Neil White - LOST SOULS

Whoever had killed this young woman had ripped out her tongue and gouged out her eyes.

Laura had methodically examined the scene. She was at work, a detective, so the shock stayed away, her mind too busy to process emotion. It would come to her later, she knew that, maybe when she was in bed or taking a bath, alone and vulnerable.

There was nothing to suggest a struggle, no defensive wounds to the hands, no ripped clothing. But then Laura spotted the marks ringed around the woman’s neck, as if the cord had been pulled many times over. It hadn’t been a quick kill. It had been dragged out, made to last.

She turned to Pete. ‘What did you make of the old boy who called it in?’

Pete stroked his cheeks thoughtfully. ‘Eric Randle? Hard to say. He didn’t look the sort, if there is such a thing, and the only blood on him looked like contact blood. No splashes or spray. But it’s all too neat for me.’

Laura was about to ask something else when she heard a car drive into the cul-de-sac. It pulled up in front of the house, and she watched as a small man in a sharp suit climbed out.

‘Oh great,’ Pete muttered. ‘Now it’s all going to turn to shit. Egan’s here.’

‘Egan?’

‘DI Egan,’ said Pete, his voice low and quiet. ‘Dermot Egan. We call him Dermot Ego. You’ll soon find out why.’

As she watched the figure walk towards the house, Laura sensed that he was right.

Sam Nixon parked his car and looked out of the windscreen. He used to like sunrise—it made even Blackley look pretty—but the view had lost its charm years ago.

Sam’s office was in the middle of a line of Victorian bay fronts, with stone pillars in each doorway and gold-leaf letters on the windows, legacies of Blackley’s cotton-producing heyday. The town used to rumble with the sounds of clogs and mills, and the mill-owners’ money would end up in the pockets of the lawyers and accountants who spread themselves along this street. Blackley’s life as a Lancashire cotton town had ended a couple of decades earlier, but it was marked by its past like an old soldier by his tattoos.

Sam could see the canal that flowed past the end of the street. The towpath was overgrown with long Pennine grasses, and ripples in the water twinkled like starbursts as they caught the early-morning sun. The old wharf buildings were still there, three-storey stone blocks with large wooden canopies painted robin’s-egg blue that hung over the water, but they were converted into offices now. The sounds of a new day filled the car, the whistles of the morning birds as they swooped from roof to roof, the rustle of leaves and litter as they blew along the towpath. It was heritage Lancashire, lost industry repackaged as character.

But it was the only bright spot. The factories and mill buildings further along the canal were empty, stripped of their pipes and cables by thieves who traded them in for scrap, left to rot with broken windows and paint-splattered walls. Those that were bulldozed away were replaced by housing estates and retail parks.

Blackley was in a valley. A viaduct carried the railway between the hills, high millstone arches that cast shadows and echoed with the sound of the trains that rumbled towards the coast. Redbrick terraced streets ran up the hills around the town centre, steep and tight, the lines broken only by the domes and minarets of the local mosques, the luscious greens and coppers bright dots of colour in a drab Victorian grid.

Beyond those, Sam could see a cluster of tower blocks that overlooked the town centre, bruises of the sixties, dingy and grey, where the lifts reeked of piss and worse, and the landings were scattered with syringes. They had views to the edges of town, but everything looked bleak and wet from up there, whatever the weather.

Sam closed his eyes and sighed. He was a criminal lawyer in Blackley’s largest firm, Parsons & Co. As soon as he hit the office his day would be taken up by dead-beats, drunks, junkies and lowlifes, a daily trudge through the town’s debris. Criminal law was budget law, the most work for the least reward, so he had to put in long hours to keep the firm afloat. He started early and finished late, his day spent fighting hopeless causes in hostile courts, and most evenings wrecked by call-outs to the police station.

He used to enjoy it, the dirt, the grime. A legal service. A social service. Sometimes both, with a touch of court theatre, just the right phrase or the right question, maybe just a look, could mean guilty or not guilty, jail or no jail.

But then the job had worn him down. He had two children he hardly saw, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had hugged his wife.

And he was sleeping badly. He was staying up too late, and when he did finally fall asleep he woke up scared, bad dreams making the day start too soon. They were always the same: he was running through doorways, dark, endless, one after another, someone crying far away. Then he would be falling. He woke the same way each time: a jolt in bed and then bolt upright, drenched in sweat, his heart beating fast.

He opened his eyes and sighed. He rubbed his cheeks, tried to wake himself up. He couldn’t put it off any longer: he had to start the day.

His head was down as he walked towards his office and fumbled for the key. He had to put his briefcase down to search his pockets, and that’s when he saw him.

On the other side of the street was a man, stooped, old and shabbily dressed, his clothes hanging loose from his body. His hands were clutched to his sides as if he were stood to attention, and his eyes were fixed in a stare, unblinking, unwavering.

Sam felt uneasy. The courtroom usually protected him, shrouded in respect and court rules, but defence lawyers pissed people off. Victims, witnesses, sometimes just the moral majority. He felt himself grow nervous, checked his pocket for his phone, ready to call the police if a knife appeared. But the old man just stared at Sam, his face expressionless.

Sam eventually found his key. He took one last look into the street. The old man hadn’t moved. He was still watching him.

Sam made a mental note of the time and turned to go inside.

As Egan walked towards them, Laura could sense his self-importance. He was jogger-trim, his nose tight and hooked, his hair bottle-dark and cut just too neatly, not a strand out of place. His white shirt was bright and crisp, to emphasise his suntan, she guessed, which seemed more salon than sunshine.

Pete smiled. ‘He’s going to be pissed off about this.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the last time I saw him he was at one of the press conferences for the abducted children, preening himself. There isn’t much airtime in this case, and he’ll want to get in and out quickly. He won’t give up a place on the podium for what might be just a bad domestic.’

Laura looked at Pete. ‘If he’s involved in the abduction cases, why doesn’t he stick with those?’

Pete looked at Laura and said under his breath, ‘I suspect it wasn’t his choice.’

DI Egan looked around as he took in the scene. He almost stepped on Laura’s toes before he noticed her. She saw his quick appraisal, eyes all over her body, ending at her bare ring-finger. Lesbian or prey, in his eyes she could see that she was either one or the other.

He spent too long looking at the identification she had hanging around her neck and then asked, ‘So what do we have, Laura?’ He looked away before she had a chance to answer, so she ended up talking to the back of his head.

‘Deceased is called Jess Goldie. It looks like she died from strangulation, sir, but it wasn’t quick,’ she said, trying to hide the fatigue in her voice. The early start was catching up on her.