Innocent Blood (18 page)

‘But you didn’t think like this.’

Hirst shook his head vigorously. ‘No. I wanted revenge and when Pam went, the flames of that bonfire I mentioned consumed me. Her death spurred me on.’

‘To do what?’

Hirst’s face twisted again into that dark, mad smile. ‘You know what. It was mad, wasn’t it?
I
was mad, wasn’t I? I thought that by killing those girls, those blessed survivors, I would somehow be justifying Debbie’s death, her cruel and unfair death. If she had to die, they should, too.’

With a brisk, angry motion, he ran his fingers through his hair.

‘It gave me a purpose, you see,’ he continued, his whole demeanour becoming more animated now. ‘I had a reason to get up in the morning. That’s what I was living for. I planned each one – each killing – meticulously. It was imperative that I wasn’t caught before I had completed all five. I was in some kind of demented trance. Reality and logic had drifted away from me. I see that now. I see that now. I was a monster. A deranged animal. I know it’s no excuse to say grief made me that way. It’s true but it’s not a fucking excuse, is it?’

‘No,’ Snow said softly.

‘And do you know what lifted the veil, what suddenly made me see what I had done? What I had become.’

‘Tell me.’

‘It was that little girl, Elizabeth. In the van. Up at Scammonden. There I was leaning over her, ready to strangle her to death and … God help me … she opened her eyes and called me “Daddy”. She thought that dark monster looming over her … “Daddy” she said, in that same soft sleepy voice that Debbie used to use. Then it hit me like a fucking ten-ton truck. My head exploded. I saw clearly what I had done. How wrong I had been.’

Suddenly Hirst’s body stiffened and his arms reached out for Snow without actually touching him. The detective remained calm and still.

‘Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking for sympathy or anything like that. I deserve all that’s coming to me. Whether you’re recording this or not, I don’t care. I am guilty. Guilty as hell and hell is where I belong. I killed those girls. Those poor innocent girls. That’s what you wanted to hear, wasn’t it?’

Not really, thought, Snow. I knew that. There can be no doubt that you are guilty and will serve a life sentence. What I really wanted to know is what drove you to do such terrible acts and now I do. But Snow kept these thoughts to himself. Instead he replied: ‘As I said, I’m not recording this interview. This is a private visit, but I sincerely recommend you inform the interviewing officers tomorrow all you have told me.’

‘Sure. Why not? It won’t do me any good and why should it? I don’t want it to. I don’t deserve sympathy or mercy. I just want to die now. I deserve to die. Not to be locked away for years. I’ll still be eating, sleeping and functioning after a fashion when I should be rotting in some grave somewhere.’

Snow had no answer for this. He knew the death penalty was not only barbaric but also made no allowance for any miscarriage of justice, but in cases like Hirst’s when the perpetrator is drowned in remorse, perhaps the rope would be the best solution for all concerned. He was sure the mothers of the three murdered girls would support that notion.

‘Thank you,’ said Snow, rising from his chair.

‘What for?’

‘For being honest with me. I cannot feel sympathy for you. The faces of those dead girls would haunt my dreams forever if I did that, but I now understand why you did what you did and as a police officer that is important to know. And, as I say, I thank you for that.’

‘What did the bastard have to say for himself?’ snarled PC Braithwaite as he locked up the cell again.

‘Not much,’ said Snow.

‘Nah, these looneys always keep it stashed up here.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Don’t think they know themselves why they do what they do.’

Snow nodded noncommittally.

A headache was building steadily and with some ferocity around Snow’s temple as he returned to his office. Suddenly he felt very weary and strangely depressed. Time he went home, he thought, take some paracetemol and get an early night. He was just reaching for his coat when Bob Fellows popped his head round the door.

‘Thought you might fancy a pint, sir, as a kind of celebration. Catching the bugger, like.’

Snow was about to shake his head and refuse when he had a sudden change of mind. A fuggy pub and a few pints in cheery company might be exactly what he needed. It was likely to be more effective than pills and that early night for easing his spirits.

‘Why not,’ he said, managing to raise a smile.

It was now around five o’clock and although the County was reasonably quiet, it was starting to fill up with workers catching a quick drink on their way home. The warm, blurry atmosphere wrapped itself around the two policemen as they entered, protecting them from the harsh realities of soberland outside. Snow and Fellows secured a quiet corner seat in the back snug. Bob raised his glass and clinked it against Snow’s.

‘Cheers.’

Snow gave a smile that he did not feel. ‘It seems wrong in a way, celebrating like this. There are three dead girls that we failed to save.’

Bob gave an exaggerated grimace. ‘I know. But we did our best. The odds were really stacked against us. And had we not eventually been successful, there would have been more killings.’

Two more, to be precise, thought Snow. He saw the logic of Bob’s observation but it did not alter the strange sense of sadness he felt at the girls’ deaths, a mixture of guilt and despair. He knew that it would pass in time and, ironically, this fact added to his unhappiness. We soon forget the pain and the treachery as the wheel of life spins on.

‘Come on, drink up, sir. My round next,’ said Bob cheerfully, before draining a good third of his pint.

Attempting to shrug off his bleak thoughts, Snow mimicked his sergeant, taking a large gulp of the cold, harsh brew. He hoped that it would help soften the hard edges of his dark mood.

Two pints later those dark edges were well and truly softened as were, to some extent, Snow’s brain and tongue. While not exactly drunk, he knew that he was not fully in control of his body or his speech. If anything, Bob Fellows was far worse and was about to switch drinks and go on to the whisky. Time, thought Snow sluggishly, to move, to get moving, to leave, to absent himself, to hightail to the hills. To go home. He grinned inanely to himself as his mind ran along this particular tautological gamut. He was sober enough to realise he was not fit to drive and that he’d have to leave his car behind at HQ and take a taxi home.

He rose a little unsteadily, desperate to keep his uncertain limbs in check. It wouldn’t do for a DI to be seen stumbling out of a pub in a tipsy fashion. ‘I’m making tracks, Bob,’ he said, adding another interpretation to his actions and aware that his diction was not as clear as he would have liked.

‘One for the road, sir, eh?’ Bob waggled his glass temptingly.

Snow shook his head. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, feeling far from it.

The cool night air came as a shock to him, making his head seem even lighter. Why, he pondered, is it with alcohol that one always goes one drink too many? Two pints would have been sufficient. He had felt better after two, but the third had allowed the depressive thoughts to return. With a slow, steady gait he made his way along town to St George’s Square by the station and secured a taxi to take him home.

Once there, he felt the indignity of the situation as he fumbled with his key, which failed several times to slip into the aperture and allow him to turn it. Eventually, he gained access and, slamming the door behind him, he slumped to the floor thoroughly exhausted. He remained in this position for ten minutes or so, dozing a little, no longer fighting the alcohol in his system.

Coffee, he thought after a while. That’s what I need. With the movement of an infirm geriatric, he struggled to his feet and made his way into the kitchen. He filled the kettle and secured the mug and jar of coffee before he saw it. It was on the work surface near the hob: a bottle of champagne. It had a bright pink ribbon tied around the neck and a card dangling from the side. Snow frowned. His alcohol-dulled brain could not make this one out. What was the bottle doing there? How had it got there? He hadn’t put it there. So, someone else had. That meant that someone had been in his house. With the laborious working out of this, his mind sharpened as the disturbing reality took hold.

He tore off the card and read the message inscribed on it: ‘To Pauley, all my love, CB xxx’.

It did not take Snow long to work out the meaning of the message and more significantly the implications.

‘The bastard’s been in my house. Colin Bird,’ he grunted, throwing the card down. He glanced around him desperately, as though he was expecting Bird to pop up by the sink unit. He rushed into the sitting room and froze in the doorway, for there on the little coffee table was an enormous bunch of flowers in a glass vase. Again there was a card loosely attached to the side. This time it read: ‘Here’s hoping our love blooms like these pretty flowers. All my love, Pauley – from CB.’

Instinctively and irrationally, emitting a growl of fury, Paul knocked the vase over with a swipe of his hand, water spraying on the carpet and the glass vase cracking as it hit the floor, spilling the blooms at his feet. What on earth was the mad devil playing at? Was he really this delusional, thinking there was a future in a relationship together, or was this some kind of crazy scheme to unnerve him, the man who had rejected his advances? And how the hell had he got into his house? Well, on quick reflection there was no mystery in that. He was a policeman. He would have ways.

Snow slumped down on the sofa and ran his fingers through his hair. Suddenly he felt very sober. Yes, he had a thumping headache, but the mists of inebriation had cleared. In this shiny new clarity, the question raised itself like a leviathan from the deep: what the hell was he going to do about Colin Bird?

PC Arnold Braithwaite was on duty again the following morning, relieving his colleague PC Newman, who had been down in the cells overnight. ‘Lucky me,’ Braithwaite growled, ‘just in time to deliver the bastard’s breakfast. I hope it chokes him.’

Newman nodded. ‘Save us all a lot of bother and the taxpayer a wallop of dosh if it did.’

Braithwaite gazed down at the tray holding the plate with a piece of greasy bacon, a pallid fried egg and a small congealed mound of anaemic baked beans. ‘I’d love to slip a little arsenic into this lot.’ He chuckled at the thought and then made his way down to the narrow corridor to Frank Hirst’s cell.

While holding the tray in one hand, he slid aside the metal spyhole cover. The sight that met his eyes caused him to drop the tray, the sound of which resounded noisily down the corridor. In the grey light of the cell afforded by the barred window and the feeble light bulb, PC Braithwaite could just make out two legs dangling by the wall. He really didn’t need to see any more to know what had happened.

‘Like death warmed up.’ Snow had heard the expression bandied about the station before when some of the younger officers had come in the morning following a night on the lash. Now he knew what it meant, for this morning he was experiencing a very similar feeling. He felt like death warmed up. It was partly the after-effects of the booze imbibed in the County and partly his concerns about Colin Bird, and in particular what to do about this maverick crazy man. He had no idea what kind of stupid stunt he would try to pull next.

As soon as Snow reached HQ, he made himself another strong coffee, the fourth that morning, and hid himself away in his office. Some thirty minutes later, Bob Fellows knocked and entered. If Snow had thought he looked a little rough that morning in the shaving mirror, it was nothing to the ghoul-like figure that hovered before him now. He walked gingerly as though passing with naked feet over burning coals, and his eyes, dark rimmed, had almost sunken into his face, the skin of which had the texture of tissue paper.

‘Good morning, sir,’ he croaked.

Snow could not help but smile. ‘Feeling a little delicate, are we Sergeant?’

Fellows nodded and it was clear that he found the action of moving his head quite painful.

The conversation, such as it was, got no further for Susan Morgan opened the door. Her expression was severe. ‘Hirst has topped himself,’ she said sharply and succinctly.

‘What?’ Snow rose from his chair.

‘He made a rope-type noose out of his shirt and vest and hung himself in his cell. He was found at breakfast time this morning.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Fellows.

Snow sat down again as the reality of the situation sank in. He swallowed the words that were on the tip of his tongue because he considered perhaps that they were inappropriate. He was about to say, ‘Perhaps it was for the best’, but thought better of it. Instead, he said, ‘Looks like he couldn’t live with the guilt. Well, in effect that draws a very firm line under this very unpleasant case.’

‘Too true. Typical, he took the coward’s way out,’ observed Fellows, his pallid features regaining some of their colour as he grew more animated. ‘I bet those parents who lost their kids will be delighted. Let’s face it, prison is a soft option for bastards like Hirst who kill young ’uns for no reason. He deserved to die.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ said Susan coolly, ‘but he cheated the system at the last.’

‘So what, the bugger’s dead. Good riddance.’

Snow glanced at Susan, their eyes connecting. It was clear to each of them what both were thinking: how wonderful to have such an uncomplicated black and white view of things like Bob Fellows. It would make life so much simpler.

If it was the simple life that Snow craved, then the gods in charge of his destiny appeared to grant him his wish, for a week or so at least. After the furore of Frank Hirst’s death had died down and the papers, after blaming the police for their incompetence in allowing a major criminal to kill himself while in their care, had found other scapegoats to pillory, things went quiet for Snow at police HQ. It was just paperwork and a few unremarkable enquiries to follow up. He welcomed the respite from the stress of the Hirst case. Of course, there was the little demon of the Colin Bird situation still sitting on his shoulder, but there had been no further developments in that department either. He was thankful for the relief.