‘Of course.’ Jenny moved out of the room. Louise stood at her shoulder.
‘Can I stick around?’
‘No, love,’ Stan said. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re kept up to speed. We need a few minutes is all.’
Louise made eye contact with George. She hesitated for a few seconds but she did move away. She pulled the door to behind her. George walked over and pushed it all the way shut.
‘There were some developments last night, Stan. I got hold of one of the lads who was here that night.’
‘I knew you would, George. I told Louise it was just a matter of time.’
‘We had to bed him down. It was quite late by the time we got him inside a custody cell. But he told me a few things, Stan, and I’m pretty certain he’s going to repeat them again in his interview in a few hours.’
‘Did he now?’
‘How’s that short-term memory problem of yours?’
Stan’s smile fell away a little. He took a deep breath. ‘Genuine to start with. A blessing it was. Of course I was cursing it at the time. I desperately wanted to know what was going on, what had happened. I wanted to be able to help you. Then it started to come back. It was like being shown drawings at first. I couldn’t see the details but I got outlines. I knew what happened though. I remember that much.’
‘You remember how Janice died?’
‘I do, George. More and more of it every day. Joseph never came to this house without causing trouble of some sort. If he hadn’t turned up that night we would have both slept soundly in our beds and woken up to breakfast. I got disturbed. I heard someone talking. I got out of bed and I could hear Joseph’s voice. I heard him checking with Janice that she had given me my medication — my sleeping pills. He was checking she had drugged me! I got my gun George, I was just going to make a statement. I wanted him to know once and for all that he couldn’t come back. Not ever again. I just had it broken over my arm. I didn’t even put any cartridges in it at first. I walked away from the gun cabinet. But, for some reason, I went back and put two shots in. I kept it broken. It was a present from my wife, that gun. Beautiful thing — a Browning over-under.’ Stan stopped to compose himself a little. ‘She knew I had been courting it for a little while. She wouldn’t let me buy it. I got angry with her for that. I didn’t know she had already bought it for me — I ruined that night too.’
‘How did it happen, Stan?’
‘I was furious, George! I can’t tell you how angry I was — as angry as I’ve ever been. I don’t remember the details still. Joseph was standing in my kitchen. He was making fun of me. He said I would never use the thing so I might as well put it down. Janice convinced him to leave. I followed him out and we argued some more. He had a few of his cronies with him. Druggy scum, the lot of them. They stayed out the back. They said something about wanting their money. I fired a shot over their heads. They all backed off but Joseph didn’t. He went back into the house. I shouted at him, I told him to come out. I said I wasn’t messing about. He shouted back at me. He said that his mother had made her choice, that she had been helping him for a long time. She had been hiding money in the house, in the barns — on my land, George! Drug money! I told him again to come outside. I closed the gun. I pointed it at the door. I could hear Janice, she was pleading with me, George. She said to just let him go. She begged me. I heard Joseph — he said that she was choosing him again over me. He was goading me. I heard him at the doorway. I could see his outline. There’s a bright floodlight over the door and I couldn’t make him out. I pulled that trigger, George. I wanted to kill our son. Just in that moment, but I did. I meant it. My Janice . . .’ Stan became unsteady. Paul stepped in to guide him to the seat. George didn’t move. ‘My Janice — it was her in the doorway, not Joseph. I think Joseph took one look at her and he ran! What sort of a son does that? He did what he always does when life gets tough. Now I hear he finally found something he couldn’t run away from.’
‘You know what this means, Stan?’
‘I do. I’ve known it from the second that gun went off, George. I tried to run away from it, too, in my own way. The barn, that’s what I was doing. I was running away from my responsibilities. You have to stand up and be a man when you’re wrong.’ Stan pushed himself to his feet. He was still unsteady. He stepped closer to George.
‘Thank you, George.’
‘For what?’
‘You kept your promise. You said you would find the bastard that killed my wife. Now you need to make sure he gets what he deserves.’ Stan reached out with his arms locked together.
‘You’re under arrest, Stan. For murder. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be used in evidence. My advice is to say nothing more, Stan, because now I’ll have to start writing it down.’ George met eyes with Paul, who nodded and felt his pockets for his car keys. They had spoken on the approach up here. They needed to get Stan out of the house as soon as possible. George immediately led Stan towards the door, taking hold of his right arm. Louise was on the other side of the door.
‘All done?’ she said, then her expression swiftly changed. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I need to go the police station. I’m sorry, Louise. I’m so sorry.’
‘What do you mean? Why do you need to go to the police station? What’s going on, Dad?’
George led him straight out of the front door. Louise’s questioning continued; she was getting more and more upset. Stan got in to the back of the car. George had to put his arm out to stop Louise getting hold of him. He forced the door shut. She turned on him.
‘What are you doing? He’s an old man! He’s a witness to a terrible murder — of his wife! Why are you treating him like this?’
George moved around to the other side of the car. He opened the driver’s door. Paul was already in place in the seat beside Stan.
‘I’m sorry, Louise.’ George looked at her over the top of the car. ‘He’s not a witness. Not anymore.’
Chapter 33
George was running a few minutes late, he needed to hurry into the building. The heavy wooden door crashed shut behind him and he grimaced as faces turned towards the noise. The girls were already dancing. The parents were seated on long, wooden benches as they faced the performance. George looked beyond the tutting and the shaking heads. He could see his daughter; she was out the front. She saw him too. She squealed and broke from the formation. She sprinted through the gap in the seating and to the back of the village hall where George was already on his knees, his arms out to meet her. He swooped her up, tears in his eyes, and he buried his face in her hair. Her torso shook, she was crying too.
‘Hello, monster,’ he spluttered.
‘Daddy!’
George rocked from side to side. It took a few moments for him to realise the whole room had stopped and turned its attention to him. He opened his eyes and scanned the faces. The dance teacher was in the background with her hands on her hips. Sarah was sitting down, off to the right. She wore a beaming smile. Her eyes were puffy with emotion.
‘Charley, I think you need to go finish your dance.’
‘I don’t want to leave you, Daddy. I don’t want to.’
‘I’ll be right here. I’m going to watch you dance, honey, I’m not leaving. Not ever again.’ He put Charley down. She took a step back and wiped her face. She reached out towards him with her little finger outstretched.
‘Pinky promise?’ she said.
George wrapped his little finger gently around hers.
‘Pinky promise,’ he said. Then he swept her up again and carried her back towards the dance floor.
THE END
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A NEW CRIME THRILLER WITH A COMPELLING DETECTIVE WHO WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO AVENGE HER DAUGHTER
BOOK 3 HER LAST BREATH
An absolutely gripping crime thriller with a massive twist
CHARLIE GALLAGHER
First published 2018
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, 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.
©Charlie Gallagher
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THERE IS A GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH AND POLICE SLANG IN THE BACK OF THIS BOOK FOR US READERS.
Author’s Note
I am inspired by what I do and see in my day job as a front-line police detective, though my books are entirely fictional. I am aware that the police officers in my novels are not always shown positively. They are human and they make mistakes. This is sometimes the case in real life too, but the vast majority of officers are honest and do a good job in trying circumstances. From what I see on a daily basis, the men and women who wear the uniform are among the very finest, and I am proud to be part of one of the best police forces in the world.
Charlie Gallagher
Chapter 1
Detective Inspector George Elms walked the corridor of Belmarsh Prison with a sense of trepidation. Visiting these places was always a strange experience and not just because he was responsible for condemning his fair share of men to a miserable existence in its grey-walled, ten-by-six-foot cells. The atmosphere was one of pent-up frustration. It hung heavily in the air, mingled with the visible, moving dust and the claustrophobic heat. You could taste it in the air. It got worse the deeper you got, the closer to the Category A prisoners — the ‘lifers.’ These men were in the high-security wing, destined never again to see the sun as free men. Some would hardly see another soul. It was one of these men that George was here to see today.
The last of the twelve security doors was the thickest of all. He offered his fingerprint. The panel beeped and flashed green. The door pushed open, but with some effort. Neither of the guards who had accompanied him this far offered him any assistance. Now he could see some cells on the other side. His presence seemed to attract movement that was just visible through the tiniest of peepholes, those that weren’t covered over. It reminded him of beasts on the outside of a bull ring pushed up against the bars, snorting their disdain, running their hooves through the sand. Desperate to join the fight.
George was led away from the cells and down another long corridor. Numerous rooms were accessible off it with similar dimensions and layouts. The guards led him into the corner room, the last one before the corridor turned sharp right.
‘You can wait here,’ one said. He moved to leave. They were the first words George could recall from either of them.
‘Don’t suppose I could have a drink, could I?’
‘Yeah,’ the man grunted. ‘I’ll go get him one.’
It seemed he was the talkative one of the two. The remaining guard stood over him, too close for comfort. George could smell his sweat. He sat at the table like he had been told. He took in his surroundings. The walls were brick, painted in a two-tone, smooth grey. The floor was worn wood with rubber repairs where the damage was worse. The radiator was a solid loop of thick steel that pinged and groaned as it worked. It must have been a hundred degrees in there. There were a few magazines. The most recent was from the middle of last year — Top Gear magazine. George flicked through it idly. He had long since accepted the limitations of his police officer wage. A Porsche 911 was definitely outside of that. It was nearly fifteen minutes before his attention was drawn to noises at the door.
Henry Roberts was bigger than George was expecting, despite the brief listing his alias as ‘The Bull.’ As he stooped through the door, his hair fell over his face. He was dressed in a grey tracksuit and was perspiring heavily. His face ran with moisture, his grey, standard-issue track top had a darker stained crescent across the chest. Inmates could wear their own clothes if they wanted to — almost all did. Roberts would be more comfortable in some shorts maybe, a T-shirt certainly. His prison-issue black plimsolls were misshapen where his feet looked to be pushing out of them. He was a slimmer build than his description — the illness must have seen to that — but he still had broad shoulders and hands like shovels. His face was largely concealed by an unkempt beard. His hair too had grown long. It covered his ears and would also be covering the numerous tattoos George h
ad read about that were on the top of his head and part of his neck. He was handcuffed, his hands hanging down in front of him. George had seen plenty of inmates when walking through the prison but Roberts was the first he had seen wearing cuffs. His face was gaunt, his cheeks looked sucked in behind the beard, and his eyes were ringed and deep in their sockets. George had only had a brief opportunity to look through the notes on Roberts, but his understanding was that he was not long for this world. When he moved to the seat in front of George, it looked like an effort. He coughed weakly and then grimaced as though it hurt. He covered his mouth with his hands. When he moved them to rest on the table the cuffs clunked. He looked at George. He looked unimpressed.
‘You’re the man they sent? The police Malakh?’ Roberts’s voice was deep, like it rumbled up from inside him. The prison guard reappeared with two plastic cups. He put them down on the table and backed away.
‘I believe my rank is more commonly known as inspector.’
‘A Malakh is a messenger sent from God. An angel, to use the more modern expression.’
‘No god sent me. Sometimes chief inspectors can—’
‘You are to be my messenger!’ That voice now carried a strength that belied Roberts’s fragile frame, a brief flashback to what he once was. He fell to coughing and took a while to recover.
‘You might have the wrong end of the stick, mate. I got told to come because apparently you want to talk to the police now. I can’t think what we might need to hear from someone like you, but I’m here.’
The George Elms Trilogy Box Set Page 49