Next to Die (33 page)

Sam tensed but kept his focus on the page.

‘Is she still safe? I presume so, or else you wouldn’t be here. You’d be grieving again, except then you’d be all out of sisters, and your mother, well, she’s too old to try for another little sister for you.’ Grant tried to catch Sam’s eye, dipping his head right down. ‘Or would that be for me?’

Sam felt the blood rush to his cheeks, his fists clenched on the page. The room seemed to contract, only Grant in focus, Sam’s chest tightening. All he could think of then was Grant, of how he would feel as he went to the floor, Grant’s blood wet on his knuckles. The only thing stopping him from leaping over the desk was the knowledge, just nudging him, that it was exactly what Grant wanted.

A soft hand went around his forearm. Sam looked over. It was Charlotte. She gave a slight shake of the head. Don’t let him get to you.

Charlotte let go of Sam and said, ‘All right, you’ve got our attention. Now talk to us.’

Grant smirked and said, ‘So why do you want to speak to me again?’

‘I want to know why you lied to me yesterday,’ Sam said.

Grant’s eyes stayed on Charlotte. Sam didn’t know if he was doing it because she turned him on, or whether he was just trying to make her uncomfortable.

Sam banged on the table. ‘This way, Grant,’ and he pointed towards himself. ‘Talk to me.’

Grant sat back and folded his arms. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘You told me yesterday how you killed your sister,’ Sam said. ‘I hope you got off on it. Because I didn’t. My inspector didn’t either. You never had a sister. So forgive us if we don’t waste our time on that. We are a little bit busy right now. I’m sure you’ll understand. Like you said yesterday, you’ve got all the time in the world. Ours is a little more precious.’

Grant laughed. ‘I told you, all you needed to know was in what I said to you yesterday, but seeing as you’re too stupid to work it out, I feel like I wasted my time.’

Sam bowed his head to him. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, but I don’t have the intellect that you do.’

‘Don’t be sarcastic,’ Grant said.

‘Isn’t that why you want us here?’ Sam said. ‘To admire you? So go on, tell me what I’m missing.’

Grant stayed silent.

‘All this about my sister,’ Sam continued. ‘Not just my poor dead sister, but the sister I still have. That’s just you telling me that you know about me, which can’t be too hard, can it? It’s an open world now, information available at the click of a mouse. So you can use a computer.’ Sam started a slow handclap. ‘I’m impressed. But what else is there, Grant? What am I missing?’

Grant’s cheeks flushed but still he stayed silent.

Sam looked to Charlotte, who gave a small shrug. They both stood up. ‘See you around, Grant,’ Sam said, and then turned as if to go, before he stopped. ‘No, sorry, I won’t, will I, because you’re in here, and I’m not.’

‘I’m out there with you,’ Grant said, his voice low and cold. ‘Just you remember that.’

‘How are you with me?’ Sam said. ‘Because you try to get in my head?’ He scoffed. ‘Bullshit.’

‘Do you know what the ultimate power trip is?’ Grant said.

‘Go on, enlighten me.’

‘Sit down again and we’ll talk.’

Sam paused for a moment, and then sat down, Charlotte alongside him. ‘Our patience is wearing thin.’

They both considered Grant, who glared back at them. Sam had rattled him.

‘Have you ever been betrayed?’ Grant said. ‘Betrayal makes people lash out. Perhaps it affected how I spoke to you, what I said.’

‘Who’s betrayed you?’ Sam said.

‘Killing isn’t what you think, you know,’ Grant said.

‘What’s this got to do with betrayal?’

‘Everything to do with it. So tell me, how do you think killing feels?’

‘How do you know I think about it at all?’

‘Because you do. Everyone does. You’d like to kill me right now, I can tell. It’s only what you would call human decency that stops you. But you wouldn’t enjoy it.’

‘Why not?’ Sam said. ‘I can’t help but think that I’d enjoy your suffering.’

‘No, you wouldn’t, because it’s all in the planning and the memory. It’s the anticipation that gives you the tingle, the excitement of what’s going to happen, but when it actually happens, you would be too much in the moment. You can’t relish it, because the adrenalin floods in, and so it’s like streams of images rushing at you, almost as if it’s happening to someone else. No, it’s the anticipation, and then the reliving. The actual killing is just a means to an end, a realisation.’

‘So what’s the ultimate power trip?’

‘Letting someone enjoy it with you.’

Sam flinched. The night of Grant’s arrest flooded back again. Grant much younger, Sam more raw.

Grant smiled. ‘You always knew that,’ he said to Sam. ‘Right from when you found me, leaving my last little parcel. You’ve always known that there was someone else there, hiding in the bushes.’

‘No, that isn’t right,’ Sam said.

‘Isn’t it? I remember how you looked at me. You were scared, your little torch trembling in your hand, but still you looked when you heard something. Your torch twitched that way, but then you remembered me and shone it back. What had you heard? The bushes rustling? Footsteps? Did you put it down to a bird flying off, or was it just the wind, your mind working too quickly, making moving shapes out of night shadows?’ Grant started to cackle. ‘You never mentioned it, did you? Like a scared little boy. I remember the trial. Do you remember when you were asked whether I was alone? Do you remember your answer?’

Sam swallowed. ‘Of course I remember my answer, because it was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There was no one else there. I didn’t see anyone. There was no proof of anyone.’

‘Proof? Demanding proof is what the guilty say, you know that, because the innocent protest it. So you only go on proof, policeman? You don’t rely on hunches or gut instincts, or whatever else you say makes you so fucking special?’ Grant tapped his head again. ‘But in here, it’s not about proof, because you go through it every time you hear my name.’ Grant’s eyes narrowed. ‘I remember your twitch as I came towards you, as I knelt before you. Your eyes flashed to the bushes, because you heard the same thing that I did. Movement. Except that I knew what it was.’

‘There was no one there.’

Grant waved his hand dismissively. ‘You were never going to admit it. You’d caught the beast, the monster. Why would you spoil it by admitting that someone else had got away?’

‘So this is the new tactic, is it, Grant? Deflection? You’re trying to lessen your guilt. What for? Some parole bid? Try to convince everyone that you’re not the bad guy everyone thinks you are, that you were led astray?’

‘Oh, I’m a bad guy, all right. Baddest of them all. It’s what I can do to others that gives me the hard on.’ He grinned. ‘To see someone else act out your own fantasies, some regular person, drawn in and converted, that’s the real thrill. I get everything then. The anticipation, the build up, and then the act itself, because I’m not the one in the moment, so I can enjoy it. And afterwards, I get the memories too. But more than that, I get to see the person grow, to change. It’s exhilarating. Now that, Mr Parker, is power.’

‘You’re sick.’

‘Yep, a real beast, but there’s something you don’t know, and that is there is no greater enthusiast than the recently converted, because for all the thrill I get, they get the pleasure of pleasing me too.’

‘So you had an accomplice all along?’ Charlotte asked.

‘Everyone has an accomplice, my dear, that little thing that makes you behave like you do. Sometimes it’s your background, or the life you lead, or maybe even those little voices that scratch you in the back of the head, like a symphony to your fantasies, but they’re all still accomplices.’

‘Okay, was it someone physical?’ she said. ‘A real person? Is that who betrayed you?’

Grant wagged his finger at her. ‘I like you. You’re clever. I’m going to have some fun with you later. Tell me, how are you, just so I can imagine you properly? Do you like it rough, someone dominant, holding you down, or are you one of those needy types? Needs a kiss and a cuddle, slow and loving?’

‘Who was your accomplice, Mr Grant?’ Charlotte said, her voice firmer. ‘Ronnie Bagley?’

‘Betrayal, remember,’ Grant said, his eyes narrowed. ‘That’s what it was about.’

Sam shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. Who betrayed you?’

Grant folded his arms. The silence grew until it became obvious that they were not going to get anything else out of him.

‘I’ll be back, Grant,’ Sam said.

Grant kept his eyes on Charlotte. ‘What, when the body count goes up?’ He smiled. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

Fifty-Five

Joe looked up at the house where Ronnie’s mother lived. A small stone house with thick stone windowsills and a door that was too small for Joe to fit through whilst standing straight. Ronnie had been bailed to live there and he wasn’t answering his phone.

He banged on the door and then paced back and forth as he waited. He needed to find Ronnie. Ruby was in danger and Ronnie was at the centre of it all. Ronnie had wanted Joe all along, but he blamed Joe for something Joe didn’t understand.

The house was in the lower part of Marton, nearer the railway line, the town divided by the large hill that created the valley side. The part of the town at the top of the hill had the views and the grand old houses, which was where Ronnie and Carrie had lived. The lower part, along the valley floor, was where all the workers’ cottages were, so their occupants were the ones who choked on the smoke in the days when mills and factories clogged up the town.

The door opened and Ronnie’s mother stood there.

‘Mrs Bagley, is Ronnie in?’

She looked up and down the street and then shook her head. ‘He hasn’t really been living here,’ she said, her voice quiet and shaky.

‘What do you mean? He has to live here. That’s what the judge ordered.’

‘That’s between Ronnie and the judge.’

‘So where does he go?’

‘I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me anything.’

‘We need to talk,’ Joe said.

She paused and then turned to go into the house.

Joe followed, squinting in the murkiness of the hallway as the door closed behind him. The house seemed brown throughout. The carpet, the light brown of the wallpaper, the paintwork yellowed through age. When he went into the living room, he spotted the silver cardboard of a cigarette packet and realised that the colouring wasn’t just through ageing.

As he sat down, she took a cigarette out of the packet, and the air became murkier still as she lit it and blew smoke into the room.

‘You must have some idea where he goes?’ Joe said.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t ask. He doesn’t tell me.’ When Joe frowned, she said, ‘I didn’t ask for him to come here. This was your idea, or that girl who called me. She said Ronnie would stay in prison if I didn’t help. What could I do?’

‘He’s your son. We ask the family in cases like this. Why, do you have a problem with him?’

She took a long pull on her cigarette, before saying, ‘He’s not right. He is… how can I say it? He’s unnatural.’

‘What do you mean, “unnatural”?’

‘That he has unnatural instincts. Didn’t he tell you about them? How I’ve had to put up with people at my door, shouting about how he upsets people, young women, because he follows them around? Stroking their hair on buses, in shops, watching them outside their houses. He isn’t right. Never has been. Ever since, well,’ and she paused, before saying, ‘well, things have happened.’

Joe looked around the room, small, cluttered with cheap ornaments and photograph frames. Ronnie wasn’t in any of them. There was a young woman though. Pretty, long-haired, smiling.

‘Who’s the girl?’ Joe said, pointing at the frames, remembering Sam’s words from before.

Mrs Bagley looked over and Joe noticed the clench of her jaw. ‘That’s Ronnie’s sister.’ She took another long drag. ‘That was part of Ronnie’s unnatural behaviour.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You need to know what sort of man you’re helping,’ she said, jabbing her cigarette fingers at Joe, making ash tumble to the floor. ‘He isn’t right.’

Joe felt his unease gnaw at him a little harder. What sort of person had he helped to put back on the street? ‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘Ronnie used to watch her. His own sister? She caught him, playing with himself, the dirty little pervert. Can you imagine how we felt? My Frank, well, he couldn’t cope, so he left, couldn’t stand to be in the same house as him.’

‘Where is she? Will Ronnie be with her?’

She shook her head slowly, her eyes misted over. She crossed herself. ‘I wish he was,’ she said. There was a crack to her voice when she added, ‘Sally, that was her name. She died. Slipped and fell in the bath.’

Fifty-Six

Sam saw that he had a missed call when the prison guard returned his phone. Even the police had to hand them in. It was DI Evans. He stalled before he made the call.

‘That was more than a taunt, about an accomplice,’ Sam said to Charlotte. ‘And why does it all come back to betrayal?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Let him have his small victory, because at least we know where he is, locked up and safe.’ That brought a smile from Sam, until she asked, ‘Was he right though, that someone else was there when you caught him?’

Sam hesitated, just for a second, but it was enough for Charlotte to look surprised. ‘So he is right?’

He clenched his jaw. ‘No, he’s not right,’ he said, and then exhaled loudly. ‘I don’t know, is the truthful answer. I didn’t lie in court. I was asked whether I had seen anyone else there. I hadn’t. Whether I had heard anyone. I hadn’t. Whether I knew anyone else was there. I didn’t.’

‘So what part did he get right then?’

‘The part where I can’t rule it out.’

She stopped walking. ‘Talk to me, Sam.’

He didn’t answer for a few seconds, and then said, ‘It was just a feeling. There were some rustles, and the sensation that we weren’t alone. And Grant had acted like I had to keep my whole attention on him, coming forward, talking, kneeling in front of me.’