The Night Caller: An utterly gripping crime thriller Page 5

  Paul shook his head. ‘Nobody claims to have been out with him, though a fair few saw him throughout the evening, but he seemed to be alone. None of them are actually friendly with him. He wasn’t with any particular group, from what I gather. They would have offered no more than a general greeting.’

  ‘His phone, get GPS locations, and have we spoken to the homeless people around there?’

  Paul looked at her questioningly.

  She clicked her tongue, impatient. ‘Those buildings around the quay, they sleep in there. They might have seen something, someone.’

  Paul raised his eyebrows. ‘You think they’ll talk?’

  She fixed him with a hard stare. ‘So what, we just don’t bother?’

  He shook his head, an apologetic smile on his face now. ‘I’ll feed it back to uniform, they’re still out there.’

  ‘Gary Fisher, the previous victim, the CCTV showed him walking alongside an unknown man? Do we know who that man is yet?’

  Paul shook his head.

  ‘Chase it,’ she ordered.

  ‘Will do.’ He scribbled in his pocket book.

  Carrie nodded her thanks and looked towards the window. Through the half-closed blinds she saw shadows outside, heard the muted hum that signalled a throng of people. ‘Press?’ she asked.

  ‘Some,’ Paul replied. ‘The public, too.’

  Carrie closed her eyes briefly. They had been here before, the community up in arms, gathering outside the police station, demanding that this killer be caught. Sometimes they congregated with placards, yelling, aggrieved at the police’s apparent failures.

  ‘Getting off soon?’ Paul asked, glancing at the clock above the door.

  She squinted at it. Almost 8 p.m. She shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t you be home by now?’

  He gave her a raised eyebrow in response.

  They didn’t need to say anything further. It wasn’t the first late night or even all-nighter they’d pulled, and it wouldn’t be the last. She thought of Paul’s home, an imagined place because she knew nothing about it, whether anyone was waiting for him or if like her, he returned to a soulless, empty apartment.

  Carrie thought of her own home. Empty, not even a cat awaited her return. Which was good; she had nothing to offer anyone else, man or beast. Everything she had went into this job, and cases like this.

  She pulled her fingers over her head, snaked a hand down the length of her hair, pulled back sensibly in a bun. She resisted the urge to yank on it.

  The people outside, those protesting, they knew there was a serial killer on the canals. Publicly, that wasn’t what Carrie and her colleagues were putting out, though it was what everyone thought. And each time a new body was pulled from the water they came back with their hastily scrawled slogans on pieces of cardboard, shouting and rattling the gates of the police station. Their fury was palpable as they screamed for them to come outside, yet when they had in the past, they spat vitriol at Carrie and her colleagues, not wanting to listen to their platitudes. She never volunteered to go out to meet the masses anymore.

  * * *

  She slammed her hands back on the desk, took a deep, sharp breath to pull herself back to where she was supposed to be. ‘So, Paul, what do you reckon on this one?’ she asked, going back to the beginning, back to training, bouncing ideas off each other in the hope something previously not considered might come to light.

  ‘It’s him again,’ he said, and his stare burned into her with all the intensity and energy that she, too, felt about this case. ‘What about you?’

  His words were a challenge. He always challenged her. Four years she had been working alongside him. When she joined the force there had been whispers about the young, hard-faced woman. Rumours abounded of a childhood so filled with abuse and neglect she was lucky to be alive, let alone working as a serving police officer. She heard the rumours; she wondered how many of them had delved into her file to see if what they heard was correct. They wouldn’t find anything. Her file was closed, shut against everyone except the highest of authority. But she had a feeling Paul, straight-laced, straight-talking Paul hadn’t even tried. He detested gossip, which is why she and he worked so well together. Sometimes she caught him looking at her, perhaps hoping that Carrie might confide in him herself one day.

  But confiding wasn’t her style. Hard work was her style, cracking cases, putting those who deserved it behind bars to ensure what happened to her family was prevented for another.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  She dragged herself back to the case in hand. Push or fall. Push or fall. When this happened, it all boiled down to those two words.

  Push or fall.

  ‘This has happened too often lately for them all to be accidents. And now twice in one week.’ She sipped at her coffee, forgetting it was cold, and drank it down anyway. ‘We have to stop it, Paul, we need to get him off the streets.’ She gestured to the crowd, louder now, outside in the car park. ‘Or that lot will be in here, and out on the quay, and they’ll take matters into their own hands.’

  He nodded, his eyes narrow but gleaming.

  ‘We need the guy we saw across the water last year, Carrie,’ he said, urgency in his tone.

  That guy, the dark guy with the beanie and the unidentifiable tattoo was the key. Carrie blinked, saw imprinted in her mind the stain that adorned the mysterious man’s white T-shirt. The T-shirt bugged her almost as much as the half a tattoo she had seen. Some nights when sleep wouldn’t come Carrie walked back to the spot where it had happened. There was no fear for her; fear was a luxury lost in childhood. Her stance was defiant, a come-and-get-me attitude that pulsed out across the water. But there had been nothing, nobody, not then, not since and not now.

  It was as though the man had vanished into thin air.

  But the tattoo, that was permanent. It was still out there, still on someone’s arm.

  She glanced once more towards the window, to the people outside, the ones who wanted answers, the ones who depended on her to make their home city safe. They didn’t want words, they were not interested in a puffed-up speech. They wanted results.

  Carrie stood up and reached for her coat.

  ‘Let’s get back out there, then. At least show them we’re serious about this.’

  She had no need to explain who ‘them’ were. The press, the public, and the families of the twelve men.

  Jade hovered at the open door, the cold biting at her skin.

  ‘Emma?’ she called, but there was no reply.

  ‘Shit,’ swore Jade softly, and with a glance towards the stairs and Nia’s bedroom she took off down the garden in the direction Emma had gone.

  She lingered in the ginnel. The one remaining working streetlamp flickered, creating long shadows that were there one moment and gone the next. Glass crunched under Jade’s feet as she pushed through her gate. There was no sign of Emma, and Jade nervously called her name as she took tiny steps along the alley.

  ‘Emma?’ she called, peering into the gloom. ‘What are you doing?’

  Emma reared up, her white face a ghoul in the darkness. Jade let out a little scream and clutched at her chest.

  ‘Go home, Jade,’ said Emma, nostrils flaring, breathing hard, reminding Jade of a racehorse. ‘Go home and look after your child.’

  With that Emma moved further back along the dark walkway, stepping backwards until she was swallowed by the shadows.

  A sudden gust of wind turned Jade’s bones to ice. Pulling her jumper sleeves down over her hands she hurried back through her own gate, and sprinted the rest of the way up the garden and into her house.

  Locking the door behind her she stared out of the glass into the black of the night. The feeling of being watched was back. A sense of exposure settled upon her like a blanket, the kitchen light illuminating her, making her visible to unseen prying, spying eyes. Lurching across the kitchen she slammed her hand on the light switch, plunging herself into darkness.

  Nine

  DAY TW
O

  Emma didn’t know what her plan was when she raced to the ginnel. Perhaps a part of her had hoped to find him here, scuffing around the alleyway like he used to when he was a child. To find that it had all been a mistake, that it wasn’t him who went into the canal, but a case of mistaken identity. Perhaps she had just wanted to run, to sprint and leave this whole nightmare far behind her.

  It was claustrophobic down here in the dark. She stepped forward, looking towards her house, her empty home, and her chest felt tight at the thought of going back inside.

  Moving past her own gate she paused at the bottom of Jade’s back garden, glanced upstairs to see the light on in Nia’s room. For the briefest second, just a tiny moment in time, Emma was filled with hatred for her friend. That she could still go up to Nia’s bedroom and wrap her little girl in her arms…

  ‘Fuck,’ hissed Emma as tears came to her eyes, because she really didn’t want to think that way.

  With her head down, she walked to the end of the ginnel and turned left, heading towards the quay, the same place she had been the night Jordan went missing.

  * * *

  She walked over to the canal that was called South Bay. In the darkness, at this time midweek it was deserted. Mist rose from the black water. It cloaked her in its embrace, accentuating just how lonely the waters were after dark. If she was capable of feeling right now, she knew she would be filled with fear at being out here, late, alone.

  Slowly, she became aware of a sound in the distance, a distinct chink of a chain on metal. It pulsed steadily, seeming to grow closer to Emma and then dipping, moving off, away. She clutched at the railing. It was cold under her hands, turning her already freezing fingers white. Who else was out there with her?

  The fright switched and turned to anger in a split second. Come and get me, she thought, irrationally. Come and put me out of my misery.

  But nobody came. The strange, metallic banging came and went again before fading into nothingness. The abandoned quay plunged into silence once more.

  Breathing heavily, Emma forced her hands free of the railing and looked into the corner where the concrete steps were situated. They were a part of history from the days when barges and boats traded here, an easy route for the sailors and seamen to clamber down onto deck. The steps went on down below the surface of the water, unused in modern times but an access and an exit nonetheless for anyone who went into the canal.

  Surely, she’d thought and indeed, had said to the police, if Jordan went into the water someone would have seen him in there, waving his arms to attract attention, thrashing his way through the cold, inky water towards the steps, shivering and shaking and in shock, but alive. And if he had drowned, he would still be visible, because drowned people floated. It had been dark, but once the sun rose in the morning… because it was a canal, not a flowing river nor the sea where the tide would have taken him out to be washed up eventually on a beach potentially miles away.

  But apparently, so Paul had told her, there were tides in the canal. She had stared at him, memories from other times catching at her. She groped for them, closing her eyes as she realised who it was that professional, stoic Detective Constable Paul reminded her of.

  Her old history teacher. She clawed at the neck of her coat as it felt suddenly tight against her throat. It was an unwelcome memory, one she thought she had successfully pushed from her mind.

  Tides, he was talking about tides and she had forced herself to focus on Paul. Yes, the canal had tides. As she looked to where he pointed, she saw it was obvious really, seeing now all the rubbish that collected in the far end of the bay. It was something she had never thought about. She’d never needed to contemplate the mysteries of the waters before.

  Emma walked over to stand there now, her eyes stinging again as she looked down into the depths. Not a ripple on the surface tonight; it was dead calm, chilling. But the tides would turn with the sunrise, bringing in flotsam, moving it along, out, down the narrow, twisting waterways.

  So where would he go, she thought to herself? Where will my son’s poor body eventually be found?

  There were so many possibilities, and she could see parts of them all from where she stood: the Erie basin, St Peter, South Bay where he had originally gone in, or St Francis basin, the Mariner’s canal. The Salford Quays and the other inlets that led off them were a maze of waterways and hiding places. Beyond them lay others that nobody ever went to; the narrow, stream-like waters, where the reeds grew tall and vines reached out to grab at anything passing by, bridges and walkways concealing the shadows of anyone who dared to linger beneath them.

  Nobody knew she came here, not Jade, not Carrie or Paul nor the FLO who had been assigned to her, Dina. She avoided them as much as possible, especially Dina. Not because she wasn’t a very nice lady, it was just… what could she do, except make tea and hover around Emma’s house?

  A flash of a single memory slice: Dina, pushing Emma up her own stairs, guiding her into the bathroom, instructing her to wash herself.

  ‘Then sleep,’ Dina had crooned. ‘Everything seems more manageable after a good night’s sleep.’

  Dina was short, round, motherly in both appearance and manner. Her eyes disappeared into folds of flesh, but they were kind. It was a long time since Emma had been mothered, and she didn’t know how to cope with kindness. Emma had stared at her from where she stood in the bathroom. She clung onto the side of the sink, knowing if her hands were free, she might spring at this woman, this imposter who told her that if she slept well everything would seem brighter come the morning.

  In the shower Emma had fumed, scraping her arms raw as she scrubbed herself, imagining sinking her nails into Dina’s fleshy face. Tears replaced the anger. They came so quickly. She folded her body over, sank to sit in the shower, the water beating down on her, stinging her flesh, feeling like a punishment.

  Those thoughts about Dina scared her and this morning she had sent her away, told Paul and Carrie that she really didn’t want a Family Liaison Officer, that if anything, Dina’s presence was just putting her more on edge. Reluctantly they had done as she wished. Dina was gone, the house was her own again.

  But it was awful, the silence of her home, even worse than Dina clattering around in the kitchen or speaking softly on her mobile phone. And it was the stillness and the emptiness that had driven Emma out of the house for the first time other than to visit the canal or go over to Jade’s house.

  Emma pushed the tears away.

  * * *

  It took three hours to walk around all the Salford canals, shining her tiny torch that she carried in her pocket into the murky water. Every now and then she heard the duplicated click of heels echo around her. Often, when she stopped, the sound still reverberated, as though it wasn’t an echo at all, but a second set of footsteps. They walked in her tracks, trailing behind her, but remaining unseen in the shadows. Beneath her coat, her heart pounded and a cold sweat broke out on her skin.

  At random she spun round, pointing her torch towards the crumbling, abandoned buildings that lined the water. She never caught sight of anyone in the dim, fading light of her torch, but the footsteps still rebounded, leaving a ringing in her ears.

  Snapping the torch off, she stood motionless in the darkness, one hand clamped over her mouth to stop the scream that threatened to erupt from her. Finally, the blurred bright lights of the Matchstick Man came into focus. She started to walk again, upping her pace, using the warmth emanating from the pub building as a beacon. Once she reached it, she paused, standing in the shelter of the empty tram stop, and let her gaze rest on the spot where they told her it had happened.

  The door to the pub opened, young people spilling out into the night. Shrieks of laughter and shouts shattered the quiet, replacing the sound of the eerie footsteps that echoed in Emma’s mind.

  ‘Do you know my son?’ she called across the street.

  One of them, a young, pretty girl, flicked a glance at her. The girl slowed her step, b
ut her friend pulled her arm, giggling. The girl allowed herself to be led away.

  Emma thought about chasing them, making them listen to her and look at the little photo of Jordan she carried in her purse.

  She patted her pocket. No purse. No matter, she could describe him, tell them his name, ask if they knew him? Were they here two nights ago? Did they witness it? Did they know who pushed him? But they would look at her the way she was now, wild-eyed and unable to form an articulate sentence. They might mock her, presume her drunk or stoned or high, and laughing, they would go on their way, sniggering and whispering about the mad woman on the quay. They wouldn’t hear the echo of footsteps travelling in their wake the way she had.

  She put her head down, pulled Jordan’s scarf tighter round her neck and trudged back home.

  * * *

  It was midnight. The church bells pealed out as she stood at the entrance to the ginnel at the back of her home. The long, dark lane ran the length of the street. A shortcut to get to the other end, it was badly lit, broken glass from lamplights and bottles alike littered the floor. Normally Emma would never go down there after dark, but tonight her feet carried her along, moving of their own accord. All fear gone; replaced by nothingness.

  She shoved her gate, ignoring the creak it made, and slammed it closed behind her. Belatedly she remembered Jade collecting all the cards for her to read. She had left them in Jade’s kitchen. Knowing Jade, she would put them all in a neat pile and keep them for Emma to read when she was feeling… feeling what, better? Less fragile?

  Emma trudged towards her back door, looking over at Jade’s house, thinking about Jade and Nan.

  * * *

  The three of them had formed an unlikely circle of friendship; the old lady, the middle-aged woman and the pregnant schoolgirl. The then eight-year-old Jordan had flitted around the outskirts of their lives, no longer a child who needed an eye kept on him at all times of the day, not old enough to join in with them. No other kids came to call for him, or if they did, they only came once. He remained where he was, on the sidelines of the women, always there but just out of reach.