Kill Me Again Part 23

'Before I got involved in the fantasy site, I used to chat on a forum for adults who were lonely. We helped each other. One guy on there was particularly helpful and I've been in touch with him since just after I started university. We still chat every now and again, mainly for his benefit. He knows I'm settled and happy, but he isn't so I've been trying to be supportive, as he was with me.'

Maggie waited. There had to be more.

'I told him I was moving back to Manchester. He said he was living here now I don't know where he was originally. We never said. He didn't even know my real name. Like all these forums, people can use any name they want. He called himself William, but I've no idea if that was his real name. Anyway, he asked if I thought it was time we met face to face. He would like to buy me a pint. He suggested a pub, and I said it would have to be lunchtime because of the kids. I went, but he never turned up.'

'Did he ever say why not?'

'He was ill, apparently. I waited half an hour and got talking to some guy about a plumbing job. He'd seen the van outside noticed the sign I prop up in the back window until I get the lettering done on the sides. He asked for my card.'

Maggie looked at him. Surely he had made the connection? She had come to realise many things about her husband tonight, but she had never thought he was stupid.

'It sounds to me as if you were well and truly set up,' she said as she pulled into the car park of a small private hotel.

'What, by William?'

'Who else? n.o.body else knew you both before and after, so who the h.e.l.l do you think it was? Somehow or other, this William must be connected to Samil. Was the guy who approached you Asian?'

'No, he was posh Manchester. Not that I think Samil's Asian. The name's got nothing to do with race. I looked it up once. It's a variant of the Hebrew Sama'el. It means Angel of Death.'

Maggie stopped breathing. Under different circ.u.mstances she might have laughed at the absurdity of the name, but she knew this man was lethal.

'It's him, Duncan. The man who called me. Your friend William must have told Samil where to find you. Either that or William and Samil are one and the same. There are coincidences, but this is way too much of one. You need to tell me everything you know about the man in the pub. I need to know him if I see him.'

And somehow Maggie knew that she would be seeing him, sooner or later.

50.

It was after three when Maggie finally crawled into her own bed. Her sister's light had been on, but she had ignored it and gone straight into a very hot shower, feeling as if her skin was crawling. After a brief and restless three hours trying to make sense out of everything she had learned, she still felt dirty. She scratched the flesh of her bare arms.

Somewhere out there a man calling himself by a name that meant Angel of Death wanted to kill her.

She had told Duncan they would find a solution, but Maggie hadn't a clue what that might be. Every spark of an idea she had was mentally ripped up and discarded with increasing frustration. Now she understood why Duncan hadn't wanted her to go to the police. He would be charged with conspiracy to murder for the deaths twelve years ago. His defence that he hadn't meant it to happen for real would mean nothing, and the evidence against him was compelling, the scene he caused when he caught Tamsin with the lecturer being one, and the fact that he had run away and changed his name whatever the reason being the other. He could get life imprisonment. Even if he could identify the real killers, who were fairly safe behind the walls of the dark web, Maggie didn't think it would make any difference.

Maggie had thought she and Duncan were as close as two people could be, but she now had to admit to herself that she knew very little about him. Even tonight he had tried to lie to her over and over again without realising how much she knew.

The phrase 'pathological liar' leapt into her head. She had come across it recently but couldn't remember the context. At that moment it seemed a perfect label for Duncan. And he seemed incapable of accepting any guilt.

There was no doubt at all that he should have gone to the police immediately the first girl was killed twelve years ago the girl called Sonia whose only fault had been that she looked like Tamsin. Maggie couldn't excuse Duncan for that. She could blame it on his youth and on his fear of imprisonment, but it didn't alter the fact that her husband the man she had loved devotedly for ten years had allowed somebody's child to be brutally murdered. The thought of the girl's last minutes almost drove all rational thought from her mind.

Maggie was trying desperately to think of Duncan and Michael as two separate people because it was the only way she believed she would be able to deal with it all. She visualised this young man somebody she didn't know who was only twenty years old and tried to understand his dilemma. She blamed him for inflicting this horror on Duncan, her loving husband, and on her family.

By the time she had left Duncan at his new hotel, suggesting he pick his van up in the morning as discreetly as he could and dump it somewhere miles from where he was staying, she was weak from emotional exhaustion.

'What's going to happen now?' Duncan had asked. 'When can I come home? When can my life get back to normal?'

'I don't have the faintest idea, but not yet. All I know is that one of us has to come up with a plan, and as far as I can see your only plan has been to do nothing,' Maggie had said. 'When has inertia ever won the day, Duncan?'

She paused for his answer, not really expecting one. Duncan said nothing.

'We're not just talking about your life getting back to normal, either,' she continued, 'so stop making it all about Duncan b.l.o.o.d.y Taylor. You'd better phone me tomorrow evening when the children are in bed and see if I've come up with something that will at least save anybody else from getting killed.'

She could see from his expression that Duncan sensed her fury and his next words confirmed it.

'You married me for better or for worse, Maggie. I know I've made a mistake, but surely everybody's allowed that? And we were happy. We'll be happy again. The kids need us both, and you know how good we are together.'

A mistake. If he called it that one more time she was certain she would lose it completely. But angry as she was with him, she needed some comfort too. Just for a moment, she had to think of him as the man she had loved for the past ten years. She needed to hold him, feel the warmth from his body pa.s.s into hers and let some of the tension seep from her limbs.

Could they ever get back to the people they had been? Of course not. Could they have a different form of happiness one that was based on absolute truth? She was no closer to an answer.

She couldn't stay in bed all day. She had to get to the office and try to find some time to examine past cases to see if there was any way that Duncan could go to the police and not be charged. She already knew it was highly unlikely.

Maggie forced herself to get up and go downstairs. She needed coffee. She pushed the kitchen door open and was only slightly surprised to see Suzy leaning against the worktop, both hands clasped around a mug.

They looked at each other. Suzy was obviously tired and Maggie felt terrible. She knew her sister would have been awake worrying about her the night before, but she couldn't have discussed things with her. Not then. She had made enough noise to ensure Suzy knew she was home, but that was the most she could manage. She didn't want to go into it all now either.

'Coffee?' Suzy asked.

'Please. Suze, I'm sorry I didn't come and talk to you last night. It's all so complicated and I don't know where to begin.'

'I take it you found him, then?'

Maggie nodded and stood quietly watching her sister make the coffee. 'Are you going home today?' she asked, changing the subject for the moment. She didn't want her sister to leave, but she had a life too.

'Of course not. I've taken a week off work family crisis being the excuse and I'll stay as long as you need me.'

'What about the kids?' Maggie asked.

'While you were out last night I had a word with Ian without screaming at him. He said the kids were winding Ruthie up, so I spoke to them and told them to cut it out.'

Maggie raised her eyebrows. She knew that Suzy took some pleasure from the children moaning about their soon-to-be stepmother.

'And then I had a word with Ruthie.'

'You what?'

'Yesterday when you talked about how it felt to truly love somebody you made me realise something, Mags. It's not Ruthie's fault that Ian didn't love me enough. Maybe I didn't love him enough. Maybe we just didn't love each other. Anyway, it's the children that count. They need to be happy there, and they need to respect their stepmother.'

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, Suzy!'

'I still think she's a poser, but hey each to their own.'

Maggie walked across the room and gave her sister a hug. She knew that had taken a lot of doing but maybe her sister was finally on the road to a better place.

'What about you, though?' Suzy asked. 'Does it all make sense now?'

Maggie debated how much to tell Suzy and in the end decided it had to be as little as possible. If she and Duncan were to have a future, those closest to them should never be in the same impossible position that she was now.

'I can't tell you, Suze. Not yet. It's honestly better if you don't know anything. He hasn't left me for another woman, though. At least that's one thing less to worry about.' Although, Maggie thought, that would have been a whole lot easier to deal with than this.

'Don't you think it would help you to talk to somebody? If that's not me, is there somebody at work you could talk to?'

'I don't know, but thanks for understanding. It's not that I don't trust you. It's just that when this is all over I don't want anything I tell you to colour your opinion of Duncan. I need to go to work, though. I need to keep this job.'

'Go and get yourself ready, then. I'll make you a bacon b.u.t.ty. The perfect start to the day. And then I'll see to the kids get them to school and pick them up again. You take it easy.'

Nodding her thanks to her sister and picking up her coffee cup, Maggie made for the stairs. The thought of having to spend her day working on defences for other criminals when she should be thinking of her own husband made her feet drag, and it was only when she was halfway up the stairs that the key word in that thought struck her.

Criminal.

51.

After less than five hours' sleep, Tom felt surprisingly alert that morning. Tiny, slender threads were starting to link some of the suspects and victims together. He had the feeling they were getting close, and adrenaline was driving him Becky too, by the look of her when he found her in the incident room, poring over the wall chart covered with pictures of victims and suspects. A young detective had seen Tom come in and had raced over to the coffee machine to fill cups for both senior officers aiming to please. Tom was glad of it. Caffeine was going to have to see him through the day.

The previous night he had thought of pretty much nothing other than tracking down Michael Alexander. He had known there was something not right with the lad, even though his alibis proved he couldn't have killed either of the girls. But now there was a link a highly tenuous one it had to be said but it was enough for Tom to get him back in for questioning, even if it was twelve years too late.

'What do we know about this counsellor, Becky?' he asked without preamble. 'We need to talk to him or her if possible.'

'We're checking it out. The practice has been closed for years. Their patient lists were handed over to a new practice that took over some of their cases. I think at least one of the counsellors has retired. Another doesn't practise anymore. But we're doing what we can.'

'Okay, but it's even more important that we find out where the h.e.l.l Michael Alexander is now.'

'I've been back through the relevant files of the original case, and you were right about his alibi, Tom.' Becky indicated a pile of papers on her desk. 'I printed this lot off, but there was nothing to implicate any of these three guys twelve years ago. Michael Alexander had a rather pathetic motive for one killing but couldn't have done it, so I don't think we can point the finger at anybody for missing this. No apparent motive for either Ben or Adam, and no evidence. It must have been a b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a case to work with nothing to go on.'

Tom still didn't know whether to be glad he had been taken off the investigation, or to wish he'd kept plugging away at the things that had niggled him. Or whether, in fact, the case hadn't had his full attention.

'So where's Michael Alexander now, then.'

Becky looked at him and raised her eyebrows. 'You're not going to like this, but he's disappeared. He's off the grid.'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks!' Tom banged his coffee cup down on the nearest desk. 'Nothing at all?'

Becky shook her head.

Tom knew without a doubt that he should have followed his instincts all those years ago. But he had run out of time.

12 years ago late June Exhausted as he was, nothing could wipe the smile off Tom's face that June morning as he walked into the incident room. He had a daughter, a beautiful little girl. No-one knew of his concerns or doubts, and n.o.body was going to. Ever.

Lucy that's what they had decided to call her. He hadn't wanted to leave her only hours after she had been born, but both she and Kate were sleeping, and if he was to be any use looking after them over the next few weeks, he was going to have to hand over all his investigations to somebody else.

'Douglas!' The shout came from Victor Elliott's office, and Tom grunted with irritation. He hoped and prayed that he wasn't going to get bogged down for hours in a useless debate that would delay his escape.

He popped his head round the door. 'Sir?'

'Come in, sit down and congratulations. A baby girl, I'm told. They're the best, you know.'

Tom was more than a little surprised to see a slightly faraway look in Victor's eyes, and remembered hearing that he had a grown-up daughter but understood she was living in Canada. Victor never spoke about her or his wife, come to that.

'Thank you, sir. I'm sorry to be ducking out right at this point. I was hoping we would have had the case sewn up before I had to leave, but Lucy was early, and I need to be at home for a week or so to help Kate.'

'Yes, yes. We'll get somebody to cover. Let's have your final take on the suspects, then.'

'We don't actually have any suspects, sir, I'm sorry to say. Anybody with half a motive has been cleared.'

'Still chasing your tail over Alexander, are you?'

'No, sir. He's not going to be able to get thirty people to lie and say he was in Keswick when he wasn't, and some of his cycle race was filmed by the university. I know he didn't kill Tamsin Grainger.'

'I sense a "but" in there, Douglas. What are you thinking?'

Tom nodded. There was a 'but' in there, but it didn't make any sense. 'He's a bit smug about his alibi. I don't like it.'

'Could he have paid somebody to kill her?'

Tom shook his head. One thing he had discovered about Michael Alexander was that he was permanently skint.

'And the other suspects?'

Tom gave a rundown of the so-called suspects none of whom in his mind was at all suspicious and waited impatiently while Victor did some thinking. He was about to ask if he could get on with clearing his paperwork when his boss spoke.

'The third girl. She said she would recognise the guy even though he had a stocking mask on. Did we run all these suspects past her?'

Tom sighed. This had been his biggest hope that she would at least give him somebody to focus on. But it had been a disaster. She had been shown photos of all the suspects along with others from their rogue's gallery. She hadn't identified anybody. She had stated categorically that she had never seen any of these people before, so either her powers of observation weren't as good as she had said, or none of their suspects was involved. Tom was inclined to believe it was the latter. They had no idea who the killer was.

'Okay. I'll let you get on then. But one thing, Douglas. If you were running this investigation from here, what would you focus on?'

Tom paused. He knew what he would do, but equally he knew that Victor Elliott wouldn't agree.

'I would search the warehouses and old mills even those with locks on the doors for evidence. Those girls were killed somewhere and transported, probably by more than one person.'

'Yes, well you've had that particular bee in your bonnet for a couple of weeks now, but it's a hunch, Douglas, and we checked it out.' Victor reached for his phone as if to signify the meeting was at an end.

'Okay, you can go, Douglas. See you when you're sick of changing nappies.'

Tom didn't move.

'What? Was there something else?'