Mark Proctor was smiling as he walked.
It had been a good start to the day. He’d had a night to think about what to do, sitting on the roof, huddled against the cold. By the time the morning came round, cold and sharp, he’d worked it out. The day had improved when he got home and saw his metal box had been returned, left outside his front door. He’d wanted to cradle it, examine its contents, but instead he’d returned it to its place in his workshop – he’d look through it later. Now for a different plan.
He was a long way from home, in one of the villages close to the Yorkshire border. The house in front of him was large and made of stone, some Pennine grandeur in contrast to the grimy bricks of the council estate behind and overshadowed by the hills that rose in the distance. There were stone bay windows on either side of wooden double doors, the curtains open, showing off the large paintings of mills that adorned the furthest walls, celebrating what had built the towns but blighted the valleys.
Proctor paused for a moment. What he was about to do would change everything but he knew he had no choice. He climbed up the three stone steps that took him through flower-beds bordered by stone walls. He made his soles scrape noisily, hoping the noise had travelled inside.
He rang the doorbell and stepped back. It chimed through the house. He was going to enjoy this.
He turned around and looked into the valley. He wanted to reveal himself like a showstopper, so he looked along the slate roofs that were warped through time, the houses in long rows. Remnants of history.
There was a delay before anyone answered. The door opened slowly.
Proctor turned around. He grinned. There was a man with thinning grey hair who kept his body behind the door, so that only the top of his head and scared eyes were showing.
The man’s eyes widened when he saw him, and his fingers gripped the edge of the door a little tighter.
‘Hello,’ Proctor said, and grinned wider, his head cocked. ‘I’m the man you were supposed to kill last night.’
Joe leaned against a fence in a small ginnel, where a line of wooden fences and trees made a snaking short cut that no one dared use. His hood was up, his hands thrust into his pockets. It made him look more suspicious, but at that moment anonymity seemed more important.
Proctor had gone into a house opposite, large and grand, three storeys, with a front garden that was terraced to the low wall at the front. The view behind was part-green, part-urban, wild Pennine slopes and downbeat housing. Cars streamed past constantly, and Joe hoped they provided enough of a distraction.
Joe had almost missed him. There’d been no car outside Proctor’s house when he first arrived, so Joe was about to leave, unsure what to do, but then Proctor rushed back. He was driving a different car, a small green hatchback with a dent around one of the front light clusters, black tape holding in the glass. He’d rushed in, pausing only to collect something by the door, and stayed inside for around thirty minutes. When he came out again, he’d showered and changed, his hair still wet. Joe had followed.
Now all he had to do was wait to see what Proctor did.
Proctor walked along the hallway and into a kitchen at the back of the house, the man leading the way.
The kitchen was warm. There was a clothes rack over the hot plates of a yellow Aga, with socks and T-shirts spread out. There was an old square sink under a stone drainer and dusty hooks on the wall. It all looked reproduction, though, as if the man had ripped out whatever modern look had been adopted in the sixties and tried to take the house back to the grand old house it would have once been. The lure of original features trapped the house in time. Photographs adorned every cupboard: a child’s smiling face, on holiday or at Christmas, some school photographs, a mother, proud and protective. Some of the photographs were old and faded by the sun that streamed through the large window.
Proctor’s eyes narrowed.
The man shuffled as he walked, his shoulders slumped in an old sweatshirt and creased trousers.
Proctor sat down at the table. His chair creaked. The man went to the sink and grabbed a glass from the drainer, filling it with water from the tap. He stared out of the window and drank it slowly.
‘People will comment,’ Proctor said. ‘What have you done? Called in sick, just not feeling up to it? Your first mistake, acting differently. Tell me, how did it feel? How were you when you got home? Scared? Or empowered, pumped with adrenalin, unable to sleep, filled with that sweet buzz of revenge?’ Proctor laughed. ‘And here I am.’ He pointed to the drawer underneath the window. ‘Is that the knife drawer?’
The man turned round and put the glass back on the drainer. ‘What?’
‘If you fancy another go, open it. I won’t move. I’ll just sit here and let you.’ Proctor grinned. ‘Watch out for arterial spray. It goes everywhere.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh come, don’t be silly,’ Proctor said. ‘I guessed what was going to happen, so I sent a friend along, a quick hundred quid. Collect something and bring it back. He was just the courier service.’
The man looked down and gripped the edge of the sink. He said nothing.
Proctor reached into his pocket and pulled out a memory card. ‘This contains the photographs I took. I parked further along from you and got everything.’
The man groaned and slumped to the floor. He sat back against the kitchen units. ‘What do you want?’
‘Money, of course,’ Proctor said. ‘This memory card is for sale, for the right price.’
‘I haven’t got any money, you bastard.’
‘You should reign in your temper. I’m the man you were supposed to kill. I should be the one who’s angry. Losing control means you make mistakes.’
The man didn’t respond.
‘And what about your friends? They’ll never stop talking about it. Who would have thought it, Gerald a killer. It is Gerald, isn’t it? Or do you prefer Gerry?’ Proctor smiled. It was time to reel him in. ‘So who set this up? The same happened to me. They had something of mine that I wanted back. We’ve been played, both of us. You’ll get a message soon, asking you to meet her for your special treat. If you do, bang, you’re next.’
‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’
‘You sure? I’ve got the pictures, remember.’ And he waved the memory card.
‘How much do you want?’
‘Fifty thousand.’ When Gerald scoffed, Proctor added, ‘I want more, of course, but I’ve got to pick an amount you can get your hands on.’
‘How the hell can I get that much?’
‘Get creative.’ Proctor winked. ‘Just get a few credit cards and you’ll soon run it up. Withdraw the cash and give it to me. Sell your car and do the same. I’ll enjoy sending these pictures to the police if you don’t. It would create a ripple. I like ripples. You’re a splash guy, I can tell.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Last night was just about that, nothing else. All you wanted was me. I bet it tortured you beforehand, all those years dreaming of it. And then there it was, the chance to get me.’ Proctor shook his head. ‘You’ve no imagination. Some people like to throw in a big rock and get off on the splash, the shock, but that isn’t where the real enjoyment is. That’s instant, thoughtless. No, it’s the ripples you should search for. The splash is just the mechanism, but what follows is truly special, because the ripples affect everything they touch.’
‘Just get to the point.’
‘Which is why I would enjoy sending these pictures. I could sit back and watch your life being destroyed.’
‘All right, I get it!’ Gerald snapped. ‘Wrap it up in whatever you want but it’s just a sleazy blackmail plot.’
‘We’ve all got bills to pay, Gerald, but I will do something else for you.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll blame someone else for it, because you weren’t the only person in the park last night.’
‘How are you going to do that?’
‘Give me something I can lay a trap with. The knife would be best.’
‘I’ve cleaned it,’ he said. Then his eyes widened. ‘I wiped it off with a rag. It’s in the garage, under something. I was going to bury it somewhere later, or burn it.’
Proctor grinned. ‘Perfect.’
Joe checked his watch. Proctor had been in the house for nearly half an hour. Who else was there? One of Proctor’s clients? Or was it an accomplice?
The front door of the house opened. Joe cursed and stepped backwards. He hid behind the branches of a laurel bush that were spreading through a hole in a fence. Proctor came out. He was whistling. He skipped down the stone steps and went to his car. He looked back up to the window, where a man was staring down at him. Proctor waved and then got into his car. The man in the window didn’t move as he watched Proctor drive away.
A few minutes went by while Joe thought about what to do. Whoever was in that house seemed pivotal somehow, because Proctor had made the house his first trip of the day. And he’d lost Proctor, the sound of his engine long since faded into the steady drone of traffic noise.
The door opened again, and this time the man in the window was rushing down the steps towards a car parked further along, a red Jaguar, old-style.
Once the noise of the Jaguar disappeared as Proctor’s had, Joe stepped out of the ginnel.
Now what should he do? Both Proctor and the man had left so there was no chance of Joe following. But Proctor had headed straight for the house, and whatever Proctor had visited for, it had made the man rush off. The answers must be in that house and Joe was in no mood to wait for events to reveal themselves. It could end up with Joe waiting on the wrong side of prison bars.
The street was busy with cars and buses, the sort of road that people drove along to get somewhere else rather than a destination in itself. No one would notice Joe walking to the house. There was a shale path running alongside it, a cut-through to the council estate on the other side, visible as brick blights beyond a line of concrete bollards. Joe thrust his hands into his pockets and headed for the path. He tried to look casual, his shoes scuffing the loose stones, but he was becoming conspicuous in his attempts. Just stay natural, he told himself, but what was natural in this situation?
He reached the back of the house without being seen and looked for a sign that someone else was in there, but everything looked dark.
The garden was bordered by a stone wall around six feet high. There was a gate under a stone archway. He pushed at it, but it just rattled in the frame, bolted on the other side.
Joe glanced quickly both ways and then launched himself at the wall. He hauled himself up, his feet pushing up on the uneven stonework and with his arms over the top. It scraped his stomach as he straddled it before he dropped onto the other side.
His shoes made a loud smack as he landed. He took deep breaths and sank to his haunches. Someone in the house next door would be able to see him if they looked out of the window. He waited for a shout but there was nothing.
The garden was a long rectangle, with a gravel path running between two brick planters, decking and chairs at the other end, pushed up against the wall. The chairs would give him another route out of the house if he were disturbed. He could vault the wall, using a chair to give him the help up, and disappear into the estate behind, where the intruder would be put down to some addict.
Satisfied that he hadn’t been spotted, he ran along the path that bordered the garden until he was flat against the house. He leaned over with his hands on his thighs and sucked in air. This wasn’t him, creeping around gardens. As he straightened, he knew that he was about to go a step further.
He walked slowly up to the back door, old and wooden, painted green, with flakes that pointed outwards like jagged fingers. There were small lattice windowpanes, dusty and cobwebbed, not double-glazed. Joe pressed his face against the glass to see how it was locked. The tarnished brass of a key stuck out of the lock. That made it easy.
Joe slipped off his jacket and screwed it into a ball before placing it against one of the panes. He closed his eyes for a moment, knowing that he was about to take the step that could end his career. But the stakes were higher than that.
The glass made hardly a sound when Joe punched his jacket, cushioning the blow but with enough force left to shatter the pane nearest the key. He reached in before he could change his mind and turned the key. When it clicked, he pushed at the door. It opened with a creak. The bottom of the door scraped on the broken glass. He stepped inside.
He’d crossed the line. All he could do now was keep on going.
He was in the kitchen. The glass crunched underfoot as he set off. He needed to find out more. He just didn’t know what he was looking for.
The kitchen door opened into a hallway lined by old tiles, black and white squares and surrounded by a coloured border. The stairs ran from near the front door, by the entrance to the room that overlooked the road. There was a room at the back that looked out over the garden: a dining room.
Joe stepped quickly across the hallway and into the back room. Sun streamed in through the French doors. It was a room to relax in, with a sagging chair in each corner. The walls were covered in pictures and photographs of a woman in her forties, with a teenage girl alongside. They were the most recent. The other pictures of them made Joe feel like he was winding back time as he turned; the woman became younger, slimmer, her hair longer, the girl became a young child and then a toddler. There were paintings stuck to all the surfaces, childlike, a small family group with the people drawn like rectangles, and a boat under a yellow circle of a sun. There were no pictures of the man, though.
There was a small desk in a corner, with the large monitor linked to a computer that was blinking a blue light underneath, the fans blowing lightly. There was nothing showing on the screen.
Joe went over to it and nudged the mouse. The screen flickered into a life. The desktop image was the same as one of the photographs on the wall, the woman and the teenage girl, hugging each other in front of the gleam of a reservoir. There was no password required.
Computers hold people’s secrets, those dark places they visit when home alone, thinking that no one was watching. There is always a trail, though, even though it often takes an expert to find it, because no internet visit is invisible. Someone, somewhere, is always watching.
Joe went to the browser history first. It had been cleared. That might be routine. Or the man might be hiding something.
The email software was next. Joe was transfixed as it loaded in.
The inbox was full. The man was called Gerald King. A lot of it was rubbish. Emails from camping and angling sites, an astronomy site. It was mundane.
But there was one sequence of conversation that came from a sender titled only ‘anonymous’. When Joe moved the mouse down, it highlighted a large number of messages. There had been quite some conversation.
He went to the top one first. It was a short message:
You got the wrong one.
Joe went down the list, clicking as he went, his mouth opening wider as he read. He couldn’t believe what he was reading.
He swallowed, his fingers trembling on the mouse. There was one with an attachment. Joe paused before opening the email, not wanting to see what he thought he might find.
It was a picture message entitled ‘Katie’.
Joe groaned and closed his eyes as the image filled the screen. He felt the blood rush round his head, warming his cheeks.
The picture was of the same teenage girl as in the photographs, except this time she was lying on the ground. Her mouth was open in a grimace, faint bruises visible around her neck. Her eyes were closed, her shirt torn open, her small bra pushed up to show her breasts, her head against stone steps.
Joe had to clench his teeth to stop the bile rising. It wasn’t the image itself – he’d seen plenty of crime scene photographs – but what he knew it represented. The murder of a teenage girl, strangled, the girl so full of life in the photographs on the walls so lifeless on the screen.
Joe was so engrossed in the image he hadn’t heard the turn of the key, or the soft footsteps along the tiled hallway. He gasped as someone gripped his hood and forced his head onto the desk.