing his eyes, but every time he did, he was jolted by the steady knock-knock, the noise of her fist against the wood, that frantic drumbeat.
He focused on a knot in the wood in the frame around the bathroom door. That would be his view until the morning.
When I opened the door, I was surprised to see Joe Kinsella there, Rachel Mason just behind him.
‘It’s time for a talk,’ Rachel said, stepping forward to join Joe, her smile brief.
‘I thought we’d had one,’ I replied. When Rachel cocked her head, I opened the door wider. ‘All right then. I’m writing the story soon, and I could do with some quotes.’
I went over to the table and moved aside the papers Tony had brought along. They’d need to read the newspaper to get the exclusive.
‘No need to be coy, Mr Garrett,’ Rachel said, as she sat down on the sofa.
‘Make yourself at home,’ I muttered, and then slunk off to the kitchen, returning with two extra glasses and another bottle of wine. ‘You look like you’re staying some time, and so we might as well be civil,’ I said wearily. I poured wine into the glasses and passed one each to Joe and Rachel.
Rachel raised her glass and took a large gulp of wine. Joe took a sip and put his down on the table next to my laptop.
‘so, what do you want?’ I asked.
‘Frankie,’ Rachel said bluntly.
‘You’ve got him,’ I replied.
‘Only for now,’ she said. ‘But we’ll lose him if we don’t find out more.’
‘And you think I’ve got more to help you.’
‘Why, do you know something we don’t know?’ Rachel said, watching me carefully and taking another drink of wine.
I raised my eyebrows. ‘I understand the game now,’ I said. ‘I’m supposed to tell you everything I know but the exchange is only one way.’ I shook my head. ‘I think we’ll play it the other way. You tell me what you know about Frankie and, if I’ve got extra information, I’ll think about passing it on.’
For a second Rachel looked angry, those blue eyes blazing,but Joe spoke first. ‘We’ll tell you what we’ve got if you promise it won’t go to print.’
‘I can’t promise that,’ I replied. I wanted them to tell me, but as they’d sought me out it felt like I had the stronger bargaining chip.
Joe looked at the floor for a moment, and when he looked up, he was smiling ruefully. ‘We need some help on this one,’ he said. ‘Everything tells me that Frankie might have killed Nancy Gilbert, but we need more than my instinct.’
That surprised me. ‘I thought Claude was your only suspect,’ I said. ‘So you think he might be innocent after all?’
Joe sighed. ‘I just don’t know.’
We were disturbed for a second as Laura bounded down the stairs. She stopped abruptly when she saw Rachel and Joe in the room.
‘Oh hello,’ Laura said, embarrassed as she looked down at herself. She had thrown on some old leggings and a T-shirt with a rhinestone logo across the chest; Rachel was still in her best suit and shirt.
Rachel didn’t respond, but Joe smiled. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘We’re sorry for intruding.’
‘They’re here about Frankie,’ I said to Laura.
Rachel raised her eyebrows. ‘But you don’t know anything about the case, do you, PC McGanity?’
Laura took a deep breath. ‘Don’t try and outrank me because you’ve wormed your way into headquarters,’ she said. ‘You’re in my house now, and so if you don’t want to speak to me, the door is that way.’
‘We want your opinion,’ Joe said quickly. ‘It was Jack we came to see, but we value your view, so please, pull up a wine glass and let’s talk.’
Laura took some deep breaths to calm herself down, and then she went to get an extra glass from the kitchen. When she returned, she filled her glass from the bottle on the table
. Rachel held up her wine glass for a refill, and Laura drained the bottle into it.
‘So let’s talk about Frankie,’ I said, as Laura sat down in a chair opposite Rachel. ‘Why do you think he killed Nancy?’
‘Jealousy is one reason,’ Joe said. ‘Frankie was obsessed with Mrs Gilbert. You mentioned an affair today. How did that make Frankie feel? It’s one thing to come second place to someone’s husband, but what happens when she takes on a new lover? It makes him insignificant, and so he gets angry. Does he try it on with her? If her love is being spread around, why not him? He can’t cope with rejection, because he’s never suffered it. His mother spent her life indulging him, giving him what he wanted. And what happens when someone who doesn’t know how to deal with rejection is denied the one thing he wants?’ Joe raised his eyebrows. ‘He becomes jealous.’
‘That’s a bit simplistic, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘It’s usually the way,’ Joe replied. ‘When people kill, they’re normally operating on some very primeval instinct. It could be blind rage, when the person is no longer in control and is just a passenger to their anger, or it could be the defence instinct, the old cornered rat. For someone like Frankie, rejection and jealousy could hit him hard, because he’s not used to it.’
‘I’m not sure I buy that,’ I said. ‘Frankie was someone who wanted to say something, not hide something.’
‘Maybe he’s scared,’ Rachel responded, taking another big swig. She was going at the wine like it was fruit juice. ‘He’s had more than twenty years to think of his excuses.’
‘Frankie didn’t have to come forward at all,’ I said. ‘But you think this might have something to do with Frankie’s mother?’
Joe smiled. ‘It’s always to do with the parents,’ he said. ‘If Frankie killed Nancy Gilbert, then he did it as an act of retaliation. People who do that follow a pattern, and Frankie fits some of the criteria.’
‘Sounds interesting,’ Laura said, who was on her way to the kitchen to fetch another bottle of wine. When Rachel flashed her a look, Laura turned back to Joe. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Killers who murder strangers as an act of anger do it for one of two reasons: either because the anger excites them or because the anger is aimed at someone else, so it’s actually an act of retaliation, usually against a parental figure,’ Joe explained. ‘In this case, it will have been aimed at Frankie’s mother.’
‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.
‘Because if Frankie killed Nancy Gilbert, he chose a woman older than himself.’
‘No,’ I protested. ‘You’re making him fit a theory, not looking at the facts. You said that he did it because he felt rejected by Nancy. So, if you’re right, Nancy has nothing to do with his mother. It is just what it is, a crime of passion.’
‘But why do you think he liked Nancy Gilbert, a woman older than himself?’
‘Because he could see into her bedroom,’ I said, exasperated now. ‘He looks at the nurses now. A local voyeur, yes. A murderer? No.’
‘Sex always comes into it somewhere,’ Joe said, ‘but some of the other facts make it sound like it was an act of retaliation aimed at his mother.’
‘What like?’ I said, holding my glass out so Laura could fill it. Joe put his hand over his, but Rachel’s arm shot out quickly, the now empty glass wavering slightly.
‘Murderers who kill as an act of retaliation are usually stalkers on the quiet,’ Joe replied. ‘They are familiar with their victim in some way, and it could be something as simple as a hello on the street, or a brief exchange when putting out the rubbish. The more extreme ones go further and seek out targets, posing as roofers or builders, pretending to look for work, but really they’re looking for victims, for vulnerable lone women.’
‘But Frankie didn’t do that,’ I pointed out.
‘Do we know that?’ Joe said. ‘What do we know about Frankie, except that he obsessed about Nancy Gilbert, and that now he obsesses about the care assistants at the care home in the same house, all the pretty young women that he can’t speak to because his mother smothered him?’
‘That’s a real leap, Joe,’ I said.
‘But there are other things too,’ he said. ‘Revenge killers like this tend to act quickly, usually with a blow to the back of the head, with the weapon found nearby. They’re not motivated by the use of the weapons, only by the need to express their anger.’
I remembered how Nancy had died when he said that—a quick blow to the back of the head. But then I saw the doubt in Joe’s eyes. ‘You said that some of the criteria fitted,’ I said. ‘You’re not convinced, are you?’
‘These things are not an exact science, you know that,’ he replied. ‘With each killer, there is a variant.’
‘So what are the variants for Frankie?’
Joe sighed. ‘The blow on the back of the head is a usual sign, but I would expect more of a frenzied attack afterwards.’
‘She was buried alive,’ Laura said.
‘That’s controlled though, not a frenzy,’ I said.
Joe nodded. ‘That’s a problem,’ he said. ‘Most of the wounds in retaliation cases are committed after death, like overkill, as if the attacker just keeps on going until the anger is spent.’
‘So it’s less like Frankie,’ I said.
‘Some of it isn’t like Frankie,’ Joe said, ‘but then again we don’t know much about Frankie.’
‘He keeps pictures of his targets pinned to his wall,’ Rachel said. ‘If you stumbled across that normally, the loner across the road keeping photographs of the victim as his private porn collection, you would suspect him.’
I looked at Laura, and wondered whether I had done the right thing by not telling her about Frankie’s pictures of her.
‘So we’ve got a problem,’ Joe said, sighing. ‘The motive in a retaliation case is anger, not sex, and so if Nancy was Frankie’s victim, she was not an object of desire, but an object of hate. I wouldn’t expect the killer to have her all over the wall as a pin-up. And the way the scene was cleaned up? Again, that doesn’t fit. Most people’s actions after a murder are to do with getting away with it, hiding the traces, aware that what they have done is wrong. An anger-killer thinks differently. He just feels satisfied afterwards, like it’s smile and cigarette time. There’s no concept of wrongdoing.’
‘It doesn’t sound like much of it fits Frankie,’ I said, shaking my head.
‘It doesn’t,’ Joe said. ‘But for as long as some of it does, we have to look at him.’
‘Where is he now?’ Laura asked.
‘Cell number six,’ Rachel said, before standing up to go to the bathroom. She had to put her hand out to steady herself.
As she left the room, I asked, ‘So, what do you want to know?’
‘Just about Frankie,’ Joe said. ‘Has he told you anything about his childhood? It seems that his mother was very private, because no one seems to know much about the family, except that Frankie’s father died when he was a young child, and so it was just her and Frankie in that house. Apart from the complaints about the snooping from across the road, he hasn’t really come up on our radar. Until we can find out something about his past, we don’t know how much of a suspect he is.’
‘Is he talking?’ I asked.
Joe shook his head and looked down. ‘He’s curled up in the corner of his cell, not speaking to anyone. We haven’t arrested him for Nancy’s murder, just the snooping.’
‘So are you looking for evidence that his mother was a tyrant?’ I asked. ‘Or what about a religious maniac, suppressing his desires? That would be convenient.’
‘Don’t be like that, Jack,’ Joe said. ‘I just want to find out what I can. If he’s innocent, then good, but I don’t want to be the one who overlooks him and then has to dig another young woman out of a grave.’
I nodded and held up my hand in apology. Maybe I was wrong to be giving Joe a hard time. He was honest, I knew that, but I was starting to feel sorry for Frankie, despite what
he had done; he was being fitted into Nancy’s story just because he was the neighbourhood weirdo, and I felt a certain amount of guilt for having brought up his name when I spoke with Rachel.
‘Frankie didn’t mention his mother in any negative way,’ I said. ‘I just got the feeling that he was lonely.’
Joe nodded, and then his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and listened to the caller for a few seconds before mumbling a response and hanging up.
He looked at me first, and then at Rachel, who had just wandered back into the room, her hand again reaching for her glass.
‘A body’s been found,’ Joe said to her, his face grim. ‘A young girl, a prostitute they think, found bludgeoned in the town centre, near the viaduct.’
‘I thought we were only dealing with Claude Gilbert,’ Rachel complained. Her voice had acquired a slur.
‘We are, but they want me to supervise the scene before the rest of the squad arrive later on,’ he replied. He pointed at the wine bottle, and then at Rachel’s glass. ‘You can’t go to a crime scene stinking of booze. Stay here. I’ll come back for you.’
‘I’ll follow you down,’ I said. I was still willing to chase a story, even if I was wrapped up in Claude Gilbert.
‘It’s police business,’ Joe said firmly.
I shook my head in response and added on a smile. ‘I was telling you, not asking you.’
Joe sighed as he looked at me, but he must have seen the determination in my eyes, because he nodded towards the door. ‘We might as well save the planet on the way,’ he said. ‘We’ll travel in the same car.’
I was smiling as I left the house, my camera and voice recorder stuffed into my pocket. Laura raised her eyebrows at the thought of being locked in with Rachel but, from the way Rachel was going through the wine, I guessed that her conversation would dry up pretty quickly.
