Next to Die (13 page)

Sam looked behind him. Some of the men were watching, waiting for his reaction. It was a test, he knew that, to see how he would fit in. Sam wasn’t interested in canteen politics. He was either good enough or he wasn’t.

‘I’ll tell you what, big boy,’ Sam said. ‘Seeing as though I’m the guest, why don’t you be a good host and make me one. You just need to find me a cup.’ There was a moment of discomfort and then someone sniggered. Sam looked back towards his screen, smiling. At least someone had enjoyed it.

Then there was the sound of a phone slamming down. Everyone looked round. It was DI Evans, and her jaw was clenched hard. She stared at Sam, and for a moment he wondered what he had done wrong.

‘He’s out!’ she shouted.

‘Bagley?’ someone asked.

‘Yes, this morning. The judge gave the prosecutor a hard time and so she buckled and let him go.’ She kicked at the leg of a desk. Everyone stayed silent, although all eyes turned to Sam.

He was about to say something when Evans shook her head. ‘No need. It’s not your fault.’ She was taking deep breaths through her nose. She closed her eyes. ‘Fuck!’

Sam went back to the screen, as refuge rather than interest. The detective who had spoken to him before was staring at him more intently, holding the tray he had brought over.

He felt the excitement of the investigation fade, replaced by resentment. He shuffled and went red, but it wasn’t embarrassment. It was frustration. It was about Joe, as always, not him.

Twenty-Two

Joe waited in his office for Gina and Monica to join him.

He was standing by the window, gazing towards the park, his mind occupied with how he was going to organise Ronnie’s case, when he noticed something. There was someone sitting on a bench on the side furthest away. The same man as before, the one who had turned up at court, in a grey V-neck, his legs crossed, facing towards the flowerbeds, but his head was cocked towards the office.

There was a creak behind him, and as he turned, he saw that it was Gina. Monica was a few steps behind, bringing with her the aroma of fresh coffee, a tray of drinks balanced on her arm.

Joe looked back to the window, to point out the person he had seen to Gina, but the bench was now empty.

Gina took the chair nearest to Joe’s desk and said, ‘How did it go with Ronnie?’

Joe thought about that for a few seconds and then said, as he took a cup from her, ‘Monica, what do you think?’

‘I thought he’d be more pleased to be out. I mean, he loosened a bit after that drink, but when we dropped him at his mother’s house, he seemed, well…’

‘Hesitant?’ Joe said.

‘Yes, that’s it, as if he didn’t really want to go in.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ he said, and Monica blushed, pleased to hear that she had assessed it correctly. ‘We need to know more about Ronnie Bagley. Can you do that, Gina? Try to tap some of your police sources.’

‘I can, but the prosecution can’t spring any traps, you know that,’ Gina said. ‘Whatever they are going to use, they have to show us.’

‘I’d rather know before they tell us, so that we’re ready to fight back. We might even find something out that helps us, like a reason why he comes across badly. He doesn’t come across as dangerous, but it feels like he’s holding something back all the time. We have to accept that juries might not like him. We can put him in a suit, but he’ll look uncomfortable, and if he gives evidence, he’ll come across as surly.’

‘Do we know why Mahones told him to stay silent in his interviews?’ Gina said. ‘It makes him look guilty from the off. All he had to say was that he didn’t know where Carrie had gone.’

‘Not yet,’ Joe said. ‘Stick to what he tells us. If we tip them off, they might alter their notes, to make their advice look better. We can spring that just before the trial.’

‘What if he told them he did it, that he had killed Carrie and his daughter?’ Monica said.

‘Then we feel happy that he hasn’t told me that yet.’

Monica sat down. ‘That doesn’t make me feel good. I believe him, because I think he would seem different somehow, if he had killed his daughter. I don’t mean I like him, but I believe him.’

‘If you stay in criminal law, clients will shock you for the rest of your career, whether you believe in them or not,’ Joe said. ‘But you can’t let it affect what you do. If you can’t cope with that thought, then you’re in the wrong line of business. You will free rapists and killers, and make excuses for all the low-lifes who won’t care about the misery they cause. Tough. That’s the bargain you make with yourself when you take on the job.’

‘Can we stop the philosophical debate for a moment,’ Gina said, impatience in her voice. ‘How are we approaching Ronnie’s case?’

‘We have to dismantle it,’ Joe said. ‘The clues aren’t obvious. There’s no body in the basement, no eyewitnesses. The prosecution have had to build the case and make it fit in with their version of events. We have to take each strand of their case and unravel it, because we can’t rely on Ronnie to talk his way out of it. By the time Ronnie steps into the witness box, if he does, our case will be as good as it gets, because when Ronnie starts talking, it will just get worse. He will have to admit violence, and he will have to explain away his confession. So we need to knock down the prosecution case so that the judge throws it out before it even gets to Ronnie’s turn.’

‘So how do we go about that?’ Gina said.

‘The blood is the first problem. We’ve got smears, not blood spatter analysis, but it makes it sound like mopping up. The police seized more things with brown stains on them that they think might be blood, which includes a saw. If it is blood, and it is Carrie’s, they’ve got a theory about the bodies being disposed of.’

‘It could be worse than that,’ Monica said quietly. ‘It could be little Grace’s blood.’

That made everyone pause, until Joe said, ‘So let’s hope it isn’t, not just for Ronnie’s sake, because he goes straight to jail if it is Grace’s, but for our own. There are some things I don’t want to think about. Until then, we defend him. If it is Carrie’s blood on that saw, we need another explanation for it. Gina, I want you to talk to him about it. If it is blood and it is Carrie’s, we need a damn good story for why her blood ended up all over that blade. The prosecution’s case, that there is only one possible explanation is all speculation. We need to provide some different options.’

‘But it’s cumulative, all the strands pulled together,’ Gina said.

‘I know that, but a number of explanations gives a number of possible outcomes. Our job is to create doubt, that’s all.’

Joe started to pace, thinking about the case. It was the part he liked best, when he saw the challenge, the evidence against him.

‘Monica?’

She sat up in her seat, attentive.

‘Hit the experts’ directory,’ Joe said, his voice more urgent. ‘Find someone who can examine blood. Could it be old blood? We don’t need to prove how old it is, just that it could have been there longer than the prosecution say. We need to destroy the case so that Ronnie doesn’t have to get in the witness box.’

As Monica made some notes, Joe turned back to Gina. ‘We need to find Carrie. That’s the most important thing. If we can prove that she might not be dead, there is no case at all. The police have spoken to her family and friends. Speak to people who might want to avoid the police, like anyone she’s been in trouble with. Trawl the gutters. Speak to people in the red light areas. We need to check she hasn’t just run away and is holed up somewhere, earning money.’

‘What about you?’ Gina said.

‘I’m going to speak to the landlord tomorrow. The other angle is that there might be more than one suspect. The landlord is a witness, not a suspect, but I might be able to change that. Or he might know of other people who visited Carrie, perhaps when Ronnie was out. She was a drinker and had no money. She might have found other ways to pay for the booze.’

‘Wouldn’t the police have uncovered that?’ Monica said.

‘You’d think so, but the police tend to look at proving a theory, whereas we are looking at disproving it. We have to be more creative.’

‘You need to be careful,’ Gina said. ‘You could destroy the landlord’s reputation if people end up thinking it is him.’

‘Right now, it’s Ronnie I’m concerned about.’

‘Why are you leaving it until tomorrow?’

‘Because there’s someone I need to see.’

‘In relation to Ronnie’s case?’

Joe nodded. ‘There’s something that’s bothering me, about the prosecutor this morning.’

‘Like what?’

‘She gave in too easily, which isn’t like Kim.’

He pulled out his phone and went to a number he kept in his address book but rarely used. He pressed dial and then waited. When he heard her voice, he fought hard to keep the smile from his face.

‘Kim, it’s me, Joe Parker. Do you fancy a drink?’

When she agreed, he arranged a place and then rang off. He had some questions, and he wanted Kim to answer them. He tapped his phone against his chin. He reckoned the day was about to get really interesting.

Twenty-Three

The City Arms was one of Joe’s favourite pubs, a small place of wood and guest ales behind a typical Manchester exterior of old green tiles. The music was set on low, so that the air was filled with the sound of conversation and the clink of glasses. The long wooden tables were clear, the after-work crowd spilled onto the pavement outside.

He checked his watch. Kim Reader was late, but she had always been like that.

Someone came in, and he looked up, expectant, but it wasn’t her. He took another drink. Warm bitter, the pint glass ringed by white marks, each one showing where he unwound a little more, like the slow loosening of a belt.

He was just checking his phone, wondering if Kim had backed out, when she walked in. She was a little breathless, as if she had walked quickly from her office just a few streets away.

Joe got to his feet to buy her a drink but she waved him down. When she came over, she was carrying two drinks. A small lager for her, and another beer for him.

‘It’s not a sign of weakness, me buying the drinks,’ he said, smiling.

Kim shook her head as she sat down. ‘It would be regarded as hospitality, you know that, and I’m not allowed any from a defence lawyer. So if I buy, it’s just two old friends having a drink.’

He smiled and drained his glass, sliding the new one over. ‘Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.’

Kim looked around. ‘I would have thought we could have met somewhere nicer.’

‘What’s up with the place? I like it.’

‘You choose like a drinker. I choose, well, like I need a bit of glamour.’

‘You meet more interesting people in real pubs. Anyway, I thought you might prefer the darkness, in case you were seen.’

‘By whom?’

‘Your bosses. Your beau.’ He took a drink and watched her reaction. Her blush told him that it was her boyfriend she was worried about. ‘Like you say, it’s just two old friends enjoying a drink.’

‘It’s not like that,’ she said, and then tried to stop the blush from spreading. It was exactly like that. ‘It was good to see you today.’

‘And you.’

‘How’s business?’

‘Good, and for as long as you don’t lay off charging people, it will stay good.’

‘We’ve no plans to do that.’

Joe sat back to lean against the old leather pads at the back of the high bench. ‘How is your boyfriend? Is it Sean?’

She looked into her glass. When she looked up again, her eyes had lost some of their shine. ‘We pass in the hall sometimes.’

Joe rolled his eyes, laughing. ‘You’re not about to give me the “my partner doesn’t understand me” spiel, are you? I thought it was men who came out with that stuff.’

‘I’d be more direct, you know that,’ Kim said, and as she looked at him, the light flecks in her green eyes were crowded out by the spread of her pupils.

For a few moments, the prosecutor, in her dark suit and manicured fingernails, was gone and back came the student Joe had known, the happy young woman he had stared at across a lecture hall, always in denims that hung from her hips and a baggy old jumper. He tried not to think how he had seen her sometimes, her clothes on the floor, her eyes closed, two young people in bed. Those memories were clouded by drink, because that was how it had happened, that sometimes they went home together when they had been drinking. There were times when he had just walked her to her house, supporting her when she was drunk, and there were others when she had invited him in, to the mattress on the floor in a student room that smelled of marijuana.

‘You haven’t changed, you know,’ Joe said. ‘Except when you’re in court.’

‘What do you mean?’

Joe took a drink, avoiding the answer, but when Kim raised her eyebrows at him, he said, ‘You’re much tougher, like everything’s a moral crusade. I remember how you were, and that must have been the real you, because you didn’t have to play a part.’

‘Perhaps this is the real me, and I needed the job to bring it out.’

‘No, we’ve become what we wanted to become, but that is different to how we are. Are you this tough at home, away from the office?’

Kim looked down, and Joe knew he had upset her.

‘Sometimes it’s hard to switch off,’ she said. ‘I make decisions that ruin lives, whichever way the decision goes, and it weighs heavily, but Sean expects me to come in and be all sweetness, be some kind of domestic goddess, when I’m just so tired most of the time.’ She took a deep breath and raised her glass. ‘I need this too much, I know that, but I know what it will be like when I get home.’ Once she’d taken a drink, she said, ‘You’ve changed.’

‘How?’

‘More grown up, I suppose. More serious. You don’t laugh as much as you used to.’

‘Maybe life isn’t as funny anymore,’ he said, and took off his jacket and put it on the seat next to him.

‘So come on,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you haven’t invited me out to mull over how our lives have got worse, so let’s get it out of the way. Ronnie Bagley.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We see each other often enough and you don’t usually ask me out for a drink. What’s different about today?’