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He let the lid bang shut. ‘It’s empty.’ He rubbed his hands together as if to get dirt off them. ‘Let’s go. He’s not here.’
Laura looked around. She wasn’t so sure.
‘C’mon,’ Pete said. ‘I’m going to find him. I want to know why he gave you a fake address. That must put him higher up the list.’
Laura was about to say something, when Pete turned to go. She decided that she was too new to object. Instead, she agreed with him. ‘I think he was already at the top.’
The boy looked peaceful. His eyes were closed, his breaths soft and light, blond hair splayed out on the soft cotton pillow. The light came from an old paraffin lamp, the flame making the shadows pull in and out and his skin glow and shimmer.
He stood over him, listened to his breathing. It sounded regular. He went to stroke the boy’s cheek, but he stopped himself. The boy wouldn’t be with him for much longer. He didn’t want to leave traces. But as he looked down and saw the warm velvet of his skin, innocent and pure, he knew he couldn’t stop himself. He held his hand over the boy’s mouth, felt his warm breath, and then he lowered his hand, felt the boy’s lips on his palm, felt the breaths get hotter.
He closed his eyes for a moment, relished it, let out a groan of pleasure as his palm became warm. Then he pressed more firmly. He opened his eyes so that he could watch the boy’s chest rise. He gave a small gasp as the tiny chest stayed there, as the boy waited to take a breath, for the air to return.
He pressed harder, just a few more seconds, felt the rush as the boy’s face started to go red. He swallowed, felt his own breaths come faster. He could choose. It was entirely up to him. Life or death.
He smiled to himself, almost in congratulation. He chose life.
He moved his hand away and the boy’s chest sank. The boy let out a long sigh, and his breathing returned to normal.
He put his cheek near to the boy’s, felt the warmth on his own. He sat back and began to laugh, excited. He held up his hands, turned them in the light from the lamp. Healing hands, he thought, laughing louder. Healing hands.
He turned towards the television. It was the morning news that interested him. The old portable television was plugged into a car battery, a long coaxial cable leading out of the room. It threw blue flickers around the dirty walls, making the colour of the boy’s face shift and move.
The boy was on a bed by a wall, an old camp bed, a collection of sheets and blankets over him at night. There was a book next to it, The Little Prince. He read from it sometimes. The boy had been looked after, and he would be going home soon.
The news started on the hour. The boy had been the lead story for the last week. It was slipping down the news now, often just a tail-end reminder. The parents had done what they could to keep the press interested, but with no news there was nothing to report. The police had done what they always did, released information slowly, repackaged old leads as new ones, just to keep the story alive.
He settled back in his chair. His breathing slowed down, his body became still. He sensed the shadows in the room settle around him, like a cloak around his shoulders, dark and comforting. As the news came on, he closed his eyes and waited.
The boy was the third story in. The parents wept some more. They loved him, they realised that now. But what about when he had taken him? He was just hanging around the streets, close to midnight. Cider and cigarettes. Bikes and skateboards. Not at home. Not safe.
He smiled as the parents pleaded to the camera, felt himself become aroused. They were searching the streets, doing their own door to door. Oh, he liked that. They desperately wanted him back. And he could do that. He could make it better. He sat forward. He wanted to see their eyes, wanted to know that it would be different when the boy went home.
He sighed with pleasure. He had seen it, the pain, the longing, the apology in their eyes. They knew now how much being without him had hurt them.
He looked towards the boy.
‘I’ll make you rich, Connor,’ he whispered, a tear forming in his eye. He leaned forward, so that his mouth was by the boy’s face. He spoke softly, tenderly. ‘Richer than you’ve ever been before. Not money,’ he said quietly. ‘You won’t need that. There are greater riches in the world than that.’
He looked back towards the television.
‘Just one more day,’ he whispered. ‘Just one more day.’
Chapter Eight (#ulink_d81c8710-e34f-588d-97a2-16fc1af5482b)
I made it to the morning briefing on the abductions, held early to give the evening editions and lunchtime television a chance to get their reports ready. There was nothing much that was new so I headed to the Magistrates’ Court, next to the police station.
Going to court had been my fall-back in London. If in doubt, go to court, because there was always something to write about. My career had started by writing court reports, when I had worked on one of the local papers based in Turners Fold. All the crime from Turners Fold ended up in the Blackley court—it was the biggest local town—so I knew my way around the courthouse, an old Victorian building, with pillars by the doors and high ceilings that wrecked the acoustics. The magistrates sat high and lofty, looked down on the lawyers perched on old wooden pews, and at the defendants perched high in the dock.
The regular court reporter, Andy Bell, a haggard old smoker with long, grey hair and patched-up trousers, had been hostile at first. He had put the years in, on Fleet Street in his younger days, and, like me, he had returned to his northern roots. But he had mellowed over the last few days. He remembered me from before I moved to London, and he soon realised that we wanted different things. I wanted the angles on Blackley life, the background stories. He just wanted the day-to-day knocks.
It was the internet thieves Andy hated, the ones who scoured the web for his stories when cases first hit the courtroom and then just arrived for the sentence hearings. I didn’t do that. He had earned the right to those stories. And anyway, he knew the tricks. If he had a story that he knew would interest the nationals, he would get the local paper to hold it back from the website until after the London deadlines. By then his story would be in London and in print before the internet hyenas knew anything about it.
It was one of those stop-start days, the cells quiet, and I was filling in the gaps by drinking coffee with Sam Nixon, one of the defence lawyers.
Nixon was one of the main players in the courtroom. Tall and dapper, he looked every inch the lawyer. Single-breasted Aquascutum suit, neat and sharp, and Thomas Pink shirt, he shone success when surrounded by failure. The courthouse attracted showmen, those who strutted and boasted, promising clients acquittals they couldn’t deliver, but Sam was different. His accent didn’t have the polish of his looks, he spoke direct and bluntly and the magistrates liked him for it. If Sam Nixon said it had happened, then it had. The earth is flat? According to Mr Nixon it is, and that’s enough.
I was talking football with Nixon and watching the movement from the court corridor, the town’s drama. Young men in tracksuits slouched on hard plastic seats, there to see friends, to socialise, part of their scene. Bad skin. Bad teeth. Bad lives. The older ones sat back and looked bored. The first-timers wore suits and stared at the floor, picking at their nails.
A prosecutor loitered nearby, but he wasn’t saying much, more interested in Sam’s football tales than his caseload. He was a good lawyer—I had been around enough prosecutors to know that most of them are—but the machinery of the civil service knocked the fight out of them, so that being able to forget about work became the best part of the job.
I turned around at the sound of laughter from a corridor that ran from one of the back courts. A man bounced into the foyer, his arms swinging defiantly, his grin showing off brown teeth and a complexion that looked like he had hovered over too many joints, his skin tarred and lined. He turned in a circle, his chest out, his arms in a come-on pose, and said to Sam, ‘She’s a fucking star, that one,’ before strutting past the glass ushers’ kiosk and out of the main door.
The ‘fucking star’ emerged from the same corridor, a tired look in her eyes. I had met her before but I couldn’t remember her name. She was one of Sam’s assistants, pretty and blonde and tall, with her hair tied back into a ponytail that swished against the black suit cut tight to her body, her skirt just above her knees. She had the figure to carry it, and I sensed the mob of track-suits a few yards away turn to gape.
Sam Nixon nodded towards her. ‘Have you met Alison Hill, one of the lawyers at Parsons?’
I smiled and held out my hand. ‘I’ve seen you around.’ When Alison shook, she smiled back at me, her eyes warm.
‘Nice to meet you,’ she said. I sensed the confidence that comes from good education and good looks.
I nodded towards the exit doors. ‘Looks like someone was happy.’
Alison looked that way briefly, and then she said, ‘I lost.’
I thought back to the client as he’d bounced through the court foyer. He looked like he had spent his life being beaten by the system, every loss carved into the anger lines around his eyes. He had lost again but at least he had stood up to it.
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ I said. When she didn’t respond, I asked her, ‘Was justice done?’
‘Not yet,’ interrupted Sam, and he looked solemn.
Alison looked puzzled.
‘The bill,’ said Sam, and then he began to grin. ‘The job’s not done until we get paid. Then there’s justice.’
As Alison rolled her eyes, my eyes caught someone looking at Sam.
He was in the middle of a pack of drinkers. They all looked haggard and tired, their faces much older than their years, red and puffy, their eyes unfocused. Their clothes hung loose and stained, their movements were slow and deliberate.
I guessed that whoever it was, he wasn’t pleased with Sam’s last effort for him. His eyes were red like all the rest, drunk even that early in the morning, but the focus was sharp and clear. Despite the drink, his stare was hard and direct.
I looked at Sam, who acted like he hadn’t noticed him. He was talking to Alison.
I was about to say something when Sam reached down for his phone. When he looked at his screen, he seemed concerned for a moment and then held it up. ‘I’ve got a message to go and see Harry.’
Alison winced. ‘So I can have your office after all.’
Sam laughed, but I could tell from the look in his eye that there was some truth in that. I knew of Harry Parsons’ reputation, the curse of the local police, and I had heard that he was as ruthless with his staff.
As Sam left, I watched the drunk follow him with his eyes, the glare ever-present.
I turned to the prosecutor, a tall man in a shiny suit, with flashes of grey at his temples, badger-style, and frayed tips on his shirt collars. I didn’t know if he earned less or just cared less, but he seemed a fashion rail away from Sam Nixon. ‘Who’s that?’ I asked, as I nodded towards the man in the corridor.
The prosecutor looked for a moment, chewed his lip as he thought of a name, and then said, ‘Terry McKay. He’s here most weeks. Drunk, usually.’ He checked his watch. ‘They’ll have to call his case soon. If it gets adjourned over lunch, we won’t see him again.’
I smiled. Terry McKay. I made a note of the name and went back into court.
Laura sensed Pete’s anger as they arrived back at the station. He was gunning for Eric Randle now. She wasn’t sure that they had got it wrong, but it had turned Pete silent and brooding. The echoes of their footsteps were the only sounds as they walked along an old tiled corridor heading to the Incident Room. As they got there, Pete spoke in a whisper, an angry hiss. ‘Egan will love this,’ he said.
There were a few officers in the Incident Room, sifting through information brought in by those cops knocking on doors. As they walked in, someone shouted out, ‘Did you get Randle?’ and Laura saw all the faces in the room turn to look at them.
Pete threw his coat onto a desk. ‘Randle’s house is boarded up. He wasn’t there.’
All the faces looked back to their screens, glad they weren’t the ones who had to break the news to Egan. Some whistled, some smirked.
Pete stayed by his desk and rummaged around in his drawers for something. Laura sensed that it was just to make himself look busy, so she walked on and headed for Yusuf, the officer who had recognised Randle’s name earlier.
As she approached, he smiled, almost bashful. He seemed too timid to be a cop, the antithesis of Pete Dawson, but as she heard Pete cursing at the other end of the room she realised that it was no bad thing.
‘You said Eric Randle’s name came up in the abduction cases,’ she began. ‘How come?’
Yusuf sat back and nodded, pushed his glasses up on his nose. ‘His name comes up a lot,’ he said. ‘Whenever something happens, a murder or something like that, he calls in with information, reckons he is some kind of psychic. He’s done the same with the abductions.’
‘Psychic?’
Yusuf nodded again. ‘He told us to look near the railway.’
‘Is that it?’
‘He was warned off, so his calls stopped, but when I show you this, you’ll see why.’ He reached over to a binder and passed it to Laura. ‘I did some digging around after you went to see him.’
‘Were you on the abduction cases?’
Yusuf nodded. ‘Logging calls, making lists of suspects, trying to cross-reference them. Speaking to the families, just listening out for something.’
‘But there wasn’t much to hear?’
He shook his head. ‘No common theme, except that the kids were from bad families.’
Laura took hold of the binder, and as she flicked through the papers she saw that it contained intelligence reports, all hole-punched and inserted precisely.
‘I’ve put them in chronological order,’ he said.
Laura’s eyes twinkled with amusement. She’d already guessed that he probably had.
‘If you want me to get anything else for you, just ask,’ Yusuf continued, and then he blushed as she smiled back.
‘Thanks. I’d like that.’ She was about to walk away when she thought of something. ‘What are you doing on this case?’ she asked.
‘Calling friends of the victim,’ he said. ‘I break the news, and when they calm down I ask about her other friends, ex-boyfriends, new boyfriends, that kind of thing. Each call leads to another person, and I research every name I come across.’
‘Any other suspects?’
Yusuf shook his head. ‘Not yet. She led a quiet life. Not many boyfriends, and no one on the scene at the moment, although her friends think there may have been someone getting close to her.’
‘Did any know Eric Randle?’
‘I didn’t ask specifically, but a few mentioned that she was a member of a club, used to meet every week, but no one knew much about it, as if she was embarrassed to talk about it.’
Laura picked up the file and nodded her thanks. Back at her desk, she started to read.
The first item was an intelligence report from the eighties. It was a warning that Eric Randle was a problem caller, that he would call the police with information, often about murders or missing children, not always local. He was warned off a few times because he got in the way, turned up at crime scenes, but over time he was regarded as a harmless nuisance and left alone.
Laura leafed through a number of incident logs, created when Eric Randle called the police to provide information. They sounded vague, usually just some idea that someone was in danger. Most had ended with a quiet warning not to meddle.
She looked up when she sensed Egan enter the room. She could hear Pete still sounding off about Randle. Egan didn’t say anything. He just listened, and then began to walk around the room asking if anyone had found anything new.
Laura looked back at the folder, and then she saw something that made her forget all about Egan.
Eric Randle had briefly been a suspect in a couple of prostitute murders around fifteen years earlier. Two girls had gone missing from their usual beat, last seen getting into a dark-coloured saloon. They were found on some waste-ground near to the motorway, both stabbed and mutilated. The killer didn’t strike again, certainly not in Blackley, and the police thought that the attacker was maybe part of the travelling crowd. But they started to look at Eric Randle because he had called the police and told them things that they hadn’t released to the press. He would have been arrested, but he didn’t fit the profile. He was too old and had no criminal history.
The killer was still at large.
Laura put the file down and thought about that. Profiling was big back then—the Cracker years—and maybe too much weight was attached to it. Profiles never caught anyone. They just eliminated people, and sometimes they were wrong. She made a note to find the file for that case.
Then the next part of the file made her jolt, just as Egan started to walk over to her desk. She put her head down and began to read, just to make sure she had seen it right. She had. A different case, a different time.
She put the folder down and sat back, thinking hard about what she had just read. Five years ago, Eric Randle had been charged with murder.
Chapter Nine (#ulink_8959b4ab-6aa4-5fcc-b893-339f93e8344c)
The light around Harry’s doorframe glowed along the dark corridor. Sam tapped lightly and went in.
He saw Harry sitting behind his large mahogany desk. It gleamed, dominating the room with its leather top and ornately carved legs. The room was decorated like a Victorian parlour, the wallpaper gold with burgundy stripes, broken up by caricatures of famous judges and paintings of the Lancashire countryside.
Harry stood up when Sam entered, his shock of curly white hair sticking up from his head, his face deeply tanned, the frequent visits to his Spanish villa making him look weathered and kind. It was a disguise. Sam knew Harry was ruthless, determined and cold in all things. He dressed smartly for someone of his age, though. He was a couple of years over sixty, and he wore dark three-pieces, his stomach only just bulging the buttons, with hand-made shirts framing bright silk ties, a flourish above his waistcoat. And he always wore brogues.
Sam had followed him into brogues, but not the three-pieces. Sam went for single-breasted suits, dark and simple. His hair was shorter than Harry’s, cut down to a number two, his way of hiding the shrinking hairline and the flashes of grey appearing at the sides. Sam’s early-morning walks kept the weight off, but the job gave him blood pressure that scared his doctor.
‘Hello, Sam, good to see you.’ Harry smiled, but it was quick, functional, lacking in warmth. His voice was nasal, almost a whine. It could wear a court down to his way of thinking pretty quickly.
Sam smiled back, a quick nod. ‘Mr Parsons.’ It was only ‘Harry’ at home, never at work.
There were two other people in the room. Sam recognised one straightaway. Jimmy King. They had met a few times, at family events, but it was his reputation that marked him out, ruthless and rich, the first producing the latter. He was dressed in black pinstripes, his hair swept back and dark. Sam wasn’t convinced it was natural. When Jimmy smiled his teeth looked bright, too clean.
The other man was much younger, and looked quiet and nervous.
Sam knew Jimmy was a childhood friend of Harry’s. He’d heard the story too many times, how they had both grown up in the same children’s home, a dusty old Victorian building, forgotten by their parents, beaten by their carers. They had grown up tough, and so Harry and Jimmy had made a pact, and that was never to be beaten, to always look after the other, and to show everyone that they could rise to the very top despite their poor start.
