71
Healy killed the call to Raker, flipped shut his phone and dumped it on to the passenger seat of the car. It was raining. A couple walked by, umbrella up, arms locked together, and then his eyes moved across the street to Teresa Reed’s house. It was time. There was nothing to stop him any more. No future. Nothing to get up for, nothing to come home to. He had no job, a wife who hated him and sons who never answered his calls. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out the photo of Leanne, tracing the lines of her face, his finger moving across the creases and bumps of the picture. ‘He won’t get away with it, baby,’ he said quietly, a deep, guttural sadness welling in the pit of his stomach.
I’ve got nothing else now.
Just you, Leanne.
When Teresa Reed answered the door, she broke out into a smile, came forward and kissed him. ‘How are you today, hun?’ she said, touching her hand to his. ‘I didn’t expect to see you so early.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I thought you were going to call.’
‘Something came up at work.’
She eyed him. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Fine.’
‘Well, I’ve just put some coffee on.’
He followed her into the house, through a hallway full of ornaments and ornate junk. He hated her taste. In the kitchen, she stood at the counter and finished putting some of the dishes away, talking about what she’d done on her day off. He barely even listened. All he could think about was what he was going to do next. About Leanne. About how he was going to avenge her death.
And about the gun tucked into the back of his trousers.
‘You remember what I asked you?’ he said to her, still standing in the doorway of the kitchen, rain running off his jacket. ‘About coming with you to the prison one day?’
She looked at him. ‘You mean watching me talk to the prisoners?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I spoke to my boss about it after you asked,’ she said, taking two cups out of the cupboard, ‘but he wasn’t massively keen on the idea. Sorry, hun.’
‘Why?’
‘I think he’s just worried it might aggravate the men.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve only been seeing them seven months. That’s no time at all. I don’t want to upset the equilibrium because, slowly, I’m starting to gain their trust. But there’s also the problem that some of them see prison guards and cops – people like you – as the reason they’re inside in the first place.’
‘That is the reason they’re inside.’
‘I know. But it might promote negative feelings in them.’
‘They’re rapists and murderers.’
Teresa Reed paused, as if she’d glimpsed something in Healy that she hadn’t seen before. ‘I know what they are.’
‘Are you sure?’
She frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘What about Broadmoor?’
‘What about it?’
‘You talk to the prisoners there as well.’
‘So?’
‘So, I’d like to go with you there.’
She shook her head, her defences up. ‘No way. It’s a high-security hospital, Colm. We’re talking about deeply disturbed patients. I can maybe talk to my boss again about letting you come along to Belmarsh with me, if that’s what you really want. I know you say you just want to watch me at work, but if we concoct some story about you using it as a research trip for the Met, Belmarsh might sign off the –’
‘I don’t want to go to Belmarsh any more.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I can get inside Belmarsh any time I want. I’ve been doing it five months already. I’ve been watching you talk to those men since January. I don’t need to see their faces up close. They’re not what I want.’
‘What do you mean, “watching me since January”?’
‘Belmarsh isn’t what I want. Broadmoor is.’
‘What are you talking about?’
He studied her, the silence in the kitchen deafening. ‘Belmarsh was just a stepping stone. The thing to make you trust me. If you’d watched me go in there, take notes, look interested as you laughed and smiled and batted your eyelids at the rapists and the killers and the worthless f*cking scumbags you call patients, I knew I could get you to take me to Broadmoor too. I didn’t care how long it took, but at some point I thought you’d trust me enough to arrange it.’ He stopped. ‘But then I got fired today.’
Her face dropped. Confusion. Fear. ‘I don’t, uh …’
‘So now nothing matters any more.’
‘Colm, I –’
He sighed, taking a step into the kitchen. He could feel the gun at the back of his trousers, shifting against the belt. ‘Do you know who you talk to up at Broadmoor?’
She backed up against the counter. ‘Talk to?’
‘Your “patients”.’
‘I, uh … I talk to a lot of –’
‘I’m only interested in one of them. The one who killed my daughter.’ A shiver of emotion passed through him. ‘And I don’t care how you get it done, but you’re the one that’s going to take me to him.’