‘I never talked to anyone. Why would I? What do you think I am?’
Nelson muttered something about a cretin.
Daryl ignored him. ‘Someone must’ve followed us here. Someone must’ve seen us.’
Carver scowled. ‘If I ever find out who led the pigs here, he’s dead.’ He rolled both his hands into fists and pummelled the air. ‘Worse than dead. I find out who squealed on me, I’ll rip his tongue out with my bare hands. I’ll smash his balls.’
‘They never got us though, did they?’ Nelson said, grinning.
‘They said they’d be watching us,’ Daryl reminded him.
‘Even that fat bastard lawyer said the pigs were full of shit,’ Carver replied.
‘He was full of shit,’ Nelson said.
Daryl nodded in agreement, licking his lips and doing his best to remain calm. With a final snarl of fury, Carver sat down again. The soft drumming on the arm of his chair resumed.
‘Here, boss.’
As he spoke, Nelson drew a large bottle out of each of his jacket pockets and held them up above his head: vodka in his left hand, whisky in his right.
‘Fuck me,’ Carver burst out. ‘You had those on you all this time and you never mentioned it!’
‘I know how to keep my trap shut,’ Nelson said pointedly.
Opening the whisky, he tipped his head right back, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down with each gulp. At last he straightened up, his eyes watering slightly, and handed the bottle to Carver who was waiting impatiently for it. Daryl watched anxiously as Carver took his turn, seeming to pour the liquid down his throat without even swallowing. When he lowered the bottle, he waved it at Daryl who sprang over to take it from him.
‘Hey,’ Nelson blurted out. ‘Tha’s my whisky. ’Smine.’
He slid off his chair, and opened the vodka.
Carver held out his hand to Daryl who returned the whisky to him, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
‘Hey,’ Nelson called out, ‘didn’t I just say ’smine?’
Ignoring him, Carver resumed drinking. After a while he dropped the empty whisky bottle, and reached out to Nelson for the vodka. He drank noisily, then leaned back in his chair, and stared blankly up at the ceiling. Meanwhile Nelson was lying curled up on the floor in a foetal position and seemed to have fallen asleep. Daryl began to giggle, and once he started he couldn’t stop. The other boys took no notice of him as he crawled across the floor and reached for the empty whisky bottle. His head was pounding and the light bulb hanging from the ceiling had become painfully bright. The crate where Daryl had been sitting was a long way off, and the room was spinning. He tried to drag himself over to the yellow chair, but it was too much effort, so he lay down where he was and closed his eyes. He was still giggling.
33
Geraldine had intended to go and see her sister in Kent on Sunday, but during the week she called to cancel her visit. It was a long way to travel, and Celia had long ago given up grumbling that, whenever Geraldine was involved in a murder investigation, her work took priority over everything else.
‘It’s OK, really,’ Celia had replied, her tone growing plaintive as she added, ‘I understand you have to put your work before us.’
‘As soon as the case is over I’ll come and see you all,’ Geraldine had promised. ‘You know I can’t wait to see the baby again. He must be growing so fast.’
Celia had chattered for a few minutes about how much weight the baby had gained, and how long he slept at night, before airing her ongoing anxiety over Chloe.
‘Honestly, Geraldine, I don’t know what to say to her. I mean, it can’t be easy for her, you know, sibling rivalry and all that, but I thought she was fine. And now this. It has to be a reaction to the baby’s arrival.’
Geraldine had laughed at her concern. ‘You’re looking for problems where there really aren’t any. It’s perfectly normal and natural, and it’s got nothing to do with the baby. She was going to become interested in boys at some point.’
‘But she’s so young,’ Celia had wailed. ‘I don’t remember being interested in boys at her age, do you?’
‘She’s probably more interested in copying what her friends are doing, and some of them are probably copying older sisters.’
‘Oh well, I suppose you’re right. Anyway, how are you getting on?’
Geraldine hadn’t admitted that although the case was going nowhere, a lead could turn up at any moment, and she was keen to be there if it did. Visiting Celia took up a whole day, and she didn’t want to be away from York for that long. A few of her younger colleagues had begun muttering about the possibility that this might be one of those cases that was never solved, but she remained optimistic.
A team had been deployed conducting door-to-door questioning throughout the city, starting in the areas around Pope’s Head Alley and Lendal Bridge, and approaching anyone walking or cycling along the river bank. So far no one had reported seeing anything suspicious or even unusual, but the investigation continued as vigorously as ever. Meanwhile, long drawn-out forensic analysis of any potential evidence found at the scenes of both murders continued, but nothing had yet been discovered that furthered the investigation. Random cigarette butts had been collected and sent off to be tested for DNA, footprints analysed, and hour after hour of CCTV footage scrutinised, but there was no evidence placing the same person at both scenes, other than the unidentified DNA they had found, and a barely distinguishable image of a long-haired woman that Eileen had dismissed as irrelevant.
Along with her colleagues, Geraldine was feeling frustrated at the lack of progress. She had spent hours poring over reports, studying everything that had so far been thrown up. The only loose end she had come across was the case of the woman who had been spotted on CCTV and then gone missing, part way through the investigation. Were it not for the timing of Lindsey’s disappearance it would have been unremarkable but, as it was, Geraldine couldn’t help wondering whether it might be significant. In the absence of any other leads, on Sunday morning she decided to call on the woman again. Her house wasn’t far out of Geraldine’s route from her flat near Skeldergate Bridge to the police station. There was no answer when she rang the bell so, after waiting for a few minutes, she left.
‘We’re just not getting anywhere,’ Ariadne grumbled, when Geraldine arrived and sat down opposite her.
‘Something will turn up,’ Geraldine replied. ‘Something always does. And there’s still the long-haired woman we haven’t managed to find yet. Who knows what she might have to tell us?’
But Ariadne didn’t hold out much hope that a witness would ever be found.
‘It can’t have been the same woman,’ she said. ‘The one who followed Felicity down to the river could be anywhere, and we don’t know the one we traced on CCTV even lives in York. She could be miles away by now. Granted it would be perfect if she did contact us and told us she had seen the killer, and gave us a detailed description of him, but what are the chances? We might as well wait for hell to freeze over.’
Geraldine’s other colleagues seemed equally sceptical, and it was true that so far they had very little to go on. All they knew was that a long-haired woman was renting a house in York, and she had possibly walked near at least one of the victims shortly before a murder. Not only was it a very tenuous lead, but they hadn’t been able to find her.
‘Perhaps she’s on holiday,’ Ariadne suggested. ‘But she’s probably got nothing helpful to tell us anyway.’
Geraldine shrugged. Once they managed to find the missing woman, she would hopefully admit to having seen the attack in Pope’s Head Alley. But it was stretching plausibility to believe that the same witness could really have been present at the scene of the second murder as well. Seeing a second long-haired figure descending from the bridge just after Felicity must have been a coincidence. Still, one or other of the women might have seen somet
hing and been too scared to come forward, or perhaps hadn’t yet realised the significance of what she had seen that night.
Geraldine was beginning to regret having cancelled her visit to Celia that Sunday when Eileen summoned the team for a briefing. Everyone gathered in an atmosphere of expectation, but it turned out that Eileen had nothing new to report. She just wanted to review what they knew so far.
‘We must be missing something,’ she said. ‘We’ve been searching for something that links Grant and Felicity but other than the fact that they were both school teachers, there doesn’t seem to be any connection between them. They trained in different institutions and have never worked in the same school. Now, what about the Drury family?’
‘We haven’t managed to trace Jamie’s death certificate yet,’ a constable said. ‘We know he went to Australia, according to his father, and our enquiries there haven’t come up with anything, but Edward Drury seemed to think his son died in Thailand. We’ve been in contact with the authorities there, but they aren’t the easiest to deal with, to put it mildly. To be fair, we haven’t given them much to go on, because we don’t know exactly when or even where he died. We’re chasing them, but don’t hold your breath for a response.’
‘Anything else?’ Eileen asked.
Geraldine brought up her concern about the long-haired woman spotted near the scenes of both murders, and how she seemed to have vanished.
‘She could have just gone away,’ Eileen replied, ‘and, in any case, we don’t know she’s connected to the case at all, or even if it was the same woman recorded on film on both occasions. But yes, do keep looking for her, Geraldine.’
Ignoring Eileen’s patronising response, Geraldine determined to continue looking for the long-haired woman. Once again, she felt a frisson of anxiety about Lindsey’s fate. There was no evidence to connect her to Grant’s murder, but something about her hurried gait as she had walked away from Pope’s Head Alley worried Geraldine, and she couldn’t shake off her unease.
34
‘You fucking finished it!’ Nelson roared. ‘Tha’s mine! What you doing with it anyway?’
He staggered to his feet, red-faced with fury, and ready to lash out. Normally Daryl would have cringed and kept his eyes lowered, in a craven attempt to avoid attention, but the drink had loosened his tongue. At the same time, it was making him incoherent.
‘No, no, no, it was empty,’ he replied. ‘It was empty.’
‘It’s empty now,’ Nelson snarled.
‘Listen, I’m telling you, the bottle was empty when I found it –’ Daryl insisted, struggling to form the words.
‘Found it?’ Nelson interrupted him. ‘What you on about, you found it? You mean you fucking stole it off me.’
Nelson leaned over and grabbed the bottle. Clutching it, he staggered to his feet and brandished it in the air, glaring wildly at Daryl as he yelled. ‘What the fuck are you doing running after us all the time, boy? You need to grow some balls if you want to hang out with us. Why don’t you find some kids your own age to pester? We’re sick of a whining kid like you trailing after us all the time.’
‘I’m not the one whining,’ Daryl pointed out. ‘You haven’t stopped whining since you woke up. You’re a brat,’ he added under his breath.
Nelson muttered about being a man not a snivelling boy.
‘Oh fuck you,’ Daryl replied.
Carver sat up. ‘Shut the fuck up, both of you,’ he snarled. ‘It does my head in the way you two carry on, always snapping at each other. There’s no peace with you two around.’
‘Get rid of him then,’ Nelson replied promptly. ‘We don’t need him. We were fine before he came along. He’s nothing but trouble. You said it yourself. He’ll get us busted.’
Daryl started, afraid Nelson had discovered his betrayal.
‘Well?’ Nelson persisted. ‘Why is he always hanging around here?’ He turned to Daryl. ‘Why are you still here?’
‘I got as much right to be here as you,’ Daryl replied, deciding to tough it out.
He turned his back on Nelson to show he wasn’t scared of him.
‘Why are you still here?’ Nelson repeated, his voice suddenly quiet.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Carver burst out. ‘You’re as bad as he is, yapping at him like a fucking girl. Why don’t you have it out like men?’
Behind Daryl there was a loud crash. As he spun round to find out what had happened, he saw Nelson’s eyes blazing beneath a glittering rainbow. Dazzled, he realised a shattered bottle was forming an arc of light in the air. Without warning, he felt dizzy and his legs gave way. Through half-closed lids he saw the floor, covered in a carpet of blood-spattered shards of glass. A veil of darkness gathered as Nelson and Carver leapt back, glaring wildly at him. Carver was yelling something about a busted door.
‘Anyone could get in and see him!’ he was shouting.
His voice reached Daryl through a dense fog. Daryl wanted to tell him not to worry, no one could see him in the darkness, but Carver changed tack suddenly. He turned to Nelson and grabbed him by the arm, shaking him. ‘We got to split, man, get away from here and never come back.’
He kicked the broken bottle into a corner of the garage.
‘Oh shit. I never meant to kill him,’ Nelson stammered. ‘I just wanted him to piss off.’
Daryl had stopped wheezing, and a pool of blood beside him glowed in the light.
‘Well, you done for him. He’s not getting up again. Come on, let’s get out of here.’
‘No,’ Nelson cut him off firmly. ‘We’re not gonna run. That’s the last thing we want to do.’
‘What are you talking about, man? We can’t let them find us here. They’ll bang us up for sure.’
‘No, they won’t find us here because we’re gonna call them.’
‘Call? Call who? What the fuck, man?’
Carver was staring open-mouthed at Nelson who was staring down at Daryl with a curious smile on his lips.
‘Listen,’ Nelson’s voice came at Daryl through the mist, dry and clipped. ‘This was an accident. He was coming at me with a bottle and he tripped and fell on it.’
‘What are you saying, man?’
‘We call the pigs, exactly like we would do if we were innocent, and we act like we’re shocked at this terrible accident. There’s two of us and no one else to say anything different to what we tell them. As long as we get our story straight, we’re in the clear.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice so Daryl struggled to distinguish his words. ‘There’s gonna be no other witness, is there?’ He seemed unable to tear his eyes away from Daryl. ‘Most people would’ve slashed at him but I stuck that glass right into his neck, like it was a knife stabbing him. Like as if he was so pissed he lost his footing and fell right on to it.’ A slow smiled spread across Nelson’s face. ‘We can do this, as long as we stick together.’
‘We could say it was self-defence?’
‘No, listen to me, man, and concentrate, will you? It was an accident. You need to get that into your head. I dropped the bottle by mistake and it smashed. I was busy picking up the pieces, just tidying the place. He was so pissed, he tripped and fell on top of me, and I had that broken glass in my hand.’ Nelson’s voice rose. ‘Before I realised what the fuck was going on, he fell right on to the broken glass and it went right through him.’
Carver nodded.
‘Repeat it.’
‘He tripped and fell,’ Carver said. ‘It was an accident.’
‘That’s it. That’s the story and we never change it, not one detail, or they’ll nail us for murdering him for sure.’
Carver staggered over to his chair and sat down. ‘So what happens now?’
‘We wait until he bleeds out and then we call the pigs and the ambulance and whoever else we can think of. Remember, we’re panicking, right? Our bro here just had an accid
ent, a fatal accident. We’re in shock. Think how shocking it is. So look shocked. Cry if you can.’
Carver gave a bark of laughter. ‘Cry? What are you talking about? You cry if you want to.’
‘You think I’d cry over this little shit. He was always trouble, right from the start.’
‘You never liked him.’ Carver narrowed his eyes. ‘It was you done this, remember, not me.’
Nelson turned and gazed coolly at Carver. ‘If you tell them it was me, I’ll say you’re lying. I’ll say it was you done it. And if we both go accusing each other, chances are we’ll both go down. They’re going to find both our prints all over that bottle. They won’t know which one of us did it, and those bastards aren’t going to let it go, are they? But listen, if we stick together there’s a way to save both our skins. Only we’ve got to do this together. They’re gonna split us up and question us until we’re ready to drop, until we’re ready to say anything just to make it stop. And they’ll catch us out if they can. So we got to keep it simple. Tell the truth about everything else. It was my bottle. We were all sharing. Here’s what happened and we got to tell it right, so listen. I got this figured out now, so pay attention, man. Daryl was out of control. A kid like that, he couldn’t hold his booze. He smashed the bottle and went for me. We struggled but he was unsteady on his feet and I managed to wrest the bottle from him. We were both laughing at him. That made him crazy and he lashed out with his fists, stumbled, and that’s when he tripped and fell on to me. Only I was still holding the broken bottle. And that’s how it happened. That’s what we say. Nothing more.’
The room seemed to spin as Carver nodded his head. Daryl wanted to protest at their lies, but he couldn’t move. All around his head lights glittered and flashed. A loud rushing noise filled his head, drowning out the voices of the other boys, and then all sensation faded and he slid into a pool of blackness.
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Rogue Killer Page 16
