For a moment, she wanted that human contact, but then she thought about Proctor and where he might go next.
She looked up and nodded towards the bindings round her ankles. ‘Stop hugging me and get me a fucking knife.’
Joe kept checking his rear-view mirror as he drove to Melissa’s apartment, nervous of the police stopping him, but there was just the evening traffic, a mixture of late shoppers and young men cruising. Melissa looked tired when he got there, as if the news about her brother had been on her mind all day, rearranging how she saw her life. Her skin appeared drawn and her eyes were red, as if she’d spent some of the time crying.
Joe rushed past her and held up the metal box. ‘I got it.’
When Melissa didn’t respond, he said, ‘You all right?’
Melissa exhaled and sat down. There was a half-empty glass of wine in front of her. ‘I’m not going to like this,’ she said. Then she apologised. ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s worse for you. What is it?’
‘Like I thought, his box of souvenirs. Dead girls.’
‘How many?’
‘Eleven. Not all dead. The more recent ones are all missing persons. He must have found he enjoyed their misery more.’
Melissa swallowed and put her hand to her mouth. ‘Eleven?’ she said, her voice barely a whisper. She closed her eyes and said, ‘Are you sure they’re all down to Mark?’
‘I found pictures of my sister,’ Joe said. ‘He’d stalked her, photographed her, as if he’d singled her out, but why would he do that? But there was one picture of her that makes it certain. It was Ellie on the floor, taken before the police arrived, because she was still wearing the necklace we hadn’t known she was wearing on the day, one never returned to us by the police. And the necklace was in the envelope.’
He reached into his pocket and dangled the necklace from his finger.
‘It was as if I could see her pain, even though her eyes were closed. She didn’t look at peace. She looked contorted and frightened, and it’s something I wish I hadn’t seen. And I can’t remove it from my head now. So yes, I’m sure.’
‘But how has he got away with it for so long? Eleven? That’s inhumane. A slaughter.’
‘Look out of your window,’ Joe said, pointing towards the lights of office blocks and apartment buildings. ‘Look at all the counties you can see from here. Hit that motorway just a couple of miles away and you’re in West Yorkshire, or Lancashire, Merseyside, and South Yorkshire just over that way. He travels around, county to county, knowing the police forces don’t share information well. All those different police areas within forty-five minutes from here – less probably – so easy to avoid having them linked. A few years ago, some of the forces didn’t even use the same computer systems.’
Melissa leaned forward to take a drink of wine. ‘I’ve been trying to get things straight in my head, thinking back through his life, at least what I know of it, looking for clues, answers. Things that had no importance back then now seem magnified, things I haven’t told anyone.’
‘About Mark?’
She nodded.
‘You can’t blame yourself.’
‘But I’m a part of it, don’t you see. I know it doesn’t make me responsible, but it makes me wish I’d seen it so I could’ve stopped it.’
Joe put the box on the floor and sat down opposite. ‘Talk to me.’
Melissa went to the fridge and returned with the bottle and an extra glass. She poured Joe a glass of wine and topped up her own. She ran her finger around the rim of the glass before she started talking.
‘Our house was cramped. There were three of us children, but I was the only girl, so Mark always had to share with my other brother, Dan. He was older than Mark by a couple of years and used to bully him. When I was really small, I’d lie in bed and hear Mark crying, or the sound of a fist being struck, or Dan taunting him. It was different for me, because I was in my own little cocoon, the baby sister, my bedroom all pink and fluffy. As they got older, Dan became a bit of a lad, going out boozing, but when he was home he would be getting at Mark all the time. When I was around ten I realised that Mark was a little different. He’ll have been around nineteen then but he was a loner. He used to disappear for hours at a time and not tell anyone where he was going. I remember Dan teasing him that he was going off to his den, his little hiding place.’
‘How did you get on with him?’
‘Really well, which is why this is so upsetting. I can’t believe it. When I got older and started getting upset over boys and stupid stuff like that, he was always there for me. He’d listen to me, comfort me.’ She shook her head. ‘I can see it now. I understand.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Something he once said.’ She took another drink. ‘I’d split up with someone, just a boy who broke my heart but was soon forgotten about, because that’s what being a teenager is about, strong reactions. Mark was great. He made me drinks, checked on me, let me talk about this boy, whose name I don’t even remember now. Then I met someone else and it was all forgotten. Mark was angry with me. He said I was selfish, that I only ever noticed him when I was sad and ignored him when life was back to normal.’
‘This is all about attention?’ Joe said. ‘I can’t believe it.’ He laughed, short and bitter. ‘No, I can believe it. That’s the whole damn point. He was Mr Anonymous, picked on by his older brother so he used to find secret places where no one could hurt him. No one noticed him until they needed him.’
‘We should have spotted that we were damaging him.’
‘No!’
Melissa looked shocked.
‘Don’t make it your fault,’ Joe said. ‘Big brothers pick on little brothers, it’s part of life. Little sisters can ignore them. Families are complicated, but most people get through it all somehow. For your brother, it just went a different way. Doesn’t Carrie ask about her uncle?’
‘Sometimes, but I just say we don’t get on. One day she might understand, but she’s too young to know, just fourteen, and that was even before I knew about all this?’ She pointed towards the box. ‘You have to take it to the police. Let them deal with it.’
She was right. Those were the thoughts he’d had as he stared out of the windscreen on the moors, not really looking at anything, just letting his thoughts wash over him, like whether he could carry on being a lawyer, or whether Proctor was worth giving it all up for. The photograph of Ellie dead on the ground told him that his career would mean nothing if he didn’t get justice for her.
‘I want to understand it first,’ he said.
‘No, please, Joe. Do the right thing.’
‘How much do you think the police will do? So he takes an interest in murdered teenagers? He’s a grief counsellor, the perfect cover, wouldn’t you say? Some defence lawyer like me will say it.’
Melissa didn’t respond.
Joe put his hand on the box. The contents were precious.
‘There is one more thing,’ Joe said. ‘There’s an extra envelope. It has no press clippings or death photograph.’
‘What, someone who might still be alive?’
‘That’s my thinking. He’s been watching someone.’
‘There’s someone to save.’
‘Only by stopping your brother.’
‘So take this to police.’
She was right again. He could save the girl by killing Proctor, but he didn’t want to do it that way. Joe had seen the pain in Gerald’s eyes, the knowledge that he’d ended a life. However much Proctor deserved it, Joe didn’t want to live his own life with torment like Gerald’s for company. He’d take the box to the police, but he’d find the girl too and warn her in case the police can’t act. For Joe, it was personal. It was about doing for this stranger what he hadn’t done for Ellie.
Joe lifted the metal box onto the wooden table between them. Melissa was leaning back in her chair, uncertain, both hands clasped around her wine glass.
‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ she said.
‘This is your brother in here,’ Joe said, putting his hand on the box. ‘If you thought you knew him, this might be where you find out you didn’t know him at all.’
‘But somewhere in there might be some blame for me, something I should have noticed.’
‘You can’t blame yourself. I carry more blame than you, because I could have said something that might have caught him earlier. This box is like something I let him do.’
Melissa stared at the box for a few seconds more and then said, ‘I need to know.’
‘Are you sure? This will rewrite your childhood, make you see everything differently.’
‘Show me. I need to make sense of it all.’
Joe opened the lid and reached in. He produced an envelope with Ellie’s name on the front. He let the contents fall onto the table without looking. ‘This is my sister.’
The pictures of Ellie landed face up. Melissa leaned forward, transfixed by the images, eyes wide. She picked up the first one. It was Ellie outside the local shop, puffing gingerly on a cigarette. Melissa traced her finger on the image. ‘I can see her soul in that picture,’ she said. ‘She looks so alive, a girl trying to become a woman.’
‘She was doing just that,’ he said. Then he pulled out the press cuttings, scattering them onto the table. ‘This was his real thing, though. It wasn’t about the murder; it was about the effect it had on everyone else. His grief counselling was just a way of wallowing in it. Why do you think he killed your cat? Because he liked the cruelty? No – it was because he liked your distress. And I bet he tried to be more supportive, to be there for you. But it was just about getting close so that he could feel your pain.’
‘Are people that calculating?’
‘I’ve been a defence lawyer for long enough to know the answer is yes. And do you know what else strikes me?’
‘Go on.’
‘No one noticed him. He was the quiet one who took himself off to his own little private space. Your other brother was the go-getter, the lad around town, and you, well, you’re the little princess, daddy’s girl. What was he? The quiet middle one, ignored by all. These murders are his own little force field, his impact on the world. A desperate little man, obsessed with being noticed, except he’s found a different way, where only he knows what he’s done. A very solitary pursuit.’
‘And I played a part in it.’
‘Don’t dwell on that. I played a bigger part. I could have said something back then, about the man I’d seen follow Ellie. If he’d been caught, all these girls would still be alive. I let him stay free. I carry the guilt. You weren’t to know. I was.’
‘That’s a lot to carry around.’
Joe reached into the box and drew out more envelopes. ‘Every one of these is partly down to me.’
‘It’s not a competition,’ Melissa said. ‘Let me look. Who else is there?’
Joe handed Melissa a few more envelopes. They all contained the same thing: stalking photographs, a death shot, then press clippings. There was always something from the body – an earring or a necklace or a pen – anything that was a part of the real person. Melissa thumbed through them in silence. She shook her head occasionally, her eyes showing a mix of horror and disbelief, each death shot bringing an involuntarily widening of the eyes.
When she’d finished, she put them face down on the table and covered her eyes. ‘I can’t believe this,’ she said.
‘And there’s the one I told you about,’ Joe said. ‘The envelope that’s less full than the rest, with no clippings or death pictures; just the stalking pictures.’
‘Show me.’
Joe passed over an envelope that was thinner than the rest. It contained the pictures that had been sent to Gerald King, of the girl from the school he couldn’t identify.
Melissa lifted the flap and reached in.
As she looked through them, she went pale and let the pictures slip from her fingers onto the floor.
‘Melissa? What’s wrong?’
She put her hands over her mouth. They were trembling violently.
Joe bent down to retrieve them. As he did so, his gaze landed on a photograph frame on the wall unit behind Melissa. He hadn’t paid it any attention, not consciously, but the girl in the photographs had seemed familiar as soon as he’d seen them. Now he knew why. There were pictures of her all around the room.
The girl in the photographs was Carrie, Melissa’s daughter. And Proctor had been stalking her.
Proctor gripped the steering wheel and screeched, his teeth bared, his wild.
‘Shit!’
It was all going wrong. Gina Ross. Joe Parker. All of his past racing forward to mock him. He couldn’t let that happen. He should have killed Gina. He’d meant to, but he’d taken too long, had wanted to make her suffer before she died. That wasn’t how he did things: it was about the effect, not the act. Normally he killed quickly. With Gina, it had been about revenge, about emotion. He’d let it get out of control.
One last act, that’s all he needed. He was leaving, he didn’t know where to, but he needed to make one final wave, something that would leave his stain long after he was gone.
Carrie. It was always leading to this.
Melissa had shut him out. He wasn’t going to allow that. He’d had to watch his niece grow up without knowing him.
He shook his head angrily, even though there was no one else in the car.
No, it wasn’t that. It was growing up without
noticing
him. Her uncle, Melissa’s brother, everyone’s rock.
It was Thursday, he knew where she went. The youth club. He’d watched her there before. He’d always known it was coming to this. He’d just been waiting for the right time. It had arrived.
He checked his watch. She’d be leaving.
He drove quickly towards Ancoats, the shadowy blocks ahead shutting out the lights from the city centre.
The youth club was in a restored church. He thought he was going to be late, people were spilling out onto the road, teenagers hugging goodbyes. Some were leaving in large groups, others climbed into waiting cars, and there were those who skulked home on their own. The quiet ones on the edge of everything. Like he’d been. He wasn’t on the edge any more.
He slowed as he drove past the end of the street and looked down towards the church. He couldn’t see Carrie.
He could drive round the block. She had to be nearby.
Then he saw her just ahead, picked out in his headlights, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, her long hair flying in the light breeze. Ginger and luxurious, just like Melissa’s.
Carrie was with just one other person, a girl smaller than she was.
There was no time to make a plan. With no one else nearby, the youth club some way back, he had to move quickly.
He swerved to the side of the road, thumping his front wheels onto the kerb, making Carrie and her friend turn around and back up towards a wall, fright on their faces.
He jumped out of his car. ‘Carrie, I’m a friend of your mum. Come quickly. There’s been an accident.’
Carrie looked uncertain. ‘What do you mean, an accident?’
‘Your mum’s at the hospital. I’ve come to collect you.’ He stepped closer. ‘We can’t waste any time.’
Her friend stepped forward. ‘No, don’t,’ she said. ‘Call your mum first.’
‘There’s no time for that. Come now.’
Carrie looked at her friend, who was shaking her head. Carrie held up her phone. ‘Just let me call her.’
He was losing control of it. Carrie was tall and athletic. He couldn’t let her make the call. She’d run away and he wouldn’t catch her.
He reached into his pocket and produced a knife, the blade long and jagged, one he kept in his car to use against girls like Carrie. He lunged forward and put it against her neck. She screamed but he clamped his hand over her mouth.
‘Get in my car. Now!’
Carrie’s friend screamed but he didn’t stop. He pressed the point of the knife into her throat, pushing in the skin and drawing a large drop of blood, before pulling her towards his car.
‘No, please, don’t,’ Carrie said, sobbing, but she didn’t resist or try to run away.
Small punches landed on his back. It was Carrie’s friend, but she wasn’t strong enough.
There were shouts further along the street, people from the youth club spotting what was going on. He had to be quicker.
He opened his car boot. ‘Get in.’
‘No, no, I can’t. Please don’t.’ Her face creased in tears as her friend ran down the street.
Proctor hit her with his fist, connecting with her jaw. She grunted and crumpled and dropped her phone. He forced her into the boot, lifting her ankles in as he slammed the boot lid, pausing only to collect her phone.
He looked along the street. People were coming towards him, some running.
He jumped into the car and stamped on the accelerator. There were bangs on the rear door as people reached him but he was able to get away, exhaust fumes filling his rear-view mirror as he glanced behind him.
He’d done it. He let out a long breath.
Now for the finale.
‘Where is she?’ Joe said to Melissa, looking around the room, his gaze catching photograph after photograph showing the girl from Proctor’s envelope. Some were posed school pictures; some were less formal photos: Carrie laughing with friends and or hugging Melissa.
Melissa was panicking. Her hands trembled as she tried to steady her phone. ‘The youth club,’ she said. ‘She goes there every Thursday. Has done for a couple of years. It’s just somewhere for the kids to hang out.’
‘And it’s a pattern, easy to follow,’ Joe said.
She pressed Carrie’s details in her contact list and muttered her name to herself. The phone rang out. ‘She doesn’t always answer,’ Melissa said, her voice deep with anxiety. ‘We argue about it all the time; I tell her that I need to know where she is.’
‘We’ll go there now. You keep calling. Check her social media. I’ll drive.’
Melissa ran for the door, pausing only to slip on some shoes and grab her keys. They rushed out of the apartment, pacing as they waited for the lift.
‘It’s not far,’ Melissa said as they ran to her car.
‘You keep phoning her and direct me.’
Joe climbed into the driver’s seat. Melissa was still trying Carrie’s phone, but without success.
‘Where am I going?’ Joe said.
‘To the main road. Go right. About half a mile, just behind a small supermarket.’
Joe sped off, the engine loud between the high mill buildings. Melissa was calling Carrie’s number again. ‘Why won’t she answer?’
‘Won’t her friends be with her? She might be fine, just talking or whatever.’
‘You don’t know teenagers,’ she said. ‘Their phones are bolted to their hands.’ She threw her own phone into the footwell. ‘Fuck!’
There was a small supermarket ahead, Joe ignoring the speed limits. ‘This one?’
‘Yes, down there.’
There was a building next to a small church further along. Light spilled from an open doorway, catching the barbed wire along the gutters and the small crowd outside. Melissa was out of the car even before Joe had come to a stop, running straight into the cluster of teenagers jabbering at each other. Cars were arriving behind them, parents getting ready to collect.
‘Carrie?’ she shouted, pushing through the crowd.
Young teenagers looked round at her. Some backed away. Others giggled. Some hid the glowing ends of cigarettes in their palms.
‘Carrie!’
A girl stepped forward. It was Wanda, one of Carrie’s friends. She was crying. Her nose was bleeding. ‘Someone took her.’
Melissa grabbed her by the arms. ‘When? Who?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, trying to back away. ‘A man. He put her in his car and drove away.’
‘Hey!’ a woman said, pulling at Melissa’s arm. ‘Leave her alone.’
Joe stepped between them, to stop a fight starting. ‘We’re just looking for Carrie. She’s gone missing. We’re sorry.’
The woman let go of Melissa, scowling, but recognised the panic in her eyes.
Melissa set off towards the youth club building, up a concrete wheelchair ramp and into a narrow corridor, before bursting into an open hall with wooden flooring marked out as a basketball court.
‘I’m looking for Carrie,’ Melissa shouted.
There were two adults, a man wearing a vicar’s dog collar and a woman in her fifties, along with a small group of older children. The man looked at the others and said, ‘We’ve called the police. Are you her mother?’
‘Who’s taken her?’
‘I don’t know. A man in a car. He hit her.’ He stepped forward. ‘I’m sorry. We’re all sorry. I don’t know what else to say.’
‘Did you get his registration number?’
‘It happened too fast.’
Melissa called 999 and shouted information about her brother down the phone. When she hung up, she ran for the door, but when she got outside she realised she had no idea where to go.
Joe headed for the car. ‘Come on, to Mark’s house. We’ll start there.’
His phone buzzed. It was Gina. ‘Gina?’
‘Proctor’s been here,’ she said, hoarse and breathless. ‘He tried to kill me.’
‘Have you called the police?’
‘Yes, they’re on their way.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘I don’t know, Joe, but you’ve got to find him. He’s settling old scores.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Just find him.’
Joe hung up.
Melissa was already in the car, staring into space, her hand over her mouth, trembling. ‘Not Carrie,’ she said, almost to herself, as Joe climbed in.
Once he was in the driver’s seat, he tried to call Sam. His phone was engaged.
‘Shit!’
People had to move out of the way as Joe floored the accelerator, some swearing at him. He didn’t care. He had to find Proctor. He hadn’t saved Ellie. but he sure as hell wasn’t going to fail Carrie.