Cold Kill (31 page)

‘No, no, nothing to do with that,’ he said, and then he grinned. ‘It
is
good to see you though.’

She moved forward and kissed him softly on the lips. ‘You can have the rest later,’ she whispered. ‘For now, just tell me what you’re doing here.’

‘The emails,’ Jack said. ‘I’ve had some more.’

Laura’s eyes widened, alert now. ‘When, last night?’

He nodded. ‘You remember David Hoyle?’

She thought for a moment and then said, ‘Smart-arse defence lawyer. Nice suits, bad attitude.’

Jack nodded. ‘That’s him. I saw him last night, rushing out of Don’s house. He looked frightened, and when I got home, I received this,’ and Jack held out the print-out of the
Hoyly Moyly
email to Laura. As she read it, her eyes widening, Jack continued, ‘There was an intruder in his house, while his girlfriend was home alone. She’s the
Angel
in the poem.’

Laura looked at Jack, surprised.

‘There’s something else you ought to know too,’ Jack said.

‘Go on.’

‘The bodies weren’t left in random places. Don and Mike were supposed to find their daughters. It was revenge. I went to both murder scenes. Jane was found on a path that takes you right to Don’s house, a path that people use to walk their dogs. Don has a dog.’

‘And Deborah?’

‘Mike Corley is a fisherman. I saw his gear when I was at his house. I bet he uses that reservoir.’

‘He never mentioned that,’ Laura said.

‘Perhaps it wasn’t a big deal when it was just Deborah, but when Jane was murdered, a pattern emerged.’

Laura thought about that for a moment, and when he passed her the paper, she said, ‘Follow me.’

She walked quickly into the police station, rushing Jack through the reception area and towards Carson, whose pink dome gleamed through the crowd of uniformed officers putting off the start of the day. He was sitting with Joe Kinsella, deep in conversation. Jack threaded his way through the uniforms, and as he got closer to Carson, Laura held up the print-out.

‘You might want to see this,’ she said, and handed the first email over.

Carson looked at Jack. ‘Is this what I think it is?’ he said.

‘Another email, to me,’ Jack said, nodding.

‘Fuck!’ Carson said, his voice tired, his breath a mix of no sleep and too much coffee. As he read, Carson’s eyes started to widen.

‘What the fuck is all this?’ he said. ‘Poetry? Angel?’

‘Taunts,’ Jack said, pointing down at the paper. ‘Angel is David Hoyle’s girlfriend. Look at the title,
Hoyly Moyly
. Hoyle was at Don’s house last night, and he left looking pretty fraught. I saw him this morning and asked him how Angel was, and he looked like I had kicked him in the gut.’

Carson turned to Laura. ‘We need to check the incident logs from last night, see if she called it in,’ he said.

‘She didn’t,’ Jack said. ‘Don Roberts is trying to deal with it himself, and I reckon Hoyle has joined the gang.’

‘But if Angel had a confrontation, she might be able to give a description. This could be the killer’s second mistake.’

Joe Kinsella was reading the email now. ‘And we need to know how she was able to frighten him away,’ he said. ‘The first two victims would have fought too, so what was different about Angel?’

‘You find out,’ Carson said. ‘I’ve got to go to a meeting with the top brass. They’re worried about the cost of this case.’ He sighed heavily. ‘If we lose some of our squad, he’ll kill again, and that won’t make anything easier.’

‘You might want to see this then,’ Jack said, and handed over the second email. ‘It arrived later on last night.’ He watched as Carson read.
And I have spotted a female. You know her, ha ha. Just got to work out the details
.

Carson lowered the print-out and passed it to Laura. ‘This might be aimed at you,’ he said. ‘You can’t be alone today.’ Laura started to protest, but he held up his hand. ‘This is non-negotiable.’

Laura read it, and Jack saw the blood drain from her face for a moment. Then she recovered and said, ‘We better catch him then.’

Carson smiled at her, but then said, ‘Just be careful. We’ve had too many corpses.’

Chapter Fifty-Two

Jack was still outside the police station, sitting in his car and worrying about what lay ahead for Laura, when his phone rang.

The number on the handset was unfamiliar. When he answered, a quiet voice said, ‘Jack Garrett?’ It was a woman’s voice, indistinct, but familiar, yet he couldn’t place it.

‘Yes, this is Jack Garrett.’

‘Did you come to my house last night?’ she said. ‘I’ve found your card.’

Jack thought about the previous evening, and then he knew why her voice was familiar. It was the woman from the Whitcroft estate, being tormented by a teenage gang. ‘Yes, I did.’

The line went silent for a while, and Jack thought he had lost the signal, but then she said, ‘Why did you come to my house?’

‘I’m writing about the estate. You seemed to be having some trouble. I was passing, that’s all.’

‘Was that the only reason?’

Jack was confused. ‘Should there be another reason?’ he said.

‘I’ve read your stories in the paper.’

‘About what?’

‘The two dead women.’

That got Jack’s attention. ‘Do you know anything about them?’

She went silent again, and Jack realised he had stopped breathing. He was waiting for her to talk.

‘Don Roberts,’ she said eventually. ‘I can tell you all about Don Roberts, and Mike Corley.’

Jack let out a long breath. He wasn’t aware of anything else around him. It was just her voice on the phone. ‘I’m listening,’ he said.

There was another pause, and then, ‘I can tell you exactly how the dead women are connected.’

His mouth went dry and he felt a tingle of anticipation. He scrambled in his pocket and then his glove compartment for a pencil, and then found a scrap of paper to scribble on. ‘So tell me what you know.’ His fingers gripped the pen tightly.

‘It was wrong, all wrong,’ she said, although her voice was fainter this time.

‘What was wrong?’

There was no response.

‘Are you there?’ Still silence. ‘What’s your name?’

There was another pause, and then she said, ‘Emma.’

‘Wait there,’ Jack said, throwing the paper and pencil to the floor. ‘I’m two minutes away.’

‘So what do we do when we get to David Hoyle’s house?’ Laura asked Joe, as he drove them through the town centre.

‘We persuade Angel to talk to us, not Don Roberts,’ Joe said.

‘But if Hoyle is there, he’ll stop us.’

Joe shook his head. ‘I’ve spoken to the court ushers. Hoyle is still at court.’

‘Jesus, does life always have to be about the money?’ Laura said.

‘I reckon it’s more than that,’ Joe replied. ‘Don wants to catch the killer himself, and we can both guess what will happen to him if he does. Hoyle knows that too, and so he’s making himself visible, giving himself alibis, so that if Don is arrested for the murder of his daughter’s killer, Hoyle doesn’t get dragged into it.’

Laura looked out of the window and thought about the email from earlier. Where was he? Was he watching her now? She turned to look at the cars following them, but the road was empty. She slumped back into her seat and said, ‘Why have you kept it a secret about Rachel?’

Joe stayed silent for a moment, and then replied, ‘Not secret, private, because it’s my private life. I don’t want to be work gossip.’

‘But your secrecy makes it seem like you’re ashamed. Rachel is a pretty woman.’

‘I’m not ashamed,’ he said. ‘And I’m not sure we’re an item either. We just sort of keep each other company when we need it.’

‘So it’s about the sex.’

Joe gave a small shrug.

‘I think Rachel feels more strongly about it than you do,’ Laura said.

‘What makes you say that?’

Laura smiled. ‘I’ve seen how she reacts to me whenever I’m with you. She sees me as a threat.’

‘And are you a threat?’

Laura blushed. ‘I’m getting married soon.’

‘Okay, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I like Jack, and you and me, well, we’re good colleagues.’

Laura looked out of her window. The car suddenly seemed suffocating, the silence uncomfortable. She brought the conversation back to the case.

‘Would it bother you if Don got to the killer first?’ she said.

Joe didn’t answer straight away. ‘Depends if they get it right,’ he said eventually. ‘The problem is that we’ll never know, because they’ll get rid of the body. All we’ll know is that the gaps between the murders will get longer, and eventually we’ll wind up the investigation, never quite knowing if the right man was caught.’

‘Is that worse than watching him walk out on a technicality, or a bad jury?’ Laura said. ‘Remember, Ian Huntley was only convicted eleven to one. It only takes three loose cannons to throw a trial. Or maybe he’ll get a walkout after twenty years, free to enjoy his final years, ones that Deborah or Jane will never see?’

‘I know how you feel, but if you work in the system, you’ve got to work with the system. It’s not about justice, it never has been. It’s about keeping a lid on everything.’

Laura gave up the argument. She closed her eyes for a moment, the long hours catching up with her, but as soon as she did, she thought she’d seen something. No, not something. Someone.

Her eyes shot open and she looked back along the pavement. She could only see T-shirts and bags, people on phones. Then she saw it again, a shock of grey hair and a slow shuffle, just a glimpse through the crowd.

‘Go back around,’ she said.

‘Go back where?’

‘Round the block. I’ve just seen someone.’

‘Who?’

‘Ida Grix,’ she said.

Joe looked surprised. ‘Why would she be here now, forty miles from home?’

‘Perhaps looking for Shane, because she recognised something in our faces that told her that her doubts were coming true, that Shane hadn’t died in London.’

Joe turned quickly into a side street and doubled back to the main street, crawling along slowly as Laura scanned the crowd again until she saw the same hair.

‘There,’ she pointed. Joe looked.

‘What, going into that shop?’ he said.

‘Yes. Pull over.’

Joe scraped his tyres against the kerb as he brought the car to a halt, and Laura jumped out and trotted down to where she had seen Ida walk into a department store. It was a long way down the street though, and by the time she got down there, Laura couldn’t see her. The shop doors opened automatically and Laura rushed in, looking around quickly, but it seemed like most of the shop was a mass of tight grey curls bobbing between the perfume counters. She remembered that there were too many exits to the shop to be able to know where Ida had gone, if it had been her.

Laura turned away, frustrated and trudged back to Joe’s car. When she got there, Joe had his elbow out of the car window, his eyebrows raised in query.

‘No joy,’ Laura said.

‘How sure were you?’ he said.

‘Sure enough to jog down the street to try and catch up with her.’

‘That’s good enough for me. I’m supposed to be looking after you though, so get in.’

‘So what now?’

‘Same as before,’ Joe said. ‘We go to David Hoyle’s house and speak to Angel.’

As Joe set off again, Laura scanned the street once more, because she knew that if Ida had travelled to Blackley, she was looking for her son. And Laura also knew that they had to find him before Ida did, because the memory of Doctor Barker told her that Ida might not survive the reunion.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Emma’s gate didn’t offer much security, Jack thought. Old wood, painted green, and it wobbled as he pushed at it. The security guards had followed him as soon as he drove onto the estate, and now they were hovering at the end of the street, watching.

The house looked dirty from the outside, with cobwebs around the window frames and the remains of eggs on the ground. He knocked on the door, and after a few seconds, Emma answered.

Now that he could see her in daylight, he saw that life had been rough on her. She was tall, but looked too thin, with prominent veins in her forearms, and her face was just skin tightly wrapped around bones, the paleness of her complexion broken only by the dark circles under her eyes.

‘I’m Jack Garrett,’ he said.

She squinted, the light outside too bright for her. The smell of booze drifted over the threshold. She looked him up and down and then walked back into the house, leaving the door open as an invitation to follow. There was a weave to her walk, and his suspicions were confirmed when he saw an open bottle of cider on the floor by the chair.

Emma caught Jack looking, so she said, ‘It’s just a small drink when it’s a nice day.’

As he checked out the living room, it seemed that there hadn’t been too many nice days for a while. The carpet was threadbare and the house smelled of damp dogs, the floor and chairs thick with dark hairs. As he looked towards the open back door, past the paintwork scuffed by pawmarks, he saw two scruffy brown mongrels lying on the ground in a paved yard that was peppered with dog shit. There was the thump of loud music coming from the house next door.

‘How do you cope with that coming through the walls?’ Jack said, trying to be friendly.

Emma glanced towards her neighbour’s house. ‘You get used to to it,’ she said, and then looked back towards Jack. ‘That’s not why you’re here.’

‘Okay,’ Jack said. ‘Tell me what you know.’

She seemed to flush and then shook her head. ‘It’s personal,’ she said. ‘Will it definitely go in the paper?’

‘I’m a reporter. Do you want people to know about it?’

Emma looked at Jack, and then shook her head.

‘Can I call you Emma,’ he said, and when she nodded, he continued, ‘people have been killed, Emma. Don’s daughter has been killed. Mike Corley’s too. If you know something about this, you might save someone else’s life.’

Her hands shook slightly. ‘Poor girls,’ she said.

‘Did you know them?’