Josiah Dark Thrillers Box Set

by Tim Ellis

  ‘So, tell me briefly what happened, young man?’ the lady in the white suit said, while the other ghosts put their silver boxes down and began examining the hole.

  ‘There’s not much to tell . . .’ he began. He’d heard that said a number of times on the TV.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Robyn asked him when he returned to the fire.

  Someone had collected wood and built the fire up as if they were going to make a full day of it. All they needed now were potatoes wrapped in tin-foil, a rotisserie with a whole pig skewered on the spit, his mum’s chunky coleslaw and some dandelion and burdock juice to wash it all down. He expected the hotdog and ice cream vans would arrive soon to feed the police, the reporters and the hoards of sightseers.

  ‘Yeah, I just told the lady what happened is all.’

  ‘Do they know who it is yet?’

  ‘Give ‘em a chance. It’ll be at least a day before they dig the body up proper. First, they have to examine the scene for evidence, and then . . .’

  ‘All right Paulie Sears, I don’t need to know the gory details.’

  The grey morning light pierced the clouds behind Robyn. He thought she looked like an angel, and really wanted to hold her and kiss her. His heart started thumping against his ribcage at the thought of doing anything. One day – if he ever plucked up enough courage – he’d ask Robyn Wilshire to marry him. Mrs Robyn Sears . . . Yeah, that sounded just right.

  He checked his watch. It was six-fifteen. He thought about his mum waking up and not finding him there. ‘Can we go home now?’ he said to the Constables. ‘We’ve got to get ready for school.’

  ‘Once you’ve spoken to the Inspector,’ he pointed to a man in a black coat and shoulder-length silver hair coming towards them across the field. ‘After that, we’ll drive you home.’

  ‘We’ll walk thanks, it’s not that far.’ He could just imagine his mum looking out of the window and seeing him climbing out of a police car at seven in the morning – she’d have a heart attack. And Mrs Rogers’ curtains across the road would be twitching as if she was having an epileptic fit.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector,’ the male constable said. ‘These are the children who found the body.’

  Paulie thought the Inspector looked like a gladiator about to go into battle. His face was creased every which way, and his black sunken eyes were those of a warrior who had seen death too many times.

  ‘Have you found out what they know and where they live?’ the Inspector asked in a voice that slithered into his ear and began burrowing through his skull and into his brain. Paulie knew that if he were ever going to become a world-famous detective he would have to practise speaking like that.

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Well get rid of them then, and get this bloody fire out before the ash completely contaminates the crime scene.’ Swearing under his breath, he set off towards the ghosts huddled around the site of the grave like the witches in Macbeth.

  ***

  Dark by name, dark by nature, that’s what people said about Detective Inspector Josiah Dark of the Serious Crimes Division (SCD) at Greater Manchester Police (GMP). He didn’t give a flying fuck what they said about him just so long as they left him alone to do his job.

  ‘And?’ he growled at the five white-suits of the forensic team.

  Polly Tyree – the Head of Forensics – stood, pulled down her mask, and said, ‘Do you always have to be so obnoxious, Dark. We’ve been here all of five minutes. As soon as we find anything, you’ll be the second person to know. Where’s your new partner?’

  ‘Mother’s been taken into hospital.’ DC Annie Lake – his new unwanted partner – had been called home to Letchworth in Hertfordshire, which suited him just fine. He didn’t want a partner, especially not a female partner. The Head of the Serious Crime Directorate – Chief Superintendent John Henn – had forced her on him, so he was stuck with her.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Give her my best wishes when you talk to her.’

  ‘You’re assuming I’ll be talking to her – I won’t be. Is the body male or female?’

  ‘I’d start searching the records for a girl between the ages of twelve and sixteen who’s been missing for at least nine months.’ She passed him a locket and chain in a sealed plastic evidence bag. The heart-shaped gold locket had a flowered pattern engraved down the left-hand side of the heart. Polly had opened the locket to reveal a small picture of a grey-haired woman and a lock of wiry grey hair.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Go away, Dark, before I commit murder myself.’

  He was glad Polly was on the case. She was the best Scene of Crimes Officer he had worked with, and he’d worked with a few. She was in her early forties, married with three teenage children, had long light-brown hair and wore thick-rimmed oblong designer glasses.

  Handing the locket back he said, ‘You’ll ring me?’

  ‘Have I started speaking in a foreign language, do you think?’

  Before he could answer he heard someone call. ‘Over here.’

  They walked towards a forensic officer wielding a Piezoelectric receiver, which was very similar to a metal detector, but the receiver sent out an electric pulse and received an echo back in return. The echoes were then joined up to form a picture of what was underground to a depth of three metres.

  ‘What have you found, Norman?’ Polly said to the forensic officer as they approached.

  ‘Another body.’

  ‘Crap!’ She turned her head towards Dark. ‘Are you still here?’

  ‘No.’ He began walking back the way he’d come, hands stuffed deep into his overcoat pockets. Hanging about wasn’t going to make things go any faster. If it had been up to him he’d have dug the whole field up with a bulldozer to see if there were any more bodies, but he knew Polly would never have let him do that.

  The fire was smouldering, and the kids had gone home. What were the parents thinking letting young children out in the middle of the night with metal detectors? No wonder so many of them were never seen again. He knew the statistics – between 100,000 and 150,000 children went missing each year – one child every five minutes. He couldn’t wrap his brain around that statistic. Whilst he’d been here, two children had disappeared. Admittedly, most were found, but there were over three hundred who were still missing. Well, it looked like those kids had found two of the missing and maybe there were more buried in this field.

  He heard a commotion. The press had started arriving, but it looked as though there wasn’t enough room on the lane for two vehicles to pass side by side – especially vans.

  Calling over one of the Constables who had been by the fire he said, ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘The lane is the only access point, Sir, and there’s no place for parking on the A555.’

  Even as the Constable was talking, more vehicles were arriving and causing chaos on the lane. ‘Right, get someone down to the A555 to block off the entrance. Only police vehicles are permitted up the lane. Get the press vehicles to reverse back onto the main road. After that I don’t give a shit where they go. If anyone refuses – arrest them for obstruction. Tear down that fence.’ He pointed to a section of fencing about a hundred metres along the lane. ‘The police vehicles can then pull onto the field down there, so that other vehicles can get out. Do you think you can do that, Constable?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  The Constable hurried off and began shouting orders. After a while the traffic jam appeared to clear and Dark walked back to his car.

  Although the press vehicles had reversed back, there was still a horde of reporters waiting to ambush him.

  ‘Rosie Lewis from the Stockport Sentinel,’ a woman wearing a beanie and a Barbour jacket said. ‘What can you tell us, Inspector?’

  He knew what he’d like to tell her, but instead he said, ‘A girl between the ages of twelve and sixteen has been found buried in the field behind me. We’re obviously treating it as murder, and I’d like to appeal to anyone who knows
anything about the victim to come forward. All information will, of course, be treated in the strictest of confidence.’

  ‘Have you any idea who it might be?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Are there any distinguishing marks on the dead girl, Inspector?’

  ‘You know as much as I know. The ground is like concrete, so it’ll be some time before the body is fully uncovered.’

  Not for the first time in a murder investigation, he realised that he could be talking to the killer. He examined the faces staring at him from behind the cameras, microphones, and notebooks. Most were women, but there were some men. He stared into their eyes trying to tunnel into their very souls, but there appeared to be no obvious killer among them.

  He wasn’t going to tell them about the second body until he knew what he was dealing with. Neither was he going to mention the locket until he’d found out who the victim was, and spoken to the girl’s parents.

  ‘Can you tell us who found the body, Inspector?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have that information,’ which was true. He’d forgotten to ask the Constable for the names and addresses of the children.

  ‘Do you have any suspects?’

  His face creased up like chamois leather and he finger-combed his hair back out of his eyes. ‘Until we find out what’s gone on here, that question is slightly premature. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’ve got work to do?’

  ‘One more thing, Inspector,’ a young woman wearing a white fur Russian Ushanka hat said. ‘Was there a heart-shaped locket around the girl’s neck?’

  ‘No.’

  Shit! She obviously knew more than he did. Her official press identity card stated that she was Dixie Reyes from the Knutsford Hippogriff. He walked over to obtain the information that the Constable had written down about the kids who had found the body, climbed into his black Rav-4 and waited until the hubbub had died down, and then he wound down the window and signalled for her to come over.

  ‘What makes you ask about a heart-shaped locket?’

  Her lip curled up into a smile and strands of long dark hair fell out of her hat as she leaned in the window. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I could arrest you for withholding information.’

  ‘Instead of reporting the news, I could become the news.’ She offered her wrists for the handcuffs.

  Realising that without the benefit of torture he wasn’t going to get any more information out of her he said, ‘A heart-shaped locket was found around the girl’s neck. Now tell me what you know.’

  ‘Erin Jameson, aged fourteen, went missing eight months ago from the Abbey Rose Care Home in Prestwich.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  Her eyes narrowed to slits. ‘I know considerably more, but unless you let me work with you and I get an exclusive on the story, I won’t give you anything else. I’ve been doing the groundwork on this for eighteen months and I’m not going to give it all to you without something in return.’

  ‘I work alone.’

  ‘So, I’ve heard – make an exception.’

  He’d just got rid of one unwanted female partner – albeit short-term, but at least he was working alone again. Now, here was another one wanting to work with him. He realised she would cause him no end of trouble if he declined her offer, but she could also save him days of hard work and dead ends. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘Do we have a deal?’

  ‘If I say jump, you jump?’

  ‘Are you going to say jump?’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘All right, but if we’re not jumping together, I’ll publish everything I’ve got and make you and the Greater Manchester Police look like idiots.’

  ‘So, what’s new?’ he grumbled, releasing the lock on the passenger door.

  ***

  He hated working with partners, and he especially hated working with reporters. Not that he’d ever worked with a reporter, but he just knew it was going to end in disaster.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I rent an apartment in Gawsworth, Macclesfield. Flat 2A at Number 33 Woodhouse Lane.’

  ‘Am I expected to be impressed?’

  ‘You will be.’

  ‘What about the Abbey Rose Care Home in Prestwich?’

  ‘Gawsworth first.’

  He glanced sideways at her. She was pretty in a plain sort of way, but she had sunken eyes surrounded by unsightly dark rings. Her skin was porcelain white and had tiny ruts, furrows and a few white spots that needed squeezing, but she wasn’t wearing any make-up – maybe it was too early in the morning for grease paint. He guessed she was aged between twenty-five and thirty, and she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring either. ‘I hope this is not some ruse to get me into bed.’

  Dixie laughed like a dockworker doing shift work on the Manchester Ship Canal. ‘Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?’

  He couldn’t stop his eyes wandering to the rear-view mirror. What the hell was she on about? He had the looks and build of a Hollywood legend. And besides that, she wasn’t much to look at either. ‘Postcode?’

  He keyed in the postcode she gave him, and he set off towards the A34.

  ‘Who are you, Dixie Reyes?’

  ‘Just a girl trying to make her way through the cruel and scary world.’

  ‘How’s that going?’

  ‘It just got a bit better, thanks.’

  ‘Well, what have you been working on for the past eighteen months?’

  ‘Wait and see. I don’t want to spoil the surprise.’

  ‘I hate surprises.’

  ‘You’ll like this one.’

  He’d run out of small talk, so he focussed his thoughts on the frozen girl in the ground. Was it Erin Jameson as Dixie had suggested? She seemed to know about the heart-shaped locket, which appeared to suggest that the girl was who she said it was. And what about the other body – who was that? Two bodies buried in the field. Would Polly Tyree find anymore?

  ‘I am impressed,’ he said when he saw the building where her apartment was located. ‘An old school?’

  ‘Yes, refurbished.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘But this is not what you’re meant to be impressed by.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He followed her in. The large entrance and stairway were communal. She led him up the marble stairs to the second floor and opened a door on the left.

  She took her hat and coat off and hung them on a wooden peg behind the door.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask. One sugar, milk.’

  ‘Go through.’

  After shrugging out of his coat and hanging it up, he strolled through into the living room. It wasn’t very tidy, but then neither was his house. After Ellie had left with his two daughters he’d had a woman come in once a week, but then one time she didn’t come back. He never asked why, and he never bothered to employ anyone else. The floor was wood laminate. There was a large mirror over the feature gas fireplace. On the right, a patio door led out to a small balcony. The wooden coffee table and chest of drawers didn’t match, and neither did the two-seater sofa and armchairs. There was a television in the left-hand corner, and he wondered why the sofa had been turned around to face the back wall.

  But when he turned around himself, he stopped wondering.

  ‘Now you should be impressed.’ She said, passing him a mug of coffee. ‘No milk, I’m afraid.’

  He took a swallow of the steaming liquid. ‘Jesus! You call this coffee?’

  ‘I’m not very domesticated.’

  ‘Not at all would be my guess.’ He nodded at the wall. ‘You watch far too many American crime shows by the looks of things as well.’

  ‘I don’t watch television at all now.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She swept her arm across the back wall. ‘This is how I spend my time.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Nearly. I sleep sometimes, but not much.’

  ‘No boyfriend?
’

  ‘Men are surplus to requirements.’

  ‘No nights out?’

  ‘An expensive luxury.’

  ‘You have it bad.’

  She put her coffee down on the floor, approached the wall, straightened a photograph and tucked a piece of frayed string in behind a scrap of paper. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I’m paid good money for nurturing my obsessive-compulsive disorder.’

  She shrugged. ‘I have to find these girls.’

  The whole wall was being used like an incident board. In the centre was a map of Greater Manchester. Coloured map pins with matching string tied around them had been pushed into a number of locations on the map. Each pin had a date and time written on it. At the other end of the string was another map pin pushed into the corner of a photograph. There were seven locations and seven photographs. One of those photographs was of Erin Jameson.

  ‘Has the landlord seen what you’ve done to his wall?’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘He might though.’

  ‘Fuck him. I have to find these girls.’

  ‘You mean that I have to find these girls?’

  ‘With my help?’

  ‘That’s what we’ve agreed, but if you’re going to make yourself ill . . .’

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  There were newspaper cuttings; social media login details and passwords; a list of clues; colour-coded Post-it notes; drawings; a mishmash of other photographs; a list of clothes they were last seen wearing; jewellery worn; any distinguishing marks; a list of friends, boyfriends and enemies; statements . . . The whole wall was like an unfinished mosaic, a montage, a patchwork quilt.