THE MURDERER'S SON a gripping crime thriller full of twists

by Joy Ellis

  * * *

  Marie ran around the side of the farmhouse. Immediately the back garden flooded with light from the security system. She found herself in a beautifully designed patio area of flagstones and raised flower beds full of bright colours. One side of the garden had a long Victorian-style loggia which was covered in a cascade of clematis and roses. But Marie knew that this was not the time to wax lyrical about the Fleets’ garden.

  ‘You check the French windows!’ called out Jackman as he ran past her. ‘I’ll get the back door.’

  She grabbed the brass handles and turned. ‘Locked, sir.’

  ‘Same here, damn it.’ Jackman sounded edgy.

  ‘There’s another door further along.’ Marie went around Jackman and approached a smaller door. It had etched glass panels in the top half, and she could see that it opened directly into a utility room that housed a washing machine and a large tumble-dryer. She twisted the handle, and it opened inwards. ‘Okay, we’re in,’ she whispered, ‘as long as the internal door isn’t locked.’

  It wasn’t, and soon she and Jackman were systematically checking the rooms. ‘Downstairs all clear.’

  They approached the wide staircase, and Marie felt her heart begin to pump harder. Over the years she had found some very unpleasant things during house searches. The only thing she never found was nothing at all.

  But Berrylands turned out to be the exception. The bedrooms were empty, and nothing seemed to be out of place, as far as she could tell. There was a sense of disorder and intrusion, left over from the search for evidence following Alison Fleet’s murder, but nothing else. They double-checked all the rooms, and Jackman even climbed the loft ladder and looked around the attic. Then they went back downstairs.

  For some reason they both made for the kitchen.

  Marie stood where she had been when the brutalised body of Alison Fleet was lying on the quarry-tile floor, and took a deep breath.

  Something was wrong.

  ‘You feel it too?’ Jackman asked softly.

  Marie nodded. Bruce Fleet’s car keys lay on the scrubbed pine table. ‘Keys,’ she muttered.

  ‘Car keys.’ Her head snapped up. ‘Okay, so Bruce’s car is out front, but didn’t Alison have a car too? Where is it?’

  Jackman straightened. ‘There’s a garage block on the other side of the property.’ He moved quickly towards the back door and unlocked it. ‘Come on!’

  Together they ran out and around the house to a big gravelled area for turning and parking vehicles, but even before they reached the garage, they could hear a familiar, low, rumbling noise inside.

  Tiny tendrils of exhaust fumes were seeping from beneath the doors.

  ‘Oh shit!’ exclaimed Jackman, yanking on the heavy wooden door. ‘It’s locked on the inside!’

  ‘Personnel door!’ Marie dashed around the side of the building. ‘At least that will be easier to break down.’

  Luckily the upper half of the smaller door was glass, and it yielded immediately to Jackman’s elbow.

  Marie slipped her hand over the remaining shards, and deftly turned the key.

  ‘Cover your mouth and nose. This stuff is dangerous even in small doses.’ Jackman pulled his jacket up to his face. ‘Breathe in as little as you can. You get to the car and switch off the ignition. I’ll try to unlock the main doors and let in as much air as possible.’

  Marie knew they were too late. Bruce Fleet had been out of reach for hours. She also knew that they could be risking their own health for a dead man, but they had to do it. ‘Hell, I didn’t think this could happen these days, not with catalytic converters?’

  ‘Look at the car.’

  As Marie pulled her own jacket tightly across the lower part of her face, she saw the old Morris Minor Traveller. Alison Fleet’s idea of a run-around was a classic museum piece. ‘Oh bloody great!’ She glanced at Jackman. ‘Let’s go.’

  They both heaved in a lungful of air, and ran into the garage.

  Bruce Fleet had done a thorough job. Not only had he locked the garage doors, he had also locked himself inside the old car. But it was an old car, and Marie immediately saw the hosepipe running through the back window and into the Morris’s interior. Grabbing a garden spade from a collection of tools hanging on one wall, she forced it into the gap, and levered it upward. The winding mechanism snapped, the window crashed down, and she had immediate access to the door lock.

  Already her lungs were burning, but she leant over the driver’s seat, turned off the engine, then felt for a pulse in the man’s neck.

  ‘Dead?’ asked Jackman, mumbling through tightly closed lips.

  She nodded, moderately sure that she was right, but she nonetheless leaned down Bruce Fleet’s side and pulled on the door release.

  Jackman had opened both big doors and air was now rushing in, but still they dared not breathe. Together they hauled the heavy body from the car and dragged him outside, where they fell in a heap on the gravel, coughing, choking and gasping for air.

  After a few moments, Jackman checked the man’s vital signs again, then pulled his phone from his pocket and rang the incident in.

  ‘It’s too late for him, but I’m afraid we need to be checked over.’

  ‘I thought we breathed in carbon monoxide all the time, one way or another?’ Marie thought of heavy smokers and poorly ventilated rooms.

  ‘And every time you do, you diminish the number of red blood cells carrying oxygen to your body.’ He smiled at her. ‘Don’t worry the medics are on their way and they’ll give us some oxygen. Are you feeling okay?’

  ‘Bit of a headache, but other than that I’m fine. How about you?’

  ‘The same. I think we’ll live.’ He gazed down at the crimson-faced dead man. ‘Unlike Bruce Fleet. We are looking at a lot of questions here, aren’t we? Was it just grief, do you think?’

  Marie raised her eyebrows. ‘Or guilt?’ She leaned forward to look closer at something sticking out of Fleet’s breast pocket. ‘Well, I’ll be . . .’ She pulled on a glove and carefully removed the folded sheet of paper. ‘He made it almost impossible to rescue him, but it looks like he’s been kind enough to leave us a note.’ She unfolded it. ‘I need some light.’

  Jackman pulled a small Maglite from his pocket and shone the beam onto the white paper.

  Marie read aloud:

  “I am sorry. Sorry to have to choose an easy death, rather than live out an agonising life. Sorry for everything that happened. Sorry for my friends. If they loved me, this will cause them pain. If they didn’t really love me, it will still be shocking. And finally, sorry to the one who finds me, but at least asphyxiation is gentler on the eye than death inflicted by the blade. BSF”

  Jackman let out a low whistle. ‘Contrite and poetic, I’m sure, but no mention of his beloved wife.’

  ‘Was he ill? An agonising life usually means that someone can’t bear the pain any longer.’

  ‘He looked fit as a fiddle. Maybe he’s talking about the agony of losing Alison?’

  ‘Or the agony of screwing up his life in some way?’

  ‘Or living with the fact that he’s a killer. Maybe the reference to the blade means something, and “I’m sorry for what happened.” That’s a bit ambiguous, isn’t it?’

  They stared at the note, half hoping that everything would miraculously become crystal clear. It didn’t. Marie carefully folded it again and slipped it back into the man’s pocket. ‘Forensics will want this left in situ.’ She sat back on her heels and wished the headache would go away.

  ‘I suppose it really is suicide?’

  Marie didn’t laugh at this. Jackman would have seen some very strange things in his time on the force, and she herself had seen murder take on a variety of forms. It was possible that it was murder disguised as suicide.

  ‘Gut says suicide.’

  He kicked aimlessly at the gravel. ‘I agree, but where this case is concerned, I won’t be a hundred per cent convinced about anything until Jacobs confirms it
.’

  ‘Well, first thing tomorrow I’m going to ask Max to find out everything he can about Bruce Fleet. He’s been working on Alison Fleet, and there are a lot of mysteries attached to that lady. Maybe they spill over into her husband’s life.’

  Jackman sat down on the ground next to her. ‘And I’m going to have to talk to Lucy Richards. I promised I would, and I can’t do it over the phone. It wouldn’t be fair.’

  Marie reached out and gently touched his arm. ‘If this gas is as wicked as you reckon, you need some oxygen and some rest before you go racing off breaking the sad news to relatives. Let uniform handle it for you. They’ll send someone to the house, and they are very good at it.’ She looked at his worried face and admired his sense of responsibility. Jackman liked things done properly, and as he had promised Lucy that he would update her on her brother’s welfare, then naturally he would be the one to go and break the news. End of.

  ‘No, I’ll go. A lungful of oxygen will soon sort me out.’ His head fell forward and his voice dropped almost to a whisper. ‘This case is going to hell in a handcart, isn’t it?’

  Marie sighed. ‘It is a tad confusing, but I’m certain more information about the Fleets’ background and private life will answer a lot of questions. Max and Charlie are well underway with their enquiries, so it shouldn’t take long.’

  Jackman smiled wearily. ‘Always the glass half full, aren’t you, Marie?’

  She grinned. ‘Someone has to be.’ She looked up. ‘And I do believe I hear the sound of an oxygen cylinder winging its way across the fens.’

  Blues and twos in the distance lifted her spirits. She’d had enough of Berrylands. She had only been here twice, and on both occasions she had been presented with a dead body. Suddenly her quiet little home in Church Mews seemed very attractive indeed.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  With his cat clasped tightly in his arms, Daniel wandered around Skye’s flat, talking constantly. He couldn’t bear the silence. He had tried the television, but every channel seemed to carry something more inane than the last.

  ‘I wish she had locked me in,’ he murmured to the cat. He had tried to find a way to ask Skye, to beg her to lock the doors and windows, and take the keys with her. But he’d seen her face, pale and gaunt with worry, and he knew he couldn’t inflict further anguish on her. The idea would have sounded insane to her, and would probably have confirmed the fears that were no doubt incubating in her mind.

  He went into the bathroom and searched through the cupboard for something to make him sleep, but there was nothing. Skye had no problem sleeping. As he already knew, Skye was one of those healthy people who kept little more than paracetamol in her medicine cabinet.

  Daniel walked back to the bedroom and pulled back the duvet. He bent down and sniffed gently at the pillow. It smelled of her fragrance, something sweet and flowery, summery, just like her. Tears welled up in his eyes. He wanted her here with him. He was desperate to hold her close, to dive into those blue, blue eyes, nestle in that fresh-smelling hair and kiss her clear, pale skin. He wanted to move on top of her, enter her and lose himself in her. It was the only time he ever felt peace, and the terrible thoughts and ideas stayed away. It was the only time he was truly happy.

  How could he even think he would hurt her? He would never hurt her. The Daniel that lay crying into her pillow could never hurt Skye Wynyard. The problem lay with the other Daniel, the one who woke up and didn’t know where he’d been, who had precious minutes and hours stolen from him. The one whose head hurt so much that it felt like exploding. What of him?

  Daniel curled up into the foetal position and, still crying, placed his thumb in his mouth and sucked.

  * * *

  PC Kevin Stoner dressed quickly, then ran down the stairs and into the hall. He paused for a moment to make a swift appraisal of his appearance in the full-length mirror. Black jeans, black T-shirt and a plain black hoodie. Perfect. He looked like any other bored and unidentifiable youth roaming the streets after dark. Only he wasn’t bored, and he wasn’t intending to aimlessly roam anywhere. Kevin’s nocturnal activities had a very definite purpose.

  He checked his watch, then walked into the kitchen where he poured himself a shot of vodka. The alcohol jolted through his head like a firework exploding in his sinuses. This wasn’t his usual way of hitting the town, but tonight’s entertainment was about as far from his normal hedonistic routine as it got.

  He walked into the lounge and sat down. On the leather sofa beside him was a small Nike sports bag. He’d checked the contents three times already, and his fingers played anxiously with the zipper. Everything’s there, he told himself. His face grew hard, his eyes narrowed and his lips tightened. His plan would work, and he would be able to get his life back on track again. In future he would have to be a damned sight more courageous than he’d been in the past. That would mean discovering just how much forgiveness his father had in his puritanical heart, but it would have to be done. Nothing like this was ever going to happen to him again. No one would ever make him feel dirty or weak, and no one would ever threaten his family. After tonight, his life would take on a very different aspect.

  He looked again at his watch. Timing was crucial, but the second hand dragged terribly slowly around the face of his watch. He couldn’t be early. Taking a deep breath, Kevin stood and picked up the holdall. There was no going back now. He was committed to his assignment, and he’d see it through to the end. With an unaccustomed prayer, he found his house keys and strode through the front door.

  He didn’t dare take his car, but he was fit and knew exactly how long it would take him to walk to Riverside Crescent. As he marched along he went over what he was going to do. He believed he had made provision for any unexpected hiccups.

  As he went he began to relax, and he even afforded himself a little smile. This whole thing was only possible because Zane Prewett was such a nasty piece of work. His mission tonight would succeed because Kevin was a conscientious and observant policeman, and his partner a lying shit. And because he was a lying shit and a bully, Prewett would never expect his meek and terrified little nancy boy of a crewmate to lift a finger against him.

  Kevin’s smile widened. Oh, Zane, how wrong could you be!

  As he turned the corner into Riverside Crescent, Kevin saw a police patrol car move slowly away from him. He took it as a good omen. Even the boys in blue were working to schedule. As it disappeared he stayed close to the road’s neatly clipped hedges and then slipped silently into the garden of the Kinder house. There were two points where he could safely approach the property without activating the security lights, and he moved cat-like, between shrubs, trees and flower beds, until he reached the side door to the integral garage. In his pocket was a key and a sheet of paper, courtesy, albeit without his knowledge, of PC Zane Prewett. He slipped the key into the lock, moved quickly inside, then hurried through to the hall and looked for the security alarm keypad. He took a torch from his bag and punched in the numbers written on the paper, then waited nervously. There was a double beeping sound, and to his relief, he saw a green light flash up on the display. Stage one completed.

  With adrenalin pumping through his veins, he began to experience the kind of buzz that villains must get when they turn over a big job. However, most of them wouldn’t be doing it with help from Old Bill. And most of them wouldn’t be lucky enough to be walking in with a spare key. Zane was certainly thorough when he handed over such sensitive information to his criminal friends.

  Kevin made his way into the lounge, and was delighted to see that it had been cleaned and tidied since they had removed Daniel Kinder’s weird art mural from the attic. It would help his plan no end. The gods really were on his side tonight.

  He placed his bag on the floor and knelt down. He had decided to use his torch only if it was really necessary, and his eyes were already becoming accustomed to the dark. A street light outside shed a weak unreal glow into the room.

  He first took out an e
vidence bag and, with gloved fingertips, shook out a ten-pound note. It was folded in a very particular way: two edges to the centre, and then in half. He looked around and decided that the best place to leave it was between a rather nice writing desk and a small display cabinet housing photographs and the kind of odd mementos that people bring back from their holidays. The banknote wasn’t obvious, but it wouldn’t take too much finding. It was a bit of a gamble using money, but with the exception of Prewett, Kevin would vouch for the honesty of all the other coppers at Saltern nick.

  That done, he took another smaller evidence bag and shook out a dark strand of hair and let it fall near the ten-pound note. It might get picked up, or it might not. If it did, well, all the better.

  He glanced down at the luminous dial of his watch. He needed to get out as soon as possible. His guests would be arriving within the next fifteen minutes, and he would like to be a little way away when they did. From the bag he removed a large soft duster, and even though he’d used gloves, he carefully cleaned everything he’d touched. He wanted to be sure that the room’s next occupants would have pristine surfaces to handle.

  He moved swiftly back to the hall, punched in the alarm security number and made his way back to the garage. In seconds, he was outside, panting in relief.

  One last, very important thing to do. From his bag of tricks, Kevin removed a third evidence bag, and took out a small, slim cell phone. He moved into the bushes, and dropped it, not too carefully, into a clump of those flowering plants that his mother loved so much, a cluster of pansies. How apt, he thought cheerfully.

  Kevin then retraced his footsteps back along Riverside Crescent to where it met a long, straight road on the corner of which was a bus shelter covered in graffiti. It was far too late for a bus, but it was a great place to loiter unnoticed and watch the big house in the crescent.