The Killer Inside (15 page)

‘I’d love a coffee, please – milk, no sugar,’ he replied. ‘They’re normally quite straightforward, Mazdas, but this one’s got me stumped.’ Walking to the rear of the car he dropped to a squatting position. ‘I’ll just see if there’s anything leaking out of the exhaust.’

‘Okay.’ She let herself back through the gate, wondering if she might be able to find anything in the house to go with the coffee. She hadn’t expected it to take this long – she was now so hungry she was starting to get the shakes. Searching the kitchen cupboards for anything resembling a biscuit, she spotted what looked like a packet of Jaffa Cakes wedged between a bottle of olive oil and a bag of brown sugar. Gleeful at the prospect of some nourishment, she grabbed it.

‘Shit!’ she hissed. It was empty. Emily must have scoffed them all on her last visit. Her four-year-old niece had the appetite of a baby elephant. Why did kids always put things back in cupboards and fridges when they were empty?

The kettle boiled and she spooned coffee into mugs, salivating at the smell of it. She put the mugs on a tray, balancing it on the palm of her left hand as she turned the catch on the front door with her right. What she saw when the door opened almost made her drop the lot.

The rescue man was standing right outside the door with something dangling from his hand. She couldn’t make out what it was but she could smell it over the oil that caked his fingers. It was something dead and rotting and it turned her stomach.

‘You been rallying recently?’ he said.

‘What? Her eyes flicked up from the dark object hanging at his side. She looked at him, bemused. ‘No… I… of course I haven’t… What
is
that? What have you found?’

Slowly and deliberately, he lifted his hand so that the object was directly in her view.

‘Ugh!’ she took a step back. ‘It’s a dead rat!’

‘Not a rat, no,’ he replied. ‘I’m no expert, mind, but I can see that it’s got no tail, so in my book, that makes it a mole.’

‘A mole? Where did you find it?’

‘Rammed up your exhaust pipe.’

‘How the hell did it get there?’

He shrugged. ‘Well, they’re not known for their athletic qualities, aren’t moles, so unless this one’s been crossed with a flying squirrel, I’d say someone’s shoved it up there.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘You got any in your garden? Neighbours can get very narked about that kind of thing.’ He smiled at her blank face. ‘Don’t worry – it won’t have caused any lasting damage to the engine. It should start first time. Want to give it a try?’

Megan followed him through the gate on automatic pilot.
Her eyes were fixed on the dead creature swaying in time with his steps. Her back garden was walled and gravelled, like most of the neighbours’ gardens. Other than the odd cat, she had never seen anything vaguely resembling a mammal out there. This could be no coincidence. Alistair Hodge had told her that a mole was the one and only animal in this country still being controlled with strychnine. Was someone trying to warn her off?

She sat behind the wheel, her limbs heavy and numb. The engine purred into action. The AA man brought her something on a clipboard and she signed it with a mumbled word of thanks.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

‘Oh, er, fine,’ she said. ‘Just a bit tired, that’s all.’

‘I’ll take this away with me, then, shall I?’ The snout was protruding from the top pocket of his overalls.

‘Yes. Yes, please.’ She watched him retreat in the wing mirror. When he’d driven off she ran into the house and slumped on the sofa. She no longer felt hungry – just sick. Someone had watched her; followed her car. While she was asleep last night that someone had been outside her house stuffing that thing into her exhaust pipe. She thought of the hall of residence: the last place she had been yesterday. It would have been so easy to tail her from there. Or perhaps her address had been traced through some other means. Either way, someone very dangerous knew exactly where she lived. Suddenly she thought of Nathan MacNamara.
He
knew where she lived. What if he’d been blabbing about it? He didn’t live in Linden House but he might hang around with people who did… ‘Oh, God!’ she moaned, burying her face in her hands.

She wished there was someone else in the house with her; not just to make her feel safer but to help her make sense of this increasingly complex web of evidence. She thought
about Dominic. He had a good ear and a good mind – the sort of person that could be relied on in a crisis. It seemed ridiculous that he was banged up in jail on the other side of the city when he no longer posed any threat to society. She closed her eyes in an attempt to conjure up his soothing presence. Was it so crazy to imagine him sitting beside her in this room? In a year or so he’d be out. It was not unknown for women – professional women – to form lasting relationships with prison inmates they had met through their work: she had heard of one or two such cases over the years. It was possible; anything was possible. Whether or not it was sensible no longer seemed important.

She was snatched back to reality by the shrill notes of her home telephone. She ran into the hall to pick it up, then hesitated, worried about who might be on the other end. What if it was the person who’d interfered with her car? After five rings the answering machine cut in. She held her breath, waiting to see if there would be a message.

‘Hi, it’s Delva.’ Megan let out an audible sigh of relief. ‘I’ve got something important to tell you. Can you ring me back when you get this?’

Half an hour later, Delva was sitting at the kitchen table, a mug of tea in her hand. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t explain over the phone,’ she said. ‘It’s the sort of thing I felt I had to tell you face-to-face.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘I met up with Natalie and Tim earlier. I wanted to know how the meeting with Tim’s dad had gone. Evidently he’s on the pensions committee and has access to records of every former member of the force who’s drawn a pension in the past forty years. If Ronald Smith had ever been a policeman his name would have been on file. There were a few Ron Smiths, but no one with the middle name Aaron.’

‘So that’s it, then.’ Megan pursed her lips. ‘That knocks
the Birmingham Six revenge theory on the head, doesn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, it does.’ Delva took a deep breath. ‘But there’s something else.’ She looked away from Megan, her eyes fixed on the carpet. ‘It’s about Dominic Wilde,’ she said. ‘I thought you ought to know.’ The words filled Megan with a horrible sense of foreboding. Less than an hour ago she’d been imagining this man sharing her life. Whatever Delva was about to say, it wasn’t going to be good: it was going to blow that fantasy right out of the water. ‘Before he went to prison Dom spent time in the SAS,’ Delva went on. ‘Tim’s dad said that when he came out of the forces he became one of the most feared men in Birmingham’s criminal underworld – a man not to be messed with – not averse to enforcing respect through extreme physical violence.’

Megan swallowed hard, struggling to rein in her emotions. ‘But that was then,’ she said. ‘He’s held his hands up to the murder he committed. He’s a different man now.’

‘But it wasn’t just one murder Meg – not according to Tim’s father. He reckoned Dom was responsible for a number of gangland killings that were never solved. None of them involved weapons: in each case the killer used his bare hands. All the victims died of a broken neck – a classic unarmed combat technique. At the time the police suspected it was Dom Wilde but there were never any witnesses or forensic evidence.’

Megan stared at Delva. In her mind she was dissecting all that Dom had ever said about himself. Had she totally misjudged him? Had her overwhelming desire to believe in his redemption blinded her to the reality that he could have played some part in Carl’s death?

‘Meg, are you alright?’

‘Yes… I… I’m…’ Megan shot to her feet, clapping her hand over her mouth. She raced upstairs and flung open
the bathroom door. There wasn’t time to close it: she only hoped Delva wouldn’t hear as she kneeled over the toilet, retching.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, when she came back downstairs. ‘It’s just that I haven’t eaten yet today. Things have been a bit traumatic.’ She told Delva about the dead mole; about her fears that someone from the hall of residence had followed her home.

‘God, Meg, that’s bloody scary,’ Delva said, her braids quivering as she shook her head. ‘You should have told me on the phone; the last you needed was me coming round banging on about Dominic Wilde.’

‘No, I’m glad you told me, honestly.’ Megan sat down a little unsteadily on the sofa. Her legs felt like jelly and her stomach muscles ached like hell. ‘I needed to know. I’ve been relying on him for information and if he’s not to be trusted, well…’ She bit her lip, not trusting herself to say any more.

‘Well, you’re not staying here on your own tonight, that’s for sure,’ Delva said, rising to her feet. ‘I’m going to take you to the supermarket, stock up on a load of goodies and cook you something special. We’ll call round at mine on the way home and get my stuff. I’m on a late shift tomorrow so I can stay till you leave for work, okay?’

‘Delva, you don’t have to…’

‘Yes, I do,’ Delva interrupted. ‘I know you’d do the same for me.’

Megan nodded limply. She felt as if she’d been kicked all over.

It was a strange evening. Delva insisted on unplugging the phone and switching off Megan’s mobile as well as her own. They ate beef stir-fry and fresh mango with Greek yoghurt,
washed down with a bottle of Australian Shiraz. With the television tuned to Paramount Comedy, they watched
back-to
-back episodes of Monty Python until Megan dozed off on the sofa and eventually crawled up the stairs to bed, lulled by the sound of Delva’s gentle snoring coming through the open door of the spare room.

The next morning Delva went to the car with her and sat in it as she started the engine. It seemed fine but Delva insisted on searching all round it before she would let her drive off. ‘Call me when you get to Balsall Gate, won’t you?’ she said. ‘Let me know everything’s okay.’

‘I will,’ Megan nodded.

‘I’ll get Tim and Natalie to pull up the court files this morning – try and get a bit more background on Carl Kelly and Patrick Ryan and any third man that might have appeared with them. And while they’re doing that I’ll find out exactly where you go to get a well-hung mole round these parts!’ She gave Megan a wry grin and waved as the car pulled away. It had been good, having Delva to stay. Megan had always prided herself on her independence, on her ability to deal with unpleasant things on her own. But yesterday had served up a double whammy. She felt more vulnerable than she had ever felt in her life.

When she arrived at the prison she was greeted by Al, the prison officer with the ferrety eyes. “Greeted” was not the right word. He looked her up and down like a piece of meat and kept her waiting while he went through all the checks – something that hadn’t happened since her first visit to the jail. It was a complete waste of time and she was sure he was doing it just to wind her up. While she stood there another officer appeared, one she hadn’t seen before.

‘Want a bacon sandwich, Al? ‘ he called. ‘I’m just on my
way to the kitchen.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Al shouted back.

‘You want sauce on it?’

‘Yes, please. Brown. Did you get that?
Brown
.’ He glanced at Megan as he repeated the word. She knew exactly what this was: a blatant reference to heroin. He knew perfectly well that she was aware of the smuggling going on in this place. He had as good as told her he was one of the main culprits. He also knew that the governor wasn’t prepared to do a damned thing about it.

With a sneer, he unlocked the gate and let her through. Suddenly it struck her that he could be the one trying to scare her off. That
he
had put that thing in her exhaust pipe. The thought of him lurking outside her house while she was asleep made her stomach lurch.

By the time she reached the room where Dominic was waiting her face was so taut that it was impossible for him not to notice that something was seriously wrong.

‘Megan, what’s the matter? What’s happened?’ He jumped out of his seat.

‘I need to sit down,’ she said, avoiding his eyes. She sank into the chair, grabbing the arms to stop her hands from trembling. ‘I can’t wrap this up in any soft words,’ she began. ‘I’ve heard things about you, Dom: things that you’ve never told me. Terrible things.’ A crushing silence descended on the room. Still she couldn’t look at him. She stared at the floor, willing him to say something in his defence.

At last he spoke. ‘Meg, I’m not going to insult you by trying to deny anything. I don’t know what you’ve heard, or where it came from, but whatever it is, it’s probably true.’

She dug her nails into the palms of her hands. She wanted to scream at him, make him feel her anguish. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Her voice was low but full of venom. ‘You made out that the murder you committed was a one-off;
something done in the heat of the moment. But there were others, weren’t there? Murders you planned in cold blood.’

‘Megan, look at me, please,’ he implored.

She glanced up and saw that there were tears in his eyes. Determinedly, she turned her face away. If he thought he was going to soften her up with a trick like that he was on a hiding to nothing.

‘What difference would it have made?’ His voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘That person no longer exists, Meg, haven’t I proved that to you? Don’t you realise that if I was still that man I could have had a far easier time in a place like this?’

She pursed her lips. There was no denying that. ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’ She raised her head, looking straight at him for the first time since she had entered the room. ‘Can’t you see that finding it out from someone else has shaken my confidence in you? Shaken it to the core.’

‘If I’d told you all that at the beginning, don’t you think you’d have run a mile? Would you really have wanted to make a friend of a violent psychopath?’ With a heavy sigh he bent his head, shaking it slowly. ‘I don’t think you realise how much it means to me, having someone like you to…’ the words died as he checked himself. Megan watched him in silence, tortured by the way she felt; wanting to reach out to him but refusing to let herself do it. After what seemed like an eternity he raised his head, his deep grey eyes searching hers. ‘I just couldn’t face the prospect of you not coming to see me any more.’

She gazed back at him, fighting to keep control. ‘Dom, don’t you understand? I sought you out to help with my research because I thought I could
trust
you. The reason we got on so well was that, unlike most people in this place, I felt you were being completely open with me. How do you think that makes me feel, after what I’ve just heard?’

‘Okay,’ he said softly. ‘No more holding back. You’ve heard about the violence. Well, there’s something else about my past that I’m ashamed of. It was the reason my girlfriend left me; the reason I haven’t seen my daughter since the day she was born.’ He took a breath and she dug her nails into her palms, wondering what was coming. ‘I treated women with contempt, Meg,’ he went on. ‘I couldn’t be faithful to anyone. I had a different girl every week – even when my girlfriend was pregnant. I was with someone else the night she went into labour. Her mother came looking for me and someone in the pub sent her to this girl’s house. So that was it. The day our daughter was born was the day she kicked me out, and that was a brave thing to do, given my reputation.’ He clasped his hands together in his lap, clenching and unclenching them, as if he was afraid of their power. ‘So that’s the man they put away, Meg: a ruthless, selfish, womanising waste of space. You know everything now and I don’t suppose you’ll want anything more to do with me.’