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

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘Just so’s we’re straight . . .’ He waited, drawing the silence out. ‘Carter is a possible witness, not a suspect. We’re not gonna arrest him, we just want to ask him a few questions — and if he’ll turn against Maitland, we take him into protective custody and earn ourselves about a million brownie points.’

  He kept his voice flat, his tone neutral as he went on. ‘He’s lying low in a farmhouse near Ormskirk. Smithie?’ He remained with his back half-turned to Smith and waited.

  Smith sighed, reached inside his car, and came out with a tablet. They gathered around as Smith called up an OS map and pinched and expanded it to show the details of the target property.

  ‘The farmhouse is here,’ he said. ‘Access is via this road.’ He traced the yellow line back to the arterial red of the A59. ‘This is Grimes Hill Road. This track runs west off Grimes Hill Road about fifty yards from the road to the farm. It’s the only road.’ He looked up at the faces. ‘Now, don’t be fooled by the name, lads. It may be called Grimes Hill, but this is Ormskirk — flatlands — a speed bump qualifies as a hill. You can see five miles all round, so they’ll see us coming.’

  ‘What d’you mean, “They’ll see us coming”?’ Williams demanded, frowning.

  ‘Like I said, he’s not going to be alone.’ Smith’s expression said, Finally you’re getting the point.

  ‘Do me a favour, Smithie,’ Cass said. ‘He’s an accountant, not Mr Big. And it’s a good thing he’ll see us from a distance, ’cos he’ll see we’ve got nothing to hide.’ An idea struck him, and he put it to the men as if he’d planned it all along. ‘And of course we’re only taking two cars. That way, we won’t look like a lynch mob.’

  Gormley and Wright nodded. They liked it.

  He grinned. ‘You know what — he’ll probably welcome us with open arms.’ He spread his own hands to emphasise the simplicity of their mission. A subtle shift of stance and the posse realigned themselves physically and mentally with him. Good, he thought. Bloody brilliant.

  ‘What’s this at the back of the farm?’ Williams tilted the tablet in Smith’s hand and pointed to a green, dotted area on the map.

  ‘A wood,’ Smith said. ‘There’s nothing but farmland the other side of that.’

  ‘Everyone clear?’ Cass said, eager to get going before anyone else expressed doubts.

  Gormley dropped his cigarette and stepped on it.

  Wright pitched his own cigarette butt. ‘Let’s just fucking do it.’ He had that glint in his eye that said he was terrified and loving it.

  ‘Smithie, you’re with me.’ Smith had done a good enough job of spooking the others after he’d got them keyed up and ready — Cass wasn’t about to let him finish the job. ‘Gormley, Wright and Williams, you can follow in Gormley’s car.’

  Gormley raised his eyebrows. His BMW was his pride and joy.

  ‘It’s the biggest we’ve got — and the fastest,’ Cass said, knowing that flattery would be the best way around him. ‘If Carter tries to break for it, we’ll need something with a bit of poke.’

  Gormley smirked. ‘You heard what he said, lads — mine’s the biggest we’ve got.’ He should have left it there, but he couldn’t resist adding, ‘Just make sure you wipe the crud off your shoes before you get in.’

  Williams walked around to the passenger door, grumbling that there was nothing wrong with his shoes, but Gormley made both him and Wright check the soles of one, then the other, before unlocking the doors.

  Smith avoided his eye, but his expression gave Cass the faintest hint of foreboding. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Is everybody wearing a Met Vest?’

  The glint faded from Wright’s eye, and Gormley and Williams stopped bickering.

  ‘I thought you said there’s no risk?’ Smith sounded almost spitefully pleased.

  ‘I said we’re not stupid.’

  The men exchanged glances, understanding the need to take precautions, then Gormley shrugged. ‘I’m wearing.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Wright said.

  Williams looked at him like Cass had asked if everyone had been to the toilet before they left. ‘Duh,’ he said.

  ‘Smithie?’

  Smith met his gaze, and Cass saw resentment and fear. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’ Cass turned and walked to his own car before any of the posse had the chance to read him. So, it’s just me then. He had driven straight from the city centre and was dressed in Saturday civvies — which didn’t include a Kevlar undershirt. So what? He didn’t need to be a hero. He just wanted to be first on the scene, tell Carter to get the hell out and stay one step ahead of Rickman.

  He had tried both Carter’s mobile and the farmhouse landline by the time Smith had folded up the map and slid in beside him. Carter still wasn’t answering.

  Chapter 48

  Bernie Carter looked out through the French windows of his rented farmhouse. In the short time he had been in this landscape, he had discovered an affinity with its broad skies and flat plains. It was mid-afternoon, but the sun was already beginning to lower, casting sharp shadows through the trees. Carter had been raised in the city. His experience of the countryside was limited to a single skiing trip in the Alps as a schoolboy. His parents had no interest in seaside or country walks — that sort of thing was all very well for other people, they’d said, but not for their boy, not for Bernard, who was bright and perceptive, a sensitive child. A prodigy. So they’d holidayed in European cities, seeking culture, punting on the canals of Venice and Amsterdam, visiting galleries and museums in Vienna and Rome, trying to make amends for the few short months of childhood neglect when the new baby had snatched their time and energy and attention from him.

  At university, he had experienced again the shock of being ignored. In school, he was head boy, top of his academic classes, but in the maelstrom of university life he was one in fourteen thousand, insignificant, struggling to be noticed. For though Carter was able, he was unremarkable, and his parents had failed, in their efforts to enrich his cultural life, to provide him with the language of contemporary music or TV and computer games. Set against the exotic shimmer of the antipodes and the Far East, his travels in Europe seemed colourless and insipid. He resented his parents for not having initiated him to this more colourful world, even though the thought of Bali or Australia, sweaty and unconfined, secretly appalled him.

  He was polite, clean, orderly, yet girls his own age shunned him as small-minded, immature, obsessive. He could talk about books, architecture and art, yet they shrugged their shoulders and turned away.

  So he watched them in the students’ union bars and the night clubs, a half-embarrassed, half-vicious smile on his face, fascinated by their naked flesh, excited to catch a glimpse of the occasional tattoo — a rose just visible on an exposed shoulder, a butterfly kissing the base of a neck — low key, tasteful, for this was the early nineties, and female body art was not yet entirely acceptable in educated circles. It was during these sessions in bars and at concerts that he first began to fantasise about marking girls’ skin.

  University, marriage and the birth of his children had tutored him in the harsh reality that he was not the centre of everything. His daughters caused a terrible conflict within him — didn’t he create them? Weren’t they reflections of him? He loved them with all the passion that he loved himself, and yet they would not always bend to his will. They were noisy and demanded more than he was capable of giving, refused to behave as objects to be placed thus and thus. Exasperated, he left them in the care of his wife, and worked hard in Maitland’s employ, craving the compliance of numbers, the predictability of spreadsheets, the comfort of equations. Through the manipulation of numbers, he found a certain equilibrium.

  Maitland was a man who thrived on excitement and danger, so although initially he had scrutinised the accounts, asking Carter to explain this or that calculation, he soon became bored. Carter had earned the respect of his employer, because while Maitland did not understand the symmetry of numbers, he understood
the power of money, and he knew that Bernard Carter made his money work hard. What Maitland didn’t know was that his cash worked harder than the books ever showed.

  The men closest to Maitland treated Carter with respect, because they saw that Maitland treated him with respect. The others — those further from the source of power — mistook him for someone they might disrespect and mock. They called him ‘Bernie the Books’, commented on the way he dressed, disparaged the careful checks he made on Maitland’s stock, ridiculing his meticulous attention to detail. At such times, Carter turned to the passive creatures who would do his bidding for drugs or money and they suffered his pain for him.

  Yet pain was only one variable of a complex equation. His purpose was not merely to inflict suffering. This, unlike the mathematical formulae of his working life, was an imbalanced equation, a Gestalt, one in which the emotional and intellectual outcomes exceeded the basic input of pain plus scarring. He created art as well as provoking fear, and he changed the girls not only psychologically but physically, irrevocably, so that when they saw themselves they would think of Bernard Carter, and not smile or laugh or sneer. They might hide their scars under long sleeves and full-length skirts, but it was Carter who had indirectly imposed their choice of clothing on them, who maintained control of them long after he had forgotten their names, and thus became godlike in his influence and omnipresence.

  The simple truth that lay beneath all of his rationalisation was more mundane, though he never would admit it: he wanted — literally — to leave his mark, like the seven-year-old boy, writing his name again and again on the under-surface of a dining table.

  Not that he was without feeling. He loved his family as adjuncts to himself. He even regretted that in the first fevered moments of realisation, the first terrible hours of knowing that his life was forfeit, he had screamed at his wife, frightened his daughters, thinking only that he must get away — must consolidate his capital and then leave. He was tormented by that now. The fury, the cruel things he had said. His wife’s call, only hours earlier, had been an opportunity to take back some of those harsh words. And now, watching the sun changing tint as it dropped towards the horizon, seeing its peachy light warm the frosted oaks, he wished he had.

  He sighed. This cheap philosophising was the reason he found himself in this predicament. In the wide expanse of fields, in the sweep of land and sky, walkers, a farmer, even the postman labouring along the lanes on his bicycle seemed small and insignificant. The physical perspective was reassuring, and he had fancied himself invisible, forgetting that in an empty canvas, the eye is always drawn to the human form.

  Maitland spoke again. ‘I asked you a question.’

  Carter found it hard to listen. His ears rang — from the gunfire or the wound to his head — he wasn’t sure. His head wound seeped steadily onto his collar, slowly congealing, his nose was almost certainly broken and yet he felt serene.

  Maitland held a gun in his right hand. There was blood on the grip — Carter’s. Carter disliked guns, preferring the subtle finesse of a knife. He relished the hiss of steel slicing through flesh, like a pre-echo of the victim’s gasp of pain.

  He looked across the room at his two bodyguards, both bound and bruised. Lowe was panting and pale, bleeding from a bullet wound to his shoulder but sullenly defiant. Quinn, wild-eyed, struggled against his bonds.

  Carter wanted to tell him to be still, that his troubles were over. He felt a species of pity for Quinn and Lowe. This wasn’t their fight — not really — but they would suffer nevertheless.

  Maitland followed Carter’s gaze to Quinn, who fought the rope till it bit into his flesh.

  ‘Is he distracting you?’ Maitland took three steps across the room and shot Quinn in the head. His body jerked, then relaxed, subsiding at last.

  Maitland returned to the chair, where Carter was tied, hand and foot. ‘Now, do I have your undivided attention?’

  Carter heard laughter behind him. Maitland’s men, four of them. Graham was there, and three others he didn’t recognise — a bald guy and two younger men, pumped up on steroids and their faith in their own invulnerability. Their job was done for the moment, they were playing cards at the dining table while they awaited further instructions. This task Maitland had reserved for himself.

  Maitland rested the barrel of the gun against Carter’s cheek. It burned and he pulled away, sending a bolt of pain through his head. His ankles were strapped to the chair legs, his wrists to the wooden arms. Maitland placed one foot on the seat, tilting it a few inches backwards.

  ‘This isn’t necessary,’ Carter said.

  Maitland thought for a moment. ‘You steal my money, walk off with six million pounds’ worth of heroin . . .’

  Carter shook his head and Maitland tapped him hard on the nose with the barrel of the gun. A starburst of light exploded behind Carter’s eyes and he yelped in pain.

  ‘Don’t lie to me,’ Maitland said. ‘And don’t interrupt.’

  ‘I made you millions,’ Carter said, avoiding a direct denial. ‘I developed a portfolio of legitimate land and property ownership which is the envy of developers across the north of England.’

  Maitland leaned forward, and the chair tilted dangerously. ‘You stole my property.’ He took his foot from the chair. It teetered a moment, and Carter braced himself for the crack of his skull on the parquet floor, then, miraculously, the chair fell forward onto all four feet again. Maitland paced to the window, barely glancing at Quinn’s body.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. Meaning why did he keep the drugs, why didn’t he tell Maitland that he’d found Mark and killed him. He sounded reasonable — disappointed and hurt — but reasonable.

  ‘I did as you asked,’ Carter said. ‘I found him.’

  ‘The Elliott girl told you?’ There was no judgement in Maitland’s tone, he simply wanted to get the facts straight.

  Carter shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t give him up.’

  Maitland turned to face him. ‘Maybe she didn’t know where he was.’

  Carter shrugged. Wasn’t that just what Mark had said? In truth he had known ten minutes after he first confronted her that Jasmine was entirely ignorant of what Mark had done. ‘You told us you wanted Mark hurt.’

  Maitland moved closer, rested his hands on his knees, and stooped to look into Carter’s face, as if he was trying to peer through a dark window. Until now, Carter had found it impossible to return that steady gaze. Perhaps it was the anaesthetising effects of shock, but he was no longer afraid. He lifted his chin and stared back into Maitland’s wide-set eyes.

  ‘I’m seeing a whole new side to you, Bernie,’ Maitland said. ‘So. You waited at the Elliott house for Mark.’

  Carter nodded.

  ‘Why didn’t you finish it then? Why follow him out to the children’s home?’

  ‘I thought he might lead me to the money.’

  ‘And?’

  Carter looked past Maitland to the windows, where the sun was sinking slowly into an early evening mist. ‘He lied, like he always lied. He said he didn’t have it — that it was all a big mistake. He told me he’d never even touched the bags. Said the Dutch were mad bastards — that they’d double-crossed you.’

  Maitland’s eyes flickered a moment, considering the possibility. ‘Since the head honcho’s dead,’ he said, the hint of a smile on his face, ‘that’d be hard to prove one way or the other.’ He straightened up. ‘And why would he double-cross me?’

  ‘The police were already onto the Dutch consortium, but you were the bigger prize.’ Flattery usually worked with Maitland. ‘They did a deal.’

  ‘And what was that?’ Maitland asked. ‘Escape a life sentence by getting their heads blown off?’ There was a snort of laughter from the card players, and Maitland shifted his gaze briefly from Carter to his bodyguards.

  Carter licked his lips. He had to do better than this, but his head was still bleeding, it throbbed like a sledgehammer, and his body ached from sitting immobile in the cha
ir. Images of the real events kept interfering as he tried to piece together a story: Mark, bloodied and babbling, telling him everything in the hope that something might prove of interest. He could have crippled the lad, returned the booty to Maitland, earned himself a pat on the head. He might have found a way to explain the discrepancies in the audit, bought himself more time — but the money was too much temptation. Somehow, dealing with Maitland’s accounts seemed abstract. The huge sums of money he shifted from bank account to bank account, or filtered through the espresso machines of Tommy Eames’s coffee bars were merely figures in an equation. But when he’d held the money in his hands, it was too much to give away.

  After Mark found Jasmine’s body, he had followed the addict’s erratic course through Liverpool. When Mark’s battered old banger had sputtered to a halt, Carter was watching, following the boy’s progress as he’d shuffled along the street, the baby in his arms. When Mark turned in to the school gates of St Francis Xavier, Carter had found a tyre iron to force the boot open. No need to force the doors. Mark had left the passenger door unlocked.

  Carter toted the bags to his Audi and slid into the passenger seat. He’d balanced a stack of twenty-pound notes in one hand and a block of uncut heroin in the other, seeing a gleaming Merc in his left palm, and his daughters’ education — bought and paid for — in his right. The choice was simple: Mark was systematically destroying himself anyway — all Carter did was hasten the end.

  ‘You see what I’m saying, Bernie?’ Maitland said. ‘The Dutch turning on me — it just isn’t plausible.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t, but it’s what he said. Mark was lying — like he always lied. He tried to blame the Dutch, but he was the one who grassed you up.’