Howard Linskey - The Dead

When we reached the door, I looked back at Baxter who seemed little more than irritated by this inconvenience. ‘There’s one last thing Baxter,’ I told him.

‘What?’ he asked sourly.

‘There’s someone outside I’d like you to meet.’

He looked confused then, so I opened the door and gestured for the man who had been waiting outside to come in. I relished the moment when Baxter realised who he was and his eyes went wide with terror.

‘This is Matt Bell,’ I told Baxter, ‘the father of the little girl you raped and murdered, but then I think you know that. He was in the courtroom.’

‘What’s he doing here?’ Baxter croaked and he instinctively tugged at the handcuffs on both wrists but they held firm.

‘He’d like a word with you,’ I said, ‘in private.’

Matt Bell took a step further into the room and stared fixedly at Baxter. Baxter’s gaze moved lower until he noticed what Bell was carrying; a large, heavy, metal tool box. Bell set the box down on the table and started to remove items from it one at a time; a hacksaw, a claw hammer, a cordless drill, some nails, a small sledge hammer. Baxter’s eyes widened in terror as Bell carefully placed each item on the table next to him. Finally he took out a roll of gaffer tape.

‘You swore to me!’ Baxter pleaded, ‘You swore an oath on the life of your child! You can’t let him touch me!’

‘I swore I wouldn’t harm or kill you Baxter,’ I reminded him, ‘I swore none of my men or anyone hired by me would harm or kill you. Mr Bell doesn’t work for me and I haven’t hired him to do anything. I merely agreed to his request to give him a little alone-time with you, one on one, just the two of you.’ All the while I was speaking Matt Bell was removing items from the tool box and setting them down. Baxter was struggling hard against the cuffs, but he couldn’t free himself. ‘I think a man deserves that, don’t you? He deserves the chance to look his daughter’s killer in the eye and make him suffer. That’s what I call justice.’

Bell turned to me and I told him, ‘You have five hours. Whatever is left after that my boys will dispose of but don’t take a minute more.’

‘Nooo!’ Baxter was shouting. ‘Pleeease no!’

Bell ignored him. ‘I won’t, and thank you.’

‘Nobody will ever find him,’ I told Leanne’s father, ‘they won’t even look, but we’ll make sure there’s nothing left to find.’ I meant that we would take Baxter’s body off to the pig farm. Baxter knew that too and his eyes widened even further. Sweat was plastered all over his forehead.

‘Don’t do this!’ squealed Baxter. I could tell by the smell in that warm room that he’d already soiled himself, but Bell didn’t care. He was past caring about anything now except the time he was about to spend alone with the man who’d killed his daughter.

I walked over to the table and picked up the airline ticket. ‘You won’t be needing this,’ I told Baxter, then I turned to Matt Bell.

‘When it’s over, take Baxter’s money and go abroad somewhere. Stay away for a while.’ He nodded like he understood but I knew he just wanted me to leave. I could tell he was eager to get started.

Baxter was swearing and pleading, almost frothing at the mouth now as he rocked from side to side, desperately trying to break free. ‘I think it’s time to shut you up, Baxter,’ I said and Bell reached for the gaffer tape. I watched as Baxter struggled but he couldn’t prevent it from being wrapped tightly round his mouth to stifle his screams. Not that anyone would have heard him out here in any case.

Kinane, Palmer and I watched as Bell slowly walked back to the table and selected the claw hammer. I got the impression he had given this day a great deal of thought. Baxter’s terrified eyes widened even further as Bell stepped towards him once more, raised the claw hammer and brought it down fast and hard, striking a sickening blow to Henry Baxter’s kneecap. His loud but muffled screams were almost too much, even for me.

‘You deserve this, Baxter,’ I told him, ‘remember that, all the while it’s happening to you and, by the way, the tool box was my idea, but castrating you before you die was his. Goodbye, Baxter.’

I turned away and walked through the door with Kinane and Palmer. We heard the muffled screams of the child killer all the way back across the warehouse floor. They grew more and more desperate and were only finally stifled when the huge outer door was pulled shut behind us.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to let that little girl’s old man at Baxter?’ asked Kinane when we were back in the car on the road to the city.

‘Because I needed Baxter to see you angry and resentful,’ I told him, ‘otherwise he would have been deeply suspicious and would never have released the five million. This way everyone wins.’

‘Except Baxter,’ added Palmer, ‘and that’s the way it should be.’

Amrein had arranged for someone who looked remarkably like Henry Baxter to meet us in Newcastle and take the airline ticket and Baxter’s passport, which we had quietly lifted from his apartment. The next day he flew from Newcastle to Luton, then took a train into London and the Underground to Heathrow. From there he caught a flight to Bangkok. With Baxter’s passport, he sailed through Customs. When he touched down in the Thai capital he checked into a hotel for a few nights and ate in several restaurants, leaving a paper trail for anyone curious enough about him to enquire, then he checked out one morning and vanished. Henry Baxter disappeared forever. No one ever saw him again and nobody cared. He was just another dubious westerner lost in the fleshpots of Bangkok.

The death of Leanne Bell became another unsolved cold case, destined to lie on file for decades. It was the best solution for everyone and, with Baxter seemingly exiled abroad, no one could point the finger of suspicion at Leanne’s old man when he also went missing for a while. One of our lads cleaned up the mess and got rid of the body. He was a veteran of the firm and he didn’t say too much about it but he did confirm one thing; what he found there proved to him without doubt that every minute of the last five hours of Henry Baxter’s pathetic life was spent in unendurable agony.

We’d barely seen the back of one murder trial before we were embroiled in another, but this time I suspected the accused might not be guilty. I didn’t like Golden Boots, not many people did, but I didn’t have any great desire to see him banged up for life for a crime he hadn’t committed; having said that, I far preferred it to be him than me.

His barrister seemed to be struggling to combat the CPS case.

‘The prosecution is big on circumstantial evidence and the accused’s character, or lack of it,’ Susan Fitch had observed, ‘but they are weak on motive. He has to concentrate on that. As far as I can see they have yet to conclusively establish any kind of motive for the killing of Gemma Carlton and if they can show he had no reason to murder the girl then they are halfway there’.

She was right about one thing; when the trial started, the Prosecution tore straight into Golden Boots’ character.

‘Do you watch pornography on the internet?’ asked their barrister.

Golden Boots, wearing a suit and tie for possibly the first time in his life, shrugged, ‘Doesn’t everybody?’

‘But you watch a lot of it, don’t you?’

The footballer sniffed, ‘Not as much as you probably.’

That earned him a ticking off from the judge before the lawyer continued.

‘The police did a check on your internet history. They found a great deal of pornography. In fact I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that was pretty much all they found.’