04-Mothers of the Disappeared Read online

  Moorehead acted like a little boy.

  Taylor was able to move all his desires on to the other man, create the kind of relationship he was looking for. And then it was all over. Before it could ever even begin.

  He talked about the first time it happened, the first boy. He didn’t name names, even though I knew who he was talking about. He talked about how he didn’t intend anything to happen, that he suddenly realized what he was doing.

  ‘I was disgusted. I know I’m sick. I know that it’s wrong. But I could feel this need inside me. A fucking monster. A monster.’

  He couldn’t finish the act. Instead he killed the boy.

  ‘It was like a release. Do you know what it felt like? It felt like I was saving him.’

  One of the two men beside me turned and left the room. His movements were stiff, robotic. I felt like following him.

  But I had to stay.

  I had to see this through.

  Burns said, ‘So it wasn’t about sex?’

  ‘Yes … no … I don’t know. I don’t know.’

  ‘How many more did you kill?’

  ‘He was the first. I hid the body. Threw it in the water, hoped that he would sink, maybe be carried out to sea. His parents thought he’d run away. I didn’t know what to do. Getting away with it, I wasn’t relieved, I just felt this weight on my shoulders. My … my parents and I never got on. There was no one I could turn to … except Alex.’

  That was when things got more complex. Taylor went to Alex. Reaching out for help. He didn’t tell him that he’d killed a child, but he told him about his urges, how he had almost acted on them. Alex tried to help Taylor.

  Taylor took advantage of the other man. Remembered all the ways in which he used to control him. Dangled the hope of there being some deeper connection between them to keep Moorehead on the hook. Like a drug addict or an alcoholic desperate to retain some connection to those around, to never truly be alone, he manipulated the other man completely.

  Moorehead helped Taylor cover his tracks. He didn’t always know what he was doing, but small favours here and there helped Taylor to continue doing what he did. For a while, he became convinced that he would be able to live with that other side of himself, that it was a vice like smoking or drinking, that it was something he simply couldn’t deny. As long as he could control Alex, as long as the other man was there to dote after him, to remind him that he wasn’t a monster, then everything was OK.

  Moorehead was free from his mother and father. But the things they did to him never went away. He excised that violence on children, the same way they had to him. And sometimes he went too far.

  But always, Alex was there to help him.

  And then there was Justin Farnham.

  When he started to talk about Justin, Taylor broke down again. He rocked in his chair, straining at the restraints. He started to grunt between gritted teeth.

  It wasn’t Burns he was looking to escape.

  It was himself.

  The enormity of what he’d done.

  FORTY

  ‘Alex never understood … never wanted to understand … He … only did what I asked. Buried plastic bags and didn’t look inside. Dropped boxes into dumps at night. Cleaned rooms top to bottom, never asking what happened. He … he protected me. But … never really knew what he was protecting me from.’

  Another drink of water. Eager to talk, now. Someone was willing to listen. After all these years. His world had shrunk so that nothing existed outside of the harsh circle of light. There was no one else except David Burns, the man gently pressuring him to talk about things he had never found the courage to talk about before.

  I was invisible. If he tried to look beyond the lights and into the darkness, he would see only shadows that he could dismiss as tricks of the mind.

  He was broken. Ready to talk. In a strange way, I think he was grateful for what had happened to him that evening.

  ‘Alex was supposed to be out on a job. I waited until he had left the house and then went out for a walk through the fields. Feeling better than in a long time. Alex had bought me books he said helped him. He thought I was suffering from depression. I don’t know what he thought that had to do with the things I made him do. But he was good at self-deception, same as me. Maybe more. The books helped a little, you know? Maybe he had a point.’

  The books in his study. The ones he had never touched. They had helped. Or at least that’s what he wanted to tell himself.

  ‘There were groups online for people like me. Where I could talk to other people. Where we could share fantasies and ideas and they’d never have to be real. That was good. Healthier, you know, than acting on those impulses.’

  Even now he was still justifying what he was. Making excuses.

  ‘And then I saw him. He was heading home from playing with the other kids. He knew who I was, said I was a friend of Alex’s. Offered to walk him home. All I wanted to do was walk beside him. I didn’t … I … I thought, she’s been dead for years. She doesn’t have this power over me, you know?’

  I tried to block out the next part of his story. Burns turned away from Taylor while he talked. He faced me, and I could see the look on his face that told me how hard it was for him to keep his instincts in check.

  Burns was a man who believed in exercising control. He was determined to find the truth. He wanted a full confession.

  And only then would he pass his full judgement.

  ‘Tell me about Alex.’

  ‘He was supposed to be home late. But he was early. Saw Justin’s body. Knew what I had done. I told him it was an accident. He asked how many other accidents I’d had, what it was he’d really been doing for me over the years. I … I told him the truth.’

  The truth was what finished Moorehead. The truth was what made him realize his own complicity, made him just as guilty in his own mind as Taylor. Moorehead had allowed himself to be controlled by a domineering force in his life. A man who, like his father, had bullied and threatened him into behaving a certain way. A man who had violently gained power over Alex. Power that Alex had accepted unquestioningly.

  But seeing the truth about Taylor, discovering the other man’s dark secret and being unable to escape it, had tipped Moorehead over the edge. He had crumbled, broken down. And finally tumbled into a dark depression that made him feel he had to somehow pay for his own complicity.

  ‘When he was done screaming and yelling and panicking … he was somehow more submissive than I’d ever known. Like he was waiting for someone to tell him what to do. Like he’d been emptied inside. He needed to be filled up. With something. Anything.’

  ‘So you told him to take the fall for you?’

  ‘No. I told him to hide the body. I never expected … When he played at finding the body again when he was helping the police, I thought … I’m fucked. That’s what I thought. When I saw it on the news, I expected the police to be at my door, handcuffs at the ready. But they never came.’

  ‘And Alex took the blame. When he realized he couldn’t tell them the truth about you.’

  ‘I guess he was … he … in his head … he was as guilty as me.’

  And unspoken, there was that strange devotion. Alex Moorehead had loved Jason Taylor in his own fucked-up kind of way. And then he’d been betrayed. Completely. I could only imagine how that had felt. I could only image the kind of guilt he felt when he began to realize the extent of the other man’s crimes.

  If I can fall so hard for him, does that mean that I’m the same? That I deserve his punishment?

  Taylor was calm, now. The sobbing was done. All he had left was the ability to keep talking. To explain everything that had happened. He sounded empty. Talking about all of this was an effort and a kind of release. As though Burns was his priest, his father confessor, capable of absolving him of all sins if only Taylor could admit to them.

  I began to understand. To see the full picture.

  When Taylor realized what was happening, he saw an op
portunity to start his life again. Alex Moorehead was too fucked up and too afraid of Taylor to implicate the other man, so Taylor set up Moorehead’s PC to look like he had spent years downloading child pornography. Combined with the murder of Justin Farnham, there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Moorehead was a predator. And then, just to make sure we wouldn’t be too stupid to find it, he offered his assistance to the investigating officers. Practically handed us the evidence.

  And we were so appalled by the nature of the crime that we took it on face value.

  We’d been duped. Suckered. Fucked over.

  I wanted to break the spell of the moment, to walk over the artificial barrier created by the floodlights, haul the sick shitebag out of his chair and beat him half to death. Maybe all the way.

  He’d destroyed so many innocent lives.

  Not just the children. Alex Moorehead, too.

  Moorehead’s father had been a big force in his son’s life. Alex had spent most of his life running from his father like he was the bogey-man. He loved and feared him at the same time. We’d discovered all of this in our initial investigation, and maybe that was why it had made sense to Wemyss that Alex would kill himself after talking to his father.

  But I wondered if there was more than that.

  If there was something else.

  Moorehead’s father had been missing since their little chat at the prison. He’d left without saying a word to the investigating officers.

  Burns said, ‘That’s it, then?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘That’s everything?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘No,’ I said, and stepped forward. Blinking as I entered the light. ‘That’s not everything, is it?’

  Taylor started to wriggle in his chair. The agitation that had affected him before returning.

  Burns glared. I didn’t give a shite.

  ‘Alex told someone the truth. Before he killed himself. He was finally able to unburden his secrets to the one person who scared him more than you.’

  Taylor turned his head away. ‘No. No. No. No.’

  I moved in. Didn’t bother with the chair. Half-expected Burns to grab me, pull me back, assert his authority. But he did nothing of the sort. He merely stood back. A good-cop–bad-cop rhythm neither of us had prepared for.

  I grabbed Taylor’s face, wrenched his head round so that he was forced to look at me. ‘He told someone. He told someone, and then they came to see you, didn’t they?’

  It made sense, now. The reason he attacked me. The reason he stopped himself short, as though suddenly scared to follow through.

  I had thought he only killed children. I wasn’t quite right.

  ‘You killed him, didn’t you? Jonathan Moorehead? A man grieving for a son he’d lost six years ago thanks to your fucked-up bullshit?’

  Taylor started to weep. He shuddered and juddered and he wrenched his face from my grip and howled.

  It made sense.

  ‘Where’s the body?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He was the first adult you killed. And when I came round, and you knew that I’d found you out, you thought you could do it again. But it wasn’t the same. Jonathan Moorehead was an old man. He had been big once, but now he was old and frail. Past his prime. And you killed him easy. He didn’t fight back. Or at least not hard enough.’

  Taylor wept and rocked.

  I stood up. ‘Fuck it.’

  Taylor howled.

  Burns stepped forward as I left the light. Sat down in front of Taylor and calmed him. Gentle. The way someone might speak to a child. ‘It’s over now,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to live with the guilt any more. Because you’ve admitted the truth, son. You’ve told the truth at last.’

  Taylor calmed. Slowly.

  Burns stood up and walked behind him, undid the restraints.

  Then he came back round. Handed Taylor a pad of paper and a pen. ‘The mothers of the boys you killed, all they want is peace of mind. They just need to know where their sons are buried. You think you can tell us? Names, dates, locations. That’s all I want. That’s all they want.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘I set you free.’

  Taylor’s eyes widened. He sniffed back snot and blood. ‘Free?’

  ‘No concern of mine, then, son. All I want is to give these women peace of mind.’

  ‘Free?’

  Burns nodded. He seemed sincere. Calm and rational.

  Taylor wrote.

  No one moved. No one said anything. The only sound came from the scribble of the pen-nib on the paper.

  When he was done, he handed the paper back to Burns. ‘I’m thirsty.’

  Burns nodded. He took the paper, handed Taylor what was left of the plastic bottle. Walked out of the light, handed the pad to one of the men standing beside me.

  Taylor gulped at the water.

  Burns turned, walked back into the light and in front of Taylor. He slammed his open palm against the bottom of the bottle, slammed it into Taylor’s mouth. The other man made a strange noise and fell back, taking the chair with him. He spat out the bottle with a spray of bloodied liquid.

  Burns was old, but still as dangerous and violent as he had ever been. He laid into Taylor with ferocity. Delivered kicks to the kidneys, hauled the other man up on to his feet and savagely slammed hard, bony fists into his face.

  Taylor collapsed.

  Burns stood over him. Kicked the poor bastard over and over again. In the body, in the face. Finally, he stomped down hard on the man’s skull. Once. Twice. Three times.

  When it was over, he stepped back. Nodded to one of the thugs. The man stepped forward, moved behind Taylor and pulled him to his feet. Then he produced a knife. He held Taylor like a pig, hauling back the man’s head by pulling on his hair. Then he slit Taylor’s throat. A practised motion, made me think he had abattoir experience. Or worse.

  I thought about Charles Leigh, the man who had made this the Murder House.

  Taylor slid to the ground. Gasped, bubbled and shook.

  And finally, he was still.

  FORTY-ONE

  That was the test.

  Right there. Everything else was a tease, a lead-up.

  Burns wanted to know if I was still a straight-up citizen. Testing my sense of justice.

  Was I playing a part?

  Or had I really allowed him to do what he did because I thought that Jason Taylor deserved what he got?

  Tough to say. Tough to know.

  Back at the office, I called Griggs on his unlisted mobile. Went straight to voicemail.

  ‘It’s done,’ I said.

  Jason Taylor hit the headlines.

  The tabloids had a field day.

  Redboot quietly shut up shop. Its servers went dead. Its clients found new tech geeks. Two days after the offices closed for good someone set a fire on the ground floor. No one was hurt, thank goodness.

  The police investigation found no leads.

  Taylor was seen at various places up and down the country for at least six months. Every sighting was a dead end. He became a bogey-man and whenever the media ran down their top scumbags, he was somewhere on the list.

  But only six people knew the truth.

  Myself.

  Burns.

  His thugs.

  Griggs.

  And Susan.

  My business account was credited with £12,000 from Burns Holdings, Inc. The Big Man told me that it was best to pay ‘little and often’ to avoid difficult questions. He said there would be more work for me if I was interested. ‘But nothing that would offend your delicate sensibilities.’ I told him I’d consider what he had to say.

  We danced. I followed the steps expected of me.

  Kellen came to see me three days after Taylor vanished.

  We talked in my office.

  She remained standing throughout. Had the kind of pent-up energy you see in caged lions. />
  ‘They shut it down. The investigation.’

  ‘Can I ask why?’

  ‘Lack of compelling evidence.’ She shook her head. ‘They opened it. They handed it to me on a plate and now they take it away.’

  ‘That’s life.’

  ‘Anyone ever told you that you’re a lucky man, McNee?’

  I shook my head.

  It was the truth.

  ‘Lucky’ was the last word I’d use.

  As she left, she said, ‘I’ll be watching.’

  ‘You’re keeping the file open?’

  ‘I’m a good cop. I do as I’m told.’

  ‘But off the book?’

  ‘Like a fucking hawk.’

  They found Jonathan Moorehead in a shallow grave about two hundred yards from Taylor’s house. He had been bludgeoned to death. The object used was round, heavy and probably some kind of ornament. Taylor had disposed of it.

  Probably in the ocean.

  I phoned Wemyss, gave him my pet theory regarding what happened in the interview and what happened afterward. I made it sound like pure speculation, but Taylor had given me enough that I knew it was true.

  ‘Fits with what we know,’ Wemyss said. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, I hope we find him.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  Wemyss added, ‘I hope the twisted cunt gets what he deserves.’

  FORTY-TWO

  Susan met me at the lay-by.

  I knew we were safe to meet out here. No one was watching. No one would think to look here.

  This was where everything had begun. Where I’d had the accident that led to my leaving the force. Where I’d started the journey to become a person I never expected to be.

  ‘How are you, Steed?’

  ‘Good as you might expect,’ I said.