While the police were combing the garden I waited in the kitchen, drinking tea, watching them through the window. The Standard lay folded in front of me and it didn’t take long for curiosity to win. I picked it up, opened it out and saw that the front page was split in two. The left side showed a brightly coloured picture of Ally, from two or three years ago, her smile leaping right off the page. Next to her was Mike, but he wasn’t smiling. His head was bowed, his hands cuffed. If you’ve ever wondered why photographers chase after prison vans on the news, jumping up at the seemingly impenetrable black windows with their boosted flashes, this is why. One in ten gets lucky. Mike was a grey thing, turning away from the flash a fraction too late. As is the case with all these pictures, his face had stone-cold guilty written all over it. In case you didn’t get it, though, the banner made it perfectly clear.
DID THIS MAN MURDER HIS PREGNANT WIFE?
When Clay had got everything going outside to his satisfaction, he came in and thanked me. I took his thanks but I knew the police would have found out about the lock soon enough. They had in fact already checked the garden for clues, going in from next door after being told the owner was away. They’d found nothing, no footprints or torn remnants of clothing, and didn’t expect to now. The mystery was explained, though. The killer had come in the back to avoid both Ron and the cameras. The last thing tying Mike to the murder was brushed away.
Clay told me what he thought it all meant, and I nodded. The killer must have deliberately entered the building for the commission of the crime. He hadn’t seen Ally and just decided to kill her on the spur of the moment, waiting until he was alone in the cafe with her. He’d been watching her, watching her and the building too. He’d known that the building was quiet on a Saturday. He’d staked it out, first latching on to Josephine Thomas. Then Ally’s pregnancy drew her to him. That time, he’d been right.
Clay insisted that the killer must have been inside the Lindauer Building prior to the murder, and I agreed. He can’t have just watched Ally going in or coming out. That would have been enough for Josephine, who he had followed home, but not Ally. How would he have known where to find her once he was inside if he hadn’t been inside himself? It was a break. He must have been caught on film. He must have gone in during the day, during working hours. How long ago? I didn’t have a clue, I just hoped they didn’t wipe their tapes. While Clay told an officer to get round to the security booth straight away I had a thought that sickened me. He’d been in the cafe. He must have been. Ally had probably made him a coffee. A sandwich even, passing the plate to him, her eyes smiling at him. And he’d killed her.
She’d smiled and called out goodbye and he’d come back and killed her.
Clay saw the look on my face. As he walked me through to the back door, he took my arm.
‘Thanks again, Billy,’ he said. As usual, his tiny eyes seemed to say something different from the words coming out of his mouth. ‘You know what, it’s a shame we lost you. I’ve always said that. And I’ve always said, if you ever reconsider. Maybe even put you back with Andy.’
‘I’d rather be a fireman.’
‘What?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Well, the offer’s there. But what I want to say is, I need this guy.’
‘Of course.’
‘In court,’ Clay said. ‘For the families. You’ve helped and I’m grateful. We need to find out what link this one in the tunnel had to the Lindauer and I know you’re going to try find out. I won’t tell you not to. I know this is close to you. But you understand me, what I mean about court?’
‘You’d better find him then.’
‘Before you do? Is that what you mean?’
‘You’d just better find him.’
‘I’ll go after you for it, Billy. I will, you’d better understand that. Evil fuck or not, I’ll put you away. I want him. Do you hear me? Do you hear me, Billy?’
I brushed past Clay. His voice jumped after me like a tethered Dobermann as I walked up Aberdeen Park and back round to the Lindauer Building.
I cranked up the Mazda and drove back to Exmouth Market. I’d done everything I could think of to find Mike and now I was going home. Clay had told me that Mike’s mobile had been taken from him and hadn’t been returned. That meant that he hadn’t got my messages but also that he wouldn’t have had my mobile number, which was in his phone. So, obviously, he wouldn’t have been able to call me except at home. He could have left ten messages on my home machine without my knowing it. I cursed myself. It was almost as if something in my mind was trying to trip me up, as if I didn’t really want to find Mike at all.
Knowing that I would never get a space outside my flat at that time of day, I parked in a delivery bay at the other end of the Market. I walked down the street quickly. If there was a message from Mike, I’d call him. If not, I’d go down to his apartment again and just wait for him to show up. I saw Max talking to the manager of Cafe Kick. He waved at me but I pretended not to see him. I wasn’t going to get sidetracked again. I was determined to get to my answerphone, determined not to let anything else keep me from my flat. I saw Mike when I was three-quarters of the way down the street. He was sitting on one of the tree-covered benches outside Fred’s, next to a bank of payphones. He was staring in the general direction of my street door, but his gaze wasn’t taking anything in. I stopped, then carried on towards him.
Like blind people can, Mike didn’t look present. The cold and the traffic and the people meant nothing to him. Christ knew what present hell or gone paradise he was visiting. I felt stupid, like a man who tips his flat upside down, only to find his glasses in the case he put them in. Of course. Mike had had two days for reality to hit him. He wouldn’t have been wandering around in shock. Nor would he have instantly hunted down comfort from a friend or his family. What comfort could he get? I knew what he’d want. Who else would he come to but his friend the investigator? Who else could offer him anything? I swore at myself, wondering how long Mike had been sitting there while I was fucking around.
Mike looked dishevelled, worse off than the old tramp sitting next to him, the one who screams abuse at you only after you’ve given him a quid. As I walked up, the tramp pushed himself to his feet and stalked off up the Market, the way I’d come. I stood in front of Mike, waiting for him to look at me, not knowing what I was going to say. When he did look at me I didn’t say anything. I just began to cry. I couldn’t help it. Mike had changed. There were no marks on him but he looked grotesque, worse than a fighter announcing his retirement. It was all there, on the skin hanging from his cheekbones, in his eyes, on his lips most of all for some reason. His face was dried up, it was dead. It killed me to look at him and I suddenly realized where I’d seen the look he wore. Too late, too late. Where the hell were you?
My legs buckled and I couldn’t stand. I reached out and I held Mike, clinging on to him, burying my head in his neck. I desperately wanted him to but he didn’t respond. I couldn’t keep myself from sobbing, my chest almost exploding, trying to connect with him. But Mike was still. Then I felt his hands, gripping the tops of my arms, pushing me away. I gulped for air, hardly able to breathe. I had to get myself together, tell Mike what had happened and what I was going to do for him. He didn’t realize it but I had access to a lot of money and to a lot of people, the kind of people who heard things. I also needed to ask him to think: who had he seen in the cafe in the last weeks? Anyone different or unusual? I wanted to tell him that I was going to sort this for him, the way he’d want it sorted. We’d get to him before Clay did.
Mike’s hand went to a copy of the Standard sitting on the bench beside him. He held it out to me, so that I could see the front page. He asked me if I’d seen it and I nodded.
‘They kept at me, Billy,’ he said. His voice was quiet, amazed. ‘They drugged me and then they kept at me, in the hospital, at some police station. They said things about Ally. That friend of yours, the copper. They pushed me down even further than I was.’
‘Mike…’
‘Then they showed me a tape. It was of myself, outside the Lindauer Building. Gold. He made me look at a tape of myself. I’d just left Ally in the cafe, I was on my way to meet you, and Nicky. The cameras picked me up walking out onto the forecourt. To the van. They stopped it and then they pointed to the bag I was carrying. In my hand. The bag. Do you know what they asked me?’
I shook my head.
‘They asked me if my little baby was inside it. In the bag. If I was carrying my own baby. They asked me that.’
‘Mike.’
‘And then they let me go. This morning. Hoped I’d understand, they had to ask me certain things…bollocks. I didn’t listen. I was beyond them. I just wanted to see you. I called you but you weren’t at home and I didn’t have your mobile number. It was on my phone and they wouldn’t give it me back. So I came here to find you. When you weren’t in I went home, but I couldn’t stay there, not for ten seconds. It smells of her, Billy. I just grabbed your keys, your spare keys. You still weren’t home when I got back here so I decided to let myself in. I knew you wouldn’t mind because you were my friend. It was the only place I could stand to be because I knew you’d help me. It was what had been getting me through. For two days, with what I was feeling, while they were on at me hour after hour, asking me, I focused on that, I grabbed hold of it, knowing that whatever those stupid, useless bastards were saying you’d be strong. I knew that Billy Rucker would be out there looking for the person who killed my wife. You, at least, would be out there.’
‘I was. And I will…’
‘I was going to wait for you. I knew you’d be back eventually. I figured you were after them, you know. Like a cowboy, riding around. And then I saw what you’d written on your wall. Her name. And my name. And nothing else. And when I realized what that meant I was sick. I was physically sick, Billy, on your floor. And I ran out of there and I’ve been waiting for you.’
‘Mike.’
‘Because I wanted to tell you what I think of you. That this is the last time I’ll ever see you. Because you’re weak, Billy. And you’re just like them. Because you thought it was me, you thought I’d done that to Ally. You saw what someone had done to her and you thought it could have been me. You saw. You thought it could have been me.’
Mike stood up from me. I tried to speak but I couldn’t. My stomach and my chest were contracting. The way he stood I thought he was going to hit me and I wanted him to. Without speaking I begged him to. But he didn’t. I tried to reach out to him but I couldn’t move and I couldn’t see anything through the sheets of tears. I tried to force the word sorry out of my mouth but I was paralysed. I looked round for Mike but I couldn’t see him. The world was a blur, it was one swirling mess. The only thing I was aware of was footsteps disappearing into traffic.