DON'T SCREAM an absolutely gripping killer thriller with a huge twist (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 3)

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DON'T SCREAM an absolutely gripping killer thriller with a huge twist (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 3) Page 16

by MARGARET MURPHY

‘You a lawyer, Ellis?’

  The man’s neck reddened. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Piece of advice — stick to your own area of expertise.’

  ‘I’m just saying what’s in the reports, Mr Maitland.’

  ‘You saw the report on my interview?’

  ‘I downloaded it — it’s all on here, sir.’ He fished in his jacket pocket and produced a thumb drive.

  Maitland turned the gadget over in his hand. It was a flat, silver-coloured stick, two centimetres long. ‘All on here, huh?’

  ‘The Nealy interviews as well, and a few emails. Anything they’ve got around to entering on the system.’

  In days gone by, Maitland would have bought himself a pocket policeman, maybe several, because one man couldn’t know everything Maitland needed to know. But modern technology dispensed with the need for risky relationships with cops. It provided him with virtual spies at every level — you just needed to find the man with the right technical skills for the job.

  ‘And my money?’ Maitland glanced at the papers on his desk: profit and loss accounts for his coffee shops and the office block refurb that now housed his own office quarters and private accommodation. Bernie Carter had worked a miracle getting the accounts in order before the weekend, but the investors would expect more than a neatly packaged audit: Maitland would have to put his share of money into the pot. ‘The Dutch consortium’s drugs?’

  The man winced. ‘The drugs were never found. The m-money’s already in the works,’ he stammered.

  In the works and out of his reach. Maitland felt sick with the loss of them, but he would rather kill this man than admit to the blow this news meant to his business. This office, the gleaming wood and glass of this entire building, were visible signs of his wealth, and of the legitimate side of his business. But he had other reserves, and he would recoup his losses — in pain and blood.

  His desk phone rang, and he picked up.

  It was Graham. ‘Something you should see on TV, boss. BBC 1.’

  Maitland clicked the remote control and two images appeared on a split screen — Mark’s car and a picture of Mark Davis. Maitland felt a sour churning in his guts. Ellis nervously jingled the change in his trouser pockets and Maitland stared at him, wanting to reach across the table and grab him by the throat. The geek shifted his weight again, anxious to be gone, but Maitland wasn’t quite ready to release him.

  He almost missed the word ‘bodies’ with the roar of blood in his ears.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, without expression. He still held the handset, but Graham remained silent, awaiting instructions. The air around Maitland always seemed to crackle with static. Now, as he thought through the implications of this new crisis, the electricity built around him like a gathering storm.

  ‘A ten-thousand-pound reward . . .’

  Maitland looked into the presenter’s steady blue eyes on the TV screen and imagined he saw a hint of mockery in them. Ten thousand pounds’ reward in exchange for two million. He kept his eyes cold and dead, and his guest stopped jingling the money in his pockets. As he swallowed, Maitland heard the dry click at the back of his throat.

  ‘That’s a substantial amount for just picking up the phone,’ the presenter said. He even sounded like he meant it.

  Not enough, Maitland thought. Not nearly enough to compensate for what I’m going to do to anyone who does pick up the phone. I’ll rip their fucking tongues out — I’ll scoop their eyeballs out of their sockets and feed them to them with a spoon — I’ll pour boiling fat into their ears and laugh my fuckin’ arse off while they scream—

  He saw Ellis’s eyes widen and wondered if he’d said any of this aloud. ‘What do you know about this?’ he demanded.

  ‘Nothing — it’s nothing to do with me,’ the man protested, as if Maitland had accused him of the murders.

  Maitland waited for the panic on the man’s face to turn to cold, comfortless fear. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘What am I paying you for, if you don’t know what’s going on?’

  The question was rhetorical, but the man saw the need at least to attempt a reply. ‘I looked up the files on the drugs investigation, like you said. I didn’t think—’

  ‘You persuaded me that your expertise would get me an all-access backstage pass to any investigation, any time.’

  ‘It can — I can,’ the man said, ‘But I need to know—’

  Maitland held up a finger. ‘Don’t interrupt. You said having a computer engineer on the inside would be like having a chief superintendent in the palm of my hand.’

  ‘I can get you any file you want,’ the man said, more subdued this time, but recognising that a lucrative sideline — and maybe even his life — depended on making a convincing case for himself. ‘But I need to know what to look for.’

  ‘Okay. Here’s my shopping list: I want to know who’s been interviewed and who’s given Rickman information. If they so much as commented on the weather, I want to hear about it.’

  Ellis nodded. ‘You will, I’ll find out.’

  He seemed anxious to leave, and Maitland was keen to get on with what he needed to do, but names were no good on their own. ‘I haven’t finished yet,’ he said. ‘I want phone numbers, mobile numbers, addresses, family details — the lot.’

  Ellis stood blinking at him.

  ‘Go and do your homework,’ Maitland said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  Ellis headed for the door just short of a run, and Maitland tilted his head right and left, hearing a satisfying click with each movement.

  He spoke into the phone. ‘You still there?’

  ‘Boss.’ Graham, calm, unflappable, always ready to do his bidding.

  Maitland gripped the handset so hard he heard the plastic creak from the pressure. ‘We’ve got a situation,’ he said.

  Chapter 23

  The TV played at low volume. Bernie Carter was nursing a gin and tonic and waiting for the local bulletin. A key rattled in the front door and he felt a spasm of tension — Meg and the girls, back from some sports event or other. They would scavenge something from the kitchen first, but soon they would tumble into the sitting room and disrupt his one quiet moment of the day. His hand went to the remote control next to him on the sofa.

  He heard a laugh — Julia’s — high and unpleasant, no doubt tormenting her younger sister. Sally whined in complaint, then Meg’s voice, low and warm, gently reprimanding. The kitchen door opened and closed, and the sounds were shut out. He tried to focus on the TV but kept straining to hear the girls. Ten minutes — all he needed was ten minutes to watch North West Newsbrief. He thought he heard the scrape of a chair in the kitchen and was on the point of abandoning the sitting room for the sanctuary of his study, when the Newsbrief banner flashed on-screen.

  ‘In a change to our advertised programme, North West Newsbrief investigates the brutal murder of a teenaged mother on Merseyside . . .’

  Carter’s heart picked up the rhythm of the introductory drumbeat.

  ‘The nationwide search for little Bryony Elliott was brought to a tragic end—’

  A tragic end? His mouth dried. No . . . The sound seemed to fade for a few seconds as fearful thoughts intruded.

  ‘—the discovery of two bodies,’ the presenter went on, each sentence underlined by another insistent drum roll.

  ‘God, no . . .’ Jesus . . . His heart hammered in his chest and he took a swallow of his drink, setting it down on the glass coffee table with a clatter.

  ‘. . . an adult and a baby.’

  The sitting room door burst open and his girls bounced in.

  ‘Daddy!’ As the younger of the two, Sally was still pleased when Daddy came home early from work. She flung herself next to him and leaned against him like an affectionate puppy, happily chomping on an apple.

  ‘Not now, darling.’ Carter tried to ease away from her, but she slipped one slightly sticky hand through the crook of his arm and pressed her cheek, still cool from the night air, to his shirtsleeve.

  Julia was
twelve, and too mature for such childish displays. She plonked herself to his right. ‘The news?’ she said, as though she had caught him watching porn.

  He turned up the volume. The presenter said Mark Davis was suspected of murdering Jasmine and snatching the baby.

  ‘Can’t you watch this in your study?’ Julia demanded. ‘Hollyoaks is on.’

  ‘No!’ Sally clung to him. ‘I want you to stay here.’

  ‘Girls, please.’

  ‘Sally, please,’ Julia mimicked, leaning forward to taunt her sister.

  How much more can go wrong?

  He recalled Maitland’s little barb at the sergeant that afternoon: ‘Redevelopment reduces the crime rate,’ he’d said. Or uncovers crimes that would be better left undiscovered.

  ‘Daddy, Sally stuck her tongue out at me.’

  ‘Be quiet, Julia.’

  Sally squeezed his arm tighter, a gesture of solidarity. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Be quiet.’

  Maitland was bad enough after the shambles on Tuesday. Now nobody will be safe.

  His head began to throb, and he put his fingers to his right temple. Julia seized the opportunity to snatch the remote control and switch channels.

  ‘Give me that,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ Julia gave him that practised insolent look he was sure she had learned from her loud friends. ‘Go and watch the boring news on your own TV.’

  Carter felt a hot flush of blood to his face and the headache began to pulse. ‘Julia.’ He untangled himself from Sally’s grip and stood up. Spots of dark colour bloomed at the edges of his vision: the headache was worsening rapidly. ‘Give me the damn control.’

  Julia folded her arms, tucking the wand tight against her bony chest.

  ‘Now, Julia.’

  ‘Daddy, you’re in the way.’ Julia angled her body to look around him at the TV screen.

  Carter slapped her.

  He didn’t think. It wasn’t premeditated — it just . . . happened.

  The girls stared at him with a look of frightened wonder, like they had felt a small earthquake, and weren’t sure any more if the ground would support them.

  Carter blinked. ‘Julia, darling—’ He reached out to touch the livid marks of his fingers on her cheek and she leapt to her feet. The control slipped through her fingers and rattled onto the coffee table.

  ‘I hate you!’ she screamed, trembling from head to foot.

  Meg came into the room, drying her hands on a tea towel, and Sally slipped from the sofa to go and stand by her mother.

  Meg looked from her husband to her daughter. ‘What on earth?’

  Julia burst into tears, sobbing into her hands.

  Sally whispered, ‘Daddy smacked her.’ Her awe and horror at this aberration were reflected in Meg’s expression.

  ‘Bernard!’

  ‘I need to watch this programme.’ He scooped up the control. The sudden rush of blood to his head set it throbbing till he thought his skull would burst. ‘I’ll talk about it later,’ he said. ‘But please let me finish’ — he had to swallow against a wave of nausea — ‘let me finish watching this programme.’ He flicked back to the news.

  The presenter had asked Rickman a question Carter had missed.

  ‘Post-mortems will be carried out on Mr Davis and the baby girl later this evening,’ Rickman replied.

  Meg raised her voice. ‘For God’s sake, Bernard.’

  ‘Later.’ He tried to sound reasonable, but he heard the tremor of rage, and so must they, because for a blessed moment Julia stopped crying and ran to her mother. He turned to the television. ‘Now get out.’

  His wife was so startled that it took her a moment to find her voice. ‘What on earth has got into you? Why must you watch that vile stuff anyway?’

  He wheeled back to her. ‘All I want’ — he was shouting, losing control in a way he found undignified and humiliating, but which he was powerless to rein back, despite the pain that hammered at his temples with every word — ‘All I’m asking is to watch what I choose on my own TV in my own fucking sitting room.’

  Meg gave a little gasp and now both girls started to weep, Sally providing a counterpoint to her sister’s wailing.

  They were afraid of him at that instant, and Carter felt ashamed, but self-pity overwhelmed any nobler instinct.

  You don’t know what fear is, he thought.

  * * *

  By seven p.m. Rickman had left the TV studio and was on a long, curving stretch of the M62 heading for Liverpool. A waxy moon, the colour of a cadaver, hung low on the horizon, revealing thin trails of mist on the flat, featureless farmland either side of the motorway. Rickman felt his attention wander and cracked open a window to keep himself awake. The air smelled of marsh water and leaf fall.

  He’d borrowed a firm’s car in case he needed the sirens and the option of using the hard shoulder to slip through the rush hour traffic. He eyed the radio, willing Foster or Hart to get in touch — even a call from the ponderous Chris Tunstall would be welcome to break the silence. He fiddled with the controls to convince himself the damn thing was still working: if the TV coverage didn’t bring forward viable witnesses, they were sunk.

  After another ten minutes, he muttered, ‘To hell with it.’ He fished his mobile from his trouser pocket, pressed the contact number for Foster then switched to hands-free and propped the phone on the dashboard.

  ‘All right, boss.’ It wasn’t an enquiry after his health, merely Foster’s version of a neutral greeting.

  ‘Tell me it’s good news,’ Rickman said.

  ‘Fifty calls so far.’

  ‘Anything we can use?’

  ‘A lot of new leads to follow.’

  Rickman swallowed his impatience. ‘We’ll have twenty more officers and civilian staff by tomorrow — now tell me what the hell is happening.’

  ‘Sorry, boss — looks like we’ll be able to put together a timeline, once we’ve sorted the sheep from the goats.’

  Rickman was surprised by the metaphor, but then he remembered Foster had been educated by Jesuits, and it seemed less remarkable. He slowed at the junction with the M6 to let a couple of HGVs on from the slip road.

  ‘We got a call from someone who claimed she knew why Mark Davis was at Black Wood.’

  ‘Don’t we know that already?’ Rickman asked. ‘I mean his connection with the Shepherds?’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Foster said. ‘But she hung up before the operator could get a name or contact details out of her, so we haven’t been able to check. Knight put out an appeal at the end of the programme, guaranteeing her anonymity and protection.’

  ‘Let’s hope she calls back.’

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘For God’s sake, spit it out, Lee,’ Rickman exclaimed, way past exasperation at this point.

  ‘Okay. Jasmine Elliott’s mother called. She’s threatening to sue Merseyside Police for making her look like a bad mother.’

  ‘She did that all by herself,’ Rickman said. ‘Let me know if anything urgent comes up. I’ll go straight to the hospital for the PMs.’ The post-mortems of Davis and the baby were timetabled to run consecutively.

  ‘Will you head back here, after?’

  ‘If Dr Griffith finishes before midnight — otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning.’

  He broke the connection, still thinking of Jasmine Elliott. Neglected and ignored by her mother, she was among those Rickman thought of as the lost souls, the invisible children whose bleak adulthood seem presaged by their childhood. A few, like Foster, made something of their lives, overcoming the impediments of birth and family, but they never got out unscathed, not entirely. He recalled the photograph of Jasmine with Mark Davis. Jasmine staring out at the world, strung out, defiant, vulnerable. Inevitably, the images of Jasmine, murdered and defiled, came unbidden into his mind, and he thought that, despite the beatings and the scars, his own childhood had been a walk in the park.

  The motorway ended abruptly, tailing off to a fifty-mile-pe
r-hour speed limit, then forty, fetching up among 1940s semi-detached suburban properties owned by comfortable middle-class families. He continued towards Edge Lane and joined the slow crawl of traffic.

  It took thirty minutes to make the two-mile journey to the hospital. He parked across the road in the multi-storey and made his way to the mortuary with a heavy heart.

  * * *

  The post-mortems took longer than expected, and Rickman left feeling wrung out. The sight of the tiny baby on the table, grey, almost doll-like, seemed a travesty, and even Griffith had been subdued as he worked on the child.

  At one thirty a.m., Rickman eased onto the silent streets, desperate to empty his mind of what he had just seen, aching for rest. Sometimes, in the quiet hours when sleep evaded him, Rickman would drive the deserted streets, past silent homes, searching for something — he wasn’t sure what — perhaps for peace, a little respite from the guilt that had tormented him since November of the previous year.

  At first, he had relied on booze to ease his pain, but he’d gone through too many nights of broken sleep, waking in a sweat, his heart pounding, his mouth dry, the memory of that day searing with colour and sound and emotion so strong, it was like reliving it second by monstrous second. He preferred now to work himself to exhaustion, in the hope that if he did dream, he would be so stupefied that, on waking, he wouldn’t remember.

  The journey home was soothing, and when he turned into the drive of his house, he was ready for sleep. He dumped his briefcase and overcoat in the hallway, and a movement at the top of the stairs caught his eye: Tanya. She pushed a lock of hair from her face and peered down at him.

  ‘Jeff? Is that you?’ She sounded anxious.

  ‘Yes,’ Rickman said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Simon was here.’ She gathered her dressing gown around her and tied the belt.

  Rickman felt a jolt of alarm. The energy Simon carried with him in recent months had an unpredictable quality to it. Before, it was fed by a restless enthusiasm and interest in everything, now it seemed nourished by a darker force, and there was an uneasy aggression at the root of his nature that reminded Rickman disconcertingly of their father. ‘Did he . . .’ Rickman didn’t know how to word it. Did he have one of his episodes? Did he frighten you?

 

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