Chapter 50
‘He won’t show up,’ Laura said.
‘Probably not.’
Trestle Storage was a seedy twenty-four-hour locker unit situated down an alley behind the station.
It was basically just a long room with a single entrance – a glass door at one end – and one wall taken up entirely by the battered metal lockers.
Laura and I were sitting opposite those, sipping coffee in a slight alcove behind the counter.
We’d relieved the receptionist of his duties for the night, and ten additional officers were stationed discreetly in the streets surrounding the unit.
Between us, we had Trestle Storage totally contained: nobody could get in without us seeing, and nobody could get out once they’d arrived.
So far, nobody had tried to do either. Aside from the buzzing strip lights overhead, the unit was eerily silent.
The General had chosen this location well, I thought.
There were several premises like this in the city centre, and their principal appeal was that questions weren’t asked.
The main customers were homeless people looking for a safe place to store whatever valuables they didn’t want to cart around with them, and low-level drug dealers.
A locker cost two pounds a day to hire. About a quarter of the two hundred in here were in use right now.
The money was barely enough to cover the rent, but the owners of these dives were generally mid-level criminals who got their cuts elsewhere.
As such, security was minimal. The CCTV was cursory at best. It covered the main entrance, and was wiped at midday.
We had a little under eight hours of footage to check through, but all it would show was people coming and going, not which locker they visited.
Similarly, a name was required upon rental, but no ID.
If you didn’t come back, you just lost the contents.
We’d already checked the ‘database’ – a clipboard of curling A4 sheets covered with scribbled biro – and the locker we were interested in had been rented to James Miller for the last three weeks.
That didn’t prove anything one way or the other, of course.
The General could have given whatever name he wanted, and both keys were missing from the pegboard of clips behind us.
‘Quiet in here,’ I said.
‘You think the receptionist put the word out?’
‘Probably.’ Bad for business to have known clients turn up and find police behind the desk. ‘To some people anyway. Maybe not to the General.’
‘I’m starting to think “the General” doesn’t exist.’
‘He exists. His name’s right there on the website.’
‘Yeah, but we’ve only got Miller’s word for it that they ever talked to each other. And the rest of it. He could even have written those posts himself – set up the username.’
It now seemed even less likely to me that Miller would have gone to such lengths. For what? He committed the murders; he wasn’t denying that. This bit of subterfuge wouldn’t achieve anything. But he might have his reasons, and for me, there was something far more conclusive.
‘What about the letters?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did he strike you as being that articulate?’
‘Not really.’ Laura sipped her coffee and grimaced at the taste. ‘Jesus. But the only way we’ll know for sure is if he walks through that door. Without that, this could all be a figment of Miller’s imagination. And there’s another thing too.’
‘Go on.’
‘Let’s say the General exists, and that it all played out exactly as Miller described it. And let’s imagine he walks in here and opens that locker in the next few minutes.’
I glanced at the smeared glass of the entrance. Nothing but night out there for the moment.
‘I’m imagining that.’
‘Okay. The question is: can we prove any of it anyway?’
She was right. If the man turned up, the only evidence we had for his involvement in the killings was Miller’s word.
The online messages inciting the crimes had been deleted, and the letters we’d received had been impossible to trace.
If we caught the General right here and now, then unless we found further evidence – at his home, say – it would ultimately come down to his word against Miller’s.
And unlike Miller, the General was smart enough to have thought ahead.
He could come up with a million explanations for having the key in his possession.
‘You remember what Miller’s father said, though?’ I sipped my coffee; Laura was right about that too. ‘It’s not our job to prove any of it. It’s just our job to catch him and gather whatever evidence we can.’
‘Yeah, like that’s ever been enough for you.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I guess not.’
‘At least we can be sure of one thing – regardless of whether Miller turns out to be a lone gunman on this, we’ve got him. He’s our murderer. If the General really exists, then we need to catch him, sure, but at least we’ve got Miller.’
I nodded. Even if the General existed and was guilty of instigating the crimes, Miller was the one who’d carried them out – and he was behind bars now, going nowhere. Which meant that nobody else was going to die. And that was something.
At the same time, it wasn’t enough: not for me anyway. Miller was responsible for his own actions, of course, but the General had helped to cause them.
And aside from catching the bastard, I wanted to know why.
What was the code? Why the letters? Why do such a monstrous thing in the first place?
With Miller, it felt like I could understand a little.
He was a young man who’d grown up twisted and bullied, learning the lesson well that inflicting fear and violence on the world was a way to make yourself bigger.
His motivations – money and self-empowerment – were twisted but logical.
For the General, I couldn’t even attempt an answer.
Without catching him – without knowing for sure – the case would remain open in more ways than one.
‘I’m tired,’ Laura said. ‘Tired of all this.’
‘Me too.’
‘I want to go home.’
‘Me too.’
She put her cup down.
‘How are things?’ she said. ‘At home, I mean. Better or worse?’
I thought about it, remembering the way it had felt to embrace Rachel the other night: the sense that the distance between us had closed slightly. And in the woods today, when I’d been sure I was about to die, it had been her I’d thought about. Her and our child.
‘Better, I think.’
‘Really? That’s good.’
‘We’ve still got a long way to go.’
But for the first time in months, it did feel like we might be able to get there. And for once I had an idea of how to help that happen. Talking, yes, but before I could do that there was something else I needed to do. Something I should probably have done a long time ago.
Laura said, ‘What do you think –’
My radio squawked. I grabbed it up off the counter almost before the sound registered.
‘Here,’ I said.
‘Hicks.’
My heart sank. It was Young, back at the department.
‘Sir?’
‘We’ve got a problem.’
I listened as he explained, slowly and quietly, what had happened.
And although he kept his voice even and his tone calm, I could sense the anger.
If he’d been talking to me in person, I imagined he wouldn’t have blinked the whole time.
Someone was about to get obliterated over there, and I took no pleasure right now from knowing whom.
I put the radio down and turned to Laura.
‘It’s over.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘Charles fucking Miller has happened. He’s given a statement to the press, right outside the department. In full military regalia too. Can you believe that? He told them he’s convinced his son is innocent and that we’re fitting him up to save our skins.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yep.’
Shit didn’t even cover it. If the General was anywhere near a television set, he would now know that Miller had been arrested and the storage unit was compromised. Which meant that our only way of catching him had just disappeared.
We gave it another hour, just on the off-chance. The unit received three customers in that time, two women and one man; they were all obviously homeless, but we had them detained anyway. Aside from that, the radio remained silent.
‘All right,’ I said eventually. ‘Let’s do it.’
We walked across to the lockers and located the number Miller had given us. I used the key from his room to unlock it. The door screeched slightly as it opened.
Laura peered in at the contents.
‘Where does that leave us?’
It’s over.
I stared at the neat pile of CDs, secured with a red rubber band.
‘Nowhere,’ I said. ‘Nowhere at all.’