The Lost Girl (Brennan and Esposito) (26 page)

D
etective Inspector Phil Brennan. That’s what her TV screen told her. But she knew better than to believe what the TV screen told her. She knew his real name. Sean.
 

The name she had killed him under.
 

She watched the news, waited for the next news report, devoured that too. Got online, went to every news website that she could find. Read and watched everything. And the end result was still the same. Fiona Welch was dead.
 

She sat back. Tried to process that fact. It was going to be too much for her. She could feel it, was sure of it. All too much for her. Everything that she had kept hidden all those years, the suppressed emotions, the rage, the guilt and fear, all of it, was going to spill out now. Definitely.
 

Except. It never happened.
 

She experienced shock, disbelief. All of that. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing and hearing. At least at first. But as the news sank in, she realised that the expected emotions weren’t going to materialise. She waited for that rush but nothing happened. No mourning, no regret. No anger at her manipulation and eventual betrayal, even after all this time. Just
…
a kind of emptiness.
 

That was as much as she could acknowledge. Or her subconscious was prepared to acknowledge. After all, she wasn’t exactly a stranger to death. Not the way she had been living for the last few years. And when she realised what Fiona Welch had been doing, how she had died, she was even less surprised. She had tried to prove a thesis she had written on the susceptibility of humanity, using murder and manipulation to demonstrate it. The fact that she had fallen – or been pushed, the news was vague on that point – to her death seemed kind of appropriate somehow. She couldn’t explain how, but it just felt like it did. Fiona had been pursuing a different kind of murder to what she had been doing. More of a typical serial killer, no matter how many academic phrases she dressed it up in. How boring, she thought. How disappointing.
 

But Sean, that was another matter entirely.
 

Days went by and still she devoured the news. But her attention had started to wane where Fiona Welch was concerned. She was dead and gone now. No point in moping over her. But the detective, that was another matter. She wanted to know everything about him.
 

Detective Inspector Phil Brennan worked for Essex Police as a member of the Major Incident Unit. Or Murder Squad for short. He was married to a criminal psychologist called Marina Esposito who had until recently taught at Essex University. He was considered somewhat unconventional. His dress sense told her that. Most police officers were in uniform even when they were allowed to wear plain clothes. Not Phil Brennan. She had seen him interviewed on TV and he wore a tweed jacket and waistcoat with a plaid shirt underneath it. A tie had been slung round his neck almost as if in penance. He had a dressing on the side of his face. That, he stated whilst being interviewed, had been caused by Fiona Welch when she had kidnapped him.
 

A shiver of excitement ran through her when she heard that.
 

She had to find out more about the man. No, she had to find out everything she could about the man. She decided to stay in Colchester, at least for a while. She had been thinking of settling down somewhere and her own house was too far to get back to. This would do fine. She rented an apartment by the river, in the same block that one of Fiona Welch’s victims had lived in. She had hoped it was the same flat but she didn’t think so. Although the rent was quite reasonable so she liked to think it was. Imagine to herself.
 

She began to haunt the library, checking out the newspaper library to find out everything she could about Phil Brennan. It was on one of her frequent trips that she became aware of the fact that she had attracted attention. Usually that would have been something she hated, and would have even actively – and possibly fatally – discouraged, but not this time. He was a librarian. And he seemed harmless enough.
 

Sorry for interrupting you, he had said one day after she had photocopied some old pages of the
Colchester Gazette
, but I couldn’t help noticing you’re interested in crime.
 

She turned to him, ready to
…
what? She didn’t know. But then she looked at the man. Small, inoffensive. The overriding impression she got from him: loneliness. So she let him talk. Answered him.
 

That’s right.
 

Are you a journalist? Something like that?
 

No, I’m just interested. Crime is a
…
hobby of mine.
 

His eyes had lit up at her words. Straight away she worked out why. He was an enthusiast. He thought he had found a fellow traveller. She smiled inwardly. If he only knew who he was talking to
…
 

I’m looking into all the recent cases that Phil Brennan was involved in.
 

Really? This is your lucky day, he said.
 

She frowned.
 

I’m quite the collector. An enthusiast. I have, if I say so myself, amassed and collated a rather large collection of crime-related materials. All local, of course. I’m something of the historian.
 

Interesting.
 

Of course, I’d be happy to share it with a fellow enthusiast.
 

She fixed a smile in place.
 

And I’d be happy for you to do that.
 

And so began a quite unlikely friendship. Malcolm was as good as his word. His house had been turned into a filing system for his crime reports. She found the attention to detail that he had fascinating. He gave her total access. The first thing she did, of course, was look through his files for mention of herself. There was nothing there. Not directly. Just a couple of unexplained deaths of middle-aged men in hotels. She felt a familiar surge of power just reading about them. Knowing she caused that to happen, one less person walking on the earth because of her. And no one knew the truth of what had actually happened. Well, only two people. And one of them was dead.
 

But it was Phil Brennan she was interested in. And Malcolm had plenty of information about him. And it was a pleasure to devour it.
 

She also noticed something else happening while she was working her way through Malcolm’s files. Malcolm was falling for her. He didn’t come out and actually say anything, but she could tell. He began to take care of himself more. Washing his clothes more often, attending to his personal hygiene. He even tidied the house for her coming round, bought her expensive biscuits to go with her cup of tea. She tried not to notice but it was extremely noticeable.
 

This, she thought, presented her with a choice, do one of two things: walk away before he tried to get to know her better and began to see through the mousy disguise she had adopted, or fuck him.
 

She chose the latter.
 

It was easy. And it didn’t take long. And Malcolm was so grateful. She had never experienced anything like it. And it was a new feeling for her too. The first time that she hadn’t seduced a man simply to take his money and his life. It was a reciprocal agreement: she gave him what he wanted in return for him letting her have what she wanted. No more, no less. And once that was out of the way she could get on with the important work, discovering Phil Brennan.
 

But fucking Malcolm came with its own set of risks. She had thought that he would be satisfied with that but he wasn’t. She could tell that he was getting hung up on her, beginning to believe they were having a relationship. He had already started asking questions about her. Her life, her background. Her family. And there was only so long she could deflect them for. And given his skills at investigation he would try – and possibly succeed – to find out something about her.
 

So she decided to disappear again. Time to rest this persona. And she did. Walked away, disappeared from his life. And she felt nothing. Malcolm, she knew, wouldn’t see it that way. She had broken his heart. She didn’t feel too bad about it. The way she looked at it, he had been lucky. She could have done so much worse to him.
 

And she had what she wanted. As much information as it was possible to get on Phil Brennan. Now she just had to decide what to do with it. Why she was so obsessed with him, why she felt such an affinity with him. The resemblance to Sean wasn’t enough. There must be something more.
 

A few months later she found out exactly what that was.
 

‘C
ome in,’ Michael Prosser called. ‘It’s open.’

He had sat in the same chair all day. Hadn’t moved at all. Just thinking.

Thinking. And accepting.

He had made a phone call after Marina and Anni had left. His heart had been heavy but he had realised he had no choice. He knew what was coming. Expected it. Once he had made that phone call he knew that everything would change. He had just been trying to decide if it was for the better or not. That was all.

And, all in all, he decided that it probably was.

Respect. How fucking stupid. How pathetic. Respect. As if that would ever happen. Could ever happen. Not now. Not ever, really. Too much had happened to him. He had caused too much of it. That was the thing. And the visit of those women in the last couple of days just brought it home to him how pitiful the whole thing was. How pitiful he was. Because their visit had shown him just how far apart he was from what he wanted, how low he had fallen. Respect. Yeah, right.

It’s the hope that kills you. He didn’t know where he’d first heard that one. But it was so right. Those women, especially yesterday, especially Marina Esposito, had given him hope. And that had led him to make that call. Which in turn had led to this visit.

So yeah, that phrase was just about perfect.

‘Michael Prosser?’

He turned, surprised. This wasn’t the voice he had been expecting. It was male for a start.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

The man stepped into his living room. Prosser got a good look at him. Tall, well-built, shaven-headed. Well dressed, too. Or at least expensively dressed. His suit looked like it had been slept in. His face, like his head, was sprouting stubble. He looked like an angry peach. And his eyes were red-rimmed.

Prosser recognised him. He was the man who had attacked Marina Esposito in the alley a few nights ago.

‘Do you want my name?’ the man asked. ‘Would that make it any easier?’

‘Sit down,’ said Prosser, pointing to the sofa. ‘You may as well.’

He sat down. Prosser noticed he was wearing gloves. Latex ones. He had expected something like that.

‘I know who you are,’ Prosser said. ‘From the other night. And from the home. I remember you. And I know you remember me.’

His visitor seemed uneasy. ‘Right.’

‘She sent you, didn’t she?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Well, then. That’s all we need to say to each other.’

‘Look,’ said his visitor, ‘I just want you to know… I just…’

Prosser waited. His visitor looked like a man used to speaking his mind but not explaining his heart.

‘I… Look, given the choice I wouldn’t be doing this.’

‘Choice?’

‘It’s my son, see. She’s got my son. So I’ve got no choice. And my wife.’ A huge sigh. ‘She’s got her too.’

‘I see. And you have to do what she wants if you ever want to see them alive again.’

‘Yeah.’ He looked up, straight at Prosser as if he had just read his mind. ‘That’s… that’s it. Exactly it.’

‘So why not go to the police?’

The visitor stood up, looked about ready to explode. ‘I am the fucking police!’

Prosser just stared. He didn’t feel like he was in any danger from the man’s outburst. He was just venting his own guilt, rage and impotence at her. And that was OK. Prosser could well understand that.

‘So how did she get you?’ asked Prosser, genuinely curious. ‘I mean, I think I can guess. But I’d like to know.’

He said nothing. Just stood there staring at something that wasn’t in the room. Or even the present.

‘Did she fuck you? Seduce you?’

He nodded. ‘Yeah.’ He laughed. It was bitter and soon died out. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it?’

Prosser almost smiled. There was a word he could relate to.

He continued. ‘She said at first that she’d tell my wife. And my son. Well, obviously I didn’t want that, did I? So I tried to stop her.’

‘Not easy, is it?’

He shook his head.

‘Didn’t realise what kind of person you’d taken on. At least, not until it was too late.’ Prosser felt he could have been talking out loud about himself. ‘You never win with her.’

His visitor nodded. ‘Yeah. I found that out.’

‘The hard way,’ and before his visitor could answer, continued, ‘I’m guessing this wasn’t the first time you’d cheated on your wife.’ Asking questions again. Intimate ones. He almost felt like he had his old job back again. Social work. Helping people. He shook his head. A last hurrah before the end. Dignity. Respect.

Or self-delusion.

Whichever.

‘No,’ said his visitor. ‘It wasn’t. Not by a, by a long… whatever.’ He walked towards the window, tried to look out through the grime-encrusted glass. ‘She found out, you see. My wife. About the others. Well, not all of them. One of them. And it made her think there’d been others. I mean, you would, wouldn’t you? And there had been. So I… I threw myself on her mercy, so to speak. Asked for forgiveness.’ He turned back to Prosser. ‘I feel I can tell you all this.’

‘You can. Go on.’

‘It worked. For a while, anyway. And we had Callum, my son. And he was supposed to bring us back together, make us stronger again. Change everything.’

‘And then she came along.’

He nodded.

‘And she was… let me guess. The kind of woman you’d always wanted but didn’t realise until you met her? Not to mention the best fuck you’d ever had, of course.’

He nodded. ‘Yeah, I… yeah.’ Amazement in his voice at having his thoughts so neatly summed up.

Prosser nodded. ‘She’s good at that. Her unique talent, you might say.’

His visitor stared at him. Really looking at him, as if actually seeing him for the first time. ‘What’s your story, then?’

Prosser pointed to his ruined face. ‘This. Her. All you need to know, really.’

He nodded once more.

The two men occupied the room in silence. Eventually, Prosser broke it.

‘And then she wanted you for something. And to make sure you did it, she took your wife and son.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And said that you’d only see them alive when you’d done what she wanted.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And that was… what? Covering for her? Killing for her?’

He nodded, head downcast. ‘And the rest.’

‘And you think that after today she’ll let you have them back again.’

‘Maybe not after today, maybe she still wants me to do something more for her. But I hope not. I just want… want them back again.’

‘Sure, she’ll let you see them again. She might even let you have them again. But they’ll both be dead.’

He looked up sharply, as if he’d been stabbed. ‘What? What the fuck are you on about?’

‘They’re dead already. Or most probably dead.’

‘No…’ He began pacing the room, hands to his head. ‘No… don’t say that… no…’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, but they’re already dead.’

‘No… no…’

‘Yeah. They are.’ Prosser sat back. ‘So really, you’ve done all this for nothing, haven’t you? Should have gone to police after all.’

He crossed the floor, stood towering over Prosser. ‘I can’t believe that… I can’t… can’t…’

His anger peaked. He reached down, grabbed Prosser by the throat, picked him bodily off the seat. Squeezed his hands hard around his neck.

‘Go on…’ said Prosser, through gasped breaths, ‘go on. I’m ready. It’s… it’s what you came here to do…’

And then he was in tears. Rage giving way to something else, huge, flowing streams cascading down his face.

‘I’m sorry… I’m so, so sorry…’ Not talking to Prosser now, he was sure of that.

Prosser stared at him, tried to hold eye contact.

‘Sorry… I… oh God… sorry…’

Prosser’s eyes closed. Behind them it seemed like stars were forming and galaxies were bursting. He felt beyond pain, beyond stress. He began to feel at peace.

‘Sorry…’

His words gave way to uncontrollable sobs as he dropped the lifeless body to the floor. As it fell, he collapsed beside it, like a puppet with its strings cut. Sobbing his heart out.

That’s when DCI Franks and Marina Esposito ran into the room.

Seconds too late.