by Andrew Lowe
‘So, what have you got to say? And why will I care?’
Logan dropped his head and gazed into the coffee cup. ‘A proposal.’
‘We’ve done this. You ask me for an official interview. I say no. You write a story, anyway. What’s new?’
‘I’m not sniffing round for an official interview. I want an exclusive official interview. Your agony at the death of the man you believe was wrongly convicted of murdering your mother. That’s a good way in.’
‘No.’
‘They didn’t charge you, but I take it you’re suspended. Hence, persona non grata at the conference. That means they have something to pursue.’ Logan rested a hand on Sawyer’s arm. ‘I can take this national.’
Sawyer pushed the hand away. ‘My pain, your gain.’
Logan leaned in and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. ‘Come on. When people see how the “hero cop” has been so badly mistreated by colleagues, there’ll be all sorts of campaigns. Even if they do charge you, it’ll be a sideshow. Like Making A Murderer with a happy ending.’ He sat back, sloshed the coffee around in his cup. ‘I know you didn’t fucking kill anyone. But you’re being set up, probably by the same person who set up Klein for what happened to your mum. Jake, whoever got to Klein might be the same person who murdered Jessica.’
Sawyer flinched at the use of his mother’s first name. ‘It’s a good job we’ve got your insight, Logan. That never occurred to me.’
Logan lowered his voice. ‘You know what confuses me?’
‘The birds and the bees? The metric system?’
He leaned forward again. ‘Why not kill you, too? Make a clean break. Nobody else is going to pursue it after all this time. Your dad is busy being the born-again Van Gogh of the North. And your brother is hardly likely to—’
‘Shut your mouth, Logan.’ A flare of rage. Sawyer cursed himself; it was precisely the reaction Logan was probing for. Raise the discomfort, then apply the balm.
‘Okay. I get it. Family ties. How about I sweeten the pitch for you? You know what they say about knowledge.’ Sawyer raised an eyebrow but kept silent. ‘I know something the police don’t know that I know.’
‘An unknown known.’
Logan smiled. Nicotine-stained teeth. ‘Sort of.’
‘I already know it. Male, late forties.’ He paused, gauging Logan’s reaction. ‘Found by commuters at Grindleford Station yesterday morning.’
‘Not bad. But I bet you don’t know what killed him.’
Sawyer nibbled at an unfinished crust of toast. ‘Boredom?’
‘Crossbow. Single bolt. Back of the head.’
‘How the fuck do you know this? Have you been questioned?’
Logan finished his coffee and gave a smug smile. ‘It’s tough these days, Sawyer, being a journalist. News is spread so fucking thin. It’s all so open and easy to access. You have to protect your sources more fiercely than ever. Anyway, that’s not all.’ He glanced back at the counter; the man was busy in the back room. ‘They found another. This morning. Off the Monsal Trail, near the old Hassop Station.’
‘Two in two days?’
‘I hear this one wasn’t quite so fresh. Cyclists reported a bad smell. Rangers traced it. Bloke in his forties. No idea how he died, but I hear your colleagues are looking for connections. I’ll do some digging. I’ve got your number.’ He stood up. ‘Bad time to be out in the cold, Sawyer. Two maniacs running round. A multiple killer and a child abductor.’
Sawyer forced a smile. ‘I like a challenge.’
15
Dale Strickland chalked his cue and crouched low at the side of the table, assessing his angles. ‘The cliché applies. You don’t shit in your own back yard.’
Marco snorted. ‘The whole place is a shithole, anyway. Tea shops and sheep shaggers.’
Dale took his shot: easy red into the corner, leaving a tight angle on a possible blue. ‘Exactly. That’s why it’s prime territory. Full of teenagers with nothing better to do than pass round STDs.’
He took a sip from a glass of whisky and nodded to the far side of the vast, low-ceilinged basement room, where a clique of younger men—almost boys—skulked around an American Pool table. Shaun stood off to the side, talking to a tubby white teenager with dreadlocks and a top-to-toe uniform of branded sportswear.
Marco caught Dale’s eye. ‘He says they’re solid. They’ve got product, eyes on a few possible bases.’
A match flared in the lamplit booth by the snooker table. Austin Fletcher applied the flame to the unfiltered cigarette in his mouth, flooding the booth with a dense plume of gunmetal smoke. Marco flicked his eyes to the sign tacked above the table: NO SMOKING. Dale smiled, shook his head.
Shaun swaggered over. ‘Fucking stinks over here. Is he doing rock?’
Marco smiled. ‘Gitanes, I think.’
‘Turkish’, said Fletcher, from behind the smoke.
Shaun shook his head. ‘Whatever. We can’t have this shit when we’re sitting on product.’ He jerked a thumb at Fletcher. ‘He can fuckin’ shoot heroin next week, for all I care. Once we’re cleared out.’
Dale took his shot: missed the blue, left an easy red.
Marco stepped up to the table. ‘Shaun, I admire your diligence with the smoking regulations, but we’re closed down here tonight. Private party.’ He polished off the red and lined up the black. ‘Why don’t you take your brains trust up to the gaming floor? They can show you how to work the Super Mario machine.’
Shaun laughed. ‘You sound like my dad. He’s got an excuse, mind. Dementia.’
Dale handed his cue to Shaun. ‘Take over. And play nice. I want this place clean and those boys set up down there tomorrow. Tell me that won’t be a problem.’
Shaun took the cue, glanced at Marco. ‘It won’t be a problem.’
Dale picked up his drink and headed for a small corner office. Fletcher shuffled to the edge of the booth seat and stood up. He took a final drag of his cigarette and offered it to Shaun, who immediately tossed it to the tiled floor and ground it under the heel of his trainer. Fletcher raised a hand to his head. He fixed his empty eyes on Shaun and smoothed back his blond hair with no hint of hurry. He drew a slow breath, picked up the grey briefcase and followed Dale into the office.
The room was windowless and overlit: two chairs, cheap desk, bookcase on the back wall with files and ledgers. Dale opened a low cupboard by the desk and took out a bottle of Glenfiddich. He splashed a little into his glass and sat down. Fletcher stayed upright, facing the closed door.
Dale sipped and waited.
Fletcher turned and sat down. He opened the briefcase, took out a slim transparent folder with a black spine and passed it across the desk. Dale opened it and flicked through the pages: photographs of Sawyer at various press conferences and police events; a scaled-down photocopy of Dean Logan’s recent Derbyshire Times ‘Hero Cop’ story; assorted documents and clippings from previous cases. The final sheet held a grainy photocopy of the Daily Mirror front page from September 1988.
BEAUTY SLAIN BY A BEAST
The main supporting photo showed a headshot of a smiling young woman with long, dark hair.
MURDERED: JESSICA SAWYER (34)
An inset image showed school photographs of two young boys.
TRAGIC KIDS: MICHAEL (9) AND JAKE (6)
Dale looked up at Fletcher; he was unscrewing the lid of his pill bottle. ‘Marco paid him a visit a couple of weeks ago. A warning.’
Fletcher kept his eyes down. ‘Armed?’
‘Yes. Took two others. One’s abroad at the moment. And Shaun.’ Fletcher snorted. ‘He took their car and they found it by Edale station. Marco has a police contact. They’d had reports of someone on the track near there, playing chicken with the trains. They had a complaint that evening.’
Fletcher raised his eyes. ‘He sees a counsellor.’
‘I know. If he’s self-destructive, suicidal...’ Dale took a taste of whisky. ‘You could use that.’
Fle
tcher smiled. ‘Could I?’ He tossed back two of the pills and drank from his bottle of water.
Dale gripped the edge of the desk with both hands and leaned forward. ‘He fought off three capable men. One with a gun.’
Fletcher shrugged. ‘Easy.’
16
Sawyer perched on the edge of the black chaise longue and took in the room: the mauve armchair opposite; mock baroque side table with teapot, cups and biscuits; glass-topped coffee table; tissues, water jug, fussy frosted glasses. He stared up at the largest picture on the wall: a slow-shutter photograph of the waterfall at Lumsworth, the liquid creamy white and solid, like porcelain. A technological gimmick presented as art.
Alex Goldman entered. She was nearing seventy: flimsy and infant sized, with grey blow-dried hair and muted, functional clothing that almost vanished her into the off-white walls. She shivered, and pulled up the hem of her beige roll-neck as she settled into the armchair. ‘Cold snap coming, I think. Earlier than usual, this year. Do you like snow, Jake?’
‘That’s like saying, “Do you like tunnels?”’
Alex angled her head. ‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s a benchmark, to see how jaded you’ve become. That childlike feeling when you’re in a car and you go into a tunnel, or when you open the curtains and it’s snowing outside.’
‘Or an aeroplane flies over, low.’
He nodded. She gave him the time to say more, but he stayed silent.
‘Well. That’s a segue, I suppose. Connection with those childlike responses. After all, our work is all about moving you away from that terrible event you witnessed when you were too young to process it. We’re trying to remodel it into something that the adult you can detach from, look back on. A memory you can pack away with the others. Something you control, rather than something that controls you.’
‘I thought we tried that, and failed.’
Alex reached over and poured two cups of tea. ‘Come on, Jake. Don’t be obtuse. You know this. Failure isn’t an excuse to give up: it’s an important part of learning. I did warn you the reliving process would be difficult.’ She added the milk and stirred two sugar lumps into Sawyer’s cup. ‘How are you coping?’
‘Trying to eat better. Watching Life on Earth.’
‘The original series? How wonderful. I can see how that would be soothing. It ties in with my point about failure.’
Sawyer nodded. ‘Of all the species that have existed on Earth, ninety-nine point nine per cent are now extinct.’
‘Yes. And some believe we are currently in the grip of a sixth mass extinction. The others were quite sudden natural events, but this one is in slow motion. Triggered by humanity’s actions on Earth.’
‘Depends what you mean by “natural events”, I suppose.’ Sawyer reached over for the tea and set it down on the coffee table. He grabbed a couple of biscuits and dunked one. ‘Some would say that natural disasters and freak weather are Earth’s way of trying to get rid of us.’
‘The Gaia theory.’ Alex sipped her tea, winced at the heat. ‘It’s all a survival story, Jake. On a grand scale, we’re part of that tiny section of life that managed to survive. On an individual level, we all have to find our own ways to live. Adversity, mistakes, failure. It helps us to refine our methods, leads to deeper understanding.’
He munched at the biscuit, spilling crumbs into a cupped hand. ‘I dreamt of the killer.’
‘Your mother’s killer?’
‘Another dream where I was there again, as it was happening, as he was hitting her with the hammer. Usually, I can’t do anything. But this one was almost lucid. She pulled off his balaclava, and I saw his face, and some detail. Dark, heavy eyebrows. Black moustache, with a touch of grey.’
Alex pondered. ‘It might feel like progress, but it could be just your imagination, filling in a gap. The treatment so far has given you confidence to get up closer to the events, in your dreams. But how are you doing when you’re not asleep? Are you still trying to recreate the feeling you experienced in the cave?’
He sat back. ‘I haven’t felt anything like it since.’
‘We’ve talked about fear. Your apparent inability to feel it, to understand it, how it’s part of our survival system. Did you finish the book Maggie gave you? The Gift of Fear?’
He nodded. ‘Had a couple of days’ downtime recently.’
‘You’re not the only one, you know. We all have a strange relationship with fear. It’s a kind of hardwired high. And we seek out the buzz without the bodily peril. Horror films, rollercoasters.’ Alex set down her cup and leaned forward, resting her hands on one knee. ‘Jake, in the field, when we tried the reliving, you were distressed. You asked why love hurts so much. Love is a deep, complex feeling. And the panic or type of fear you felt in the cave, that’s also deep and complex. Despite all of the pain that love has brought you, it’s a pain you understand. And so I think you’re excited by this new feeling that’s equally rich and unfathomable, but that isn’t compromised by the baggage from your mother’s death.’
Sawyer gave a weak smile. ‘So I’m seeking extreme experiences of danger and risk because I’m hoping that the deep and complex feeling of fear will come to replace the deep and complex feeling over what happened to my mother?’
His burner phone sounded with a message alert.
Alex raised an eyebrow at the unfamiliar tone. ‘We should have a second try at reliving soon. Take you through the experience again, see if we can get any further.’ She stared him down. ‘You do realise that we’re not working towards improving your vision of your mother’s murderer so you can pursue some kind of cold case. We’re trying to help you to live a less troubled life in the here and now.’
‘Of course.’
She sighed. ‘Have you looked into it from a hardware angle? Neurology? You were attacked yourself, with the hammer.’
‘My father told me I was examined at nine, and again when I was sixteen. CT, MRI. He insists I was “damaged”. I suppose I could get my hands on the imagery. Revisit it.’
He took out the burner phone. Text message from Max Reeves, asking him to call.
‘You should get a fresh consult,’ said Alex. ‘A full picture. New opinion, with current technology. It might help you. As we mentioned last time, my concern over your lack of fear response is that your judgement is impaired, meaning you put yourself, and others, in jeopardy. You can’t keep getting away with that.’
Sawyer stood up. ‘I’ll get the original test results. Got a lot on at the moment.’ He waved the phone. ‘I need to call someone.’
Alex smiled. ‘If you’re quick, I can stop the clock.’
Sawyer walked out to the end of Alex’s drive and stood by the Mini, staring down to where the lane blended into rolling farmland at the fringes of the Manifold Valley. He called Reeves.
‘Mr Sawyer. You’re keen. Couple of things you’ll be interested in. The name you gave me, Caldwell. First, the good news. William Caldwell was the DCI at Buxton station in the 1980s. So he would have certainly had the authority to let Casey walk.’ Reeves took a wheezy breath. ‘Got a mugshot from his file. I’ll send it. This number safe for media?’
‘Yeah.’ Sawyer braced. ‘Bad news?’
‘Might be a problem if you want to talk to Caldwell about what he did with the hammer Casey got for him. He’s dead. Well, technically. His wife reported him missing in September 1997. Nothing since. You know how it works: after seven years with no contact, we assume you’re not coming back.’
A blast of wind whistled in from the fields; Sawyer turned back to face the house. ‘So he’s been legally dead for fourteen years now.’
Reeves cleared his throat. ‘Good luck with that one.’
‘His wife still alive?’
‘No idea.’
‘What about the burgundy BMW?’
‘Fuck me, Sawyer. Give us a chance. This is unpaid freelance, you know. There’s a lot of those models registered. It’ll take time, off the books.’
‘On what?’
Sawyer opened his eyes: sky white as clay, no sun. ‘On a current case.’
Reeves sighed. ‘Depends what you want to know. Please tell me this is your special secret phone. I can’t help you on your own case. I know nothing. I don’t want to know nothing.’
‘Anything,’ said Sawyer. ‘You don’t want to know anything. Double negative.’
Reeves laughed. ‘Is this how you’re dealing with suspension? Turning into the grammar police?’
‘The guy they found this morning at the Monsal Trail. Cause of death?’
Silence from Reeves.
‘Max. Two bodies discovered in two days. Both adult males, similar age. It’ll be on the database. Shared intelligence. Cross reference with crossbow crime in the Southeast.’
‘There’s no need to fish, Jake. It’s a different MO, this time. No crossbow. Someone bashed his head in.’
17
The woman twisted off her yellow gloves and tapped on the door. She paused, and entered. The old sitting room had been cleared of all furniture, apart from a line of bulging bookcases and a new-looking bottle-green sofa against the far wall, below an enormous window.
The tall, slender man lay across the sofa, cast in dappled shadow from the window’s Venetian blind. Black hoodie, jeans, luminous red trainers. He was reading by the light of a lamp clipped to his book. Music played from an unseen source: dense and oppressive drone metal, but with the volume almost too low to be discernible. The man tipped his head as the woman entered.
She closed the door behind her and lingered there in the gloom. ‘Are you okay, dear? Cold out.’
‘I was reading.’ His voice was soft, almost whispered. ‘Asimov. A story set in the future, where real teachers have been replaced by computers. Not science fiction. Horror, I’d say.’ The woman took a few steps forward. ‘The children wonder about the children in the past, about how much fun it would have been to have real teachers and real books.’
