Next to Die (17 page)

‘This is DC Sam Parker,’ Evans said. ‘He’s going to look through your daughter’s things.’ Sam nodded a greeting to them. ‘Are you all right with that?’

Mrs McGovern was about to say something, but Sam stopped her by saying that he would be respectful. She smiled thinly, her eyes watering, and so he went towards the stairs.

Julie’s bedroom was at the back of the house, overlooking a long lawn shaped in curves, with a greenhouse at one end and bright bursts of flowers in the beds. The room itself was the curious age-mix of a young woman still at home, with remnants of her childhood slowly replaced by her adult life. There were stuffed bears on the pillow and a statue of a ballerina on the dresser, with a make-up bag and a box of tampons further along.

Sam went to the dresser first, feeling to the back of the drawers, ignoring the expected contents and trying instead for anything unusual, like paper or a notebook. Nothing there.

The other drawers were just the same. Jumpers and T-shirts and jeans and shorts. He took out the bottom one to look in the space between the drawer and the floor, where she might keep her secret things, but it was just that – an empty space. He straightened and went towards the bed, clicking on the computer as he went past it. There was a shelf above it, lined with Harry Potter and Twilight books. He lifted out each book to check for anything in them, but they were just books. He lifted the mattress. Nothing there.

Julie’s computer sat on a desk by the window. It was tidy, but more than just neatness. It seemed like there was attention to detail. When he looked at most desks, they made him uneasy, because there were usually papers strewn across, or pens lying haphazardly. Julie’s was different. The mouse mat was placed in the centre of the desk, exactly in the middle and parallel. There were two pens, one blue and one black, lined up next to each other. A notepad was on the corner, perfectly positioned. Sam was no psychologist, but it didn’t seem like the desk of someone who would do something rash or impulsive. Julie wanted order in her life, some kind of plan.

There were two drawers in the desk. Neither was locked. Sam looked in the top one. There was a pencil case to one side and next to it an address book.

He lifted out the address book and placed it on the desk. He would look through it at the station.

The computer had finished its whirring and was showing a desktop picture of three girls in an embrace, all grinning at the camera, Julie in the middle. Three happy teenagers, looking forward to life.

Sam went to the email software first. He scanned the messages but there wasn’t anything that aroused suspicion. He was looking for any discussions about Julie feeling low, or any meet-ups planned for the night before. There were just receipts for a few online purchases and routine chatter between friends. He scanned through the documents folder but nothing stood out as unusual. He went to the computer folders, to see whether she had hidden anything away, but none of the folder titles gave any hints.

He clicked on the internet browser and checked the history, looking to see where she had looked on the internet, whether she had visited any suicide websites or suspicious forums. Or even whether she had been trying to find accommodation somewhere. A hotel or hostel. It was blank, cleared out. That struck Sam as unusual. He expected teenagers to be a little secretive about their internet history, but it meant that Julie had cleared it before she went out. Was that relevant? The computer experts would go through the hard drive later, to look for what she had searched for, or the trail of her chat programs, but that would take time.

None of that was good. If there was something that hinted at deeper problems, then she could end up as a runaway, someone who would go through difficult times but would be alive. But as the alternatives run out, you are left with just one: that she had been abducted and murdered.

He stopped when he heard a shout from downstairs. He went to the landing and looked over the rail. It was Evans.

‘Yes, ma’am?’

Evans came up the stairs and spoke in a whisper. ‘I’ve just heard from the prison. Ben Grant has said yes. Now is the time. Can you do it?’

‘Yes, ma’am, you can trust me.’ And in that moment, as the words came out, for the first time he really meant it.

Thirty

‘Ronnie, come in,’ Joe said, and pointed to the chair in front of his desk.

As he walked into the office, Ronnie seemed uncomfortable. He looked towards the paintings on the walls, pictures of old Manchester hung against bright stripes of gold and white, like an Edwardian drawing room. There were law books in a bookcase, All England Law Reports going back through the years, but they were just for show. The textbooks Joe actually used were accessed through his computer.

The room was intended to impress, because criminal clients don’t want to put up with the guy above the estate agency. They want to think they have the best lawyer, and so a plush office in a city centre building goes part way to convincing them.

There was a creak as Ronnie sat down. Joe sat opposite, the barrier of the desk between them. Some firms went for sofas, so the client could be put at ease. Joe didn’t agree with that, because his clients wouldn’t get an easy time in the witness box. They had to answer questions under pressure, and that started in his office.

Joe picked up his phone and called for Monica to join him.

‘Do you want a drink, Ronnie? Just tea or coffee though.’

He shook his head. ‘Can I smoke?’

Joe thought about saying no, but then remembered how Ronnie had been all too keen to swap firms. He didn’t want to risk another defection over some passive smoking. Joe went to the window to open it, and Ronnie rummaged in his pocket for his cigarettes. Joe was about to lift the sash when he saw him. In the park, on a bench, looking up. Same as before. The man in the courtroom. As soon as Joe caught his eye, he got to his feet and started to walk away.

‘Wait there,’ Joe said to Ronnie, and then rushed out of his room, bolting down the corridor and the stairs. As he emerged onto the street, he looked along, up and down. There wasn’t anyone walking away. He went towards the park, the gate clanging loudly as he pushed through it and headed towards the bench where he had seen the person. It was empty.

Joe put his hands on his hips, feeling exasperated. Someone had been watching the office again.

He trudged back across the road and into his office. Ronnie was still sitting in the chair when he walked back into the room, but the blinds were crooked, as if he had been looking out. Monica was there too, sitting on a chair at the side of the room, her legs crossed, a notepad open in front of her.

‘What had you seen?’ Ronnie asked.

Joe was panting from the rush up and down the stairs. ‘I saw a client I needed to see, that’s all.’

Ronnie sat upright. ‘So this is where we start, is it? What do you think about my case?’

Joe looked towards the pile of papers on the edge of the desk. ‘Yes, this is it.’ He tried to keep the focus on Ronnie’s case. ‘How are you feeling, Ronnie? You’ve got a long haul ahead.’

‘Tired,’ he said, which surprised Joe. Ronnie didn’t seem happy to be out of prison. He hadn’t at any point. Most people would have stayed in prison until their trial. Ronnie seemed to treat his time inside as if it was a momentary inconvenience.

‘So what’s our defence?’ Ronnie asked.

‘If you didn’t kill Carrie and Grace —’

‘I didn’t,’ Ronnie interrupted.

Joe held up his hand. ‘If you didn’t kill them, the fact that they are still alive is our defence.’

‘Can you prove that?’

‘Not yet,’ Joe said. ‘We’re going to try.’

Ronnie looked down.

‘What’s wrong, Ronnie?’ Joe said. ‘They are still alive, right?’

‘Well, I didn’t kill them,’ he said. He looked over at Monica. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’

Monica glanced at Joe, and then said, ‘Our job is to defend you. That’s what we’ll do.’

‘We need to prepare for the worst though,’ Joe said. ‘What if Carrie and Grace are dead? The jury might think that, so we have to look at other suspects. Tell me about your landlord, Terry Day.’

‘No.’

Joe was surprised. ‘What do you mean, no?’

‘Just that,’ Ronnie said, his lips pursed. ‘Leave Terry out of it.’

‘There is enough evidence to convince a jury that Carrie and Grace are dead,’ Joe said. ‘If it wasn’t you, then it must have been someone else. What about the lonely man on the top floor who listens out for arguments? Did he go downstairs to comfort her, because he was worried about her, and things got out of hand? Did he come on to her? Did Carrie come on to him?’

‘No, Carrie wouldn’t.’ Ronnie’s voice was getting angry.

‘Why not? You’re out at work all day, and she’s lonely because life is hard. You’ve got a young baby and things aren’t good between you. Did she miss the physical side, the strength of a man? Did Carrie come on to him and he pushed her away, making her bang her head?’

‘No!’

‘Or maybe he saw her and knew how lonely she was. He heard the argument and saw it was his chance. He went down there. He comforted her. He read too much into it and tried it on and they fought. He killed her. And he had to get rid of her before you came home.’

Ronnie was shaking his head violently. ‘No, no,’ he said, wagging his finger at Joe. ‘What about Grace, my daughter? Where does she fit into it?’

‘The same way the prosecution say it fits into your case, Ronnie. People panic. If he killed Carrie, he couldn’t leave Grace on her own. He had to make it look like Carrie had run away, so that people would think that she had left you. When you walked into that police station, it was his chance. Someone else would get the blame, not him.’

Ronnie sat back and looked down, clamped his hands under his thighs. ‘We can’t do that. We can’t blame Terry.’

‘It’s a case theory, that’s all,’ Joe said. ‘It doesn’t have to be true, as long as it might be.’

‘It’s not my case theory,’ Ronnie snapped. ‘Leave Terry Day out of this.’

Joe thought about that. He was the lawyer and he was the one who made the decisions, but he couldn’t ignore his client.

‘So if we don’t go after Terry Day, all we can do is pick at the prosecution case, except that it’s a decent one. If we ignore Terry Day, your defence gets weaker.’

Ronnie shrugged.

‘Okay,’ Joe said. ‘Let’s go through it. The bloodstains. How hard did you hit Carrie?’

‘I don’t know. What do you mean, how hard? It was a punch. How hard is a punch?’

‘And did she stay on her feet?’

Ronnie thought about that. ‘I don’t know.’

‘How can you not know? It’s the first time you hit her, so you say.’

‘Like I said, I don’t know.’

Joe slammed his hand on the desk, making Ronnie jump. ‘“I don’t know” won’t work, Ronnie.’ His voice was angry. ‘Carrie is missing. Grace is missing. Carrie’s blood was on the door and on the walls, smears where you wiped it up. The jury will think it was from when she was killed, so if we can’t come up with an alternative theory, you’re finished.’

Ronnie looked at the ceiling and closed his eyes. He squeezed them tight, as if holding back tears, but when he looked down again, his eyes were dry.

‘I punched her, that’s all,’ he said, his voice soft.

‘Why?’ Joe said. ‘What had she done that made you snap?’

‘She was, well…’ Ronnie shook his head. ‘I found out she had been having men round when I was at work. To, well, you know, entertain them. That was the argument Terry Day heard.’

‘She worked as a prostitute?’

Ronnie nodded slowly.

Joe made a note in his notebook. ‘Who were her clients?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t her pimp, you know. I was just some poor sap who went to work as she fucked men in our bed to get vodka money.’

‘Who was her pimp? Who organised it?’

‘She didn’t say. The argument was too angry to get into the detail.’

‘And you hit her.’

‘Yes. I’m not proud of it, but she was taunting me. I just lost it. Can you imagine what it must be like to find that out?’

Joe swung round slowly in his chair as he thought about that, facing out of the window. He had felt the red-hot stab of infidelity, but not on the scale mentioned by Ronnie. He glanced towards the park, just checking, but there was no one there.

He turned back to face Ronnie. ‘This could go two ways, you know that?’

‘How?’

‘It might be enough. Did you want Carrie to stop?’

‘Yeah, of course. Who wouldn’t? Sleeping with men, with Grace in the flat. It was wrong.’

‘And you asked her to stop?’

‘I told her to stop.’

‘So perhaps Carrie had handed in her notice, so to speak?’ Joe said. ‘And there we have it, another case theory. Her pimp hits her, or one of his men, and kills her accidentally. They panic and get rid of the body. But there is one thing that stands out in all of this.’

‘Go on.’ Ronnie was grinding his teeth as Joe looked at him.

‘If this might be true, you have to accept that whoever killed Carrie also killed your daughter.’

Ronnie took a deep breath. ‘I understand.’

‘And there’s the other side to it,’ Joe said.

‘Which is what?’

‘That you were so angry at what Carrie was doing, how she was sleeping with men when you were out at work, that you attacked her. It might give you an explanation, but it also gives you a motive.’

‘For killing my own daughter?’ Ronnie sat back and folded his arms, scowling. ‘How sick do you think I am?’

‘How long had she been a prostitute, Ronnie?’

Ronnie started to shake his head slowly. ‘Not long, I don’t think.’

‘You don’t pick up an application form at the job centre. If she was working from home, she knew her way around. So maybe Grace isn’t yours,’ Joe said, and he watched as the blood rose in Ronnie’s cheeks. ‘Is that what happened? She argued and taunted you, and then it came out that Grace was a punter’s child? So you flew in a rage and then took it out on poor Grace, that sweet, defenceless little girl.’

‘You bastard.’

‘No, Ronnie, I’m not. I’m just giving you a flavour of what you’ve got ahead if we go with this case theory. For all that it explains away the evidence, it gives you a motive. A damn strong one.’