Egan pursed his lips and looked away.
And there was something else.
Egan turned back, his eyebrows raised. Go on.
Laura glanced at Pete. Shes missing her eyes and tongue.
What do you mean, missing her eyes and tongue?
It means that she hasnt fucking got them any more, said Pete, his voice rich with sarcasm. What do you think it means, that she left them on top of the fridge or something?
Egan spun around, eyes angry, so Laura interrupted. She was tied to a chair, and her eyes and tongue have been cut out.
Egan continued to stare at Pete, who just stared back. Eventually Egan turned away. He sighed and then began to chew at his lip. Laura sensed that he had just seen this investigation stretching a long way into the future.
I bet you could do without this, said Pete to Egan, as he raised his eyebrows at Laura. On top of the abductions, I mean.
Egans top lip twitched.
Laura looked down and tried not to smirk. She had quickly figured out that Egans eyes were on the career ladder. She had seen his type before: delegate everything and then take all the credit. Look pert and enthusiastic in strategy meetings and then ditch the work onto others. She could guess why Pete hadnt climbed very far.
Is it drugs? asked Egan, looking around, trying to change the subject. Some kind of revenge attack?
Doesnt look like it, Laura said. She was new to Blackley, but she knew enough to know that this wasnt a drug neighbourhood. It was full of new-build town-houses, all shiny red bricks, narrow paths and neat double glazing, brightened up with cottage fascias and potted plants. It was a first-time-buyer estate. Drug dealers dont bother with the housing ladder; they stay low until they can move really high. I checked with intel half an hour ago, and shes not on our radar. Just a nice, quiet girl, so the neighbours say.
How was she discovered?
Laura and Pete exchanged glances before Laura replied, The call came around four this morning. Some old boy, Eric Randle, said he went round to check on her. He found her tied to a chair, dead.
Went round to check, at four in the morning?
Thats what I thought. Laura raised her eyebrows. Said hed had a dream.
Egan smiled, almost in relief. This sounds like a quick one.
Maybe, maybe not, she said. I saw the body, and I saw him, and he doesnt seem a likely. But he doesnt have an alibi. Laura thought back to the meeting shed had with the old man. He hadnt spoken much, seemed in shock.
So is he suspect or witness? asked Egan, watching her carefully.
Suspect. Everyone is, this early into it.
So did you arrest him?
Laura noticed the tone of Egans voice, slow and deliberate, making sure it had been her decision. He would stand by her only if it looked like she had got it right.
She paused for a moment, thought about what they had in the way of evidence. The old man had been visibly upset, but Laura had checked him out for wounds or scratch marks. Nothing. His clothes had been seized, to check for blood-spray, and hed agreed to a DNA swab, for elimination purposes shed told him, along with his fingernail clippings, but nothing in her instincts told her that he was the killer.
No, she said, after a moment. Hes of interest, but no more than that.
Egan nodded, a thin smile on his lips, and then headed up the path towards the front door.
Crime scenes are still in there, she shouted.
Egan stopped, looked back at her. Laura thought he appeared irritated, as if she had somehow insulted him. Before he had a chance to speak, a uniformed officer appeared at her shoulder.
Weve got a neighbour who says she heard something last night.
Egan looked over and then moved back down the path towards them.
Who is it?
The uniform pointed behind him to a house a few doors away, at the edge of the cul-de-sac. On the doorstep stood a woman in her fifties, wrapped in a quilted dressing gown, her hair messy and eyes bright with fear.
Whats she got? Egan barked the questions, sounding impatient.
She says she heard a car leave very late, well after midnight. It had been parked at the entrance to the cul-de-sac. A nice car, Audi TT, navy blue. When it left, it screeched away.
Did she get the number?
The uniform held up a scrap of paper. Not last night. But she remembered it this morning when she saw the police arrive because it was one of those personal ones.
Egan looked down at the piece of paper and grinned. We need to do a vehicle check on this.
The uniform smiled. Already done it.
Egan pursed his lips a couple of times, like a nervous tic, and then asked, Whos the keeper?
Someone called Luke King.
Is he known to us?
His father is.
Go on. Egan was sounding impatient again.
Hes Jimmy King.
Egan looked like hed been slapped.
Who is he? Laura whispered to Pete.
Pete sighed. Some would say a local businessman, one of the most successful in Lancashire.
And what would others say?
The most ruthless and sadistic person they have ever come across.
She was going to ask Pete something else when she noticed that Egan had started to pace. She sensed that if Egan was about to feel the strain, she was about to get even busier.
Chapter Five
It was over an hour before anyone else showed up at Sams office. It was the same most mornings, quiet until just after eight. He preferred it that way normally, away from the office chatter, but it was different this morning. He was edgy, troubled by the old man outside the office. Every time he looked out of the window, he was there, staring up, watching him work.
And Sam was trying to work. The early-morning office time was important. Being a criminal lawyer could be a full day. All-day courts and all-night police stations, with clients and witnesses to see in between. Sam had a diary full of appointments, although he knew most of those wouldnt attend. Theyd turn up instead on their trial dates, expecting him to defend them when they hadnt even bothered to tell him their story.
So the early morning was when Sam caught up, the office fresh with the smell of furniture polish after the attentions of the dawn cleaner. He briefed counsel, compiled witness statements from a jumble of notes, or dictated the stream of correspondence demanded by the Legal Services Commission.
The younger lawyers did it differently. They went for visible overtime, working late into the evening, hoping to be noticed. But it made no difference. Only one thing mattered, and that was the figures. How much money was made. No one asked when it was made.
At Parsons & Co, whatever problem needed sorting, there was always a lawyer willing to bill you for it. Crime had always been Sams thing, but when Harry Parsons had started out, hed done everything from divorces to fighting evictions. As the firm grew, it sprouted departments. The criminal department was the most precarious, because the work was so unpredictable. Police budget cuts could lead to fewer arrests, or if a lawyer upset one of the bigger criminal families the department would find itself with fewer clients. The claims department was the money-spinner. It used to help people who called into the office, victims of real accidents. Now it just handled referrals from those claims farmers who advertised on television, the promise of free money slotted in between debt-firm commercials, and now the lawyers settled claims for people they never met.
Harry Parsons himself still worked in the office, but he didnt venture out much, working instead from a room along a dark corridor of worn carpet and faded paint. A local legend, hed built up the practice from virtually nothing, but he ran it now from a distance, trusting the departments to deal with the day-to-day domestics. Everyone else was jostling for position: the old man was due to retire in a couple of years, and they were all hoping for a share when he went.
They didnt have the ace card that Sam held, though: he had married Harrys daughter, Helena, and given him two grandchildren. As far as Sam was concerned, he was at the head of the queue.
Sam was looking out of the window when he heard the other lawyers and clerks begin to trickle in. They gathered in a room along the corridor and drank coffee, exchanged insults. Sam would wander in when he finished what he was doing. He was on his third cup of coffee and he could already feel his heart thundering, but he needed the kick. He had a morning in court to get through and the broken sleep was getting to him. He looked round when he heard a knock on the door. It was Alison Hill, the newly qualified lawyer in the firm, spending some time in crime until she decided what she wanted to do with her career. She would move on, he had seen the ambition in her eyes, but until then Sam liked seeing her around the office. She wore her hair back in a ponytail, clasped by a black clip, and her blonde locks gleamed. Whenever they met, Sam automatically toyed with his wedding ring, felt himself smile too much. She was tall and elegant, with a bright and easy smile, her green eyes deep and warm.
He nodded towards the window. Do you know him?
Alison walked over and looked into the street. Sam could smell her perfume, something light and floral.
She shook her head. Never seen him before. Why, is he bothering you?
He shrugged it off, but as Alison turned away from the window, Sam noticed she had a file in her hand.
Everything okay? he asked.
Alison looked down, almost as if she had forgotten she was holding it. Ive got this today, for trial, she said.
What is it?
Johnny Jones, for assault.
Whats the problem?
She looked awkward for a moment, and then said, He seems guilty. Ive looked at every angle and I cant see a way out. He attacked the karaoke man because he missed his turn. Half the pub saw him do it, and its on CCTV.
Sounds like a classy place.
She grimaced. It reads like the worst night of your life.
Sam smiled, found himself playing the elder statesman. Dont worry about Johnny Jones. Hell be convicted, guaranteed, but he wont listen to your advice. Hell want an acquittal out of pity, but he wont get one. Just call it character-building.
How come? Its a complete no-hoper.
Would you rather lose a no-hoper or a dead-cert winner?
She didnt answer.
Nothing you can do will get him an acquittal, Sam continued, and the prosecution will give him a hard time for having the trial. He will get the verdict he deserves, and maybe even get the sentence he deserves. But, Sam raised his eyebrows at her, if you mess up a dead-cert winner, when you have made promises you thought you could keep, youll see your clients eyes every night when you go to sleep, that look in his eyes as he gets taken down the steps. Fear, anger, confusion. Trust me, thats worse.
Alison sighed and then smiled. Thanks, Sam.
Any time. As she went to leave, Sam said to her, Dont forget the magic words, when you get to your feet.
She looked confused. Magic words?
Clients instructions. When you are asked if the not guilty plea stands, just say that those are your clients instructions. It just gives a hint that you dont believe in what you are doing.
Why should I do that? It wont help Johnny Jones.
Forget about your client. Youre the one who matters, and for your sake the court needs to know which one of you is the idiot. There is only one thing worse than a lawyer making a hopeless application, and thats a lawyer not knowing it is hopeless.
Bang on the table, you mean?
Sam grinned. He remembered that from law school, the old adage that if you are strong on the law, argue the law, and if you are strong on the facts, argue the facts. If you are strong on neither, bang on the table.
Bang it hard, said Sam. Take every point, regardless of how pointless, just so that the punter thinks youre a fighter. He wont know youre talking nonsense, but if you fight the case he will think youre the best young lawyer in Blackley.
Alison nodded, looking more relaxed now. Okay.
Remember, youre Harrys golden girl.
She blushed, although they both knew that there was some truth in that. Helena, Sams wife, had once been a lawyer at Parsons, but had given it up when shed had children. It seemed like Harry saw Alison as Helenas replacement.
Sam looked back out of the window. The old man was still there.
If I get killed today, remember his face.
Can I have your office?
Get out.
She was laughing as she went.
When he was alone in the room again, Sam watched the street life. The pavement was getting busy with lawyers from other firms, big egos in a forgotten Lancashire town. They barely noticed the drunks who congregated at the end of the street and shared cheap cigarettes and stolen sherry.
He watched the lawyers walk by for a while, waved at the ones who looked up. When he looked beyond them, he noticed that the old man had gone. He checked his watch and then stepped away from the window. He made a note of the time. Like most lawyers, he lived his life in six-minute segments.
Chapter Six
I watched Bobby as he watched television. Parenting was all new to me, but I loved Laura McGanity, and she and Bobby came as a pair.
Ambition had taken me to London a few years earlier, and I had fulfilled that, carved out a small niche in the crime circuit: Jack Garrett, crime reporter. It had come at a price, though, most nights lost chasing down drug raids or shootings, or writing exclusives on scams and gangsters, losing sleep as I waited for the door to crash in.
But then my father was killed a year ago. We had grown apart before that; we were like strangers when I went south, but since his death I had needed to come home to Lancashire. I didnt know why, couldnt work it out. Maybe it was as simple as guilt, trying to make up for the years when I had been away, chasing excitement, chasing dreams. Whatever the reason, I was back in Turners Fold, the small Lancashire cotton town where I grew up, all tight alleys and millstone grit; the town I had worked so hard to escape from.
It was harder for Laura, though. Wed met on a case -she was one of the detectives, while I was the reporter prying for a story. She was London to her boots, at home in the noise, the movement, the youngest daughter of a City accountant. I had given up a lot to move up north: my social whirl, my contacts, my new life in the city. But Laura had given up everything familiar.
I sat down next to Bobby. His eyes stayed fixed on the televisionSpongeBob SquarePants and I wondered how the move would affect him. Laura had divorced Geoff, Bobbys father, not long before we got together and contact had been sporadic at first. As soon as Id arrived on the scene, things had miraculously improved. But now I had dragged Bobby two hundred miles north, away from the urban clutter of his toddler years and into the open spaces of Lancashire moorland. We had settled in an old stone cottage, with a slate roof and windows like peepholes. At night the cottage seemed to sink into the hillside, the lights from within like cats eyes flashing in the dark.