Next to Die by Neil White Page A

even if it meant doing what DI Evans had asked.
    ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said.
    ‘What, about your bus case?’
    ‘Yes. I can save it for another day. It’s my brother’s birthday. I ought to say hello. He shouldn’t be on his own tonight.’
    And then he smiled as he turned to go. As the door closed behind him, it felt like a metaphor for his career – that he was moving on. He went down the steps more quickly than he had come up, and when he burst out into the car park, he felt determined. He would do what he needed to impress Evans, because the Murder Squad was where he had always wanted to be.
    It was his time.

Twelve
     
    Joe’s thoughts were on Ronnie Bagley as he walked into the gardens near his office. There was enough evidence to justify an arrest. Enough to persuade the prosecution to charge him with murder. And enough for a judge to keep him locked up until his trial.
    He felt that churn of self-doubt, the one he kept to himself. He knew it was the wrong day for a case like Ronnie’s, because the anniversary of Ellie’s death had made him think too much of lives stolen too young. He tried to shake it away. Ronnie was entitled to a chance. That was the system he had been trained into, the bargain he had made with himself, that he would help, not judge.
    He glanced over at Monica walking beside him, looking for a distraction. ‘It’s not as glamorous as you think,’ Joe said. When she looked confused, he added, ‘I know we only saw a couple of corridors, but I could see the way you looked around as we walked through.’
    ‘The prison?’ she said, and laughed. ‘I wasn’t thinking it was glamorous. It was just something new.’
    ‘I used to find it exciting, like I was on the sharp end of all the cut and thrust, dodging the police.’
    ‘And now?’
    ‘Just a big building full of broken lives. Some perhaps got heavier sentences than they deserved, and perhaps some are even innocent, but you can bet that most of them in there have got away with more than they have been caught for.’
    Monica blushed. ‘You make me sound naive.’
    ‘I don’t mean to, but you’re from a nice background, different to the people in there. It’s bound to seem exciting, but glamour on the inside is just crime on the outside.’
    ‘Will Ronnie get out?’
    ‘Probably not.’
    They walked past the flowerbeds, late lunchers filling the benches, and as they crossed the road to the office, he said, ‘What do you think of Ronnie?’
    ‘I don’t know. He didn’t seem threatening or like he had done something bad, which surprised me. He seemed pathetic, really.’
    ‘Pathetic people are murderers too.’
    ‘I suppose so.’ She smiled. ‘Go on then, what did you notice?’
    ‘Grace,’ Joe said.
    ‘The baby? What do you mean?’
    ‘He hardly mentioned her,’ Joe said. ‘If you think about it, there can be only one of two truths. He either killed Carrie or he didn’t. If he killed her, then he must have killed Grace too, because she can’t survive on her own. So think what he would be like if he hadn’t killed her. What he knows is that Carrie is nowhere to be found, and so neither is Grace. Wouldn’t you expect him to be a little more frantic? His child has been taken away; he might never see her again. But we didn’t get that. Just self-pity and confusion.’
    Monica was silent for a moment and then said, ‘So you think he did it.’
    ‘What I think doesn’t matter.’
    ‘But it does matter.’
    ‘Does it? Do you think justice means truth?’ Joe shook his head. ‘Justice is an outcome, that’s all, and all I have to think about is what outcome I can get for Ronnie. That’s the deal you make with yourself when you become a criminal lawyer. You help wicked people get away with awful things.’
    Monica didn’t respond to that, and Joe knew that the hard truth of his job stripped away a little more of his humanity every day, and it had become just a challenge, a way to test the system,