by Paul Gitsham
About the Author
PAUL GITSHAM started his career as a biologist, working in such exotic locales as Manchester and Toronto. After stints as the world’s most over-qualified receptionist and a spell making sure that international terrorists and other ne’er do wells hadn’t opened a Junior Savings Account at a major UK bank (a job even less exciting than being a receptionist) he retrained as a Science teacher. He now spends his time passing on his bad habits and sloppy lab-skills to the next generation of enquiring minds.
Paul has always wanted to be a writer and his final report on leaving primary school predicted he’d be the next Roald Dahl! For the sake of balance it should be pointed out that it also said ‘he’ll never get anywhere in life if his handwriting doesn’t improve’. Over twenty-five years later and his handwriting is worse than ever but millions of children around the world love him.*
You can learn more about Paul’s writing at www.paulgitsham.com or www.facebook.com/dcijones
* This is a lie, just ask any of the pupils he has taught.
Praise for Paul Gitsham
‘Once again Paul Gitsham has produced an utterly gripping thriller’
‘Brilliant from start to finish. Love this series’
‘Paul never lets you down’
‘Beautifully written, well plotted and well researched’
‘Up there with the best series’
Also by Paul Gitsham
The DCI Warren Jones series
The Last Straw
No Smoke Without Fire
Blood is Thicker than Water (Novella)
Silent as the Grave
A Case Gone Cold (Novella)
The Common Enemy
A Deadly Lesson (Novella)
Forgive Me Father
At First Glance (Novella)
A Price to Pay
PAUL GITSHAM
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020
Copyright © Paul Gitsham
Paul Gitsham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008331160
E-book Edition © June 2020 ISBN: 9780008301200
Version: 2020-04-27
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Praise for Paul Gitsham
Also by Paul Gitsham
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Monday 02 November
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Tuesday 03 November
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Wednesday 04 November
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Thursday 05 November
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Friday 06 November
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Saturday 07 November
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Sunday 08 November
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Monday 09 November
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Tuesday 10 November
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Wednesday 11 November
Chapter 38
Thursday 12 November
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Friday 13 November
Chapter 41
Saturday 14 November
Chapter 42
Sunday 15 November
Chapter 43
Monday 16 November
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Tuesday 17 November
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Wednesday 18 November
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Thursday 19 November
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Friday 20 November
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Saturday 21 November
Chapter 56
Sunday 22 November
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Thursday 26 November
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Wednesday 02 December
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Author Letter
Dear Reader …
Keep Reading …
About the Publisher
For Cheryl.
Prologue
The branches whipped at her face as she crashed through the trees. Her breath caught in her throat, her lungs labouring to keep up. Behind her, dogs barked and snarled, and she heard the shouts of her pursuers. The further into the woods she plunged, the darker it turned, the thickening canopy of leaves blocking ever more light.
A sudden burst of pain sent her sprawling to her knees, a fist in her mouth muffling her cries.
She couldn’t go on anymore.
She couldn’t.
Maybe if she turned around and went back they’d forgive her.
Maybe if she begged …
A shot rang out.
Going back wasn’t an option.
She’d just seen what they did to deserters.
She’d seen what they did to women like her.
She gritted her teeth, forcing herself back to her feet. She needed to continue her flight, putting as much distance as she could between her and the following men, before running was no longer possible.
She pushed on. The dogs were louder, and she shuddered at the memory of them. Huge, slavering things – she’d seen the way they attacked the dead rabbits thrown to them; chained up all day, they would be beside themselves at the prospect of a real, live prey to chase down.
The road was only a few hundred metres away; a busy, two-lane highway, the hiss of traffic was audible even at this time of night. There’s no way her pursuers would risk chasing her onto it.
She stumbled again, her foot sinking into a depression in the soft earth. She tried to get up, she really did, but she was exhausted.
What had she been thinking? Nobody ever escaped. Those who tried were dragged back and used as an example to everyo
ne else.
Another shot cracked the night sky open.
It was closer than the last, and the dogs were even louder.
The extra surge of adrenalin was enough to spur her on.
But her pace was now little more than a brisk walk.
It was the best she could do.
The sound of the road, the sound of freedom was getting louder, but the sound of the dogs was getting louder more quickly.
Another unseen obstacle, and she ended up flat on her face.
What was the point? Everything that she loved in the world was now gone. She rolled onto her back, too exhausted to care about the blood trickling down her face from her broken nose. She felt her eyes close. Just a few seconds’ rest …
This time the shot was so close, she heard the leaves above her rustle.
No! She wouldn’t give in. Too much had already been sacrificed. If she gave up, if she died here, those sacrifices would have been in vain, and the memory of his selfless love would die with her.
Clambering back to her knees, she half crawled, half walked, towards the road.
This time when the pain came, there was no ignoring it.
‘No, no, no,’ she whimpered. Not now. Just a few minutes more.
Behind her, she heard the baying and snapping of the dogs and the shout of their handlers.
It was over. The dogs would be on her in seconds. There was no way she could keep ahead of them now. Sinking into the soil, she prayed to a god who seemed to have been deaf to her pleas for as long as she could remember.
Please make it quick.
She fell to her side, welcoming the encroaching darkness, looking forward to the release from suffering.
Suddenly, bright, dazzling beams of lights cut through the trees, turning night into day wherever their dancing cones landed. Overhead the night was shattered by a loud clattering. Now she could hear the handlers shouting, calling back their snarling charges.
But she was too far gone to care, wave after wave of pain passing through her, until eventually the darkened forest turned pitch black and she remembered nothing more.
Monday 02 November
Chapter 1
It had been a fairly quiet few weeks. Some might even say boring. DCI Warren Jones felt his head start to dip and he dug his nails into the palms of his hands. Nodding off in the middle of a budget meeting before they even got to the coloured printouts of this year’s projections would be rude, especially in a room full of his peers, some of whom seemed to regard it as the most exciting event in their calendar.
There weren’t even any decent biscuits.
What he wouldn’t give for some real policing right now. A good, meaty case he could get his teeth into, with leads to chase down and suspects to grill.
The current speaker switched slides. A quick look at the graph with its downward trends told Warren everything he needed to know. Fewer front-line officers, less money to pay for outsourced forensics services, and another cull of support staff. It didn’t seem as though the cuts extended to turning the heating down in the briefing rooms, although it was a mystery to him why this even required a meeting; an email would have sufficed.
Warren resisted the urge to look at his phone sitting face down on the desk in front of him. He hated when people did that; it was the height of bad manners.
On the opposite side of the room, the door opened, and a middle-aged man with a name badge on a Hertfordshire Police lanyard came in. Apologizing to the speaker, he scuttled around the table. Warren saw glimmers of disappointment on the faces of his colleagues as the support worker passed them by. He felt a surge of much-needed adrenalin as it soon became apparent that the man was heading for him.
‘Lucky bugger,’ muttered the DSI sitting next to him.
The man leant down and spoke quietly into Warren’s ear.
Hiding a smile of relief, Warren apologized to the rest of the attendees and made his way to the door. Clearly, somebody upstairs had been listening to his silent pleas.
Be careful what you wish for.
The crime scene was already surrounded by a cordon when Warren arrived. An ambulance, lights off, sat silently. Two paramedics sat on the back step of the parked vehicle, keeping the chill, November air at bay with a thermos of coffee. Their patient was well beyond anything they could do.
Parking up, Warren signed the scene log and fetched his murder bag from the boot. He would wait until the last minute before putting on his paper Teletubby suit, gloves, booties, hairnet and facemask. Even at this time of the year it would get uncomfortably sweaty very quickly.
Already there were swarms of white-suited crime scene investigators going about their business. He wondered if they ever got used to the protective gear, or if they just learnt to put up with it.
The smell of tobacco smoke was accompanied by the sound of rustling. Warren turned to see Detective Sergeant Shaun Grimshaw heading his way. The man’s paper suit was folded down, so that only his legs were covered. He carefully stubbed out his cigarette on the edge of his packet, before placing it inside the box.
At least he wasn’t contaminating the crime scene, thought Warren, though to be fair, they were still well outside the police tape.
‘I take it you’ve been in already?’
Grimshaw nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s a bloodbath.’ He motioned toward the paramedics. ‘Nowt for them to do, that’s for sure.’
‘Talk me through it before I go in and see for myself.’
Grimshaw turned and pointed down the street. ‘The victim’s in the rear ground-floor room of the massage parlour. According to the girls who were working, it’s one of the clients. A white male, mid-twenties I’d say. He was on his back, relaxing after a full-body massage. The girl servicing him said she’d popped out of the room to let him chill out for a bit and was fetching fresh towels for the next client, when she heard a scream.’
‘What do you mean, “servicing him”? Are we talking sex work?’
Grimshaw shrugged. ‘Supposedly it’s not that type of place, but who knows? I’ve seen the two girls working here, and they’re above the local average, if you get my drift.’
Warren let the insinuation slide; he’d speak to the Sexual Exploitation Unit later, and see if they had any intelligence on the establishment.
‘Then what?’
‘The girl …’ he looked at his notebook ‘… Biljana Dragić, raced back in and she reckons there was somebody in a black hoodie removing a knife from the middle of the victim’s chest. She said the window was open, and he climbed out, ran across the yard and through their back gate. She didn’t see his face.
‘She called for help and tried to stop the bleeding with towels. Another girl, Malina Dragić, heard her, came in and tried to help her, but they reckon he was already dead.’
‘The same surname and it sounds Eastern European. Are they related?’
‘Sisters, and they are Serbian nationals. With work visas. They were very keen for me to know that.’
‘Where does the back gate lead to?’
‘There’s an alleyway. He could have gone either direction, towards the high street or into the estate behind. Jorge’s already down there with a team of uniforms looking for witnesses.’
‘It’s the middle of the afternoon on a Monday. There should have been someone around,’ said Warren. ‘Presumably the killer was covered in blood, and you say he took the knife with him?’
‘Yeah, the girls reckon he pulled it out. There are bloody smears on the window where he escaped.’
‘Then either he’s run away covered in blood, he’s stopped to take his clothes off and ditched them, or he got changed. Get a team out looking for the knife and any discarded clothes.’
‘Will do.’
‘Whilst you’re at it, get Mags Richardson to start collecting CCTV and licence plate numbers. If he didn’t escape on foot, he might have used a vehicle.’
‘It’s a slightly dodgy area; Jorge reckons some of the houses might have security
cameras out the front, so he’s got his team looking for that as well. There’s CCTV in the reception area and out the back, but none in the actual massage rooms. I guess you don’t want that sort of thing on camera.’
Again, Warren ignored the implication.
‘How many staff and clients were on the premises at the time?’
‘There were no other clients at the time of the murder – it’s pretty quiet this time of the week. There were just the two masseuses.’
‘What about the owner?’
‘She’s on her way.’ He looked at his watch. ‘She’ll be here any minute now, I reckon, in this traffic.’
‘I want to speak to the masseuses when Forensics have finished with them.’
‘You might need a translator. Their English is pretty basic.’
‘Get one organized. Do we know who the victim is?’
‘Just a first name, “Stevie”, and a mobile number. They’re pretty old school; they use a paper diary to book in clients.’
‘Bag the diary as evidence. Send the mobile number back to Rachel Pymm and see if she can do anything with it. Who’s the crime scene manager?’
‘Andy Harrison.’
Warren nodded his approval. So far, everything had been done by the book.
‘Good work, Shaun. I’ll go and take a look.’
The rather grandiosely titled Middlesbury Massage and Relaxation Centre was a converted detached house, similar to dozens of small business across the town. The small garden at the front had been tarmacked over to create enough space for two medium-sized cars, whilst the large bay windows had been covered in signage advertising the services offered within, and products customers could buy to supposedly re-create the experience at home.
Warren stepped carefully onto the metal boards laid down by the CSIs to preserve any trace evidence such as footprints in the entranceway.
Inside, the wall between the entrance hall and what would originally have been a spacious front sitting room, had been knocked through to make a large reception-cum-waiting area with a desk, computer, till point and several comfy chairs. Towards the back were two small tables, each with a comfortable-looking recliner and a more practical work chair. Judging by the bottles of nail varnish and acetone on the tables, this was where the manicures and pedicures took place. Even through his mask, Warren’s nose was assaulted by a heady mix of different scented oils.