The Domino Killer (6 page)

Sam looked at Charlotte in surprise. ‘Henry Mason was wanted for the murder we were already working?’ he said. ‘And now he’s been killed? What is it, some kind of gang feud? Look at this house, the area. Remember his clothes. He doesn’t seem the type.’

‘He was hanging around in a park after dark, a few miles from home,’ Charlotte said. ‘That isn’t normal behaviour. He was up to something. We need to find out what.’

‘And what the connection is with a dead teacher.’

‘Exactly,’ Charlotte said. ‘Let’s see if there’s anyone in.’

As they both got out of the car, they put on their jackets. The day was warm, but if they were breaking bad news, it didn’t seem right to be casual. Sam was in a white shirt, a blue tie against the charcoal grey of his suit. The heat made his collar damp.

They approached the door slowly, putting off the moment when they changed someone’s life for ever. The house looked silent as they got close, with no bright flickers from the television or signs of movement.

They exchanged quick glances before Sam rapped on the door. He looked around. There was no one watching. They were in an unmarked car and they could have passed for salespeople or religious doorsteppers.

‘I’ll speak to a neighbour, see if anyone else lives here,’ Charlotte said.

Sam stepped back and looked up at the house. ‘There’s a dead man in a park around ten miles from here, connected to another dead man. What about the occupants here? There might be more inside. We’ve got grounds to force the door.’

Sam was about to aim a kick at the area around the lock when there was a sound nearby. He stopped and looked up. A man in a dark blue suit was coming from the house next door. He stopped when he saw Sam and Charlotte.

‘Everything all right?’ the man said.

Sam pulled out his identification. It was time for a change of plan. ‘DC Parker, Manchester Police. Does Henry Mason live here?’

‘Yes, he does. Is he in trouble?’

‘Does anyone else live here?’ Sam said, ignoring the question.

‘His wife, Claire, and their two sons. Or at least they did.’

‘What do you mean?’

The man looked around and then walked towards them. ‘There was a screaming row last week,’ he said, leaning in before raising his hand in apology. ‘We’re not nosy, you understand, but it was hard to miss it. The night was warm and our windows were open. Theirs too.’ The man frowned. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘I don’t suppose you have a key?’ Sam said.

‘No, I don’t, but I know where they keep one: under the pot at the back. The alarm password is 1234. They told us in case the alarm goes off when they’re away.’

‘Thank you, Sam said. ‘Sorry to keep you.’

‘It’s all right. Just being neighbourly. If you need anything else, just call. You know where I live.’

Charlotte went to get the keys that were hidden where most people hide them as the neighbour took his time in deciding to set off, until his curiosity was beaten by his need to be somewhere else.

When Charlotte came back to the front of the house, she was holding a set of keys. ‘Thank God for good neighbours,’ she said, as she tried a few. When she found the right one, she took a deep breath and went inside. There was the frantic beep of the alarm until Sam pressed in the numbers. Then there was silence.

They were in a wide hallway with stairs ahead, the floor wood-lined, modern and shiny. There was a living room to one side. Sam pushed at the door. It opened onto a room that seemed almost golden: light brown carpet and yellow striped wallpaper. The sofa and chairs echoed the stripes, with gold trim on the cushions. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, but the ceiling was low so Sam had to dodge it as he moved across the room. He didn’t want to touch anything in case he made it less than pristine.

A set of doors led to a dining room, the table shiny dark wood, with glasses set on coasters and napkins folded inside.

‘Intense,’ Charlotte said. ‘And there are children in the house.’ She pointed to photographs on the mantel over the fire.

They were studio shots of two young boys, nervous smiles under dark fringes, their best shirts worn for the occasion. There was just one happy family picture, taken on holiday, Sam presumed, the whole family grouped around a restaurant table. Henry Mason was in a red T-shirt, his tan deep, the muscles on his arms taut, his hair deep black. He was the man on the video from the florist’s. The woman in the picture had blonde hair that was pinned back by sunglasses, her smile bright and wide.

‘It must be an effort to keep it like this,’ Sam said.

‘Appearances matter, it seems,’ Charlotte said. ‘We need to check upstairs, to make sure we’ve no more dead bodies.’

Sam went first, walking slowly upwards, unsure what they would find. The stairs and landing were like downstairs, neat and clean with a tall vase with dried flowers at the top of the stairs and family photographs on the walls.

He took a pen from his pocket and held his breath as he used it to push open the door to the first room, so that he wouldn’t remove any forensic traces. It creaked open into a boy’s room, action toys in a box in the corner. It was empty.

‘Nothing here,’ Sam said.

‘No, here neither,’ Charlotte said, looking into another child’s bedroom before pushing open the bathroom door with her foot.

They faced each other as they stood in front of the door to the main bedroom. Sam used his pen again to push open the door. It swished along the pile of the carpet as it opened, revealing an ornate metal bedframe with a silky bed cover. There were photographs on a dresser and a large wardrobe, but there was no one inside.

‘At least the body count has stayed low,’ Sam said.

‘I’ll take this room,’ Charlotte said. ‘If there’s a lady of the house, the contents of her drawers might make you blush.’

‘Thank you for sparing them,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll have a look around downstairs.’

He listened to Charlotte opening drawers as he went downstairs and into the living room. Whenever someone is killed, secrets and private lives are revealed.

Sam went straight towards an oak bureau in the corner of the room. It was three drawers deep, with cupboards on either side. The top drawer was filled with placemats and napkin rings. It was the drawer below that held the document envelopes. He peered inside. Bank statements, bills, papers relating to the house, like insurance and mortgage details.

He checked the mortgage documents first. The first one was a letter from the building society: they were behind on their payments.

Sam rifled through the bank statements. They were ordered but they told the same story: things were not going well financially.

Charlotte came back into the room.

‘Anything unusual?’ Sam said, looking around.

‘No, nothing. And you’d have been fine up there. The vibrator count was low.’

‘Less fun down here,’ Sam said. ‘There’s money trouble. I wonder if he went to the wrong kind of person for help.’

‘But why would his fingerprint be found in blood at another murder scene?’ she said. ‘They might be in money trouble, but people like this always are. Their life is all about how other people see them, a family to be admired. Affording it is something else entirely.’

Sam was about to start looking at entries for a month earlier, any purchases or cashpoint withdrawals that might put him near the other murder, when a car sped into the cul-de-sac, braking sharply on the driveway.

Charlotte raised her eyebrows. Someone had passed on the news that they were at the house.

A car door slammed. Angry footsteps were followed by the front door opening so quickly that it banged on the wall in the hallway. The woman from the photograph burst in. She didn’t look as radiant as she did in the pictures. Her hair was shorter and her eyes flared with anger.

‘Who the hell are you, in my house?’ she said.

Sam pulled out his identification. ‘I’m DC Parker, Greater Manchester Police, and this is DC Turner. Claire Mason, I presume.’

‘What’s he done now?’

‘Henry?’

‘Who else?’

‘Please sit down, Mrs Mason,’ Sam said, his voice softer.

‘No, I won’t sit down. Tell me what the hell is going on.’

Sam stepped forward and took hold of her hand. He looked her in the eyes and gave a smile loaded with regret. ‘No, please sit down.’

That’s when she knew.

Claire Mason slumped onto the sofa, her hand trembling in front of her mouth. Charlotte sat next to her and held her other hand.

Claire stared straight ahead. She hadn’t asked any questions, even though Sam could tell that she was full of them. Eventually, she looked up at Sam and said, ‘How?’

Sam gave her a regretful smile and said softly, ‘We’ve found a man in a park near Stalybridge, murdered. We think it’s your husband.’

‘What, so you might be wrong?’

Sam didn’t answer. There was a chance they might be, but they didn’t think so. The clothes matched the footage from the florist and so did the pictures in the house.

Claire wailed and put her head in her hands. Sam and Charlotte waited once more, until she looked up and said, ‘What was he doing in Stalybridge?’

‘It looked like he was meeting someone,’ Sam said. ‘Do you know anything about a meeting?’

‘Meeting someone? Who?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ Sam said. ‘Does he know anyone in that area?’

‘No. He works on the other side of Manchester,’ she said. ‘That’s where his showroom is, near the airport.’ A pause and then, ‘Why do you think he was meeting someone?’

Sam swallowed. This was the hard part. Any chance of his memory being fondly held was about to end and Claire’s life would become about bewilderment, but they had to get the answers. A delay in a murder case can allow forensic evidence to be scrubbed away.

‘He was carrying flowers,’ Sam said. ‘We’ve got footage of him buying them and they were found at the scene.’

‘Flowers?’

Sam nodded.

Claire started to shake her head, anguish replaced by disbelief. ‘Why would he have flowers?’

‘Mrs Mason, do you know whether your husband was seeing someone else, or planning to see someone else?’

‘No, of course not,’ she said, anger taking over. ‘Why would he? No, not Henry.’

Charlotte leaned forwards. ‘Mrs Mason, we are going to have to look through everything. We need to find out more about Henry’s lifestyle. We need computers, phones, anything.’

Claire seemed as if she was about to object, but she nodded eventually and slumped back on the sofa.

The family liaison officer would arrive shortly, because the hard job of telling their sons would come next. Then they would go about the task of disassembling Henry’s life, to find that secret he was hiding from his wife, the secret that eventually cost him his life.

Joe drummed his fingers on the green leather inlay on his desk. Legal texts dominated one wall, a collection of law reports he never looked at but were there to impress his clients.

His office was laid out like an Edwardian drawing room, with richly coloured wallpaper and a wooden fireplace. There was a more sympathetic meeting room on the ground floor, with a low table and comfortable chairs, a box of toys in one corner for those times when the whole family came along, but he didn’t want this client to feel comfortable. He wanted to unsettle him. The room was silent, apart from the regular tick of the clock. It helped him focus.

His phone flashed red. He paused for a moment, wondering if he was doing the right thing. But he had waited so long for this.

He answered, listened to the message and said, ‘Show him up.’ Then he called Gina. ‘Could you come to my room in five minutes. I’ve got a client I want you to meet.’

Joe took a deep breath as he listened to the clomp of Mark Proctor’s footsteps along the landing. His door opened slowly.

Joe stood up and said, ‘Come in, Mark. I can call you Mark?’ There was a slight tremble to his voice. He sounded like he was trying too hard.

As he came into the room, Proctor looked around cautiously, as though he was expecting someone else to be there. His tongue flicked onto his lip and he wiped the palms of his hands onto the front of his black jumper. He smelled of cigarettes.

He considered Joe for a moment and then shrugged. ‘Yeah, fine, whatever.’

Joe gestured to the seat in front of him. ‘Sit down.’

Proctor followed his direction and looked around again. ‘So why do we have to do this now?’

‘Because you might remember more now than in a month’s time, when you have to go back. It means we have our witnesses ready if you’re charged.’

‘There won’t be any witnesses,’ Proctor said matter-of-factly, turning back to Joe.

‘I’d rather be ready than not,’ Joe said, feeling a sense of panic. ‘My caseworker will take your instructions, but I thought I ought to introduce myself properly. I wasn’t myself last night.’

Proctor reached into his pocket for a packet of cigarettes, staring at Joe all the time.

It was a test, Joe knew, to see whether he objected, to determine who was in charge. Some clients saw the relationship with their lawyer as being about power, about who had it and how far the lawyer would go for them. There were too many lawyers in prison cells who’d got the balance wrong. Joe wanted to concede some power to Proctor. He pointed to an ashtray on a shelf near the fire.

Proctor smiled, the first one, although it was more of a sneer. ‘I thought you were going to puke last night.’

Joe returned the smile, surprising himself that it came so easily. ‘So did I. It must have been something I ate.’

‘You lawyers like to eat too rich.’

‘So tell me about the break-in at the compound,’ Joe said, not wanting idle conversation.

‘How do they know it was me?’

‘You were caught near the car, after it had been set alight.’

‘It doesn’t make it me.’

‘There will be CCTV.’

‘Good. Let’s see it. We both know that CCTV is never good.’

Joe didn’t disagree with him. ‘Why were you running away from your car, which had been set alight not long after it was stolen?’

‘Stolen?’ Proctor said, his eyes wide. ‘So I’m the thief in this, not the people who decided they could just take my car without asking, and who were never going to give it back to me unless I handed over cash?’

‘And proof that it was yours.’

‘I could prove that all right.’

‘You sound like you agree with them, that you took it back because you were angry with them.’

‘Yeah, I can see how it looks that way, but it isn’t, because that’s just them guessing. You’re the lawyer, so you know how it is; they’ve got to prove it, not me.’ He leaned forward, warming to the conversation. ‘Maybe I’m the victim here. They take my car from me because it’s got no insurance – big deal – but it’s their job to keep it safe so that I can collect it. I’m a scapegoat, that’s all, because their compound isn’t secure. I might have a claim.’

‘And the fact that you were running away from where your car was burning?’

‘Coincidence, that’s all. I see a burning car and I know I’m in a bad neighbourhood, so I run. How was I supposed to know that it was my car? Sometimes you end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s just bad luck, isn’t it?’

Joe didn’t know if it was some kind of a hint or message, a reference to Ellie. Did Proctor know who Joe was? No, he was reading too much into it. Joe met Proctor’s gaze but there was no taunt there.

‘Tell me about yourself?’ Joe said.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Your story. We’ve all got one.’

‘It’s insignificant, some might say,’ Proctor said. ‘Born and brought up in Ancoats. A brother and a sister. I left home and got married. No children. Like I say, insignificant. Invisible almost.’

‘Is that how you feel, invisible?’

‘No. That’s how others see me.’

‘Are you close to your family?’

‘What’s this, the psychiatrist’s couch?’

‘Just building a picture,’ Joe said. ‘I might need to talk about you in court.’

Proctor curled his lip as he thought about that. ‘Not really close,’ he said. ‘My brother Dan works down south somewhere, a big shot in events management. My sister Melissa thought she was something big, going off to university and marrying some high-flyer. Now? She works in a pub near Piccadilly, wiping up beer stains.’

‘Which pub?’

He paused, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to answer, but said eventually, ‘Mother Mac’s.’

Joe fumbled for his pen and was about to start going through the forms when there was a light knock on the door and Gina walked in. Joe looked up and watched them both carefully. He wanted to see whether Proctor had ever been in Gina’s thoughts when she was investigating Ellie’s murder, or whether Proctor had kept watch on the investigation and knew who she was. He was looking for a flicker of recognition from either of them, just to show that he was right.

Gina strode into the room and smiled. ‘Hi, I’m Gina Ross,’ she said. ‘I’m Joe’s caseworker.’ She walked over and stood behind Joe, ready to take over. Joe looked up at her. She looked back to Proctor. There were no suspicions.

Proctor was impassive. He looked at Joe, then Gina, then held out his hands. ‘Let’s get this started.’ He lit his cigarette.

Gina was about to object to Proctor smoking but Joe held up his hand. ‘No, it’s okay,’ he said.

Gina didn’t say anything but turned around to open one of the windows. There was a sudden rush of traffic noise.

Was he getting it wrong? Gina had led the investigation into Ellie’s death, so Proctor must know who she was, but there’d been no reaction.

But Joe was so certain, everything about his first reaction to Proctor told him that.

Joe stared at Proctor’s hands, one clasped around the wooden chair arm, the other resting on his knee, smoke curling upwards from his cigarette. His fingers were long and skinny, nicotine staining two of them brown.

They were the hands that had wrapped themselves around Ellie’s neck. Those fingers had ended her life, squeezed out everything that was so special, and his leering face had been the last thing she’d seen. Those hands had destroyed a family. And for what? To satisfy an urge?

He should tell Gina. Why not tell the police? There might be the chance of new evidence, some forensic trace that couldn’t be detected all those years ago but would be brought back to life by advances in science. There might be people connected to Proctor that would remember things he’d said, whose own suspicions would be fleshed out.

But he didn’t want that. Joe had never wanted that. His desire to find Ellie’s killer had been about one thing: putting his own hands around the murderer’s neck to let him know how it felt when your life slipped away. He wanted to see that knowledge in Proctor’s eyes and for him to recognise Joe from that day, so he knew it was about payback.

Joe stood up quickly and said to Gina, ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ He looked at Proctor and forced out a smile. ‘Good to meet you again, Mark. If you’ve got any problems, speak to Gina, but you tell her all you can.’

And with that, Joe rushed out of the room.

He shut the door behind him and leaned his head against it. His heart was thumping hard and his collar was damp. He took deep breaths and then pushed himself away from the door. Consumed by his own certainty and years of dreams of avenging Ellie’s death, he couldn’t stay confined in there any longer. He needed air and space, room to think, so he stamped along the corridor, just to get outside.

But he knew one thing: he was going after Proctor.