Each Day I Wake: A gripping psychological thriller: US Edition (16 page)

John Delaney had to admit that there were times when what Ives had said was right. It was more comfortable being Terry Morgan, a life somehow less complicated, played by simpler rules. Those that needed to get high needed to stay high and they needed men like Morgan for that. Need was what that life was all about.

He knew he wanted out. That couldn’t come soon enough now that Ives was on his case. That meant money enough to get away, to the Far East, maybe, where he could build a new existence, a new persona, away from all this. And he knew where money could be found.

Tyrone Montague had done his best to deny Morgan’s place in his social circle, wanting to place him in the same tier in life as the chauffeurs, bodyguards, housekeepers, gardeners and the other modern day servants who maintained his life in style. But Montague, like so many of his special friends within the circle, had his own need of what Terry Morgan offered and, with reluctance, Montague had allowed Morgan into the weekend parties and private club sessions that was the spice of their lives. Of necessity, since how else was Morgan to be discreet in maintaining the supply of the goods that fuelled their lifestyle.

Time to call on that friendship now.

They were meeting in a wine bar within walking distance of Canada One. It was evening time and the place was crowded with after work drinkers, plotting next day’s alliances and betrayals. Crowded enough for everyone here to pass without notice.

Delaney raised his glass. “Your health, Ty.”

Montague clinked glasses with just enough reluctance to show his friendship was less than unconditional. “You have something on your mind, Terry?”

“Things you need to know.”

“Like?”

“Like there’s a new copper on your case.”

Montague was trying not to look surprised. “I’m pleased you’re still looking after my interests, Terry. You know that means a lot to me.”

“Thing is, that may have to change.”

“What do you mean?”

“That same copper has it in for me as well. I need to get out. And I need your help to do that.”

“So why would I want to do that?”

“There’s a place in the Philippines, owned by a friend of my brother and he wants to sell it. It’s a bargain at one-eighty thou. That’s all I’d need to set myself up in a new life, far enough away from here.”

“One-eighty is one big ask, Terry. You’re not thinking of blackmail are you? You know you must have as much to hide as me. Where would that get you?”

Delaney thought of playing his ace at this point by telling Montague that he was seated next to an undercover copper. But not just yet.

“So, what if I tell you that when you hear what I’ve got to say, there’s no way you won’t agree that one-eighty thou is cheap at the price?”

Montague took another sip of wine. “That’s a risk. I could just walk away.”

“Somehow, I don’t think you will.”

“So?”

“The copper’s name is Ives. Detective Inspector Stephen Ives. He’s investigating the killing of a girl, name of Cathy Newsome.”

“I’ve heard of the case. What’s it got to do with me?”

“Seems someone who was close to you who died in mysterious circumstances is now part of the investigation. Ives is looking at whether there’s a connection between her death and the killing of the Newsome girl.”

Montague’s practiced look of being at ease with the world was starting to slip. “So who are we talking about?”

“Someone we both know. Stella. Stella DaSilva.”

“And?”

“I have contacts, right? Inside the Ives operation And guess what? Ives has been told that Stella kept a diary and that in the diary is a day-by-day account of her life. If and when Ives finds the diary, he’s going to know every detail of Stella’s life here on Canary Wharf. Not just about the drugs but also all she got to find out from her highflying chums in the finance world. Including you and, from what I know, I’d say that would be you on both counts.”

Montague stiffened. “I see. So, now I say
thanks, Terry
and walk away and there’s no one-eighty thou.”

Delaney smiled. “I don’t think so, Ty. One-eighty thou says I can help you find Stella’s diary. And, as I think you know, that’s cheap at the price.”

“And what if I tell you I’m still going to walk away and find it myself.”

“That’s when I tell you something important about me that you don’t know but should have been aware of all the time.” Delaney pulled out his Met Police ID card. “You see, I’m an undercover copper, name of Delaney, and I know enough about you and your so called circle of friends to have you all put away long and good.”

Montague didn’t blink. “OK. Mr. John Delaney. You’ll have your one-eighty thou. Once you bring me the diary.”

When I returned to Brogan’s apartment, he looked anxious to see me as he opened the door to let me in. “I’d just about given you up.”

“Took longer than I thought to get back here.”

I glanced over to the table where he’d been seated, reading through the print out of Della’s diary that he’d collected at
The
Herald
. Something told me it hadn’t been what he’d expected.

But first, I had to tell him. “Marshall, you need to know that the police will be looking for me.”

He sat me down opposite him at the table. “What’s happened? You look shaken up.”

I placed the file containing my copy of the diary on the table. “That bad?”

“As if someone’s scared the hell out of you.”

“That would be Ives. DI Ives. You know I told you about the missing girls. I’m sure he has me in the frame for killing them.”

“Slow down. What does he have on you that he didn’t have when we talked about this on the drive from Lichfield?”

I told him about Ives’ visit to
The
Herald
and the dating site. “He has proof that I was in contact with the girls on the Orion site and implied I’ve been stalking them. He’s building a case.”

Brogan shook his head. “So what? You’re a journalist.”

There was something that didn’t feel right about the way he was responding to me. Something I couldn’t place. As if he was trying to draw me out in some way.

Brogan was full of questions. “Do they know you’re here?”

“No.”

“Then we have time.” He paused to emphasize the importance of what he said next. “Tom, there’s a question you need to answer. There’s a reason you were investigating those girls. You know what it is. Why can’t you come out with it?”

It came as a shock. Maybe it was because of the fear I’d been experiencing since Ives began accusing me. Maybe it was because Brogan had voiced the question in such a simple and unavoidable way.

Something that had been there in my memory but prevented from seeing the light of day was breaking through.

The thought formed itself on my tongue in the moment that the words came out. “I was investigating a serial killer.”

“Then what you did, searching for his next victim, makes sense.”

I was stunned by what I’d discovered. “He’s out there. He’s been out there all this time.”

“And Ives is only just getting to understand what he’s dealing with.”

“The problem is, he thinks the serial killer could be me.”

“He has no evidence other than the dating site and that’s taking him nowhere.”

“And the fact that I told him I’ve seen the girls being killed.”

“Send Ives back to your medical man. Healey, isn’t it? He’ll tell him he needs to get real evidence.”

I was taken in by Brogan’s skepticism of anything the police do or say. It reminded me that nothing had changed since the day we first met as kids back in Nottingham. He was then, as now, ready for a fight with anything that looked like authority. But something told me I couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t just offering me this defense as a means of drawing me out for some purpose of his own.

I opened the file I’d brought with me from the office and laid out my copy of Della’s diary.

He glanced down at his pile, half read by now. He shook his head. “I was prepared for anything. I knew the life Della was living was something I couldn’t condone. I tried to get her to change once I found her but she wouldn’t listen.” Anger mixed with sorrow began to show once more. “Don’t you think I’ve asked myself a thousand times why I didn’t try harder?”

“You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

“It’s too late for that, anyhow. It’s a luxury I don’t have. Or at the least, one I’ll save for torturing myself with later. All that matters now is finding who killed Della.” He spread his hands over the diary print out on the table before him. “And I believe the answer lies somewhere in here. But there’s a problem. Della liked her secrets.”

“What do you mean?”

He read out the first entry that came to hand.

“
May 22nd
.
To the Starlight with DS. She’s a slippery one. Been running around with FD when all the time she has her eyes on DP.”

Brogan beat his fist on the table in frustration. “See what I mean? Just like her to not be satisfied with the encryption. She uses initials to refer to everyone.”

He read out another entry.

“December 1st. TM is a weird one but I really love him. Don’t know what I’d do without him. Even if he is running around with that tart BW.”

He sat back. “How is this going to be of any use?”

“She told you it was all in here, what she kept on people she knew in case she needed it. We’re just going to have to work out who everyone is.”

“It’s worse than any code.”

“We should be able to work out some of them out from what we both know.”

He looked and me long and slow. “I don’t want to be indelicate here, Tom, but isn’t that something you’re going to find difficult?” He paused. “And as for me, I hardly had time to get to know Della let alone the people she was mixed up with.”

“Then we’ll have to find someone, one of her friends, who’ll be able to put names to those initials.”

He looked at his wristwatch. “I have five hours before I go on shift. I’ll start the diary again at the beginning and work my way through the first year. Maybe you can read from the beginning of year two. Then we can see what we have.”

I agreed. “OK.”

The intention was not to read each day’s entry in detail but rather to skim over it in favor of discovering how many people we had to identify from their initials. But as we skim read, we couldn’t help calling out comments on those entries that stood out.

Marshall was first to call out. “Here’s what she’s saying about the slime ball who’s supplying her with the drugs that killed her.”

“April 11
.
Expecting TM tonight with my goods. Can’t tell you how wired I am waiting.
”

Brogan cracked the knuckles in his right hand. “If I get hold of him, you know what I’m going to do.”

I didn’t need to reply. His anger spoke for itself.

The next thing he noticed brought me to a halt.

“
April 9th. Another meeting with the paper. TM is one of the best. One of the few men I really trust.”

Brogan glared at me. “What do you think she means by that?”

I looked away. I had the idea that Brogan had seen these entries earlier in the day, long before I arrived back at his apartment, and that, as I’d suspected, he’d been biding his time, drawing me out, playing with me to find out as much as he could from me before revealing what he’d discovered. And that there was more to come.

He continued to stare at me. “You’re not saying you knew Della?”

I hesitated. “I didn’t know, Marshall. I promise you. But some of the entries I’ve seen looking through Della’s diary are making me think I must have. I was part of the investigation into wrongdoing by Montague and Della was a contact who had information on him. I’m starting to recall my meetings with her now, Marshall. It’s like a mist is clearing and the details are coming back into view.”

“How many times did you meet her?”

“I don’t know. The diary says dozens.”

His voice was now louder, more animated. “Or maybe I should be asking how well did you know her?”

“It was nothing like that, I promise. You’ve met Janet. You know I’m loyal to her.”

“So, you’re not the
TM
who’s been supplying Della with drugs?”

“Come on, Marshall. Do I look like the kind of person who would deal heroin?”

He shook his head. “I don’t expect you’d know where to start.”

“Another
TM
, dealing the drugs?”

“I guess so. So, don’t dodge the question about Della.”

“I told you. I’m loyal to Janet.”

“As you say. But how do I know that when there’s so much about what’s happening here that you don’t seem to know about yourself. So, tell me. Just what do you now remember about Della?”

I tried to move away but he gripped my forearm and pinned it to the table.

The words came from a part of my mind that had been closed to me up to now. I was startled by what I found myself saying. “I think Della liked me. She wasn’t just a journalism contact. More a friend. We would meet for coffee. In the afternoon, in a coffee bar somewhere, or on Paddington Station. I was interviewing her for the paper, seeking the final links that would blow open the OAM story, but she was reaching out for something more.”

He snarled. “You mean you were involved with her.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“You sure?”

I wanted to reply but I didn’t know how. I was getting a piece of my past back that I couldn’t deal with. Everything about these recollections of Della made me want to shudder but I knew I couldn’t let Brogan see that.

He stood and paced the room. I could see that he was trying to control a seething anger that was all but consuming him. Just as it was all those years ago when as a young boy he’d lived through a similar struggle to avoid the violence he’d inherited, unchosen, from a world he’d been born into.

He turned and faced me. “There’s something else, Tom. Something I’ve been waiting to tell you.”

He pulled out one of the pages from the pile he’d earmarked and held it up to my face.

“
April 25th. I’m sure TM is going to kill me.
”

“That’s two days before she died. I knew her death was more than an accident. Now, here’s the proof that she knew her life was in danger. And that she knew her killer.”

I could see from the steel cold stare in Brogan’s eyes that he was losing the battle to control the rage he was feeling and that all that destructive energy was being directed at me.

“You’re not saying it was me?”

“Ives thinks so. He must have his reasons. And then there are the visions you’ve been seeing of those girls being killed.”

“Why would I tell anyone about them if I was a killer?”

“A way to draw attention away from the fact that you’ve killed Della.” He raised his ring encrusted fist and held it an inch from my face. “What was she to you, Tom? Tell me or I swear I’ll beat it out of you.”

I was thrown back to thinking about Ives and the accusations he was making that I must be involved in the disappearance of those girls.

Was I a killer?

Is that the reason I’ve been see the visions of the girls?

Why was I having all those meetings with Della?

Was I the
TM
she knew was going to kill her?

I tried to reason with Brogan. “It’s not me, Marshall. You have to believe that.”

He crashed his clenched fist into my face and I felt the sickening pain as my lip split and blood streamed down my face.

I fell back onto the floor but before I could get up, he was on me, pinning me down.

I was back in Nottingham in the life and death combat that marked our time together as young boys. Brogan was always the stronger. He always had so much more of the fight in him. I had to plead for mercy as the code of conduct of boys’ fights allows.

But matters were different now.

I knew then that this had dogged me all my life. The desire to give in, to walk away, to avoid conflict at all costs, was a weakness I should have faced up to but had concealed from myself all these years. I’d tried to turn it into a virtue. I’d told myself that reconciliation was always best; that this was the code of life that I’d grown up with and I’d convinced myself that it had served me well. I’d met Janet. She’d told me that my gentleness was what attracted her to me and I loved her for that. But for all that, conflict was, in the end, unavoidable. And I’d chosen to walk away rather than fight.

I knew now that this had to change.

Brogan hurled himself upon me with a wild display of brute force, an outpouring of the bottled up anger that had blighted his life since his father’s death, his separation from his sister and all the hardship and disappointment that followed. Crystallized, shining bright, in this moment. He was shouting abuse at me yet what emerged was just one long, high decibel bellow of anguish.

The next two blows were at my solar plexus. I could feel the will to resist deserting me as the sickening shock of those blows expelled the air from my lungs.

He meant to kill me if I couldn’t resist, I knew that.

I reached out. There was a cast metal replica of a statuette of an Irish sports star just out of my reach. It looked heavy enough. If I could just reach it.

Three more blows rained in. Brogan was verbalizing again now. “Tell me! Tell me why you did it?”

The fist was held back again, inches from my face, threatening a final blow that would drive me into unconsciousness.