The Dying Place

by Luca Veste

  Such was the life.

  How could he be a father when a sleepless night made him feel as if he was lugging a suitcase of a body around, full of heavy, tired bones? Murphy was pretty sure one of the prerequisite terms for accepting parenthood was the knowledge that sleep was a distant memory for the first twelve or so months.

  Murphy rubbed his temples, slowly opening his eyes to reveal the hospital corridor once more. Not for the first time, he repeated his focus mantra while he narrowed his eyes, almost straining the pain away. Pushed himself off the wall and made his way back to DC Harris and the waiting area. To his work. To the long hours of waiting around, hoping a mistake hasn’t cost you a case. Or a body.

  Harris’s back was the first thing Murphy saw as he entered, but he already knew something was wrong. Rigid shoulders, one arm rising up before flopping to his side.

  Plus, he could hear his raised voice, shouting into the phone.

  ‘Where …? Tell me fucking where …? He’s gonna go mad if you don’t tell me … don’t put her on … no …’

  Murphy’s brow furrowed as he moved slower, his shoes making no sound on the floor as he reached DC Harris and stood to his side.

  ‘Hello, boss … no, he’s just on the phone or something … okay … I understand … fucking shit!’

  Harris had turned only slightly, but the sight of Murphy at his shoulder had caused him to jump a foot in the air and drop his phone. Calmly, Murphy bent down and picked it up, the back of the mobile phone still sliding across the floor, but otherwise intact. Murphy lifted the phone to his ear, DCI Stephens’s voice screeching through the speaker before it had even reached his ear.

  He waited for a gap in her speech before speaking. ‘It’s me. What’s happened?’

  Ten seconds later, he was running.

  26

  Rossi cursed more often than she would ever tell her parents, even more so given it was in their mother tongue. There was something about the Italian language which gave swearing much more … gravitas.

  Swinging her car around, when she was only yards from her house and the comfort of her own bed – a few hours’ kip and a shower being her top priority at that moment – was all the reason she needed to start a crescendo of foul language to fill the space in her car.

  ‘Cazzo … mannaggia tua … figlio un cane … pezzo di merda … FICA.’

  She just wanted to go home. Shut herself away for a while and rest. She couldn’t though. That gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach wouldn’t allow it. She’d known as soon as she’d left the station, pulling her car out onto St Anne Street and pointing the way home.

  Rossi stuck two fingers up at someone beeping their horn as she finished the U-turn in one swift movement, a quick glance in her rear-view mirror telling her she’d had plenty of time.

  Probably.

  Fucking Brannon and fucking Murphy.

  It had started as soon as Brannon had announced the disappearance of the youth club bloke. Wheels turning and turning. Coincidences that don’t just happen.

  She catastrophised things, according to her ex, a psychology lecturer. That had been his major issue at the time. Some word that she’d never heard used in that way suddenly becoming his go-to move whenever they’d argued.

  Rossi had pretended to know exactly what he’d meant the first time he had said the word, telling him to go fuck himself and storming out the room – then pulling out her phone and googling it as soon as she was upstairs.

  Cazzo.

  He was probably right though. She did have a tendency to see the bad in everything. Pessimism was just her default setting – why set yourself up for disappointment, when if you thought something bad would happen and it didn’t you could feel great? It was win-win, as far as she was concerned.

  So what if sometimes that led to thinking the worst of every situation?

  That’s why she wasn’t lying in bed at that moment though. Why she was driving across Queens Road and up the East Lancashire Road towards Norris Green.

  Rossi had seen the worst in the situation, and imagined the possibility DS Brannon could be walking into a place he couldn’t handle alone.

  A sexist would call it woman’s intuition, but it was more about experience and logic. Rossi just knew something was wrong about the whole thing.

  If she was truthful, making sure Brannon was safe was more about making sure David Murphy was covered, rather than Brannon’s safety. She couldn’t really care less about him, but Murphy deserved help … and if something happened to Brannon, she knew where the blame would lay.

  Rossi slowed as she turned down Lower House Lane, the dual carriageway quiet for the time of day. A couple of minutes later, and the church appeared on her left, the youth club behind it.

  She parked up on the street rather than pulling into the side road, noticing Brannon’s car outside the youth club. Got out of the car and started walking, the only noise coming from the few cars which passed on the main road a few yards away.

  Rossi walked around the corner onto the side street where the youth club was, catching sight of herself in the driver’s side window of Brannon’s car.

  The reflection made her pause.

  She heard Brannon shout, but was locked on the reflection of a man exiting the youth club. Holding what looked very much like a shotgun and a rucksack.

  Her throat clogged up.

  Staring at the reflection of the man, who was only looking towards where Brannon’s shouts were coming from, she willed herself to turn around. Shout. Do anything to stop what she knew was about to happen.

  Rossi had heard witnesses say they froze in situations like this. Had sniffed and sneered outside interview rooms as she discussed cases with other detectives. All believing that they would act differently if they were involved in the same circumstances.

  She’d been wrong. Obviously. She couldn’t move. Laura Rossi, detective sergeant in North Liverpool CID, was just as cowardly as all those others she’d mocked over the years.

  Now she knew. Fear rooted you to the ground. Panic stopped your voice from shouting out. Horror crawled around your veins and kept you still, hoping you hadn’t been spotted.

  It took a second to think all those things. In that time, Brannon’s voice had become closer. Her own private movie, playing out in a blurred reflection of a car window.

  In two seconds, her thoughts began to flurry.

  Do something. Say something. Anything.

  Stay still. The wolf can’t catch you if you’re completely still.

  Rossi looked away, down at her inert feet mocking her with their immobility.

  Turn around. Face him. Stop Brannon from walking into a face full of pellets. Death.

  Rossi looked up, past the window, to the church which backed onto the side street.

  Nel nome del Padre, e del Figlio, e dello Spirito Santo. Amen.

  Rossi turned and took in the tableau. The man holding the shotgun with two hands, level with his chest, waiting for Brannon to come into view.

  Brannon about to turn the corner of the building. Shaking his head in slow motion.

  ‘Brannon, get back.’

  Both heads shot towards her scream, but she barely saw the man turn the shotgun her way as she began moving.

  Leaning over, willing her legs to move faster, quicker, to get around the car to put a barrier between her and him. Between her and death.

  She couldn’t hear.

  Rossi had one hand on the bonnet as she began to run. Felt, rather than heard, the glass shatter on the car.

  Pain.

  Turned as she fell down. Saw the man holding the shotgun move backwards with the recoil.

  Brannon stood motionless at the corner of the building, disbelief drawing his face downwards. Not a perfect O. She recognised the look.

  Looking down at her white shirt revealed where her jacket had flown open as she’d fell.

  Thinking it probably wouldn’t be white for much longer.

  Ave, O Maria, piena
di grazia, il Signore è con te. Tu sei benedetta fra le donne e benedetto è il frutto del tuo seno, Gesù. Santa Maria, Madre di Dio, prega per noi peccatori, adesso e nell’ora della nostra morte.

  Amen.

  PART THREE

  Home

  Six Months Ago

  His dad had lived there since he’d married Mum. Forty-odd years in the same house. He couldn’t imagine anything worse. Settling anywhere. The same walls staring back at you every day. Familiarity with every surface, every crack, every fucking piece of brick in the place.

  He was the only one who’d wanted to move when they’d been kids. His brother and sister had been happy enough to just carry on in the same house as normal, but not him. Constantly complaining about not having his own room, the same four walls surrounding him forever. He wanted to go somewhere else. Four bedrooms, so he could have his own space.

  His dad was his best friend.

  It helped they liked the same things. Same taste in music, films. They’d sit and watch whatever movies were showing on the TV that had cost a fortune back then, whilst his mum would make herself busy doing whatever mums did. The other two in their rooms, or out with friends.

  He wasn’t interested in anything like that. He was happy enough just sitting with his dad when he’d come home from work smelling like paint and hard graft.

  When he was really young, he’d spend hours just picking flecks of paint out of his dad’s rapidly thinning hair.

  He’d got too old for doing that kind of thing far too quick for his liking.

  It was the seventies, going into the eighties. Liverpool FC were flying and dad’s favourite player had been Emlyn Hughes. He left and it became Alan Hansen. Tough defenders who weren’t afraid to stick their heads on the line.

  His dad was everything.

  Now that man was lying on the sofa, bought on tick twenty years before. Still spring in the cushions. One arm lying across his chest, the other behind him. His legs dangling off the end.

  His dad looked old for the first time.

  Pale and loose-skinned. Lined and weathered.

  Old.

  Dead.

  He knew without checking. No rise and fall of his chest. Already going cold. Stiff.

  When he was about to leave school, his dad had sat him down and had a serious conversation with him. He’d noticed the changes. The giving up. He’d never been a great student. Quiet, reserved. He’d finally made friends with people his own age and they were more interesting. What they could get up to at the weekend. Which girls were more likely to let you cop off with them. It was the early nineties, Liverpool was coming out of the desolation of the eighties and the job market wasn’t exactly welcoming to a sixteen-year-old lad with no qualifications. He didn’t much care anyway. His dad had noticed the scrapes, the bruises. The marks of late-night fights and drinking cider in parks. His parents had always been lax with their youngest, letting him set his own time to get home by at the weekends. Still, their sighs and groans on a Saturday afternoon had been getting longer and more annoying, so he’d seen the talk coming.

  His dad had been watching Grandstand on the TV. Just the two of them, him still sweating out the two or three litres of cider he’d drank the night before, his dad sat with the Liverpool Echo on his knee, a cup of coffee in his hand.

  His dad had just started talking. Telling him stories he’d heard before about his own childhood. The stuff he’d got up to with his own mates in that period after the war had ended and the fifties heralded change that never really came. How a stint in the army had made him a changed man, how never really knowing his own dad had marked his life in numerous, significant ways.

  ‘You need to find something in your life,’ his dad had said to him years before. ‘Something you’re good at. I don’t want you turning into one of those little bastards on the streets, making everyone else’s life a misery. You’re better than that.’

  Now his dad wasn’t waking up. No matter how much he shook him. The rush, the adrenaline of what they’d done that evening had worn off. The years they’d discussed what they’d do if they were in charge, the time they’d begun planning what they’d finally found the people for. The look on that little bastard’s face when they’d pulled him in the van. Scared shitless and looking more like a little boy, rather than the old teenager who had tormented his dad for months.

  When his mum had died, he spent most of his free time with his dad. Not there though, not at the house. At the local pub, mostly. During the evenings, after he’d finished up work for the day.

  His dad was still his best friend.

  Even after he’d retired, become a little slower as he left his sixties and entered the decade of death, they were still close. They still shared the same taste in things, the same views.

  Everything was going to shit. That was view number one. Things had been different years ago. Of course, there were scallies around, they’re like rats in London … never more than a few feet away from one. But it was different now. They were different now. At least back in the day there was a pretence of respect. Now they just didn’t care. Wanted to drag everyone down to their level.

  His dad’s arm was shifting his weight over where he’d moved it, looking for a pulse. He’d fall off the sofa if gravity was allowed to do its job. A car passed by outside the window, lighting up the darkness within the living room for a few fleeting seconds with its headlights. The light faded away and he blinked a few times to get used to the gloom again.

  It was cold. His dad didn’t believe in having the heating on past a certain time. It had gone three in the morning when he’d arrived, so the house had become cold.

  When his dad had told him of his idea, he’d initially nodded along as if it was possible. He knew it wasn’t really, not these days. They seemed fearless, these young lads out there every night, not caring at all about consequences. He doubted locking them up and giving them a lesson using violence alone would have any effect. Look at how many get banged up in Walton and come out unchanged. If prison didn’t make a difference, what chance did a forty-odd-year-old property developer and his retired father have?

  That’s why we need a team.

  The pub was always quiet during the evenings they’d meet up for a few pints. Watch the midweek footy on the new flat-screen Brian, the landlord, had installed, hoping to attract a few more punters. Only a few regulars, those hanging on despite the smoking ban and the supermarkets charging a tenner for a whole crate of lager, rather than the two-fifty a pint it was there now.

  It was easy to get on speaking terms with those there. Soon, you know who shared your beliefs, your politics. You know which ones to avoid because everything came back to immigration and you’re not interested in racists. You want the old-school ones. You want the ones who remember a time when respect was earned and not expected. You want the ones that want to do something about it. Who don’t want to just sit around and piss and moan about how everything was better in the old days, when you could leave your door open and no one would rob you … conveniently forgetting that no one had fuck all to steal back then anyway.

  No. You want the ones with a clear idea. Maybe a personal grudge. They’ve been broken into by kids who got nothing but a slap on the wrist. You want the ones who were sick and tired of good, honest working men and women being forced to pay for Chantelle down the road to spew another kid out of her nethers, the father some snot-nosed dickhead who wouldn’t know how to support his own head if it wasn’t attached to his bony shoulders … just so she could get more money from the dole.

  They made a list.

  You wanted anger, but directed in the right places. The focus had to be on those in the wrong. They didn’t care that they’d had a shit upbringing, which probably explained their behaviour as teenagers. No. They were becoming adults, they had to learn personal responsibility for their actions.

  Him and his auld fella. Something to concentrate on rather than the fact they’d just lost a mother and wife. It had bee
n exciting in those early days, checking the regulars out, see if any fit.

  A few hours before he’d walked in to find his dad lifeless in his living room, they’d taken the second one. The one his dad wanted. The one who had made his life a misery the past few months. The one who hadn’t listened to his dad, who’d scarpered as soon as he’d come around himself.

  He’d been a perfect choice.

  It had been too much though. It was obvious now. He’d killed his own father because he hadn’t planned it out properly. He shouldn’t have been involved in this part. He could have visited the farm he’d bought for the land a few years previously and left, almost forgetting about it.

  His dad should have been in bed. Not outside his own house, shouting the odds with some scally.

  He stood in the darkness, just looking at the lifeless, breathless body that used to be his dad. His best friend.

  Wiped away a tear which had snuck out of his eye. Moved over to the window and took out his mobile phone. Dialled for a pointless ambulance and waited.

  Waited for this part to be over, so he could go back to the farm and finish what they’d started.

  27

  Murphy arrived at the scene within five minutes of hanging up on DCI Stephens. Dozens of cars blocked the road up towards the back of the church, so he dumped his own car on Dwerryhouse Lane and ran the last part there. Almost punched a uniform who tried to block his path but settled for shoving his warrant card in the dickhead’s face without breaking stride.

  As he got closer, he realised it probably wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway. Firearms officers were dotted about the place, casually standing around with guns slung over their shoulders, just waiting to be used. An ambulance was pulled up at the side street which led down to the youth club. Murphy slowed down to a fast walk and tried to see beyond the multitude of people who seemed to have taken up residence in the road, the uniforms and plain-clothes milling about together.