The Death Collector (22 page)

His thoughts had gone to Kim Reader. She lived a couple of streets away, and being so close made him want to seek her out, to check whether she wanted a drink. He didn’t feel ready to stop.

He thumbed through his contact list. The crowd outside the bar had grown, groups of men mainly, their chatter loud but sober, just enjoying a midweek drink. As Joe looked around, he realised that he was the drunk one, the images coming in like buffering video.

When he found her, he texted her.

Joe set off walking, his eyes glancing downwards to his phone, waiting for it to buzz in his hand. When it did, he read:

He sent back:

His phone stayed quiet for a few minutes, until it buzzed and he read:

He had walked two streets and turned towards where she lived. The light was on in her apartment. Desire was driving his actions, steered by alcohol. There had been moments when they were both young law students, when drunken nights had ended in drunken sex, although it had always meant more to Joe than he had let on. Since then, when their careers re-converged in Manchester, they had skirted around each other, their contact limited to professional jousting and occasional pub sessions, but the pull had always been there. The problem was that they had never been single at the same time.

His phone buzzed again.

He was outside her apartment, looking up at the shadows of the television against her white blinds, flowers on the window sill.

Are you still there?
she texted.
I could come and meet you.

There was a pause of a few minutes, as Joe swayed on his feet.
It’s complicated
, came the response eventually.

That text made Joe close his eyes. All he had to do was ring her bell and she might let him in, and a memory of one of their nights together came back to him. Kim’s soft murmurs, the warmth of her skin, her hands pressing into his back.

But there was Simon. Joe didn’t mess around with attached women. He had felt the sting of infidelity himself. He wasn’t going to inflict it on someone else.
Complicated
wasn’t the same as being single.

He typed,
Shame. I’m in the taxi, heading home.
He paused before tapping the send button, and he looked up at the sky as it went, his words bouncing between the phone masts and ending right above him, where Kim was waiting.

Okay. Another time
, came the response.

He walked away, and although with every step it felt like he was making the wrong move, he kept on walking.

For Carl, the evening had been one of waves of images and sounds, fading in and out, tiredness and hunger making it hard to stay on his feet. He was able to press his hands against the wall to give himself some support, but he was weakening.

He thought of his mother. He had to stay strong for her.

The darkness enveloped him, magnifying the noises, something for his mind to lock onto as it swirled around, lost in some half-sleep, unsure if he was dreaming. He could hear steady breaths sometimes, as if someone was watching him closely, bathing him in their warm breath. Perhaps it was just a draught finding its way in from somewhere and mixing in with his own semi-consciousness.

Other times, he heard sounds above him. The knocks of sharp heels on a wooden floor, the creak of a chair, the distorted wail of a song. Laughter. Then it had fallen silent. Carl had tried to listen out, to keep himself awake and focused, but it had got harder as the hours passed. His head was bathed in perspiration, his clothes sticking to his chest.

Then the cellar door opened.

Carl flinched. He stood up straight, set his feet apart. The rope dug into his neck but didn’t tighten. There were loud swishing noises, the sound of something heavy being dragged, and then grunts of exertion.

Carl knew what it was before he saw it. He closed his eyes, not wanting the truth to be confirmed, but the sounds that filled his head were somehow worse. The sickening slap of bare flesh against stone steps echoed round the cellar, making him open his eyes.

The man was pulling someone, although he was visible only as a slow shadow in the light that streamed down from the open doorway. He had his hands under the person’s arms and the body jolted as he made his way down the steps. When he got to the bottom, Carl saw that it was a woman, naked. The man dragged her across a few feet more and then laid her gently on the floor. The faint light caught beads of sweat and made them glisten. It was Carl’s first proper look at his face. He saw a glare in his eyes that made him shrink back.

The man looked down at the woman’s body and said, ‘Just meat now.’

He started to pace, a moving shadow against the light. His hands went to his head, running over his hair, fast and edgy, his pacing getting faster.

Carl stamped his foot, angry for her, screeching through his gag.

The man looked up, surprised, almost as if he had forgotten Carl was there. He stepped over to him and pulled at the knot on the gag at the back of his head. He reached into Carl’s mouth to take out the rag that had muffled his screeches of horror.

Carl put his head back, swallowing, his mouth dry. ‘What have you done?’

The man gripped Carl around the jaw, forcing his head upwards. He didn’t say anything at first. He took deep breaths through his nose and pushed Carl’s head back.

‘You’re hurting me,’ Carl said, gasping.

‘You started this,’ he snarled. ‘You came looking for me. Well, you’ve found me now. Do you like what you see?’

‘You killed her,’ Carl said.

‘No, you killed her,’ the man said, gripping harder. ‘Don’t you see that? You interfered, brought it forward. Look at her.’

‘I don’t want to.’

The man gripped Carl’s jaw harder and moved to one side. ‘Look!’

Carl blinked away a tear. He couldn’t see much. Just a dark outline on the floor.

‘She’s just a piece of meat now,’ the man said. ‘All stiff and pink like pork. There’s no soul, nothing special. We all come down to this in the end. Slabs of meat.’

Carl looked again as his eyes got used to the faint glow of light. He could make out her pale skin, her limbs flaccid, and fought against the rise of bile in his throat.

The man pushed Carl’s head back again, knocking him into the wall. Carl rocked backwards. The rope dug into his neck. ‘So what do I do with you?’ the man said. ‘I can’t let you go.’

‘You can. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.’

‘Why would you do that? You’ve nothing to lose by talking. Not like her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You want a lesson in life? How’s this: we all pretend. Take Emma here. If all she wanted was fun, why choose me? Fun is transient, meaningless. We were more than that. No,
I’m
more than that, and she said she was too, that she wanted more than just a fling. We connected. I was the man for her. I made her laugh, was the witty and intelligent guy for her. I could be whoever she wanted me to be. That’s how I am. Emma wanted to feel the strong arms of someone round her, just a trace of the passion she used to feel for her husband. I gave her that, but still it wasn’t enough. How could she say that?’

‘But if she was married, she was never going to be yours.’

‘You’re so naïve,’ the man said. ‘Marriage kills passion. It burns out the fires until there is nothing left except resentment and loneliness and bitterness. People who pretend otherwise are lying to themselves.’

‘My parents were happy,’ Carl said.

The man shook his head slowly. ‘No, they weren’t. They just pretended they were for your benefit, to keep you feeling safe and secure, so you didn’t have to worry about all the shit that heads your way in life. I mean, how often did you hear them laugh, and I mean really laugh?’ Carl didn’t respond. ‘Never is my guess. Emma was the same, and I was going to rescue her. I wanted to show her a different way, to explore all her dark corners. We all have them, you know, those hidden desires we won’t tell anyone. All she had to do was expose herself to me, show that it wasn’t just some romp, that it was no cheap thing. She had to give herself to me, surrender everything. Let me know her every thought, every fear, so that I had her completely and she was unable to go back.’

‘And once you had that?’

‘I’d let her go.’

‘Dump her, you mean.’

The man laughed, although it came out as a sneer. ‘What else would there be for me to see? I brought her out of herself, found the real Emma. It was my gift to her.’

Carl’s mind was racing. The man seemed less hostile in this frenzied state. If he could keep him talking, perhaps there was a way out. ‘It sounds like a game,’ he said. ‘You make her love you just so you can mistreat her. But she would have given up everything she had for you, ruined her own life.’

‘But she wouldn’t give herself up, so I had to rescue her twice over.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I rescued her once, when I showed her the real Emma, but do you think I could let her go back to her life, the one she had? Empty, soulless. It would kill her from the inside, except she wouldn’t even know she was dying, because it would be slow and lingering. But still she clung onto it, always scared, because one wrong telephone call from me, a careless word in someone’s ear and all she had would have been gone. Her home. Family.’ He smiled, as if he was proud of himself. ‘So I’ve rescued her again. She’s free now.’

Carl looked over at Emma’s prone form and anger crept in. ‘You don’t collect,’ he said. ‘You destroy, like those people who say they love butterflies when really they just want them dead and pinned inside a frame. If you can’t destroy a person by breaking them, you kill them.’

The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘If you collect, you don’t give away.’ He cocked his head. ‘Maybe I’m not a collector? Perhaps I’m just a thief? I like to collect other people’s things.’

‘But it won’t last for ever,’ Carl said. ‘They might trace her to you and they’ll come down here and find me.’

The man clenched his jaw before yanking on the rope and drawing it tight. ‘You’re not making a convincing case for being kept alive.’

Carl gasped. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, panic clear in his voice. ‘I won’t say anything like that again. But it’s a good question. How do you know they can’t trace me to you?’

The man’s eyes flickered at that. ‘Can they?’

‘I found you, didn’t I?’

‘Ha! That’s what you’re holding out for? The rescue. The white knight on his charger. So let’s speed things up a bit.’

The man reached for his waistband and Carl heard the same swish as he had earlier in the night, the sound of a knife being drawn from a leather sheath.

He waited for the blade to appear under his chin again. It didn’t. It came at him lower down, just above his knee.

The man leaned in so that he could whisper into Carl’s ear. ‘Can you feel the knife? Just one thrust. How long would you last on one leg?’

‘Don’t hurt me, please,’ Carl said, tears running down his face.

‘These walls are filled with memories. I’m going to lose them all now, because of you. Shouldn’t I let you share my pain?’

‘No, no, it doesn’t have to be like this.’

Carl shrieked as the blade pierced the skin on his leg and moved down towards his kneecap. Blood soaked his trousers. It felt like flames as the knife was dragged through his skin, until the man pulled it out eventually and wiped the blade on Carl’s clothes.

Carl gritted his teeth in pain.

‘There, I’m helping you,’ the man said. ‘Your legs might give up a bit sooner now. If this is hell for you, that cut might end it more quickly by getting you swinging. Until then, think of the pain you’ve caused. If you’re still around the next time I come down, I’ll help you a little more.’

‘No, please, don’t,’ Carl said, sobbing, desperate to bend down but prevented by the rope.

‘Don’t you see?’ the man said. ‘I’m giving you the power, making it your choice when you go. A lot to take in at your age, but you have no idea how much pain you have caused me. I’m just spreading it around.’

With that, the man pushed the gag back into Carl’s mouth and turned and walked out of the cellar, slamming the door shut at the top of the stairs. Carl tried to stay balanced on one leg, sobbing, swaying, feeling the rope grip a little tighter.

As the darkness settled around him, the silence broken only by his own sobs, Carl could think of nothing else but the agony radiating from his leg that prevented him from putting his foot down.

It would all be over soon.

The low rumble of tyres almost numbed Sam to sleep as he completed the last part of the journey onto the moors.

The argument with Alice was still in his head, but it had been pushed away by the compulsion he felt to find out why the crime scene troubled him. For Sam, the location was important, even if Hunter disregarded it and was interested in no one else but Sarah Carvell’s husband. Charlotte’s words stayed with him: X marks the spot.