The Death Collector Read online

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she said.

  He turned round. ‘A bulb, that’s all.’ He pointed ahead. ‘Go in. First door on the right.’

  ‘You should have brought me here before,’ Emma said. ‘Hotels are nice and all that, but I’d rather see where you live.’

  Her footsteps made loud clunks on the polished oak floorboards as she walked slowly, her hand trailing along the deep red wallpaper, the light bulbs shielded by purple shades with small tassels, so that the way in looked dark but warm.

  He slipped off his silk scarf and wool jacket and hung them over the end of the banister.

  The fire was smouldering as he entered the living room, so he went over to the brass bucket to put on more coal. As they clattered into the grate, the oily smell of the coal dust made his mouth water. It took him back more than twenty years, when it had been his job to do this, to keep the fire stoked on those nights in.

  For a moment, he smelled his father’s cigarettes, the atmosphere heavy with them, the smoke swirling around the room like a faint blue cloud, the aroma warm as it made his throat tickle.

  He thought he heard a laugh. The sound of his mother. He whirled around. There was only Emma there, turning on the spot, her heels making small marks in the rug as she looked around the room. She wasn’t laughing.

  He swallowed. His parents came back to him more each time. As he watched Emma he saw his mother dancing, just turning on the spot, swaying, singing.

  This was the time he loved the most, the anticipation. It was more than lust. It was excitement, felt by the fast hammer of his heart, the tightening in his throat, the room fading as he thought of what lay ahead.

  He tried not to betray his nerves. ‘I’ll get us a drink,’ he said, and walked over to the cabinet on the furthest wall.

  Emma sat down but she didn’t relax. She was sitting forward, her knees close together. She was wearing what she thought was glamorous, a short dress, silky and blue, off the shoulder and set off by black stockings. Her hair was tied back.

  Facing away, he poured whisky into two tumblers, and topped hers up with cola. She knew how to ruin a good drink. Then he reached into the cabinet and pulled out a small bottle. He poured a generous quantity of the ground powder into the drink, swirling it quickly. He paused to let the powder dissolve and then went to her.

  She smiled as he handed her the glass.

  He sat in silence for a few minutes as she drank. She looked around the room, her finger wiping at the condensation on her glass. She asked him about the things she could see, whether they were antiques or just long held by his family.

  He answered but said little. He let her fill the gaps by taking long sips from her glass.

  After around twenty minutes, he walked over to the record player, the old Dansette. He’d had to have it repaired a few times, but he refused to give it up. It had provided the soundtrack to his weekends as his parents put on records of what he used to call ‘golden oldies’, which made his mother laugh. They had worn out more than one rug as they held each other and twirled and laughed.

  At least that’s how it started.

  The Dansette buzzed as he turned it on and then there was a fizz through the speakers. It made him look over to the high-backed chair near the fire, and for a second he thought he could see his father’s fingers gripping the arm, his legs jutted out in front of him. He looked again. It was just a moving shadow made by the fire.

  He lifted the stylus arm gently and blew some fluff from the needle. He reached for the small record collection next to it and took the record from the front, as always.

  He took the vinyl out of its sleeve, holding it by the edges, wiping it gently with a cloth before placing it onto the spindle. His tongue flicked onto his lips as the plastic arm clunked onto the record and, as he pulled on the start lever, it slapped onto the turntable.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the sweep of the stylus arm, the tick of the mechanism, and gasped as the needle lowered and emitted a loud crackle as it hit the groove.

  The first bars of the song filled the room, loud and distorted. The room seemed to contract. His mother’s giggles, getting tipsy, stumbling into the furniture. His father’s irritation, growing through the evening, fuelled by the whisky. The singer’s opening line, deep and mournful.

  ‘Dance with me,’ he said, as he opened his eyes.

  Emma took another long sip from her glass. He went to her and held out his hand, and she rose to her feet.

  She was about to put her drink down when he shook his head. ‘No. Drink up.’ He raised his glass to his lips and downed his, breathing through his nose at the fire in his chest. ‘We’re here to have fun.’

  Emma smiled and said, ‘Okay,’ before draining her glass.

  She swayed as she walked over to him. He was much taller than her, so he was able to pull her close and put her face into his neck, inhaling deeply, taking in her perfume. It was the one she always wore and all their previous times together rushed at him. The passion, the fun, those promises she had made to him, her pleasure at being free.

  Broken promises.

  He held her like that as the song played out. The needle creaked back to the beginning of the song, and she giggled as it started again. As the song wore on, she started to sway and slump in his arms, and then the needle clicked its way back and all there was left was the light fizz from the speakers and the crackle of the fire.

  He laid her on the floor carefully, making sure she was on the floorboards and not on the rug, so that no fibres would be transferred. He lay next to her and put his face into her hair so that he was enveloped by the smell of it, warmth and shampoo and perfume and her own scent, the one that assaulted him on those few times they had spent the full night together, her own aroma filling the hotel room.

  Her head was hard against the floor as his hand went around her neck. Her bones were brittle under his grip, her skin warm. He squeezed, and he thought he could hear her heels beating a fast rhythm on the floor, gasps and shrieks slowly rendered mute. When he looked, she was still, the flunitrazepam taking effect.

  He squeezed again. It would soon be over.

  Sam leaned against the kitchen worktop and looked down. It was quiet, his children were in bed and the house had distilled down to the hum of the fridge and the slow rumbles of the central heating.

  He had gone into the kitchen to load the dishwasher, but he had become thoughtful and distracted as he mulled over the day’s events. DI Evans’s words came back to him. If his theory about the body was wrong then he would have to deal with Hunter’s wrath on his own. The uncomfortable creep of self-doubt came over him, the sudden certainty that he should do his job and nothing more. Follow orders, work the leads, avoid going up against anyone.

  He thought back on what he had found out about Sarah Carvell. She had everything, it seemed: a husband who loved her, children, a nice house. Sam remembered how the credit card bills showed Sarah’s other life; the one she thought about when her husband was out at work.

  He reached across the worktop to where the post was piled up. Junk mainly, waiting to be dumped in the recycling bin, but there was that other pile. The bills, reminders, bank statements.

  Alice was in the other room, watching television. Sam reached across and flicked through the statements until he saw one with Alice’s name on. A credit card bill. It had been opened but the statement was still in the envelope. He looked back to the living room, visible through the glass in the door, to where he could see Alice staring at the television.

  He pulled out the bill slowly and opened it out. Just over four hundred pounds owed on it. He skimmed the entries and shook his head, angry with himself. It was just petrol and things for the house, some children’s clothes, obvious from the shop names.

  He jumped and looked up when he felt a hand on his arm, just a gentle touch. It was Alice, her hair swept back, her skin pale and shiny from whatever late-night skin routine she had followed. Her eyes looked pink from the lack of
mascara.

  ‘Checking my post?’ she said, her eyebrows raised.

  He put the bill down, feeling guilty. ‘I know, I’m sorry. I was curious, that’s all.’

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her softly on the lips. Her warmth, those unexpected hugs, the occasional stroke of his back as she went past him, those were things that kept everything together. She had been his school sweetheart, his first serious girlfriend, and from the things they had shared, first times, great times, close times, he knew she would be his last.

  Alice pulled away.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, although her tone told him otherwise.

  ‘Talk to me, Alice.’

  She folded her arms and looked down, her lips set. His unease grew until she said, ‘I feel lonely sometimes.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that. I’m alone at the moment. You’re out all day and come home late, and when you do come home, you don’t really, because in here,’ and she tapped the side of her head, ‘you’re still absorbed in whatever case you’re wrapped up in.’ She paused as she blinked away tears. ‘You’re never here. Not in your head.’

  He sighed. He didn’t know how to respond. At work he saw things that were too dark to bring into his family home. He tried to leave them behind, so that his home stayed untainted by the evil that seemed to roam the city streets, but they stayed with him, he knew that.

  ‘You used to think about all the fraud cases, too,’ Alice said. ‘But it seems different with the murder cases. They consume you. Sam, you don’t have to feel personally responsible for catching every murderer. It’s a job. You’re part of a team.’

  ‘If someone has been killed, it’s important,’ he said.

  ‘And so are we. Your family. Your children. Don’t forget about us in the process. You don’t have to attack each case as if you’re trying to make it up to your sister.’

  Sam exhaled sharply. ‘That’s not fair,’ he said. He could feel his anger starting to bubble. He took a deep breath. He didn’t want the argument. ‘I will never bring Ellie back and I can’t control too much of what happens at the station, but if I can just help to bring a killer to the prison gates then I feel like I’ve got a little closer to making it right for not protecting her.’

  ‘You’re not to blame for Ellie’s murder. We’ve been through this so many times!’

  ‘I know that – you’re right – but it doesn’t stop me from feeling it.’

  ‘So what about us? When do we get a piece of you?’

  ‘I can’t help how I am,’ he said.

  Alice stormed away at that and slammed the kitchen door. He raised his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. He knew he would have to make it up to her, and to his two girls, but for the moment he couldn’t shake off his thoughts about the case.

  So his mind went back to it. To the way he felt about Hunter, and the investigation; the release of the scene and those secrets that might still be up there, left to get blown away by the rolling breezes that rippled across the heather. Suddenly, he remembered what Charlotte had said: X marks the spot.

  He went into the living room, where Alice was sitting with her knees drawn up underneath her on the chair, her arms folded tightly.

  ‘I’m going back up there, tonight,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The moors. That crime scene isn’t finished yet.’

  Thirty

  He grunted at the ache in his shoulder as he moved. Perspiration speckled his forehead. He wiped the sweat away with his forearm before reaching down to smooth Emma’s hair. He moved it away from her face and kissed the top of her head, pausing for a moment for one deep inhale of her scent. It would be impossible to recall it. That’s the way with smells, but once he smelled it again everything would come flooding back.

  No one leaves. He had offered her escape and she had rejected it. He had to save her.

  He closed his eyes as he remembered the screams. The bad nights always ended with screams, even though they always started the same way. A warm fire. Some music. His parents dancing. But he would see the transformation as the whisky flowed. Sometimes it would stay as laughter, and he would sit in the corner of the room and watch his parents dance and hold each other, two people drawn together.

  But there were always the other nights, when things would take a different turn.

  They started with the tight grip of his father’s fingers on the chair arm, that little sign that the whisky was feeding his darker side, where his resentment lived, that spine of hatred that propped up his feelings. Then came the grabbing and pulling, with hisses of contempt in her ear.

  All she had to do was leave.

  His mother would see the signs, and a nod of the head towards the door, a flick of her eyelids, told him that he should go to bed. He knew what it meant. There were things he shouldn’t see.

  But he did. He heard it and his imagination did the rest. The loud slaps, the screams, the gasps of pain. Sometimes she would fight back and he would get angrier. The slaps became punches, or the loud crack of his father’s belt, and he would creep downstairs and watch through the banister.

  All she had to do was leave. But she never did.

  Joe watched the afternoon turn to evening, as the large houses around the Green became silhouettes. The hours were passed in good company, though, the conversation with Hugh moving away from Aidan Molloy’s case and to updates on legal gossip. Who was getting divorced, which firms were in trouble, who was merging with whom. Joe enjoyed Hugh’s company and he could see Hugh’s pleasure at talking about his old life, however much he pretended he didn’t miss it.

  As the clock wound round towards ten, Hugh rose to his feet and stumbled against the table. He laughed to himself. ‘It’s my own personal alarm,’ he said. ‘It used to be a telephone call. I would call home every hour, and when Patricia couldn’t understand me, she would come and collect me. Now?’ He laughed again. ‘My first wobble sends me home.’

  Joe stretched. He could feel the night air beginning to spin and he knew he should stop, but he didn’t feel like ending so early and going back to an empty apartment.

  ‘How far have you got to go?’ he said.

  Hugh pointed, his finger swaying in time with his body. ‘Just down there. You watch from here, just to make sure I don’t fall over.’

  Joe laughed and shook his hand. ‘Look after yourself, Hugh. We should do this again.’

  Hugh waved and then set off, his feet not always following the straight line he aimed for. Joe watched him until he swayed into a front garden fifty yards along and disappeared into his house. When the front-room light clicked on, Joe drained his drink. Standing up, he felt the pavement shift under his feet. He was drunk, but he still wanted another drink.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket.

  It was the familiar pull he felt when he was drunk, although it was usually the bare walls of his apartment that prompted him to seek out company. It was usually internet chatrooms, strangers meeting on darkened screens, except that it had become harder to avoid the seedy stuff. It was the companionship Joe was after, just brief and fleeting, a distraction, but it had become a compulsion for him. The nights seemed too quiet to be drunk alone, so he had tried to break the habit.

  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.

  Just been for a drink with Hugh Bramwell. He seems well. He said to say hi.

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

  Hugh? Were you at the Jockey? Should have told me.

  He sent back:

  Didn’t want to disturb.

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

  Never a disturbance.

  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.