Murder Mile (22 page)

Chapter 30

NEIL HENDERSON KNEW
exactly what he wanted to do with Crawley – he wanted to kill him – but that wasn’t going to work to his advantage at this moment. As he looked at Crawley, backing away, his hands groping behind him as he bumped into the tile-topped coffee table in the centre of the floor, he wondered how a man like him had ever managed to instil fear in anyone. But he knew he had. Henderson remembered the exact lines Angela had written in her diary. He remembered how she had looked at the merest mention of the teacher’s name, the terror on her face. And she had been panicked, thrown into shock by the television news when the story about the girl they found in the field near Straiton came on. Crawley had done that – this weak, scared man who stood before him with his hands shaking and his brow wet with sweat.

Henderson gripped the Stanley blade tighter in his hand and walked towards Crawley. He had abducted him from a school playground; he thought about that for a moment, it seemed almost like fate. Like the tables being turned. This is what Crawley had done to those girls; he had captured them, taken them prisoner. But he hadn’t taken them home, or anywhere familiar. He had driven those girls into the countryside, into the dark of night. He had taken them to a place where no one would see them, where no one would
hear
their cries, their screams. Henderson felt moisture pooling in his hand; he shifted the blade. He remembered the time his mother’s boyfriend had taken him somewhere out of sight, what he had done to him there. He remembered the pain, the agony of it. For a moment, Henderson wasn’t there in the room with Crawley, he wasn’t himself; he was the young boy who had been taken up those stairs, watched as the door closed behind him and then cried when the door opened again and he realised the shame he would have to carry around for the rest of his life.

‘You fucking bastard,’ said Henderson.

Crawley turned away, looked towards the back of the room. There was nothing there, only the window and the curtains, a standing lamp and a small bookcase. There was no one to save him, there was no weapon he could reach for, there was nowhere to hide or to run to. He turned back towards his captor, his face draining white for a moment. His eyes roved, left to right. He jerked, his arms flew up in a spasm towards the side of his head and then he gripped his limp hair in his hands.

‘Thinking about bolting are you?’ said Henderson; he edged forward again, closed down the space between them. ‘Not much fucking chance of that, I’d have the throat out you before you got a yard.’ He started to laugh, watched as Crawley closed his eyes tightly; he looked like a child pretending that nothing would happen if he couldn’t see it.

‘What do you want from me?’ he wailed.

Henderson locked down his prisoner; he could almost smell the fear in the room. He sensed Crawley’s energy attenuating, seeping out of him, as he reached forward and placed the haft of the blade on the sleeve of his jacket. The movement made him tense, his shoulders squared. ‘Is that what they said to you … Those girls?’

Crawley raised a hand, wiped at his eyebrows with the tips of his long fingers; some drops of sweat glistened there. ‘What girls? … I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

Henderson sparked, ‘Don’t fuck me about, you know what I
mean.’
He reached out, grabbed Crawley by the collar. His hot neck brushed against Henderson’s knuckles as he pulled him towards the blade, forced it to the edge of his jaw. ‘The girls you took out to the field, the ones like … Angela.’ He said the name slowly, savoured each syllable, made sure Crawley would have no doubt about the word he uttered.

‘Who?’ said Crawley.

Henderson raised the butt of the blade again, pressed it into the fleshy part of his jaw line; a thin trickle of blood smeared the tip of the blade and then ran down Crawley’s neckline. ‘Don’t fucking mess me about, you know fine well who she is … You took her out to the field and tied her up but she got away.’

‘No. No. No.’

‘Yes! Fucking yes. And she’s been walking the Links since she got away, from you, Crawley … She got away when she hit you with a fucking rock.’ Henderson brought the haft down on Crawley’s head; there was a dull thud and then the teacher called out in pain. His knees seemed to fold, one at a time and then he slumped to the floor in a slow, swooning fall. He writhed like a maggot in a bait-bucket, his arms flailing before him as he tried to renegotiate his place in this strange new world. His balance had deserted him, he patted at the carpet with his large ungainly hands and groaned audibly.

Henderson leaned over, grabbed Crawley’s hair, dragged him towards the middle of the room. He was still dazed, still fumbling, as Henderson produced the nylon rope from the inside of his jacket and started to tie him, first round the ankles and then, after pushing the arms behind his back, the wrists. Blood smeared on the carpet from the nick on Crawley’s jaw which had opened wider, and from the fresh wound on his head. His eyes rolled about and his limbs fell limp. He mumbled, tried to speak, but words wouldn’t come. When he opened his mouth to grab mouthfuls of air, Henderson noticed the blood on his teeth.

‘You know all about getting folk tied up, don’t you …’ said Henderson. He yanked on the rope, saw it burning into Crawley’s
skin;
he tightened it even more, said, ‘I say you know all about tying up folk, eh.’

Crawley groaned, a broad rivulet of blood traced the shape of his forehead from hairline to brow. His head lolled on his shoulders and his facial muscles sagged and drooped. He looked dazed, his eyes glassy and moist.

Henderson prodded him, ‘Wee lassies, you know about tying them up, don’t you.’

Crawley started to mumble again, his words came coated with spittle. Some blood escaped the corner of his mouth as he spoke, ‘I don’t know anything. I-I don’t …’

‘Just keep that up,’ Henderson yelled. ‘See where it fucking gets you, pal.’ He stepped back, dropped the trailing rope at his feet and raised his hands. ‘Are you fucking daft or what? … Can you not tell when you’re digging a hole for yourself?’ Henderson steadied himself before the teacher; he shook his head as he took in his gaze. He settled before him, let the mash of his thoughts subside and then he lowered his hand to the floor and pulled the rope tight. He tested the tension, looked at his work; he seemed content that the knots would hold and so he cut the excess rope at the teacher’s wrists. As he rose, Henderson dug inside Crawley’s jacket pocket and removed his wallet. There was a thin bundle of notes there; he seized the cash, then looked towards the bank cards.

Henderson held up the cards, waved them in Crawley’s face. ‘Right, what’s the fucking numbers for these?’

Crawley folded over, moaned. He had started to hyperventilate, gasping for breath as he lolled to and fro on the carpet. ‘I don’t know anything.’

Henderson looked away, balanced his thoughts, then placed the cards in his pocket. He took a step back from the centre of the room then made a lunging kick into Crawley’s lumber region – the teacher called out in agony, rolled to his side as Henderson stepped back. ‘I’ll ask once more, but only once more, and only because you seem to be a wee bit slow on the uptake, Mr Crawley. Now, if
you
tell me what I want to know … I’ll fuck off and leave you in peace – so, the numbers on these cards …’

Crawley started a coughing fit, his face darkened as he tried to raise his head off the carpet, his thin hair fell over his watery eyes. He seemed to have registered the request, said, ‘There’s only one number … The cards all have the same number … It’s two-two-four-three.’

Henderson had been tightening his fists, waiting to lunge forward and connect them with the teacher’s head. He nodded instead, smiled to himself. He said the numbers over, ‘That’s it? … No others?’

Crawley gasped, ‘N-no. That’s the number I always have.’

‘OK. OK.’ Henderson leaned over him, grabbed his mop of a fringe and twisted it. ‘Now, I am going down the road there to clean out these accounts …’

Crawley’s eyes lit. His head tilted, still drooping on his thin neck.

‘Don’t worry, don’t worry … I won’t get it all today; see they have limits on these bank machines. But …’ he raised a finger in the air, his voice lilted, became a song, ‘so as you won’t be alone tonight, I’ll come back here and I can get some more out tomorrow, how does that sound?’

Crawley rasped, ‘You said you were leaving … If I told you the numbers, you said …’

Henderson placed the sole of his shoe on Crawley’s shoulder, pushed him onto his back again and started to laugh. ‘And you fucking believed me … You’ve still got a lot to learn, teacher, sure you have.’

Henderson straightened himself, stepped over the bound Crawley and headed for the hallway. He closed the living room door behind him, released the handle and pressed the flat of his back to the panels. He allowed a moment to compose himself, still his breathing. When he lifted his head he saw the car keys on the floor by the window; they sat beside a fallen lamp with a tassel shade. He walked over and picked up the keys, dropped them in his jacket pocket and headed through the front door, closing it behind him, checking the lock held.

Henderson’s feet scrunched on the driveway scree as he walked towards the car. A low hedge partly screened the house from the street and the road but the neighbouring properties were in full view. His heart still pounded beneath his jacket, but the cool breeze that touched his brow seemed to calm him. He opened the car door and found the engine started on the first turn of the ignition; he reversed out. On the main road Henderson wound down the window, let the air lick the edge of his face as he pushed the needle towards thirty miles-per-hour. In a few moments he felt his pulse subside; he had calmed completely. He slapped the dashboard, congratulated himself. ‘Nice one, Hendy … Fucking nice one indeed.’

Henderson followed the roads into the centre of Edinburgh, heading for Newington on the south side. The traffic was heavy, commuters clogging up the city arteries, but once he passed the main shopping precinct the congestion eased. On North Bridge he stopped the car just shy of the High Street, beside a Bank of Scotland branch with a cash machine; a homeless man sat outside, wrapped in a blue blanket, begging for money; on his way out the car Henderson sneered at him. He knew he was on the verge of clearing a substantial chunk of his debt to Boaby Stevens and he already felt the surge in his confidence. He saw the faces on Shaky’s lot when he handed it over; they’d know he was someone who settled his debts, not just another loser that they were going to pick away at for the rest of his days.

Henderson slotted in the first of the three cards he had taken from Crawley and withdrew the maximum limit, then repeated the action twice more. He felt a compulsion to kiss the cash as he slotted it into his inside pocket, but he resisted; he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. As he headed back to the car he looked up to the darkening sky and shook his head. He’d had a result, all he had to do now was hold his nerve and make the payment on his debt.

Henderson knew Boaby Stevens holed up in a pub in Newington called the Wheatsheaf; he turned the engine over, released the clutch and started out along Nicolson Street. As he drove, he went over
the
words he would use as he strolled into the pub: ‘Hello, Mr Stevens, I believe you sent a messenger out my way.’ He smiled to himself, imagined the look on Shaky’s face as he counted out the money. ‘Well, I couldn’t have you thinking Neil Henderson doesn’t pay his debts … And so, here you are.’ He laughed now; the springs in the driver’s seat started to judder. He was going to show them – he wasn’t paying the full amount but he’d get it. He’d have the debt cleared, and be back on his feet. It was all working out.

‘Nice work, Hendy … Fucking nice work,’ he mouthed to himself as he drove.

At the box junction, he flicked on the blinkers, turned left and then left again on his way to the Wheatsheaf. The sky had darkened more now; it looked like rain as he pulled up on the double yellows outside the pub and killed the engine. A white van passed by; its headlights washed a pale glow over the road surface as Henderson stepped onto the windy street and trailed the paving flags to the pub’s entrance.

Chapter 31

DI ROB BRENNAN
made his way down the corridor towards Incident Room One. He got as far as the coffee machine before his legs started to feel heavy, his feet dragging on the industrial carpet tiles, and then his knees locked. The DI stalled where he stood, drew a deep breath and checked his watch face. There was still time to call a press conference and get the Sloans on board, he hoped, but what were the chances the Sloans would be keen to front-up a plea on television for help to find their daughter’s killer? It was one thing to talk to the press in your own front room, it was something altogether different to sit in a television studio under the spotlights and face a pack of hungry hacks. Brennan also knew from experience that very few relatives of victims were ever keen to repeat the experience once they’d spoken to the press. What had seemed like a good idea, like a closure, seemed only to open the wound wider once it was over.

The DI pinned back his shoulders, forced himself to take the first step towards the incident room. His feet still dragged, but his heart was by far the heaviest load he carried. Brennan knew he had taken an almighty chance on the Chief Super accepting his word and failing to check the veracity of his press conference claim. If he had, Brennan knew he could well be looking at another
enforced
leave. The thought spun around inside his mind as he walked, each dizzying revolution reminding him how much he had gambled. Is that what it had come to now, thought Brennan, gambling with his career? There had been a time when the job was all, everything; now it had been reduced to a spin of a roulette wheel. He didn’t know quite when, or how, he had reached this new low but he didn’t like it. He was changing inside, his every perception was being challenged. Everything he thought he had once held fast to – his job, his marriage, his sense of himself – was in flux. He wondered how long he could go on balancing so many misconceptions. He felt lost to himself, confused. The only constant he clung to was his sense of justice; Brennan needed to find justice for those girls that had been murdered. They were young girls, not even old enough to have reached their prime; they were barely more than children. And they had been slain, brutally; their corpses dropped in a field. Not even buried or hidden, just dumped. It was as if the killer was taunting the force; taunting him.