SHADOW CRIMES
A gripping crime thriller full of twists
DETECTIVE SOPHIE ALLEN BOOK 7
MICHAEL HAMBLING
First published 2018
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this.
The right of Michael Hambling to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
©Michael Hambling
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THERE IS A GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH VOCABULARY IN THE BACK OF THIS BOOK FOR US READERS.
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A young woman’s body is discovered on a deserted footpath in a Dorset seaside town late on a cold November night. She has been stabbed through the heart.
It seems like a simple crime for DCI Sophie Allen and her team to solve. But not when the victim’s mother is found strangled the next morning. The case grows more complex as DCI Sophie Allen discovers that the victims had secret histories, involving violence and intimidation. There’s an obvious suspect but Detective Allen isn't convinced. Could someone else be lurking in the shadows, someone savagely violent, looking for a warped revenge?
CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Friction
Chapter 2: Death
Chapter 3: Mugshots
Chapter 4: Promotion
Chapter 5: Tears of Laughter
Chapter 6: At a Low Ebb
Chapter 7: Furious Activity
Chapter 8: The Affair
Chapter 9: No Skinny Dipping
Chapter 10: The Watchers
Chapter 11: Convent Girl
Chapter 12: Prison Visits
Chapter 13: Danny Fenners
Chapter 14: Danny’s Diary
Chapter 15: Liam Fenners
Chapter 16: Anglers
Chapter 17: Data Analysis
Chapter 18: Still Playing Games
Chapter 19: Justice
Chapter 20: Operation Shadow
Chapter 21: Horror
Chapter 22: The Wedding
Chapter 23: All Solved?
Chapter 24: Inferno
Chapter 25: Bacon Sandwiches
Chapter 26: Questions
Chapter 27: Sausage and Chips
Chapter 28: A Shadowy Web
Chapter 29: The Villa Rosina
Chapter 30: At the Barracks
Chapter 31: Family Memories
Chapter 32: Feeling Sick
Chapter 33: Feeding Fears
Chapter 34: Into a Safe House
Chapter 35: The Junk Shop
Chapter 36: Bluster
Chapter 37: Quarry
Chapter 38: The Chase
Chapter 39: A Great Little Earner
Chapter 40: Witness
Chapter 41: When a Plan Comes Together
Chapter 42: Concert
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CHARACTER LIST
Glossary of English terms for US readers
To the people of my home city of Salisbury.
We’ve experienced difficult times this year, due to the reckless use of a nerve agent that killed one woman and put the lives of others at risk. Throughout this lengthy and dangerous episode, the people of Salisbury went about their business in an atmosphere of calm and cheerfulness, beneath that glorious spire.
I love Salisbury. I love its people, its cathedral, its streets of medieval buildings, its schools, its parks, its pubs, and I am proud to have been a resident for nearly forty years. This book is for you, Salisbury.
Chapter 1: Friction
Saturday, Midday
A few minutes after midday on a cold January Saturday, Lydia Pillay stood outside a shabby pub near Dorchester’s railway station. She was wearing grey skinny-fit trousers, ankle boots and a leather bomber jacket, jet-black like her cropped hair. She looked around as if she were expecting to meet someone, tapping a foot impatiently, glancing at her watch and tugging at the gold stud earrings that glinted above her red silk scarf. Evidently whoever she was waiting for was late. After one final look at her watch, she turned and opened the door of the bar, hesitating for a second as her eyes adjusted to the low light.
The pub seemed busy, more so than she’d anticipated. A large group of men clustered near the bar, all clutching pints of lager or glasses of spirits. This wasn’t what she’d expected. She made her way to the bar and ordered a glass of apple juice, took off her gloves and stood waiting for her drink. Around her, the chatter suddenly ceased and she was aware of being observed closely. These weren’t ordinary drinkers in for a quick lunchtime snifter. They might well be a range of sizes and shapes, but they had several characteristics in common. All had shaved heads, menacing tattoos and an intimidating manner. She noticed that the bar staff looked worried, as if they didn’t quite know how to cope with this threatening group. She picked up her glass, retreated to a small table against the far wall and sat down, taking a magazine out of her shoulder bag. She looked up. One of the men had followed her, his stocky form hunched forward in a menacing way. His tone was threatening.
‘We don’t want you in here. Fuck off back to where you belong, you Paki bitch.’ He seemed to seethe with anger, his fleshy face red, eyes slitted. He’d jabbed a finger at her as he spoke but now this hand was clenched into a fist. A nearly empty pint glass of lager was in the other.
‘I was born here in the UK and that makes me as British as you. And, if you must know, my parents are from India, not Pakistan. Not that that would be of much interest to you, would it?’ She was aware that two other men had walked across to stand behind the first. Both wore the same uniform of denim jeans, T-shirt and tattoos on their arms. One was tall, thin and wary-looking, the other short and pugnacious.
‘Fucking right. I couldn’t give a shit where your grubby family comes from. Just piss off back there. That’s once you’ve fucked off out of this bar, ’cause we don’t want you in here, polluting our clean air with your stink.’
She pulled a slim wallet out of her pocket, opened it and placed it face up on the table in front of her, not taking her eyes off the man’s face.
‘Detective Sergeant Lydia Pillay. Dorset police.’
She sensed someone approach from behind, but she didn’t want to take her eyes off the man. Was there some uncertainty in the way his eyes flickered?
‘Hello, boss. I was delayed by a few minutes. Alright?’ The reassuring voice came from behind her.
The taller man put a warning hand on his colleague’s shoulder as if to calm him, but said nothing.
‘I think your timing’s okay on this occasion, Jimmy,’ she said to the person who’d quietly approached from behind, still with her eyes on the intimidating man standing opposite. ‘You’ve just broken the law, Mr Whoever You Are. But you know that, don’t you? I bet you even know the exact charges I could bring against you. Bu
t I’ve got other things to worry about right now, so just get out of my sight and take all your friends with you. If any of you are still here in ten minutes’ time, we’ll lift the lot of you.’
The man turned away, muttering obscenities under his breath, and returned to the group at the bar, who had largely fallen silent as the scene unfolded. He jerked his thumb towards the door and the group slowly followed him out.
She waited until the tall thin man bringing up the rear had left, and then turned to the person who had joined her.
‘Where the hell’s Andrea Ford?’ she hissed. ‘She should have been here fifteen minutes ago.’
Detective Constable Jimmy Melsom shrugged. ‘I know. She phoned in a short while ago to say she couldn’t make it. I knew that meant you’d be here on your own, so I moved as quick as I could. Sorry I wasn’t here earlier.’
‘It’s not your fault, Jimmy. I’m glad you came, but what’s going on in Ford’s head? Why did she phone you instead of me? And why were that lot of thugs here? It was meant to be a low-key meet-up with this informer of hers. So why did it go so badly wrong? I don’t even know what he looks like, so I can’t tell whether he was here or not. One thing, though. If he witnessed that little scene, he’ll have scarpered by now.’ She sighed. ‘Tell the bar staff we’ll be back in a few minutes, will you? We’ll take a quick look around the area to check that this lot aren’t raising mayhem somewhere else. Then we’d better head back to the office.’
The group of men seemed to have split up. The two detectives spotted a few of them in a pub closer to the town centre, but they no longer stood out from the crowd. Instead they were quietly sitting around a table studying the sports pages of some of the tabloid newspapers on display in the bar. The leading trio were nowhere to be seen, so Lydia and Jimmy returned to the scene of the confrontation.
The duty manager was keen to talk. ‘No idea who that lot were,’ he said, running his hand through his mousey hair. ‘I know we’re not exactly an upmarket kind of place, but it’s not often we get a crowd as bolshie as them. They were arguing about everything. I could see trouble brewing, so it was a relief when you turned up and got them to go. We had a few regulars leaving because they felt threatened.’
‘So, you’ve no idea who they were or why they were here?’ Lydia asked. He shook his head. ‘They were looking for trouble, I can tell you that.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I think they were waiting for someone. Maybe you?’
This shocked Lydia. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘The ringleader, that heavily built aggressive bloke, kept his eye on the door all the time, and he was on the phone a lot. He reacted as soon as you walked in. You must have seen how they all went quiet when you came up to the bar. I didn’t realise you were a cop. Maybe they didn’t either.’
Lydia thought for a moment. ‘Did you hear any of them say where the ringleaders were heading when they left? We didn’t spot them in any other place we passed, though a few of the others are in a pub round the corner.’
‘No. I called a couple of other pub managers nearby, we have an unofficial agreement about tracking troublemakers, but no one else has reported any problems. I didn’t recognise any of them.’
One of the bar staff, a young man, chipped in. ‘A couple of them were talking about casual work on the ferries. I didn’t hear any details though. Don’t know if that helps.’
Lydia handed her card to the manager. ‘If anything else does occur to you, please get in touch.’
‘Could they be from one of our ferry ports?’ Jimmy said on their way to the door. ‘That might mean Poole or Weymouth. Weymouth’s only ten miles away.’
‘The Weymouth link is a possibility. Andrea Ford is based there. I wonder if information about our planned meet up slipped out somehow? One thing’s for sure. After what we’ve just heard, it’s clear those thugs were looking for trouble and that worries me. And why the hell wasn’t she here, with or without her informer?’
* * *
Detective Inspector Kevin McGreedie’s attitude towards his second in command, DS Lydia Pillay, was a shade ambivalent and he felt guilty about it. She was a first-class detective who worked extremely hard and she had a sharp brain. During the six months that she’d worked for him, she’d never given him any cause to doubt her loyalty and commitment but the uneasiness was always there. It wasn’t the fact that she was from an Asian background, nor that she was an obviously committed feminist. Neither of these caused him the slightest problem. No, it was the fact that Lydia had been Sophie Allen’s protégée before the young detective unexpectedly transferred to the Regional Financial Crime Unit in Bath for two years. Now she was back in Dorset, at Bournemouth CID, in a move that had obviously been engineered by her previous boss. Or had it? Kevin was also aware that Lydia’s sudden departure from Sophie’s Violent Crime Unit at Dorset’s police headquarters may have been brought about by some unexpected rift between the two women. He’d never managed to find out what it had been, though. One of his own junior detectives, Jimmy Melsom, had left the unit soon after Lydia and claimed to be unaware of any disagreement. But Jimmy wasn’t the most razor-sharp analyst of human interaction, particularly when it came to women.
So where did Lydia’s real loyalties lie? It wasn’t a problem of any consequence to the work of the department, so why did he feel so guilty? Sophie was one of his closest friends as well as a county police colleague, but he was aware that she had unofficial contacts, and a lot of influence, in many police forces across the country, particularly since her very recent promotion to detective superintendent. He was beginning to wonder if the “old boy” network that had once been so influential in policing was being replaced by an “old girl” structure, closed to the male members of the profession. It was a little unsettling for traditional male officers like him, promoted through the ranks and lacking a university degree. Yet he knew from his younger days just how much crap women officers had been forced to endure in decades past. Part of him felt it was about time they gained the upper hand.
Kevin had decided to pay a brief visit to his Bournemouth CID office on Saturday afternoon because he knew Lydia was due to meet an informer in a backstreet bar over in Dorchester, arranged by a local detective, and he had uneasy feelings about the planned encounter. Lydia’s current investigation was the result of a Home Office request that county forces try to get to the bottom of the methods used by criminals to smuggle “illegal materials” into prisons on their patch, identify the people involved and organise some arrests. Apparently, the justice department had just digested the fact that the situation was getting out of hand, something the prison service, and most police officers, had known for several years and had predicted as soon as the government began to cut back on prison budgets. Did anyone in their right mind think that an increasing prison population could be adequately supervised by fewer prison staff without problems following closely behind? Some politicians did, obviously, and now someone on high had got the message. A unified effort was called for, and a local police officer nominated to coordinate the investigation into the criminal gangs that supplied the illicit goods from outside the prison walls. With two prisons in the county, Dorset should be one of the leaders. It was the government’s usual answer to any problem — neatly shift the responsibility elsewhere. And Lydia had been keen to get involved. She had approached Andrea Ford, the detective with the most contacts in the area around Portland prison. Andrea had never inspired Kevin with confidence. He’d often felt uneasy about her off-piste role in West Dorset, added to which he’d never entirely trusted her judgement. Getting close to criminals was like being a trapeze artist, and needed a highly developed sense of balance. Andrea Ford had a very outgoing personality and a willingness to hurl herself into raucous social situations, but in Kevin’s opinion she lacked insight, added to which there was something unsettling about her attitude to criminals, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.
The door opened. An angry looking Lydia Pillay
stalked in, accompanied by Jimmy Melsom.
She threw her bag on her desk. ‘What a fiasco. Ford didn’t turn up, the informer may or may not have been there, and I got threatened by a gang of racist thugs who were in the pub. The whole thing fell apart. Bastards.’ She switched the kettle on and spooned some instant coffee into an empty mug. ‘What are you doing here, boss? You shouldn’t be in today. You need your time off.’
That was the thing about women officers. They always found the time to comment on personal difficulties, whatever the situation. Kevin had kept Lydia up to date on the latest course of chemotherapy that his wife, Laura, was undergoing, and she never failed to remind him when he needed to get home or collect Laura’s prescriptions. Lydia had even gone shopping for groceries for him. She really was unnervingly organised. But was it any surprise, considering who her boss had been?
He shrugged. ‘I was out anyway to collect a few things from the shops, so it isn’t a problem. No need to make a fuss about it.’ He regretted the last remark as soon as he’d spoken. The words sounded ungrateful.
‘No, but you need to switch off sometimes, boss. Laura needs you at the moment. Not that I don’t appreciate your interest, but I’m a big girl now. I know how to look after myself. And Jimmy was around. I’d kept him informed of where I was.’
Kevin became even more irritated. ‘I’d have done the same for anyone under my command. It’s not because you’re a woman, you know. You’ve got to see beyond the easy reason.’
‘Do you know more about Ford than you’ve let on, boss? Is that what’s worrying you?’
‘No.’ He shrugged again and turned away. ‘Let’s discuss this on Monday morning when we’ve all had a chance to think things through.’
Lydia watched him leave, then turned to Jimmy Melsom. ‘Is it my imagination or did he look more worried than usual?’
SHADOW CRIMES a gripping crime thriller full of twists Page 1