The Death Collector (8 page)

Joe found the file eventually. It had its own box. He sneezed as he lifted it down and removed the dusty lid, just to check the contents. Five black files: the prosecution statements, defence statements, exhibits, correspondence and unused material. It was usually in the unused material that appeals were won, that collection of papers the prosecution decided not to use but often led to inquiries that should have been followed. There were some scraps of papers, receipts and legal aid forms, and a wrapped-up bundle of papers tied up in pink ribbon, the barrister’s brief.

He carried it up the two flights of stairs and was breathing heavily by the time he thumped it onto his desk. More coffee was needed, and once he had filled his cup and returned to his desk, he flipped the lid open again and lifted out the file containing the witness statements. With all cases like these, there were a lot of statements that didn’t say much. They exhibited the paper trail, like search records and small pieces of evidence found in bedrooms, or bus tickets and train receipts. The crucial ones were the direct eye witnesses and the forensic statements.

As he read, Joe saw that the case against Aidan Molloy was good. It had stayed in the public conscience because of the identity of the victim’s father and the casual way in which the body was discarded.

A young couple had driven to Saddleworth Moor, to do whatever it is young people get up to in cars in the darkness. As they pulled into a small track they often used, someone ran to a car ahead and drove off at speed, but they saw enough to get a glimpse, and even managed a partial registration: the letters ‘DDA’.

Once the car had gone, their headlights caught something pale in the distance. They were curious, and when they went over to look, they wished they hadn’t. They found a woman, Rebecca Scarfield, twenty-nine years old, naked and dead.

The police were under pressure right from the start. Her father was Desmond Archer, the assistant chief constable, and she was a respectable woman, married to a local car salesman, two children. They wondered if it was a revenge attack connected to her father, but then attention turned to Rebecca’s love life. That was when the case turned against Aidan Molloy.

Rebecca’s marriage was in trouble. She had craved attention, and when her husband stopped giving it to her she went looking for it elsewhere. Her phone logs showed one regular caller: Aidan Molloy. So the police visited and the case started coming together.

Rebecca had been seeing Aidan, an impressionable young man caught in the glare of an attractive older woman. But when the police visited him, he lied. About whether he knew her and about where he had been that night. Once the lies started, he became a man with something to hide.

When the police ran the partial vehicle registration through the computer, ‘DDA’, there were a few matches, and one of the local ones was Aidan Molloy’s car.

There was no DNA on Rebecca. There was no sign of a sexual assault. It was just circumstantial and Aidan’s failure to nail an alibi made him a major suspect. When his mother was first spoken to, she told the police he had got in at two thirty in the morning, but Aidan had said it was half-past midnight. None of the neighbours remembered him coming home. The only thing Aidan could say was that it wasn’t him.

And then there were the threats. Three young women gave statements claiming that Aidan had threatened Rebecca, saying he would kill her if she ever tried to leave him.

The spade was the clincher, in the boot of his car. Brand new, with a wooden handle and clods of peat stuck to the blade, the same sort of soil found on the moors near to where she had been found. The prosecution’s case was that he had been caught in the act of burying her and when the young couple came along, he panicked.

Joe put the file down. The case was a good one. Aidan had made his protestations of innocence to the jury, and they had looked him in the eyes and not believed him.

He put his head back and closed his eyes, suddenly tired, aware that he had given some of his evening to satisfy his curiosity and it had come to nothing.

But it was more than that. He was trying to salvage something from his job, a spark to relight the fire that had dimmed after Monica’s death and the guilt he felt because of it. It was as if he wasn’t allowed to enjoy it any more. He was looking for a cause to inspire him.

It was time to go home. He stood up to put the file back into the box, just flicking through it one more time, the names and typed paragraphs merging into one spool of grey and white.

Then he saw it.

He stopped, went back through the statements, trying to see what had attracted his attention, his eyes skimming over the words. He saw it again. A single word. A name: Jex. Detective Sergeant David Jex.

It was an unusual name, an unlikely coincidence. Carl’s father, or uncle? Brother?

That made Joe pause, his mind suddenly started to whirl, the gears clanking together. There was something else going on. Someone related to Carl Jex had been a detective on Aidan’s case and now Carl had become interested in it. But Carl had been wary of the police whilst Lorna, his mother, was worried that the police might have done something to him. But why hadn’t either Carl or Lorna mentioned the involvement of David Jex? And why would either of them be worried about the police?

Joe carried on flicking through the file, turning the pages faster, looking for anything else that seemed familiar. Then he saw something that surprised him. It was another name: DCI Hunter. He had been at the police station the night before. Lorna had mentioned him.

Joe allowed himself a small smile. Now he was interested.

Carl Jex hid behind the leaves of a large laurel bush as he waited in the back garden of the house he had looked at the night before. There was just a long rectangle of neat lawn between him and a stone patio at the back. He was hungry and tired, having spent the day lying low, trying not to be seen by anyone.

He had been holding out for darkness and observing from afar, trying to see what was going on inside. Carl knew that he would be visible to anyone who looked out of the window, as his pale face gleamed in the fading sun, but he had to get closer, to keep watching. He had come this far and he wasn’t going to stop now.

Carl could see the man inside, just walking around, cleaning up. All Carl could do was sit on the cold ground, his knees drawn up to his chest, and wait.

A light dimmed at the back of the house. Carl sat upright, more attentive, his hand moving the branch to one side. Something was changing. He listened out, heard a door closing and then the clunk of a car door being unlocked, the flash of the orange lights noticeable in the gloom. He waited and then there was the sound of an engine. The man was going out.

Carl waited for the engine noise to fade and then moved out of his hiding place slowly, crouching, wary that it was a trap. It all seemed quiet, though, and when he was sure that he wasn’t being watched he straightened and ran across the lawn, his soles squeaking on the damp grass, seeking the shadow of the house, unsure if a security light would light up when he got against the wall. It stayed in darkness.

He closed his eyes and waited for the thumping in his chest to calm down. The bricks were jagged against his cheeks, his stomach turning nervous loops. After a few minutes, he bent down to the small flowerpot by the back door. He had been watching the house for long enough to know that there was a key hidden underneath.

The door opened slowly onto the empty house. Carl paused and listened out for a burglar alarm, but all he heard was the steady drip of a tap. He stepped inside and closed the door, the click of the latch loud.

Carl pulled out a torch from his pocket and shone it around. He gasped. Even in the moving shadows of the torch beam the house was like a museum piece. The kitchen in front of him was old-fashioned, with a deep ceramic sink that was riddled with veins and a free-standing kitchen with units in light blue. The hallway was further ahead, towards the wooden front door under a small arched porch, the door handle low and old, the brass plating long since worn away. The wallpaper was deep red, making the hallway seem dark, even with the streetlight shining orange from outside.

He twitched his nose. The house smelled of aftershave, rich and spicy, as if its owner had sprayed himself before he went out.

He shone his torch to the ground as he went towards the stairs, so that the flickering light didn’t alert any neighbours. There was stained glass in the door, with panels alongside, so the beam would be visible from outside. Upstairs seemed like the place to begin. Carl guessed that was where most people kept their secrets.

The stairs creaked as he crept upwards, moving slowly, not wanting to trip and break something. He swallowed as he went, nervous, his tongue flicking to his lip. He wasn’t a criminal and wasn’t used to this mixture of fear and excitement, the adrenalin making him light-headed.

The stairs opened onto a small square landing, with five doors leading off it. He pushed open the first one. There was a bath and a sink, old and large, with limescale covering the brass taps. The toilet was next door, the door coated with decades of paint. The whole place had never had an update.

There were three bedrooms. The first door opened onto a small room filled with boxes. The curtains were open and there was enough streetlight to let him see what was inside. He opened the first box. It was old newspapers. In the next, engineering magazines from the seventies.

Carl stepped out of the room. There was nothing in there for him.

The curtains were closed in the next room. They were thick and heavy and blocked out the streetlight, so he felt confident enough to turn on his torch.

The beam hit an old double bed with a solid iron frame and springs that sagged towards the floor, the cover a patchwork quilt, the mattress deep and heavy. The room looked like it wasn’t used any more. There were ornaments and photographs scattered around, although they looked faded, as if from another decade, maybe longer, but there were none of the other signs of everyday living. No hairdryer on the floor or creams on a dresser or an open jewellery box. The alarm clock next to the bed was an old black-faced Westclox, the numbers painted in that faint green that maintained a moment’s glow as he moved his beam away. He noticed the time. Five twenty. It had stopped.

Carl went to a wardrobe and looked in. The clothes smelled fusty, the hangers filled with dark heavy coats and blouses with frills.

He stepped away. It intrigued him, but it wasn’t what he was looking for.

The next room was different. He could tell it was being used from the scent of stale sleep and deodorant. There was a double bed in the middle of the room, the cover red and silky, like a parody of something sensual. There were clothes piled neatly on one side of the floor, ready for the wash but still folded. Men’s clothes.

He went to the wardrobe again, and there were women’s clothes, like the other room, except these were different. They were more modern, slinkier, silkier. Skirts and blouses and scarves. Each set was covered in a clear plastic cover, like the sort his mum brought home from the drycleaner’s. He flicked through them. Seven sets. One of them looked familiar, like the one he had seen the woman wearing the night before.

He closed the wardrobe door and went back onto the landing. He listened. It was still quiet. The man hadn’t returned.

The living room was the next place to look, because that was where he had seen them together. He moved quickly down the stairs and went in through the door closest to the front door.

The heat hit him straight away. There was a coal fire glowing and it gave the room that sleepy heat, as well as enough light to let him look around. The torch went into his pocket.

The look of the room was dated. The fireplace was low and fronted by old green tiles. The chairs and sofa sagged in the middle and the standard lamp in the corner had a dark red fringe. Carl walked over to the record player, fascinated. He had never seen one before, only those turntables used by DJs. This was a faded pastel green box with a dirty brown speaker grille, the word
Dansette
emblazoned on the front like a chrome badge on a classic car.

There were photographs on the wall. Carl looked at them. They were of a woman, about his mother’s age, was Carl’s guess, in her forties, although they were dated, the dirty colours of the seventies showing in the clothes. There was a young boy in some of them, but no men.

He sat down, disappointed. He wasn’t sure what he had expected to find, but it all seemed so ordinary. It was time to get out and start looking again.

Then he saw it.

He had been looking towards the doorway and the stairs. There was an alcove under the stairs, filled with coats and umbrellas and boots. And there was a door handle too.

Carl went to it and twisted the handle. It was locked.

He looked for a key but he couldn’t see anything at first, the walls too dark, making everything gloomy. Then he saw a gleam. There was a hook behind the coats, and swinging from it was a key.

It fitted. Carl swung open the door.

There was a flight of stairs going down, a solid wall on one side. He had expected a blast of cold air and the damp smell of a cellar, but instead it felt warm. He went down slowly, his torch on again, looking out for hazards. He took the key with him. He wasn’t going to be locked in.

The stones were smooth and worn and narrow. He turned a corner at the bottom, into what would once have been the storage for the coal poured through the small opening at the top of the cellar space, long since bricked up. The floor was tiled, and there was a desk against a wall. As the torch flashed around, he saw some shelves along one wall holding garden things, like fertilisers and wood stain. It was used as a storage room, nothing more.