Next to Die (27 page)

Joe took another look towards Ronnie’s flat and then followed Terry up the stairs and along the first floor landing. The middle flat wasn’t self-contained, so the doors to all the rooms opened on to the landing. Terry hadn’t made many alterations to his house so that he could let it out.

Terry carried on up the stairs to the second floor, and Joe felt the building close in on him. The daylight through the glass above the front door didn’t travel far up the stairs, and the stairwell to the top floor was much narrower. The door at the top looked makeshift, as if Terry had just pinned a doorframe in between the ceiling and the floor, and so the whole frame moved as Terry went through it.

He gestured towards a living room on the other side of a small landing and muttered something about making a drink. Joe and Gina went in, and as Terry rushed off to make some coffee, they settled onto a sofa that was low to the floor and covered in a blue cloth, like a futon. The room seemed dingy from the small attic windows, made worse by the dark brown swirls of the carpet and the nicotine tinge to the woodchip wallpaper.

‘I’ve got my pepper spray if he walks in with a chainsaw or something,’ Gina whispered.

‘All I know is that I’m not drinking whatever he’s making,’ Joe said.

After a few minutes, Terry came back into the room carrying a tray, with three cups and a small plate of biscuits. Joe took a cup and placed it on the floor. Gina did the same.

When Terry sat down, he pointed at Joe and said, ‘What happened to your eye?’

‘Don’t you know?’

Terry looked confused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve been following me around, keeping watch on me.’

‘No I haven’t,’ Terry said, although his cheeks flushed.

Joe nodded slowly. ‘Yes you have. Someone saw you. So I want you to tell me why. What do you want to tell me?’

Terry looked at his drink cradled on his lap, and Joe let him sit out the silence. Eventually, after a slow few minutes, Terry looked up and said, ‘I’m not supposed to talk to you. They told me not to.’

‘They?’

‘The police.’

‘If there is something you know that will help me, I’m entitled to know.’ Joe reached into his pocket for his voice recorder. He held it up so Terry could see it and said, ‘You need to talk.’

Terry’s finger scratched at his cup but he stayed silent.

Gina leaned forward. ‘Mr Day, if you know something, you need to tell us.’

He looked at her and then at Joe, then took a deep breath.

‘All right, I’ll tell you. It’s about Carrie, and the little girl.’

‘Go on.’

He swallowed and then straightened his shoulders as if to brace himself. ‘They’re alive,’ he said.

Joe’s eyes widened. ‘Alive? How do you know?’

‘I’ve seen them.’

Forty-Six

Sam was left on his own. Everyone else shared small talk and worked their way through whatever paperwork landed in front of them. There were some officers on the telephone, chasing down whatever new information had come in, just to see if there was anything useful, but most calls ended with a polite thank you. The focus was on finding the last person who saw Julie alive, except that no one seemed to know where she had gone once she left her parents’ home.

Sam was going back through the files relating to the other missing girls. He was trying to find any reference to a feeling of being watched, hoping to see a similarity to what Ruby had reported, to what he thought he had seen earlier that day. Or, rather, hoping that he wouldn’t find anything, so that all he had was a cry for attention from Ruby and someone innocently running away from him in the woods – kids messing about.

Julie’s bedroom kept on coming back to him, though. There was no reason why it should, he’d only had a brief look and skimmed through her computer, but something niggled him, like a scratching sound at the back of his head that told him there was something he had overlooked.

He closed his eyes and tried to shut out the disruptions in the room. The tap-tap of fingers on keyboards, whispered discussions, mumbles of telephone chatter. He tried instead to replace it all with Julie’s room.

The bed had been to one side of the room when he walked in, with posters on the wall. Some pop stars and animal pictures. If Julie wasn’t found, the room would stay like that: a time capsule.

As he walked the room in his head, the next thing along was the dresser, covered in perfumes and powders and photographs, the toy ballerina in the middle. Next, there was a bookcase, and then the computer desk, with a small monitor and a base unit on the floor. There were schoolbooks on the desk, textbooks and dog-eared exercise books. There was an MP3 player to one side.

Was that important? If she didn’t have her MP3 player with her, then it reduced the chance that she was snatched silently when she was wrapped up in the music from her headphones. So why hadn’t anyone reported hearing her scream or a fight?

Sam took a deep breath. There was something else.

His mind kept on going back to the computer monitor, but it wasn’t something on the computer itself. He had read the emails. There was nothing that had jumped out at him. No, it was something
on
the computer.

Sam went over to the corner of the room, where a young female detective was going through all the items seized from Julie’s bedroom. Her adolescence had been turned into a collection of clear plastic bags clustered around a desk.

The female detective looked up. She was mixed race, with exotic dark curls tumbling onto her light grey suit, and when she saw Sam, she smiled. ‘Hello. I’m Charlotte.’ She checked around, as if to ensure that no one else was listening in, and then said, ‘I liked what you did to Ged yesterday, about the coffee,’ and she pointed towards Ged, who was staring at a screen, his pen tapping on the desk.

Sam relaxed for the first time since he’d joined the squad. ‘I’ve got a thing about bullies, that’s all.’

‘That’s no bad thing,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’

Sam grabbed a chair from a desk nearby and wheeled it over. ‘I went to Julie’s house yesterday and saw her bedroom. Something has been bothering me about it today. Can I look at what you’ve taken?’

‘I hope you know where to look,’ she said, and pointed towards the bags.

‘It was near the computer. Every time I try to think about it, I go back to the monitor.’

Charlotte bent down to rummage through the bags. She pulled one out and put it on the desk.

‘This was the stuff from around her monitor,’ she said, and opened the bag to put them on the desk.

Sam looked through, everything in exhibit bags. They were just scraps of paper mainly, some showing calculations, others showing girlie doodles, with drawings of flowers and love hearts. Then he saw it. It was what had been in his mind, the niggle, the itch.

It was a photograph. It had been attached to the shelf behind the computer screen. A teenage boy, pretty and smiling. But her parents had said she didn’t have a boyfriend. There was something about the photograph that was familiar, except he couldn’t place it.

‘Is this boy on her Facebook page?’

Charlotte brought up Julie’s profile on her screen. It was being left open in case someone posted something useful. She went to the ‘Friends’ page and scrolled down, looking for the person in the photograph. She stopped at a couple, just to check, but then moved on. When she got to the bottom, Charlotte shook her head. ‘He’s not there.’

He held up the photograph. ‘I need to go back.’

Charlotte looked at the photograph and then at Sam. She must have seen his resolve, because she said, ‘I’m coming with you,’ and grabbed her coat.

‘Where did you see Carrie and Grace?’ Joe said.

‘I’m not supposed to tell you.’

‘Who told you that? Carrie? Because she’s trying to get away from Ronnie?’

Terry shook his head and then looked down. ‘I can’t say anything.’

‘You need to talk, Terry, because this will come out in court, whether or not you tell me now.’

Terry nodded slowly, and Joe watched his resolve slowly build until he said, ‘The police told me to stay quiet.’

Joe and Gina exchanged glances. ‘The police? Why would the police say that?’

‘They said if I didn’t keep it to myself, Ronnie would get away with it.’

‘Get away with what? If Carrie and Grace are alive, there’s nothing for Ronnie to get away with.’

‘That’s what I said, but they told me not to be concerned, that it was their job to worry about these things, and that it would all turn out right in the end.’

Joe was confused. He knew there was an obsession about figures and targets in the force, but covering up evidence that could free an innocent man was a step back to the seventies.

‘Tell me all about it,’ Joe said. When Terry clenched his jaw, Joe added, ‘You want to tell me, don’t you, because that’s why you’ve been watching me, walking to my office and then turning away, because it’s bursting out of you, your need to let me know.’

There was still no answer.

‘Terry, talk to me,’ Joe said. ‘Please.’

Terry swallowed. ‘Okay, I’ll talk.’

‘Where did you see them both?’ Joe said.

‘In the city centre.’

‘When?’

‘Last week.’

Joe pointed to his dictation machine, which he had clicked on and placed on the small coffee table, the red light showing. ‘This is recording now. Just tell me your story.’

Terry took a deep breath. ‘I’d gone into town. I go sometimes, just to see people, because no one knows me there, and so I can walk around and be myself.’

Or be someone else, the war hero, was Joe’s thought, but he didn’t voice it.

‘I got the train to Victoria,’ Terry continued. ‘I was walking towards the shops, and there are some seats in that new part, you know, where it was rebuilt following the IRA bomb, next to the large glass building.’

‘I know it. The Football Museum, by the Cathedral Gardens.’

‘That’s right. Well, I like it there, because there are a lot of things going on, but just behind it is sort of peaceful, because of the cathedral and the music school. So, I was just sitting there, watching everyone, when I heard something behind me. It was a little girl’s voice. She was laughing at the fountains they have there, because they just pop up, and they must have surprised her. I turned round, and there they were, Carrie and Grace. She was different though, Carrie.’

‘How so?’

‘Her hair was shorter and darker.’

‘So how can you be sure it was her?’

‘It was the little girl I recognised. She’s such a sweet thing. Hard to believe that she’s their child. Pair of drunks, both of them, but Grace, she is so cute. She has these blonde curls and a lovely smile, because it isn’t yet worn down by all the rubbish Ronnie and Carrie will put into her life. And she laughs so much. I would hear it, even on my floor, Grace singing and laughing.’ Terry paused as he enjoyed the memory, and Joe and Gina looked at each other, eyes wide.

‘How close were they to you when you saw them?’ Joe said.

‘Close enough to tell.’

‘That answer isn’t good enough. In distance. Feet and yards. Metres, if you prefer.’

Terry thought about it, and then said, ‘Thirty yards.’

‘Was it busy?’

‘There were a lot of people walking around, but I saw them. They were on the other side of the fountains.’

‘So you saw them from thirty yards away, through crowds and the water from the fountains, and Carrie’s hair was different?’

Terry scowled. ‘That’s what the detective said when I told him. He sounded like he didn’t believe me, just like you.’

Joe tried not to smile. He knew the question he was about to ask would destroy the case against Ronnie Bagley, because he had learned one thing about witnesses from his own trial experiences, and that is if you challenge them about how sure they are, they will do their best to remove any doubts, because what makes a witness get involved in a case is that they want to be helpful. He glanced at the dictation machine to make sure that it was still recording, and asked, ‘But are you sure?’

Terry leaned forward, determination in his eyes. ‘Absolutely sure, one hundred per cent,’ he said, and then sat back again, his arms folded.

Joe smiled. It was game over. Terry Day would never be allowed to come back from that certainty, and without Terry Day, the prosecution would lose the argument Ronnie had with Carrie, and the threat that he was going to kill her. Joe had to work out how to play it, because if he tipped off the prosecution, there was no guarantee the case would end; they might still hold out for two bodies, just in case Terry had got it wrong. Joe couldn’t use Terry himself, because he said too many things that harmed Ronnie. He could leave the recording to the trial itself, and use it to undermine everything, but again, that was a gamble, because the prosecution might be able to persuade the jury that Terry could be mistaken. Identification is a difficult area of evidence, because a mistaken witness can be a genuine witness, but still mistaken, a mantra that had been drummed into juries for decades.

It wasn’t quite as bad for Ronnie, because Joe had to create enough doubt, nothing more, but leaving everything to the coin tosses in the jury room was like planning an English summer barbecue a month in advance.

Joe reached for the dictation machine and switched it off. ‘Thank you, Terry, for speaking to us. I’m going to try to do something with this. You’ve done the right thing.’

Terry didn’t respond. He stayed in his chair as Joe and Gina let themselves out. They stayed silent as they went down the stairs. It was only when they were back in Joe’s car that they spoke.

‘What the hell was that all about?’ Gina said.

Joe looked up towards the window. Terry was watching. ‘I don’t know. Someone will be in trouble for this though, for withholding it, because Carrie being alive is one of our defence strategies, and there it is, straight from the mouth of a crucial witness.’

‘I’m not sure,’ Gina said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Would Terry’s identification stand up in court?’

‘It wouldn’t convict anyone. From a distance, with different hair, and through water. Recognition evidence is always easy to disprove. You can turn it into assumptions and guesswork with the right questioning. And when we ask whether the witness has ever been about to say hello to someone in the street but then stopped at the last moment when they realise they have it wrong, the case just crumbles. They say yes, and everything becomes another possible mistake, and if they say no, the jury doesn’t believe them, because everyone has done it.’