Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
“I didn’t think you’d make it.” Cavan stood in the hallway of the apartment, a bottle of beer in his hand, looking mouth-wateringly handsome in trousers, a shirt that was just about tight enough across his chest, and bare feet.
Lucy had clearly imposed the “no shoes” rule.
I walked into his arms for a hug, sniffing his cologne, and hoping I didn’t smell of two days policing without a shower.
We’d had an impromptu stay over in Newcastle on Thursday night to tie up any lose ends we could, taking statements from the young lad who’d been waiting on, and an official statement from Alexandra Aster.
She hadn’t heard from Neil Hunt since Tuesday night, and neither had anyone else.
He and his mate Craig hadn’t turned up for work since Wednesday, his phone was off, and other than three hundred quid being withdrawn from his bank account, there’d been no other activity. His car was still in Liverpool.
There was still nothing to connect him to Brooke O’Hara, but he’d certainly elevated himself in terms of our persons of interest list.
“Just about, but I need to shower and get changed.” I wondered if I was too gross to ask him to join me, even though there were at least another dozen people in the apartment that was a decent size, but still.
“Do you want me to get you a drink?” He gave me a kiss that tasted nicely of beer.
“That would be amazing. Are you staying tonight?”
He grinned, boyish and charming. “If you want.”
“I want.” I felt the fizz of chemistry, like a buzz of champagne going to my head, making the evening full of promise all of a sudden.
“Excellent. There’s a bottle of champagne – cheap because we’re teachers – in the fridge.
I’ll get you a glass. Shall I bring it to you?
” He backed away towards the kitchen, the door opening at the same time and one of Lucy’s friends almost falling through, obviously having gone too heavy on the shots.
“Please.” I went into my room and stripped off the clothes that needed to go to the dry cleaners tomorrow. I had a list of messages to respond to from my foster siblings, and a call to return to Romy, still the world’s best foster mum.
Or just mum. She’d told me often enough that the foster bit didn’t matter, and if we were lucky we got to choose our own families.
My phone was almost dead. I looked around for my charger, then remembered I’d left it in the kitchen the morning before.
Throwing on a pair of joggers and an oversized T-shirt that I’d nabbed off Cavan I slipped out of my room and headed to retrieve the charger.
The apartment was big and had access to a roof terrace.
Given that Manchester had declared it to be False Spring, the sun was also out and it was as if all the rain from last week had never happened.
Someone had even mentioned a hosepipe ban in a month or so as rain wasn’t forecast for at least a week, although those that lived in the city would never trust a weather forecast.
I opened the kitchen door, seeing Cavan and Lucy, Lucy moving quickly to the fridge.
“Have you seen my charger?”
She looked over at me and smiled. “You’re back! You must be knackered.” She swung over and gave me a quick hug.
“It’s been a long couple of days. I’ll get showered and come outside. Is there food?” I’d existed on over-processed food for the last thirty-six hours and needed something that could pretend to be home cooked.
“I’ve done party food. It’s in the dining room, and there’s a chilli for later. Cavan helped me cook.” She gave my boyfriend a little wave. “We added dark chocolate like you do.”
For some reason that detail made me feel off. “Thank you. Be back out in half an hour. Shall I take my drink?” I looked over at Cavan who was putting the champagne – a discount supermarket spesh – back in the fridge.
“I’ll bring it through. I seem to recognise that T-shirt, by the way.”
“Thought you might.”
He followed me back to my bedroom and helped me out of it, and I discovered I wasn’t too gross after all.
There were catcalls and whistles when we finally got outside on the terrace, predictably so.
About twenty of Lucy’s friends and colleagues had gathered, high from being on holiday from school, and drunk from the shots and prosecco that were being consumed.
I had no doubt that the lounge would be littered with sleeping teachers tomorrow morning, but I didn’t care.
I was high myself of the champagne and decent sex, the two combining to help me forget that I was in the middle of a double murder enquiry and had piqued someone’s interest in a way that might not be positive.
But for tonight I could be someone else, caught up in a web of teachers’ politics and staffroom gossip which I had no responsibility for.
I was in the middle of sympathising with a geography teacher about the lack of blokes on dating apps who were able to be honest about their interests when I heard my name from below, a haunting melody that sent shivers of abject terror up my spine.
“What the fuck’s he doing here?” I tried to peer over the wall that ringed the terrace without interrupting the geography teacher’s monologue by moving.
I heard my name again. A different voice this time.
There’d be another murder investigation tonight, with a killer known very well to the police, same with the victims.
“Serious?”
The geography teacher stopped talking. “Is something up?”
I nodded. “I think two of my colleagues are here.”
“Oh. Are they single?”
“Very. Very, very single. And very, very dead.” I muttered the last part and walked to the wall.
Lucy’s father had bought the property, an oddly designed building with six apartments and a roof terrace shared with the two penthouse suites, about two decades ago, when house prices had dropped and just before Didsbury became uber-trendy.
I paid a peppercorn rent and Lucy had lunch with her dad once a week as payment, and we had one of the best spots in the town.
Unfortunately, my address was well known by my colleagues after Vinny had picked me up one morning to get to a crime scene and found it impossible to believe where I was living, given he was in a hovel in Edgeley.
I’d made the mistake of mentioning to Wrigley that we had a house party tonight, which Wrigley had mentioned on a conference call in the car on the way back from Newcastle.
Clearly, Vinny and Lachy had decided that constituted an invite.
“Are you buzzing us in?” Vinny shouted up to me as soon as he saw my head poking over. “You looked weird from this angle.”
“You haven’t had an invite.”
“We’ve worked together for six years. It goes without saying I have an invite. I always have an invite from you.” He’d really made an effort with his hair. Maybe the geography teacher would be in luck after all.
“You really, really don’t.” I sighed. This conversation could go on all night, which would be a shame. “I’ll buzz you in. But do this again and something horrid will happen to you.”
“Like what?”
“I haven’t decided yet, but I’ll take great pleasure in coming up with something.” Which wasn’t true and I’d long since resolved not to waste any time on Vinny. “Give me two minutes – hang on, have you brought drinks?” I was aware that as I was a couple of storeys up, we were both shouting.
Nothing like a couple of cops being busted for breaching the peace.
“Yep. Beers for me and Lachy and a bottle of piss for you.” He held up a bag.
By piss, he meant prosecco. Vinny hated the stuff having drank too much of it one night and chundering his guts up, waking in a pool of his own vomit.
It was a highlight of my twenties.
“I’ll come down.” That was safer than making their own way up. The other apartments housed young professionals and Vinny and Lachy could be charming enough to talk their way in somewhere else and get up to god knows what.
They were waiting patiently at the main door when I got there. Lachy handed me over a big bar of chocolate.
“Was this a freebie?”
“Yeah.” I already knew him so well. “I filled out a form and got this for entering. Didn’t give them my real details though.”
“At least Vinny’s taught you something.” Vinny could never pass up on a freebie. I’d told him several times he was tight enough to be a Yorkshireman in disguise. “Why are you both here?”
“We wanted something to do.” That was Lachy.
“We wanted to check on your welfare. Is your housemate still single, by the way?” And of course, that was Vinny.
“The same rules still apply. My housemate is out of bounds to anyone I work with. There is, however, a lovely geography teacher.”
Vinny’s ears pricked up like an Alsatian’s at the thought of sausages. “Is she hot?”
“You might not be hot enough for her, but at least I’ll be entertained.”
They followed me up the stairs, not bothering with the lift, discussing something a colleague in another department had been dealing with, up to the apartment.
“Is that fella of yours here?” Vinny stopped before we entered the apartment door.
“He’s called Cavan, and yes, he is. Be polite.” It was like giving instructions to a toddler.
“He wasn’t polite when he stood you up last week.”
Oh no, this wasn’t what I needed tonight. I turned to Vinny and jabbed him in his chest with my finger, surprised at quite how solid it was. “No, it wasn’t, but life happens, and I’m not bothered by it, so you shouldn’t be.”
He managed to look almost apologetic. “Fine, I won’t say anything. But if he does piss you off, you know I’ll have a word.”
I could fight my own battles, which Vinny knew well because I had several ongoing ones with him, but it did feel good to have someone in my corner.
“If I need you, I will ask.”
“Now, where’s this geography teacher?”
Four down, only two discovered. The handiwork was neat, tidy. Less aggression, so they’d surmise once they’d found her. She’d been suspicious, of course she had. Two people she’d known had been found murdered and the city was on edge waiting for the Push-Her’s next victim.
Push-Her.
That was funny. It really wasn’t a push. More of a drag, or a fall forwards after being repeatedly stabbed in the back. That one, Brooke, was one to be proud of, really. She’d stabbed people in the back, so her ending was ironic.
He’d suggested fitting the murders to the crime committed, which was what had happened with number five, who was currently in a prison of her own doing.
She really shouldn’t have turned that key all those years ago.
A shame really. Number five had been nice most of the time, but like the others, she’d been a sheep.
She didn’t have to turn the lock, so it seemed fitting that she should understand what it was like to be trapped in somewhere.
That was when understanding would hit; what it was like to be locked in, no one around to hear you cry for help, or cry at all.
Only the mice and the rats and the beetles that looked at you like you were being prepared to be their dinner, slowly marinating in your own juices on a floor clothed with rubble.
Whereabouts unknown. Whereabouts uncared for.
No one had come looking. No one would be looking now, either.
This time, the body was weighted down so it should take longer to be discovered. The cause of death would be the same, but there were differences, of course, key differences so the cops would carry on with their theory that this wasn’t quite the same killer.
Later, when they eventually found what was really the first body, they’d question their ideas again, but it was doubtful they’d actually work out what’d actually happened.
Whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen. If they couldn’t work out who’d killed them all, or they arrested the wrong person, then would the killing stop? Was giving up what was becoming a ritual possible?
The body was in the water now, peaceful, resting just underneath the surface, so if someone did come for a stroll down here and bothered to look in the water, they’d get rather a shock.
The tarp used to move the body was now folded back into the suitcase, which would soon be taken to a trip in Rochdale.
The key thing had been moving Morgan into a foetal position before rigor had set in and getting her into the suitcase then.
Morgan was small, she probably hadn’t grown any taller since that summer.
A trip then to the culverts, pulling the suitcase which looked like a thousand others sold in supermarkets two years ago, dressed like a person moving out of the place they’d shared with their partner, to the culvert that no one had been in for half a century.
Another suitcase, from a different store, had been waiting in that culvert for the move to the river, just in case any of the cameras had caught the first one. A different size, different shape, harder to identify, a hard case that would be drenched in bleach once back at the garages.
So useful that the city had so many semi-abandoned buildings.
Then, tonight, the big coat had come out, the boots chosen so specifically, and the body met the water. They’d probably work out the body had been kept in the culvert, sniffer dogs would pick up on the scent of blood, far more competent than the police were.
They wouldn’t work out where the deed had been done, or maybe they would and it wouldn’t matter. They’d just think the modus operandi had altered.
They were already looking for the wrong person. He’d said that in one of their sessions. Meeting him had been useful, more than had been thought at the time. He’d been the encourager, even if he hadn’t meant it that way.
The body shuddered with the tide. This was a river again, and there was every chance the body would travel with the current, if the weights became dislodged.
Stones. That was what the weights were. Stones. Ones from years ago, found near the door when it’d eventually been opened. Stones the girls had pelted against the door, laughing, repeating mean names.
Everyone had been collected. Every one of them cleaned and polished like they were some sort of trophy.
Well now they were a prize for Morgan. Pretty, pleasant Morgan. Morgan who was always so quiet until she wasn’t.
She was quiet now.