SEE HER DIE a totally gripping mystery thriller (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 2)

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘Mr Doran—’

  Doran held up one hand to stop him. ‘Is this where you say, “It’s not what you think?” ’Cos frankly, Jake — that’s clichéd.’

  Bentley looked at his shoes and concentrated on not throwing up over them. When the nausea subsided, he said, ‘I got in a few shots before I realised who the guys were that called at Sara’s house.’ His voice trembled a little, but he thought he sounded under control. ‘If I’d known they were your men, I would never have taken them.’ He dared a fleeting glance at Mr Doran’s face. went on. ‘I didn’t want you to think—’

  ‘That you were trying to shaft me?’

  Bentley nodded miserably. ‘I thought — no, I knew — it would look bad.’

  ‘You know what looks worse?’ Doran waved the empty envelope in Bentley’s face. ‘This.’

  Bentley blinked, trying not to flinch.

  ‘I think you kept the pictures back as insurance, in case I didn’t give you the job.’

  ‘No, Mr Doran — I swear!’

  ‘So where are they?’

  Bentley closed his eyes and groaned involuntarily. ‘I burned them. The prints and the negatives.’ He passed a hand over his face, wiping away tears.

  ‘I think you gave them to the police,’ Doran said calmly.

  ‘No!’

  ‘On your knees, Bentley.’ These were Warrender’s first words to him.

  ‘Mr Doran. I was stupid. I should have been honest with you. But I didn’t tell the police. If I told the police, wouldn’t they be here by now?’

  ‘Get on your knees.’

  ‘I feel really sick,’ he said.

  Warrender raised his hand. He held a gun. Automatic.

  Bentley tried to hold himself steady, but he felt weak with sickness and fear. ‘Please, Mr Doran,’ he begged, tears coursing down his face. ‘You’ve got to believe me. I burned them. I was afraid I’d get stopped and the cops’d find them, so I burned them.’

  ‘Shame you didn’t burn the envelope then, isn’t it?’

  Warrender pushed the gun barrel into the back of his head. It felt cold and this time when Warrender said, ‘On your knees,’ he went down. The floor of the cellar felt slimy against the palms of his hands.

  Warrender drove the barrel hard into the base of his skull. ‘Get your hands where I can see them,’ he snarled.

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ he said, trying to take the pathetic whine out of his voice, trying not to breathe too deeply because it made him want to heave, trying to stay alive just a few minutes longer. ‘I could be useful to you, Mr Doran. I really could.’

  ‘You might be right,’ Doran said.

  Bentley felt the pressure ease a little and he thought. There’s hope. Keep talking. There’s hope.

  Then Doran said, ‘But I can’t trust you.’

  He was falling. He didn’t feel the impact, but he could smell damp earth, could taste the grit in his mouth. Oh, you friggin’ idiot, Jake! He told himself. You fell in the pit. Get up, you wuss. Get the fuck up! But his legs wouldn’t work. He told them to move, but they wouldn’t. And he felt cold, like he had been plunged into water, into ice, and the shock had taken his breath away. He saw the wink of the two flashlights some way above him.

  They know I’m here. They’ll call for help.

  Then the lights were gone. He tried to shout, but though something bubbled in his mouth, no sound came out. Oh God! I don’t want to die. Don’t let me die here. Please, don’t—

  The distant mechanical noise grew closer and Bentley stared up into the darkness. He saw a glimpse of orange as one of the flashlight beams bounced off the machine. He saw the barrel rotating, round and round, a slow, steady, solid sound. And then it stopped.

  What he saw next was in flashes of torchlight, like dancers frozen in action by strobe lighting: the machine. Orange. Mr Doran’s face. The machine. A stalactite, white, smooth. Orange again. The machine’s barrel. Tilting. Grey sludge. Heavy and thick.

  He tried to scream but he choked on blood. He tried to move, but the bullet Warrender had fired had severed his spinal cord. He tried to close his eyes, but his eyes refused to obey. His mouth filled with cement. Then his eyes and nose and ears were blocked with the heavy, burning mix. It sealed the gaping wound in his throat and buried him under the weight of concrete a full horrifying minute before he died.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  ‘This is wrong.’ Naomi Hart was driving one of the firm’s cars, headed towards Megan Ward’s bolthole in Rodney Street.

  ‘You heard what the boss said.’ Foster grabbed the door handle to steady himself as she made a sharp right.

  ‘I heard him, and he’s wrong.’

  They passed the clock tower of Liverpool University’s Victoria building as it struck the quarter-hour. Nine forty-five and the evening briefing had concluded only minutes earlier.

  That morning, Foster and Hart had gone home to sleep as Rickman ordered, but they were both back on duty by late afternoon and they had been allocated night watch on Megan.

  ‘Yeah, well, he’s the boss,’ Foster said. ‘You’re not supposed to agree with him all the time.’ She scowled and he added, ‘Look on the bright side — it’s brass monkey weather, and it looks like rain; at least you’ll be inside in the warm.’

  Hart gave him a disgusted sideways glance as she made the final left turn.

  ‘You can get your head down, if you like,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep an eye on her.’

  She sighed, easing in to the kerb by Megan’s building. It was cold and bright, a gibbous moon shivered pale over the rooftops, and the imposing façade of the Anglican cathedral, just visible at the end of the road, glowed pink in its light.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so against this,’ Foster said. ‘You don’t exactly like the woman.’

  They got out and Hart looked at him across the roof of the car. ‘I don’t. Don’t like her. Don’t trust her. Which is kind of the point.’ The air was fresh and green with new spring growth and Hart took a calming breath. ‘She’s liable to flit and you know we won’t be able to track her down.’ She pressed the remote on her key fob and locked the car down before starting across the street. ‘She’s as slippery as a greased weasel and she can magic money out of thin air — she’s already admitted defrauding Patrick Doran of over a million and a quarter pounds.’

  ‘Doran’s a crook!’

  ‘So is she.’

  Foster dipped his head: he couldn’t argue with her on that one.

  ‘And God knows how many other poor fools she’s ripped off,’ Hart went on.

  Foster waited for a car to pass before following her to the other side of the road. ‘If this is about me having a bit of a flirt—’

  ‘God!’ Hart threw her hands up in frustration. ‘This isn’t about you. I’m just saying — mess her about and she could disappear. Permanently. We’d lose a potential prosecution against Megan and maybe Doran as well.’

  ‘You think I hadn’t worked that out?’ he said, feeling a surge of anger. ‘Give me some credit, Naomi.’

  Hart looked off down the street for a moment or two. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. But I’m sick of baby-sitting. I’m sick of being nice to her. I’m tired of her whole “woman of mystery” bullshit.’

  ‘Personally, I find it kind of sexy,’ he said, recovering a little.

  She shook her head, exhaling loudly in frustration. ‘I give up.’ She made as if to move on, but he stopped her.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I might be skirt-chaser, but I’m not a complete idiot.’

  Surprised, she said, ‘That’s not what I think.’

  They looked at each other for a few seconds and Foster thought, Okay — that’s a start. He nodded, acknowledging the implied — if rather back-handed — compliment, and slid her a sly look as they walked on. ‘What — you don’t think I’m skirt-chaser, or you don’t think I’m an idiot?’

  She smiled, then bit her lip, a look of annoyance flitting across her fe
atures, though whether it was directed at herself or him, he couldn’t tell. ‘You’re incorrigible,’ she said.

  ‘You wha’?’

  ‘A dead loss.’

  ‘You haven’t heard my best chat-up lines,’ Foster said, leaning on the doorbell, then taking a step back so that Megan could get a good look at him from the sitting-room window. She buzzed them in and was waiting for them at the door of the flat.

  ‘Are we set?’ Megan asked.

  She seemed keen — even excited — which struck Foster as odd, given that she was about to part with more than a million pounds. He looked at Hart and Hart shrugged.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ she said.

  Foster sucked his teeth. One step forward, two steps back — that’s Naomi for you. ‘We’re all set,’ he said.

  Megan pressed the speed-dial key for Doran on her mobile, but Foster took it from her and cancelled the call before it connected.

  ‘We need to discuss game play, first,’ he told her. ‘The meet is at midnight on Church Street,’ he said. ‘By the statue of the Moores brothers. He comes on his own. No muscle.’

  Megan shook her head. ‘I decide the venue and the time.’

  ‘Sorry, Megan,’ Foster said, ‘This isn’t open to negotiation. We’ve got civilians to think about. Public safety. So it’s our rules or not at all.’ Megan remained silent, apparently thinking it over, and Foster told her about the security arrangements and the presence of armed officers. ‘Church Street is pedestrianised, so we won’t have to worry about traffic,’ he explained. ‘It’s after the pubs close, but before the clubs empty out, so there won’t be much foot traffic. There’ll be a police van stationed at the Bold Street end — which is normal at that time of night — only tonight it’ll be full of our lads.’

  Hart tutted and he said, ‘By “lads”, I mean “officers”, of course.’

  ‘Got it all worked out, haven’t you?’ Megan said.

  ‘We’ve done this kind of thing before,’ Foster confided. ‘So, d’you wanna make that call?’

  * * *

  Doran felt sick and exhausted; part of him said that Bentley was a harmless fantasist who would have been useful for a middle-ranking job, that the occasional kind word would have been enough to keep him sweet. The more pragmatic part of him said that Bentley would quickly have tired of menial work and tried to use his knowledge about Sara Geddes’s death as a lever. Doran had seen and heard enough during the course of the evening to know that like most fantasists, Bentley’s ambition exceeded his abilities. If he had taken Bentley into the firm, there would come a point when he would think he deserved more. More power, more responsibility, more money. And Doran would not be held to ransom.

  He answered his phone on the second ring. Caller ID showed ‘number withheld’.

  ‘Doran,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Doran.’ A woman’s voice. ‘My name is Megan Ward.’

  He felt the blood drain from his face. He tapped Warrender on the arm, then clicked the phone into its cradle and switched to ‘hands free’.

  ‘Go ahead, Miss Ward,’ he said, repeating her name for Warrender’s benefit.

  Warrender shot him an alarmed look and his hands closed tightly on the steering wheel. After a pause, Megan Ward spoke.

  ‘Am I on speakerphone?’ The voice was clear and calm, a hint of northern — Lancashire, maybe.

  ‘I’m driving,’ Doran said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  She laughed. ‘You do for me? Nothing, Mr Doran.’ Her voice hardened. ‘Now pull over — I prefer to talk privately.’

  Warrender glanced at him and he nodded. The line disconnected and he snatched the phone from its cradle. ‘What the hell is she playing at?’

  ‘Just that,’ Warrender said, sliding the car to a halt at a bus stop. ‘She’s playing you like a sodding violin.’

  ‘Why is she calling now?’ Doran asked, not expecting an answer. ‘Why this precise moment?’ Bentley’s body was still cooling under half a ton of concrete and Megan Ward, the bitch who had caused this whole sorry mess, had decided that this was the most opportune time to call him.

  ‘Coincidence?’ Warrender said at last.

  ‘I don’t like coincidences,’ Doran said. ‘They’re usually bogus and they’re almost always bad news. You’re sure Bentley wasn’t under surveillance?’

  ‘Only from my men,’ Warrender said.

  Doran knew better than to expect a fulsome reassurance. Warrender stated the facts as he saw them without embellishment; it was one of his strengths, and one of the reasons he had survived so long in the firm.

  The phone rang in his hand and he flinched. He pressed the ‘answer’ key and said, ‘Miss Ward. What do you want?’

  ‘Now, that’s a more honest question,’ she replied.

  Doran waited, thinking that if he ever tracked Megan Ward down, they would have a long and painful discussion.

  ‘I want to talk,’ she said.

  ‘You could’ve picked up the phone.’

  ‘I just did.’ He heard amusement in her voice.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ she said. ‘After all, I have your money.’

  Doran breathed through his nose, trying to keep from smashing the phone against the dashboard.

  ‘I’ll meet you by the Moores brothers’ statue in Church Street at midnight,’ she said.

  ‘I decide when and where,’ he interrupted, unwittingly echoing her own words to DS Foster.

  Again, he heard that soft laugh. ‘You’re forgetting who has the power here, Mr Doran. Since I have the money, that would be me.’

  ‘Why?’ he said. Every survival instinct told him that this was not right. ‘Why are you even here? You could’ve vanished by now.’ He hesitated, wondering if what he was about to say was too revealing. ‘We thought you had.’

  ‘And you’re doing everything in your power to find me. I don’t like being watched. I don’t like being hacked — no hacker ever does. I intend to live a long and remunerative life, and I suspect that will be difficult with your hounds on the scent — you really should keep them on a tighter leash, by the way.’

  ‘Meaning?’ He knew very well that she meant Sara Geddes, but he wasn’t about to discuss it on an open line with a faceless voice.

  ‘Meaning your boys over-stepped the mark. Now I understand that you’re upset, and I’m willing to make a deal. You call off the dogs, I give you your money back.’

  ‘As simple as that?’

  ‘Actually, it’s rather complicated for me . . .’ She paused as if working through the logistics. ‘But that’s my problem — one I’m willing to cope with for peace of mind.’

  ‘What’s to stop me coming after you anyway?’

  ‘You’re a businessman. A pragmatist. You have a good business, a reputation, the prospect of making a fortune with the current upsurge in Liverpool’s economy — why waste your time and resources on a costly vendetta?’

  Doran almost believed it himself. He could see how Fay might have been taken in by Megan Ward’s smooth line in chat. Megan Ward in her male persona, he reminded himself and felt a small flare of anger, like a bubble of acid bursting in his stomach.

  ‘You’re an intelligent man,’ she went on. ‘You’ll learn from your experiences, get trained specialists to maintain your computer security, make sure I don’t happen again.’

  ‘I don’t happen’, Doran thought. ‘Happen’, like she was some kind of natural disaster. He held back, even though he wanted to rage at her. She was a disaster: for him, for his family, and for his business.

  ‘It’s a deal,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘How will I know you?’ He took out the photograph Bentley had given him.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she replied, ‘I’ll know you.’

  Doran felt a premonitory dread at the words, spoken so coolly, but with a rim of fire behind the ice. He visualised again that long, agonising conversation he would have with Megan Ward. He would take great pleasure in pu
ncturing that inflated ego.

  ‘Midnight, then,’ he said, with barely an edge of anger in his voice.

  ‘Make sure you come alone,’ Megan said. ‘I’m not the gregarious type.’

  * * *

  Megan hung up, looking pleased with herself. ‘Let’s get down there now,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘I like to suss out the terrain.’

  ‘Sorry, Megan,’ Foster said.

  Her forehead creased, then she seemed to understand. ‘You’re worried he’ll show up early as well — catch your “lads” on the back foot?’ She stole a glance at Hart when she used the words “lads”.

  ‘That an’ all,’ Foster said. ‘But the thing is, Megan, you’re not going.’

  She laughed, then seeing Foster’s expression, she said, ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s too risky,’ Hart said. ‘If Doran really did send those heavies to Sara’s house, you could be in real danger.’

  ‘Well, yeah . . .’ Megan frowned at her like she had tentatively suggested that Genghis Khan might have been a bad man. ‘Why d’you think I wound him up like that?’

  ‘Because that’s what you do?’ Foster said.

  ‘Doran is bad news,’ Hart said.

  Megan began to make a sarcastic remark about the combined intellect of the Merseyside Police Force, but Foster spoke over her. ‘The local scalls do not mess with Patrick Doran or his employees,’ he said. ‘They’ll shove industrial strength fireworks up the exhausts of police cars. They’ll launch assaults on cop-shops — but they do not mess with Patrick Doran.’

  Megan sighed heavily, but she stopped trying to interrupt.

  ‘His site protection is second to none. Know why?’ Neither Hart nor Megan ventured a suggestion. ‘Because if he catches them, the lucky ones go home minus a few teeth. The ones who really piss him off are liable to lose a couple of fingers.’

  A muscle jumped in Megan’s jaw.

  ‘There’s a story doing the rounds that he took one guy’s finger for breaking into one of his sites and stealing a couple of laptops. Just the one finger, mind — he wasn’t all that pissed off. Only he took it in four stages: fingernail, first joint, second joint, knuckle joint.’