The Death Collector (14 page)

There was a knock at the door. Sam went to answer. It was a female detective Sam knew from his early days in the Force, Nicola Sharp.

When Sam showed her through, she said, ‘DI Evans sent me. I’m your FLO.’ Then she looked at Billy. ‘I’m the Family Liaison Officer. I’m here to help you during the investigation.

Billy looked and nodded, but didn’t say anything. He was retreating into himself.

Hunter looked irritated. Sam couldn’t understand why. Nicola was a woman who exuded sympathy but she could also read people well. The FLOs were experienced detectives, not hand-holders. If Billy was hiding something, Nicola would spot it.

Hunter forced out a smile and got to his feet. He headed for the door, Weaver with him, leaving Billy with Nicola. Sam thanked Billy for his help and followed. When he thought of what devastation awaited the children, he was relieved to be leaving.

Lorna Jex looked down before she spoke, as if she was trying to work out what to say. Eventually, she looked up and said, ‘I don’t really know when it started, David’s obsession with the Aidan Molloy case. It just crept up on us. Why should he have been obsessed with the case? He’d been on the investigation, knew all about it. But he was, and I couldn’t understand it.’

‘When did you first notice?’ Joe said.

She shrugged. ‘A year ago. Perhaps a bit less. It was as if he suddenly started to feel bad about something, but why should he? He put a bad man away. David had put a lot of really bad men away, but this seemed different, as if it really affected him. He started to collect things, newspaper reports, things like that, and would go to see people, spend all night sometimes, driving around. I don’t know where he went, didn’t want to know really.’

‘What was his thing about the case, though? Did he ever say?’

‘No, but I would catch him sometimes, just staring into space, like something was bothering him. And I remember that he became obsessed about our debts. He said we would have to clear everything, so we didn’t book a holiday last year and stopped buying treats. We just put everything towards the credit cards and mortgage.’

‘Do you think he was planning on running away? Perhaps he was making sure you could cope after he left.’

‘What, because we were clearing debts? I don’t think so. He could have just told me he was going and left. That would have been better than what we have now, this uncertainty.’

Joe frowned. ‘Did David think that they’d got the wrong man in Aidan Molloy?’ When Lorna looked at him, he added, ‘Why else would he become obsessed with the case? Like you said, Aidan was locked up, David’s job done. What else was there to do?’

Lorna shook her head. ‘He never said.’ A pause, then, ‘Do you want to see David’s notes?’

Joe raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, I do.’

She got to her feet wearily and walked towards the living-room door. Joe took it as a sign to follow her, and he creaked his way up the stairs behind her until they got to the small bedroom at the front of the house.

‘This was my daughter’s bedroom, before she got married,’ Lorna said, and she pushed open the door.

The room wasn’t very big. Just enough room for a bed that ran to the window sill, space saved by storage underneath, raising the bed so that anyone tall would sleep with their feet on the windowsill. There were old white cupboards and shelves opposite that had been taken over by black filing folders, with a computer and monitor resting on a small desk at one side. There were newspaper clippings pinned to a cork board and maps taped to the wall.

Joe stepped forward, expecting them to be all about Aidan Molloy, but as he got closer he saw that they were missing person reports from newspapers. As far as he could tell, there were six women mentioned, the clippings pinned alongside each other with string going to a point on a large map of Manchester. Four of them were just small pieces, as if they were hardly worth of a mention, whereas two were bigger spreads, with appeals from their families. Joe remembered one of them from the media buzz. A law clerk called Mandy, blonde and pretty with cute children. There were a few tearful appeals and the public mood had turned on her husband because he hadn’t cried at the press conference.

‘He was spending more and more time in here,’ Lorna said, her voice flat and emotionless. ‘And drinking. He’d always drunk at weekends or while we were watching a film, but then it turned into something he did on his own, up here.’

Joe turned away from the clippings. ‘Tell me about the night he disappeared.’

Lorna leaned against the wall. ‘He’d been getting worse. He was drinking more and not turning up for work. They were going to discipline him, but he put in a sick note and went off with stress. Then one evening he was different. He seemed happier, excited almost. He said he was going out but wouldn’t tell me where, but he hugged me, and he hadn’t hugged me in a long time. He said he loved me but he had to go out, and that was it. He never came home.’

‘Where do you think he went?’

‘I just don’t know, but something was different that night.’

‘What did you do?’ Joe said.

‘I reported him missing.’

‘What did the police say?’

‘That’s just it. They didn’t say much. They put out an alert, some pictures in the paper, stating that they were worried about him, but they seemed to think he’d just run away.’ She wiped her eye. ‘I don’t think they liked it being public. He was on sick leave for stress, so it hinted that whatever happened was somehow their fault.’

‘Did he take any money out of his bank? If he was still getting his wages when he was off sick, he would have money to take out and he would need it.’

Lorna shook her head and tears appeared in her eyes again. There was the truth, and she knew it. He was dead.

‘So what about Carl?’ Joe said softly. ‘Where does he fit into all this?’

‘Carl loves his dad. Worships him. David’s a policeman, strong and protective. What teenage boy wouldn’t love a father like that?’ A smile through the tears. ‘That’s how we met, through the police. My car was broken into and David was the person who came to see me. He didn’t solve the break-in, but he was so sweet. Tall and strong, just started out in the job. I asked him out. He was a good man. Carl couldn’t cope with David walking out, and he suspected it was something to do with all of this.’ She pointed towards the clippings. ‘So he started going through it all, to try to find the answer.’ She wiped her eyes again. ‘I told him to stop, that he had schoolwork to do, but he wouldn’t listen. He became as obsessed as David, up here all the time, going through things. He started to stay out a lot, always late, and the school told me he was skipping lessons.’

‘Did Carl say where he was going the other night?’

‘He said he was going to see a friend. When he didn’t come home yesterday morning, I called the police. They told me he’d been arrested, so I came to you.’

Joe looked back towards the newspaper clippings, and to the black file covers. Two missing persons, father and son, both connected somehow to Aidan Molloy, and none of this would earn any money for the firm.

But as he looked at the shelves, he knew that the answers to whatever had happened were in those papers.

‘I want to help,’ he said.

Lorna reached out for him and put her hand on his arm. ‘Thank you,’ she said softly.

His phone beeped. He held up his hand in apology and looked at the screen. It was a message from Gina.
Where are you? Client downstairs.

Joe sighed. He knew he should go back to the office, but he was more interested in Carl Jex. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, and called Gina. When she answered, he said, ‘I won’t be back in time.’

‘Where are you? You’re not booked in the diary anywhere.’

‘I’m just checking something out.’

‘Aidan Molloy?’

He glanced at Lorna to see if she was listening, but she was gazing at the clippings on the wall, her husband’s obsession. ‘Yes. I’m with Lorna, Carl’s mother.’

There was a pause, until Gina said, ‘I know you want to make a splash, but I don’t think Tom will care. Make some money. That’s what talks with Tom.’

‘If he wants us out, there’s nothing we can do. You suck up to Tom if you want, and he might keep you on. Me? I’m gone, I know it.’

‘And what about your client?’

‘You see him and tell him to find another lawyer.’

With that, he hung up and went back to looking at the news clippings and the map on the wall. Did the locations mean something? They had meant something to David Jex, as he had drawn attention to them. Or perhaps he was just trying to find a pattern somewhere, shapes in the mist, although Joe didn’t really know why.

The files on the shelf had titles on the binders.
Statements
was prominent on seven of them, and the name of Aidan Molloy and the six remaining people listed on the missing persons reports. Each had a date written on the spine and all six people had gone missing after Aidan Molloy had been arrested. Joe shook his head. It all meant one obvious thing: David Jex didn’t think Aidan Molloy was guilty. Neither did Carl. And now both had disappeared.

Hunter drove quickly, heading to the home of Sarah Carvell’s friend, Wendy Sykes, where Sarah was supposed to have been on the night she went missing. He glanced in his mirror at Sam. ‘You’re Joe Parker’s brother, right? The defence lawyer.’

Sam was unsure whether Hunter was just making conversation; he didn’t seem the type for idle chat. ‘Yes. He’s doing well for himself.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion. He’s at Honeywells, isn’t he?’

‘Has been for a couple of years now.’

Hunter didn’t comment any further, just concentrated on his driving. Sam didn’t know if Joe’s job made things better or worse for him, in Hunter’s eyes. Did Sam get some credit for choosing the right career or was he tainted by association?

Whispers in the canteen gave defence lawyers mixed reviews. Most of the police accepted them as a necessary evil, but they thought they also derailed investigations and left victims without justice. Some played fair, but too many didn’t.

But Sam knew something else too: no one fights dirtier than a copper in trouble.

The journey wasn’t far, a couple of miles. Wendy lived in a similar house to Sarah, built on the gaps made by the bulldozing of industry, modern and clean and on a street of sweeping curves and short driveways and garages that never housed a car.

The routine was just the same. The slow walk along the path. The quiet knock on the door, as if it came with an unspoken hope that it wouldn’t be answered. But Wendy Sykes opened the door as they all did, with her face a mix of fear and shock and then tears. Another life changed for ever.

Wendy let the door swing open as she walked back into the house. She was small with short dark hair, dressed in jogging trousers and a T-shirt. She went straight to the kitchen and asked everyone to sit down at a long rectangular table. There was a slow-cooker on the side, filling the room with the aroma of warming stew.

Wendy turned to look out of the window, wiping her eyes. ‘I thought you were here about my husband, or maybe, you know…⁠’ And Sam noticed that she glanced at a picture of two smiling young boys in a small wooden frame on the wall close to her.

She was still looking out of the window when she said, ‘How did she die?’

‘We can’t tell you, I’m sorry,’ Hunter said.

‘But she was killed, right? It wasn’t an accident, or suicide?’

‘I can’t tell you very much,’ Hunter said. ‘But yes, it looks like she was murdered.’

Wendy closed her eyes at that and took a deep breath. ‘Billy?’ she asked.

‘Why do you say that?’ Hunter said, leaning forward.

She opened her eyes and turned round. ‘I don’t mean anything. I thought you always looked at the husband, that’s all.’

‘Had Sarah ever said that Billy was violent?’

Wendy shook her head. ‘No. Just the opposite. Too placid, like she wanted to shake him up a bit, that everything was a bit steady. But everyone has a snapping point.’

‘Why would Billy snap?’ Hunter said.

Wendy paused before she said, ‘No reason.’

‘Billy said Sarah was with you two nights ago. Is that correct?’

Wendy looked to the floor for a few seconds. She let a tear roll down her cheek and then said in a low voice, ‘No, she wasn’t. I stayed in.’

Hunter exchanged small nods with Weaver. Billy’s story was checking out. ‘Did you know that Sarah said she was with you?’

‘So Billy said.’

‘But why would Sarah say she was with you if she wasn’t?’

‘I don’t know. I just know I was here, so I don’t think I can help you.’ The tears had gone now, replaced by tension.

‘Did she text you or call you?’ Hunter pressed.

Wendy reached for a mobile phone that was plugged into a wall socket, charging. ‘Have a look,’ she said, and skimmed it across the table to Hunter.

Sam watched over Hunter’s shoulder as he went to the messages folder. It was blank. Too blank, as if there’d been a clear-out.

Sam held out his hand. ‘Can I have a look?’

Hunter passed him the phone. A Samsung. Sam clicked on the phone icon and went to the logs, a list of all the texts and calls received and made. All the logged calls had a contact name next to it. Wendy was right. There were none from Sarah.