Chapter Seventeen
Baxter
The outside of Wakefield Prison was everything I’d expected it to be: dour, imposing, uninviting.
“Are you sure?” Lake asked, for what had to be at least the sixth time since we’d left London and taken the train to Geoffrey Ryhill’s current residence at his majesty’s pleasure, after more than a week waiting to see if he’d accept the visiting order request. “We could just walk away. Find a nice restaurant and have some dinner.”
“You think I’m going to come all this way and not go through with it?”
“Hoped maybe,” Lake said with a smile. He glanced at the red brick building. “You’re not the only one who’s nervous.”
“What have you got to be nervous about?”
“I’ve never met a murderer.”
It was a valid point. I wished I could say the same. “You can wait out here if you want.”
“I should be saying that to you.”
“I’m the one who said I had to see him.”
Lake huddled deeper into his coat. “True.”
“So I guess we’re both going in.”
“I guess we are.”
Lake’s thoughts were chaotic as we walked toward the main entrance.
If anything, he’d underplayed it when he said he was nervous.
After the security checks, someone led us to a table where a man already sat waiting.
He wore the standard prison uniform of gray jogging bottoms and a blue T-shirt, neither of which fit particularly well.
He lifted his head as we arrived, his gaze speculative as he gave us both a slow once-over.
I wanted to change my mind and leave. But Lake was already pulling out a chair and lowering himself into it, and I wasn’t going to be the person who’d dragged him here only to desert him.
So I sat, too, forcing myself to ignore the frantic thud of my heart and look at Geoffrey.
He’d aged a lot since the mugshot photo.
How much of that was time and how much was prison life I couldn’t tell.
“So…” Geoffrey said. “What did you want to see me about? Are you journalists?” His voice matched his appearance—wholly unremarkable.
“I get a lot of journalists requesting visiting orders. You wouldn’t believe the crazy shit they want to talk about.
And yet I’m the one who got labeled unhinged in court. ”
“We’re not journalists,” Lake said, his voice reassuringly calm.
We hadn’t once discussed how the conversation might go if he agreed to a visit. Sitting here now, with him staring back at us, it felt like a glaring oversight.
“How’s your… erm… day been?” Lake asked.
Geoffrey laughed. “Uneventful. Same as every other day in this place. Are you therapists? Is that what this is about?”
“My name’s Baxter,” I said. “Baxter Stuart Canmore.” Geoffrey frowned, no flicker of recognition occurring. “Even if you don’t recognize my face,” I pressed, “you must recognize my name.”
He thought about it and then shrugged. Either he genuinely didn’t remember, which seemed odd, or he was doing a good job of pretending he didn’t.
“October eleventh, 2006. Finchley Central Station car park. Around seven in the evening.” Sweat prickled along my spine, my clothes sticking to me, but I forced the words out.
“You were there that night. You killed a man. You killed me. You stabbed me in the back and ran off. I want to know why. Why me? Had we met before and I don’t remember? Had I wronged you somehow?”
Geoffrey leaned forward, brow furrowing. “If I’d killed you, you wouldn’t be here, would you?” He shot Lake a conspiratorial glance that said, Have you heard this crackpot?
“Did you stab a man that night?” Lake asked. “The crimes you were charged with began in 2015, but the police theorized you started years before that.”
“The police,” Geoffrey said slowly, “theorize a lot of bullshit. Doesn’t make it true.”
I tuned into his thoughts—and got nothing. It happened occasionally. Some minds were just impenetrable. I tried again. Nothing. Like hitting a brick wall.
“I’ve never been to that car park,” Geoffrey said. “Plenty of others in London, but not that one. So I can’t help you.”
“Can’t,” I said, frustration rising, “or won’t?”
Geoffrey laughed, leaning back with lazy amusement. “I just told you—can’t. I can’t explain a crime I didn’t commit. The police tried that game too. I told them the same thing.”
“Why did you stab the other men?” Lake asked, trying a different angle.
Something dark flickered across Geoffrey’s face as he straightened. For the first time, I saw the murderer lurking beneath the urbane surface. “Because they didn’t deserve to live another minute.”
I refused to let the chilling words cow me. “Why? What had they done?”
His gaze locked onto mine, sharp and searching, slid across to Lake, and then snapped back. “They disrespected me.”
“How?”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you’re not journalists? You ask as many questions as they do.”
“I’m sure.” My throat was dry. “How did they disrespect you?”
Geoffrey gave a weary sigh. “Various ways.”
“If we start with 2015, your first victim was Christopher Vine,” Lake stated. “What did he do?” Lake had clearly done some of that research he professed to enjoy so much.
A fond smile curved Geoffrey’s mouth. It might have been sweet if Christopher hadn’t been in his grave for a long time, and Geoffrey hadn’t been the one who put him there. “Ah, sweet Chris,” he said. “Goddamn, he was pretty. Have you seen pictures?”
Lake nodded stiffly. “He was… very handsome.”
“Just go along with whatever this nutter says.”
It was good advice whether he meant the thought for me or himself.
“The trouble with being that pretty,” Geoffrey continued, “is he thought I’d put up with him playing around.
That just because he was a ten, and I was—well, let’s be generous and say a seven back then—that he could treat me however he wanted and I wouldn’t complain.
Which I did. For a while, anyway. But it festered.
Every time he cheated, it was like another layer of skin being scraped off until I was one big pulsating nerve. Can you blame me for snapping?”
When neither of us answered, Geoffrey laughed.
“Why a car park?” I asked. “Why not somewhere more… intimate?”
“The hunt,” Geoffrey answered without missing a beat. “It would have been too easy at his place. Or mine. A car park had risks. And risk is…” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “Exciting. A two-for-one. I got rid of him, and got to enjoy myself at the same time.”
There was a torrent of sweat beneath my armpits now, my nervous system not coping too well with a discussion so close to home. Geoffrey leaned forward, the nearest guard glancing over but saying nothing. He crooked a finger at me.
Against every instinct, I leaned in. Perhaps he was going to confess. That was worth a couple of minutes of discomfort.
“Do you want to know what it feels like?” Geoffrey murmured. “Is that why you’re here?”
“No,” I said, voice tight. “I just wanted to know about murders before 2015.”
“It’s a rush,” he said, “to know you have all the power and they have none. The first time I stabbed someone, I thought there’d be more resistance.
More force needed.” My breathing turned shallow.
I couldn’t look away. Was he talking about me or Christopher?
“Depends on the knife, I suppose. Mine was sharp. I made sure of it.”
A dull pain bloomed in my back, radiating outward.
“It’s a cliché, I know,” Geoffrey went on, “but it really was like a knife through butter. Though maybe that doesn’t work when you’re actually talking about a knife.” He chuckled. “I’ll think of something better next time.”
I was back there. The gloom. The pressure. The fall. Wetness. Pain. Hopelessness. Like the nightmare, but awake, unable to escape. No prison guards. No Lake. Just me and Geoffrey, and his poisonous words.
“The blood surprised me,” Geoffrey said. “I expected it to be slower.” I was going to be sick. “I wore gloves after the first time. I discovered I don’t like getting blood on my skin. Too sticky. Too red, too…”
Concrete against my cheek. Cold. So cold. Blood was sticky because I could feel it on my hands as it pooled beneath me, spreading until I wondered how my heart could still beat when there was more outside my body than in.
“Enough!” Lake snapped.
The spell broke. I shoved my chair back, the sensation of freeing myself from Geoffrey Ryhill’s hypnotic stare like wrenching a boot from mud—sucking, resisting, trying to pull me under again.
Lake’s hand closed around my elbow, hauling me upright. “We’re done here.”
I didn’t argue, leaning into him as he guided us toward the exit. My ears rang, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out Geoffrey’s laughter as it followed us.
Nothing felt real until we were outside and the cold air hit my face. Lake steered me to a wall and had me sit. I concentrated on breathing, fast, shallow breaths eventually slowing to deeper ones. “He said he didn’t do it,” I said finally.
“You couldn’t read his mind?”
I shook my head.
Lake sat beside me, the thigh pressed to mine offering a comforting warmth. “Do you want my opinion?”
“Yes.” It startled me how much it mattered in such a short time.
“He was lying. Why would he tell you the truth?”
“No reason.”
“And why lie?”
That took more thought. “He enjoyed watching me squirm,” I said. “I was a worm on a hook.”
“Exactly,” Lake said. “That’s probably the most fun he’s had in years.”
“Thanks for getting me out.”
Lake shrugged. When I tuned into his thoughts, he was thinking about the tree a few feet from us.
It was a common tactic people used when they didn’t want their thoughts read.
The more time I spent with Lake, the better he was getting at it.
Normally, he retreated into historical facts.
On the train, it had been Napoleon. Now, nature. Endearing, yet frustrating.
We sat in silence for a while, Lake still thinking about the damn tree while I contemplated the feeling of being chewed up and spat out. Facing up to things was tiring. “Let’s get a hotel tonight,” I suggested. “One with a restaurant where we can stuff ourselves.”
“I can’t—”
“My treat,” I said quickly. Lake was proud and refused to admit that he wasn’t exactly flush when it came to money.
But you only had to look at all the things his ex had taken that he hadn’t replaced to see the truth.
Hell, he hadn’t even gotten himself a bed.
“Thanks for coming with me. I’m sure there’s a long list of stuff you’d rather have done today. Like root canal surgery.”
That earned the laugh I’d been aiming for. He rubbed the back of his neck. “It would be nice not to get straight back on a train.”
I stood, my legs a lot less jelly-like. “Then it’s settled.”