Next to Die (3 page)

So he had walked behind her. All he could hear was the brush of her hair against the nylon of her top, just soft crackles, swaying from side to side, mesmerising, hypnotic. He moved to the other side of the pavement whenever she paused to look in a shop window or check her phone, worried that he had been spotted, but it had only ever been about her reflection. She had flicked at her fringe, her hair cut straight across and long down the sides, so that it framed her face.

He remembered the coldness of the scissors, small in his pocket and tight around his fingers, but he could keep them concealed in his hand right up until they were slicing across their target. So his fingers went into the grips, ready, just hoping that the chance would arise. A busy shop, or perhaps a bump on the street, his hands quick, like a pickpocket.

Then she had stopped. His heart had drummed in his chest. She was at a bus stop. The perfect way.

He stopped next to her. She hadn’t noticed him.

When the bus came, he listened to where she was going and got a ticket to take him further. He would see where she went.

The seat behind her had been vacant, and so he slid in behind her. Her hair had hung over the edge of the seat and, as the bus rocked, he watched it move in front of him, his breaths like quick gasps, his mouth dry. No one behind him, just an old woman in front, but she wasn’t looking. She wouldn’t remember him.

So he had pulled the scissors out of his pocket. They were his tools, short and sharp, oiled so that they made no sound, the blades keen so that there was no pull. Just one quick, clean cut.

As they came to a stop, her hair had stopped moving. His hand reached up, the scissors ready, his other hand underneath, ready to catch.

It had taken just one snip, the blades coming together, and an inch-wide strip of hair fell into his hand, soft and light, just tickles on his fingers. He clenched his fist and felt the strands in his grip.

He remembered how his vision had blurred, the need to get home, to spend time alone with it, but then she had flicked her hair and everything had seemed to move more slowly, the long strands swaying like the slow waft of a curtain in the breeze, because he had seen it, just a glimpse, but enough. It was the soft nape of her neck, where her hair was softest, those fine hairs almost like down.

He had leaned forward. It had been a risk, because she might feel his breaths on her neck, but he had to get closer. He loved short hair, bob-style, but high at the back, so that he could imagine the hairdresser’s clippers buzzing over skin, sending hair to the floor, tumbling off the back of the chair, the bristles soft against his fingers. Short hair made it too difficult though, because he might nick the skin and so draw attention to himself and his scissors. The clippings he collected were a consolation, because it was the nearest thing he could get without touching.

Her nape had made it harder to think clearly.

She stood up to get off the bus. Her top crackled as her hair swished across it, clean and gleaming, flowing down her back and then swaying with the soft rock of her hips, although not all of it stayed neat. There were those small strands that rubbed against the shoulders, static making it dance. He wanted more. He had watched her as she got off the bus, as she turned into a long street of stone houses. There were only open fields at the end, so that meant she must live on the street.

That had been the moment when he had known he would go further, because he had her hair and knew where she lived.

She had been the first one.

Five

The scene at the court corridor was the usual one: blank faces waiting around for their hearings, sitting on stained blue chairs bolted to the floor as prosecutors made their way past with laptops under their arms. Most of the defence lawyers were young, with their firms emblazoned across the top of their files, instructed to hold them so that the firm’s name was visible, so that they acted like a sandwich board, free advertising.

Monica trailed behind him as Joe moved towards the courtroom. Joe let the conversations in the corridor wash over him, defendants reliving whatever had brought them to the court, although their lawyers would repackage and sanitise the stories and pack them full of remorse, ready for the courtroom. He scanned the faces quickly, just to check if there were any clients he recognised, particularly old clients from Mahones. It didn’t take much to get them to swap; sometimes just a bottle of cheap sherry, but there was no one who looked familiar.

‘So what happens now?’ Monica said, her voice almost a whisper.

‘We get the papers from the prosecution and then later we go see him in prison. All Ronnie has got now is a long wait to find out what happens to the rest of his life.’

The chatter faded as Joe pushed at the door and the courtroom hush took over. Rows of wood-effect desks ran towards the front of the room, stopped by the raised platform used by the magistrates, justice dispensed from below the court crest. The lion and the unicorn. The Royal Standard.
Dieu et Mon Droit
. Defence solicitors filled the desks. Some were talking. Others were reading their files or doing the crossword. Joe groaned. It looked like there was a queue. He checked his watch. He had somewhere he needed to be.

He thought for a moment of leaving, not wanting to be delayed, but Ronnie’s case was too important. The darkness came back over him, like a sudden swamp of his mood, because he knew what would come later in the day, when the memories flooded him and the secret he had carried for fifteen years rose to the surface once more. But that was for later. Ronnie was the here and now.

He gestured for Monica to sit at the back as he went to speak to the prosecutor. When he saw it was Kim Reader, he smiled. Kim was an old friend from law college, although they had once been more than that, a couple of drunken nights bringing them together. Her expression was weary as she turned round, expecting another bout of moans from a defence lawyer, but when she saw it was Joe, her face brightened.

‘Joe Parker,’ she said. ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘Yeah, you too. What are you doing here? I thought you played around in the big courts now.’

‘I’ve got a murder case and so I’m keeping hold of it, except that I get the rest of the list too,’ and she grimaced and pointed to a tablet computer on a lectern, the morning’s cases loaded on and ready to be presented, next to a small pile of white file covers, the overnighters.

‘Ronnie Bagley?’ Joe said. ‘He’s mine.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You’ve got that one?’ She turned round and nodded at two people sitting on the seats at the side of court, a man and a woman. Detectives, Joe guessed. It was obvious from the way they were dressed. Pastel shirts, well-pressed, and clean suits. Lawyers went for either well-worn or expensive pin-stripes.

They got up and walked over, their identification swinging from blue ribbons around their necks.

‘DI Evans,’ the woman said, smiling, although Joe could see it was forced. For now, he was the enemy.

The man behind said, ‘DS Bolton,’ and held out his hand to shake. Joe took it, even though he knew why it was being done, to try to make him grimace, to admire the firmness.

‘Inspector, good morning,’ Joe said.

‘I thought Bagley was with Mahones?’ Evans said.

‘Not any more.’

‘I’m not surprised. They told him to stay quiet, but if he had something to say, he should have said it. He might not have been charged.’

‘So you’ll believe whatever he says, Inspector?’ Joe said, mock surprise on his face. ‘If you want, he’ll say how he didn’t do it and you can let him out.’

Evans flushed at Joe’s sarcasm. Before she was able to reply, a door opened at the side of court and the magistrates walked in – two pensioners in suits and a young woman too glammed up for a courtroom. Everyone rose and gave their ritual bow, and then the court was filled with the noise of a key jangling in a lock. Joe turned towards the back of the courtroom and looked at the dock. A bedraggled man in his fifties appeared behind the toughened glass screen, handcuffed to a security guard, the first overnight drunk of the day, his sweatshirt and jogging bottoms showing the rigours of a night in a cell.

As the court clerk started to speak, to check the man’s name and date of birth, Joe realised that he needed Ronnie Bagley, just for a distraction from the everyday trawls through broken lives.

He went to sit down, but as he did, he saw the detectives talking in whispers, nodding, staring over at him. They stood to go and, as they left the courtroom, Joe got the unerring sense that his involvement in the case had somehow become more important.

Six

Joe looked up at his mother’s house and his fingers gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

From the outside, the house was a quiet semi-detached with large windows and a small garden wall, a driveway running towards a garage with a battered wooden door. He knew what it would be like inside: birthday banners, cakes, family fun. Except that it was all faked, all designed to keep up the façade that everything was fine, that they were a happy family. Only those in the family knew how deeply fractured they had been by Ellie’s murder. His father sank into a depression that he never got over and sought comfort in a bottle. A stroke ended his life five years later. Joe’s mother had carried on the drinking where he left off, and since then the house had started to decay.

His parents had bought the house from the council at the height of a property boom, expecting it to be an investment, but they’d never had the income to maintain it. The other ones on the street received the regular touch-ups from the council, but his mother’s house had grass growing from the gutters, so that water poured out when it rained, and window frames that were starting to look rotten, the paint almost gone. He had tried to get her to hire a decorator, had even turned up himself one day with a paintbrush, but she hadn’t wanted anything touching. It was as if she couldn’t stand the thought of moving on, even though there was Ruby to consider.

The concern for the house was for a different day. What was waiting for him in it was part of the charade, and so he got ready to smile, to pretend that he didn’t want to be another year older, the number forever getting bigger. But it’s what they did, the Parker family. They celebrated everything together, as if they would somehow fall apart if they didn’t join together for the big events.

It was more than that, though. It was about Ellie. Every day since then had been about his sister.

The memories came back, and they hurt, as always, the dark blanket ready to smother him. His birthday was always about holding back the grief. He had expected the steady roll of time to take away some of the pain, but instead it had become magnified. It was his own fault, because he fought to keep her memory alive and felt angry when he thought he was about to forget and move on.

He glanced in the rear-view mirror. He had to be ready, best smile, but he knew that whenever he walked into the family home, the grief seemed as raw as it had been back then. Especially on his birthday, the anniversary of when she died.

No, that was wrong. It wasn’t as clinical as that. She hadn’t died. She had been killed. Cold and brutal.

He shouldn’t dwell on it though. His diary had been kept light, because it was the same every year, his birthdays following a pattern, as his mother tried to make it a celebration, despite knowing the day wouldn’t stay like that.

The day was warm as he stepped out of the car. Manchester was damp too often, plagued by grey skies from whatever rain Ireland hadn’t managed to soak up. This was one of those rare late-spring days, when the birds sang and the Pennine hills that loomed over the city seemed to glow rather than brood. The metal gate let out a clink as he opened it, and as he walked up the drive and the twin tracks of paving slabs along the side of the house, his sister, Ruby, appeared at the window. She waved. He waved back and then got his best smile ready as he saw her outline through the glass in the door.

Ruby was all teenage excitement and long limbs. At just thirteen, there was a large gap between them.

‘Happy birthday,’ she squealed, and then planted a kiss on his cheek. ‘I thought you were never going to arrive.’

‘How could I miss this?’ he said, and laughed, despite himself.

She led the way, pulling on his hand, and as he got into the house he was assaulted by the sights and smells of his childhood: the aroma of home-baking coming from the kitchen, the holiday kitsch ornaments on a shelf next to the television: an ashtray from Malta, a bell from Spain, some shot glasses from various places in Scotland. There were photos of him and his brother on the mantelpiece, along with pictures of Ellie, his first baby sister.

He focused on Ellie’s picture. His birthday celebration was always early, the morning for him, because the rest of the day was for Ellie. She had died on his eighteenth birthday, raped and strangled and left in undergrowth not far from her school. So every birthday he had was about Ellie, and so they had to get him out of the way first.

It struck him how much Ruby was like Ellie. It was the way she smiled, sort of mischievous, a glint to her eyes, her tooth biting her lip. It took him by surprise sometimes. He felt that kick of sadness and had to remind himself that Ruby was her own person, wasn’t just a substitute for the sister he had lost.

‘You made it then?’

It was his brother, Sam.

‘It is my party,’ Joe said, as he turned around. ‘I’m supposed to be late. It’s fashionable.’

Sam flickered a smile. ‘Happy birthday, brother.’

He was a detective, although he wasn’t like most Joe knew. Sam was quiet and thoughtful, slim, with his hair neat and short, but he was nervy, his eyes shielded by glasses. He was the family conscience, the one who tried to keep everyone together, as if life was a series of obligations. So on birthdays, holidays, and sometimes just because there was a good weather forecast, the same small group was asked to turn out and mumble at each other.