‘What are you talking about?’
Proctor leaned forward and his hands clasped together. He stared into her eyes. She met his gaze.
‘Sometimes the ripples are more enjoyable than the splash,’ he said. He cocked his head. ‘Making no sense?’ He smiled. ‘I ought to think about getting a new lawyer. Perhaps you’re not as good at your job as you think you are.’
Gina clenched her jaw in frustration.
Proctor gestured towards the door. ‘If you’ve nothing left to add, it looks like our meeting has ended.’
Gina put away her notebook and pen. As she stood to leave, Proctor said, ‘Don’t feel bad. You can’t expect everything to always go your way.’
She rushed out, almost knocking the cup out of Helena’s hand, who was bringing in the drink.
‘Goodbye, Helena,’ Gina said, before rushing through the door.
As she stood on his drive, she took a few deep breaths to calm herself. She was angry. He’d been taunting her, her hands were shaking. She rushed to her car. Once inside, she called Joe.
He answered straight away. ‘So what did you find?’
‘A woman with no voice or authority, happy just to do whatever pleases him. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew something but chose to ignore it. The house has no character or warmth. But there was a funny thing.’
‘Go on.’
‘As soon as I arrived, she asked me if I was there about the money?’
‘Did she say what she meant?’
‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘Proctor’s a financial investor, but he runs into problems with his clients sometimes. Helena said that he had a different set of accounts, hidden away in a metal box in his workshop at the end of the garden. I’m not surprised. Psychopaths are risk-takers but overestimate their own intelligence. He isn’t going to be doing normal investments. He’ll be running scams of some type. She said there were other things in there too. Photographs and odd things.’
‘His memento stash,’ Joe said. ‘Gerald was sent copies of his daughter’s notebook. But it won’t be there any more. He was burgled.’
‘There might be other things.’
‘Stick to our plan,’ Joe said. ‘You’re looking into any old cases. Speak to Sam.’
‘Do I mention this?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘And what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to have a snoop around Proctor’s workshop.’
Sam rushed into the Incident Room, not wanting to waste any time. There was the packed silence of hard concentration. The latest murder hadn’t been linked officially, but the possibility made everything more serious. The case could become huge – something momentous they would talk about when they got older. To their children and grandchildren, perhaps even to the television cameras: one of those true-crime programmes where just about any murderer gets a profile. Everyone looked up as if they were expecting Sam to give them an update from the new murder. When he went straight to his monitor, they went back to what they were doing.
Sam didn’t meet anyone’s eye. As much as their interest in him could be about updates, it could also be because his brother’s involvement was getting deeper. Were his colleagues looking at him and wondering what he knew, whether he would share it? Sam didn’t have many friends on the team. He was the quiet one by the window, the one who preferred to look for changes in behaviour patterns over knocking on doors.
He retrieved the list of registration numbers picked up on the cameras close to Henry Mason’s murder site. He’d printed them out and folded them under his monitor the day before, waiting for some quiet time to start building a grid, working out the owners and separating them geographically, so that if nothing came up forensically they could quickly work out teams to visit each house.
He was looking for something different now; he was looking for Mark Proctor.
He logged onto the computer and went to the entries for Mark Proctor from a few nights earlier. The statements were on the system, everything done electronically, and he went to the arresting officer’s statement. As he expected, Proctor’s registration number was on there, the car seized and taken to the compound. He scribbled it down on the back of the papers and logged off. He grabbed his papers and headed for the door. He didn’t want Brabham to come back to tell him he was off the team.
As he reached the doorway, someone shouted, ‘Everything all right, Sam?’
‘Just a line of inquiry,’ he shouted back,as he darted along the corridor.
He got in his car and called Gina. ‘On my way,’ he said, and hung up.
It didn’t take long to get to the park where Henry Mason was killed.
There was some twine wrapped around one of the gates. Flowers, Sam guessed, long since stolen. Gina was waiting on a bench just inside the park. Sam held up the sheets of paper as he got closer. ‘Here’s the list.’
‘How close are the cameras?’ Gina said. She didn’t want to tell Sam about the visit to Proctor’s house just yet. She wanted more certainty.
‘There’s one just as you come off the motorway,’ he said. ‘It gets them going off and on. It makes the ring road like a ring of steel. You can’t get in or out without someone knowing about it. There’s another on the way out of town. I got one from the road into Manchester from the next junction along. If we know which junction he used, it will give us a better idea of his movements.’
‘Have you gone through them?’
‘No, not yet,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d wait to see how you were getting on.’
‘Someone is coming here shortly. Someone I trust. He might have something for me.’ She patted the bench next to her. ‘Pull up some wood and make yourself comfortable.’
Sam sat next to her and pulled out the sheets of paper. ‘This is from the camera nearest to here,’ he said, holding up one sheath. ‘If Proctor came from his house, he’d come past that way, but he’s not stupid. He’s avoided capture for a long time, and he hasn’t done that by being predictable. I’ve got the lists from all the closest junctions and the ones in the towns on the way.’ He handed over a scrap of paper with Proctor’s registration on it. ‘Let’s get to it.’
The wind blew the pages as they both looked. Sam was looking for just the last three letters, because that was enough to memorise, and then he examined each entry if he came across it.
Each report ran to nearly a hundred pages, showing registration numbers and the times the vehicles were logged. The time span covered the evening rush hour so the traffic had been busy. Fifteen pages in, with the typed figures starting to blur in front of his eyes, he said, ‘I’ve got it,’ and tapped the sheet with his pen. ‘Proctor came off the motorway and passed the camera just after seven.’
‘Mingled in with the dregs of rush hour.’
‘What time does it get dark?’ Sam said.
‘Just before eight.’
‘He was getting himself in place nice and early. The attack was brutal, and because no one heard any shouting, I reckon Mason was taken by surprise. So Proctor was waiting patiently, and once it was dark, bang, hammer on the head.’
‘I can trump that,’ Gina said, and passed over the sheets of paper she’d been looking at. ‘Just before nine thirty, his car was picked up on the camera at the next junction along. We’ve got him in the car, because he was stopped shortly afterwards, on the way home; so we’ve got him driving towards the murder scene and away from it.’
‘We need more, though,’ Sam said.
The sound of footsteps drew their attention, like the clip of leather soles. A man in a suit strode towards them.
‘Is this your man?’ Sam said.
Gina smiled. ‘Yes. Tim Smith. One of the best detectives I’ve worked with. Just don’t tell him I said that.’
As he got closer, Tim was panting. ‘I can’t stay long.’
‘Good to see you, Tim. I take it you’re not going to the gym much.’
He patted his stomach and grinned, a football of a paunch protruding over his belt. ‘Can you tell?’ He gave Gina the quick up-and-down. ‘You’re looking well.’
‘Don’t lie,’ she said, and she tapped his wedding ring. ‘I’ve got a hangover, I slept badly and my roots need doing. Did you get what I asked for?’
He looked at Sam, hesitant to answer.
‘This is Sam Parker,’ Gina said.
Tim frowned, as if he was trying to remember something, then said, ‘You made the call yesterday, about your sister.’
Sam nodded. There was no point in denying it.
‘You can trust him,’ Gina said.
Tim paused for a moment, but when Gina raised her eyebrows, he relented and pulled out an envelope from his suit jacket. ‘I did my best but I haven’t got much.’
Gina reached out her hand, but Tim pulled the envelope away.
‘What’s it for?’ he said. ‘I can’t do this if it’s to help one of your clients.’ Before Gina could protest, he added, ‘This Proctor guy? You must have known I’d check out his most recent arrest? Honeywells is the name on the custody record. Joe Parker, right?’ Tim nodded towards Sam. ‘I know of Sam because of the call, but why are you working together?’
Sam and Gina exchanged glances, nothing more than twitches of eyelids and the slightest head tilts, but each knew what the other was asking: could they trust Tim? As far as Sam was concerned, if Gina did, that was enough for him.
‘Full disclosure?’ Gina said.
‘Yes, full disclosure,’ Tim said.
‘Yes, Proctor’s a client of the firm. And before you say anything, I’m not trying to get him off with anything. My boss is Joe Parker. Sam’s brother. Ellie’s brother.’
So Gina told Tim about how Joe was convinced that Proctor was Ellie’s killer, and that he was somehow linked to other murders in the city.
‘And Sam couldn’t just find out about Ellie’s case – or Proctor – without this subterfuge? It’s all just a few clicks of the computer mouse away.’
‘Come on,’ Sam said. ‘I can’t go near anything to do with Ellie’s case, and if we get Proctor for it, they might look at the computer trail. You’re on the squad; you’re entitled to look.’
‘What you mean is that you’ll do the same as searching the computer but in a way that won’t get you found out?’
‘It’s not what you know, it’s what you can prove,’ Sam said. ‘I’m not going to get you into trouble.’
‘So you’re trying to lock up your client, rather than keep him out?’ Tim turned to Gina.
‘Something like that,’ she said.
Tim grinned. ‘If only there were more defence firms like yours,’ he said, and passed Gina the envelope. ‘I can’t let you keep them, but if you happened to make a note of what was on them, who would know?’
‘Thanks, Tim,’ Gina said, and pulled the papers out of the envelope.
As Gina flicked through them, Tim looked at Sam. ‘Ellie’s case was glanced over this morning,’ he said, his voice softer. ‘There’s nothing that links Proctor in any way. I know we could do some speculative testing, to see if there is any DNA on her clothes we haven’t detected before, but we’re not going to get funding for it. You know how it goes now.’
Sam did know, but that didn’t ease his frustration.
‘So what are these?’ Gina said.
‘I went a bit deeper on Mark Proctor,’ Tim said. ‘I found something. Concern expressed about him from bereaved parents of murdered children. He’d got a reputation as a grief-junkie, someone who contacted families, usually just offering kind words. Some didn’t want sympathetic voices, but others were receptive to them, used them as crutches to help them through. And Proctor was always there for them. He even married one.’
‘What?’
‘His wife’s sister was killed and dumped in an alley that ran behind an industrial estate. Proctor turned up, like some self-appointed grief counsellor, and the victim’s sister fell for his soothing words. Harry Neave was the SIO on that one.’
‘I know Harry,’ Gina said.
‘Retired now.’
‘It’s okay, I know where to find him.’
Gina skimmed through the loose sheets. Four families had complained about Proctor, but one stood out amongst all of them: the Reilly family. They claimed that Proctor had known something the family hadn’t.
‘That’s the one,’ Gina said, tapping the piece of paper.
She reached into her handbag to get a piece of paper, and then scribbled down whatever details she could.
As Sam read it, Gina said, ‘Has Proctor ever been arrested, or come close to it?’
‘Apart from the other night, nothing,’ Tim said.
‘Let’s see if we can change that.’
Joe was sitting in his car, parked on the street further along from Proctor’s house.
His mind was fixed on Proctor’s workshop. If it was somewhere private, it might be somewhere he kept other secrets, the ones that haven’t been stolen. Proctor kept keepsakes; the notebook belonging to Gerald’s daughter told him that. There might be more.
He could tell Sam, in the hope that he could get a warrant, but he’d discounted the idea as soon as it came into his head. There wasn’t enough evidence to link Proctor to anything at the moment, except that the dead man in Worsley had travelled there in Proctor’s hire car? How did that implicate Proctor? If anything, it made him less of a suspect, because as far as the police were concerned it made him a potential victim. There was just some third-hand information that his accounts weren’t what they should be and Joe’s spark of memory. How could a detective on the Murder Squad hope to get a search warrant on that basis?
No, there had to be another way, and Joe knew that it involved him.
Joe dug into his pocket for his phone and called Gerald. When he answered, Joe said, ‘You need to meet Proctor, to talk about the blackmail. Meet him in the city centre. I need some time with him away from the house.’
When Gerald agreed, Joe said, ‘I’ll know when he leaves, but let me know when he’s with you. I need to know I’ve got some time.’
Joe hung up and waited. It was time for his second break-in of the day.
‘So does Brabham know where you are?’ Gina said, looking at Sam as he drove along the suburban road, looking up at the houses.
They were heading for the home of the family who’d complained about Proctor, that he’d been too intrusive, the family of murdered Zoe Reilly.
‘I can just tell the truth if I need to, that I was looking at the camera records for the night of Mason’s murder,’ Sam said. ‘He trusts me to do my job. He just hasn’t worked out that I’m not doing it at the moment.’ He came to a stop and straightened. ‘Here we are.’
Gina looked past him, to a nondescript detached house built sometime in the seventies, if the wooden panels under the living-room window were anything of a guide. It was on a street of nearly identical houses, although the intervening years had cast some differences. A house on a corner was covered in ivy, and some sported extensions over the driveways.
‘So this is the Reillys’ house,’ she said.
‘Yes, I haven’t been here for a while,’ Sam said.
‘You’ve been here before?’
‘Did you see the path further along?’
‘No, where?’
‘Just before we turned right onto the street; the road came to a dead-end but the path carried on, along a bridge over a stream and then through the woods next to some football pitches.’
‘No, I didn’t notice that,’ Gina said. ‘You seem pretty familiar with it.’
‘I arrested a flasher in his car once – some salesman who thought he’d found a quiet spot to look at pornography, or that was his excuse. Except he matched the description of a man who’d been seen hanging around in the woods, watching the kids play football. He denied it was him, and we couldn’t prove it, but we spoke to all the people round here and gave a description of his car. He’ll have found somewhere else, but he didn’t come back here.’
‘Why do you mention it?’ Gina asked.
‘Because Zoe Reilly was killed down there, in those woods.’
Gina was surprised. ‘You know about the case?’
Sam raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you know how Joe said he keeps a look out for any rapists or child molesters, because he would recognise the person who followed Ellie? Do you think I don’t do the same? Whoever killed her may have killed again. Whenever a teenage girl is murdered, I take an interest. I am bound to, after Ellie.’
‘But how would you know, if no one knew who killed Ellie?’
‘I won’t find out unless I look. Most come to nothing – it usually turns out to be a family member or someone close, like a neighbour or boyfriend. But I remember Zoe’s case.’
‘Because of the flasher?’
Sam nodded slowly and clenched his jaw. ‘I paid him a visit. It was all off the books, just chasing up my earlier arrest, checking there’d been no repeat, that his rehabilitation had been successful. I told him about Zoe and how his behaviour could cause him to be looked at. He went pale, perhaps understood for the first time how much trouble he’d brought upon himself. He had an alibi, and produced enough evidence to satisfy me.’
‘Did they get anyone?’
‘No, they didn’t,’ Sam said, shaking his head. ‘I know what it feels like in there.’ He looked up at the house. ‘It’s more than anger, because that needs a focus. It’s bewilderment too, and frustration.’
‘Let’s go speak to them,’ Gina said, and stepped out of the car.
Sam reached for his jacket, which he’d thrown onto the back seat. He took his time putting it on as he got out of the car, always looking at the house. Gina set off walking but paused to let Sam catch up. He was the one with the identification that would get them into the house, although Sam looked every inch a copper, from the greyness of his suit to the rigidity of his stride.
The front door opened before they reached it. A woman was standing there, dark brown hair flying around her face in the light breeze. Her mouth was open in surprise.
‘Sandra Reilly,’ Sam said, raising his identification. ‘I’m DC Sam Parker, and this is Gina Ross.’
The woman swallowed and looked her lips. ‘Is it about Zoe?’ she said, her voice a croak.
‘I’m sorry, I’ve no news,’ Sam said, his voice softening, ‘but could we speak to you?’
Mrs Reilly stepped away from the door. ‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry. Come in.’ She smiled, but it was a brave one, meant to disguise how she was feeling.
Sam and Gina walked from the short hall into a living room that looked like a tribute room. There was a large photograph of a teenage girl on the wall over the fireplace, and smaller ones in frames dotted around the room. It would be impossible to sit in that room without being reminded of Zoe.
She gestured at them to sit down. ‘So what’s this about?’
Sam started the questioning.
‘This might sound strange,’ he said, ‘but do you remember a man who came to speak to you after Zoe was found. A grief counsellor.’
‘Which one?’ Sandra said. ‘We spoke to a few, until we realised that they didn’t have anything to say that helped. There was no mystery to it; we have friends who did the same for us – gave us the chance to talk things over.’
‘What about Mark Proctor?’
Sandra’s eyelids flickered at the name. ‘Yes, well, I remember him.’
‘How so, out of all of them?’
Sandra sat down in a chair and looked out of the window. She stayed silent for a few moments. When she spoke, her voice was quieter, more reflective.
‘This view hasn’t changed,’ she said. ‘We’ve been here for twenty years. I was pregnant with Zoe when we moved in, and we had another little one.’ A smile. ‘Dominic. He leaves school this year, and soon it’ll be just me and Ricky, my husband. We were so happy when we moved in. It seemed such a nice house. And it was, for so many years. I cling to this view.’ And she looked towards the window.
Sam was transfixed. He knew Gina was looking at him, as if the despair he could feel balling tightly in his stomach was etched on his face. Sandra was describing his own mother in the years after Ellie died.
‘Every day, this view is the same,’ Sandra continued. ‘A lawn. The curving tarmac. The neighbours heading out to work. And it used to be Zoe’s view too. The same view but with Zoe as a small girl, playing with Dominic, dolls on the grass, a pink bike with tassels coming from the handlebars. Walking to school, each year taller, older, but the view never changed.’ She let out a long breath. ‘Then that final day. I watched her go. Just another day. She came back from school and was going to see a friend. I offered her a lift but she said she was okay. It was a nice evening, light and summery, and she was playing on her phone. She was always playing on her phone. I watched her go, I always did. She turned to wave at the bottom of the drive, and then she was gone.’
Sandra turned away. ‘The view stays the same, and all I want is for it to include Zoe walking up the path, but it never will.’ Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Sam and Gina. ‘And you never caught him, whoever it was. I don’t even have that focus.’
‘Tell me about Mark Proctor,’ Sam said.
‘He knocked on our door one night. He was carrying leaflets from a charity, a bereavement service, said he’d been asked to come along. It was a month or so after Zoe had been killed. The police interest was dying down because there was nothing to report.’
‘Did you ever check with the police whether Proctor had been sent by them?’
‘No, I don’t think we did,’ she said. ‘He was official, from a charity, so he said. And you can see how I am, needing to talk about it, to somehow understand it. And he seemed to know what to say, that it was about expressing ourselves, letting it all out, the usual stuff.’
‘So why do you remember him so well?’ Sam said.
Sandra frowned. ‘It was just a gut feeling, and something he said.’
‘Can you explain?’
‘It seemed like he was enjoying it too much. He was supposed to be there for our benefit, a shoulder to cry on, but it was as if it was for his benefit. He wanted to see photographs and for us to tell him about Zoe as she grew up. He was showing too much interest, almost as if he wanted to make us upset. Ricky called him a grief-junkie. That’s what he was, someone who liked all the drama and the pain.’
‘But what did Proctor say that made you turn against him?’
‘He mentioned a boyfriend we didn’t know about.’
Sam and Gina exchanged glances. ‘Unusual.’
‘Yes, that’s what we thought,’ Sandra said. ‘There’s a large Pakistani community on the other side of the football fields. The schools are always fighting each other, because the fields make a divide, schools on each side. Zoe was seeing a young boy called Khalid. I don’t think it was anything serious, they met through friends. She didn’t tell us because she thought we might object, and Khalid kept it quiet because he didn’t know what his parents would say, their son going out with a white western girl.’
‘And you found out through Mark Proctor?’ Gina said.
Sandra nodded. ‘He reckoned one of Zoe’s friends had told him, but why would he get that involved? He was a shoulder to cry on, that’s all. So I asked around. No one would admit to telling Proctor, but I found out where Khalid lived. I went to see his parents.’ She sighed. ‘They were lovely people. They’d heard about Zoe from the news and Khalid had kept it quiet, but it was nothing to do with them. They had no idea that Khalid had been seeing Zoe and, to be honest, I think they would have been okay. They were welcoming and kind but it didn’t get us any closer to finding out who killed Zoe.’
‘When was the last time you saw Mark Proctor?’ Gina said.
‘After I’d spoken with Khalid’s parents,’ she said. ‘He was too controlling, as if he wanted to know everything. He shouldn’t have known about Khalid before we did and, in the end, you learn to live with it. You never get over it, but just learn to accept that the pain will always be there.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘Do you know when it’s worst? When I forget about her. Not as in I’ve moved on, but if we have a night out or something, or a holiday, and there are moments when I’m laughing, having fun, and then it hits me, the guilt, the feeling that I shouldn’t be happy like that because of Zoe. How can I enjoy myself as if I haven’t a care in the world when Zoe is dead?’
‘I’ve heard people say that before,’ Sam said. He knew that Gina was watching him.
‘So what is it about Mark Proctor?’ Sandra said.
‘Just some complaints we’ve had, and your complaint flagged up,’ Sam lied. ‘We’re considering taking him off our list of approved counsellors.’ He got to his feet. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Your information is very useful.’
Sandra didn’t get up to show them out. ‘So you’ve no news on whoever killed Zoe?’
Sam shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’
When they got outside, Sam let out a long sigh.
‘You all right?’ Gina asked. ‘It seemed like she was talking about you, not just herself.’
‘The pain is common,’ Sam said.
‘So how much more do we know about Mark Proctor?’
‘Like she said, he’s a grief-junkie. If he had something to do with Zoe’s murder and he remembers the raw emotion in that house, he’s got one hell of a souvenir.’