by Lisa Cutts
Praise for
Lisa Cutts
‘A shocking and all-too-believable thriller . . . Lisa Cutts
knows exactly how to tell a cracking story’
MARK BILLINGHAM
‘Compelling, pacy, full of tension . . . had me gripped from
the first page to the last’
ANGELA MARSONS, internationally bestselling author
‘A genuinely immersive read. Her background as a detective
is used to good effect in this clever, suspenseful tale’
KATE RHODES, acclaimed author of RUIN BEACH
‘I didn’t move a muscle until I’d finished it . . . superbly and
entertainingly told. Hard to pull off, but Lisa Cutts does it
with heart and style’
LOUISE CANDLISH, Sunday Times bestselling author of OUR HOUSE
‘Lost Lives is a moving and thought-provoking story that
highlights one of today’s most merciless crimes. The strong,
engaging characters and the need to know what happens to
them makes for compulsive reading’
RACHEL ABBOTT, bestselling author of COME A LITTLE CLOSER
‘With glimpses of the dark humour that makes Lisa’s
writing so original, it’s a genuine rollercoaster of emotions.
Lisa has a rare talent indeed – heartbreaking and thrilling, this is pure genius’
ELIZABETH HAYNES
‘Masterful storytelling from a writer at the top of her game’
JULIE WASSMER
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Then
I knew that I was taking a big chance – a massive one – not to mention one with an outcome that could end it all. Potentially my life, definitely my freedom. Still, that was why I did it: the rush was like nothing on earth – well, nothing legal anyway.
I had taken my time, watched the premises, scoped the route, timed the comings and goings of anyone likely – or stupid enough – to try to stop me.
I had upped my game, there was no doubt about it. But the trouble with this game was that, not only were the stakes high – so was the win.
Still, it wasn’t the first time and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
I sat in the car, tried hard to steady my breathing, and took the key from the ignition. To those scuttling past on the pavement, crossing the road in this shitty little town, right at this moment I was nothing more than a man parking his battered Ford Cortina. No one ever paid me any attention, and, right now, that was exactly what I wanted.
I leaned across to feel beneath the passenger seat. My fingers grasped the edge of the woollen balaclava before reaching the sawn-off shotgun a couple of inches further away. My nicotine-stained fingertips grazed the surface of the crumb-riddled, black plastic floor mats, the gun knocking the empty cigarette boxes and discarded takeaway wrappers out of the way.
With the blood pumping in my ears and my heart racing, I tucked the shotgun inside my deliberately-too-large jacket and rested the balaclava in my lap.
This was the part where I had to take my time, keep control and focus.
I did all that and more as I ran what was now a well-practised eye over the glass front of the building society.
Bradford and Bingley was my financial establishment of choice, most likely because of their adverts on television. They always seemed to appeal to the right people, the sort who had money.
Once more, I took a few deep breaths, made sure I had a tight grip on the balaclava in one hand. Over the last few months I had perfected the art of leaving the right one free for the shotgun when the time became right.
One last glance up and down the almost empty mid-morning pavement before I got out of the car.
For one stupid moment, it crossed my mind to lock the car, but as there was no one I trusted enough to be my getaway driver, locking it would cost me precious seconds when I’d need them most.
Without giving anything else much thought, adrenalin now off the scale, I cleared my mind of everything that didn’t involve executing the perfect armed robbery. I walked the 250 feet towards the building society, one hand on the balaclava, the other on a loaded shotgun.
*
I strolled along the pavement, face down, collar up, palms sweating. Even before I opened the door and stepped inside, I knew there were only two customers and one middle-aged woman working behind the counter.
Ideal.
One elderly man stood to my left, busy trying to fill in some piece of paper with a pen chained to the desk he leaned against. A young woman of about twenty stood in front of me at the counter, foot tapping presumably in annoyance at how long her transaction was taking.
That was about to change.
I almost felt sorry for these people: they had no idea what was about to happen; the impact the next few minutes would have on the rest of their lives, wondering if today might have been their last.
Still, I had a job to do.
I stepped forward to the bored customer, getting unnaturally close to her. She was wearing a cheap perfume, something sweet that reminded me of old ladies, all flowery and sickly.
She turned her head, irritation on her face, about to tell me to step back, and then her features changed dramatically as she realized what was happening.
Her mouth opened into a perfect circle, while her eyes grew to the size of saucers, her skin deathly white as she took in my balaclava. Until this point, she hadn’t even noticed the shotgun I had pulled from inside my jacket.
Now that I was pointing it at her head, she most definitely had.
‘Hands on the counter,’ I said to the woman behind the till. She looked terrified too, but that was the point.
‘Money, now,’ I shouted. The bank teller was mid-forties, attractive in a mumsy way, shaking like a shitting dog.
She fumbled, unsure of what to do, even though her staff training would no doubt have instructed her on how to behave if someone were to come into your provincial branch and point a gun at a customer’s head. Supposedly this stupid bitch thought it would never happen to her. Except now it was, and she should get on with it. I hardly had all day.
‘Fucking do it,’ I shouted at her as I grabbed the petrified younger woman’s arm.
I glanced behind me at the old man – pen in his gnarled, liver-spotted hand, his face a mask of horror – then I turned my attention back to the counter.
‘Notes only,’ I shouted at her again. ‘Fives, tens and twenties.’
Fifties were too difficult to get rid of. Keep it simple, always.
I let go of the young woman’s arm to pull a Sainsbury’s carrier bag from my pocket, then threw it across to the cashier and watched as she stuffed the cash inside.
I lunged across towards the bag, grabbed it by the handle then turned and ran towards the door. My whole body was coursing with adrenalin, making me feel more alive than I ever thought possible.
I ran out of the building, shotgun back inside my jacket, balaclava pulled off my head as soon as my feet hit the pavement.
Then I was back to a brisk walk towards the car, not looking behind, not trying to draw attention to myself. Just a man with his collar up to keep out the cold on a chilly afternoon in the south-east of England, shopping bag at his side, car keys ready to shove in the ignition.
I almost laughed as I opened the car door, threw the bag down next to me and pu
shed the shotgun back under the passenger seat. I indicated and pulled out of the parking space, driving away, the sound of police sirens growing louder in the distance.
Chapter 1
Tuesday 5 May
The jobs were coming in thick and fast. What had once felt like the world’s weirdest but most rewarding challenge now felt to Detective Inspector Harry Powell like the universe’s biggest piss-take.
How exactly he was supposed to run an incident room with over half of his staff on restricted duties, reduced hours and flexi-working, he simply wasn’t sure. No one seemed to work an eight-hour day any more, most reluctant to do overtime. All except DC Sophia Ireland, who never seemed to turn it down.
Still, as he had always done, he would embrace this new-age way of policing and hope he retired before it went completely belly-up.
It was either that or privatization, and that would surely be a disaster.
As he sat mulling over how he was going to manage dividing his staff among an over-burdened, under-staffed county, as well as the review of all outstanding Missing Persons he had been volunteered for, his landline rang. The display told him that the deputy chief constable was taking time out of her day to call him.
‘Ma’am,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you on this fine Tuesday morning?’
‘Harry,’ she said, the warm, polished tones of a news-reader sounding in his ear. ‘I hope all is well with you.’
‘Ah, I’m happy as a pig in the proverbial.’
He looked to the ceiling, one of his most comforting places for solace in some form. Quite why, he didn’t know; it had never worked before.
‘Well, Harry,’ she continued as he wrapped the phone cord around his fingers, certain something bad was about to follow, ‘the thing is, we’re sending you another member of staff, so that’s good news.’
No, it’s fucking not good news, he wanted to shout into the mouthpiece. It was only going to bring him grief: senior officers did not telephone someone many ranks lower than themselves out of the blue, to tell them they were getting a new member of staff. Not without there being inherent problems attached.
He waited.
Here it was.
‘You’re to get someone really keen and motivated. He’s one of the new fast-track detectives, so he’s done his basic training and is raring to go. We’re all very enthusiastic about this latest project, placing the newest recruits into specialist posts, and I know that you and the guys at Major Crime will make him feel very welcome.’
‘There’s no vacancies,’ he thought he heard himself say, as he wondered if she had actually heard him.
‘What?’ said Deputy Chief Constable Loretta Bannister.
‘I said, ma’am, that we don’t have any vacancies. We haven’t advertised, there hasn’t been a fair and open recruitment process as advertised by Inhuman Resources, and we certainly don’t have the budget for another officer. I’m about—’
‘Look, don’t worry about the finer points, okay? I’ll send you his resumé and you can find him something to do. And let’s be honest about all of this, it doesn’t really matter whether you find him some work or not, the important thing is that, on paper, he looks as though he’s being gainfully employed.’
There was a second, just one second, when Harry really wasn’t concerned about his future, his pension, his job, and then he remembered that he had worked for almost thirty years in a career that had sometimes supported him, but sometimes hung him out to dry.
‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘you, or someone who’s got the information at their fingertips, can send it over to me. You know, the usual – who this person is and his smorgasbord of policing credibility – and I’ll find him a job that’s right up his alley. Anything else I can help you with today, ma’am?’
He glanced down at his near-white fingertips, phone-wire strangulation taking off nicely. Some things never changed, and they never would.
‘No, no. I think that’s about it,’ she said.
He heard a slight pause in her tone. It might have been her thinking time, but then again, it might have been her PA bringing her a beverage.
‘Okay, boss,’ he said as he held back a sigh. ‘Email me the details and I’ll find him a role here.’ On this specialist unit that good detectives wait years to get on, he thought as he chewed on the inside of his cheek and hung up the receiver.
Whoever was coming was going to be a problem.
There was something very wrong about this.
Still smarting, Harry let out a heavy sigh when his phone rang again. This time he saw that the call was from the Force Control Room: this was rarely a good thing. Either something had happened that needed his immediate attention or, horror of horrors, a member of the public wanted to talk to him.
‘Harry Powell,’ he said, trying to sound a little less miserable than he felt.
‘Morning, mate,’ said a voice sounding far too cheerful to be employed by the same people who were paying Harry his wage. ‘It’s John Pinnock over at the FCR. I’ve got something for your attention on this lovely morning.’
‘Well, I’m just the lottery winner of East Rise town today,’ said Harry, trying to add the right amount of sarcasm. He knew the calls were recorded, but he also knew Inspector Pinnock well enough that he would appreciate the overtones.
‘Let’s see,’ said John, ‘I’ve just emailed you our CAD 852 of a call to us today. Some workmen who were about to start clearing farmland found what looks to be human remains in a shallow grave, clothing indicating a female. The address and who you need to speak to there are on the CAD.’
There was a slight pause while Harry opened the email and then said, ‘Okay, John. Leave it with me and I’ll take a look.’
As he gathered his thoughts, Harry went into automatic mode: despite feeling the tension surging through his whole being, this was what he did, and this was what he and his team excelled at.
They investigated murders for a living and almost every member of staff in his depleted incident room would pull out all the stops following the discovery of a body in suspicious circumstances.
There really was nothing that came close to murder.
Harry rubbed his hand across his face as he glanced in the direction of the corridor, sounds of early morning chatter and chinking of ceramic mugs coming from those already at work and eager to begin the day.
He knew that a couple of the team were off today, including Detective Constable Hazel Hamilton, Harry’s girlfriend. That thought made him smile. He liked working with her and she never took advantage of sleeping with the boss. Still, he hesitated, deciding whether to forewarn those who were at work that their day was probably about to be severely disrupted or leave them to their existing work until there was actual confirmation of a body.
As he brought up CAD number 852 on his computer screen, scrolling through for the details he needed, he shook his head at the distant memory of being called out in the heavy rain in the early hours – one morning years ago in the driving rain. He had trudged across a field, ruining a pair of almost new suit trousers, water finding its way inside his wax jacket to trickle down his neck, only to shine a torch into the ditch onto the suspected corpse, throw his head back and exhale a long and heavy sigh.
The uniformed officers guarding the scene were about to warn him off sliding down the bank and contaminating the crime scene when he had held out a hand to silence them.
‘Cancel the CSI,’ he had shouted over the rain and wind to his stunned colleagues. ‘It’s got fucking antlers. I’m going back to bed.’
It wasn’t his finest hour, but at least he had stopped short of calling them all incompetent fuckwits.
Harry had remembered sharing the story the following morning with another of the team, Detective Constable Pierre Rainer. Pierre had cried with laughter, holding his sides and wiping the tears from his eyes.
To his surprise and shame, Harry found himself wiping away his own tears as he thought about Pierre, his colleague and fri
end. His loss was felt by everyone in the incident room, but by none more than Harry.
Cynical as Harry might be, unenthusiastic about murder he was not. He raced through the words on his screen, hairs on the back of his neck standing up, certain that what he was reading was the unmistakable beginning of East Rise incident room’s newest murder.
Chapter 2
Detective Constable Sophia Ireland was never one to turn down overtime, which was fortunate as there was never going to be a shortage of it.
She paused at the cashpoint, fingers hovering over ‘£20’. She thought about it for a moment, then pressed ‘£10’, and hoped it would last her until the weekend.
She stuffed her bank card back inside her warrant card, shoved that in her jacket pocket and curled her fingers around the note, all the while wondering if she’d make it through to payday.
As she crossed the road heading back towards East Rise police station, she totted up the overtime she had worked in the last few weeks. She’d not worked as much as she would have liked as the department was frequently running out of money. Some hours she’d done for free just to get the work done. The budget was empty and there was no way she could have left the job half-done. Still, getting paid for it would have been better.
For a moment, Sophia paused outside the sandwich shop. They made the best crab sandwiches. The bread was freshly baked, the crab locally caught. If she spent nearly half of her cash on a sandwich, though, she would most definitely be overdrawn in no time.
Fingers still clasping her cash, she turned and walked away back towards the front door of the police station.
As she got to the bottom of the steps, her phone bleeped. Shaking it free from her pocket with her other hand, her stomach dropped when she saw it was from her mum.
Hi love, hate to ask but any chance of making it £250 this month? Things are very tight. Grandad’s care home fees are due. xx
The glass doors slid open as Sophia reached them, fumbling to get her phone back in her pocket. She could have walked to the side of the building and made her way to the entrance there, which took her directly to the Major Crime Department, but she often walked through the front counter, simply to stop and say hello to whoever was on duty.