Dead Souls: A gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist Book 6

by Angela Marsons

  Bryant almost spat out his drink.

  She sighed. ‘Oh, all right, it wasn’t a skinny latte but you get the picture. Around his own team he’s personable, amusing, just as I remember him but with me, well…’

  ‘Didn’t you two get on once?’ Bryant asked, quietly.

  ‘A long time ago,’ she replied.

  He looked at her. ‘What was it – four or five years ago? There were a lot of rumours, back then about…’

  Kim crossed her arms in front of her. Yeah, she’d heard the rumours too, and she hadn’t responded to a single one of them. She opened her mouth to explain to Bryant the type of police officer Tom had been, but she couldn’t. The very example she’d been about to use was the thing of which she’d promised never to speak. And she never would.

  ‘He wasn’t always like this,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘Some people just work differently more er… organised than…’

  ‘Are you saying I’m not organised?’ she asked.

  ‘In your own way, eh? Let’s just leave it at that.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘That’s one of those things you’d only dare say to me as Kim, right?’

  ‘Hell yeah. Now tell me about the case.’

  ‘Doctor A suspects three separate victims, buried elsewhere first. We have a fibre and a bullet wound.’

  ‘Guns?’ Bryant asked.

  She nodded. Any crime concerning firearms was still an exception in their neck of the woods.

  ‘We have a possible description of our first victim. We still have no clue how old the bones are or how long they’ve been buried. She’s briefed her colleague, Marina, who will continue the excavation at site, now that Dr A’s transferred to the morgue to start putting it all together.’

  ‘Oh, Keats will be pleased,’ Bryant observed.

  ‘No less pleased than Doctor A. She contacted the HTA but they wouldn’t issue—’

  ‘Back up,’ Bryant interrupted. ‘What’s the HTA?’

  ‘Human Tissue Authority. They issue licenses for morgues, even temporary ones. But there’s no building on-site with running water, one of the basic requirements, so the remains have to be transported back to the morgue. Trust me, she would have preferred to stay on-site.’

  Kim knew that Doctor A was very much like herself and would have preferred all aspects of the forensic operation in the same place. Where she could better control it.

  ‘Anything interesting about the site?’

  ‘Actually, yes. The farm is leased by the Cowley family. Father, son and daughter. I have no idea about the mother yet. The daughter is a terrier who refused permission to search the property, and her brother was involved in a shooting incident earlier today.’

  Bryant’s eyes were wide.

  ‘Exactly that,’ she exclaimed, pointing to his face. ‘That’s exactly what I’m not getting from Travis.’

  ‘And with all that you’re home and showered before half seven?’

  ‘Precisely,’ she said.

  Armed with so much information, her team would have been investigating, researching, prodding and probing until either they or the options available to them were exhausted.

  ‘Oh, and I get the feeling there’s no love lost between the Cowley family and the Preece family who own the land.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Kim. It’s even got me excited. Are you sure you can’t wrestle this case away from West Mercia?’

  Kim had thought it a hundred times. If only she’d had a pound for every time she’d been tempted to call Stacey or wished that Bryant was in the car beside her.

  Only her respect for her boss had stopped her.

  ‘I gave Woody my word that I would try to make it work,’ she said.

  He nodded his understanding. ‘Must be killing you not being in total control, though,’ he said, with mild amusement.

  ‘You have no idea. Anyway, enough about me. How are the kids? You and Dawson bonding?’

  ‘Oh yeah, he’s coming for a sleepover at the weekend,’ he offered, drolly.

  ‘How about Stacey?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Yeah, Kim had thought as much. Stacey was a detective that worked better under pressure. When pushed, her brain created magical friction that transferred to her fingers.

  ‘Can’t you two involve her more?’ she asked.

  Bryant sipped his coffee. ‘Trying to but we need to give her a starting point and we haven’t got that yet.’

  ‘I heard that Henryk guy was beaten pretty bad,’ she said.

  Bryant nodded. ‘His family has been threatened. Wife and three young children. Text messages are beyond vile and clearly from a total sicko. There have been threatening letters, vandalism and insults scratched into their door.’

  ‘Is the family safe?’ she asked.

  He coloured slightly. ‘Yeah, they’re safe,’ he said, pushing himself off the stool. ‘Anyways, I’d better…’

  ‘What have you done?’ she asked. ‘I know that look.’

  Bryant shook his head, and started to back away.

  She joined the dots together. A woman on her own with young children, receiving vile and violent threats and a husband incapacitated in hospital.

  ‘They’re at your house, aren’t they?’

  ‘On the basis of plausible deniability for you, I’m going to choose not to answer that.’

  He didn’t need to. She was tempted to remind him of protocols and rules and witness distance, but that would have been hypocritical and it wouldn’t have changed a thing. Nothing Kim said about his career would have trumped children in danger.

  ‘Just be careful,’ she warned.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, as he got to the door.

  ‘Can you hold the morning briefing tomorrow?’ she asked.

  ‘No problem,’ he said, as he stepped through the door.

  He paused and turned. ‘Oh, and Kim, just because you’re not in control doesn’t mean you can’t be in control.’

  Kim smiled as she closed the door behind him.

  The smile didn’t last long.

  There was a sense of foreboding growing inside her, and she knew it had something to do with her team.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Dawson had the sudden urge to roll up little balls of paper and flick them across the desk at Stacey. The set expression of her face told him she wouldn’t appreciate it, but he was convinced eventually she’d lighten up and they could exchange knowing glances behind the backs of the adults, like they normally did.

  He knew his irritation was from Bryant leading the briefing. They were the same rank, yet he hadn’t been asked to do it. His colleague was standing there trying to fill a boss-sized hole and it wasn’t working.

  He knew he was being unfair but he couldn’t rid himself of the phrase ‘Be careful what you wish for.’

  Not so long ago he’d confided in his boss that he was sick of working alone and yet one full day of being stuck with Bryant had disabused him of that opinion. Around his colleague he felt constricted, like the man was judging his every move. It affected the way he was doing his job. He just wished the boss would come back and take Bryant off his hands.

  ‘Any luck with the number that offered Henryk the casual work?’ Bryant asked.

  Stacey shook her head. ‘No, but I’m almost finished with tracing the number that sent the racist messages.’

  ‘Great,’ Bryant answered.

  But Dawson knew it wasn’t good news. If one contact was difficult to trace and the other wasn’t, he would bet they’d been sent by different people. And much as he wanted to know who had sent the sick threats to Henryk and his family, he suspected it wasn’t the same person who had attacked Henryk in the car park.

  ‘Check with forensics, Stace. See if they have anything at all.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Is it worth going back to our witness? See if she’s remembered anything else?’ Dawson asked.

  Bryant shook his head. ‘I think our time is better
spent checking the CCTV.’

  Great, Dawson could hardly wait. Hours of poring over grainy images, looking for an average-looking white guy dressed in black. They’d have him by lunchtime.

  ‘It’s the neighbour,’ Stacey said, suddenly.

  Dawson frowned. ‘Huh?’

  ‘The text messages. The filthy, threatening ones came from the Kowalski’s next-door neighbour, Gary Flint.’

  Bryant sat back in his chair. ‘You’re joking?’

  Stacey offered him a sharp look.

  ‘Right next door?’ Dawson asked, feeling the nausea rise in his stomach. The texts had been graphic, violent, sick – and all the time he’d been right next door?

  Initially, Dawson had been mystified by Bryant’s decision to move the family into his own home. He didn’t officially know, and he preferred it that way. But he’d overheard the phone calls Bryant had made to his wife. He’d thought his colleague was overreacting, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  Bryant grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. ‘That’ll be our first port of call this morning,’ he said, with an authority that caused Dawson to grind his teeth. ‘And Stace, can you check on the rest of the neighbours? See if they’ve got any markers for violence.’ He paused. ‘Particularly numbers twelve, sixteen and twenty.’

  Dawson recalled they were the windows with the BNP stickers.

  ‘Yeah, more busywork,’ Stacey muttered as he and Bryant headed out the door.

  Dawson waited until they were outside the building before he spoke.

  ‘Hey, Bryant, any idea what’s up with Stace?’

  Bryant shook his head. ‘Seems okay to me.’

  Dawson hid his smile as he got into the passenger seat.

  Looked like this wannabe boss didn’t notice everything, after all.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Kim idly wondered how many times she could bounce her head off the table before it began to bleed. She had deliberately placed herself at the back of the room so that the frustration on her face would go unnoticed, although the thunk of her skull on wood would definitely elicit a glance or two.

  So far, the day was replicating the day before. She had collected Travis from his home, watched the awkward embrace between him and his wife, and spent the journey to the Kidderminster briefing in silence.

  Being a ghost at the briefings of a case she was co-heading was beginning to grind on her nerves. She could feel questions bubbling in the back of her throat, despite the silent instruction from Travis that this was his playground.

  ‘So, are the warrants through for the Cowley family?’ Travis asked, from the top of the room.

  The guy with the bandana nodded.

  ‘Johnson, Gibbs, go along and oversee the search. Remain sensitive to the family and let me know if anything develops.’

  The last sentence was completely unnecessary, Kim observed.

  ‘Lynda, keep in touch with the hospital and let me know when Billy Cowley wakes up. We need to know what happened there.’

  Thank goodness he’d seen sense about investigating the so-called shooting accident.

  ‘Penn, start looking at the description from Doctor A and see if you can match it to any of the missing persons reports.’

  ‘Any indication of how long back we’re talking?’ Penn asked hopefully.

  Travis walked towards Penn’s desk and took back the pot plant from the previous day. He placed it on the top table. ‘And that’s for expecting everything to come to you on a plate, wanting an easy life,’ Travis said, smiling.

  Oh, she was trying so hard to stay quiet.

  ‘What do we know about the Cowleys?’ she asked, taking herself by surprise.

  Six heads turned her way. Kim suddenly felt like the naughty kid at the back of the classroom. She realised that analogy was a little too close for comfort.

  Travis coloured with rage. She considered for a moment his anger versus her boredom and frustration, which would manifest as rage for the rest of the day. She ignored him and continued. He could thank her later.

  ‘The family, what do we know? Where’s the mother? Why the obstruction from the daughter? How long have they leased the land? Who?…’

  ‘Twenty-seven years,’ Lynda offered, answering her fourth question before glancing at her boss.

  ‘It’s all in the briefing document,’ Travis said.

  ‘Pretend I can’t read,’ Kim said, ignoring the little darts of hatred coming her way.

  Lynda continued: ‘Not sure about the mother yet, but the daughter is a solicitor and the son is a bit of a loser. He’s had a dozen jobs, not lasting in any of them and has been between jobs for the last three years. He still lives at home with his father. Fiona Cowley does not.’

  Everyone in the room was now looking at Lynda.

  Kim nodded for her to continue.

  ‘For the first fifteen years of the lease, Cowley farm was a thriving, successful business supplying mainly beef to local supermarkets. The foot-and-mouth outbreak decimated their stock, and they haven’t recovered since. They’ve tried different things to gain an income from the property. A farm shop from one of the barns was closed down by Environmental Health, and one of the lower fields that brought a small income from camping flooded three years ago.’

  Kim saw the interest on the faces of her colleagues.

  It was now a possibility that the Cowleys were a desperate family.

  ‘Thank you, Lynda,’ Kim said.

  Now she’d succeeded in getting one of them to speak to her, she considered shutting up and then changed her mind. Travis was raging now anyway.

  ‘What about the landowners, the Preece family?’ she said to no one in particular.

  Bandana boy turned towards her.

  ‘Robson Preece is the fourth Preece heir to expand the land fortune owned by the family for the last two hundred years. He’s in his mid-seventies now but the family fortune has almost quadrupled under his control.’

  ‘What type of land?’ Kim asked.

  ‘Anything. There’s barely a square mile of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and the Midlands that the family hasn’t owned at some stage over the last two centuries. The portfolio includes plots big enough for a decent-sized supermarket up to vast estates of farmland.’

  ‘And what do they do with it?’ Kim asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing. They buy it, hold it and sell it. The family has profited heavily from the housebuilding boom in the last twenty years.’

  ‘Okay, thank you, Penn,’ Travis said, sharply.

  Kim considered asking him to continue, but that would have been deeply unprofessional and it helped the team not at all to see blatant division in the line of authority.

  But the briefing had finally become interesting.

  ‘Lynda, anything on the attempted abduction from yesterday?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to the woman, Mrs Umgabe, and let me tell you they picked the wrong one there,’ she offered with a wide-eyed smile. ‘She said a van pulled up beside her and two men jumped out, one grabbed her arm and, to quote her accurately, “I maced the bastard”.’

  Kim smiled along with everyone else. Except Travis.

  ‘Circulated the description of two average-sized white males and started checking local CCTV.’

  ‘Share the load with Lewis,’ he said, nodding towards the youngest, quietest member of the team. ‘And stay on top of the hospital.’

  Lynda wheeled her chair across as Travis headed back into his office.

  Just for a minute it had felt like she was doing her job, but it had been short-lived. Kim began to wonder if Travis’s hatred towards her trumped the need to solve this investigation.

  As he closed the office door behind him, she questioned if he would cling to his animosity, whatever the cost.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Stacey breathed a sigh of relief when they left. Yesterday she had welcomed their interaction. Today she did not.

  She had the distinct feeling that Bryant was giving her busyw
ork, but unlike Dawson she didn’t resent the work instructions coming from the older sergeant. To her it was the natural order of things. Despite both her male colleagues holding the same rank, there was a seniority in Bryant. She wasn’t sure if that was because the boss chose to spend most of her time with him or because of his age and experience. But the man had her respect.

  Although, she had to admit that seeing the barely concealed petulance on the face of Dawson had brightened her morning.

  Oh well, she thought, firing up the electoral roll website. She’d find out about the people at the addresses Bryant had requested. She’d do some digging into their backgrounds. The email to forensics had left her inbox before the two of them had left the building.

  Yes, she would complete the tasks she’d been given, she thought, with a feeling of delicious mystery. Because today she had a purpose.

  She lowered her head and focussed.

  Once she’d completed these requests, she could begin the secret project of her own.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Kim pulled off the car park into a line of traffic. All animation in the face of her passenger had been replaced by red hot rage.

  ‘Let it out, Tom,’ she offered, calmly.

  He ignored her.

  ‘You’ll feel much better,’ she insisted, finally reaching the traffic island.

  ‘Shut up, Stone,’ he growled.

  ‘Tom, are you really prepared to let—’

  ‘No, Stone, seriously, shut up,’ he said, winding down his window.

  She could hear sirens in the distance.

  Travis switched on his radio and listened carefully.

  He turned to her. ‘Hit-and-run just up ahead.’

  She wound down her window and listened. The sirens were behind them. ‘They’re never gonna get through,’ she observed.

  ‘Agreed,’ he said.

  She indicated left and beeped her horn twice before pulling the Golf onto the pavement and then onto a car sales forecourt. Travis was out before she had switched off the engine.

  She scrambled out of the driver’s side and threw the car keys at a stunned car salesman.