The Murder Code (31 page)

But why?

That was the question.

‘How did Miller send the clips?’ Renton said. ‘We might be able to track that. Did he email them?’

‘No. Too risky, apparently. This guy arranged for a locker in a storage unit in the centre of the city, near the railway station. They both had keys. A local courier for the General—supposedly—would deposit the money there and pick up the CDs Miller left.’

‘How did Miller get the key?’

‘By post. He burned the envelope, so once again, we can’t prove it for sure. But we found the key in his bedroom, along with a good chunk of money.’

And that was our one glimmer of hope.

Miller had said he’d deposited a bundle of CDs last night. News of his arrest was being kept strictly under wraps, and plain-clothes officers were en route to the storage unit right now. We would join them shortly. The plan was to keep the area under discreet surveillance and see who, if anybody, came to the locker. There was a chance—just a small chance—that the General, whoever he was, might show up. ‘That’s good,’ Renton said, ‘because as things stand, you won’t get him this way.’

‘No.’

I thought of the locker at the train station. Was that our only hope?

‘No,’ I said again. ‘But we will get him.’

‘H
E WON’T SHOW UP,’
Laura said.

‘Probably not.’

Trestle Storage was a seedy twenty-four-hour locker unit situated down an alley behind the station. It was basically just a long room with a single entrance—a glass door at one end—and one wall taken up entirely by the battered metal lockers. Laura and I were sitting opposite those, sipping coffee in a slight alcove behind the counter.

We’d relieved the receptionist of his duties for the night, and ten additional officers were stationed discreetly in the streets surrounding the unit. Between us, we had Trestle Storage totally contained: nobody could get in without us seeing, and nobody could get out once they’d arrived. So far, nobody had tried to do either. Aside from the buzzing strip lights overhead, the unit was eerily silent.

The General had chosen this location well, I thought. There were several premises like this in the city centre, and their principal appeal was that questions weren’t asked. The main customers were homeless people looking for a safe place to store whatever valuables they didn’t want to cart around with them, and low-level drug-dealers. A locker cost two pounds a day to hire. About a quarter of the two hundred in here were in use right now. The money was barely enough to cover the rent, but the owners of these dives were generally mid-level criminals who got their cuts elsewhere.

As such, security was minimal. The CCTV was cursory at best. It covered the main entrance, and was wiped at midday. We had a little under eight hours of footage to check through, but all it would show was people coming and going, not which locker they visited. Similarly, a name was required upon rental, but no ID. If you didn’t come back, you just lost the contents.

We’d already checked the ‘database’—a clipboard of curling A4 sheets covered with scribbled biro—and the locker we were interested in had been rented to James Miller for the last three weeks. That didn’t prove anything one way or the other, of course. The General could have given whatever name he wanted, and both keys were missing from the pegboard of clips behind us.

‘Quiet in here,’ I said.

‘You think the receptionist put the word out?’

‘Probably.’ Bad for business to have known clients turn up and find police behind the desk. ‘To some people anyway. Maybe not to the General.’

‘I’m starting to think “the General” doesn’t exist.’

‘He exists. His name’s right there on the website.’

‘Yeah, but we’ve only got Miller’s word for it that they ever talked to each other. And the rest of it. He could even have written those posts himself—set up the username.’

It now seemed even less likely to me that Miller would have gone to such lengths. For what? He committed the murders; he wasn’t denying that. This bit of subterfuge wouldn’t achieve anything. But he might have his reasons, and for me, there was something even more conclusive.

‘What about the letters?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did he strike you as being that articulate?’

‘Not really.’ Laura sipped her coffee and grimaced at the taste. ‘Jesus. But the only way we’ll know for sure is if he walks through that door. Without that, this could all be a figment of Miller’s imagination. And there’s another thing too.’

‘Go on.’

‘Let’s say the General exists, and that it all played out exactly as Miller described it. And let’s imagine he walks in here and opens that locker in the next few minutes.’

I glanced at the smeared glass of the entrance. Nothing but night out there for the moment.

‘I’m imagining that.’

‘Okay. The question is: can we prove any of it anyway?’

She was right. If the man turned up, the only evidence we had for his involvement in the killings was Miller’s word. The online messages inciting the crimes had been deleted, and the letters we’d received had been impossible to trace. If we caught the General right here and now, then unless we found further evidence—at his home, say—it would ultimately come down to his word against Miller’s. And unlike Miller, the General was smart enough to have thought ahead. He could come up with a million explanations for having the key in his possession.

‘You remember what Miller’s father said, though?’ I sipped my drink; Laura was right about the coffee too. ‘It’s not our job to prove any of it. It’s just our job to catch him and gather whatever evidence we can.’

‘Yeah, like that’s ever been enough for you.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I guess not.’

‘At least we can be sure of one thing—regardless of whether Miller turns out to be a lone gunman on this, we’ve got him. He’s our murderer. If the General really exists, then we need to catch him, sure, but at least we’ve got Miller.’

I nodded. Even if the General existed and was guilty of instigating the crimes, Miller was the one who’d carried them out—and he was behind bars now, going nowhere. Which meant that nobody else was going to die. And that
was
something.

At the same time, it wasn’t enough: not for me, anyway. Miller was responsible for his own actions, of course, but the General had helped to cause them.

And aside from catching the bastard, I wanted to know
why
. What was the code? Why the letters? Why do such a monstrous thing in the first place? With Miller, it felt like I could understand a little. He was a young man who’d grown up twisted and bullied, learning the lesson well that inflicting fear and violence on the world was a way to make yourself bigger. His motivations—money and self-empowerment—were twisted but logical.

For the General, I couldn’t even attempt an answer.

Without catching him—without knowing for sure—the case would remain open in more ways than one.

‘I’m tired,’ Laura said. Tired of all this.’

‘Me too.’

‘I want to go home.’

‘Me too.’

She put her cup down.

‘How are things?’ she said. ‘At home, I mean. Better or worse?’

I thought about it, remembering the way it had felt to embrace Rachel the other night: the sense that the distance between us had closed slightly. And in the woods today, when I’d been sure I was about to die, it had been her I’d thought about. Her and our child.

‘Better, I think.’

‘Really? That’s good.’

‘We’ve still got a long way to go.’

But for the first time in months, it did feel like we might be able to get there. And for once, I had an idea of how to help that happen. Talking, yes, but before I could do that, there was something else I needed to do. Something I should probably have done a long time ago.

Laura said, ‘What do you think—’

My radio squawked. I grabbed it up off the counter almost before the sound registered. One of the officers stationed outside.

‘Here,’ I said.

‘Hicks.’

My heart sank. It was Young, back at the department.

‘Sir?’

‘We’ve got a
problem
.’

I listened as he explained, slowly and quietly, what had happened. And although he kept his voice even and his tone calm, I could sense the anger. If he’d been talking to me in person, I imagined he wouldn’t have blinked the whole time. Someone was about to get obliterated over there, and I took no pleasure right now from knowing who.

I put the radio down and turned to Laura.

‘It’s over.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘Charles fucking Miller has happened. He’s given a statement to the press, right outside the department. In full military regalia, too. Can you believe that? He told them he’s convinced his son is innocent and that we’re fitting him up to save our skins.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yep.’

Shit didn’t even cover it. If the General was anywhere near a television set, he would now know that Miller had been arrested and the storage unit was compromised. Which meant that our only way of catching him had just disappeared.

We gave it another hour, just on the off chance. The unit received three customers in that time, two women and one man; they were all obviously homeless, but we had them detained anyway. Aside from that, the radio remained silent.

‘All right,’ I said eventually. ‘Let’s do it.’

We walked across to the lockers and located the number Miller had given us. I used the key from his room to unlock it. The door screeched slightly as it opened.

Laura peered in at the contents.

‘Where does that leave us?’

It’s over.

I stared at the neat pile of CD cases, secured with a red rubber band. Sixteen in all.

‘Nowhere,’ I said. ‘Nowhere at all.’

F
RANKLIN LEANS FORWARDS.

‘The key to your father’s gun cabinet?’

The boy—Andrew—nods.

‘And then what happened?’

Andrew looks like he’s about to cry. Once again, Franklin tries to summon up some sympathy from inside him. He has been through a lot, after all, this boy. Whatever happened in the house, he must remember that. Andrew is eight years old but looks younger. Whatever happened, it must have been awful and traumatic. It is understandable. There is nothing to gain from pressing him, not really.

‘Andrew? Can you tell me what happened?’

The boy shakes his head, unable to meet his eye. But again, he thinks, that doesn’t mean anything. He is only eight years old.

‘You can’t?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know what happened next?’

‘I stayed in the bedroom, like John told me.’

Despite himself, as Franklin looks at the boy, he absently touches the cross he wears around his neck.

You’re lying, he thinks. Andrew, you are lying to me.

T
HE MORNING AFTER THE
failed stake-out, I drove out to Buxton. There was something I needed to do.

The road was wide and flat. On my way, I passed a few cars, but mostly just speed-limit signs and the lines of indistinguishable houses: dull wooden faces with shadowed windows, set back behind their fences. When the breeze picked up, dust billowed across the tarmac. The sky ahead was featureless: a single, implacable shade of grey.

When I reached the house—one I hadn’t returned to for over twenty years, or at least not physically—it was obvious. Not only from the indistinct but shivery familiarity I felt at the sight of it, but because it stood out from all the others I’d passed. As ramshackle as its neighbours might have been, at least those buildings were habitable, even if only barely, but this house was clearly derelict.

I parked up outside. When I killed the engine, there was no sound at all, not even birdsong.

I stared at the worn façade of the house. The red paint had long since flecked away. The windows had no glass, giving oblique views of the peeling wallpaper in the dank rooms within.

A family had lived here once.

There was a man and his wife and their two sons. By all accounts, they were innocuous. Nobody who knew them had anything bad to say about them; nobody would have marked this particular family down as having something wrong with it. They wouldn’t have suspected there was a seed of violence nestled at its heart, waiting for the right time to bloom.

The man was former military, retired through injury, and clearly a little rough and bitter. He drank. The woman was cowed and nervous in a fidgety kind of way. None of that was enough to differentiate them from other families in these parts.

The two boys, though …

With hindsight, some people did say they’d appeared haunted: too quiet, both of them. It was as though they were making an effort to keep silent about something. As though there was something they wanted to say but wouldn’t, or couldn’t. When they looked at people, they didn’t seem to see them.

And with hindsight, those same people probably wondered if they should have recognised that something was wrong with that family. If they might have done a little more, even though doing something is not what people do, and especially not back then.

But that was all a long time ago.

As far as I knew, nobody had lived here since what happened. Not in the ordinary sense, anyway.

Finally, I got out of the car.

My brother was two years older than me, but he was always smaller and weaker. It really was as though we had different fathers, although I don’t believe for one second that’s true. It was just that John took after him, while I carried more of my mother’s genes. Although perhaps that’s just wishful thinking on my part.

Regardless, my brother always felt the need to protect me, because he was older. Even though he wasn’t physically capable of doing so, somewhere deep inside him he felt like he should, and his failure to do so ate at him. The more he hated our father, the more he also hated himself for being unable to stand up to him. When our father mocked him for being weak and ineffectual, it stung, because he believed it was true.

And yet, despite his hatred, John had still taken on board our father’s ideas about what it meant to be a man. He’d absorbed the idea that one way to deal with the frustrations of your life is by using violence against others to make yourself feel bigger. That wasn’t the whole story of why he did what he did that night, but it was a part of it.