Lost Souls

by Neil White

  I was about to say something when Sam reached down for his phone. When he looked at his screen, he seemed concerned for a moment and then held it up. ‘I’ve got a message to go and see Harry.’

  Alison winced. ‘So I can have your office after all.’

  Sam laughed, but I could tell from the look in his eye that there was some truth in that. I knew of Harry Parsons’ reputation, the curse of the local police, and I had heard that he was as ruthless with his staff.

  As Sam left, I watched the drunk follow him with his eyes, the glare ever-present.

  I turned to the prosecutor, a tall man in a shiny suit, with flashes of grey at his temples, badger-style, and frayed tips on his shirt collars. I didn’t know if he earned less or just cared less, but he seemed a fashion rail away from Sam Nixon. ‘Who’s that?’ I asked, as I nodded towards the man in the corridor.

  The prosecutor looked for a moment, chewed his lip as he thought of a name, and then said, ‘Terry McKay. He’s here most weeks. Drunk, usually.’ He checked his watch. ‘They’ll have to call his case soon. If it gets adjourned over lunch, we won’t see him again.’

  I smiled. Terry McKay. I made a note of the name and went back into court.

  Laura sensed Pete’s anger as they arrived back at the station. He was gunning for Eric Randle now. She wasn’t sure that they had got it wrong, but it had turned Pete silent and brooding. The echoes of their footsteps were the only sounds as they walked along an old tiled corridor heading to the Incident Room. As they got there, Pete spoke in a whisper, an angry hiss. ‘Egan will love this,’ he said.

  There were a few officers in the Incident Room, sifting through information brought in by those cops knocking on doors. As they walked in, someone shouted out, ‘Did you get Randle?’ and Laura saw all the faces in the room turn to look at them.

  Pete threw his coat onto a desk. ‘Randle’s house is boarded up. He wasn’t there.’

  All the faces looked back to their screens, glad they weren’t the ones who had to break the news to Egan. Some whistled, some smirked.

  Pete stayed by his desk and rummaged around in his drawers for something. Laura sensed that it was just to make himself look busy, so she walked on and headed for Yusuf, the officer who had recognised Randle’s name earlier.

  As she approached, he smiled, almost bashful. He seemed too timid to be a cop, the antithesis of Pete Dawson, but as she heard Pete cursing at the other end of the room she realised that it was no bad thing.

  ‘You said Eric Randle’s name came up in the abduction cases,’ she began. ‘How come?’

  Yusuf sat back and nodded, pushed his glasses up on his nose. ‘His name comes up a lot,’ he said. ‘Whenever something happens, a murder or something like that, he calls in with information, reckons he is some kind of psychic. He’s done the same with the abductions.’

  ‘Psychic?’

  Yusuf nodded again. ‘He told us to look near the railway.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘He was warned off, so his calls stopped, but when I show you this, you’ll see why.’ He reached over to a binder and passed it to Laura. ‘I did some digging around after you went to see him.’

  ‘Were you on the abduction cases?’

  Yusuf nodded. ‘Logging calls, making lists of suspects, trying to cross-reference them. Speaking to the families, just listening out for something.’

  ‘But there wasn’t much to hear?’

  He shook his head. ‘No common theme, except that the kids were from bad families.’

  Laura took hold of the binder, and as she flicked through the papers she saw that it contained intelligence reports, all hole-punched and inserted precisely.

  ‘I’ve put them in chronological order,’ he said.

  Laura’s eyes twinkled with amusement. She’d already guessed that he probably had.

  ‘If you want me to get anything else for you, just ask,’ Yusuf continued, and then he blushed as she smiled back.

  ‘Thanks. I’d like that.’ She was about to walk away when she thought of something. ‘What are you doing on this case?’ she asked.

  ‘Calling friends of the victim,’ he said. ‘I break the news, and when they calm down I ask about her other friends, ex-boyfriends, new boyfriends, that kind of thing. Each call leads to another person, and I research every name I come across.’

  ‘Any other suspects?’

  Yusuf shook his head. ‘Not yet. She led a quiet life. Not many boyfriends, and no one on the scene at the moment, although her friends think there may have been someone getting close to her.’

  ‘Did any know Eric Randle?’

  ‘I didn’t ask specifically, but a few mentioned that she was a member of a club, used to meet every week, but no one knew much about it, as if she was embarrassed to talk about it.’

  Laura picked up the file and nodded her thanks. Back at her desk, she started to read.

  The first item was an intelligence report from the eighties. It was a warning that Eric Randle was a problem caller, that he would call the police with information, often about murders or missing children, not always local. He was warned off a few times because he got in the way, turned up at crime scenes, but over time he was regarded as a harmless nuisance and left alone.

  Laura leafed through a number of incident logs, created when Eric Randle called the police to provide information. They sounded vague, usually just some idea that someone was in danger. Most had ended with a quiet warning not to meddle.

  She looked up when she sensed Egan enter the room. She could hear Pete still sounding off about Randle. Egan didn’t say anything. He just listened, and then began to walk around the room asking if anyone had found anything new.

  Laura looked back at the folder, and then she saw something that made her forget all about Egan.

  Eric Randle had briefly been a suspect in a couple of prostitute murders around fifteen years earlier. Two girls had gone missing from their usual beat, last seen getting into a dark-coloured saloon. They were found on some waste-ground near to the motorway, both stabbed and mutilated. The killer didn’t strike again, certainly not in Blackley, and the police thought that the attacker was maybe part of the travelling crowd. But they started to look at Eric Randle because he had called the police and told them things that they hadn’t released to the press. He would have been arrested, but he didn’t fit the profile. He was too old and had no criminal history.

  The killer was still at large.

  Laura put the file down and thought about that. Profiling was big back then—the Cracker years—and maybe too much weight was attached to it. Profiles never caught anyone. They just eliminated people, and sometimes they were wrong. She made a note to find the file for that case.

  Then the next part of the file made her jolt, just as Egan started to walk over to her desk. She put her head down and began to read, just to make sure she had seen it right. She had. A different case, a different time.

  She put the folder down and sat back, thinking hard about what she had just read. Five years ago, Eric Randle had been charged with murder.

  Chapter Nine

  The light around Harry’s doorframe glowed along the dark corridor. Sam tapped lightly and went in.

  He saw Harry sitting behind his large mahogany desk. It gleamed, dominating the room with its leather top and ornately carved legs. The room was decorated like a Victorian parlour, the wallpaper gold with burgundy stripes, broken up by caricatures of famous judges and paintings of the Lancashire countryside.

  Harry stood up when Sam entered, his shock of curly white hair sticking up from his head, his face deeply tanned, the frequent visits to his Spanish villa making him look weathered and kind. It was a disguise. Sam knew Harry was ruthless, determined and cold in all things. He dressed smartly for someone of his age, though. He was a couple of years over sixty, and he wore dark three-pieces, his stomach only just bulging the buttons, with hand-made shirts framing bright silk ties, a flourish above his waistcoat. And he al
ways wore brogues.

  Sam had followed him into brogues, but not the three-pieces. Sam went for single-breasted suits, dark and simple. His hair was shorter than Harry’s, cut down to a number two, his way of hiding the shrinking hairline and the flashes of grey appearing at the sides. Sam’s early-morning walks kept the weight off, but the job gave him blood pressure that scared his doctor.

  ‘Hello, Sam, good to see you.’ Harry smiled, but it was quick, functional, lacking in warmth. His voice was nasal, almost a whine. It could wear a court down to his way of thinking pretty quickly.

  Sam smiled back, a quick nod. ‘Mr Parsons.’ It was only ‘Harry’ at home, never at work.

  There were two other people in the room. Sam recognised one straightaway. Jimmy King. They had met a few times, at family events, but it was his reputation that marked him out, ruthless and rich, the first producing the latter. He was dressed in black pinstripes, his hair swept back and dark. Sam wasn’t convinced it was natural. When Jimmy smiled his teeth looked bright, too clean.

  The other man was much younger, and looked quiet and nervous.

  Sam knew Jimmy was a childhood friend of Harry’s. He’d heard the story too many times, how they had both grown up in the same children’s home, a dusty old Victorian building, forgotten by their parents, beaten by their carers. They had grown up tough, and so Harry and Jimmy had made a pact, and that was never to be beaten, to always look after the other, and to show everyone that they could rise to the very top despite their poor start.

  Harry had gone to university to study law, his first exposure to the middle classes. He scraped his way through on student grants and part-time jobs, and then returned to Blackley with a new accent and a dream of his own practice. Jimmy had gone too, but he found his studies hard. He realised something else, though: that there was money in property, and students needed property. So he dropped out of university, borrowed money and bought a house. He filled it with students, crammed in like inmates, and when the rent started coming in he bought another. When Jimmy returned to Blackley he had ten houses and a desire to buy up the town that had treated him so badly.

  Harry and Jimmy had remained close, inseparable. Harry had even invited Jimmy to Sam’s wedding, but business commitments had kept him away. Jimmy had sent his apologies and a crystal bowl. It was still in a cupboard somewhere.

  Sam could tell that this was more than a social occasion. Something big was happening. He could see it in the way Jimmy and Harry exchanged glances, knowing and wary.

  Jimmy King moved towards Sam, his hand outstretched, a disarming smile telling Sam that Jimmy was in charge. ‘How is the beautiful Helena?’ he boomed, his Lancashire accent strong, although Sam knew it varied, depending on the audience.

  Sam wanted to say, ‘Drunk most of the time’, but he resisted. Instead, he smiled and shook hands, felt King’s other hand wrap around his. Sam could feel the control in the man’s grip, like a statement of intent, so he shook back hard, tried to feel the crackle of his fingers. King’s smile flickered for a moment and he gripped back. Sam felt Jimmy’s rings press against his own hand, the gold bands thick and bold. Sam had won the first skirmish.

  ‘Good morning, Mr King,’ Sam said simply.

  Jimmy King regained his smile and patted Sam lightly on the back. ‘Jimmy. Call me Jimmy.’

  Sam nodded politely. He sat down and crossed his legs, tried to figure out the reason for the meeting. He knew one thing: he didn’t trust Jimmy King. Despite being Harry’s friend, Sam knew of Jimmy’s reputation, and he saw how the rest of the staff became jumpy whenever Jimmy called into the office.

  In the eighties, Blackley had tried to sweep away its past by clearing the slum terraces. Many stood empty, boarded up and derelict. They were sold off at a bargain price; Jimmy King had bought streets of them. He renovated them and rented them out, and was credited with saving communities. Those he couldn’t save were bulldozed and sold to developers.

  No one mentioned how he treated his tenants. The houses were damp and cold, created health problems, asthma and respiratory illnesses. Some tenants tried to take a stand and threatened court action. The visits from Jimmy’s men came in the night, when Jimmy was somewhere visible. Not many complained for long.

  Sam didn’t see a landlord rescuing communities in Jimmy. He knew Jimmy’s background, but Sam’s wasn’t so different. The law had been Sam’s way of escaping a derelict council estate: his edges were still rough, his accent strong, maybe his eyes lit by a little more fire than most lawyers. Sam had met the Jimmy Kings of the world many times over, and he saw just another gangster, ruthless and selfish, who used the ordinary people of the town for his own ends.

  Sam looked at Harry, who seemed impassive. That was always Harry’s way. He would sit and stare, let people talk, so that he made them nervous and they talked when they should really stay quiet.

  ‘A girl was murdered last night,’ said Harry eventually, ‘on the Daisy Meadow estate.’

  Jimmy King sat down and nodded in sympathy.

  ‘It turns out that a car belonging to Jimmy’s son Luke was near the scene,’ Harry continued, ‘so it will help the police concentrate their efforts better if they can eliminate him from the inquiry.’

  Sam looked past Jimmy and at the nervous-looking young man. He had a vague recollection of an awkward teenager at Harry’s fiftieth birthday party, who’d sat in a corner all evening and watched the girls dance. Adulthood hadn’t changed him too much. He was in his mid twenties, his face pale, his eyes heavy under a small blond flick. He was wearing a suit that he couldn’t fill, the shoulder pads hanging slack over his lanky frame. He looked at Sam once and then quickly looked away, twitchy. His cheeks looked raw from a shave he hadn’t needed.

  Sam turned back to Harry. There was a look in his eyes Sam hadn’t seen before. Harry Parsons was never nervous. Not ever. But he was now.

  ‘Just elimination?’ asked Sam, watching Jimmy King.

  Jimmy smiled. His son just looked at a spot on the floor.

  ‘What else?’ said Harry, trying to drive the conversation. ‘We want to be discreet.’

  ‘Who’s in charge of the investigation?’

  Sam thought he saw Harry’s mouth curl slightly.

  ‘DI Egan.’

  Sam realised now why Harry might be nervous. Sam had dealt with Egan a few times, and the DI’s big problem was that he wasn’t nearly as clever as he thought he was. The son of Jimmy King might get him a press conference, make him a hero with the officers who wondered quietly where Jimmy King’s money really came from. Sam looked at Luke again. Egan would sacrifice anyone for exposure, and Jimmy King’s son was small bait.

  ‘You haven’t been arrested,’ said Sam. ‘If you’re just a witness, make him come to you.’

  He said it like a challenge, and watched Jimmy shift in his seat. Luke still looked at the floor.

  ‘Civic duty,’ said Harry, ‘and Jimmy doesn’t want his goodwill turned into a media circus.’

  Sam noticed a quick exchange of looks. It felt like there was something he was missing.

  ‘How do you know all of this?’ asked Sam, curious.

  Jimmy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let’s just say that I know people who know people.’ He turned his charm back on, flashed his teeth at Sam. ‘It’s important that this stays quiet. If Luke’s involvement becomes public, everyone will know about it, and he will never live it down.’

  ‘What involvement?’ asked Sam.

  Jimmy paused for a moment, uncertain. ‘What do you mean?’

  Sam glanced at Harry. He was still staring, letting him talk.

  ‘Mr Parsons said “elimination”’,’ said Sam. ‘You said “involvement”’.’

  Jimmy King twiddled with a ring on his little finger, a cluster of tiny diamonds glinting. ‘Semantics, Sam.’

  ‘Semantics convict people.’

  Jimmy smiled, but Sam could see that the warmth had gone. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘If I agree to do this,
the only people who go are Luke and myself

  Jimmy was quiet again, flashing looks at Harry, waiting for guidance. Harry exhaled and then nodded.

  ‘Wait downstairs,’ said Harry to Jimmy. ‘Ask reception to let you wait in a side room. I’ll just have a talk with Sam first.’

  When Jimmy stood up, he looked at Sam and then said quietly, ‘I give my lawyers some leeway because a rude lawyer is often a good lawyer. But I’ll warn you now, if I find out that you are just plain rude, you have made an enemy, whoever your wife is.’ He smiled thinly, his stare hard and direct. ‘I wouldn’t recommend that as an option.’

  Sam didn’t say anything as Jimmy left the room.

  Harry turned to Sam. ‘What are you playing at?’ He looked angry, his brow furrowed.