The Death Collector (29 page)

Nicole let the silence drag on, broken only by the loud giggle of a small girl on a swing.

‘Dan and I didn’t live together then,’ she said eventually. ‘We had to find places if we wanted some privacy.’ She blushed. ‘You know how it is.’

‘So you were looking for somewhere quiet?’

‘I’m not ashamed. We were younger, just having fun, and there’s a track you can drive down with some old derelict cottage at the bottom. It says private but the gate was never locked, and you only had to go a short distance to be hidden from the road. We used to go up there a lot, but we stopped after we found her, Rebecca. It didn’t feel right after that.’

‘So what did you see?’

‘It was just like Dan said. We were pulling in but there was a car already there. We stopped, but then someone ran to the car and drove away really quickly. He almost scraped our car as he went past and headed towards Manchester, not the way we’d come. When we drove further in, our headlights caught Rebecca.’ She shook her head. ‘It was awful. It was just as if she’d been dumped there like an old mattress. I’ll never forget it.’

‘So what did you get wrong?’

‘The car. We got the car wrong.’

‘But Dan seemed so certain.’

‘I know. He is, but he wasn’t at the time, and now he’s convinced himself.’

‘So tell me.’

‘It wasn’t a blue Astra, like we said. It was a red Ford Focus.’

‘That’s quite a difference.’

‘It wasn’t bright red. A dark red, and with a quick look in the dark you might say it was dark blue. And they are similar-looking hatchbacks.’

‘So it could have been a blue Astra?’

Nicole shook her head. ‘I might be a woman but I know about cars. I like them, always have, but why would I know? I’m just the woman who gets ignored in car showrooms; the salesmen talk to Dan, even if I’m the one who’s buying. So why listen to me when I said it wasn’t a blue Astra?’

‘But if you were so certain?’

‘I got scared and doubted myself. That detective explained it that way; it was dark and a quick glimpse and perhaps I was wrong. The killer has a blue Astra, so I backed down. He told me that he would get away with it if I created doubt, and that he was the killer and we had to stick to the story or else he would be freed to do it again.’

‘But your car was wrong.’

‘I know, but Dan was less sure than I was. He didn’t get as good a view because he was driving and then he was distracted by the body. I watched the car for longer and I know what I saw.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘So I lied, and Dan said that I was doing the right thing. The police said I was doing the right thing. How could I live with letting Rebecca’s murderer go free just because I said it was a different car? He might have swapped cars or borrowed one.’

‘What about the partial registration?’

Nicole shook her head. ‘We didn’t get a partial registration. Not really anyway. The police told us what the letters might have been and we just went along with it.’

‘The car was part of the jigsaw,’ Joe said. ‘You were a witness. All you had to do was tell the truth and let the facts determine the outcome.’

She looked at Joe, suspicion in her eyes. ‘It’s different for people like you,’ she said. ‘It’s all a game. The police said we were making sure a murderer stayed locked up and that we would stop him from doing it again. How could we fight against that?’

‘Who was the officer?’

Nicole thought for a moment. ‘Hunter,’ she said.

He should have guessed.

‘Will I get into trouble?’ she said.

He thought about that. He could lie and say no, that justice would prevail, but he couldn’t do that. Five years earlier she was certain it was a blue Astra. Now she was certain it was a red Focus. All that was certain was that she had lied.

But it wasn’t enough to get Aidan out of prison. No, he had to find out more – perhaps even find the real killer – and for that he needed something more than a person who changed her mind a few years later.

Emma had stayed silent for a long time. Whether she was groggy, or was just trying to work out what had happened, Carl wasn’t sure, but she had stayed curled up against the wall. He had tried pleading with her to speak, to remove the noose, but she had remained silent.

He jumped when she said, ‘Is there a light in here?’

‘There’s a lamp on a table just over there,’ he said.

Emma made her way carefully to it, the table moving with a scrape as she found it. She felt around the base before finding the switch. Carl squinted into the glare. He could only guess at how he looked, standing with a noose around his neck.

‘Help me, please,’ he said.

She went as if to rush over to him, but she gasped and put her hand to head. ‘My head hurts,’ she said. ‘And I’m so cold.’

She put her arms around herself, as if to warm herself, and then went to him. She pulled at the rope, loosening the knot and slipping it over his head. He sank to his knees in relief, gasping and falling to one side, enjoying the feel of the cold floor against his cheek. His legs felt like they were on fire as they got used to not taking his weight, blood flowing through his cramped muscles again.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

He moved his head to get a better view of her.

She was on her knees, huddled, rocking backwards and forwards, her teeth chattering.

‘I think he threw my coat in the corner over there,’ Carl said. ‘It will keep you warm, and, well, you know, cover you up.’

Emma nodded and walked quickly over to the opposite corner of the cellar. She found Carl’s coat and put it on. She was slim and the coat was too big for her, so she was able to cover herself up properly. She wrapped it tightly around her body, her mousey hair trailing over the collar.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and ran to the stairs. When she got to the top, she pulled on the door handle, but it was no good. The door was locked. She banged against it with her shoulder, but the door didn’t move. She sat down on the top step with her head in her hands and started to cry. ‘What’s going on?’ she shouted through the tears, and stamped her foot twice, before whimpering with pain.

Carl let her cry for a while before he said, ‘He thinks you’re dead.’ She stopped crying for a moment and looked down at him. ‘That’s why you’re here. He was going to get rid of you later.’

‘Dead? But why?’

‘Because you were going to leave him.’

She shook her head in disbelief. ‘What a fucking mess,’ she said, more to herself than to Carl. Then she looked across the cellar. ‘And why are you here, like that? Is this some kind of sick game?’

‘I got too close, so he locked me up. He hasn’t decided what to do with me yet. I think he’s going to kill me but I’m different to you.’

‘How?’

‘I’m not a woman.’

‘It’s as simple as that?’

‘It seems that way.’

Emma paused as she thought about that. Then she walked over to him and knelt down opposite. She stayed silent for a few minutes and Carl didn’t try to interrupt her thoughts. Eventually she said, ‘So tell me what you know?’

And Carl did. He explained to her about his father and why he had ended up at the man’s house and then in the cellar, with a dead woman to start off with and how he had watched the man drag Emma down the stairs.

‘He must think he killed you, but for some reason he got it wrong.’

‘There was something in my drink. One minute we’re dancing, the next I’m down here.’ Her hand went to her throat. ‘It hurts,’ and then, ‘What now?’

Carl thought about what the man would do when he came back into the cellar, and he knew that there was only one thing he would do: kill her. ‘We need to sit and wait for him to come back, then hopefully surprise him. Can you find anything to break these chains with?’

Emma went looking through the shelves, lifting up tins of paint and boxes of weedkiller. ‘It’s just household stuff.’ She carried on searching before shouting out in pain, lifting her foot. She winced and bent down. ‘There’s broken glass down here.’

Carl closed his eyes in apology. The glass he had smashed earlier.

Emma carried on looking around the shelves until she said, ‘No, nothing.’

She knelt down next to Carl and pulled the coat closer to herself. ‘So what do we do?’

‘We wait, I suppose.’

They both stayed in silence for a few minutes, until Carl said, ‘Who is he?’

Emma thought about that for a few moments. ‘I don’t know really,’ she said. ‘He told me he was called Declan, but I don’t know if I believe that any more. Most of what he told me wasn’t true. Why should I believe his name?’

‘So how did it start?’

Emma looked at him and said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘My dad went missing because of whatever this Declan does. If I’m going to understand this, I need to know how it works.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘So you won’t understand.’

‘My father is missing and I want to know everything about this man, so I can try to understand that at least.’

When Emma didn’t respond, Carl said, ‘He told me that he’s a collector, whatever that means, and that once he collects, he doesn’t give up.’

‘That’s about right,’ Emma said, almost to herself, her lips curled into a snarl. ‘It’s not too difficult to imagine, is it, even for someone of your age. Good old-fashioned flattery, and I fell for it. I feel so stupid.’

‘Tell me more.’

Emma was quiet again for a few minutes, until she said, ‘I work in a pub in the city centre. Nothing special. It’s a cliché, isn’t it, a barmaid going out with a customer? But Declan wasn’t like the usual drunken crowd.’

‘How?’

‘He was intelligent, thoughtful, well-dressed. He’s big but there’s something soft about him. No, not soft. Feminine. He always wore nice jumpers and shirts, and it was his shoes I noticed. Always brown brogues, with leather soles. I could tell they were expensive, but nothing flashy. Declan was always expensive but understated. It just marked him out as different.’

‘So what made him choose your pub?’

‘I don’t know. He just came in one lunchtime and started drinking and talking. I thought at first he was trying to be cool by hanging around with people who he thought were beneath him, but he made an effort. He seemed interested in people, didn’t seem to look down on anyone, and he knew stuff. It’s hard to explain, but he would just seem to know about whatever people were interested in. He seemed to latch onto me straight away. I don’t know what it was. My shifts changed and he started coming in the evenings. Never getting drunk. Just sitting at the end of the bar, drinking quietly, and I would end up talking to him. He was interesting, but it was more than that. He was interested in me. Wanted to know about me.’ She shrugged and looked down, embarrassed. ‘I was flattered. How stupid is that?’

‘So you became his girlfriend?’

She thrust her hands into the coat pockets. ‘Not straight away. I’m married. Two children. I love my husband, I really do, but it was too safe. You’ll understand this when you’re older. He does his thing, I do mine, and we both make sure the children are all right, but I felt taken for granted, ignored, and there was Declan. Always telling me how nice I looked, always interested in me, and I liked it. It’s vain and it’s silly, I know, but when you get complimented all the time you don’t want it to stop. It wasn’t long before he started asking me out.’

‘What about your children? I’d be hurt if my mum did that.’

‘Don’t judge me, Carl. That’s not fair. You don’t know anything about life. I said no for a long time, months really, but he seemed determined. He got my number from somewhere and would text me constantly. Late at night and in the morning. I fought it for a while but then he told me he wouldn’t accept my refusal, and soon it got to the point where I didn’t want him to stop. You might understand this more when you’re older, but sometimes it’s just nice to hear good things said about you when your life is all about working and making meals and watching television. So eventually, well, I’m sure you can guess.’

‘So how did it come to this, where he tried to kill you?’ Carl asked. ‘He said it was because you were going to leave him.’

Emma wiped away a tear that snaked down her cheek. ‘I had to end it, and he didn’t understand. When I first started seeing him, he was a real gentleman, and it got pretty intense. He told me he could take me away from everything, that all I had to do was give myself up to him. I just couldn’t get enough of him. I thought of him all the time, but then he started to change.’

‘How?’

‘He knew my situation, right, I told him that. I didn’t want to leave my husband, but he wanted me to, and you have no idea how exhilarating it is to have a man want you so much. But then he got more demanding. Too demanding. He wanted me to do things that I didn’t like. Sexual stuff. You wouldn’t understand, you’re too young, and I wouldn’t leave my husband. It sounds hollow, but my family comes first every time. I just wanted to be cherished. Is that so wrong?’

‘So what happened?’

Emma raised a hand to her face and wiped away more tears. ‘I caught him out, just by chance. I had a night off when I was supposed to be at work, about a month ago, and I went for a drink with some friends. We went into a pub and I saw him at the bar, and he was talking to the barmaid just like he did with me. Attentive, smiling, and I could tell from her face that she was lapping it up, just like I had. I felt such a fool. He had wanted me to give up everything for him, but I was just another woman, part of a game. I almost lost everything because of him.’