Mark Proctor looked down at his hands. They were steady. No trembles or shakes. It had been an interesting evening but not entirely a surprise.
He fumbled with his keys and went into his house. There was music playing in a back room, some radio station turned up too loudly. Helena knew he hated that; the inane chatter, that Americanised drivel, the constant stream of badly written commercials.
‘I’m back,’ he shouted.
The music carried on.
‘I said, I’m back,’ he shouted louder.
There was a pause before the music was switched off. He preferred the silence, to let the sounds of the house take over. The tick of the clock, the clangs of the radiator, the hum of the fridge. They gave the house life and shouldn’t be drowned out by bad radio.
He walked along the hallway, pausing only to straighten a picture that had become askew, and into the small room. Helena was there, her hand around a glass of wine, a scented candle burning on the hearth. She looked up at him, wide-eyed. ‘You’re late,’ she said.
‘I got held up,’ he said. ‘I went to see a new client and Greg borrowed my car to meet someone.’ He nodded towards the glass. ‘Wine?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It was just something to do.’
‘Is there anything to eat?’
‘I didn’t know what time you were due back, so I haven’t made any supper.’ She put her glass down with a heavy clink. ‘I can make you something, if you like.’
‘Yes, that would be nice,’ he said, and backed out of the room. She knew not to put the music back on.
He threw his jacket over the banister and went upstairs to the small study. The door clicked closed and the room felt like a haven. He put his head back against the door and closed his eyes. He needed to work out what to do next. The computer was the obvious start.
As the computer booted up, he took the camera out of his pocket, slipping out the memory card and putting it in the drawer on his oak desk. Once the screen was showing, he went to the email software. No emails.
He opened the messaging app on his phone. He was angry, but he needed to keep that at bay; acting through anger leads to mistakes, and he didn’t make mistakes. He typed:
I sent my assistant to collect my box, I was busy at the time, and he hasn’t returned yet. What’s going on?
He clicked
SEND
and sat back. The noise of Helena in the kitchen drifted through the house: water filling a saucepan, some chopping of vegetables.
He thought again about the memory card from the camera and then glanced across at the A4 binders on his desk, the public face of his business. They contained the accounts he showed if he visited an investor. That was his business, persuading people to forget about the banks and trust him, because his accounts showed his successes, five-yearly investment plans that paid out big.
The sight of his accounts made an idea begin its slow journey to fruition, from a niggle to a growing realisation and then to an absolute certainty that it was the right thing to do.
His real accounts were locked away in a small safe in the corner. He went to it and pulled out an old ledger, hard-backed. He slid the bolt on his study door and settled back into his chair. He opened it to reveal his spidery handwriting, a list of names and numbers, showing monies in and out, along with a running balance. It was the only number that mattered because his scheme was a simple one: people paid him money and he did his best to make sure he didn’t have to give it back.
A smile was all it took. A shake of the hand, words spoken earnestly, promises that sounded plausible, with recommendations passing through whole families. They loved his balance sheets, those annual summaries of the progress of their investments that he used to get them to make another investment. Give him twenty thousand pounds, and after five years it’s grown to thirty-two thousand pounds. Give them back two thousand and they trust him to invest the remaining thirty for another five years. So it goes on, every five years, small sums given back and the rest reinvested. It was brilliant because they trusted him. He dropped off calendars at Christmas, held small parties for them, and their relatives couldn’t wait to join; he’d never let anyone down.
It was all a sham. He paid out using the new investments and enjoyed a good life, fobbing them off with loose change every five years. It was laughable. They thought they had a couple of hundred grand in the bank, when all they had done was give him a chunk of their money many years ago and believed his promises ever since.
The banking crash had made it difficult. People got scared and wanted their money back, but there wasn’t any left, so he’d relied on a lot of charm. But he’d ridden it out, putting off those who wanted their investments back by promising a decent return if they held firm. Less than before, but still better than the banks, because he knew where to look.
That wasn’t the difficulty, though. The hard part was attracting new investors, because people just didn’t have the money like they used to. He needed a new surge of capital, and as he looked at the memory card from the camera, he knew that he had it.
Joe sat in his car, running his hands over his hair, panicking, looking around, wondering who was watching. He’d just left a dead man whose blood was still warm. His fingers were trembling. Should he have done more? The man could have been saved.
No, the man was dead. His eyes were open, staring, and there’d been no breath coming from him. The man was beyond saving.
He looked at his palms and his vision swam. There was blood dried into the ridges in his palms and fingers. It will be in his hair and his clothes, just small traces of the victim’s DNA on everything he touches.
He slammed the steering wheel with his hand. Fuck! He shouldn’t have touched him, should have thought about evidence, but he’d reacted naturally. A man was on the ground and Joe had reached out to him, a human reaction.
He had to get away. Where could he go? There was one person who might help him. It might be too late for that, but it was the only person he could turn to.
Gina.
He set off quickly, his mind trying to make sense of it all.
The man had been alive just minutes before, Joe had seen him. So it could only mean one thing: that the killer had been waiting for him, striking as soon as he had the chance.
So who was he? Joe had been certain it was Proctor. It was a hire car, like Proctor’s, the same make and model and colour. The man was wearing the same hoodie Proctor had been wearing earlier.
Then he remembered the Trafford Centre. The car park. A switch? A pre-arranged meeting that Proctor had been suspicious about, so he’d got someone to go along on his behalf?
But if it wasn’t Proctor, who was it, and why was he murdered?
What about the body? It might not be discovered until the morning; the evening was setting in and midweek didn’t seem the right time for the green to attract the local teenagers. He had time to get rid of the traces.
But where was his morality? There was a dead man and Joe had witnessed his last movements. He should help. Except he knew the answer straight away, that as soon as he said that he’d been following the victim, suspicion would fall straight on him. Everywhere the police looked, he would be the prime suspect. He’d been seen loitering nearby, conspicuous in his courtroom suit. If they asked his family, they would say that he’d rushed off after he’d found out that Mark Proctor had spoken to his little sister. Sam would tell them that he’d once vowed to kill Mark Proctor.
Joe shook his head, gritted his teeth in frustration. What could he say? He thought he was following a man he’d once vowed to kill, right up until the point where he was murdered in a park by someone he couldn’t describe? He could see every investigative trail point back to him: he’d made a mistake, that in the gloom he’d mistaken the man for Proctor and carried out the promise he’d always made to himself. And there were traces of the man’s blood on him. It was a strong case, and he would become that cliché, the murderer who protests his innocence all the way through his life sentence.
He punched the steering wheel in frustration, making his horn sound, and screeched out loud.
There was only one thing Joe knew for certain, one thing that kept his anger under control: he hadn’t killed the man. He had no reason to feel guilty. But he had to keep on the move until he got to the bottom of everything.
He drove to Gina’s but parked a few streets away. It was too soon for the police to be interested in him, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He walked the rest of the way, looking around as he went along the slow curve of a suburban street. If there was a threat, he wanted to see it coming, even though he knew he looked suspicious.
Gina lived in a modern house on an estate, with wide lawns and cars parked on driveways rather than garages. It was nondescript and boxy, with the streets busy with children every weekend. He was relieved to see that her living-room light was on.
Joe paused before he walked up her drive. Gina used to be a detective. If she suspected he’d done something murderous, would she help or turn him in? He wasn’t sure he could trust her. But he remembered her true nature from when she was a detective. She’d been almost a mother figure to him as the family grappled with Ellie’s murder. She wouldn’t turn her back on him now, he was sure of that.
He took a deep breath and approached her door. He knocked and checked his watch: after nine. The curtain in the living-room window moved and then went back. At first, Joe thought she’d decided not to answer the door, but then there was the rattle of the security chain.
When the door opened, Gina just let it swing and walked back into the house.
Joe followed, closing the door behind him. When he went into the living room, there was no television on. There was a wine glass on the floor, as good as empty. From the way Gina slumped into her chair and pulled her knees up to her chest, Joe guessed that the glass wasn’t her first.
‘So that’s it,’ she said, raising her hands.
Joe could hear the slow growl of anger in her voice, along with the drawl made by the wine. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m retired,’ she said, and bent down for her glass. She drained her wine and said, ‘At fifty-three, I’m all washed up, just thirty years alone in these walls to look forward to. Thank you, Joe Parker.’
Joe didn’t sit down. ‘I’m not here about that.’
‘What, me leaving isn’t even worth talking about?’
He looked up at the ceiling and let out a long breath, tried to stay calm. ‘I’m sorry, Gina. What more can I say? I let you down.’
‘No, you let Ellie down.’
Joe glared at her. Gina raised her hand in apology. ‘Yeah, a low blow, I know, but that’s how I’m feeling.’ She pushed herself out of her chair before weaving towards the kitchen. ‘So what is it then? Have you come here to apologise?’
Joe listened to the opening of the fridge door and then the glug of the wine being poured. When she returned, she was carrying two glasses.
‘Too late for sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve quit.’ She handed him a glass. ‘But I don’t get drunk alone.’
Joe sat down and took a drink. The wine was cold and fresh and just what he needed.
‘I’ve come here for your help,’ he said.
Gina pointed with the hand that was holding the wine glass, so that the wine spilled onto the chair arm as she jabbed her finger towards him. ‘You had my help once before, but you weren’t being truthful to me, so it all came to nothing. You betrayed me, Joe. It feels like you cheated.’
‘This is different,’ he said. ‘Whatever’s happened in the past, you’re my friend, and I’ve come to you because I don’t know who else to turn to.’
Gina took a drink and stared straight ahead. After a few seconds, she said, ‘Go on, tell me.’
So he did. About Mark Proctor speaking to Ruby and about how he’d followed him to see where he went. When Joe got to the part where he found the man dead in the park, Gina’s mouth dropped open and she put her glass down.
‘What do I do?’ Joe said.
She left her chair and kneeled beside him. ‘What the hell have you done, Joe?’
‘Nothing! I told you how it happened.’
‘What if I don’t believe you, because you have to admit it looks pretty coincidental? You wanted to kill Mark Proctor. You followed him, and someone you thought was Mark Proctor is dead. Show me your hands.’
‘Don’t you think I know that?’ he said.
‘Show me your hands!’
Joe put his glass down and held them out. Gina turned them slowly, looking intently at his fingers. ‘There’s blood on them,’ she said, her voice quiet. ‘And your shoes. I can see it on the edge of the sole.’
‘I know that,’ he said, jerking his hands away. ‘I went to the guy, to see if I could help. I trod in his blood.’
Gina thought about that. ‘What would you tell a client to do?’
‘Not cooperate,’ he said. ‘Let them find me.’
‘So you’re not going to call the police or hand yourself in?’
He shook his head.
‘But how does that look?’ Gina said.
‘Guilty, that’s how it looks,’ he said, with resignation. ‘You’ve got to believe me. There’s no one else I can turn to. Yes, I made a mistake in the past, but I was hiding what someone else had done, not what I’d done.’
‘No, you were hiding what
you’d
seen,’ she said.
Gina looked at his hands again and got to her feet. She went over to her phone, which had been charging on the table in the corner. She unplugged it and placed it on the chair arm.
‘Leave,’ she said.
‘Gina, don’t do this.’
‘Leave and go back to your apartment. Do whatever clean up you want. If you’re lying, your clothes will have blood spray on them…’
‘They won’t, I didn’t kill him. It’s contact only.’
‘Then save them, to prove that. Call me when you get to your apartment, but make sure the call is a long one. Make it twenty minutes. I’ll answer and leave the line open. I’ll tell the police I tried to make you hand yourself in. The record of the phone call will be there, and it might just help you. That glass…’ And she pointed at Joe’s wine glass. ‘It’s going in the dishwasher and I’m going to wash the carpet where your shoes have been. As far as I’m concerned, you were never here.’
‘And then what?’
‘I’ll make some calls and see if anyone has discovered the body. If he’s been found, you’re on your own. Don’t come here again. Don’t drag me into it, because I don’t know whether you’ve done it or not. I want to believe you, but you’ve lied to me before and for a long time. Everything points to you, Joe, and I’m not going to jail if you’ve lied again.’
Joe nodded slowly, dread creeping through him. ‘And if the body hasn’t been discovered?’
‘I’ll tell them. I was a murder detective, and whatever you’ve done or haven’t done, there’s a body and a crime scene that will be degrading by the minute.’
‘And what will you tell them?’
‘That you called me and you told me what you just have.’
He let out a long breath and got to his feet. ‘I understand.’
‘This is goodbye, Joe.’
‘I know that.’
Gina didn’t move as he left the house.
He had to get back to his apartment. From there, he had no idea what he was going to do, but he knew he had to keep moving.