Free The Domino Killer by Neil White Page B

street from his office.
    He was still certain about Proctor, the spark of recognition as keen as it had been at the police station, but the lack of anything between Proctor and Gina had thrown him. Gina had never mentioned any suspects, so that wasn’t a surprise, but Joe had expected something from Proctor. There’d been press conferences, appeals for information. Gina had been on television; there was no way Proctor wouldn’t have known who she was.
    But Joe knew deep in his gut that he was right. He had to decide what to do with this knowledge, but needed to be surrounded by noise. His apartment offered only silence, and in the quiet he would be alone with his thoughts. He didn’t want that. His thoughts frightened him. He wanted to feel the buzz of the city.
    Joe loved Manchester. He had been brought up in its suburbs but it was the noise and strut of the city centre that enthralled him. From the swagger of its musical history, embedded into the bars and clubs squeezed into grime-soaked railway arches, to the dirty scars of its industrial past, Manchester dragged its memories with it. The centre had once been squalor, with families squeezed into small rooms to serve the factories that turned the canals black and the air thick with smoke, but now glass and steel towered over ornate Victorian buildings, the distant skyline interrupted by the vast brick mills that once hummed with the sound of cotton looms.
    Joe loved everything about the place, even the threatening undercurrents, the surliness, all against the backdrop of rumbling cabs and the electric screech of the trams.
    A pub on the other side of St Ann’s Square was often a magnet for him. Inside it was dark, the wooden bar dominated by rows of glasses hanging from a rail. Men stood along it in small clusters, mostly in suits, talking out the working day, although the solitary ones wobbled on their feet, the day coming to another soaked and lonely end.
    Joe ordered a pint of bitter and sat down at a table. Old photographs of the city hung on the wall next to him and the daylight glowed through the doorway against the dimness of the bar. The pub calmed him usually, the stresses of a day in court forgotten in the slow pleasures from a pint glass. Today it wasn’t having the same effect. He took a drink but it tasted sour. His fingers tapped out a rhythm on the scuffed wooden table.
    He was about to walk out and leave his drink behind when someone pulled out the chair opposite. It was Gina.
    He was surprised. ‘You weren’t long with Mark Proctor.’
    ‘His decision, not mine,’ she said. ‘He seemed like he wanted to be elsewhere.’
    ‘Am I this easy to find?’
    ‘You were only ever going one way,’ she replied. ‘Can I join you?’
    He wanted to say that he’d rather be alone, but it wasn’t true. ‘It looks like you already have,’ he said.
    Gina went to the bar to get a drink. She returned with a glass of wine and put her suit jacket over the back of the chair. As she crossed her legs, her skirt rode up, revealing toned and bronzed legs. Two men at the bar glanced over. Gina was fifty-three and she looked great.
    ‘You all right?’
    He closed his eyes as he fought the urge to tell her about Mark Proctor, about his long-held promise to kill Ellie’s murderer. She would stop him, tell him to call the police, but that didn’t seem enough. He’d never wanted an arrest. He wanted revenge.
    ‘Yes, sorry,’ he said. ‘Just not feeling myself today, that’s all.’
    ‘Mark Proctor said he thought you were going to throw up last night.’
    Joe didn’t respond, so Gina said, ‘What is it, then? A bug or something?’
    ‘Must be.’ He smiled, although it was thin, never reaching his eyes. ‘I’ll be fine, don’t worry. What did he say about his car?’
    ‘Nothing much. He wouldn’t go into details. I probed but he didn’t seem keen on sharing. If the police want to interview him again, he’ll need to stay silent.’ She frowned.