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

by Joy Ellis

  He’d been there only a moment when he saw a figure walking very deliberately towards the Kinder house. Something about the dark figure made him stiffen. It didn’t look like the person he was expecting, and if it wasn’t, who the hell was it?

  The man moved silently into the garden and disappeared. Then Kevin heard a vehicle approaching and breathed a sigh of relief. His mystery man had been the outrider, the scout, and the rest of the posse were bringing up the rear. And they were right on time. The whole thing was working to perfection. A second man arrived, slipped into the garden, near where Kevin had entered, and three minutes later a dark van with the registration plate covered, drove into the driveway. It moved slowly round to the garage area, out of sight of any late night passers-by.

  Kevin waited for exactly ten minutes, then took a brand new pay-as-you-go mobile from his pocket and dialled 999.

  And now it was time to go.

  Kevin jogged home the scenic route, using the back lanes and the river footpath. He wanted to be off the main road when his compatriots came bombing along towards the Kinder place. He stood by the river for a few moments and tried to still his racing pulse. The water flowed dark and deep, and helped to calm him. He stared into the inky darkness and decided that it had all gone rather well. And now here he was, strolling home in the moonlight with a smile on his face. It was done. Now it was down to his fellow officers to be thorough, and Zane Prewett to be where he’d said he would be tonight.

  By the time he was home, Kevin Stoner felt as if he had managed to set in motion a massive chain of events, one that would send Zane Prewett on a very different path to his own. And tonight, for the first time in a long while, Kevin thought his nightmare might just be over.

  * * *

  As Kevin still buzzed with leftover adrenalin, Sue Bannister was feeling a buzz of a different nature.

  Her husband was working a night shift at the hospital, and had left the house in a blaze of fury. Nothing new there. But the quarrels were becoming too frequent, and Sue was at her wits’ end.

  She knew he was having an affair with one of the nurses. He had no idea that she was aware of it, but then he was a bloke, wasn’t he? She also knew that the fights and the quarrels were because he felt guilty. She was pretty sure that he still loved her, but — well, he was a bloke, wasn’t he?

  Sue had made herself a gin and tonic. It wasn’t a large one, she didn’t want to get tipsy, but it had given her the courage to make the call. He had listened to her, in a way her husband never did. He had been really interested in how she felt, but then he was always like that, kind and interested. And tonight, for the first time, he had offered to come over.

  Sue wriggled a little on the bed. She had never done anything like this before. She looked down at her clothes. They were pretty, almost sexy but not too provocative. She shouldn’t appear too eager.

  She took another sip of her drink. He had asked her several times what time her husband got home, and whether he ever left work early. She had assured him that he was never early, more often very late, and that was probably because he and his cheap little nurse had shifts that allowed them to have a quick shag before he came home for breakfast.

  This thought pumped anger and hurt through Sue’s veins, and made her even more ready for her visitor. At the very least, she could offload, pour out her heart to him, and know that someone was actually listening. At best, well, Sue glanced at the clean and tidy bed. After all, she hadn’t started this and, as the proverb said, what was good for the goose . . .

  She swallowed the rest of her drink, checked the time and went downstairs. The back door was unlocked. She had told him, casually, to use the back door, that everyone did, and maybe it was best that no one saw him on the front doorstep late at night. In her street, curtains twitched no matter what the hour.

  As she reached the bottom step, she heard a slight noise. He hadn’t let her down! Sue patted her skirt, glanced in the hall mirror, and gave a nervous little smile. She took a deep breath and walked into the kitchen.

  * * *

  The man who stood opposite her, just a few inches away, looked as if he had just stepped from a hospital.

  From head to toe he was clad in operating greens, from the pull-on cap covering his hair to the protective slip-ons over his shoes. He wore a face mask.

  Sue tried to assimilate what she was seeing in front of her. But the information failed to compute. Useless information jumped into her brain. ‘Eye-rest’ green, they called it, opposite to red on the colour wheel. It was used on the walls, for theatre linen, and the staff wore it. Blood stains on green are far less garish than scarlet splashes on bleached white.

  Sue opened her mouth to speak, but his hands took hold of her and spun her around. He clamped a gloved hand over her mouth.

  If this was supposed to be a sex game, if she had accidentally given him a very wrong impression of what she needed from him, she had to stop him. Now.

  But how could she? The hand was crushing her lips into her teeth. She couldn’t even swallow properly, let alone breathe. Her free arm flapped feebly like a bird with a broken wing, as useful as tissue paper. Blind panic overcame her confusion. This was no game.

  And then he hit her. Hard, on the back of her head.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Kevin timed his entrance to the station perfectly. He made sure that he was wearing the long face that had become his trademark over the past few months.

  Men and women officers, shortly about to stand down from the night shift, were scurrying around with big smiles on their faces, exchanging excited high fives.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Kevin asked a young PC called Gus Bannon.

  ‘Hey, your shift missed out on a blinder last night! Drew Wilson and his crew only tried to do over the Kinder house! But we had an anonymous tip-off, and we managed to nick most of them.’ He allowed a small frown to cloud his delight. ‘Shame that two of them legged it, but four, including Drew himself, are downstairs in the slammer.’

  ‘Really?’ Kevin tried to look surprised and impressed. ‘We’ve been trying to get something on that shower for months, but they were always a step ahead of us.’

  ‘I know, but something went badly wrong last night. You should have seen the star-burst when we turned up. Villains scattering in every direction. Blinding!’

  Kevin clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Good collar, mate. Well done.’

  He made his way towards the locker room. He knew that Zane would be there already. Kevin opened the door and looked around. The room was empty apart from Prewett, sitting white-faced on one of the wooden benches. Kevin slipped his miserable face back into place, though his heart was singing.

  ‘I’ve just heard about last night’s shout at the Kinder house.’ He kept his tone flat, then looked quizzically at Zane Prewett and dropped his voice to a low whisper. ‘I thought Drew Wilson was one of your “mates.” So what happened?’

  Zane jumped up from his seat and started pacing the room. ‘Fuck knows! But if Wilson decides this cock-up has anything to do with me, then I’m dead meat.’

  Kevin fervently hoped that would be the case. He said, ‘But you did send him the info on the place. I saw you clocking the alarm system code and you made me cover for you when you buggered off out to get the back door key copied.’

  ‘Yeah, and I texted him and told him to abort when we let that nutter Daniel Kinder out! Why the hell he went ahead, I have no fucking idea.’

  Kevin stared at Zane. ‘Are you sure he got your message?’

  ‘He acknowledged it like he always does.’ Zane groaned noisily. ‘Then the stupid bastard goes out there anyway.’ He turned his pasty face towards Kevin. ‘And that’s not the worst of it. My fucking phone’s gone missing.’

  Kevin feigned shock. ‘Bloody hell, Zane! If anyone finds that, you really are in deep shit.’ He paused for a moment then asked, ‘Do you think Drew Wilson will try to drop you in it?’

  ‘What do you think, numb-nuts?’ Zan
e’s face became a mask of anger. ‘I bet you’re loving this, aren’t you?’

  Kevin was elated. He wanted to yell out that he was happier than he’d ever been in his life. He said, seriously, ‘You are a bent copper, Zane, and you mix with low life. Even you must have realised that that sort of game can’t go on for ever. You’ve been swimming with piranhas, and now they’ve been reeled in they are going to strip the flesh from your bones.’

  Zane swung round and grabbed Kevin by the lapels, backing him into one of the lockers. ‘Well, even if they do, you, my little faggot, will keep your mouth shut!’

  Kevin smelled Zane’s sour breath and saw anger and fear in the eyes that were just inches from his.

  ‘What I said before still holds good, so remember it well, or your precious little Sophie will be the first to realise that you don’t cross Zane Prewett! You suffer, Kevin.’ He grimaced. ‘There’s a lot you can do to a pretty young thing like that — life-changing things.’ He pushed Kevin roughly to the floor. ‘And that’s without those lovely pictures that are all ready to go to Daddy, though I doubt he’ll want them for the family album.’

  Kevin struggled up. ‘Oh, don’t worry about me. You know you’ve got me exactly where you want me. I won’t be talking to anyone. This almighty mess is totally down to you, Zane. You’ve done this all on your own.’ He straightened his jacket. ‘You should thank your lucky stars that this didn’t happen on our watch. Can you imagine what sort of fiasco that would have been, if you’d been sent to round them up? Drew Wilson would have lynched you! Now I suggest we get outside and try to act normally.’ He moved towards the door and couldn’t resist adding, ‘Even if you are shitting yourself.’

  * * *

  By ten in the morning, Skye was beginning to wish that the police had kept Daniel locked up. He had rung her mobile at eight thirty and had told her, his voice trembling, that his mother’s house had been broken into. Her first thought was that she had not locked up properly, or had forgotten the alarm, but she knew that hadn’t been the case. It wasn’t her house and she had been extra-careful.

  ‘The police are in there with their forensic zombies stomping all over the place again. Twice in a matter of days! My mother will go berserk.’ He had sounded like a child on the verge of a tantrum.

  ‘Daniel, your mother is thousands of miles away in the jungle communing with fern plants and dragonflies. And I’m sure we can tidy it up again,’ and she had stressed the word again, ‘before her return.’ Not something she relished after her “cleanathon” with Lisa. The Thai police were trying to locate Ruby Kinder, and the moment they did, she would be on the first available flight home. ‘Did they take anything of value? Was anything damaged?’

  ‘Nothing. Well, there would have been, but someone called the police. They caught them before they could drive away in their van with half of mother’s house on board.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Skye. Things were bad enough in the Kinder house, without thieves making off with their precious belongings. ‘And how are you, sweetheart? Did you get any sleep?’

  Daniel made a strange snorting noise. He said, ‘I don’t know. I thought I did sleep, and the police said they called here to tell me about the robbery, but . . .’ his voice faltered. ‘I didn’t hear them.’

  ‘Then you slept really well, didn’t you?’

  ‘You don’t understand, Skye! I don’t think I was here.’

  He didn’t say anything further. He didn’t have to. Skye felt a headache forming behind her tired eyes. She wanted to cry, but asked calmly, ‘Where were you when you woke up?’

  ‘Here, in bed. But when I got up, there was . . . there was dirt on my trainers.’ His voice was now trembling again.

  ‘Stay there,’ she said. ‘I’m coming home.’

  * * *

  The team, with Guy Preston, sat in Jackman’s office. They were on their second round of coffee. They had begun with the attempted burglary on Daniel Kinder’s house.

  ‘If it hadn’t been for that anonymous tip-off, it would have been the perfect screw,’ said Marie. ‘The press had given up camping on the doorstep, the mother’s abroad, Daniel was still supposedly in custody, and with Skye moved out, they had an empty drum to turn over. Hell, even the cat had gone AWOL.’

  Jackman frowned. ‘Convenient, that anonymous call, wasn’t it? Gave our lads exactly the right amount of time to get there and catch them with stolen stuff in the van and all of them with their hands still in the till, so to speak.’

  ‘If it was a neighbour you’d have thought they’d have given their name, wouldn’t you?’ said Charlie. ‘No reason not to.’

  ‘A mate of mine who went out there last night reckons it was Daniel Kinder who rang 999.’ Max rubbed at his chin.

  ‘Daniel?’

  ‘He’s pretty sure he caught sight of him when the balloon went up. Not in the house, but out near the road. And when they went round to Skye Wynyard’s place to tell him about the attempted theft, he either wasn’t there or he didn’t answer the door. They couldn’t get hold of him till early this morning.’

  ‘So what did he say to them?’ asked Jackman.

  ‘Said he’d taken something to make him sleep. Reckons he was dead to the world.’

  Jackman let out a worried snort. ‘Hell! That man is still giving me grave cause for concern. But we need to get on. We have to discuss the Fleets, our second victim, Julia Hope, and we still need to find out all we can about Françoise Thayer.’

  Jackman drew thick, heavy circles on his notepad, trying to clear his overladen brain. ‘Right, let’s list what we have, then we’ll decide how to proceed.’ He looked at Max and Charlie. ‘Kick us off with what you know about the Fleets.’

  Max nodded towards Charlie, ‘After you, mate.’

  Charlie looked at his notebook. ‘One, they were in big financial trouble. The Fleets’ brewery was going down the pan fast, and somehow Bruce Fleet had managed to conceal the debts from everyone. Two, Alison Fleet’s GP never prescribed antidepressants, but large quantities were found hidden in her shoes in the bottom of her wardrobe at Berrylands.’

  ‘Were there any labels on the containers?’ asked Guy Preston.

  ‘No. They were loose in polythene bags, no packaging on them.’ Charlie flipped over a page. ‘But forensics identified them as something called clomipramine hydrochloride, and it appeared that she’d been taking them for some time.’

  ‘That’s a tricyclic anti-depressant,’ said Preston. ‘It’s widely used for depressive illness and a myriad of other problems. But if her GP didn’t give them to her, who did?’

  Charlie went back to his notebook. ‘The GP firmly stated that Alison Fleet had no major health problems and he had never had to refer her to any kind of hospital consultant in the fifteen years that she had been on his books.’

  ‘Then it sounds like she was self-medicating via the bloody Internet.’ Preston’s voice was tinged with anger. ‘It’s so damned dangerous. Some people never learn until it’s too late, then we have to pick up the pieces.’

  Max leaned forward. ‘I don’t know how she got the pills, Prof, but I think I know why she was trying to keep her head above water.’ He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair. ‘We’ve had some of our guys check out her accounts, the charity accounts in particular, and they are a complete mess. Money has been transferred back and forth between different funds, and massive amounts are missing. It looks like she was trying to cook the books, big-style.’

  ‘To bail out hubby?’ asked Marie.

  ‘Maybe,’ Max frowned, ‘but there are no withdrawals with corresponding payments into the brewery or Fleet’s personal account.’

  Charlie joined in, ‘And she wasn’t squirreling it away for a rainy day either. Her own funds were at rock bottom, and she didn’t hold any offshore stuff either.’

  ‘Which brings us to her first husband,’ Max continued. ‘His name is Skinner, Ray Skinner, and he showed up on Alison Fleet’s iPad. We believe that she
has been in contact with him recently, but he’s not been easy to pin down.’

  ‘Do we know why they split up?’ asked Jackman.

  ‘They were very young when they married, and there were hints about domestic violence, but there’s nothing on record to say that she ever filed against him. It’s mainly speculation from the few bits of information that we managed to dredge up, but we’ve nothing concrete.’

  ‘So why see him now?’ mused Marie.

  ‘Why indeed? He sounds like he should have been a part of her life that she’d rather forget.’

  ‘Perhaps he wouldn’t let her,’ said Charlie. ‘Blackmail could be the answer to the cash-flow problem.’

  Jackman nodded. ‘Then keep looking for him. He could also be the reason she hit the pill bottle.’

  He was about to continue when the phone rang. He spoke for a few moments and replaced the receiver. ‘Well, one thing has been clarified. That was the lab. Bruce Fleet’s suicide was exactly that: a suicide. His prints are all over the hosepipe and car body near the exhaust pipe. He locked both the car and the garage doors from the inside, and he definitely wrote the note. Fingerprints are all we have so far, as the other tests will take time, but they have confirmed that death was caused by chemical asphyxiation and preliminary investigations suggest that it was by his own hand.’ He grimaced. ‘At least we don’t have a third murder victim on our hands.’

  ‘We just need to prove that he isn’t a dead murderer,’ Charlie added dourly. ‘Bruce Fleet could have been at his wits’ end with his business going under. Then he finds that his wife is haemorrhaging money to a previous husband that he knew nothing about, and he totally loses it.’

  ‘You’re forgetting his alibi, Charlie-boy.’ Max chipped in. ‘He was miles away, talking to a load of brewery bigwigs.’

  ‘Then use the same scenario, but Bruce pays someone to do the dirty work for him, and as you just said, the grieving husband has a smashing alibi.’ Charlie sat back, looking smug.