Next to Die (8 page)

Sam sighed. ‘I worry about Mum. And Ruby. Mum can’t cope with her. She goes out all the time, doesn’t do her homework, and Mum just ignores it, because she can’t stomach the fight.’

‘Should we speak to her?’ Joe said. ‘Teenagers left to make their own decisions get into trouble, and I don’t want to get called out to the police station for her.’

‘Yes, I think we should.’

Joe let the silence grow as Sam looked out over the water. There was something troubling him. Finally Sam said, ‘Talking to Ruby would make a change from talking to a murderer, I suppose. That must sit heavily, after what happened to Ellie.’

Joe took another sip of wine. There it was, the reason for the visit. ‘You said “murderer”.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Do you mean Ronnie Bagley?’

‘Well, yes.’ Sam sat back. ‘Why was he more important than your family today, so that you had to squeeze us in before a prison visit?’

‘It’s not a competition,’ Joe said, and put down his glass. ‘How did you know I’m involved in Ronnie’s case?’

Sam looked surprised by that. ‘Well, you are, aren’t you?’

‘From today I am, but how did you find out?’

Sam didn’t answer at first, and so Joe waited, knowing that Sam would fill the silence.

‘Someone mentioned it at the station,’ Sam said eventually. ‘They asked me what was going on.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘Nothing. What else could I say? I don’t know anything about your cases.’

‘How did they say it to you? The last I heard, you were on the financial unit, shuffling papers. So what was it? An email, or a phone call? Or just whispers in the canteen?’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘I’m not stupid, Sam. I’ve had one court hearing and a prison visit and you find out, when I can’t think of any reason why you should. So why? Is my involvement making people nervous, because I get results?’

‘Don’t be so bloody arrogant.’

‘Or is there something about the case that you don’t want people finding out?’

‘Now you’re being ridiculous. Someone just mentioned that you had picked up the case, that’s all. You being my brother is a conversation piece, something to say when you pass people in the corridor.’

Joe didn’t respond. Sam wasn’t going to reveal anything.

‘I don’t know how you can do it anyway,’ Sam said.

‘If you’re saying what I think you are, we’ve had this conversation before.’

‘It still needs saying. You defend murderers and rapists and thieves and fraudsters. How can you do that? How can you go to sleep at night, knowing the people you help keep on the streets?’

Joe closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

The question bored him. It was the one all defence lawyers got, especially from the police. His answer changed, depending on who was doing the asking. Sometimes he gave the truthful answer, that he thought that it was a mark of civilisation that people could have a fair trial, because the crook would be convicted if there is proof, regardless of what he did. The police had to follow rules, just like everyone else did, and the rules gave everything order. Other times, he went for the shock value and said that he didn’t care, that it was fun, rocking the system, but he didn’t really think like that. Cases did keep him awake sometimes, when he had to walk past the families of the victims when the person who took away someone precious walked free, but those were the exception. As much as he tried, most of his clients took a long walk down the cold steps, and some would never walk back up them to the harsh blink of freedom.

But this was Sam asking.

‘You mean how could I do it after Ellie?’ Joe said, and his thoughts flashed back again to fifteen years earlier, sitting there surrounded by birthday cards,
18 Today
banners pinned up around the living room, the house filled with police officers and the sound of his mother’s screams.

‘He’s still out there,’ Sam said, his fingers tapping out a rhythm on the table, a sign of his agitation. ‘And when he’s caught, he’ll get someone like you to help him get away with it.’

Joe didn’t respond at first. There were secrets he had kept for fifteen years, and it was too late to change things now.

He took another sip of wine, a longer one this time. ‘I don’t have to defend myself,’ he said. ‘I’m beyond all that. I just help people.’

‘What do you think Dad would say if he knew?’

Joe turned to him, anger flashing in his eyes. ‘That’s a low blow, and you know it.’ When Sam responded only by looking at the floor, Joe said, ‘It’s time for you to go.’

‘What, we can’t enjoy a birthday drink together?’

‘You didn’t come here for that.’

Sam looked at him, stern-faced. ‘If that’s how you want it.’

Joe kept his gaze focused on the water as Sam scraped his chair back.

‘Don’t leave your family behind,’ Sam said, and then his footsteps faded as he went through the apartment.

When he heard the apartment door close, Joe reached across and took a beer can from the holder. When he popped the ring pull, he raised it in salute. ‘Happy birthday, Joe Parker.’

The evening was spent lost in paperwork, and it was nearly eleven before he took the box back inside. The beer was gone, as was the wine, and the wobble he felt as he walked back in told him that he would feel the booze in the morning.

The case was just as he had first gleaned from Ronnie – that it was conjecture and guesswork, because Carrie and Grace’s bodies hadn’t been found – but the evidence was stronger than Ronnie hoped.

Ronnie and Carrie lived on the ground floor of a tall Victorian house, with stone-silled bay windows and stained glass around the front door. The crime scene photographs made it look grim and cramped, with just one bedroom, Grace’s cot in one corner, squeezed in alongside the double bed. The other main room was the living room, with a kitchen beyond, the bathroom just a small room at the other end of the kitchen. The doors were plain and flat, the paint on them bubbled at the bottom, the white now a dirty cream.

The living room was dingy, everything in brown shades, the light provided by a window opposite the fireplace, although they looked like they were cleaned rarely, with dust and cobwebs on the outside. The carpet was faded brown swirls, with worn out patches from the door. Carrie had made some effort to make the flat look nice, with some flowers in a vase on an old dresser, although the varnish on the wood was cracked and old. There were photographs of a young baby Grace in clip-frames, but the pictures looked dulled by cigarette smoke even though Grace was only two years old. The ashtrays were piled high with old butts, and in the bin in the corner of the room there was the neck of a vodka bottle, the red label just visible.

The crime scene investigator had been thorough. The flat surfaces of the doors made for good fingerprints and acted like a blank canvas for the blood splatters. The attack had started at the entrance to the bedroom, because there were smears on the door, as if someone had made a bad job of cleaning up. It was the same on the fireplace, with contact marks and then tiny spatters that were consistent with Carrie’s head being banged on the granite hearth. The landlord’s statement was graphic, making the argument seem beyond the routine bickering they normally engaged in. The prosecution case was simple: Ronnie had killed Carrie in their apartment and then removed her, dumping her somewhere. They just didn’t know where he had taken her, or his daughter. If they found Carrie, they expected to find Grace buried alongside her.

And then there was the visit to the police station, when Ronnie walked in and said that he had killed his girlfriend. That gave Ronnie a problem. All the jurors needed to believe was that Ronnie killed her. The lack of a body was a problem, but juries don’t like to let killers go free.

Joe closed the sliding doors, so that the low hum of late traffic disappeared and all that was left was the fan of his computer.

He went to his desk and moved the mouse to fill the screen with the desktop picture of a scanned family photograph, his favourite of them all together, taken on holiday in Portugal. They were on a beach, all of them in shorts and T-shirts, the soft sandstone of the Algarve cliffs behind them, his parents grinning, their arms around Ellie’s shoulders, Joe and Sam on either side. It made him pause for a moment. Although he saw it every time he went to his computer, the conversation with Sam brought back the memory of the holiday. Ellie was dead less than a year later.

He took a deep breath and then clicked on his internet browser. He knew what he was going to do. Sober, he never went there, but when he felt the jangle of booze in his fingers, he went looking for company.

Internet dating. He had registered but always ignored the requests for a meeting. It just made him feel like he was back in the game, which was what he needed, but he had no desire to commit. He browsed the pages and read the profiles, imagining what would happen if he got in touch, just to feel that tingle of anticipation that had long since disappeared.

He got up to close the curtains, but as he stood at the window, he paused. There had been a flash of something on the other side of the water, as if the lights along the canal bank had caught the gleam of something metallic. Joe remembered the man outside the office earlier in the day. He clicked off the light so that he got a better view outside, and as he pressed his face against the glass, there was movement – someone moving quickly.

He stepped away from the glass. Someone was watching him.

Fourteen

His sobs blotted out the sounds of the morning. No birdsong, no shouting, no hum of the traffic from outside. Just his own steady moans, his arms over his head trying to keep out the noise of his memories, because they had been coming all night, waves of screams and cries, making sleep impossible. Was this how it would always be, never able to forget? Was it too much to ask that he could wipe away what had happened, so that he didn’t have to be tormented by their final moments? The fear in their eyes, their end incomprehensible. He had wanted to say he was sorry each time, that he had never meant it to be like that, but in those final few seconds it was meaningless.

So he craved the silence that never came.

It wasn’t just the memories that frightened him. It was the arousal he felt when his mind dwelled on what had happened. It had taunted him all night, the build up of a few hours looking back on it all, it cheated even that small pleasure from him because it was wrong to be aroused by it. What sort of monster had he become?

It was his way of dealing with it, though, rooting it in pleasure, but those few minutes trapped in fantasy were always replaced by shame and disgust. He called it the dead phase, when the passion had gone and all he had left was the panic of discovery or the sweep of remorse.

Instead, he watched the slow spread of daylight across the floor, cold and harsh, the slow finger of judgement creeping towards him. He pulled his bedding over his shoulder and tried to curl up and get some moments of sleep, but as he stared at the wall, he knew the chance for sleep had gone.

It was all so wrong, he knew that, and so he hoped that his memories would be enough to maintain him, but remembering everything wasn’t the same as experiencing it, where the need for someone new drove him on.

He closed his eyes and tears tickled at his eyelids, his cheeks burning red. It was there again, remorse, that dark shadow that crept into his thoughts and eroded the pleasure. For every silky feel of hair, he remembered a screech of fear or panic. Struggles against the rope, the terror of the blindfold, until those final muffled moments, the fast thrash of the legs, and then stillness. He clenched his teeth as they came back to him. It hadn’t been about that, it never had, but how could they be allowed to leave when they would bring an end to it all?

Loneliness would get him in the end, because there was no one to ease his pain, to provide the words that had helped him to function, the inspiration behind it all. Beautiful, tender, passionate love had driven him to it. Didn’t that make it better, that it wasn’t all about him?

He sat up, let the bedding fall to the ground. He needed to be stronger. This was supposed to be the new beginning.

The words seemed hollow. He wasn’t strong enough.

As the strip of daylight widened across the floor, he clamped his eyes shut again and wrapped his arms around his head. He had got it wrong. He couldn’t do this.

Fifteen

Sam was awoken by the buzz of his phone on the small set of drawers next to his bed. He glanced across at the clock. Only 5.30. He rubbed his eyes. Too early.

He reached for his phone. He was about to click the answer button when he saw that it was another withheld number. He sat up and held the phone in his hand. It vibrated against his fingers. Alice stirred next to him, but still he left it, until eventually it fell silent as it transferred to voicemail.

He lay back on the pillow and tried to forget about the call. It would still be there when he got up. It might be something else, a cold call about an accident claim or a fake computer virus, but he couldn’t turn his mind away from it, the thought of it like an itch, and the more he tried to resist it, the harder it became to ignore it. So he watched the day get brighter through the curtains, more awake with every minute, Alice’s slow breaths the only sound as he resisted the urge to check his voicemail, to see if it was the same message.

He turned over and bunched the sheets under his chin, tried to get back to sleep, but his mind went back to the night before. It had ended sourly, but Sam couldn’t stay angry with Joe. They were brothers. That meant something.

Alice stirred. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said, her voice a drawl.

He thought about not saying anything, but the way she propped herself up on her elbows, her tangled hair trailing on the pillow, told him that she would keep asking until she got an answer.

‘It’s nothing. Just work.’

Alice didn’t respond for a while, and then she said, ‘Is it something to do with Joe?’