Next to Die (4 page)

‘Yeah, thanks,’ Joe said. ‘Where’s Mum?’

‘In the back room, fixing food. You know how it is. Just let her stay busy.’

‘What time are you going to the cemetery?’

‘Aren’t you coming?’

Joe sighed. It was the same old argument. ‘I’m working.’

Sam didn’t say anything at first. He glowered for a few seconds, cricked his neck, and then said, ‘It wouldn’t hurt one year. Just for Mum.’

Joe stepped closer, so Ruby couldn’t hear him, and spoke in a whisper. ‘I think of Ellie all the time, but I prefer to think of her in happier times, like when it’s her birthday, not on the day she died. I want to remember her for the right things, not how it ended.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

Before Joe could respond, his mother came into the room, a plate of sandwiches in her hand. As she put them down next to the sausage rolls and scotch eggs, the plate rattled against the table. The shake to her hand was getting worse.

Her smile was weak as she came towards him. Joe could tell she was trying too hard. He had to lean down to let her put a kiss to his cheek. Her lips felt cold, and she trembled more than she used to.

‘Don’t you look handsome,’ she said, taking his hand, her fingers cold and brittle in his. ‘My youngest boy, thirty-three. Who would have thought it? It makes me feel old.’

‘Worry when you start to look it,’ he said, making her laugh.

It was a lie, they both knew it, but it made her feel better. For years, he thought she hadn’t changed. Her style hadn’t altered – skirts and jumpers. Her hair was still cut short and only the colour had changed, as the grey started to take over before being replaced by a series of light browns. Some looked natural, others didn’t. Now she was starting to look like the woman she would become. Older, more frail. There were broken veins under her eyes and her cheeks were acquiring a permanent flush. Joe knew it was the booze, but there was no point in saying anything. She drank to reach oblivion when she needed it, and Joe knew that his birthdays were always the toughest. She put herself under pressure to make it a good day for him, even though he had told her often that it didn’t matter. But if they didn’t do this it would become solely about Ellie, and she needed the drink to get her through the day.

‘Come this way,’ Ruby said, interrupting, pulling him to a chair by the fire. Even though it was May and warm outside, the fire was on a low heat.

He let Ruby lead him, and sat there as they sang him ‘Happy Birthday’. Joe did his best to look cheerful, for Ruby’s sake, and then Ruby disappeared to bring in the small pile of presents. He made a show of delight as he unwrapped them, laughing at the jokes on the cards, expressing all the right amount of gratitude for each gift. Shirt, a mug, beer and socks.

‘Happy birthday,’ his mother said, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

‘I’ve got to go soon,’ Joe said, and then winced at the hurt that flashed across her eyes for a second. He wished he could take the words back, but they were out now.

‘So which low-life is more important than your family today?’ Sam said.

‘It sounds like you’re the one who’s still on duty,’ Joe said, sighing. ‘Try not being a copper for a day. You might like it.’

‘Go on, tell me how they’re just people, like you and me.’

‘Let’s not have this conversation again.’

‘I’ve seen how your clients really are, when they’re spitting and snarling in their handcuffs. You get the cleaned-up version, when they’re pleading for bail or whatever.’

‘They
are
still people.’

‘Don’t fight, boys.’ It was their mother.

They both smiled at her, trying to make it out like it was all a joke, just a brotherly wrestle, except that the passing years had made it more verbal than physical.

‘His work is more important,’ Sam said.

‘Joe’s work
is
important,’ she said. ‘I’m very proud of him.’

Sam clenched his jaw. He locked them up, Joe set them free, but in her world success was measured by the price of your suit, not the good work that you did.

‘I’ll call in later, I promise,’ Joe said.

His mother’s smile was even more forced. She knew he was avoiding the graveyard trip.

Sam’s phone rang. He turned away as he answered but Joe listened in anyway.

‘I’m not working today,’ Sam said. He listened, and then his voice seemed to raise a notch when he said, ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

When he turned back around Joe said, ‘What is it?’

Sam looked back at his phone and said, ‘I’ve got to go in. They want to speak to me about a murder case.’

‘I thought you were on the financial unit?’

‘I am,’ Sam said.

‘So why a murder?’

‘I don’t know.’

Joe didn’t get an answer when he reached for a sandwich and said, ‘It’s not good when work gets in the way, is it?’

Seven

Sam Parker checked his tie in the rear-view mirror and straightened it, but it just became more twisted than before. He straightened it again, so that it ended up how it had started. Sam didn’t feel ready to go in so soon after visiting Ellie’s grave, but an inspector on the Murder Squad had summoned him. He couldn’t ignore it. The Murder Squad wasn’t the official name, it was now the Major Incident Team, but Sam knew that the egos preferred the old moniker.

He looked up at the building. Stanmoss police station was old and built in redbrick with wings at either end. Rings of sandstone wrapped around it, so that it looked like it was wrapped in gold, although it looked jaded, with the brickwork bearing decades of traffic fumes like fatigue.

Try to stay calm, he told himself, it might be nothing. But if a murder case needed a financial investigation, this could be his opportunity to impress.

It would be better on a different day though. All through his career he had worked towards this moment, a brief glimpse into the Murder Squad, but the memory of the cemetery took away any sense of satisfaction. Ellie was always there, the little sister he had last seen as he went to university that day. A clingy, cute fifteen-year-old, snatched away from her life by someone who cared about it so little. It was corny, he knew it, but Ellie needed someone to fight for justice. And not just for her, but the people like her, the ones who left their homes but never made it back.

One more deep breath. Whatever this involved, it was just another case. Murders and frauds are the same. It’s about what stands out as unusual, a change from the routine. A different spending pattern, or a different route to work.

Sam had done his share of frauds. They were a lot of effort for not much reward. People went to jail, but not for long. Sometimes it felt like it was worth it, like when a pursuit of the paper trail led to houses bought by laundered money, so the fraudster lost his gains. But most of the time it was just people trying to work out ways to provide money for gambling, or to entertain the women they had lied to about their money. Perhaps this was his chance to get involved with something bigger, the reason why he had joined the police. This was for Ellie.

He jumped at the sound of his phone. The screen said it was a withheld number. He thought about not answering, because he guessed it was the call he had been getting for a few weeks, but it was the number he gave out to witnesses so he knew he had to answer.

‘Hello, DC Sam Parker.’

There was a pause, and for a moment he thought it might be an automated message, a promise of compensation if he had ever tripped or had a car crash. But it wasn’t. The sounds came as they always did. A struggle, cries, muffled grunts of exertion, and then the sound of a scream, cut short by a slap and followed by sobs.

He clicked it off and thrust the phone back into his pocket. His guess was that it was the soundtrack from some post-midnight horror film, because it was recorded. He put it down to being a detective, being targeted by people who hadn’t enjoyed his work. He had seized a lot of dirty money from a lot of bad people, and some of them got angry.

The calls weren’t every day, but they came in flurries, so that he might go for a few days without a call, and then he would receive four or five a day for a few days, the message never changing.

Sam let the sun perk him back up as he stepped out of the car, and then checked his appearance again in the reflection as he walked slowly towards the front door. His suit was grey and sharp – he’d gone home to get changed – with a cornflower blue shirt and dark blue tie. It made it look like he was going for a job interview, but that was how he felt.

The door echoed as it closed and he roamed high-ceilinged corridors lit by dirty strip-lights, the covers filled with dirt and dust, the radiators thick with years of paint. He was looking for something that resembled an Incident Room, but most of the rooms seemed empty, used as storerooms, with boxes piled high and desks dismantled, ready to be taken away. As he walked, he started to think that someone was playing a joke on him, but then he heard soft mumbles of conversation. He followed the noise, and as he turned a corner he saw an open door ahead. The shirts and ties visible ahead told him that he had found the Murder Squad.

Sam swallowed as he got closer, and as he tapped on the door, everyone turned to look.

The room was filled with desks in clusters, screens flickering on each one, casting blue reflections over files and notebooks. There were bits of paperwork stuck to the wall and on white noticeboards, with dates and names scrawled on in green.

No one spoke, so Sam said, ‘I’m DC Parker. I’m here to see DI Evans.’

Everyone looked towards the back of the room, to a woman speaking on the telephone. She glanced up at him and then carried on with her conversation, so he took in what was around him. There were posters on each wall of four teenagers, two of them not even eighteen. He recognised them because they were posted in every police station in the county. In the Incident Room, they felt more prominent, alongside more pictures and larger images from the posters.

The sounds in the room seemed to recede as he got closer to them, to look more carefully, the chatter replaced by that crushing sadness whenever he thought of what the families must be enduring. Four young women from different parts of Manchester, with no connection between them that had been made public, and all of them missing, presumed dead. The last woman went missing two months earlier. There must be a pattern. It was just a question of seeing it.

But they were all so very different. Two of them were white, one of them tall and redheaded, the other brunette, her hair long and curly. There was a young black girl, only fifteen, although the flirt to her smile made her seem older, along with an Indian girl, the dark lushness of her hair giving a glow to her photograph. What weren’t people seeing?

There were footsteps behind him. DI Evans. He turned to her. She was small and petite, with short grey hair and some steel to her smile.

‘Sam Parker?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and when he saw the slight flare of the nostrils, he added, ‘ma’am.’

‘I’m Mary Evans,’ she said. ‘Call me Mary in here. I’m glad you could make it.’

‘I know, I’m sorry,’ he said, guessing that he had already taken too long. ‘I’m on a rest day.’

‘You’re here now. Follow me.’

She walked past him and led him away from the Incident Room, along the corridor to a smaller room that seemed to serve as her office. There was a dirty coffee cup and a framed picture of a young woman. The office looked temporary though, because there were lever arch folders in a pile by a cabinet that were browned with age, as if she’d had to clear out the remnants of the previous occupant before she could use the room. The papers on her desk were strewn around, and he had to fight the urge to reach over and stack them neatly, so that she would find it easier to read them.

‘Sit down,’ Evans said, pointing to a chair that looked on the verge of collapse, the legs starting to splay. It swayed beneath him as he sat down.

She stared at him for a few seconds, and he fought the urge to shuffle in his seat. ‘Is it about the four missing women?’ he said, and pointed to the room next door. ‘I saw all the posters.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ she said. ‘Have you heard of Ronnie Bagley?’

Sam’s mind flicked through the files in the cabinet next to his desk, picturing it like an address book, a list of names, and then when he came up with nothing he tried to skim through all the villains and wasters he had dealt with through the years. Finally he shook his head. ‘No, ma’am. It doesn’t sound familiar.’

‘He is to your brother.’

Sam was confused. ‘Joe?’

‘Yes, Joe Parker. He’s a defence lawyer, right?’

‘Yes. Used to be with Mahones. With Honeywells now.’ He frowned. ‘What does this have to do with me?’

Evans hesitated before she spoke, staring at Sam, as if she was trying to unsettle him, remind him who was in charge.

‘I want you to get some information from him,’ she said eventually.

‘In relation to what?’

‘One of his clients.’

Sam’s eyes widened. ‘You want me to spy on my brother?’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

Sam exhaled loudly. He wasn’t sure he was going to enjoy the rest of the conversation.

Eight

Joe had collected Monica from the office and driven straight to the prison. He made small talk on the way, to take his mind from all the reminders of Ellie’s death, and it worked. Monica was filled with all the eagerness he’d once had as a lawyer starting out, and he enjoyed the bounce of her conversation, her ready smile.

Strangeways took the shine away, with its high walls and old redbrick core. It was no longer the prison it had once been, when the cramped conditions and constant lock-up ended up with the prisoners taking it over for twenty-five days, but still it made for a brooding shadow on a major route into the city. The layout was like spokes on a bike wheel and on the outside it had been given a modern look, clad in bright new bricks and with a visitors’ centre by the main road. That was all gloss however, because behind the high walls there were still remnants of the Victorian gloom. The tower and those parts of the prison furthest away from the main gate still showed its history, of executions and riots, through chipped and scarred redbrick.