The Death Collector (7 page)

He held up the leaflet and said, ‘I’ll read all about it,’ before walking on.

He looked back at her as he went. Her smile had gone, her face reset into a mask of determination. He was going to go back and ask if she knew anything about Carl Jex, but he knew that it would lead to questions that he had refused to answer for Carl’s own mother.

Joe looked at the leaflet.

It was glossy and double-sided. One side was filled with a picture of Aidan Molloy, an awkward-looking young man with too much weight around his cheeks and a thin smile, along with the shouted proclamation of innocence that adorned the A-board behind Aidan’s mother. He turned it over to read the other side.

It was long on passion but short on facts, an impassioned plea from a desperate mother. It could all be true, but Joe knew too well from his own court experiences that it could be nothing more than disbelief, that clinging onto the idea of injustice was preferable to the reality that her son had murdered someone.

He had to forget about it. Gina was right. Forget about Carl. Forget about Aidan Molloy. Do the paperwork and move on.

He stopped as he heard his name being called, and as he looked up he saw his brother, Sam, walking towards him. Kim Reader was just behind him, smiling.

Joe returned the smile. Sam thought it was meant for him, so he smiled along too, and then said, ‘We were talking about you earlier, and here you are.’

‘This is my area of the city,’ Joe said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Just a case that needed to go before a judge, to get some witness summonses.’

‘Hope it’s not one of my cases,’ Joe said. ‘I don’t want you making them any stronger,’ and then to Kim, ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, and she moved her bag to her left shoulder, her hand on the strap. She was blushing, glancing at Sam.

Sam saw the exchange and said to Kim, ‘I’ll let you two talk. Catch me up.’

Once Sam had walked on a few yards, she said, ‘How are you, Joe?’

‘You know, the usual.’

‘I haven’t seen much of you.’

‘I’ve thought the same of you.’

‘You know where to find me,’ she said.

‘And you me,’ he said.

He wanted to say more but didn’t know what. He and Kim had been intimate in the past, a few drunken nights at college, a little flirting across the courtroom, but their timing had always been out. They were never single at the same time, and Joe didn’t do infidelity.

Instead, he smiled at her dopily until Kim pointed to the leaflet in his hand and asked, ‘You taking the case on?’

Joe looked back towards Aidan’s mother, who had resumed her position, trying to interest passers-by. ‘I was just interested in what she had to say.’

Kim followed his gaze. ‘She used to come to our office, asking us to look again at the case, but it’s been gone through so many times. So she started going more public.’

‘Those closest to offenders often see things the least clearly,’ Joe said.

‘That was my line,’ Kim said, and then smiled ruefully. ‘It’s sad, though. I’m sure she means well, but she needs to move on and accept what he did.’

‘Would you, in her shoes?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps when I’ve children of my own, I’ll see things differently.’

‘Or less clearly,’ Joe said.

She moved as if to go, but then hesitated, placing her left hand on his arm and giving it a squeeze. ‘It’s good to see you again, Joe.’

‘Yeah, you too.’

Then he noticed her hand as he looked down. Something wasn’t right. There was a half-smile on her lips. She wasn’t wearing an engagement ring any more.

Kim let go and started to walk after Sam. Joe was going to say something, but for a moment he couldn’t think of the right words. So he watched her go, talking to Sam as they walked back towards the prosecution offices.

Joe’s walk back to his own office had more bounce than before. Seeing Kim had given him a spark that had been missing.

He read the leaflet again. His thoughts returned to Carl Jex and the secrets he had promised to reveal, somehow related to Aidan Molloy. And now, just a few hours later, Carl was missing.

Then Joe realised something else: for the first time in a while he was interested in his job.

Sam Parker arrived back at the police station, an old redbrick building that was due to be sold, part of the drive to find savings in the budget. It was crumbling slowly, but the Murder Squad occupied the first floor, using the rooms at the furthest end. It had no front desk, nowhere for the public to make any complaints. The squad just provided a reason to heat the building to stop it getting damp.

The walk down the corridor was along a ragged blue carpet worn thin over the years and past rooms filled mostly with boxes, the walls decorated with old posters, some faded and stuck fast to the walls, others hanging from one corner so that they flapped in whatever draughts blew through the building.

He put his head round the doorway of DI Evans’s office. She was working her way through some kind of noodle dish that had been brought to life by the kettle.

‘I’ve got the witness summonses,’ he said, waving the pieces of paper.

She looked up, her trouser suit grey, her hair grey and short, her face tired-looking. ‘Good. Get them served.’

‘I thought I’d get a uniform to do it.’

Evans raised one eyebrow and shook her head slowly. ‘In a murder case, where we need those witnesses so much? I don’t think so. Start this afternoon.’

Sam stifled his sigh. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, and went into the main squad room, heading for his usual seat in the corner, closest to the windows, so that his computer screen was often bleached out by the sun. In summer, the heat through the window made his shirt cling to his back and in winter the wind blew in around the old sash frames and made his neck ache from the cold. It was all the fun of being the newest on the team.

Charlotte looked up from behind the screen opposite and smiled, her white teeth and light brown skin framed by black curls that tumbled down to the light blue of her suit. ‘How was your trip to the courtroom?’

Sam shrugged. ‘It was okay. Got a grilling from the judge about what we had done to persuade the witnesses to go to the trial, but Kim said he was always going to issue the summonses. He wouldn’t let nervous witnesses derail a case.’

‘So now these decent people, who were just there when it all happened, have the threat of prison if they don’t get in the witness box against violent gangsters?’

‘That’s the way it has to be,’ Sam said. ‘Do you want them to get away with it?’

‘Honest opinion?’ Charlotte said, her eyebrows raised, tweezed to a thin arch. ‘It doesn’t matter whether we convict the killer or not. There’s one dead gangster and another one will replace him. Sometimes a jostle for power makes it worse. For some of these lads, it’s the only prospect they have. Some money. Some status.’

‘And some prison, and some danger.’

‘That’s just part of their life, but these witnesses will spend a large part of their lives scared now, just for doing the right thing.’

‘It’s a civic duty,’ Sam said. ‘That’s what the judge said, and he’s right.’

‘Okay, okay, I give in,’ Charlotte said, grinning.

Sam pointed towards a small pile of papers on her desk. ‘Anything new here?’

She shook her head. ‘Couple of missing person reports. They’ve been mentioned to us but not getting any attention just yet. Been told to be aware of them, that’s all, in case they escalate. One of them has got Hunter twitching, though.’

Sam looked over her shoulder to the DCI in the other corner of the room, who was tapping a pen on the desk and staring at a screen. ‘How come?’

‘Do you remember David Jex?’

Sam frowned, and then he remembered. ‘The detective who went missing?’

‘That’s the one,’ Charlotte said. ‘I worked on the same team as him when I first started out. He worked with Hunter until about a year ago, when he requested a transfer and ended up on community policing. Then six months ago, he just went missing.’

‘Breakdown?’

‘So they reckon. Some rumours about becoming withdrawn, as if something was on his mind. I don’t know what his wife puts in their food, but she called in earlier saying that now her son has gone missing.’

‘That’s unusual,’ Sam said, intrigue creasing his forehead.

‘Not really. He was arrested last night for being a peeping Tom. Just a kid and probably too ashamed to go home.’

‘Yeah, maybe. What’s the other?’

‘Some married woman who went out all dolled up and never came home.’

Sam gave a wry smile at that. ‘Someone slept in and too scared to go home to her husband?’

‘That’s my guess. That’s at the bottom of the list. So what now for you?’

Sam held the witness summonses in the air. ‘Going to spoil a few people’s evenings and drop these on the witnesses.’

‘Beats sitting in here. Why did you come back?’

‘I was hoping to get a uniform to do it. Evans said no. And anyway, my sandwiches are in the fridge.’

‘How very rock ’n’ roll,’ she said, laughing.

He grinned. ‘I eat, and then it’s back on the mean streets, playing at postman.’

Joe saw out the day by answering correspondence and going through his filing cabinet, writing chase-up letters to clients, reminding them of appointments they wouldn’t keep and court dates they would forget. He had to keep the paper trail going to make sure they couldn’t blame him, because when they got lifted on a fail-to-appear warrant they would try to do just that; their need to get free was always stronger than the desire to protect Joe. He visited their lives in brief patches and he was forgotten about as quickly as he had been needed.

He tried not to think too much about what the senior partner, Tom, had said about thinning the workforce. He would make his decision when he was forced, and a big case might yet rescue him – something like a large fraud, which would keep Tom from carrying out his threat for a while.

Joe didn’t move as he listened to the office wind to a close, the secretaries saying their goodbyes, the clerks not far behind. He could go, he knew that, and he was too tired to do much more, but he was waiting to be alone.

So he drank coffee to keep himself awake and listened as the main door closed and the final farewells were said. He turned in his chair to watch them head back to the home lives that Joe hoped he wouldn’t wreck. When all he had left was the tick of the clock in his office and the noise of the traffic that filtered through his window, he moved the mouse on his computer to bring up the screen again.

He opened the client search facility. He went to the archive section, just a drop-down tab, and typed in ‘Molloy’. There were a few, but only one Aidan. He had a file number and a location.

The archive files were kept in the basement for three years before being stored off site until they received their destruction date another three years after that. Except for the murder files, because murder files never go quiet. Aidan Molloy’s file was in the cellar.

As Joe went down the stairs that swept into the reception area, the office was quiet apart from the faint chatter of one of the family lawyers working late; there was always someone willing to put in the hours, and it was better for a career to do it late than do it early. No one spots the early starters.

The way to the cellar was down a set of stairs just off the reception. It was a well-worn stairway as it was also the route to the staff toilets and a small kitchen. Beyond that there were rows of shelving that stored the files that shuffled their way along until they reached the date when they were shipped out to the external storage.

Joe rarely went into that part of the cellar; there were other people who located old files if ever there was a need. He clicked on the light, a pull switch that turned on a dusty yellow bulb, a cobweb arching to the ceiling. The room smelled of damp paper and it made his nose itch.

As he went through the room, he tried to make sense of the system. The archive number was different to the client number, and seemed to be based on the destruction date. Only murder cases were kept separate. Unlike the victims, murder cases never died. A prisoner always wanted to proclaim his innocence, and for as long as they did, they would stay in prison. It was a high-risk strategy, that an eventual finding of innocence would set them free, but people wanted to leave prison without a stain and with no life-licence hanging over them, as if they couldn’t trust themselves not to do it again. The murder files were kept in the cellar so that no slim chance of a quashed conviction was given up to the shredder.