The Death Collector (46 page)

‘So if Declan Farrell died it would all come out?’ Evans said.

‘No, worse than that,’ Sam said, stepping closer to Weaver. ‘He can’t log in from prison. So you two bastards had to keep Farrell free, or else it would all come out.’

Weaver nodded slowly.

‘Call him,’ Sam said to Evans. ‘We’ve got the story now. Let’s get Alice back.’

Sam and Evans had been focused on Weaver. They hadn’t been aware of Hunter getting out of his chair until he made a run for the door.

Sam went after him, but Hunter slammed the door behind him, trapping Sam’s hand in the jamb, the few moments of excruciating pain enough to allow Hunter to bolt along the corridor, already with his car key out.

Evans went to the door, but faltered, looking back at Weaver.

‘Leave Hunter!’ Sam shouted. ‘Call Farrell. Get Alice back.’

‘I’ll go,’ Joe said, as he made for the door.

‘Where?’ Evans said.

‘I’m going to find Alice,’ he said. ‘And Hunter might just take us there.’

Mary had waited in the car for Joe. She had seen Hunter rush out, his car racing away down the street. As Joe drove in the same direction, he told her the basics of what Weaver had said, that Aidan had been framed and that they had known Aidan was truly innocent for a few months. She had cried, more from anger than sorrow, before she turned to Joe and said, ‘So Tyrone, sorry Declan, has her?’

Joe nodded grimly.

Mary put her hand to her mouth and tears appeared in her eyes. ‘This is my fault,’ she said, almost to herself.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He called me earlier. He asked about you at first, how you were getting on, but then I told him about Sam finding David Jex, the coincidence of it.’ She looked across at Joe. ‘I didn’t know, Joe. I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Joe said. ‘You can help though.’

‘How?’

‘You might know Declan’s secrets.’

‘What do you mean? I don’t know anything about him. I thought I did, but I don’t.’

Joe glanced across and winced at the pain in her eyes. He gripped her hand for a moment. He tried to smile, but his worry for Alice kept it away. ‘He can’t just take her somewhere new. He has to know where he is going or else he might be caught. You might have an idea.’

Mary looked at him, scared, confused. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘He must have somewhere. A secret place, somewhere private, just for him.’

‘Nothing he said was true, so how am I to know anything?’

‘Because people like him want you to know, deep down. He told you a lie to get on your side. He used you to deflect attention from himself, to find out what you knew, but he would be unable to lie all the time. Convincing liars wrap the lies up in some truth. I’ve seen it with clients and witnesses, that provided you stay near enough to the truth it is harder to catch them out.’

Joe’s phone rang. It was Sam. He answered.

‘Where are you, Joe?’

‘Trying to find Hunter and Alice. Have you heard anything else yet?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘So have you told Farrell what Weaver said?’

‘Yes, a text. He hasn’t texted back to tell me where she is.’ Joe heard Sam gulp back the tears. ‘I’m never going to find her, Joe.’

‘We’ll find her,’ Joe said, and clicked off. He turned to Mary. ‘He’s on the moors somewhere, going from the picture of Alice. Did he ever take you there?’

‘Only a few times, to where Rebecca was found,’ Mary said. ‘We ended up walking up there. He said it would help me, to see the location where Aidan’s life changed, even if Aidan had nothing to do with it.’

Joe pulled up sharply at the side of the road. ‘Did he say anything up there that might mean something else? Think.’

‘I don’t know. Yes, I suppose. He seemed different there, more human somehow. He’d talk about himself, get sort of nostalgic, talk about how his parents died and left him their house, and how he used to enjoy watching them dance together. They’d play records and drink and dance in front of the fire, and he told me that he liked to watch them, that it was when they seemed close, together somehow.’ She shook her head. ‘That must have been untrue as well. I used to think I was such a good judge of character – that I could read people, decide when I could trust them. It looks like I was wrong.’

‘That’s what Carl Jex saw,’ Joe said, his voice getting faster. ‘Peeping through the window, he saw a man and a woman slow-dancing in front of the fire. That must be his ritual. When they wanted to leave him, he got a promise of one last night. He recreated his parents’ evenings in before he killed them. The woman Carl saw through the curtains when he was arrested? She will be the woman found dead on the moors. Tell me, how did he seem when he talked about them, when he was up there on the moors?’

‘It was like he showed a bit more of himself. I thought at first it was because of what the location meant to me, the place that led to Aidan being locked up, but then I realised that the place itself made him different. It’s the moors, I suppose. They do make you feel small somehow.’

‘No, you’re seeing it wrong,’ Joe said, eager now. ‘That location meant something to him, because it was where he was getting rid of Rebecca’s body before he was caught. And what did everyone think Aidan was going to do?’

‘Bury her.’

‘Because of the spade in the boot of his car. It was seen as a one-off, a crime of passion, a way of getting rid of the body. And not a bad theory. She would never be found, but if the spade was planted then it was just a guess by whoever planted it. Except he was interrupted by that couple and he raced off, leaving Rebecca. But if he became different up there, more reflective, more human, was it something more practised than that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What would make him reflect up there? If he killed more than one person, was that place special because he was looking at his own personal graveyard, where he goes to remember?’

Mary put her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.

‘Burial seems important somehow,’ Joe continued. ‘Melissa wasn’t killed. She disappeared. The mystery of the body’s location is part of the torture, but he knows, and he can sit and reflect and look out over the ground, knowing what lies beneath. So we need to go to where Rebecca was found. Are you ready?’

She nodded, determination in her eyes. ‘I’m ready.’

Declan Farrell looked out through the empty window frame.

He was stalling. Was he backing out because this was different? His previous visits here had either been to remember or to bury. This was just revenge, one final twist before he disappeared.

He felt it then, the emotion he had been looking for: anger, the slow bubble, the creeping heat. He was about to lose everything he had. Why shouldn’t others? He was going to lose this – his place, his home. There would be nowhere left to get lost in the memories of his mother, now safe from harm under the soil. And those in the hills outside, too. Their passion, how they had submitted to him completely, and then how they had turned away from him. The moors were their resting place, and his hiding place – they would never be found. The moors were too vast, too open, the landscape too scarred.

Alice shivered and moaned behind her gag, dirty tears soaking her cheeks, soil staining her legs. He had wanted Sam to see her again – an image that would stay with him and haunt him, so that every day that he spent looking for her he would be reminded of her terror, be tormented by it, always trying to work out the location of the small square of land that would make up her grave.

He pulled up the collar of his jacket and pressed the power button on her phone. It was time for another picture.

The screen finally came to life, the software icons appearing at the top. The network signal, faltering to the occasional one bar, the time, the battery life. Then there was another, a small circle that pulsated.

He clicked on it, curious. He kept his phone use simple, using cheap pay-as-you-go phones so that there was never a trail. No angry husbands to work out his name. No obligation to register a phone. Alice’s phone was modern, sleek and black. His eyes flickered wide when he saw the letters GPS. He knew what that meant: her phone could be located.

The heat inside him changed, from anger to something hotter than that. It was fear. He scrolled through the icons on the screen until he found the picture folder. He brought up the picture he had sent before and worked out how to get the information about it. The view of the screen blurred as he saw it. There it was, the filename for the picture, and the date and time, along with other things that didn’t mean anything to him, but underneath all of it were digits. GPS coordinates. They would know where to find her.

He steadied himself against the wall. They would find this place. He would lose even this as a memory. He turned towards Alice. There was the blame.

He grabbed her by her arm and pulled her up. She shivered as she stood there, her arms still tied behind her back, her clothes sodden and filthy.

‘We need to move,’ he said.

Before they could go, there was something to his right. Lights, a sweeping beam, some of it reflecting along the narrow track that wound down from the road. Someone was coming. He wouldn’t be able to drive away.

He grabbed Alice’s arm and said, ‘We’ve got to go,’ before walking quickly out of the empty doorway of the cottage.

The lights were getting closer, the high beam spreading a bright fan that lit up the moorland ahead. There was the slow crunch of tyres on loose stones and the steady rumble of an engine.

He pulled at Alice, who yanked away from him, seeing rescue in the lights. She fell to the ground and started to scramble towards them, her eyes wide above the gag, the headlights getting brighter all the time.

He grabbed her hair, making her yelp, and pulled her to her feet before gripping her round her waist and propelling her forwards, down the grassy slope, and towards the slow meander of the stream and the grouse butts lining the valley.

They both landed in the water, Declan holding Alice down so that her clothes were drenched. The headlights crept around the final bend in the track and lit up the derelict cottage, his own car in front. The engine was turned off and someone stepped out, slowly and deliberately. Then he heard a voice he recognised.

‘Farrell!’ It was Hunter, shouting. ‘Where are you?’

He had to think of a different plan. He grabbed Alice by the arm once more and set off down the valley.

Sam paced, frantic, scared, his hands clasped behind his head, just about keeping everything together, but it was the impotence that was getting to him. Weaver was staring ahead, saying nothing. Sam turned on him.

‘How could you do that?’ Sam said.

Weaver looked up slowly. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘Hunter killed David Jex, not me.’

‘He was alive when you covered him over,’ Sam said, shouting now. ‘Didn’t you see the post mortem result? Or were you too busy trying to protect that murdering bastard? David Jex had soil in his lungs. You could have saved him.’

Weaver leaned forward and looked at the floor, his arms on his knees, as if he was going to vomit. ‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.’

‘But it did, and you were happy for Aidan Molloy to rot away in prison to protect yourself, for David’s wife never to know his fate, and, worst of all, to let Declan Farrell carry on doing what he has done. It all comes down to you, Weaver, and that prick Hunter. All you had to do was admit a mistake and lock away a bad guy, but no, you wanted to play vigilante and cover your own backside. Not only a coward, but a crooked coward, you piece of shit.’

Evans put her hand on Sam’s arm. He had been getting closer to Weaver, so that he was standing over him, pointing, snarling.

‘No, Sam, not now,’ she said. ‘Save this.’

He shrugged her off and pointed at Weaver. ‘So where has Hunter gone?’

Weaver didn’t respond.

‘Come on, you must know. Hunter isn’t just running. He’s gone somewhere. So come on, where? How much do you know about Declan Farrell?’

Weaver glanced up and his eyes narrowed. He sat back and folded his arms. There were tears in his eyes, but behind them was the hard glare of defiance.

‘What, so you can go after me with something else, as if I’m not in enough trouble.’

‘This isn’t about you.’

Weaver looked past Sam and at Evans, who was just behind him, still holding onto Sam’s arm.

‘Think of the Force,’ Weaver said. ‘It will do us a lot of harm. Hunter and I can retire, just fade away. The only winners will be the lawyers, looking to sue the Force for God knows how much. Hundreds of thousands for every dead body, and Aidan Molloy, and all of it taken from our budgets so that the people we try to lock up stay free. Is that what you want? And the public will never trust us again. All you have to do is let Farrell go, or at least let Hunter and me sort him out, our way. Where’s the injustice in that?’

Sam shrugged off Evans’s arm and gripped Weaver’s throat. He pushed him backwards into his chair. Spittle flew into Weaver’s face as Sam barked, ‘Farrell has got my wife and still all you can think about is yourself?’

Hands gripped Sam, some uniformed officers running in from the corridor at Evan’s shout. They helped her to pull Sam off Weaver and push him back against the wall.