Nine Elms: The thrilling first book in a brand-new, electrifying crime series (Kate Marshall 1)

by Robert Bryndza

  ‘Do you want to?’ he repeated.

  ‘I’ve had a crazy idea,’ said Kate, lowering her voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Crazy, and risky too, but we’d be doing it for the greater good.’ Kate leaned closer and told Tristan about the staff kitchen and the door code. ‘If we set out soon, we could be in Altrincham in about five hours.’

  ‘Break in? Are you nuts?’ he hissed, glancing around at the other patrons dotted around at tables drinking coffee.

  ‘Tristan. This is the kind of thing I used to do as a copper, but back then I had a badge and I could get a search warrant. Look, if we go to the police he could get tipped off, and if there are any photos kept hidden there he could get rid of them.’

  ‘What kind of photos do you think are there?’ asked Tristan. ‘Not snuff photos of girls being murdered?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘No. If Paul Adler was the go-to for printing pornographic photos, then he could have got to know Peter Conway . . . well, we think he did know him, because Enid told Gary he processed their racy photos. What if Conway took photos of other girls? And he used Adler to process them? There could also be more photos of Caitlyn. Paul said there was a place he and Caitlyn used to go for walks, and a lake where they swam. He could have taken photos of other places they went, other people. It could lead back to Caitlyn’s disappearance. He was worried enough to lie to me about knowing Peter Conway.’

  ‘It’s a pharmacy. Won’t there be alarms? People break in to steal drugs,’ said Tristan.

  ‘He said he only had cameras in the dispensary and looking at the till. This storeroom was at the end of the corridor away from where the drugs were kept.’

  ‘It’s still breaking and entering,’ said Tristan.

  ‘We could find important evidence about Caitlyn’s disappearance. It could lead to evidence for the copycat killer case. If we’re serious about being private investigators we have to take risks. I wouldn’t do this unless I’d seen that code and I thought we had a chance,’ said Kate.

  ‘Kate. I watch crime dramas,’ he said. ‘If we . . . ’

  He stopped to let an elderly couple squeeze past with their cups of coffee, and waited until they were out of earshot before continuing. ‘If we steal photos that then need to be used as evidence, is that evidence admissible in court?’

  ‘Not admissible in court if the police break in without a warrant. But what if we find photos with people and locations that we recognise? It could be a potential location where Caitlyn’s body was dumped . . . Tristan. Sheila and Malcolm asked us to find her, and we said we would try. Imagine if walking in through an unlocked door is the way we find her body? They could give her a proper burial.’

  Tristan paused and rubbed his face, looking out of the window to sea.

  ‘Okay. Let’s do it.’

  CHAPTER 52

  Peter regained consciousness moments after being Tasered. He was cuffed and lying on his front in the corner of the small therapy room. Winston was sitting on his back, his large weight pressing him into the floor. He had one hand holding the back of Peter’s head and with the other he was radioing for backup.

  Peter rolled the piece of flesh around in his mouth, sucked on it and then swallowed it down. He was grateful his head wasn’t facing the wall, as he got to watch the chaos erupting around him. The white walls were covered in a fine spray of blood, as were the patients. Ned, Derek and Martin were each being restrained by an orderly. Martin was twitching and writhing. Derek was a drooling zombie so wasn’t putting up any resistance. Ned was too frail and small to resist, but he was shouting, ‘Tell me what’s going on! I can taste blood! Whose blood is it?’ as his milky eyes blindly rolled in their sockets.

  Obese Henry had fallen off his chair, and two orderlies were vainly trying to get him up, but were slipping on the thick pool of blood spreading out from Meredith’s body.

  The orderlies fought vainly to revive her, but Peter could see that she was dead.

  ‘The weapon? Where is it?’ shouted Winston.

  ‘It’s on the floor by her chair, you bloody idiots!’ shouted Martin as he continued to fight against being restrained. The bent piece of metal lay in the congealing blood.

  ‘I need backup urgently to meeting room six on G Wing. We have a code three-eighty-one. I repeat, code three-eighty-one,’ said Winston into his radio.

  Peter could see that there was no one with a free hand to pick the weapon up.

  A moment later eight orderlies arrived in the already crowded room with a first aider carrying a medical box. Derek, Ned and Martin were taken out of the room, followed by Henry who was heaved up by three orderlies into his wheelchair. Its wheels ran tracks of blood across the white tiled floor as he was pushed out of the room.

  Peter was surrounded by four of the orderlies, with Winston still on his back, and he felt the prick of a syringe as he was given a sedative. The chaos in the room dissolved away to white.

  When he came round he could feel the cold wind through the spit hood. He was outside the hospital, strapped to a rolling cart, being wheeled out of the large main building of Great Barwell, past the tall razor-wire-topped fence. He couldn’t move his body. He wore a straitjacket and the spit hood, and his legs were bound to the trolley. He tilted his head back and saw Winston pushing the trolley, his face blank and stony.

  As the path curved around the main building, he saw a red air ambulance helicopter. Two paramedics were loading an empty gurney into the back before going around to the door. As they climbed inside, the engine started to roar. Meredith Baxter had no need for a hospital, thought Peter. She would be heading straight for the morgue.

  The solitary confinement block was set apart from the rest of the hospital, against the back wall of the perimeter fence. They had to wait at the heavily fortified main entrance as they were buzzed in and the doors were unlocked. Peter heard the roar of the helicopter take off, and saw it circle in the sky above.

  Winston came with him into solitary, and his face remained passive as Peter was checked in by the head orderly, a large bald man with an angry rash on his face and arms. Peter was taken to a small room where he was untied from the trolley and left to strip off his clothes. He submitted to a full body search by the surly bald orderly. He was then given a block of soap and taken to a shower.

  Peter stood for a long time under the water, watching it flow red, then pink and finally clear. He soaped his body down and felt every nerve ending jangling.

  His last visit to the solitary confinement block had been over a year ago, after the fight with Larry, when he had bitten off the tip of his nose. Peter knew he would now be kept in solitary confinement with no access to the phone, and his visits would be stopped. Someone from Great Barwell would call Enid and tell her what had happened. She would be informed of any legal recourse, and they would tell her that Peter would be kept in solitary confinement twenty-four hours a day with two fifteen-minute visits to the exercise yard. By law they had to inform her what time his fifteen-minute exercise would be scheduled.

  After his shower he was given a blue overall and placed in a cell devoid of anything but a small bench and a stainless-steel toilet bowl. A tray of food was put through the hatch a short time later, a gelatinous mess of grey on a plastic plate, and he ate it all. He needed to keep his energy and strength up. After the plate had been taken away, the hatch in the door opened again.

  ‘Exercise yard,’ said Winston. A mesh spit hood was thrown in through the hatch and it closed again. Peter pulled it on and did up the buckles at the back. The hatch opened again.

  ‘Stand by the door with your hands behind your back. Do not turn around.’

  Peter could detect anger in Winston’s voice, that he was disappointed in him. He got up and stood patiently at the hatch, and his hands were cuffed tightly.

  ‘Step away.’

  He did as he was asked. The hatch closed and the door opened. Winston stood with a young orderly with blond hair. They led Peter out of t
he cell and along a windowless corridor, past the other cell doors. There were six cells in the block, arranged in a hexagonal shape. A corridor ran around them and in the centre of the hexagon was the exercise yard. The door leading out into the yard had a small murky window of thick safety glass. Peter could see it was dark outside.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked. There was silence. ‘Can you please tell me the time?’

  ‘It’s nine p.m. Stand to one side,’ said Winston. The blond orderly set to work with a bunch of keys. Three locks had to be turned before the door opened. ‘You have fifteen minutes.’

  Peter stepped through the open door and into the cold fresh air. The exercise yard was cramped and small, just bare concrete with a tiny drain in the centre. The walls were fifteen feet high, with an additional ten feet of razor-wire-topped mesh fencing. A small hexagon of sky glowed orange. As he had heard from Winston, the net had been removed.

  Peter tipped his head back and looked up at it, breathing in the cold air. He smiled. 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. By now his mother should know about the murder of Dr Baxter, his move to solitary confinement and what time he was allowed out into the exercise yard.

  She would now pass the information on to his greatest fan.

  CHAPTER 53

  It was dark at 7 p.m. when Kate and Tristan drove into Altrincham town centre. The shops were all closed, but the pubs and clubs were open, shining bright colours onto the pavements, which were busy with teenagers on their way out for the night.

  ‘There’s not a pub near this chemist?’ asked Tristan as they stopped at a traffic light.

  A stream of lads in smart shirts and trousers and young women wearing skimpy outfits weaved across the road. A large hen party tottered past, all wearing plastic tiaras and matching pink T-shirts. One of the girls spied Tristan in the passenger seat and stumbled over to the car. Without warning she lifted her T-shirt and pressed her bare breasts to his window. Tristan sat there for a moment, and his mouth dropped open.

  Kate was stunned and a little jealous to see how pert the young woman’s breasts were. ‘For God’s sake, don’t just stare at her,’ she said, leaning over Tristan to bang on the window.

  The girl staggered back. The traffic light had turned green, but the hen party was congregating around the car. They were all completely drunk and, egged on by the first girl, they lifted their T-shirts and flashed Tristan. Kate was surprised how few of them were wearing bras. She honked the horn. There was a thump as a girl with dark hair and smudged mascara climbed up on the car bonnet and pressed her face against the windscreen.

  ‘Hi, sexy,’ she said to Tristan. ‘Is that your mother?’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ said Kate.

  Technically, she could be Tristan’s mother, but the scorn in the young girl’s voice burned at her. Kate activated the windscreen wipers and screenwash, dousing the girl. She squealed as she was squirted with water and leapt off the bonnet, swearing. Kate honked the horn again and slowly advanced on the hen party, who parted and started to jeer and heckle.

  ‘You okay?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Fine,’ said Tristan, blushing.

  ‘We need to concentrate.’

  They drove towards Adler’s Chemist. The crowds thinned out as they left the pubs behind. The dark roads were deserted. A silence fell over the car.

  ‘It’s not too late to bail,’ said Kate, realising that what they were doing was crazy.

  ‘No. If there is a chance we can find something that leads us to Caitlyn, we should take it,’ said Tristan. He rubbed his sweaty hands nervously on his trousers.

  A few minutes later they reached the parade of shops with Adler’s Chemist. The shops were all closed. The two estate agents had lights on in their display windows, but the windows in Costa Coffee and Adler’s Chemist were both dark.

  Kate circled around the block twice until they saw the entrance to a narrow road which ran behind the parade of shops, leading to the delivery bay at the back of the building. She carried on past and they parked two streets away, outside a row of houses in darkness. Kate turned off the engine and headlights. They sat for a moment in the dark, listening to the engine ticking over as it cooled down.

  The last time she’d been on an active investigation as a police officer was the night of the crime scene at Crystal Palace, when Peter Conway dropped her back at her flat. It seemed like a lifetime ago. She remembered her hunch when she’d found Peter’s keys and flask, and how scared she’d been to act on it. She now had a similar feeling about Paul Adler.

  Tristan was rummaging around in his backpack. He pulled out some running gear and two battered-looking baseball caps, and handed her one.

  ‘Must be fate. I had these in my bag,’ he said.

  They pulled them on and Kate checked her reflection in the mirror. The baseball cap looked a bit stupid with her jeans and black leather jacket, but its bill cast a shadow over her face.

  ‘Pull it down further and keep your head down,’ said Tristan, adjusting her cap and then his.

  ‘Okay. If there’s any hint of trouble, we run for it,’ said Kate.

  It didn’t seem like the best pep talk, but Tristan nodded. They got out of the car and walked back to the road leading behind the parade of shops. It was dark and empty. The side walls of two terraced rows ran alongside the parade. They were windowless and loomed high, cutting out the glow from the surrounding streetlights.

  When they reached the gate leading to Adler’s loading bay, they saw it was unlocked. It creaked loudly in the silence as Kate opened it.

  The loading bay was dark and Tristan tripped over a pile of plastic rubbish bags.

  ‘Shit,’ he hissed as he went down.

  ‘You okay?’ Kate asked, fumbling to help him up.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. She could hear the fear in his voice.

  They moved slowly to the back door.

  ‘It’s here,’ said Kate, feeling for and finding the electronic keypad.

  ‘What if there’s an alarm?’

  ‘Then get ready to run.’

  Kate took out her phone and activated the light. She keyed in the number on the keypad. There was a horrible pause. It beeped loudly, then it gave a buzz and a click and the door popped open.

  ‘It worked,’ said Tristan, shock in his voice.

  ‘I’ll switch my light off,’ said Kate.

  They were plunged back into darkness. She poked her head through the door. She couldn’t see much, but she could see that there was no small red light by the ceiling for an alarm box. She could smell stale coffee and cleaning fluid, and a minty antiseptic smell, and the memory of the last time she was in this kitchen came flooding back to her.

  They went inside and Kate closed the door.

  Tristan crashed into a chair and Kate nearly cried out. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  Kate moved around the small table to the other door. She tried the handle and it opened. They could see down the long corridor, past the two closed doors, the dispensary door on the left and storeroom on the right, and down to the shopfront. The glow from the streetlights out front penetrated the gloom. As they crept along the corridor to the door on the right, Tristan’s trainers squeaked on the floor. Kate checked, but there weren’t any cameras mounted on the ceiling.

  ‘This is the door,’ whispered Kate when they reached the storeroom. She tried the handle. It was locked. Using the dim light from the screen of her phone, she saw there was a padlock on the outside. ‘Shit.’

  ‘What do we do? Look for a key?’ whispered Tristan.

  ‘If he’s padlocking it, he won’t leave a key lying around.’

  Kate thought how ridiculous it was of Paul Adler to padlock the room. It might look more severe than a lock, but a padlock was actually easy to open.

  ‘I need a hairgrip,’ she said.

  ‘Why are you asking me? I’ve got a buzz cut,’ Tristan said, panic sounding in his voice. ‘I thought we were just going through unlocked doors.’

  ‘We will be, if we
can find a hairgrip or a paperclip,’ said Kate. The chemist sold hair accessories, but there were security cameras in the front. She thought back to the girls who worked for Paul Adler. They all had long hair. ‘There must be a staffroom or toilet,’ she added.

  They crept around and found a small toilet next to the kitchen. There was a mirrored cabinet above the sink, and inside was a packet of tampons and a hairbrush thick with blonde hair. Underneath the hairbrush was a hairband wrapped around a stack of hairgrips.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Kate. When she closed the cabinet she caught sight of their reflections, their faces in the shadow of her phone light. Scared. They returned to the door with the padlock.

  ‘Does this really work?’ whispered Tristan, as Kate knelt down and straightened out one of the hairgrips.

  ‘Yes. When I was a PC, or WPC as they called us back then, we had training with a locksmith and lock picker – an excon. They used a padlock made of clear plastic for training. It showed how the lock works inside. There’s a row of pins inside the padlock which all need to be lined up level. That’s what the key does when you push it in, and when you turn it, it opens the lock mechanism . . . ’

  There was a bang, which made them both jump, followed by the drone of a car engine.

  ‘Shit,’ said Tristan.

  ‘Just a car backfiring,’ said Kate. She could feel sweat starting to trickle down her back. ‘Here, hold the light on the lock.’

  Tristan trained her mobile phone screen onto the padlock. She put the first hairgrip in the padlock, pushing it to the bottom of the lock. Then she opened another hairgrip, straightened it out and bent the tip of one end. She slipped it into the lock above the other pin and started to push it in and jiggle it up and down.

  ‘I wish I could see if the pins were lifting up.’ She kept jiggling and pushed it all the way in. ‘Okay. Here we go.’ She turned the pins and the padlock sprang open.