The Death Collector Read online

  Joe nodded that he understood. ‘I’ll do what I can, I promise you that much.’

  And as he stood to go, Joe knew that he meant it.

  Thirty-nine

  Lorna Jex was sitting on one of the fold-down chairs that lined the wall of the waiting area when Sam walked in.

  He knew how he appeared. Tired-looking, stubble on his cheeks, a weary drawl to his voice. Lorna Jex was owed more than that by the police force that had employed her husband. But he could still show her kindness.

  The station was no longer open to the public. There was no front desk, no access unless you were allowed in by someone, so Lorna was alone, her fingers wrapped up in a handkerchief, tears staining her cheeks.

  ‘Mrs Jex,’ he said, his voice gentle, reassuring. ‘I’m Sam Parker. Come through, please.’

  She got slowly to her feet, following Sam into the gloom of the station, away from the eyes of the press that were gathering outside.

  He led her along the corridor and into what was once an interview room, the table and chairs still bolted to the floor, the alarm sensor that ran round the wall no longer in use. No windows, no comfort, but it stopped Sam from walking her through the whole station, or being gawped at through open doorways.

  As he sat her down, he went to a chair on the other side of the table. He reached across and took hold of her hands. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Jex. We found David’s body this morning.’

  She hung her head and started to cry, her sobs making her tremble, tears running from her cheeks and making spots of moisture on her blouse.

  ‘Hasn’t anyone been to see you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve been out, speaking to Carl’s friends, trying to find him. It was only when I got back and there was a reporter on my drive that I thought something must have happened. So I came here. I thought it might have been…⁠’ And she let out a long breath and looked up to the ceiling, blinking fast, so that more tears hung from her eyelashes. ‘I thought it might have been Carl.’

  Sam squeezed her hand and she gave him a watery smile. ‘How did he die?’ she said, pulling her hands away to wipe her eyes.

  ‘We don’t know yet. He was found buried on the moors.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘So he didn’t kill himself?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  There were more tears and Sam let her cry herself out.

  ‘I’ve always known this day was coming,’ she said eventually, her voice more even. ‘I feel bad, because I feel relieved somehow, that at least it’s all over, and that it isn’t Carl. I thought DCI Hunter might have been here though. He and David were close, as far as I could tell.’

  ‘He’s very busy with the investigation, that’s all,’ Sam said, his instinct to protect Lorna’s feelings taking over from his anger at Hunter. ‘I’m sure he’ll come and see you.’

  Lorna smiled her gratitude.

  ‘Just one thing,’ Sam said. ‘I’m Joe Parker’s brother, Carl’s solicitor. I know about how Carl went missing. Have you heard anything?’

  ‘What, you think it might be connected?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sam said. ‘We have to take it seriously, though.’

  Lorna started crying again. ‘And Carl might end up the same way?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sam said. ‘But knowing everything might help us get to him in time.’

  Lorna shook her head. ‘No, I don’t know anything. He was secretive, like his father. I didn’t really look in his files. Just the odd glimpse.’

  ‘Files?’

  ‘Yes. My husband made files of whatever it was he was looking into. I didn’t pry. He told me it was police work. When he disappeared, Carl did the same.’

  ‘And still you didn’t look?’

  ‘Not properly. It was just old statements, that’s all. To do with that Aidan man, Aidan Molloy, the one who killed that woman on the moors.’

  ‘Where are the files now?’

  ‘Your brother has them all.’

  Sam gave her hands another squeeze. He hadn’t wanted to involve Joe, not after Hunter’s dig about him, but Sam knew there was no choice now. Joe’s case and his case were linked.

  It was time to speak to his brother.

  Forty

  As soon as Joe turned his phone back on, he saw that there was a message from his office. He rang as he approached the prison doors, Mary still outside, pacing, waiting for him.

  ‘Hi, Marion; it’s Joe.’

  ‘Mr Parker, the woman you spoke to earlier has called. Nicole. She wants to speak to you again.’

  Joe smiled to himself. It was the young mother who had found Rebecca Scarfield, along with her husband, Dan. Joe had known she would call, although it had come quicker than he expected. Despite the fact she had stayed silent earlier, her body language had told him that she disagreed with her husband, even though he had been speaking for her. He made a note of her number and called her before he got outside, not wanting Mary to hear it.

  She told Joe that he had to meet her away from the house, so that Dan would never guess she had spoken to him. He told her he would be there in half an hour.

  When Joe got outside, Mary turned, her face expectant.

  ‘How is he?’ she said.

  ‘Like I expected. Angry, bitter, but you know all of that.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘I’ve got to see someone.’

  ‘Connected with the case?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  Joe thought about that. He needed to keep Mary onside but he didn’t want her to frighten Nicole away.

  ‘If you keep your distance,’ he said.

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because I’ve spoken to her once already, and her husband took over. There’s something she wants to tell me. Let’s not scare her off.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Nicole Grant.’

  Mary nodded to herself, she recognised the name, and agreed.

  Mary was quiet on the walk back to his car, and during the journey to Nicole’s, although Joe could feel the sense of expectation that she was trying to hold back now that the glimmer of hope was shining a little brighter. He told her about David Jex, how it seemed that his brother had found him, and that brought more life into her conversation. But as they got closer to Nicole’s, her shutters went up again and her public face returned: the survivor.

  When they arrived in Nicole’s village, he pulled over where Nicole had told him. He turned to Mary.

  ‘Wait in the car. I’ll tell you everything she tells me, but if you come over, she might clam up. Be patient.’

  Mary stayed silent as Joe got out of his car and went to sit on a park bench.

  He waited for thirty minutes, and had started to wonder whether he had got her directions wrong, when he saw her walking towards him, her head down, her hands thrust into the pockets of her jacket.

  She didn’t say anything when she sat down next to him, so Joe stayed staring ahead, watching the sway of the branches of the trees that towered over the bench. She would talk eventually, he knew that. She had called him.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ Nicole said after a few minutes. She was chewing gum, her jaw fast and nervous. ‘I can’t stay too long. I’ve left Matthew with a friend.’

  ‘Where’s Dan?’

  ‘Playing snooker. He’ll back for his tea, so I can’t hang about.’

  They were in a park just up the hill from Nicole’s house, a wide patch of green with some wooden climbing frames set in bark chippings, the stone houses surrounding it set against the green hills behind it, looking away from the dark brood of the Pennines and towards the more gentle roll of industrial West Yorkshire.

  She looked around. ‘I bring Matthew here sometimes, when I need some fresh air.’

  ‘I don’t blame you, it’s a nice spot,’ Joe said, not rushing her.

  She turned to Joe. ‘Do you really think Aidan Molloy might be innocent?’

  Joe
looked at her. Her hands were in her lap, her fingers clasped together. Her eyes looked heavy, a flush to her cheeks giving away that she had shed some tears since his visit earlier.

  ‘I don’t know, truly,’ Joe said. ‘All I know is that I’ve spoken to people I trust and they think he is.’

  ‘Which means that he’s in prison for something he didn’t do, because of something we said.’

  ‘And more than that,’ Joe said. ‘It means that the real killer is still out there, still posing a threat.’

  Nicole sighed and put her head back. ‘This is never going to end, is it?’

  ‘Cases like this never do. He won’t be released if he won’t admit his guilt, and there is no chance of that, so he’ll carry on waking up behind bars. I’ve met his mother.’ He tried not to give away that she was watching from his car parked just further along the road. ‘She’s a fighter who won’t give in.’

  Nicole stayed silent.

  Joe turned round to her, his knee on the bench. ‘You said something strange just then.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Nicole said, her voice suspicious.

  ‘You said Aidan was in prison because of something you said.’

  ‘Yes. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘But why didn’t you say that it was because of something you saw? Not said. Unless, of course, what you saw was different to what you said.’

  Nicole slumped forward and lifted her hand to her eye to wipe away a tear. ‘I won’t get in trouble, will I?’

  Joe was keener now. There was something here. ‘I don’t know. I can’t promise anything, but isn’t this about doing the right thing?’

  She exhaled loudly and her lip trembled. ‘I don’t want to go to prison. I’ve got a young child and I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.’

  ‘Talk to me, Nicole.’

  ‘Dan will be angry.’

  ‘Sometimes you’ve got to tell the truth.’

  Nicole took a deep breath and said, ‘We got the car wrong.’

  Joe’s eyes widened. He knew the importance of the car, and the partial registration. It was a key part of the case.

  ‘Tell me about that night,’ he said softly, trying to hide his excitement that something new was coming out. ‘I’m not writing anything down. It’s just you and me.’

  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.

  Forty-one

  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.’