Next to Die (7 page)

‘I don’t know. He didn’t seem threatening or like he had done something bad, which surprised me. He seemed pathetic, really.’

‘Pathetic people are murderers too.’

‘I suppose so.’ She smiled. ‘Go on then, what did you notice?’

‘Grace,’ Joe said.

‘The baby? What do you mean?’

‘He hardly mentioned her,’ Joe said. ‘If you think about it, there can be only one of two truths. He either killed Carrie or he didn’t. If he killed her, then he must have killed Grace too, because she can’t survive on her own. So think what he would be like if he hadn’t killed her. What he knows is that Carrie is nowhere to be found, and so neither is Grace. Wouldn’t you expect him to be a little more frantic? His child has been taken away; he might never see her again. But we didn’t get that. Just self-pity and confusion.’

Monica was silent for a moment and then said, ‘So you think he did it.’

‘What I think doesn’t matter.’

‘But it does matter.’

‘Does it? Do you think justice means truth?’ Joe shook his head. ‘Justice is an outcome, that’s all, and all I have to think about is what outcome I can get for Ronnie. That’s the deal you make with yourself when you become a criminal lawyer. You help wicked people get away with awful things.’

Monica didn’t respond to that, and Joe knew that the hard truth of his job stripped away a little more of his humanity every day, and it had become just a challenge, a way to test the system, because as far as Joe was concerned, the system had failed him and his family. More importantly, it had failed Ellie.

‘Ronnie seems to think you ought to remember him,’ Monica said.

‘I’ve had a lot of clients. He’ll get over the hurt.’

‘It’s not just that though.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I know where you live, and you do live in a swanky apartment.’

‘Why is that important?’

‘Because Ronnie knew that you did. He said you would go back there tonight.’

Joe paused and then gave a small shake of the head. ‘A lucky guess,’ he said, although he started to wonder if there was something he wasn’t quite seeing.

They slipped into the building by a side door. The firm specialised in commercial work and family law, but kept a crime practice out of habit. The clients who paid the private fees used the double oak doors that sat between white pillars at the front, the reception tiled in black and white. It had been built for grander times, not for the daily grind of a city centre law firm, except that the main entrance wasn’t for his clients. The criminal department had always been the poor relation, made to work out of a side entrance, so that thieves and sex offenders didn’t share the main waiting room with businessmen and sobbing divorcees.

‘Have I missed anything?’ Joe said to Marion, the receptionist, a woman in a smart business suit with a sharp tongue, who let clients know what was acceptable banter and what wasn’t. No one got past Marion if she didn’t want them in the building.

‘It’s been quiet,’ she said. As he headed for the stairs, she added, ‘Happy birthday, Mr Parker.’ When he turned round, she was smiling, even blushing a little. ‘I always remember, you know that.’

Joe returned the smile and then went quickly up the stairs that curved to the first floor and to a corridor filled by doorways, each office small, remnants from the day when the buildings were designed to be grand houses. Honeywells occupied two buildings next to each other, four storeys tall, knocked through into one complex of corridors and small rooms.

‘So what do I do now?’ Monica said.

‘You must be hungry; you missed your lunch. Take a break.’

Monica looked deflated by that, as if she wanted to stay with him, but Joe turned away. He needed some time to himself.

As Monica left, he settled into his chair. The green leather cushion felt familiar and comfortable, and for a moment he closed his eyes. He should persuade Monica to do something else. No one came into crime anymore. Not anyone with any sense, anyway. There was still some money to be made, by learning all there was to know about road traffic laws and hoping you got clients rich enough to pay your bills, but for most young lawyers, it was all graft and no reward. He should treasure Monica’s enthusiasm and then send it elsewhere, for her sake.

He opened his eyes when Gina came into the room.

Gina’s office was two floors above, in the old roof space, squeezed below the sloping timbers with all the law clerks. She was there to keep an eye on them, to report back on who was really interested in impressing, or who was just seeing out a training contract. Sometimes the noisy and the brash get noticed the most, but it was the ones who did the billable hours that the firm would keep on.

‘How was Ronnie Bagley?’ Gina said, leaning against the door jamb.

Joe tapped his fingers on the desk for a few seconds and then said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘You think you might have an innocent one?’

‘I always believe that they might be.’

‘That’s one of your failings. You’re always looking for the client who will redeem you, because you saved him, proof that the system isn’t just about people getting away with it.’

‘And you’ve still too much of the ex-copper in you.’ He sighed. ‘None of that matters when they look at the figures, does it? We will decide what is best for Ronnie, and we get paid along the way.’

‘That’s the game, Joe. That’s what you keep telling me. And I’ve spoken to the prosecution. They’ve got some more papers for us. What you were given in court was just a summary. They’re arriving by courier later, so you can read them before tomorrow.’

‘Call me when they arrive. I’m going to draft Monica in on it.’

‘I thought you might.’

‘What do you mean?’

Gina laughed. ‘Come on, Joe, I’ve seen how you look at her. I can’t blame you. She’s a pretty young woman.’

‘I don’t look at her in any way,’ Joe said, a blush creeping up his cheeks.

‘I’m a woman, Joe. I know how men look at other women. Just promise me one thing: don’t make a fool of yourself,’ and then she turned to walk away.

He didn’t answer that. He just looked away as the door closed slowly, listening as Gina’s footsteps receded faintly down the corridor.

Joe turned in his chair to look out of the window. Monica was on a bench eating some salad in a plastic tray, a book open in front of her, her hand constantly pushing her hair back behind her ears as she dipped her head to eat, so that it was like a routine, her fork going to her mouth and then her hair teased back, and then it would fall forward again as she looked down to her tray. Joe smiled to himself. He had enjoyed her company during the day.

She looked up and he pulled his head back quickly, panicking that she might see him watching, not wanting her to get the wrong idea. He closed his eyes. It was his window, with a good view, so everything was normal.

Joe eased himself back in front of the window, and he saw that she was on her feet now, walking across to a litter bin, her food finished.

He was about to turn away again, but then something attracted his attention. He leaned closer to the window and scoured the park. Then he saw it. It was a man sitting on a bench further along from Monica. He looked smart, in a blue V-neck and grey slacks, his hair parted neatly. But it wasn’t his clothes that had caught Joe’s attention. It was the way he was looking at Monica.

No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t just that he was looking at her. He was studying her. He was sitting bolt upright, with his hands on his knees, his head turned towards her, watching as she put her food in the bin and started her walk back to the office.

Joe kept watch on him as Monica went through the park gate and crossed the road to the office. As she skipped up the office steps, the click of her heels reaching up through the open window, the man got to his feet and walked away.

Thirteen

Joe noticed the silence as he clicked the door closed in his apartment. No tick of a clock or the sound of conversation from another room. There were noises from elsewhere in the building – the mumbles of a television from the apartment above, and someone was shouting a few doors down – but his home had none of that.

He was carrying a box filled with papers, Ronnie’s file, sent over from the prosecution an hour earlier. It was no way to spend his birthday.

He walked through to the living room and put the box on the floor. The low evening sun flooded in as he opened the blinds. The apartment was sleek and minimalist, although more by accident than design. He wasn’t interested in decorative clutter. A sofa. A television. A computer. It was all he needed, because it was the view that he came home for.

The apartment was in Castlefields, once the heart of the industrial revolution, the hub of what had built England, where waterways and railways converged, with the end point for the world’s first industrial canal, the stopping point for the cotton sent over from the Deep South, unloaded at Liverpool and sent along the canals to the Pennine towns that stretched all the way into Yorkshire, where deep green valleys became choked by smoke, and moorland grasses were replaced by long stretches of terraced housing, like deep gashes across the countryside. The history had created a landscape of reclaimed warehouses and wharf buildings, some of it new but built to the same design, to blend in, but a lot of it was the modern crammed into the old, creating a beautiful knot of water, brick and steel all built on the footprint of the Roman fort of Mancunium. The city centre and busy roads were just on the other side of the apartment block, but his view was the tranquil stillness of canal water and pleasure barges, two willow trees gently sweeping at the surface, the calm disturbed only by the rumble of the trams as they went back and forth over the viaducts.

Manchester had been built on textiles, but it had been a tough upbringing. The city had grown too quickly, meaning people had been crammed into small houses, a family to a room, sometimes more, so that for a while the whole city choked on fumes and human debris, the streets nothing more than a network of slums and factories that killed its inhabitants too young, cholera thinning the population. Joe knew it as a proud city though. The squalor had grown the labour movement and the Manchester people had almost starved when they supported the cotton blockade of the Southern States during the American Civil War. They knew what was right and stood up for it. The mills and factories were gone now, and the few that remained were just brick shells used for art studios and craft fairs, but it was that mindset that had framed Joe’s upbringing.

It was the canal that had drawn Joe to the apartment. He enjoyed evenings on his small balcony, watching the sunset shimmer across the water, the murky water gleaming as the light caught it.

He opened his fridge and found a sauvignon blanc, the product of an internet wine club he had joined a few months before and hadn’t bothered to leave. The swish of the balcony door as he opened it brought in the sound of early evening. The clink of glasses and sound of laughter from the open restaurant in Catalan Square on the other side of the canal mixed in with the creak and squeal of the tram wheels.

He poured himself a glass and then went back for Ronnie’s file.

As he set the box down on the balcony, he picked up his glass to toast it. ‘Happy birthday,’ he said, and then sat down, pausing to take a sip.

He let the late-evening warmth bathe him for a moment, knowing that he would lose it soon, because once he started to read he would become immersed in the case. It was always the way, that he thought of nothing else but winning. It didn’t matter what type of case, from a minor fight to a murder like this one. It was the result that counted.

There was a buzz on the intercom. He wasn’t expecting anyone. He thought about not answering, but then curiosity got the better of him. He went back inside to the panel, and when he pressed the button, he heard his brother’s voice, Sam.

‘Joe, it’s me. You can’t have your birthday alone.’

Joe wondered whether to answer. He guessed that Sam wasn’t there for his birthday, and that it was about what had happened earlier, when he hadn’t gone to Ellie’s grave with him. But Ellie’s memory had been with him all day, and so it was good to hear a voice from the family.

He pressed the button to let Sam into the building and then opened his apartment door to let him walk right in.

Joe returned to the balcony. When Sam appeared, he was holding some beer cans, smiling.

‘Happy birthday. Again.’

‘I don’t normally get all this.’

‘We parted badly earlier,’ he said. ‘I thought I should try to make amends.’

Sam pulled a can from the ring and offered it to Joe, who held up his wine glass and said, ‘I’ve got this.’

‘I thought you were a beer drinker,’ Sam said, looking at the can in his hand and then at the wine glass.

‘I am, but I like a glass of wine sometimes.’

Sam sat down on the chair opposite and put the cans on the floor. He tried to slot the can back into the ring, and Joe watched amused. Once the four-pack was reassembled, Sam frowned and said, ‘You’re changing.’

‘People do.’

Sam looked at the view and then back at the wine glass. ‘You can’t reinvent yourself, Joe.’

He took a deep breath. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘This,’ Sam said. ‘Apartment on the canal, wine, like you’re some kind of city sophisticate. You’re just like me, from the same bland part of the city, our family trashed. This isn’t you.’

‘You’re turning my booze preference into a class war,’ Joe said. ‘It’s not like that.’

‘Are you sure?’ Sam said. ‘Is that why you wouldn’t come to the grave today? You’re moving onwards and upwards, leaving us behind.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Joe said. The smile disappeared. He could feel the darkness tugging at him. Ellie. A woodland path.

‘I just think our family should matter more,’ Sam said.

‘It does matter, it’s just that…’ and then Joe paused. There were too many things he carried around with himself, a secret he couldn’t share with Sam. ‘I had to be somewhere. It’s work, Sam. It’s what I do. It pays my bills.’