Lost Souls (21 page)

Laura was sitting at her desk when Egan walked back into the Incident Room, her attention drawn by a murmur. He looked nervous, his eyes darting around the room as he saw all eyes turn to him. Laura saw the press officer behind him, her face flushed and angry. It was obvious that they’d had words.

Laura looked over at Pete, who had been thumbing his way through incident reports and logs of crank calls. Pete smiled, just a twinkle.

They both turned to the front of the room as they heard Egan clapping.

‘Can I have everyone’s attention?’

No need to ask, thought Laura. You had it as soon as you walked in.

Egan let the murmurs die down and then cleared his throat.

‘Some of you may have seen the press conference,’ he said, ignoring the smirks around the room. ‘And some of you might have wondered why I said what I did.’

No one said anything. It was like watching a public suicide.

‘Although I told the press conference that it looked as if the person who had been abducting children was now identified, you will remember that I didn’t confirm any link between the abductions and the murder of Jess Goldie. There are two reasons. Firstly, there is no
real
proof of a link. We can speculate and guess, but there is nothing but coincidence so far. And secondly, and more importantly, by not publicly linking them, we might draw the real killer out. He will want to take his bow.’

There was a murmur again, but louder this time. Then Pete shouted out, ‘Is drawing the killer out another way of saying that we let someone else die just so that we can get some fresh forensic?’

Laura watched Egan take a deep breath. He was angry with Pete, but she guessed that he was angry because he knew that Pete was right, that Pete had guessed the truth: Egan had messed up, and he was covering up to protect himself.

‘If you have any queries about the publicity decisions,’ Egan said, the words coming out slowly, ‘speak to the press officer here, but I have come here to explain the strategy. Privately, we consider a link. Publicly, there is no such thing.’

Are we keeping the two teams separate then?’ someone asked.

Egan’s lips twitched. ‘Yes, for the moment, but that is being kept under review.’

Pete sat back, irritated now. Laura guessed that he was angry because Egan had landed on the best solution by chance.

Egan smiled and thanked everyone, and then left the room.

‘Did you ever hear such crap?’ spluttered Pete.

Laura shrugged. ‘It didn’t sound like a bad plan.’

Pete threw down his pen. ‘He always comes up smelling of fucking flowerbeds.’ He looked at Laura, and then held up a pile of incident logs—the crank calls and witnesses were growing by the hour. ‘And we have to wade through this shit, without any help,’ he barked.

Laura toyed with her pen for a few seconds as she thought. ‘I’m going to look at Jess’s dream diaries.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she had dreams of the future as well. The key to all of this is what connects it all: their dreams.’

Pete shook his head. ‘The world is going mad,’ he muttered to himself.

When Sam left court, he knew where he was headed. He was going to help Terry. He knew he was in the right place when he saw two policemen smoking in the hospital car park. He walked over to them and tried to look relaxed.

‘You here for Terry McKay?’ he asked.

They exchanged glances and looked at Sam’s grubby shirt and bristled chin. ‘Been working too hard, Mr Nixon?’ one said, his mouth in a smirk.

Sam looked down at himself. He knew how he looked. He started to walk away, his fists clenching, knowing that if he started to say something he could spend the rest of the day in his own cell.

‘If you speak to him,’ the other one shouted back, ‘tell him to make a complaint.’

Sam turned around, shocked. ‘He hasn’t made a report?’

‘No, and I don’t get it. Someone burnt his hand off. It looks like a fucking lacrosse racquet, just spindles and bits of flesh.’

Sam turned away quickly. He felt light-headed again. Terry wasn’t making a complaint. Had someone got to him?

He rushed into the hospital reception and found out the name of Terry’s ward. Visiting hours were nearly at an end, but Sam negotiated the corridors quickly; the hospital was Blackley’s new monument, and so the signs were all bright and bold. When he found Terry’s ward, he stopped. What if Terry remembered that he had left him? He took some deep breaths and looked at the ceiling.
Don’t be a coward.

He walked through the ward. He could see Terry at the end, a heavily bandaged hand raised in the air. He was about to say something when he saw that Terry had a visitor already. He slowed down as he recognised the person by the bed. It was Luke King. He was talking to Terry, and Terry looked like he was listening attentively.

Sam walked up to the bed quickly and grabbed Luke by the collar. He spun him round fast.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ spat Sam.

Everyone on the ward turned to look.

Luke shrugged off Sam’s hand.

‘Don’t touch me, Nixon.’

‘Checking up on your family’s dirty work?’ and he nodded towards Terry, who looked away, fear in his eyes. Sam turned towards the rest of the ward. ‘Take a good
look,’ he shouted. ‘This is what you get when you cross his father.’

Luke didn’t react.

Sam looked at Terry, but Terry was still looking away.

‘Don’t let them get away with it,’ warned Sam.

When Terry didn’t respond, Luke smiled, his eyes narrowed. ‘Looks like you got your answer,’ he said.

Sam looked around the ward again, all eyes still on him, and he saw the white shirts and shoulder flashes of two security guards heading for him. He held his hands up and walked out.

When he got outside, the two officers were still there. ‘Any joy?’ said one.

Sam shook his head. ‘None at all,’ he replied.

Back in his car, he looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He glanced in his mirror and saw Luke King watching him from the hospital entrance. Sam could see that he was smiling.

He was about to turn the ignition when his phone rang.

‘Helena, everything okay?’

Sam sat up straight when he heard that she was crying.

‘Helena, are you okay?’ he repeated. His hands were clenched around the steering wheel. ‘The boys, are they all right?’

‘I’ve had a crash in the car,’ she said, the words coming out between sobs.

Sam gasped.

‘We’re not hurt, but they say I was drunk. But I wasn’t, I promise.’

‘Where are you?’

There was a pause. ‘At the police station.’

‘Have you been on the intoxilyser yet?’

‘Yes,’ she said, her voice almost inaudible. ‘Blew eighty-five.’

Shit, that was high, he thought. The legal limit for alcohol in breath was only thirty-five.

‘Wait there, I’ll come and collect you.’

He drove off, leaving Luke standing there, staring.

I met Eric’s daughter in the Eagle and Child, an old Tudor pub on the road out of Turners Fold, tucked into a dip, away from the dark grids of the nearby towns. Smoke drifted from the cluster of chimneys in the middle of its roof.

Mary Randle was sitting at a table in a corner when I arrived. I wasn’t sure at first if it was her, but as I watched her I saw traces of Eric. Her voice on the phone had been quiet and scared, and she seemed the same in person, looking around as if she was prey, her eyes darting, wary, alert.

I introduced myself and sat down, but when I saw how quickly her smile flickered and died I knew I would have to do most of the work.

‘I don’t know if the police told you,’ I said softly, ‘but I’m the one who found your father.’ I paused. ‘I’m so sorry.’

She looked away. She took a few seconds to compose herself and then asked, ‘How did he look?’ It came out almost in a whisper, but as she wiped a tear from her cheek she laughed to herself, bitter and full of hurt.
‘He looked dead, I suppose, but what I mean is, did it look like he had suffered?’

I gave a thin smile and shook my head. ‘It looked like a simple hanging.’

She nodded. I noticed that she was holding a white handkerchief crushed between her fingers.

‘He didn’t do it,’ she said, her voice more strident now. ‘You know that, don’t you? He didn’t hurt any of those children. He didn’t take any of them.’

I reached out and put my hand over hers. I felt her hand tense, but then she gripped mine with her other hand. I looked into her eyes and saw an intense look, belief.

‘I know,’ I said softly. ‘I know he didn’t. And do you know what, I don’t think the police believe that either. Not really, deep down.’

‘Then why did they go on television and say that they had caught the Summer Snatcher?’ she pleaded.

I held her hands, pumped them as if to make her stronger. ‘If you know the truth, hang on to that. The police don’t always get it right.’

She sighed and let go of my hand.

As she dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief, I looked at her and tried to work out her story. She was his legacy, but she seemed reluctant in that role. She had that same look as her father, like some kind of lapsed academic, with her hair short, soft and mousy, her eyes grey. She was wearing a lilac jumper and blue jeans, pressed so that she had a crease down the legs. She looked bookish, and it was hard to believe she came from an estate where tracksuits were the norm. Maybe that’s where she got her wariness from—a childhood of not
fitting in. Her eyes constantly darted around the room, always looking for the threat, and her fingers played nervously with her leather purse.

‘Why did you want to meet me?’ I asked.

Mary took a quick sip and licked her lips. Then she said, ‘About a week ago my father called me and asked me to contact Sam Nixon if he died.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘He thought he was going to die?’

Mary nodded. ‘He thought that often, but he seemed genuinely scared this time round.’

‘Did you call Sam Nixon?’

‘Yes, as soon as I found out about my father, but he said he wasn’t interested.’

‘But he told you I was.’

Mary nodded again.

‘Did my father tell you about his dreams?’ she asked quietly, embarrassed.

I nodded. ‘He seemed scared, just like you said, but he told me his story. I wanted to write about him. I still do.’

‘He used to paint his dreams. He’s done it for years. Often I would go downstairs to go to school and he would be painting in the kitchen. It would take him a few minutes to even notice I was there.’

‘I’ve got a couple of his most recent ones,’ I said, as if I was talking about a well-known artist. ‘They were painted just before he died.’

‘Did you recognise anything in them?’

I smiled. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but yes, I did.’

She began to cry, her face crumbling with grief.

‘Hey, hey, don’t cry.’

‘My father died today,’ she said, her voice thick with tears. ‘I’m allowed.’

I gave her that one. I remembered the feeling all too clearly myself. I sat there for a while, letting her compose herself. One of the first things I had learned as a journalist was to listen. If she wasn’t ready to talk, then I would wait as long as it took.

Mary’s orange juice must have been getting warm. The ice cubes had long gone. I looked around the pub. The windows were small and the walls were painted Elizabethan cream, above mahogany wood panels that went all the way around the room. The rest of the character was long gone, though, all the rooms knocked through, as it tried to re-create the history that had been ripped out during an earlier refurbishment. Wooden beams painted black ran across the ceiling, the lines broken by witticisms painted in white.

As the silence lingered, I sensed Mary begin to relax again.

‘I’ve got a box of his paintings,’ she eventually said. ‘I don’t know what to do with them.’

‘And you think I will?’

‘You might do. They go back years, decades.’

‘Why don’t you want to keep them?’

She snorted a laugh. ‘You’ve seen the house he lived in.’ She went quiet, took a deep breath. ‘The house he died in.’ She paused as a sob choked her up, and then she continued, ‘Those paintings ruined his life. Mine as well, if I’m honest about it.’

‘They defined his life,’ I argued. ‘He thought he had a gift and wanted to share it to protect others.’

‘No, no, no. He stopped living his life, so obsessed was he about his dreams. You saw his house, all boarded up.’

‘It was his home.’

‘It was his dream studio. He said he didn’t dream when he slept away from that house, and so he worried that if he left he would stop having them.’

‘I didn’t get the impression that he enjoyed having them.’

‘He didn’t, but he thought they meant something important. He trained himself to remember his dreams, so that when he woke up he could recall them for longer than most people.’

I looked into her eyes and tried to work out her thoughts.

‘You sound like you didn’t believe his dreams were of the future,’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘I wanted to believe him, but I didn’t want to encourage him either.’ She considered for a moment and then asked, ‘Did you believe him?’

I smiled apologetically. ‘I’m a reporter. I can write it and not believe any of it, as long as someone buys the story.’

She looked away for a moment, and I could see her trying to hold on to the tears.

‘So do you think he was misguided, that he wasted all of those years?’ I asked.

She looked back at me and watched me for a few seconds. It seemed like we were the only people in the pub at that moment. She looked down as she began to shake her head.

I reached out to her again. ‘It’s okay. You’re entitled to your own opinion.’

She looked up again as she tried to blink away her tears. ‘Oh, it’s not that,’ she said. ‘It makes me so angry because it ruined his life. And it ended it as well. It wasn’t always like that. Nor was the house. It used to be a normal house. I grew up there.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘She died years ago.’ She smiled, looked almost wistful. ‘If she had been alive, she would have told him to keep quiet about it all. When she died there was no one to rein him in. So he got a name for being the estate weirdo, talking about seeing the future, going down to the shop to get himself photographed with his paintings.’

I looked quizzically at her.

‘To date them,’ she said, by way of explanation. ‘There’s a clock on the wall with the date on it. But word got round and the kids would taunt him. And then he started calling the police, trying to tell them what he had seen whenever anyone was killed or abducted. So he became a suspect, and the local kids thought he was guilty. I’ve seen him spat on, shouted at, mothers with their children screaming at him in the street.’

‘And so he boarded himself in?’

She nodded.

‘It was the murder of a little girl that caused the problems—they didn’t get anyone for it. Dad called the police every day to tell them what he had seen, and then when they saw him looking around where they found the body, they locked him up so fast.’

‘But he was released.’

She shook her head. ‘After a few months. The kids on the estate don’t see that as a declaration of innocence. Most of them get away with crime. There are
no
falsely-accused there. They either get caught or get away with it, nothing in between. So I knew where they thought my dad fitted into the picture. His windows were smashed. Things thrown at the house. The door was always being kicked in. I couldn’t stand it any more so I left, and I tried to get him to come with me, but he wouldn’t.’

‘If you don’t believe that he dreamt the future, why did you want to speak to me? You could have stopped at Sam Nixon when he said no.’

‘Because it’s what Dad wanted. He told me to speak to Sam Nixon if he died, as if he might know what to do. Sam passed me on to you. I’m just following the trail, just so that I can tell myself that I did what I was asked.’ She smiled now, the first real smile I had seen from her. ‘He was a good man. Misguided maybe, but kind and gentle, all the things a father should be.’

‘I’m going to write about him. Are you okay with that?’

Mary nodded. ‘He would have wanted you to.’

‘If I write the story, it will be the one I want to write, though, which might not be the same one you want. You understand that?’

Mary nodded.

I realised that I needed the raw materials. The paintings. The photographs. Mary must have sensed what I was thinking, because she said, ‘They’re in the boot of my car. I’ve put them in date order, and every time
something happened that he thought he had seen in a dream, I cut it out of the paper and put it with the painting.’

I started to smile. ‘You didn’t believe any of it, but you helped him catalogue it.’

‘He was my father. I loved him.’

‘There is one more thing I need from you,’ I said. When she raised her eyebrows in query, I continued, ‘I need to know more about your father. And not just the dream stuff. I want to know about Eric Randle the man.’

She nodded at me. ‘I can do that.’