BEYOND EVIL

BEYOND EVIL Neil White DI Sheldon Brown has never recovered from finding the body of Alice Kenyon brutally murdered, naked and abandoned in a pool. And he’s never stopped pursuing his main suspect, hellraiser and lottery winner Billy Privett either.So when Billy is found dead and, what’s more, viciously dissected, DI Brown’s obsession is rekindled. Who killed the notorious millionaire in such a bloodthirsty way? With jaded lawyer Charlie Barker – who desperately needs to pick up the pieces of his own life – Sheldon will uncover a world of drugs, long-buried secrets and a cult with a deadly conviction to their cause … NEIL WHITE Beyond Evil To everyone at Avon Table of Contents Title Page (#u236661ba-7fc3-535a-a2a6-63472e265934) Dedication (#u6d831825-86aa-5253-8c38-d660ba1f1473) Chapter One (#ud4d46087-774b-5c14-9aed-f082c46e02da) Chapter Two (#u0a63e2cd-f209-54dc-8542-77830650c3fb) Chapter Three (#u58e704b6-9d12-59a3-b42f-e9c71d108f42) Chapter Four (#ub6092a83-f8b4-5493-b3b4-2ef65451f524) Chapter Five (#u72474528-352a-5365-8397-ce93fb16c19c) Chapter Six (#uc51a509b-d994-538f-87ce-0595f01c6316) Chapter Seven (#u628dcdb8-f1ce-56e5-96fc-ae0ea3504579) Chapter Eight (#ub3bdf096-88a9-53bf-a4f4-02027881946b) Chapter Nine (#u225605ab-35ef-54ce-be8f-83ba4a4ee7a9) Chapter Ten (#ud898fe0d-2c52-51a3-8f1a-c3956d040383) Chapter Eleven (#ua21ba29e-d19a-5e07-ab99-f0158ae6895e) Chapter Twelve (#u7485ac9f-15a1-5b3e-a833-3b80e7bcb40a) Chapter Thirteen (#u2d2c83e6-6a09-522f-96a9-a95e522cf14f) Chapter Fourteen (#ubf79a18e-9a9d-50ce-bc2a-4f7e94a36ca9) Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Six (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Forty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifty (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifty-One (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifty-Two (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifty-Three (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifty-Four (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifty-Five (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifty-Six (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Sixty (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Sixty-One (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Sixty-Two (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Sixty-Three (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Sixty-Four (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Sixty-Five (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Sixty-Six (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Sixty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo) Neil White’s Writing Tips (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) By the same author (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter One The blue flickers of the police lights dominated the view as Sheldon Brown looked out of his windscreen. He’d had the call thirty minutes earlier, and so had scrambled out of bed, the fatigue chased away by adrenaline. That had faded, replaced by the rhythm of his heartbeat, like flutters in his chest. Sheldon reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out his bottle of diazepam, small blue wonders. He washed two down with a bottle of water. They wouldn’t take effect straight away, he knew that, but just the act of taking them made his fingers tremble less. He checked his reflection in the car mirror, that his tie was straight, his shirt not too creased. He didn’t look too bad. It was the middle of the night. That would give him some latitude. He stepped out of his car and pulled at his shirt cuffs. The cold hit him straight away. It was summer, but the night air never stayed warm in Oulton, the Lancashire town that had become the hub of his police career. He had started out in the town as a young cadet, a few years spent sorting out the fights that spilled out from the pubs, the licensing hours just a guide, not a rule. His rise through the detective ranks took him to the larger towns in the county, but eventually he made his way back. Oulton was the last stop before the moors, where the roads out of the valleys snaked upwards and towards Yorkshire, where there were few trees to stop the howl of the wind, just coarse grasses that grew wild. The town didn’t offer much for tourists other than a starting point to go somewhere else. There was a small maze of shops, once family-run businesses turned into charity shops and nail salons, but most of the pubs were boarded up now, victims of supermarket booze and the smoking ban. Weather-beaten terraced streets ran up the hills to empty patches of land where factories used to dominate. Some of the houses were rendered and painted in pastel shades, except that exhaust fumes and cold winters had turned them shabby, so that they were just dirty breaks in the lines of grey stone. There were some elegant spots though, where the mill-owners had lived, grand stone gestures set in their own grounds, with curving gravel drives and wide lawns, nymph statues spraying water into lily ponds. The mills were gone, and so they made for large country hotels, used for weddings and by those walkers who liked to start their hikes as near to the top of the hills as they could. Sheldon was in front of one of these hotels, the drive lined by marked police cars, headlights illuminating a huddle of people in uniform slacks and shirts. Ivy spread over dark grey walls and around white lattice windows, with wide glass conservatories along both sides. He took his suit jacket from the hook in the back of his car, and once buttoned up, he took a deep breath and set off walking. Just take command, was his thought, as he got closer. He tugged at his cuffs again. The gravel crunched under his feet, like loud cracks in the night. There were people looking out of their bedroom windows, curiosity beating sleep. A uniformed officer walked towards him, his fluorescent jacket bright green in the darkness, bouncing back the weak light from the faux Victorian lamps that lined the driveway. His arms were outstretched, ready to turn him away. Sheldon pulled out his identification and said, ‘What time did the call come in?’ The constable held his hand up in apology and said, ‘Just after one, sir.’ ‘Who’s supervising the scene?’ Sheldon said. ‘Sergeant Peters.’ Sheldon knew her. Tracey Peters, smart and ambitious, but normally on the burglary team. ‘You’re the first inspector to arrive, sir.’ Sheldon nodded, just to stop the panic rising. This could become his case, but he had to control it. ‘So what have you heard?’ Sheldon said. ‘You won’t like it, sir.’ ‘I don’t expect to like it,’ Sheldon said, the words coming out clipped and precise. ‘I said what have we got?’ A blush crept up the constable’s cheeks. ‘A male, dead, in there,’ and he pointed towards the hotel. ‘There was a complaint about noise, and when the duty manager went to the room, he found a body.’ ‘Any word on who it is?’ ‘The room was booked in the name of John Bull, so I heard, but that sounds like, well …’ ‘Bullshit?’ ‘That’s the one.’ Sheldon set off for the front of the hotel. He went to a plastic crate filled with forensic suits, hooded paper jumpsuits packed into plastic wrappers. He ripped at the polythene and slipped one on over his clothes. Once he had snapped on the face mask, he set off to join the small huddle of white paper suits just outside the hotel doors. The crowd turned to look at him as he joined, and when they realised who it was, Sheldon spotted the exchange of glances, the raised eyebrows. ‘How bad is it?’ Sheldon asked. ‘As bad as anything I’ve ever seen,’ someone said. He recognised the voice, and the long dark lashes blinking over the mask. Tracey Peters. Sheldon nodded, and tried a smile. ‘A bit different to looking at overturned furniture,’ he said, and then, ‘how much of a mess have the staff made?’ ‘No one stayed long enough to get near the body. As soon as they looked inside, they backed away, screaming.’ Sheldon looked towards the building but didn’t say anything for a while. He looked up at the bedrooms. Someone was taking photographs with a phone. A tale for the dinner party. ‘Let’s take a look,’ he said, and walked around the small huddle. He heard the boots of Tracey Peters behind him. He climbed the hotel steps quickly and went through the revolving door. His footsteps echoed in the marble lobby, a walnut reception desk in front of him, a brass plaque reminding him of the hotel name. Sweeping stairways curled upwards behind it, lined in plush wine-coloured carpets. Tracey stepped in front. ‘It’s at the back,’ she said, and led him away from reception and through a long room filled with high-backed chairs and a large stone fireplace. They turned into a long corridor lined by doors. There were plates outside some, remnants of room service. Neither said anything. All he could hear was the rustle of their paper suits. His eyes scanned the walls for any blood smears that might have been missed, but it looked clean. At the end of the corridor, by an open fire door, he saw the bright glare of arc lights coming from one of the rooms and the bustle of more white forensic suits. The crime scene investigators stepped aside as he got near. One was dusting the glass on the fire door, hoping for a print. Another was swabbing the doorframe for DNA, in case someone grabbed the door on the way out. ‘Anything yet?’ Sheldon said. The dusting stopped for a moment and the tired eyes of a middle-aged man turned to him. ‘Nothing much, sir. All the blood is on the bed. No footprints in the room. There were handprints, but they were smears, and so no good for getting any prints.’ ‘I’ll need to speak to everyone who was using rooms along this corridor, and the night manager,’ Sheldon said. ‘He’s been trying to get in the way since we got here, worried about his business,’ Tracey said. ‘He’ll have to keep worrying,’ Sheldon said, and then went into the room. He shielded his eyes as they became used to the glare of the lights, and once he was able to take in the scene, sweat prickled across his forehead and his mouth filled with acid. He looked away for a moment and took a deep breath. Once he knew that he was able to look again, he slowly raised his head. There was a man in front of them, lying spread-eagled on a bed, his arms and legs pulled to the corners and tied to the bed legs. ‘That’s some extreme sex game,’ Tracey said, and she pointed to a ball gag that was discarded in the corner of the room, a leather strap with a plastic ball in the centre. Sheldon thought he could see teeth marks in it. Sheldon let out a long breath. ‘I don’t think he was enjoying it,’ he said, and took a step closer, leaving Tracey nearer the door. The man was naked. He didn’t look old, the Maori tattoos that swirled down from his shoulders giving that away, but it was what was above his shoulders that made Sheldon wonder if he’d sleep again that night. There was a shock of black hair on the pillow, slick with blood, because where the face had once been there was just the bright white of cheek and jawbones, streaked red by blood and remnants of torn flesh and muscle. The eyes were still in place, and teeth seemed set in some final grimace. The face had been cut away in a neat shield, as if a stencil had been used. ‘Why would someone do that?’ Tracey said. ‘It makes him harder to identify, but that can’t be the reason,’ Sheldon said, his voice quieter than before. ‘Is the face still here somewhere?’ Tracey shook her head. ‘Not in this room.’ Sheldon closed his eyes. ‘There is a bit more to this,’ he heard Tracey say. Sheldon opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘In what way?’ ‘I spoke to the police doctor when he left,’ she said, and then raised her eyebrows. ‘He thought that the victim had been alive when it started.’ Sheldon looked back to the body on the bed and shook his head. The constable outside was right. This was going to be a bad one. Chapter Two The noise started in his dream. There was a bird on a branch, bright red and blue feathers, chirruping at him, but then the bird faded and the room came into view. He was in bed and the chirrups were still there, except that they were now electronic. He groaned and put his head under the pillow. It was the telephone. He could ignore it, just wait for the answer machine, but then he realised that he couldn’t let it do that. He might need the call. He threw the pillow to one side and stumbled out of bed. The floor swayed under his feet. He tasted the booze as he exhaled, stale and unpleasant, and then he pulled the discarded T-shirt from the front of the clock radio. Eight o’clock. Later than he thought. The phone was still ringing. ‘All right, all right,’ he shouted, and made his way through his apartment, wiping his eyes. The answer machine beat him to it. ‘Charlie. It’s Julie. I can’t make it this afternoon. There’s been a murder. It was supposed to be my day off, but they’ve cancelled my leave to cover for those drafted in to help. We’ll do it another time, but we need to sort it out. And Charlie, you called again Saturday night. Don’t do it again, I told you. Andrew is getting sick of it.’ Then it clicked off. Charlie sat down. This afternoon? Then he remembered. They were supposed to be sorting out their things, the breakup routine. He put his head back and closed his eyes. He was glad he had avoided it. The apartment would need cleaning, and he didn’t need to look to know that there were the remains of a late night Sunday film session on the floor: a pizza box and a line of empty beer bottles. He would get a life-lecture from Julie if she saw it, and he didn’t need it. They’d been together for just a year, and he hadn’t changed. He was almost forty and was drinking too much when they got together. He was just the same a year on. He guessed she was supposed to change him. Was it his problem she hadn’t succeeded? It was his own fault for getting involved with police officers, he knew that, but Julie hadn’t been the first. He was a defence lawyer, and the police had an expectation that he would be some successful go-getter, all about sports cars and the best restaurants. It had never taken them long to find out that it wasn’t like that, because some lawyers are just courtroom shouters and part-time ambulance chasers. Julie had been one of the longer relationships, but that was only because of his reluctance to let her leave. She was attractive, tall and elegant and blonde, like a tick-list on a dating site, and they had got together during one of those long chats at the custody desk. He hadn’t fought as hard that day, and spent most of the interview watching her. They went out for a meal, and she moved in two months later. She moved out ten months after that, when she realised that they had nothing in common, and that Charlie wasn’t interested in finding anything they might share. And then he remembered she mentioned a call. He sighed. He had done it before when drunk, just a call to see if she wanted to give it another try. It wasn’t that he even thought that way when sober, but bad ideas are sometimes crafted on the long weave home from a pub. Julie was with someone else now. Perhaps that was what rankled. Charlie opened his eyes and stumbled to his feet, groaning at his reflection in the mirror. His dark hair was now streaked with grey and too long for his age, gathered in greasy curls around his collar. His beard was unkempt, more like he’d forgotten how to shave rather than he’d decided to grow one. It wasn’t a good start to the week. His mother had always said that he would amount to nothing, and he thought he had won the argument by qualifying as a lawyer. Except that he had spent the next fifteen years slowly proving her right. He looked away and went to the window instead. His flat was on the top floor of a four-storey apartment block overlooking Oulton, blocking the view to the open moorland, the bricks clad in fake stone to make it blend in with the growing town. He got the sun as it set in the evening, and the views gave him something to look at when he was on his own, even the grey sprawl of Manchester, although the city buzz never got as far as the town. The phone rang again, and he thought about not answering, but he didn’t think it would be Julie again. It could be a client, or the police. It was one of the drawbacks of being a defence lawyer, that he had to be available when the clients needed him, but most calls meant nothing. Like relatives letting him know that their cousin or brother had been arrested, only to find out that the prisoner had chosen a different lawyer. But there is always the prospect that the next call will be the big one, the case that keeps the practice ticking over for another year. The large frauds are the best, where the volume of paperwork creates plenty of billable hours, but not many came in like that. Anyway, he wasn’t the sort who liked to spend his time scouring through paperwork. He knew what he was: a tub-thumper, defending on emotion, shouting for his clients in a small northern town. He had the guile and legal brain for trading blows with barristers in the Crown Court, and he had thought about going down that route, but he didn’t have the temperament. He might enjoy the arguments, but sometimes he fought too hard when finesse would be better, and he struggled to control his hackles when he heard the sniggers of the country-set. And he’d have to shave more often. He clicked the answer button, and it took him a few seconds to recognise the greeting as Amelia’s, his business partner. ‘Amelia? This is early.’ ‘You’ve got a change of schedule today, Charlie,’ she said, her voice curt. ‘We’ve been burgled.’ The day was getting worse. ‘Anything taken?’ ‘Not as far as I can tell, but there’s a broken window and they’ve been through the files.’ Charlie didn’t like the sound of that. Some of the town’s worst secrets were in those files, the real stories behind the crimes, not the excuses the defendants spill to their friends. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ ‘No, I need you to go to court and deal with my cases. I’ll sort things out here. And there’s been a murder.’ ‘Yes, I know. People are rushing to tell me.’ ‘From the whispers I’m getting, it’s a bad one. You need to get to the police station.’ ‘We’ve got the suspect?’ There was a pause, and then, ‘I don’t know if there is one, but I want you to find out what you can, in case they bring him in and he hasn’t got a lawyer. Your name might just tumble out of the custody sergeant’s mouth. You know how it works.’ ‘I think I’m right out of all charm,’ he said. ‘My cases are quick, and I’ve checked your diary,’ Amelia said, not listening. ‘You haven’t got much on. Just try and get the gossip.’ Charlie wiped his eyes. He did know how it worked, but he wasn’t in the mood for a Monday morning schmooze at the custody desk. It wasn’t the sergeant who was important, but Amelia had never learnt that. She thought that a flick of her hair with a sergeant brought her work. Unlikely. Custody sergeants are immune to charm. No, the people who pass your name to the prisoners are the civilian jailers. Make friends with those people, and it is your name that gets mentioned through the hatch of the cell door. ‘How will I get access?’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ll find a way,’ she said, and then there was a click. Charlie stared at the phone as Amelia hung up. That was her way. No unnecessary politeness. Just get the job done. He was tired and feeling rough, but he had learnt not to question her methods. His name might be higher on the brass plaque outside the office, but she ran the practice because she had saved it. He struggled to the bathroom, and was about to wipe the condensation from the mirror, but decided against it. He knew that he wouldn’t like what he saw. The beginnings of broken veins and purple skin under his eyes. He was thirty-nine years old, and looked already like the milestone birthday was a long way behind him. When he came out of the shower, his eyes caught the empty side of the bed again. He still slept to one side, not used to the fact that Julie was no longer there, her tangle of blonde hair almost lost in the soft white pillow. A year-long habit was hard to break. He looked in the wardrobe for his suit, but swore when he realised that it had been lying crumpled in the corner since Friday night. He pulled his emergency suit out of the wardrobe, all threadbare cuffs and shiny elbows. As he pulled on the clothes, tightening the tie around his neck and threading his cufflinks into his shirt, he started to feel like a lawyer again. It was always the same. Weekends in scruffs, weekdays in pinstripes, and the tightness of the shirt collar seemed to squeeze out the weekend. He just needed a coffee and then he would be ready for the world. Chapter Three Sheldon Brown’s eyes were closed. There was sweat on his top lip and his fingers were clenched into a tight fist to stop the shakes. He breathed through his nose and began the countdown from ten. He got to one and opened his eyes. His reflection in the mirror in the police station toilets gave nothing away. His dark hair lacked some shine, and there were purple rings under his eyes, but he had looked worse. He had got used to not sleeping. He splashed some water onto his face and dried it off with a paper towel. He nodded at his reflection and then headed for the door. As Sheldon came back onto the corridor, he became aware of the sound of men laughing and joking, waiting for the day to start. The squad was padded out with officers from other teams, drafted in to help with the routine stuff. The door-to-doors, fingertip searches. The door to the Incident Room was ahead, and he strode towards it. A voice from behind stopped him. ‘Sir?’ Sheldon turned round. It was Tracey Peters, the sergeant from the night before. Tall and brunette, with deep brown eyes, elegant in a fitted grey suit, she looked like she had caught the sleep Sheldon had missed. ‘Sergeant Peters, good morning.’ ‘It’s Detective Sergeant, actually, although I prefer Tracey.’ She smiled. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I have spoken to my inspector, and he says that if you want one more, then you’ve got me.’ When Sheldon didn’t respond, she added, ‘I was there last night, and so I want to see it through.’ Sheldon swallowed and nodded. People would be watching him. He would need all the help he could get. ‘Yes, thank you,’ and then, ‘it’s been hard getting the numbers in.’ Tracey grimaced. ‘I know how it is.’ Every team was the same. Budget cuts had decimated the force, and so every squad was running at its leanest. Sheldon had assembled a unit from whoever could be spared, with some drafted in from the nearest towns. They had taken over the small Oulton station, a stone block in the middle of the town next to the Magistrates Court, with old wooden windows and a genteel blue lamp hanging over the door. There was supposed to be a detective chief inspector coming over from the Force Major Investigation Team, to see whether they should take over the case, but there had been a double murder on the other side of the county. Sheldon had been instructed to keep things afloat until he got there. Sheldon stopped at the doorway of the Incident Room and looked in. The station wasn’t used to so much activity, and the squad looked crammed in. Condensation was building up on the windows and officers lined the walls, the few available chairs taken by the keen ones who had arrived first. He recognised all the detectives in there, testament to the twenty-five years he had put in, the eager young cadet turned into a jowly man in his fifties. As people saw him, the sounds of conversation died away, and they exchanged glances, some of disappointment, some of surprise. Sheldon smiled, but it came out like a twitch, and then he walked in, his head up. All the eyes in the room followed him as he took a place at the front. The only sound in the room was the rustle of an envelope as he pulled out a set of photographs, and then the rip of sticky tape as he pasted them to the whiteboard at the front of the room. They were the pictures from the night before, the body on the hotel bed, strapped to the corners, the face sliced off. Murmurs went around the room as they took in the images. Sheldon guessed that word of the body had gone round the station, but photographs made things more real. Sheldon cleared his throat and then turned round to look at the squad. His hands went into fists again. ‘Last night was grim,’ he said. ‘I was there. I know how it was. We need to catch whoever did this.’ He tried to make it sound like a rallying call, but he was met by stares and silence. His tongue flicked across his bottom lip, waiting for someone to ask a question, just to fill the gap. ‘Do we know who the victim is yet?’ a voice said at the back. Sheldon recognised him. Duncan Lowther, the poster boy for the local CID. He was a hobby copper, inherited wealth funding his life, not the job. His was the Porsche on the car park, to match the expensive cologne, and the weekends spent in the wine bars of Manchester. He talked of great literature and art-house cinema, and didn’t wear the usual uniform of pastel shirts and chain store suits, preferring tight grey V-necks and silk ties. Sheldon had seen too many coppers like him. All glory, no graft. ‘That’s the first thing we need to work out,’ Sheldon said. ‘Always start with the victim. And someone needs to go through the incident logs for the county for the last twelve hours, just to check if someone didn’t come home.’ ‘Extra-marital?’ someone else said. ‘Maybe a jealous husband?’ Sheldon nodded. ‘Maybe. That is one angle. It was cruel, and so revenge seems a motive.’ He looked at the photographs again. ‘The face was removed and wasn’t left in the hotel room. We need to find where it went, because someone took it away for a reason, and so we need to know why.’ ‘It could just be a random sick murder,’ Lowther said. ‘These things do happen. And does it matter why? It’s the who that’s important.’ Sheldon felt the smile grow on his face, although it felt tight and unnatural, and he knew it hadn’t reached his eyes. ‘Thank you for your wisdom, but if you get the why, you’ve got yourself a suspect list. And you’ve just got yourself the CCTV job.’ When Lowther looked confused, he added, ‘Go to the hotel and watch the camera footage. Account for everyone staying there. If someone comes in who you can’t put in a room, there’s your first suspect. Then go through the town cameras. Someone running, or a car going too fast.’ He looked around the rest of the room. ‘The rest of you. Divide yourself up into twos. It’s time to knock on doors. You know the routines. Get the paperwork in, look for the unusual, and let’s hope for a forensic hit.’ ‘How long have we got the job in Oulton?’ a voice said at the back. ‘FMIT are coming over.’ ‘I want to keep it with us,’ Sheldon said. ‘The people in this town know us and trust us. You know how it is around here, that they don’t like outsiders. If we let FMIT take over, people might clam up and we will lose that local contact.’ There were some murmurs of agreement, before everyone looked to the front, startled, as a uniformed officer burst into the room. He looked at the photographs, and then at Sheldon. ‘Yes?’ Sheldon said, irritated. ‘We’ve just had a call, sir, from the paper, the Lancashire Express,’ and he pointed to the photographs taped up at the front. ‘It’s about your case. They said they’ve got something you have to see.’ Chapter Four Charlie walked to his office, as usual. Even though there had been a burglary, getting there earlier would only make a bad start come sooner. The stroll shook off most of the booze from the night before, although he couldn’t get over the slump as quickly as he could a few years earlier. Managing a hangover was just about patience though, and so he knew he would be over the worst by lunchtime. His apartment was at the top of the town, just so that they could sell it by the views. It wasn’t a long walk; just past the entrance to a council estate, where the street signs were obscured by graffiti, and then along a row of terraced cottages whose views across barren hills had been stolen by the march of progress. As he walked past the Eagleton, the best greasy spoon in town, with large windows that were permanently steamed up, he heard someone ride alongside him on a bike, the tyres crunching on the small stones in the gutter. Charlie’s pupils were still sluggish, but he recognised him as Tony, one of his regulars. This was the part of the day when Tony made sense, before he stocked up on bargain vodka and watched the day dissolve into a blur of survival, every day just an attempt to get through to the next one. Sometimes he got into fights, just messy brawls most of the time, and that’s when he turned up at Charlie’s office. ‘Tony. How are you doing?’ ‘Have you seen up by the Grange?’ he said, pointing over his shoulder, towards the moors. ‘There’s police everywhere.’ ‘There’s been a murder,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s probably to do with that.’ ‘Who is it?’ Charlie shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘It must be someone important. I’ve never seen so many police.’ Charlie smiled. ‘We’re all important, Tony, even you.’ He was about to set off walking again when Tony said, ‘I’ve just had a summons, for threatening behaviour. I’m up next Thursday. I was on my way to your office.’ ‘You won’t get legal aid.’ Tony scowled. Charlie stopped walking and sighed. He knew the scowl. If Charlie wouldn’t do it for the goodwill, then someone else would. He remembered refusing to turn out for someone on a freebie, and the client killed someone two months later. The one who did the freebie got the murder. ‘Guilty plea?’ Charlie said. Tony nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll see you there, but if something else comes up, you’re on your own. I’m yours if I’m available.’ Tony smiled. ‘Thanks Charlie.’ Charlie didn’t say anything as Tony set off riding again. People like Tony kept the work flowing. Sometimes he got paid, and sometimes he didn’t, but Charlie had to look after him for those days when he did, because he had chosen criminal law, the budget end of the trade. He remembered the brochures for high-earning corporate firms that littered the career racks at his university, attracting those with polished accents. The only child from his family to go to university, Charlie guessed at his limitations and aimed low. At least he achieved his aim, and it didn’t seem like failure. As Tony rode away down the hill, Charlie noticed a group of people on the other side of the street. Six of them, all in black clothes, and Charlie thought they were looking straight at him. They were near the office, and even as Tony went past them, they didn’t change their focus. That made him pause. For every client he had to defend, it usually meant upsetting someone else, like a victim or a police officer. Charlie paused for a moment, made some pretence about checking his phone, but when he looked up again, the group were no longer there. Charlie frowned. Perhaps he had misread it. He shrugged and set off walking the last hundred yards to his office, above a kebab shop and accessed by a door squeezed between it and a tattoo parlour. Charlie had set up his own practice five years earlier, when the firm he trained with started to replace the lawyers with paralegals. He had known that he was next in line, and so he went on his own. The dream of building an empire soon soured, with long hours just to make the practice break even, with too much time spent on practice management, just to prove that he was fit to do legal aid work. He had been on the brink of walking away from it all, knowing that he wasn’t cut out for it and that a job behind a bar might make him happier, when Amelia had approached him and said that she wanted to buy in. Amelia Diaz. He had seen her a few times around court before then, and her appearance was hard to forget, with long dark hair and an olive-tanned cleavage that she flaunted at men to get what she wanted, and at women just to show that she had it. Her father was from Barcelona and had married an Englishwoman, except a northern upbringing had given her more brashness than Catalan swagger. Charlie hadn’t wanted a partner, but he was too desperate to turn her away, because it let him carry on being the only thing he knew he was good at – a Magistrates Court legal hack. As he climbed the stairs, he could hear the coffee machine bubbling. ‘Amelia?’ She popped her head around the door of her office and scowled. ‘Glad you could make it. Come in.’ Charlie rolled his eyes at Linda, who had been his receptionist and secretary and office manager since he started, a woman with the stature of a bowling ball, with hair cropped close to her head. He grabbed a coffee from the machine before going into Amelia’s room. There was someone else in reception, a skinny teenager, late teens, in a blue skirt and jacket. Mixed race, her teeth white as she smiled, bright against her caramel skin and the loose frizz of her hair. Charlie raised a hand in greeting and fought the urge to smooth down his hair. Then he caught his reflection in a picture frame, grey streaks and messy whiskers, and looked away. He was a generation too old, and he wore every year of it. Amelia’s office was minimalist, with a coat of white paint and a glass desk in one corner. The carpet had been taken away and the floorboards stripped and stained white to match the walls, the old curtains replaced with modern office blinds. A computer hummed on the corner of the desk. Except that it wasn’t in its usual tidy state. There were files strewn on the floor. ‘How did they get in?’ Charlie said. ‘They smashed the glass in the fire escape and climbed in through there.’ ‘What about the alarm?’ ‘It needs fixing, you know that.’ Charlie leant against the doorframe. ‘Did they take anything?’ ‘I don’t think so,’ Amelia said. ‘It was more like a search. The monitors are still here. Even the petty cash tin and the television.’ Charlie frowned. ‘That worries me more,’ he said. ‘If they wanted something from the files, one of our clients might be in danger, if it’s important enough for a break-in. Have you called the police?’ Amelia thought about that and then shook her head. ‘If they want something from the files, the police will want to know what we think it is, and I’m not breaching a client’s confidence.’ He knew she was right. He represented burglars. He couldn’t get too worked up about one of them coming to visit. ‘Leave it, Charlie, I’ll sort it out,’ she said. ‘These are your files for court,’ and she handed over two blue folders. ‘And what did you say you were doing?’ he said. She looked at him for a moment, as if she was about to tell him something, but then she sighed. ‘Sorting this out, and then some admin stuff; you know, like keeping the accounts up to date, and some bills. And I’ve got a private payer coming in to see me.’ He waved it away. ‘You can keep that one,’ he said. ‘They expect too much for their money.’ ‘You should learn to love them, because they pay three times more than legal aid, and they won’t go through your handbag when they’re alone in the room.’ Charlie didn’t need Amelia’s take on the business. He had been doing the job longer than she had, and all Amelia could offer was something that he knew already but just didn’t want to hear. He watched her as she sat at the desk. Charlie thought she seemed distracted, her scowls interrupted by the occasional faraway gaze. ‘You all right?’ he said. She looked up at him, and Charlie saw vulnerability. It didn’t surface often with Amelia. A couple of times after too much booze, and when they’d talked money. Or the lack of it. Amelia was business-like, brisk, and could even be fun, when the wine flowed and the music was right. But today her eyes seemed a little wider than usual, more searching. It was just for a moment though. She shook her head, and then smiled. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Who’s the girl in reception?’ ‘Donia. She wants some work experience, is about to go away to university. I thought you could show her round the court.’ Charlie rolled his eyes. Great. Now he had to babysit someone all day. This was Amelia’s idea of making business pay, getting students to work for nothing, all of them hopeful of some job opportunity that would never materialise. ‘She’s come a long way, from Leeds,’ Amelia whispered, her door open. ‘Even rented somewhere for the week. Be nice to her.’ He walked away and went to his own room. As he went past Donia, she looked up again, as if she expected him to stop, but he didn’t. There was no point in getting friendly. If she hoped for a training contract, she would be disappointed. As Charlie went into his room, he was surprised. It was untidy, but that’s how he had left it. He put his head back out of the door. ‘Why just your room?’ he shouted towards Amelia. ‘You can ask them if we ever find out who did it.’ Charlie shrugged and closed his door. He threw his files onto the desk, before he let his feet join them as he slumped into his chair, an old burgundy recliner with coffee stains on the arms. Charlie’s room was at the front of the building, because it came with a view of the street. It wasn’t much, just the curve of a cobbled street, but it gave him something to look at. It was the comfort to Amelia’s austere. The desk was old and scarred and faced the window, so that the sun had bleached out the varnish. There were some dirty coffee cups that had never made it back to the kitchen and a pile of files that needed work. Amelia hated the premises, but Charlie refused to move. So this was it, he thought, as he stared out of the window. The week was about to start. Just another grind through routine court cases. The week will end, and then it will be the same again. A lost weekend, and then Sunday spent wondering what he had said the night before. He watched an old woman walk up the hill, her back bent, as if she had spent most of her life walking up hills that were too steep to live on. That’s how it seemed in Oulton. Too steep, too cold, too isolated. The town didn’t grow or reinvent itself. It just crumbled a slow death, every closure bringing more boarded-up windows, and one more reason for people to head down into the valley and not come back. As he looked out, he saw something further along the street. There was the same group of young people he had seen outside the caf?, all around twenty years old, all in black, their hair long and dyed black to match, their faces pale. There were glints of metal in their faces. One of them had a guitar. He looked older than the rest, with wild dark hair and lighter clothes. Dirty denim rather than black. The others seemed to encircle him as they walked, and most seemed to be smiling. They must have seen Charlie staring, because they glanced up as they passed below his window. The older one nodded, and Charlie thought he saw him smile. Chapter Five John Abbott squinted as he opened his eyes. It wasn’t a bright day, he could tell that from the greyness on the other side of the glass, and there were no curtains or blinds at the window. It was later than the usual waking time, because they woke with nature, but the night before had been a late one. He waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, and then looked towards the window again. There were other people moving elsewhere in the house, but he wasn’t ready to get up. He felt Gemma stir against him, her skin warm, her arm across his chest. His thoughts went back to the night before and he grimaced. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. She’d been more excitable than normal and had chosen him again. He could have said no, that it wasn’t right, made up some excuse, but he didn’t. He gave in every time. It was the way she smiled at him, cute, coy, with large appealing eyes, and how she covered her mouth when she giggled. It was more than just her appeal though. He had needed the warmth and the closeness, although in the harsh light of morning he knew he shouldn’t have done it. Her leg moved across him and he pushed it away. The noises were getting louder in the house, and so he knew he had to get up. He moved her arm and slid out of bed, although that was a generous description for a mattress on the floor covered in blankets. Only a rug stopped his feet from hitting the cold wooden floor. He looked down. The covers had slipped from her. He shook his head. Gemma was too young, her shoulders thin and bony, her skin pale and mottled. Her face was too innocent for what had happened the night before, her nose small and dappled by freckles, wisps of mousy hair across her cheeks. He padded over to the window and looked out. He was naked, but it didn’t seem to matter whether anyone could see him outside. The view calmed him. They were on the top of a long slope, with mist in the deep valley below, just bracken and gorse for the most part, but clusters of trees broke up the hills and sheep dotted the slope on the other side. John liked the isolation, the countryside the same as it had been for hundreds of years, the chimneys and terraced streets in a different valley he couldn’t see. He looked down at the Seven Sisters, remnants of a stone circle in the field in front of the cottage, just seven stone fingers rising out of the ground in a grey crescent. They were in an old stone farmhouse, where everyone slept in cramped quarters, five to a room. The room he was in with Gemma was the exception, the party room, apart from Henry’s room, where he slept alone. The farmhouse owner slept in a room downstairs. John didn’t like to think of that, because he was neglected, too infirm to look after himself. There was a noise behind him. He turned round. Gemma was sitting up, smiling. He went as if to cover himself, but she laughed. ‘Too late to be embarrassed now,’ she said, her voice light and soft. ‘Nothing is wrong that is beautiful, you know that. Henry said that.’ ‘I know that, but, well,’ and he shrugged. She reached over to the side of the bed and rummaged in a bag. She pulled out a spliff and lit the paper twist at its tip. That warm, cloying smell of cannabis drifted towards him. She took a hard pull and held it in, before letting it out with a cough and a smile. The first one of the day was always the worst. She leaned forward to offer it to him. ‘You’re free, babe. Leave your hang-ups behind.’ He was reluctant, but she thrust it again and said, ‘Come on, it’s okay.’ John went to her to take it from her and rolled it between his fingers, watching as the glowing tip turned soot-grey. He took a small drag and then hacked out a cough when he took in the smoke. She laughed. ‘I thought you were getting used to it,’ she said, and then flopped back onto the bed. ‘How old are you?’ John asked, his eyes watering from his coughs. Gemma wagged a finger. ‘I’ve told you before, details spoil a good time.’ ‘It’s important though.’ ‘But why?’ ‘Because of what we did last night.’ ‘You’ve so much to learn,’ she said, shaking her head, smiling. ‘You’re not bound by the old rules anymore. Freedom. Remember that word, John. It’s the whole point of us. Don’t you listen to Henry? The law is just what society says we cannot do, but we are not part of that society anymore. We are our own selves, free people, living human beings.’ She turned over and propped herself on her elbows, her chin in her hands. ‘Didn’t you enjoy it?’ John looked at the naked stretch of her body. Her smooth back, her pert backside, and his mind went back to the night before. ‘Yes, I enjoyed it,’ he said, and a flush crept up his cheeks. She giggled. ‘I can tell,’ she said, looking at his groin. He took another drag on the spliff and then bent down to pass it back to her. She smiled as she took it, her features lost in a pall of sweet smoke, and there it was again, that disquiet that there was something too childlike about her. As Gemma took a hard pull, John asked, ‘Where did Henry go last night?’ There was a pause as she held the smoke in her lungs. She smiled as she let it out again, and then said, ‘Why?’ ‘Henry went out again, and he goes out a lot. I’m confused, that’s all. He wants me to give everything up for him, for the group, but does he give everything up for me?’ Gemma sat up, her face more serious now. ‘You know things are happening. He has to arrange things, and so he has to meet people.’ ‘But he could phone, or email or something.’ ‘Haven’t you noticed yet, that we have nothing like that? They can trace where you are and intercept what you are saying. He told you that. Didn’t you understand?’ ‘Of course I did. I just thought there must be a better way to organise things.’ Gemma frowned. ‘You ask a lot of questions.’ John paused before he answered. ‘Just curious, that’s all.’ Gemma looked at him, her head cocked, serious for a moment, and then she asked, ‘So how old are you? Thirty?’ ‘Twenty-five,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an old face, that’s all.’ ‘I like your face,’ she said, her voice softer. ‘Come here.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think we should. I can hear people moving around.’ ‘Henry told me to make you happy,’ she said, and then she giggled, her hand over her mouth. ‘I can see that you are happy.’ Gemma parted her legs. Her hips were bony and thin. John closed his eyes for a moment and tried not to think of how she had been. ‘Is Henry always going to approve everything?’ he said, and opened his eyes again. ‘How can we be free if we need Henry’s approval?’ ‘Are you questioning Henry?’ John shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t do that, you know that.’ ‘We have to fight for our freedom,’ Gemma said. ‘You do believe that, don’t you? We are building for something big that will make everyone take notice, and if you don’t believe that, well, there’s no point.’ John nodded, and took a deep breath. ‘I believe in us, you know that.’ ‘So come back to bed, because if Henry decides that this shouldn’t happen anymore, it will stop, and I don’t want that, because I want to please you. And you want to please Henry, don’t you?’ He nodded. ‘Yes, I want to please Henry.’ His voice sounded weak. John went to the bed again. Gemma’s arms went around his neck and he felt her body begin to press against his. He closed his eyes as his resolve weakened, as she guided him towards her. Chapter Six Sheldon’s heartbeat was drumming fast again as he skipped up the stone steps to the Lancashire Express offices. Tracey Peters was behind him, walking with a crime scene investigator. There was a uniformed officer in a fluorescent green jacket by the corner of the building, someone’s arm around her. Further along, on a low stone wall, there were people gathered in a huddle. The newspaper was produced from a large millstone building on the road that sloped down into the valley. It reported on the towns and villages along the Yorkshire border, with courtroom stories and council meetings, road crashes and summer fetes, its articles padded out by items pulled from the internet. Whenever they got a story that was big in Oulton, its base, the paper ran it for as long as people were still interested, and sometimes even beyond. As Sheldon got near to the large double wooden doors at the top of the steps, someone stepped in front of him. Sheldon recognised him as Jim Kelly, the newsdesk editor, a man in his fifties who smelled of cigarettes and dressed like a journalist clich?, from the grubby blazer to his crumpled cords. ‘Inspector Brown, I was hoping it would be you,’ Kelly said, sweeping his greasy flick of hair over his head. Sheldon stopped. He’d had press attention in the past, not much of it supportive, with the Express at the heart of it. ‘I hope this isn’t some kind of trick to get a quote,’ he said. Kelly smiled. ‘It’s better than that, follow me,’ and he headed into the building, Sheldon walking quickly to keep up. ‘Seeing as though you’re here, Inspector,’ Kelly said, over his shoulder, ‘have you got anything I can print?’ Sheldon didn’t answer. Kelly had never been kind to the police in his reporting, and so he wasn’t going to get any special favours. Kelly shrugged and just kept on walking. Sheldon thought he could see the trace of a smirk. There were no people left inside, just small clusters of desks and computer monitors, the walls lined with framed front pages. The chairs were pulled untidily away from desks, as if people had left quickly. Their footsteps echoed as they walked, the ceiling high and arched, the building an old Methodist chapel converted fifty years earlier. Kelly must have seen Sheldon looking at the empty office, because he said, ‘We thought they ought to wait outside until you’d finished.’ He pointed towards a desk at the end of the room, facing out so that it looked over all the others and towards the door. Kelly’s desk. There was a white cardboard box on it, like a cake box. ‘It was handed in at the front desk, in a plastic bag.’ ‘Who delivered it?’ ‘I don’t know. We don’t have someone at the front all the time. It was left on the desk, that’s all I know.’ Tracey went to the box first, but then let the investigator get in front so that he could take some photographs. Once he had finished, he stepped aside to let Tracey get a proper view. ‘There’s something written on it,’ she said. Sheldon looked at Kelly, who nodded and said, ‘The face of greed. Has a certain sort of message to it, don’t you think? A great headline.’ ‘Did you open the box?’ Sheldon said, his mouth dry, starting to guess what might be inside. ‘I didn’t know what was in there,’ Kelly said, defensively. The crime scene investigator passed Sheldon a paper mask and a bonnet to put over his hair. Sheldon snapped them on and then went over to the box, pulling on latex gloves, Tracey moving to one side. He took hold of the box by the corners. A trickle of sweat made his eye sting as he started to lift off the lid slowly. As the lid came off, revealing the contents, Sheldon had to take deep breaths in and out, to calm himself. He gagged but clenched his teeth and forced himself to stay in control. He glanced at Kelly over his paper mask, who said, ‘I spent the first ten years of my career taking photographs of road accidents. These things don’t bother me.’ Sheldon scowled and then closed his eyes to ready himself for what he would see when he looked in the box again. His forehead was moist. He counted to three and then opened his eyes. There was white tissue, but most of it was smeared dark red. In the middle, nestling in the paper, was a face, except that it looked more like a grotesque mask. The edges of the skin were smooth, as if it had been cut away with a very sharp knife, but Sheldon could make out the more ragged pieces of flesh and muscle stuck to the underside, where someone had reached into the cuts with their fingers and pulled the face away. But it wasn’t just the sight of the face that made Sheldon’s pulse quicken and a flash of sweat cover his cheeks. It was the feeling that he recognised the person, even though the face had no form, torn away from the bones that had once made the features unique. He thought back to the body tied to the bed. It had been hard to guess the age. There were tattoos that made him look younger, Maori swirls on the upper arms and onto the shoulders, but the body looked older, pale and flabby. The face in the box answered that question, the skin soft, a small dark goatee on his chin. Sheldon’s knees weakened. It couldn’t be him. Jim Kelly was saying something, but the words were indistinct mumbles. Memories rushed back at him. A dead woman, a large house, the floor wet with spilled booze, but there were no glasses lying around. The dishwasher was running but there was no one there. He had moved through the rooms, looking for an answer to the call that had come in, that a young woman was dead. Then he had found her, floating underwater in the swimming pool, almost at the bottom, naked. Jim Kelly’s voice became louder. Sheldon opened his eyes and apologised. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’ ‘Do I get a quote now?’ Kelly repeated. ‘Is it who I think it is? Billy Privett?’ Tracey said, ‘Shit,’ behind him, but Sheldon shook his head. ‘This does not make the paper yet.’ Kelly smiled. Sheldon guessed that he had already taken photographs, ready for syndication when the time was right, and he had the exclusive. Sheldon turned away and headed for the exit, not bothering to say goodbye, knowing that the day ahead had got a whole lot more complicated. Chapter Seven Charlie walked to the courthouse most days. It was when he got his day together, when he worked out how long each case would take, what he was going to say to his client, what excuses he would spin to the Magistrates. This time, he had Donia with him and his routine was disrupted. All he could hear were the click-click of her heels, like little jabs in his head shaking the last remnants of his hangover. ‘You don’t say much,’ Donia said, when they were almost at the court building. There was a slight tremor to her voice. He considered her for a moment. She was staring at him, expectantly. He stopped. At least it made the heels go quiet. ‘I have my routines,’ he said. ‘I’ve been doing this job too long to care too much, and so don’t expect me to gush about it. One of my habits is a quiet walk to court. I was just sticking with it.’ ‘Okay, I’m sorry,’ she said, and then he felt a stab of guilt when he saw a deep flush to her cheeks. ‘Do you think the police will catch whoever broke into your office?’ Her naivety made him smile. ‘We haven’t called the police,’ he said. ‘And they won’t care anyway, particularly when there’s been a murder in town. A defence lawyer has had his office burgled – I wouldn’t figure in their priorities much, and what if it’s one of my own clients? Siding with the police would not be good for business.’ ‘So you just ignore it?’ ‘No point in trying to change things,’ he said, and set off walking again. When he heard her heels fall into step with his, he asked, ‘What are you expecting from this week?’ She seemed to take a long time to think about that. ‘Just to learn more about the law,’ she said. ‘Why law? Have you got a university place?’ ‘At Manchester,’ Donia said. ‘I want to experience it first though.’ ‘And so you thought my little practice would give you a taste of what it’s all about,’ Charlie said, and then he laughed. ‘Think of it like this; whatever your legal career has in store for you, this week will be just like real life.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘No money and no fun.’ ‘Did you always think like that?’ He looked at her, and his mood darkened just for a moment. No, he hadn’t always thought like that, but things hadn’t turned out like he had hoped. Then Charlie saw something in her eyes. Resentment? He was being dismissive of her career before it had started, when he had made the same decision as her too many years earlier. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and then he smiled. ‘Try and enjoy your week. Maybe you’ll make a better job of your career than I have.’ Donia seemed pleased with that, although her joy lost some of its sheen when they arrived at the court and had to make their way through the pall of smoke that hung around the entrance, the nervous defendants taking a cigarette as they waited for their cases to be heard. Some of the more experienced nodded at Charlie, and someone shouted his name. He waved a greeting and tried to recall the client’s name, but he couldn’t. He was just another face from years of hopelessness. Society cast them aside, but this was Charlie’s kingdom, his role as champion of the oppressed and dispossessed. Or so the poster might say. The reality was different. He was where they were, at the bottom of his profession, except that amongst these people, he was still king. Charlie heard a whistle, a long, drawn out sound that told him someone had spotted Donia. He couldn’t help smiling when a skinny man in a tracksuit and missing teeth leered at her. The whistler’s best years were a long way behind him, and Charlie thought they had probably never been that good, but he didn’t seem to realise how many leagues below her he was. The court served all the towns in the valley, although it was always at the point of closure. The paint around the doors was peeling, and cracks were appearing in the plastered walls. Charlie remembered being distracted during a trial once as a mouse ran across the well of the court. The open doors were the only things that kept things bright, because once they creaked to a close, the inside was all gloom, brightened only by yellow strip lighting, so that everyone took on a jaundiced look. Charlie paused for a while and looked towards the activity outside the police station, the road filled with cars and police officers grouped outside. People watched what was going on, and from the buzz of conversation, he knew that the murder acted like a magnet for the whispers and the gossip. It looked like some were going to make a day of it, red eyes flicking between the bustle of people and the bottle of sherry being handed around. As he went in through the wooden doors, he had to step to one side to avoid a little girl running through the crowd giggling, her blonde hair in curls, all smiles as she sang to herself. ‘Cute,’ Donia said. ‘That’s the worst part, the children,’ Charlie replied. ‘They laugh and play like most kids, but their parents will mess it all up for them eventually. Drugs, booze, violence.’ ‘Booze,’ she said, and she smiled. ‘Bad stuff.’ ‘What?’ She blushed, embarrassed now. ‘What do you mean?’ he said. Donia pointed to his mouth. ‘The mints, well, they don’t work as well as you think.’ Charlie smiled at her bluntness. ‘It’s better than nothing,’ he said, and then popped another mint into his mouth. He pulled the first blue file out of his bag and shouted out the name. A tall man with a stoop came towards him. A shoplifter. No profession for a small town, where everyone knows you. Charlie pointed towards an interview room at one side of the waiting area, and as they all went inside, his client said, ‘I’m pleading not guilty.’ This was the part Charlie was most bored with, pretending like he cared. He’d heard mostly crap over the years. The innocents were pretty rare. ‘Go on then, Shaun, let’s play the game. If you go not guilty, the court will want to know what bullshit excuse you’ve got this time.’ ‘That’s your job, to come up with the defence.’ Charlie closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he saw that Shaun was still staring at him, waiting for an answer. ‘No, it isn’t,’ Charlie said. ‘You come up with the lies. I just repeat them and pretend I believe them.’ When Shaun scowled, Charlie added, ‘You’re just not very good at your job, as a shoplifter.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Shaun, every video I’ve watched of you shoplifting, you look around so much that even little old ladies know what you’re doing. Here’s a tip; if the cameras watch you from the minute you walk in, you’re going to get caught.’ ‘I didn’t think your job was telling me how to be a better crook.’ ‘Perhaps I’m just telling you to pick a different career, because you’re not good at the one you’ve chosen.’ ‘Or go to a different town?’ Charlie shook his head and laughed. ‘If you think that will help.’ Shaun shrugged and then said, ‘I saw you Friday night.’ ‘Oh yes?’ ‘In the Gloves. You were fucking wasted.’ That wasn’t news, but he didn’t want to hear it. ‘Let me go speak to the prosecutor,’ Charlie said, and left the room, Donia behind him. As they walked into the courtroom, the prosecutor was in his usual place, at the front desk, next to a large pile of files. Tall and greying, he was the slow and steady type, who had learned quicker than Charlie that calm and precise got further than bluster and adrenaline. He was flicking through his papers, just a refresher. Charlie knew that he’d already been through them once, but it beat staring at the wall, waiting for the court to start. ‘I’ve got Shaun Prescott,’ Charlie said, as he leaned over him. He turned round and looked surprised. ‘Amelia not here? Or is she getting ready for the cameras?’ ‘Cameras? You’ve lost me.’ ‘The murder,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard about it.’ ‘Between me and you, I was speaking to the court reporter before. He got a text from someone at the Express. The rumour is that the victim is Billy Privett.’ That was a surprise. ‘Billy Privett? You’re joking, right?’ ‘That’s what I was told,’ the prosecutor said. He glanced up at Donia, and then leaned into Charlie so that he could whisper. ‘Tied up and face sliced off, so I heard, with his features posted to the local paper. They’ve got themselves really excited, because the scoop will keep the paper afloat for another year.’ Then he smiled. ‘So a bad day for you, because the killer won’t be coming your way, even when they catch him. Conflict of interest.’ ‘I’ll worry about my ethics,’ Charlie said, even though his brain was still trying to take in what had been said. Billy Privett had been all over the press for the last year, public enemy number one, the lottery winner with no class versus the poor but noble dead girl’s father. Billy had played up to his image, knew that people were jealous of his money, and so he wanted to make sure everyone knew how much he had. Parties, cars, gold chains around his neck, diamonds in his teeth. The press loved him, even though they painted him as a hate figure, because someone to hate sells newspapers. He’d been heading for a life of crime before the big win. Charlie had represented him before he made it rich with those magic six numbers. Billy had collected his winner’s cheque with an electronic tag on his leg, and he’d had to race back to Oulton before the curfew kicked in. Once the money arrived, Amelia represented him, because she was more ruthless with her billing, and looked better than Charlie whenever she spoke to the press. But it was the girl that defined him. Alice Kenyon. Going places, from a good family, but ended up as the victim of a brutal sexual assault and found drowned in Billy’s pool at the end of another wild party. Alice’s father kept her name in the paper, campaigned for those who were at the party to speak out, but no one did. Alice’s father found out the downside to fame, that a small moment of stupidity makes the front pages. Caught with a young woman in a car, he went from sympathy figure to pervert, and so the public clamour for answers about Alice died down. Charlie was still thinking about Billy Privett when he realised that the prosecutor was still talking. ‘Amelia will get some publicity though, and so it all works out. Except for Billy, that is.’ Charlie nodded, just to get himself back into the conversation. ‘People like to go to a name they recognise.’ He lifted up his files. ‘And I could do with some better clientele.’ ‘Doesn’t Amelia bring it in? Some of the rough trade we get in here must like a touch of glamour.’ He looked down at Charlie’s clothes. ‘No offence, Charlie, but you’re breaking mirrors these days.’ ‘None taken,’ Charlie said, and the wrinkle of the prosecutor’s nose told him that Donia was right, that the mints weren’t working. ‘Amelia brings the work in that I can’t. Most of my punters don’t win, know that they have no chance against the system, and so they might as well look at someone nice before they lose.’ ‘And how do you find it? Distracting?’ ‘Not my type,’ he said, lying. He didn’t fall for Amelia’s tease, but he had looked at her body for too long and too often when she didn’t realise he was staring. Or maybe she did but didn’t mind. Someone told him once that women always notice men looking. That hadn’t stopped him looking. It just made him stop apologising. ‘Are you sure it’s Billy Privett?’ ‘No, but that’s just what I’ve heard.’ Charlie sighed. ‘Murder cases are hassle anyway. If you foul it up, your name is dragged through the Court of Appeal. I don’t want that. Let someone else have it.’ And then he stepped away, knowing that there was no need to spend time in the police station. He would be back at the office in an hour, with just Amelia’s disapproving glances to get him through the day. Chapter Eight John emerged from the bedroom and made his way downstairs to the kitchen. He had slept better for sharing a mattress with Gemma, rather than the bunks in the other rooms. The stairs descended into the hallway by the front door, with the living room in the middle of the house. The floor was still strewn with spilled ashtrays and empty vodka bottles from the night before. There was a large capital A in a circle spray-painted onto the wall, the universal symbol for anarchy, along with photographs from demonstrations and camps the group had been on just pinned around the room. In all of the photographs, there was the same image, a group dressed in black but made distinctive by the now infamous plain white masks they wore, their faces expressionless. He went through the living room and into the kitchen. There was a long wooden table alongside an old porcelain sink that was cracked and veined with age. He was surprised that there were so few people there. They cooked and ate as a group. Thirteen people lived at the house, including Henry, but there were only five others in the room, and Gemma just behind him. They were standing at the window, looking into a small courtyard. John looked to the table, scattered in crumbs, left over from an earlier sitting, with chipped white plates and glasses of water in front of them. There were loaves of bread piled up at one end, with blunt-looking knives next to them. Everyone turned towards him, and then Gemma. He blushed and then he looked to the end of the table. Henry’s seat. He wasn’t there. ‘What’s going on?’ John said. ‘There are people here,’ someone said. It was Dawn, a woman in her early twenties, dressed like the rest of the women in a long black skirt and T-shirt, with round glasses and eyes that flitted around the room nervously. ‘Who is it?’ ‘They’re from another group. They used to come and drink with us, but not anymore. They just speak to Arni or Henry and then go.’ John looked towards the window. Arni was outside, a large Danish man, with broad shoulders and muscled arms that bulged with veins. His hair was long and light, pulled into a ponytail, his goatee board twisted to a point, beads on the end. Large black rings made holes out of his earlobes and silver hoops cut through his eyebrows. Arni was speaking to someone in a white van, the window wound down, parked in a small courtyard with farm outbuildings on the other side, just low stone barns accessed by large sliding wooden doors. ‘So what are they doing here?’ ‘I don’t know, but they have been coming for a few weeks now.’ John watched as Arni lifted down a barrel from the back of the van and started to roll it towards one of the barns. He spoke to the other people in the van, and then the engine started again, spluttering and belching smoke. Arni turned to look at him, and so John stepped back quickly from the window. He looked round at everyone and smiled nervously. He sat down and was conscious of the silence. He looked at the plate of bread in front of him. It was dry and unappetising. Gemma sat opposite. As she reached forward for some bread, her T-shirt gaped open, too big for her, showing her bony cleavage. She smiled at him. The group was mostly made up of young people, teenagers, but they had a look of maturity that he didn’t see in many people of their age, as if they had found what they wanted from their lives and so had no reason to kick back against it anymore. The people left at the table were the quieter ones. There was Dawn, along with a couple in their forties, the Elams, Jennifer and Peter, ageing hippies whose communal living lifestyle had drawn them to Henry. Jennifer was the curious one, with wide, bird-like eyes and grey roots showing through the dry ponytail of jet-black hair. Peter was quiet, with a paunch and lost hair. It was to Dawn that John’s eyes were drawn. She seemed unhappy compared to the rest, and he couldn’t work it out. No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t unhappiness. It was reluctance. Always the last to join in with cooking or cleaning, and she said little when Henry was there. John felt something on his leg, and as he looked, he saw Gemma’s half-smile, her foot running slowly up his calf. Arni came back into the house. Gemma’s foot dropped and she looked downwards. Arni looked at John, his eyes narrowed. John pushed the bread away. He knew what that look was for. Sex was allowed, but they weren’t supposed to form bonds. ‘Where’s Henry?’ John said. ‘He’s gone out, with some of the others. There are things that have to be done.’ ‘What like?’ John said. The rest of the group looked at one another. It was Gemma who spoke. ‘Don’t question, you know that,’ she said, her tone light, but John spotted the hint that he had already said too much. There was a moan from a room along the hallway, on the other side of the living room. Everyone ignored it, except for Dawn, who shuffled uncomfortably. Another moan. John looked at Gemma, who shook her head, almost invisibly, but John caught the warning. Don’t go in there. The moans were from the farmer who owned the house. A man in his seventies, he spent his time bedridden, looked after by whoever could face going into his room, provided that Henry agreed. More moans, except that they were more pleading this time. Dawn went to the table quickly and grabbed some bread, filled a cup with water, and started walking towards the door. There was a crash. Plates banged. People jumped. Arni held out his stick, a gnarled cane made from polished oak, a brass gargoyle for a handle. ‘Don’t go in there,’ he shouted at her. Dawn stopped. People looked at Arni, and then back at Dawn. ‘He’s hungry, and thirsty,’ Dawn said, her voice trembling. Arni pointed the stick at a chair and shook his head. ‘Sit.’ Dawn looked back towards the doorway and then at the stick. She bowed her head and then sat down. As John looked, he saw that tears were running down Dawn’s cheeks. She pulled at some bread, but didn’t look like she was going to eat again. Arni put the stick under her chin, the cold metal of the gargoyle against her skin. ‘We need more food. Worry about the old man later. Understand?’ Dawn nodded slowly. Arni didn’t move the stick. ‘Take John with you.’ John was surprised. He had been with the group for three weeks now, and he hadn’t been allowed out of the compound. It had been that way ever since they had turned up at his house. His mind went back to that night, when it had seemed like just another talk. They had spoken to him a few times, but on that night they wanted him to go with them and leave everything behind. They had made him wear a blindfold at first, made from a torn-up hessian sack that scratched at his eyelids and made him itch. Except that he couldn’t scratch it, because his hands were tied behind him, sitting against the side of the van, his head up, trying to work out where everyone was as they prodded him, just for a bit of fun. There had been giggles all the way from the young women, and he had tried to laugh along with them, making out like it was a game, but had been worried that perhaps he had misread them. It had been stop and start as they made their way out of town, but then the curves and tight bends of the countryside had taken over, throwing him around the van, making everyone laugh louder. The jolts and bumps as they drove along a rutted farm track were the final part of the journey, and then he felt the rush of cool air as the van doors flew open. Gentle hands guided him out of the van, and then he was taken inside, pushed along a short corridor into what he now called home. The smell of cannabis had hit him straight away, sweet and strong, and he was put into a wooden chair. There were voices around him, whispers, giggles, murmurs of conversation, but all he had been able to see was the inside of the blindfold. The bindings around his wrists were loosened and then tied to the chair, so that he was exposed, vulnerable, unsure as to how many people were there. ‘John?’ It was Gemma, bringing him back to the present. ‘So are you coming with us?’ she said. He smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, I will.’ John stepped out from behind the table and went towards some hooks on the wall. When he found his jacket, a plain black zip-up, he waited by the door as Gemma and Dawn got up to follow him. Chapter Nine Sheldon’s hands gripped the wheel as he drove towards Billy Privett’s house. The tight streets of the town centre turned into winding lanes that headed towards the moors. Drystone walls lined the way ahead, although they were down to untidy piles of rock in places, so that the roads opened straight onto open moorland, bleak and wild, with sheep grazing up to the tarmac, the grey dots of stone farmhouses peppering the views. He had left Jim Kelly, the reporter, at the station, giving a statement about how Billy Privett’s face was delivered to him, although it was really to keep him out of the way. Sheldon turned into a narrow lane and felt his tyres slide on some mud thrown up by a tractor. The road bumped and dropped towards a small cluster of houses hidden deep in a valley. Except that one of the houses stood out from the rest. ‘Is that Billy’s house ahead?’ Tracey said. Sheldon nodded. ‘Yes,’ was all he said. His jaw clenched when he got a good view of it. The house was a large block of red brick that sprawled over two plots that had once been home to two bungalows. The house was double-fronted, with large pillars between them that supported a tiled porch, reached by the long stretch of the driveway. Billy Privett had bought the house when his lottery numbers came in, and since then he had put his own mark on it, with games rooms and a bar, although Sheldon didn’t see them as any kind of improvement. Tracey looked at the house as Sheldon pulled up at the kerb. ‘I was just thinking that he was a lucky bastard, but then I remembered that he is now in the mortuary,’ Tracey said. Sheldon climbed out of the car. ‘He still had more luck than he deserved,’ he said, and then set off for the gate, Tracey catching up with him. He pressed the intercom. No one answered for a while, and Tracey eyed up the fence, as if seeing whether she could scale it. Sheldon touched her on the arm. ‘Privett has dogs,’ he said. ‘And they’ll be hungry by now.’ Tracey rolled her eyes. ‘I should have guessed that.’ Sheldon jabbed at the button, more impatient this time. He was about to turn back to his car when a voice came through the speaker. ‘Hello?’ It was a woman’s voice, timid and quiet. ‘It’s the police,’ he said. ‘We need to come in.’ There was a pause, and then, ‘Billy isn’t here.’ ‘I know. That’s why we need to come in. Could you open the gates please.’ Another pause followed, and then there was a buzz as the gates began to creep open. They exchanged glances and then began the slow walk along the driveway, as the house loomed ahead of them. ‘Who was that, his sister?’ Tracey said. ‘He didn’t have one.’ ‘But what about his family?’ Tracey said. ‘Shouldn’t we be speaking to them first?’ Sheldon shook his head. ‘His mother died ten years ago. His father fell out with him when Billy wouldn’t spend the money on him. The family liaison officer is trying to find him. We’ll leave the hand-holding to her.’ The door opened before they got there and a woman appeared, no older than twenty, with her hair light and short, swept behind her ears. Her arms were folded across her chest, although her tight blue shorts and a cropped vest top took away any pretence at modesty. Her breasts jutted out, her nipples visible through the cloth. ‘I’m Christina,’ she said. ‘I’m Billy’s housekeeper.’ Sheldon guessed that it wasn’t her skills with a duster that got her the job. ‘Is there anyone else here?’ Sheldon asked. ‘No, just me,’ she said. ‘There was supposed to be a party last night, but when Billy didn’t come home, everyone went.’ ‘How long have you been working for Billy?’ She paused, as if she had to work it out, and then said, ‘Around a year now.’ Since just after Alice Kenyon died, Sheldon thought, although he was surprised he didn’t know this. He hadn’t seen her before, even though he had done surveillance on Billy Privett after Alice’s death. ‘I’m sorry,’ Sheldon said, his voice soft. ‘We need to come inside.’ Christina didn’t look much older than his own daughter, and he didn’t know what hardships had made her decide that cleaning up for Billy Privett was an improvement in her life. And he knew that she was about to become jobless. ‘Is it Billy? What’s he done? Is he okay?’ Sheldon looked at Tracey, and then sighed. ‘We do need to come in. Please.’ ‘No, tell me now,’ she said. Tears had appeared in her eyes. Sheldon wondered how much he could say. He was confident that it was Billy’s body in a mortuary drawer, but confirming that to some young housekeeper seemed a step too far. ‘We’re worried about Billy,’ Sheldon said. ‘How worried?’ Christina said. She gripped the edge of the door and glanced back into the house, as if she knew what she was about to lose. ‘I just want you to let us have a look around, and then come with us, to tell us where Billy went last night.’ Christina stepped aside, and Sheldon walked into the house. There was a grand entrance hallway, dominated by curving stairs that swept upwards, the carpet lush and deep red, a chandelier dropping down from the ceiling. Corridors went either way, with light streaming across from the open doorways. Christina sat on the stairs, her face filled with confusion. ‘So is Billy hurt, or worse?’ ‘We’re trying to establish that,’ Sheldon said, not wanting to get drawn into disclosing anything. ‘Did Billy say where he was going last night?’ Christina didn’t answer at first, but then she looked up and shook her head. ‘He said he had to go out, that’s all. We thought that maybe he was getting something for the party.’ ‘Drugs?’ Christina shrugged, non-committal. ‘But then he didn’t come home, and so everyone went home. Even the girls.’ ‘What girls?’ Christina snorted a laugh. ‘There are always girls. Money is better than good aftershave for drawing them in. They don’t like Billy, but they let him play because he buys them things.’ ‘Did any of them have boyfriends?’ Sheldon said. Christina nodded. ‘Some did. But the boyfriends didn’t mind, because Billy bought booze and took them on holidays. He even let them race his cars.’ ‘And what about you?’ Christina shook her head, her lip curled. ‘No, never. That’s why he doesn’t sack me, because he hasn’t got bored of me. He gets tired of the girls he fucks, because there are always more. Me, I’m like a target for him, but I’m better than that.’ Sheldon smiled. He liked Christina, because she had been playing Billy, although the investigation was growing with every question. Jealous boyfriends, young women who gave too much of themselves for a taste of the high life. Maybe drugs too. ‘We’re going to look round the house now,’ Sheldon said. ‘Just wait here.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because we need to search everywhere.’ He moved away, but then something occurred to him. ‘No, you can help us,’ he said, turning back to Christina. ‘Try and remember who was here last night. I want a list when we come back.’ Christina frowned and sat down on the stairs. ‘Is Billy hurt?’ she said. ‘Why can’t you tell me?’ ‘Just stay there,’ Sheldon said, and then he set off along one of the corridors. As he looked ahead, he felt the tingle of his nerves again, the tightness in his chest. He reached into his pocket for the diazepam, but stopped himself. He had to confront this. Sheldon turned to head for the room at the end. As he walked, his mind flashed back to one year earlier, when he had walked along the same hallway, the first detective at Billy’s house. It didn’t look much different. Memories flickered and imposed themselves on the scene. The large window looming at one end, the once-white carpet covered in dirty footprints and spilled wine stains. There was a bar on one side, with lager pumps on the granite surface and optics for spirits pinned to the wall. The television seemed to dominate the room, and there were beanbags strewn around. This was the party room. Just like last time, except that it had acquired more grime. And like last time, once the party ended, when Alice was found, everyone left. Sheldon closed his eyes for a moment as he saw the tell-tale blue shimmer on the wall. The door that led to the pool room. He opened his eyes and walked slowly towards it. The memories of a year earlier came faster this time. As he approached the door, the light from the pool shining through the glass, he saw his hand reaching for the handle as if he was looking through a haze, his clothes different, the sleeve of his jacket navy blue, not the grey suit he was wearing. He had gripped the chrome handle sharply, really just expecting another room, but instead he had seen Alice. She was in the water, close to the bottom, her arms out, flaccid, distorted as he looked down on her, her hair fanned out. She reminded him instantly of his own daughter. Her hair was the same colour, her build similar. His stomach rolled as he saw that it was someone just like Hannah. Except that Alice was naked. He opened the door again. The pool was still there. It ran the length of a brick extension, with large windows all around. There was a large tiled area at one end, with a jacuzzi. The pool was tiled in bright white, except for the six numbers that were set out large in dark blue on the bottom. Billy’s winning numbers, his life defined by six balls that rolled out of a machine one Saturday evening. It didn’t look quite as clean though. The jacuzzi was empty and there were some broken tiles along one side of the pool. The gentle shimmer of the water transfixed Sheldon as he thought once more about Alice. Alice Kenyon had been a nineteen-year-old economics student, part of a group of young women with high prospects, but like most young people, they wanted to enjoy themselves. Billy Privett’s parties had become the talk of the area, with private security paid to keep out the uninvited. The guests were Billy’s friends, plus any hangers-on that Billy picked up during the evening, along with any pretty young woman who wanted to have free booze and drugs. The rumours quickly became legends, with nude pool parties, orgies in the bedrooms, and drunken stock car races in the back garden. The police were called often in relation to noise; mainly from the cars he raced and crashed in the field he owned at the back. Sheldon once heard about a young female officer who went to the house because of a noise complaint, and when she walked into the pool room, she was the only person wearing clothes. It was only her pepper spray and baton that kept it that way. Then one night changed everything. Someone had called the police anonymously, said that something had gone wrong at the party. Sheldon went with a young cadet. The house had been insecure; the gate unlocked, the front door open, and when they’d crept through the house, it had been deserted. There had been a clean-up though. The dishwasher had been full of glasses, and if there had been DNA on them to establish who was there, it evaporated with the steam that rushed for the ceiling as Sheldon opened it to check. And in the pool, there had been Alice, her body just brushing the numbers etched into the tiles. Sheldon had dived in to pull her out, but his attempts to resuscitate had been futile. Alice was dead. It wasn’t the body that had fuelled his anger though. It was how the investigation floundered that had got to him. He had started to lose sleep, waking up in the middle of the night, sweating, clutching at his chest. He was dragged back to the present as Tracey appeared behind him. ‘It’s too warm in here,’ she said. Sheldon agreed and nodded, his forehead moist, his shirt stuck to his chest. ‘I think it’s supposed to make everyone get naked.’ He backed out of the pool room to make his way to the stairs, edging past Christina, who was still on the bottom step, her chin resting on her hand. Sheldon remembered which was Billy’s room. He glanced into some of the others on the way, and they were pretty much unchanged. Some were set out with soft chairs and large screens, while others were party rooms, with floor cushions and red cloth covering the window. Christina’s was different. It was tidy, with cosmetics and perfumes lined up in front of a mirror. Billy’s room was just the same as it was a year earlier. There was a large round bed in the middle of the room, with a mirror attached to the ceiling above it, the bed covered in red silk sheets. It was a clich? of luxury, more sleaze than style. The computer was on a desk next to the bed, and when he gave the mouse a nudge, the screen came to life. He sat down to start browsing as Tracey went through his drawers. He went to the emails first, but as he scrolled through, he saw nothing of interest. It was mainly racist jokes circulated amongst friends and confirmations of purchases. There was nothing to help in the documents folder either, just invoices that had once been received as attachments and a few manuals for the gadgets he had around the house. Sheldon was just about to go to the pictures folder when he heard Tracey whistle. As he turned round, she was holding a piece of paper. ‘It seems that Billy wasn’t all heart,’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’ Tracey showed him a piece of paper that was ragged along the edge, as if it had been torn out of a notebook, with a list of names with numbers alongside. ‘It looks like a dealer list.’ As Sheldon looked, what he saw was all too familiar, because a list of names and numbers usually meant one thing: a list of drug debts. ‘So Billy was charging for whatever people were taking on party nights,’ Sheldon said. ‘No longer the generous millionaire.’ Tracey nodded. ‘It looks that way. He might have put pressure on the wrong person.’ Sheldon sighed. ‘We’ll have so many lines of enquiries that we’ll need a road map soon.’ He turned back to the pictures folder. When he clicked on it, he saw that it was organised into party dates. He clicked on one, and it was what he expected. Men leering at the camera, drinks in their hand, some women giggling, and as Sheldon scrolled through, the women ended up naked. The men became more exuberant as the photographs progressed, the women more vacant, with the latter ones being the most graphic. It seemed that Billy was more interested in taking pictures than he was in taking part. Sheldon scrolled backwards, wondering if Billy had got blas? as the months wore on, that whatever he had removed from the computer a year earlier, when they were investigating Alice’s death, had made its way back onto it. It was just the same. There was no folder for the night of Alice’s death, or for the few weeks before then. It had made it hard to find out who had been going to Billy’s parties just before Alice died. A young woman had died, and all Billy could think of was to remove evidence. There was a noise behind him, a slight cough. When he looked round, he saw that Christina was watching him. She leant back against the doorjamb. ‘I’ve remembered some of the names.’ ‘Tell me at the station,’ Sheldon said, and as he walked towards her, she held out her wrists mockingly, as if she was about to be arrested. Sheldon ignored her and brushed straight past. He wasn’t in the mood for games, and there was something about Christina that troubled him, except that he couldn’t quite work out why. Chapter Ten Charlie’s hangover started to clear as he walked back to the office with Donia. He had been too harsh on her. She was just a kid, and he had been like her once, filled with eagerness about a legal career. It was the way his life had turned out that had killed the dream, which wasn’t her fault. And he could tell from the occasional grimace that she just wanted to sit down and take off her shoes. They looked brand new, and her heels were probably shredded. There was a time when work experience was just that, a taster. Now, the kids treated it like a job interview, and got themselves the clothes to match. ‘So why the law?’ he said, turning to her. She perked up, seemed surprised by the attention. ‘It looks interesting.’ ‘It can be, depending on what you do. Although that’s one of the problems, because it seems like the more you can earn, the more boring it gets. The worthy stuff is the best, and you get to keep your conscience, but you’ll be poorer than your clients. Get a nice suit and a bright smile and flaunt yourself around the big city money pits, and then maybe you’ll have a decent life.’ ‘I’m from Leeds. Will I have to move away?’ Charlie smiled. ‘No, Leeds is good. I went to university there.’ ‘I know.’ ‘Do you? How?’ Donia looked flustered. ‘I saw it on a profile somewhere. I researched you before I arrived.’ Charlie thought about that, and couldn’t remember when he had ever put his university in a profile, but he let it go. The internet can tell you anything now. ‘So why are you here?’ Charlie said. Donia seemed to think about that, but then said, ‘I need the work experience.’ ‘But you’re a long way from home.’ ‘The placements in Leeds were all taken up.’ Charlie shrugged. It was her summer, and all law students need work experience. The colleges keep taking the money, but there are no jobs anymore, not unless you know an uncle or aunt with a law firm. So they write to him, begging for some experience. And he lets them come, because it’s free labour. Sit them behind a barrister in the Crown Court or interview witnesses, and they can even make the firm money. ‘What have you made of it so far?’ he said. ‘What I expected, although can I say something?’ ‘Yeah, sure.’ ‘Well, I’ve been wondering how you would be, and I thought you would seem happier.’ When Charlie looked surprised, she added quickly, ‘I’m sorry, that’s rude of me, but this is going to be my career too, and so I want to know whether it will make me happy.’ Charlie smiled. Donia knew nothing of his past, or how he lived his life. She was looking at the superficial. She saw his name on a sign, the status as a lawyer. She didn’t see the panic about the bills being paid when the legal aid money arrived late, or the nerve-shredding fatigue of a night at the police station after a long day in court, with paperwork still to do. ‘Your career will be what you make it,’ he said. They were on the street that led to his office, past the charity shops, and the newsagent who had abuse yelled at him most weeks and had to replace his window a couple of times a year, the price of being the first Asian shopkeeper in the town. Charlie tried to make excuses for the ones who had done it when they were taken to court, but the newsagent was still friendly to him. As they got closer to the office, Charlie saw the group he had seen before, with the dyed black hair and black clothes. The older man was in the doorway of an empty bingo hall, the neon letters fixed to the wall now dark and dirty. The rest of the group were sitting on the pavement, listening to him talk. The older man seemed to watch Charlie as he went past, and so he and Donia slowed down as they got near, to listen to what they were saying. The older man stopped talking when he saw that Charlie was watching. ‘Don’t stop on my behalf,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m curious.’ The ones sitting on the floor looked at the standing man, who pulled his hair back before saying, ‘You ready to hear the story?’ His voice was low and slow. ‘What story is that?’ He smiled at Charlie, and everyone else smiled when he did so. ‘You’re not ready.’ ‘Try me. Or try this – why are you hanging around here?’ ‘You sound nervous. You’ve no need. You’re part of the law machine that ties everyone together.’ ‘So you know who I am?’ ‘Everyone knows who you are.’ ‘It feels like you are watching me,’ Charlie said. The man frowned. ‘Everyone gets watched. You’ve bought into it all, so the government knows everything about you. Where you shop, what you buy, what you think. Your legal system? It is built on lies. You know that though, that there is no search for truth, not ever.’ ‘So what do you offer?’ A pause. ‘Something new, a fresh beginning, where we can look after ourselves, make our own rules. A new morality, that’s what we are.’ Charlie rolled his eyes. ‘I thought maybe you were different.’ ‘From what?’ ‘Some hippy set thinking you can change society. We’ve been here before, but human nature ruins it every time.’ ‘Not this time.’ ‘Who says?’ The man looked at Donia, who smiled politely, and then turned back to Charlie. ‘Look at you, man. Dark suit. Tie. Shirt. You wear your hair long, but it’s a small protest, because you still follow the crowd. You’re scared. I can smell it, your fear. Of getting older, of your life. We have no fear. We are free.’ Charlie stepped closer. ‘Bullshit. You’ve been hanging around here all morning. We were burgled last night. Was that you?’ ‘There are no boundaries.’ ‘There are when I lock my office door. Do you want me to get the police?’ The man’s smile disappeared. ‘They mean nothing to me, because they don’t rule me. This society rules by consent. I’ve withdrawn mine, and so I’m not bound anymore.’ ‘I’m sure they will find a way to bind you somehow.’ The man shook his head, his eyes narrowing. ‘Not this man. I’m free. Not ruled by you or those like you. But look at you, Mister Lawyer. You are all about the rules.’ Charlie looked at him, and then down at the group again. ‘I’ll leave you to your way, and you leave me to mine. That’s real freedom, isn’t it?’ He turned away, Donia alongside him, questioning why he had bothered to get involved, and carried on towards the office. He heard the group laugh as they moved away. Charlie climbed the office stairs to the reception. Someone was coming out. Two men, both in trim dark suits, shirt and tie. He stepped to one side as they came towards him. They looked like money, but there was steel in their eyes. He knew that look. It was hardened criminality, not some professional caught on a speed camera. Amelia was picking up clients like that, whereas Charlie’s congregation was filled with drunks and petty thieves, or the Saturday night fighters. The real criminals made demands he didn’t have the interest to meet. He went to his own room first and dumped the files on his desk. Donia hovered near the door. ‘What now?’ she said. He looked down at his files. There were letters to dictate, to confirm the outcome of the court hearings, but they could wait. The clock was working its way round to lunchtime, and so a quiet half hour would do no harm. ‘A coffee would be good,’ he said, pointing towards the kitchen. Donia smiled, some disappointment in her eyes, but she went anyway. Charlie fell back into the old armchair in the corner of the room. As he put his head back, he let the stresses of the morning wash over him. Someone had been into the office during the night and made an untidy search. What had they wanted? And the news about Billy Privett. He didn’t open his eyes when heard the door to his office open. He knew it would be Amelia. ‘The glazier has been,’ Amelia said. ‘We need to get better security.’ ‘If we keep netting clients like that, a bit of broken glass won’t be a problem.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘The two men who just left. The big hitters. Dark suits. Bad attitude.’ Amelia faltered, and then said, ‘Just clients.’ ‘Empires are built on people like them,’ Charlie said. ‘I salute you, and let God make Oulton a less safe place.’ Amelia didn’t respond, but she stayed in the room. Charlie opened his eyes. ‘I’ve got some bad news on the murder as well,’ he said. ‘Murder?’ she said, and then, ‘Oh yes, that. What about it?’ ‘We won’t get the suspect, if he’s caught,’ Charlie said. ‘The rumours are that the corpse is Billy Privett.’ She nodded but didn’t respond. ‘You don’t sound surprised,’ he said. ‘Rumours travel quickly,’ she said, although she sounded distracted. ‘Are there any suspects?’ ‘I don’t know. I didn’t get further than the courtroom.’ She turned and walked out of the room. No pleasantries. He looked out of the window instead. The view was the same as always. Slate rooftops. Telephone wires. He got to his feet and strolled to the glass. The cobbles were worn and streaked with engine oil, the street curving downhill. Charlie looked past all of that and watched the drift of the clouds. He could ignore the files for a moment. Then something caught his attention. It was a white van further along the street, a logo on the side. It looked like it had just arrived, with two men behind it, one holding a camera. He groaned to himself. The police had become less keen on passing information to the press since all the phone hacking stories, but the reporter at court had said the rumours came from the local paper, and so they were bound to spread. He left his room, almost knocking the coffee cup out of Donia’s hand as she brought it to him. Charlie took it from her and went to Amelia’s room. She was standing at the rear window as he went in, looking out. She didn’t have the view that Charlie had, just the yard behind the kebab shop and a row of houses. She went to sit down at her desk. ‘So how do you feel about Billy Privett?’ he said. ‘Why should I feel anything?’ she said, although her tone was unconvincing. ‘Because there is some faint warmth to your blood, that he was a human being you came to know? Or maybe just because he can’t pay you any more money.’ ‘He was a client,’ she said. ‘And that’s always been your problem, that you see them as friends, all these wasters.’ ‘They are, a lot of them. I grew up in this town. I’m no better than them.’ ‘Save your working class guilt, Charlie, because none of them give a damn about you. They would drop you in it quicker than they’d have your wallet.’ ‘You’re all heart,’ he said. ‘You better get your sympathetic face ready though. You became Billy’s spokeswoman once he came into the money, and the press are outside.’ ‘What, now?’ Charlie nodded. ‘Come on, take a deep breath and think like a real life person. Use words like “regret” and “sorrow”. Good soundbites.’ She scowled. ‘You know I can’t say anything, not without Billy’s consent.’ ‘I don’t think he’ll complain too much,’ Charlie said. ‘Billy was good for you, although there is some irony in that someone involved in a high-profile death should end up dying prematurely.’ ‘What, like karma?’ Amelia said, and then shook her head. ‘There are things you don’t know. He died an innocent man, you need to remember that.’ ‘I’m a lawyer. You don’t need to feed me the line. Not being guilty is a long way from being innocent. A young woman died and he stayed quiet. He could have said something to help the police, even if he had no part in her death. His silence just made him look guilty.’ A look of irritation flashed across her face, but it was fleeting. ‘I’ll say it again,’ she said. ‘He died an innocent man.’ ‘If that is going to be his epitaph, they need to hear it,’ and Charlie pointed towards her doorway, meaning the people on the street. He started to walk back to his own room, and Amelia followed him. He could hear the sway of her hips in the way her heels made loud taps on the hardwood floor. The scent of perfume drifted towards him as she got close, soft musk, delicate and expensive. When they both got into Charlie’s room, he pointed to the van that had pulled over at the side of the road. There was someone on the pavement with a boom microphone in one hand, talking to a cameraman and looking around. Charlie raised an eyebrow at Amelia as the cameraman pointed up at the window. ‘Oh shit,’ she said, although it seemed like a whisper to herself, rather than any comment Charlie was meant to hear. Then he saw someone just further along the street, a face he recognised. Amelia hadn’t spotted him. ‘Got to go,’ he said to her, and as Amelia shot him a frosty look, he added, ‘Cheer up. You’ll look great on the news.’ Charlie went towards the door, leaving Amelia gazing out of the window, one hand just flicking at her hair. Chapter Eleven John stepped out of the door that led into a stone courtyard, Dawn next to him. They were going to find food, on Arni’s order. He hadn’t gone more than two paces before Gemma fell into step alongside him, heavy black boots on her feet. John looked down, and for a moment he wanted to put his arm around Gemma, to enjoy the walk in the countryside, but Dawn was with them. Instead he said, ‘How far is it?’ ‘A couple of miles.’ Gemma smiled. ‘How does it feel, to be leaving the farm?’ He thought about that for a moment. ‘Strange,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s all still out there, babe, just remember that,’ she said. ‘That’s why it’s been so long, to let you shake off your old life, but it’s still there somewhere, ready to suck you back.’ ‘I think I can fight it,’ he said. ‘I’ve listened to Henry. I understand his message now.’ ‘We’re creating our own world here, where none of all that crap matters. We’re free people, but it isn’t easy, because people are weak. That’s right, isn’t it, Dawn?’ Dawn looked like she was going to stay silent again, but then she looked at Gemma, then at John, and nodded. ‘We have to stay together, to avoid temptation.’ John watched Dawn look away. He leaned into Gemma. ‘Is Dawn weak?’ he whispered. ‘From time to time, we all are,’ she said, and then Gemma let go of him and skipped ahead, her long skirt swirling around her ankles, along the muddy path at the side of the house, past the outbuilding that housed two quad bikes and the barrel that Arni had brought in earlier. There was a small square enclosure against the wall, fashioned out of chicken wire, with wooden shelters at one end, housing the hens that provided them with eggs. The peace was broken by the hum of a generator that powered the lights in one of the barns, where they grew cannabis. As they emerged from the shadows they started to cross a field, the ground bumpy and pitted from tractor tracks and the root clumps of meadow grasses. In the middle were the Seven Sisters, the stone circle, although it was just a crescent really, some stones taller than others, with one slab in the middle. Dawn waited for John to catch up, Gemma running ahead. When he reached her, he said, ‘I didn’t know there was a stone circle near Oulton before I joined the group.’ Dawn looked at it, and then down again. John thought he saw a tear run down her cheek. ‘Dawn?’ She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and then tried out a watery smile. ‘It’s our legacy, so that it will be there long after we’re gone and people will know that we were here. And why.’ He was surprised. ‘I didn’t know it was a new thing, that we had put the rocks there.’ ‘You haven’t been here long enough. You’ll find out soon enough.’ John nodded to himself, curious, and then said, ‘You can trust me, Dawn.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I can’t.’ ‘Why not?’ Dawn looked towards Gemma, who was heading for a tumbledown part of the drystone wall and to a path that cut through the northerly woods opposite, which kept the coldest winds away from the house. ‘Things are not what they seem,’ she said. ‘You need to get out.’ ‘What do you mean?’ Dawn wiped her eyes and then said, ‘Tell me what you think of Henry.’ John thought about what to say. ‘He’s a strong leader, delivers a good message, and I believe it, like we all do.’ Dawn laughed, but it was bitter and hollow. ‘So we’ve no need to talk.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I thought we weren’t about leaders.’ ‘We always need leaders.’ ‘I thought we were about freedom,’ she said and then walked quickly ahead, to catch up with Gemma. John followed them, curious, wanting to find out more, but Dawn was with Gemma now, and he knew the moment had gone. He looked around as he walked, at the roll of the fields and clusters of trees that dotted the green hills. He stepped over the fallen down rocks by the wall and into the shadows of trees, where the soft swish of the grass was replaced by the echo and snap of the woodland path. Patches of bluebells glimmered in the shafts of sun and he caught the scratches of grey squirrels clambering up the bark. The path would take them lower down the hill, to the stream that trickled and gathered pace until it ran between the stone sides of the Oulton buildings. As he emerged back into the daylight, Dawn and Gemma were ahead, but apart from each other, Gemma turning as she walked, playful, young. Dawn looked down, her step leaden. ‘How far now?’ he shouted. ‘Not far,’ Gemma yelled back. ‘More of the men should do this. If it wasn’t for the women, you’d all starve.’ John laughed. ‘Hasn’t that always been the way?’ He turned to look back towards the house, and saw that it was hidden now. Two rabbits chased each other in the long grass on the other side of a low wall. The sun felt warm, the blush of early summer on his cheeks. It felt good, free and easy. John felt the same surge of happiness he had felt when he first arrived, the simple contentment of belonging. The path followed the line of a wall and then reached the top of a small rise, where the view changed. He looked ahead and saw Oulton. The buildings in the centre were tight together, the grey stone rising higher than the others around, with tall windows and ornate facades, boasts of Victorian wealth long since gone. A disused railway line ran away from the town and down the hill, towards the towns in the valley, now part of the commuter spill over from Manchester, driving up the house prices and sending the locals further north. The town fanned out like a flower, with the closed-in centre, and then the swirls and curves of the newer housing estates on the edges. The peace of the countryside was replaced by the sounds of lorries rumbling along the roads or straining up the steep hills. ‘There,’ Gemma said, and pointed. He looked and saw the corrugated metal roof and tarmac car park just below them, the first part of the town they reached. A supermarket. ‘We’re going shopping?’ John said, confused. Gemma giggled. ‘Not exactly.’ They followed a path that was long and steep, curving down the side of the hill until it ended by a high wooden fence made up of strong horizontal laths with gaps in between, perfect for footholds. Gemma turned to Dawn. ‘Have you got your bag ready?’ Dawn held up her rucksack. ‘Come on then,’ she said, and the two women scrambled over the fence, their long skirts riding high on their legs, Gemma’s bare, Dawn’s clad in torn black leggings. John peered through the fence to the rear of the supermarket and saw large open doors, through which he could see high shelves of stock. A forklift truck lay dormant just inside. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Are you going to steal?’ Gemma turned around. ‘It’s not stealing,’ she said. ‘We are not taking things from inside the shop. They throw too much food away, even though there’s nothing wrong with it.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s crazy. I mean, we grow food to feed ourselves, but then throw it away because the fruit looks less fresh or the bread too hard. So we are taking it back, so that it does what it is meant to do. Bread, milk, cheese, butter, and jars and tins. Coffee, tea, cereal. It is all fine to be eaten, and so we should take it, because it is the right thing to do. It has been thrown away and so they don’t want it anymore. How can it be wrong?’ ‘What does the shop say?’ ‘This shop?’ Gemma said, and pointed. ‘Nothing. There is a bigger one a few miles down the road, and they spray the food blue so that we can’t take it. Where is the morality in that, that it is better to throw it away than allow people to eat?’ Then she grinned. ‘We come at night sometimes, because the security man lets us look without any problems. We know how to make him happy.’ John felt a bite of jealousy, and his eyes must have given him away, because Gemma said, ‘We get fed, he gets satisfied. What’s the problem? Except that he isn’t working this week, he’s away with his wife, so we have to do it this way.’ ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ John said, looking towards the large open doors. ‘We’ll be fine. If we get caught, we’ll just smile and flirt, and no one really cares.’ John watched through the gaps in the fence as the two women scurried through the yard and clambered into a large blue skip. They were in there for just a couple of minutes, and then they scrambled back out again and ran across the yard. They threw their bags over the fence and clambered over to join him. Gemma showed John the contents of her rucksack, and seemed pleased when he nodded his approval. ‘We will eat well today,’ he said. Gemma set off walking back, Dawn more slowly again, quiet and still, and so John followed. The sun was on his face and his head was filled with bird whistles and the swish of the grass and Gemma’s giggles. And he felt it again. Happiness. It was the simplicity of it all. It was joyous, with no troubles, no worries, with just the scents of the fields and the pleasure of his companions to fill the day. Gemma turned round to him and blew him a kiss. When he returned it, he was smiling, couldn’t stop himself, his heart skipping like a teenager. He felt it at that moment. A certainty, a resolve that he had left his old life behind, and it felt good. Chapter Twelve Charlie walked quickly down the stairs from his office, popping a couple of mints into his mouth. He knew who he had seen outside and wanted to catch him up. The sight of the television people had reminded him of how big the Alice Kenyon story had become. Billy Privett had been everyone’s favourite hate figure even before Alice Kenyon died. He’d got his money too easily and flaunted it too much. Billy knew that it got his face in the paper and so he played up to it. Once Alice died, face down in Billy’s pool, a horrible end to just another party, the publicity became less fun. It became about the questions he wouldn’t answer. Who had given her the drugs? Who had brutalised her sexually? Who else was there? The good times for Billy waned after Alice died. No one knew if Billy had killed her, but everyone guessed that he had stopped the killer from being caught. The press highlighted every new thing he bought, every party he still held, as if he was mocking Alice’s death. Time passed though, and Alice would have been forgotten, except that her father, Ted, wouldn’t let that happen. He learned the lesson pretty quickly that the media can help if you harness it correctly. He became the victim’s champion, and campaigned about the right to silence, about drug laws being too relaxed, about an individual’s responsibility to help. Except that by putting himself in the public glare, he became a target for the media. When Ted was caught in a car with a girl who looked younger than Alice had been, a blurred photograph showing them in an embrace, the public view turned from sympathy to dislike. Ted was outside Charlie’s office, his hands thrust into his coat pockets, staring up at the office window. The camera crew wasn’t ready yet. The reporter was adjusting his tie and checking his hair in the van mirror, and the cameraman was looking at the floor, waiting. Ted Kenyon had once been a good source for a quote, but it didn’t look like he had been spotted. Or more importantly, Ted seemed keen on keeping away from the lenses. Charlie walked slowly towards him, looking for a sign that all wasn’t well. Ted knew that over the years Charlie had been Billy’s lawyer from time to time, and that Amelia had dealt with the fallout from his daughter’s death, but what was he doing outside his office? As Charlie got closer, Ted looked at him, a flicker to his eyelids showing that he had recognised him, and then he nodded a greeting. Charlie popped another mint into his mouth before saying, ‘How are you, Mr Kenyon?’ Ted stared at Charlie for a few moments. Ted wasn’t tall, but the broadness of his shoulders and the faded cuts and nicks on his hands showed off his years in the building trade. He had built up a successful business, and the money it had brought in had given his daughter the confidence to think that she could leave Oulton and make something of herself. Until one night back in her hometown had brought it all to an end, and Ted Kenyon realised that although sheer determination could bring him the good things in life, it didn’t do much to keep away the horrors. ‘I’m not sure,’ Ted said, his voice quiet. He was smartly dressed, although Charlie had never seen him any other way, in trousers with a sharp crease and a V-neck jumper, a shirt and tie just visible. He was not even fifty, but everyone who knew him said that Alice’s death had aged him. Whatever energy he’d had left, he had channelled into Billy Privett. What would he do now? ‘So you know that Billy Privett has been killed?’ Charlie said. He nodded. His jaw was clenched, and he was looking past Charlie, towards the office. ‘Is that why you’re down here, to give a quote?’ and Charlie pointed towards the television van. Ted paused for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No, not today.’ ‘I don’t want any trouble, Mr Kenyon. I’m sorry for your daughter, I always have been, but I was just doing my job whenever I helped him. So was Amelia.’ His look darkened for a moment. ‘She did more than that.’ Charlie was confused for a moment. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘People like you turn doing my job into an excuse, as if it makes everything all right,’ Ted said, his mouth set into a snarl. ‘It doesn’t though, does it?’ Charlie didn’t try and respond. He’d tried to justify his job to enough people in the past, but not many had agreed with him, that everyone deserves someone to speak up for them. Ted looked up towards the office window. Charlie followed his gaze, and saw Amelia there, speaking into a telephone. ‘So what do you think about Billy dying?’ Charlie said. ‘Nothing will bring Alice back,’ Ted said, after thinking about the question for a few seconds. ‘I thought of myself as a tough man. It’s the way I was brought up, that it’s a tough world, and so you’ve got to be tough with it. Alice being murdered made me realise that I wasn’t as strong as I thought, and so I went with my feelings more, instead of trying to hide them. Now?’ and he shook his head. ‘I don’t feel anything. No pity, no sympathy, no anger. I know that it sounds cruel, because Billy was also someone’s child, but that is how I feel.’ ‘People will understand,’ Charlie said. ‘Your daughter died.’ ‘No, they won’t,’ he snapped. ‘I know what people think of me now. It’s not about Alice anymore.’ Charlie didn’t answer that. Don’t get frisky with girls barely out of their teens, was his thought, but he didn’t voice it. ‘Why have you come here, Mr Kenyon?’ Charlie said, and when Ted looked confused for a moment, he added, ‘Amelia’s office. Of all the places to come, you’ve chosen here.’ Ted paused, and then he said, ‘I was passing, that’s all.’ As he said that, Charlie saw a flash of Ted’s ordinariness for a moment. That was why his message had once been so powerful, because he was an ordinary man with a heartbreaking message. He was hard working, had provided for his daughter, an outgoing bubbly teenager. No one had a bad word for her. She was popular, the boys liked her, good at sport, did well at school. She was everyone’s favourite daughter. Then she was found face down in Billy Privett’s pool, and Ted Kenyon was the voice for every victim who felt like they got lost in the system. But for all of the media skills he had been forced to learn, he looked lost, as if he didn’t know what to do now that the source of all his hatred had gone. Charlie didn’t know why he did it, but he held out his hand. ‘I know you’ll think it’s hollow, but now that Billy has gone, I can say what I always wanted to say, that I’m sorry about your daughter, and I hope one day you get all the answers.’ Ted looked down at the outstretched hand, and then shook his head. ‘Not today,’ he said. ‘So what now?’ Charlie said, pulling his hand away, embarrassed. ‘We don’t want any trouble here.’ Ted looked up at the office again, and said, ‘I’m going home to what’s left of my family,’ and then he walked away, his head down. As Charlie watched him go, he saw the two men in suits who had been to see Amelia moments before. They were watching him and quietly talking to each other. As Sheldon got closer to the police station, he saw that journalists were already gathering outside. Billy’s housekeeper, Christina, leaned forward from her seat in the back to look at the reporters. She had agreed to provide a statement about what Billy had told her he was doing. ‘Billy’s dead, isn’t he?’ she said. Tracey exchanged glances with Sheldon, who gave a small shrug. ‘Yes, we think he is,’ Tracey said, her voice soft. ‘I’m sorry.’ Christina stared out of the window for a few seconds, and then said, ‘They soon found out, the reporters. Are the police still selling secrets?’ Sheldon drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he thought of it. He remembered the press outcry about Alice Kenyon. They had turned on Billy Privett at first, and hounded him for not telling anyone what had happened, but he had been a caricature before Alice, the lottery winner with no class. Once they got bored of Billy’s infamy, they turned on the police for not finding the answers. ‘We don’t sell secrets,’ Sheldon said, although he knew that he didn’t sound convincing. There had always been coppers ready to pass on information for the right price. ‘Or you just got better at hiding it,’ Christina said. Sheldon’s car rumbled up the cobbled slope that led to the station, and some of the reporters turned towards his car and took an interest. ‘You need to get into the middle of the seat, put your head down, unless you want to be all over the press,’ Sheldon said to Christina. Christina flicked at her hair and smiled out of the window instead. He pulled into a space in the far corner of the car park, into what used to be an enclosed yard where prisoners were allowed to take cigarette breaks. It meant he could enter through the door at the other end of the corridor though, away from the public entrance. As they walked from the car, Christina in front, Sheldon detected a sway to her hips that was not there when they had been at Billy’s house. He glanced upwards, to the white-framed windows that ran the length of the station, and he realised that she was playing to whatever audience there might be. Tracey raised her eyebrows at him. Sheldon took the lead as they went inside, through two sets of doors and into the long corridor that led to the front entrance, the Incident Room further along. Some male officers passed them as Sheldon walked to an interview room, Christina alongside him, and he noticed the second glances that went her way. As he looked at Christina, he saw that she was smiling still, enjoying her moment as the centre of attention. She knew the secrets of the man found dead in the town the night before, and the look on her face told Sheldon that she would relish telling the story. Duncan Lowther came towards him along the corridor, bursting out of the Incident Room. He did the second glance at Christina, the look to her breasts that he presumed she wouldn’t spot, and then gave a tilt to his head that told Sheldon that he needed a quiet word. Sheldon turned to Christina and smiled an excuse me, before going to the wall on the opposite side of the corridor. Lowther kept his eye on Christina for a while longer and then leaned in. ‘The buzz about it being Billy Privett has reached headquarters,’ Lowther said. ‘What do headquarters say?’ ‘They want to send FMIT over today.’ Sheldon closed his eyes for a moment. The Force Major Incident Team had taken over the Alice Kenyon investigation. Some people had said that he’d become too involved in the case, but he shouldn’t have been punished for it. He could have caught her killer, if he had just been given more time. They hadn’t caught the killer either, but that didn’t seem to matter. It had been Sheldon who’d had the case taken away from him. ‘I thought they were too busy?’ Sheldon said, after a few seconds. Sweat popped onto his lip. ‘They are, but it looks like they have spotted the press exposure on this one and want the limelight.’ Sheldon raised an eyebrow. He knew how it went, that FMIT would take over all the murder investigations in Lancashire if it was possible, but they had limited resources, like every department. So they picked the bigger cases, the ones that were the most complex, or attracted the most attention. When the Alice Kenyon case had first started, it was just a student found drowned in a pool, and at the wrong end of the county. Oulton was left to fend for itself in most things, and the local chiefs liked it that way, but sometimes things got a little too big, and in Alice’s case, the press clamour made them ask for more help. The big city boys had been glad to help out. ‘I can do this,’ Sheldon said, although he surprised himself that he had voiced his thoughts. Lowther nodded, uncertain. ‘It’s not always up to us, sir.’ A door opened further along, and Chief Inspector Dixon appeared in the corridor. She was once the rising star of the force, but she was pushed out to Oulton and her career stalled as she got used to the quieter life. Perhaps that had been the intention of the top brass. She was going outside for a cigarette, the lighter and the gold of the packet visible in her hand, but then she faltered when she saw Christina. Sheldon glanced across to Christina, whose smile had turned into a smirk. The Chief stopped in the corridor for a few seconds, her eyes towards the floor, and then she turned away and went back into her office, the door clicking closed behind her. ‘And I got a message from the reporter, Jim Kelly,’ Lowther said. ‘He’s gone back to work, but he said that he’s going to write his story about,’ and then he paused as he noticed Christina listening. He leaned forward and whispered, ‘About what was delivered to his office this morning.’ Sheldon closed his eyes. It was the same old problem, that there wasn’t much they can do to stop press reporting until they had a suspect charged and before the court. They got agreements sometimes to hold things back, but Sheldon guessed that Jim Kelly wanted to squeeze every bit of publicity out of the case. Sheldon’s fingers trembled and so he clenched his fist to stop it. ‘Sir?’ It was Lowther. Sheldon opened his eyes. A bead of sweat trickled down his nose. ‘I’ll speak to Kelly,’ he said, and then took Christina into a side room. Chapter Thirteen As they crossed the field in front of the cottage, their bags bulging with food, Arni was waiting nonchalantly in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb. John knew it was an act. Arni’s jaw was clenched and the veins in his arms showed his tension. Arni stepped forward as they got closer and held out his arms. Gemma and Dawn passed over their rucksacks, and Arni’s lips were pursed as he looked through them. Dawn was trembling next to John, and so he turned to nod and smile, but she didn’t respond. Arni pointed at John and then towards the van. ‘It needs cleaning out,’ he said. ‘And there is some mesh near the barn. Cover the cottage windows with it. We need to be ready.’ ‘What for?’ John said. Arni glowered. ‘You’ll find out soon enough. Until then, you don’t need to know.’ And then he went back into the house. Once Arni was out of earshot, Gemma said, ‘I’ll help you with the van.’ John smiled. ‘Thank you.’ He knew the rhythm of the group now. Arni was the enforcer, Henry the inspiration. ‘I’ll sort out the mesh.’ He went to the side of the house to find what he needed as Gemma went to get a bucket. He approached one of the farm outbuildings where he had seen the wire mesh rolled up earlier, leaning against a wall. John picked up the roll but then stopped to peer into the shadows of the outbuilding. There was a large sliding door that ran on rusty rollers, and it had been left ajar. As he looked, he saw a metal barrel, just like the one Arni had unloaded earlier. John looked around to check that no one was watching, and then stepped inside. It was cold and dark and smelled of oil and old machinery. His shoes scraped on grit, and so he walked slowly, anxious not to betray his presence. John looked at the barrel. There was nothing written on the outside, but as he got closer he saw that it wasn’t welded shut but had a lid. He looked around to check that he was still alone, and then he lifted it slowly and peered inside. It contained white crystals, the barrel half full. He heard voices, and so he dropped the lid and went back outside. It was the Elams collecting eggs. Jennifer looked up and waved. He waved back, and then went to pick up the mesh. Gemma appeared behind him, dragging a hosepipe to the van. He smiled at her as she filled the bucket with water and then clambered into the back. Dawn was sitting down outside, watching them, absent-mindedly throwing stones like a bored child. John thought about the barrel as he watched Gemma spray at the floor of the van, her boots loud in the confined space as they scraped on the dirt and the grit. Water started to stream out, like dark rust, staining the courtyard. Gemma had been there on the first night, when he’d been brought blindfolded to the farmhouse. Someone had sat him in a chair and then tied his hands to the back. John remembered his nerves, his breaths fast, his tongue flicking over his lips to remove the sweat, the creaks of his chair audible above the sounds of people around him. He had seen the light come on, bright even through the blindfold, so that he had moved his head around, more nervous as he tried to work out what was going on. There had been hands on him. Soft hands, feminine hands, running up his chest, his legs, his groin, touching him. People were laughing, young women giggling. It was a tease, a joke, but the powerlessness turned him on. Then fingers had tugged at the small knots at the back of his head and the blindfold was loosened. The glare from the light had been bright, and so he squinted and turned away. As the room had come slowly into view, all he could see were smiling faces. It had been carefree, but mixed with the flush of arousal, the glint of excitement that something new was happening. He thought then that there didn’t seem to be many men, that it had been mainly young women, some little more than late teens. His eyes had moved frantically from one to the other, checking for hostility, or hatred or danger, some sign that he had read everything wrong, but there were none. They wore the same look of contentment they had worn when they had visited him at his own house. Then he had seen him for the first time. Henry. John heard him before he saw him. There was a rustle behind the lamp, the crossing of legs, a cough. Then Henry commanded everyone to sit down, his voice quiet, but it had held everyone’s attention, because they all did just that, sitting cross-legged on the floor. John had known that Henry was their leader, because everyone else had talked about him so much, but that was the moment when John knew exactly how much Henry led, and how much they followed. Henry had leaned forward into the beam from the lamp, so that it cast a halo around his hair. It was wild, long and unkempt, and dark strands against the brightness of the light made it fan out. ‘I’m Henry,’ he said. John had looked down at first and licked his lips, like a nervous twitch. When he looked up again, his voice was strong. ‘I’ve heard of you.’ There had been silence at first, everyone waiting on Henry’s response, but then his laugh started as a low rumble, a deep chuckle, and everyone else joined in, laughing at John’s innocence, his impudence. Everyone remembered the first time they met Henry, John knew that now. Henry had leaned into him, and John got a scent of sweat and oil and dirty hair. Henry was unwashed, grubby, with dirt around the collar of his denim shirt, but John knew that he shouldn’t turn away from it. That was the first time John saw Henry’s eyes. Everyone talked about Henry’s eyes. They were bright, excited, piercing, but searching and compassionate. They could be everything to everybody, and back then his eyes looked joyful, wide, to match the grin that gleamed through the dark shadow of his beard. ‘There’s no going back, John, you know that,’ Henry had said, but it hadn’t come out like a threat. It was more a statement of fact. Henry had clicked his fingers, and then he had seen her. Gemma. She had been the one he had been drawn to when they had visited his house. There had been a connection with her, and she had felt it too, he was sure, but it had been impossible to speak to her on her own, because she was never alone. He remembered the flutters of excitement when he saw her, her body young and lithe. John’s focus had been entirely on Gemma as she went to her knees in front of him, flutters of excitement in his chest as her hands ran along his legs. Her eyes never left his, a half smile on her face, flirting. As her hand went slowly between his thighs, just brushing him over the cloth of his trousers, it had seemed unreal, almost hazy, because he knew that people were watching, but in that moment it was just Gemma, the soft movement of her fingers on him. He had tried to fight his arousal, but his hands were still tied, and so all he could do was go with the sensations. Then it was just a blur of images, of sounds. The pop of his trouser button, the cloth sliding down his legs, Gemma warm on him, soft moans, flashes of bodies in the candlelight, other people naked, all the time Henry’s quiet laughter in the background. He had felt the rope slip from his wrists and Gemma led him to the bedroom. Once in there, he had let Gemma take charge. John took a deep breath. That had been just three weeks earlier. He had relived that memory on those nights when Gemma wasn’t there, and he had waited for it to happen again. And it had, whenever Henry allowed it. ‘You’re daydreaming again.’ ‘Uh-huh?’ John said, and then he realised that Gemma was talking to him. He laughed and splashed some water towards her. She giggled and squeezed on the hose, sending a jet of water towards the stains on the floor from whatever had been in the van, before flicking it upwards, laughing with him, sending an arc of water towards him. John threw some more water at her, dunking his cloth and splashing her, her pink skin visible through the wet cloth. Gemma jumped down from the van and put her hand on her hips, as she mocked up a stern look. John flicked some more water towards her, making her shriek out, laughing. She must have heard the voices first, because her laughter disappeared, and as she turned around, John followed her gaze, and then he heard them too, excited laughter and shouts. There were other people in the house. They must have arrived when they were at the shop. There were people coming out of the house, shaking hands with Arni and walking towards two old cars parked further along the farm track. John hadn’t noticed them before. John counted nine of them, and they looked like the type of people in the photographs that adorned the walls. Mohican haircuts, long scruffy jumpers, hobnailed boots. White boys in dreadlocks and small wispy beards. ‘What’s going on?’ John said. ‘Probably a planning meeting,’ Gemma said. ‘What for?’ Gemma looked at him and blushed. She glanced over at Arni and then shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because not everyone knows,’ she said, and then smiled. ‘It’s going to be a big surprise when it happens though.’ John looked back towards the group. As they got nearer to their cars, Arni turned towards him. John waved. Arni stared back, and even though he was a distance away, the coldness of his eyes made John lower his hand and turn away. Chapter Fourteen Sheldon cricked his neck as he got closer to the Incident Room. He had left Christina, Billy’s housekeeper, with Tracey. A woman-to-woman talk might elicit more information. He had spoken to Jim Kelly to try and get him to delay the story, but Kelly hadn’t been interested. He had a failing paper to keep in business, and so the sensitivities around Billy Privett’s death didn’t matter to him. Billy Privett’s story was inextricably mixed up with Alice Kenyon’s, and her murder hung around the local police like a stain on the uniform. Now that Billy was dead, all the mystery surrounding Alice Kenyon’s murder would burst to the fore again, and with Jim Kelly ready to write his story for the paper, he expected it to be on the front page. For Sheldon, though, it had never gone away. He saw Alice’s dead body when he least expected it, during his quieter moments and when he thought he was a long way from his job. Reading the newspaper, sitting in the park. And it wasn’t just Alice. He remembered all of them. Young women murdered by random strangers. Men punched and stamped to death outside nightclubs, just because they looked at someone the wrong way. Victims of domestic abuse who endured years of beatings until finally he went too far, and all those lost chances to get away came to nothing. Or old men battered in their homes for the contents of their dead wives’ jewellery boxes. Lives ended by violence, all leaving extra victims. The grieving mothers, and husbands and wives, or children who grow up never knowing their mother or father. The injustices stayed with Sheldon, and his memories seemed like a film on fast forward, speeding glimpses of limp flesh or blood-soaked clothing, except that with every year, with every new case, the film just got faster, so that he couldn’t make out the faces anymore. It was just a stream of images, like a flicker book. Pink. Brown. Fat. Thin. But at the end of all of it was Alice Kenyon. He looked up and realised that he had stopped walking. He was standing in the corridor, his fists clenched so hard that his fingernails dug into his palms, making small crescent cuts in the skin. He scrambled in his pocket for his pills, his blue saviours. He popped one into his mouth and swallowed. It seemed to catch in his throat, but he kept on gulping to force it down. Tugging at his cuffs, he told himself that he was ready to do this, and then walked into the Incident Room. People watched him as he went in. The corpse had been confirmed as Billy Privett by fingerprints, and the mood seemed different to earlier in the day, as if everyone had felt the spotlight turn on them, making them more earnest. Duncan Lowther was at the other end of the room. ‘CCTV?’ Sheldon shouted. Lowther looked up and then pointed towards his computer monitor. ‘I’m going through the footage now. I’ve got it on here, if you want to see it.’ Sheldon nodded that he did and went to stand behind Lowther’s shoulder, other detectives crowding round. ‘The hotel only records the lobby,’ Lowther said. ‘It gets used a lot for conferences, and not many people will want to stay in a hotel that might film them room hopping.’ He moved the footage back quickly, so that the woman behind the reception desk seemed to vibrate. ‘This is Billy checking in,’ and he let it play at normal speed. Sheldon watched as Billy moved into shot. He looked like he was trying to hide his appearance. He was wearing a baseball cap low onto his brow and sunglasses, so that he just drew attention to himself in the opulent surroundings of the lobby. ‘Why were you there, Billy?’ Sheldon said to the screen. ‘It’s more about why he was keeping it such a secret,’ Lowther said. ‘What about later on, nearer the time when he was murdered? Is there anyone unusual coming into the hotel?’ ‘I haven’t gone through all of it. I’ve got a list of every guest and their checking-in time, and so I’m looking at that to get a description. Every time someone appears on the screen, I work out who it is, and note down what they are doing. By the time I’ve finished, I should have accounted for every guest and worked out if there is anyone in the hotel who isn’t a paying guest.’ ‘And once you’ve done that?’ ‘I check out each one, and look for someone giving false details.’ Lowther smiled. ‘That’s the fun part, because I can bet that we’ll drag at least a couple of people in who gave false addresses to keep their stay secret. You can’t beat the twitch of a cheating spouse to brighten your afternoon.’ When Sheldon scowled a rebuke, Lowther added, ‘We’ve been getting plenty of calls from the press.’ ‘Speak to the Press Officer and make it official then,’ Sheldon said. ‘Have we had any fresh information about Billy since the news broke?’ ‘Just a few calls about his lifestyle, but nothing we didn’t know. We’ve had a few putting Ted Kenyon’s name forward.’ ‘That’s where I’m going next,’ Sheldon said. ‘You’ve got to go somewhere else first,’ Lowther said. When Sheldon raised his eyebrows, he added, ‘The Chief has been looking for you.’ ‘What, Dixon? How long ago?’ ‘A few minutes. She said to go down when you were free.’ Sheldon let out a breath and stepped out of the Incident Room. He looked along the corridor, towards the Chief Inspector’s office. It was darker down there, furthest from the entrance. He took a deep breath and set off walking. He guessed what this was about, but that just made the walk seem longer. As he got to the door, a nameplate facing him, he knocked lightly. He waited until he heard ‘yes’, and then he walked in. The atmosphere changed immediately, from the hubbub of the station to the refined calm of a gentlemen’s club, except that the room’s occupant was a woman. He had last seen her in the corridor before, when he had brought Christina in. Her head was down, looking at some papers, her hair cut short and streaked by grey. There were paintings of hills on the walls and a wine-coloured leather chair dominated one corner, high-backed, as if it was just short of a cigar and whisky glass. Framed family pictures were on a cabinet, although Sheldon kept his focus on her as he stood in front of the desk, his hands clasped in front of him, and waited for Dixon to notice he was there. When she did look up, Sheldon said, ‘You wanted to see me, ma’am.’ Chief Inspector Dixon pointed to the chair in front of the desk. ‘Sit down, Sheldon, please.’ Her voice sounded tired, and as he got a better look at her, he saw dark rings under her eyes and broken veins just starting to flush across her cheeks. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/neil-white/beyond-evil/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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