by William Paul
THE DCI DAVID FYFE MYSTERIES
William Paul
© William Paul 2019
William Paul has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.
Table of Contents
SLEEPING DOGS
SLEEPING PRETTY
SLEEPING PARTNER
SLEEPING DOGS
Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
1
The naked man went down on his knees in front of the hissing gas fire, so close to it that the richly pink colouring of his flesh seemed to be sucked to the front of his body leaving his back a pallid ghostly white. He kept his spine erect, bowing his head to rest his chin on a platform of intertwined fingers. A bright silver chain was wrapped twice round the knuckles of his right fist. The crucifix it was attached to was hidden inside the two hands, cupped between the palms like something alive and delicate awaiting release.
In the warm darkness of the curtained room he prayed silently. His lips moved rapidly but no words emerged. As he prayed his forehead creased with wrinkles and he pressed his hands more tightly together. The sharp edges of the crucifix gouged into his skin, causing him discomfort. Familiar feelings of guilt and shame popped up in his mind but distantly, like faraway targets rising and falling on a firing range. He squeezed his hands more tightly until the discomfort turned into actual pain and then he squeezed harder still.
Abruptly he stopped praying and opened his eyes. Someone else was entering the room behind him. He did not move. He did not turn his head. He remained kneeling, staring into the yellow and white flames pouring upwards over the red-hot fireclay towers. The heat was severe against his eyeballs and it flowed down the front of his body like a layer of molten plastic sticking to the contours of his body.
Behind him, where his flesh prickled in the comparative coldness, he could sense movement. He could hear the softest of footsteps on the carpet and the faint electric crackle of static. A grotesquely distorted human reflection rippled fleetingly across the dull beaten copper of the fire surround.
He tensed as a hand touched his left shoulder. An inner emptiness expanded up and around him as if he had just stepped off a cliff. His whole body was on fire now. He was soaking up the heat like a sponge. Droplets of sweat seemed to block every pore, squeezing out reluctantly like toothpaste from a near-empty tube.
The hand patted and stroked his bare flesh. It moved slowly down over his chest, sliding smoothly over the hairs. He saw the blood-red fingernails, like the heads of exotic snakes, glide all the way down to his stomach. Another hand touched his right shoulder. More scarlet fingernails brushed gently at the other side of his chest. Strong sweet perfume made his nostrils flare. A gently yielding softness pushed against his back, a gossamer veil of hair fell over his eyes so that he was totally enveloped from head to toe in the most sensuous warmth.
‘Are you ready for me yet, Donald?’ a purring feminine voice whispered hoarsely in his ear. ‘Have you asked for your forgiveness before we get started?’
Father Donald Byrne was a big, powerfully built man. There was thick dark hair on his chest and shoulders. He closed his eyes and squeezed the sharp-edged crucifix savagely. The sweat was running freely over his face and chest. His whole body trembled.
He stood up and turned to step into the inviting female embrace, burying his face in the woman’s long hair and kissing her neck to feel the arterial pulse of warm blood against his lips. He unwound the chain from his fingers and dropped the crucifix. It hit the floor soundlessly as he picked up the woman effortlessly and carried her towards the bedroom. Through the door he could see that the covers on the bed were pulled down in readiness. Despite moving away from the fire, his body still burned furiously. Desire and anticipation made him breathe heavily, made his movements clumsy. Spittle bubbled at the corners of his mouth. The red-tipped fingers clawed impatiently, vindictively at his back. Her teeth nipped the flesh of his breast. The darkness intensified as he kicked the bedroom door shut with his heel and dropped the clinging woman from waist-height on to the bed.
He hesitated momentarily, looking down at the woman sprawled below him. The saliva was thick in his throat, so thick he could hardly swallow it to be able to breathe. The demon lust made him tense and hard. He bent down towards her. The fingernails reached up and hooked into his shoulder blades.
‘Forgive me, Lord,’ he murmured in words that floated out on exhaled breath. ‘Forgive me, for I know exactly what I am about to do.’
2
The shivering junkie stood in the centre of the room while Gus Barrie kept his back to him as he played the pinball machine. Lights flashed, music stuttered, an intelligible computer voice gabbled loudly, and the scoring digits spun into the millions. When the steel ball jumped off a bumper at an angle and cracked loudly against the underside of the glass the junkie winced as if it had hit him in the head. Barrie went on playing.
Ross Sorley hugged his arms round his thin body and rocked from side to side. Withdrawal was hurting him. It was scraping at the inside of his brain and making his blood run too fast. His eyes were puffy and swollen and his teeth felt strange, as if they were barely attached inside his mouth and floating about loosely. He needed a hit and he needed it very badly. Every vein where he had ever stuck a needle was wasp-sting sore. He desperately needed to be stung again.
When Barrie’s heavies had lifted him off the street he had offered only token resistance. The Jones brothers were evil bastards who enjoyed their work. They were muscle-bound giants with near-shaven heads containing tiny brains. There was no point in arguing with them or fighting them. They only hit him once, once each, both at the same time, a slap on the side of the head and a hard punch to the stomach. Then Billy pushed his face into the back seat of their car and sat on him while delivery was made. It was all relatively painless. He was grateful for the small mercy.
Junkies like Sorley didn’t frighten easily. Fear was for rational people who cared if they lived or died. He was too far gone, too hopeless a case. Even though he had spent the previous two weeks in hiding because he had heard a whisper that Barrie was after him, he was glad to be found. Barrie was a businessman. When he realised Sorley really was not in a position to settle the debt they would negotiate. Promises would be made, a deal would be cut. It had happened before. It would happen again.
He had been standing watching Barrie play pinball at the middle machine in a row of five for fifteen minutes. There was a snooker table on one side of him and multigym equipment beyond it. Sandy Jones had stripped down to vest and shorts and was pumping some iron on a benc
h. Billy was a menacing invisible pain behind him.
Sorley was aware of the glass wall on his other side that separated the room from the swimming pool under its opaque glass roof. The moving reflection of the water’s surface on the ceilings and walls was annoying and sore on his eyes. He dimly remembered standing in the same spot many years before. It had been so different then. He had been smartly dressed, clear-headed, sharp as a knife. He and Georgie Craig had been discussing going into partnership with Barrie. A different time. A different world.
The pinball machine suddenly blared out a trumpet fanfare and the computerised voice boomed out a hard luck message. The lights went out. Gus Barrie slapped the sides and turned to face Sorley. A look of displeasure transformed slowly into one of distaste.
‘Ross, look at yourself.’
Sorley took the command literally. He opened out his arms and looked down at the dirty grey T-shirt, the torn jeans, and the trainers with string for laces. When he looked up again Barrie’s fist exploded in his face.
‘What a fucking mess you are, Ross. You wanted to play with the big boys but instead of getting smart you got a habit. You stupid pathetic bastard.’
Sorley was hauled back to his feet, blood dribbling from his mouth. He spat out a broken tooth and stared at it on the floor. ‘Sorry, Gus,’ he said, remembering that he had once owned a silver Porsche. And a genuine Swiss watch that cost more than five thousand pounds. He felt his wrist to check that it was gone.
‘You knew my brother, so I gave you a chance and you screwed up. I’m too sentimental. I’m just too fucking sentimental.’
Barrie shook his head. Sorley nodded. He hadn’t known the younger brother, Mike Barrie, very well at all. Had met him a few times, drank with him in a club once, had fancied his wife. Who wouldn’t? He was called Mad Mike because he was a nutter, completely psycho and probably clinically insane. A dangerous bastard, but only to himself in the end as it turned out. Sorley, back from a few years in America, had dropped the name to get restarted and had teamed up with Georgie Boy who had an inside track with the Barrie clan. Mad Mike was dead and couldn’t argue. Gus Barrie, who had taken on the running of the family business after Mike’s death, had been impressed. People had thought Gus was too soft to run the business, too emotional. They were wrong. A different time. A different world.
‘Are you listening to me?’ Barrie asked, frowning slightly. ‘I’m expecting a lady shortly, you see, Ross. A very classy lady. That’s why I need the money. I owe the money to her. I promised to pay it back and she’s coming over to collect it.’
Sorley swayed and frowned, matching his expression to Barrie’s. He had owned a woman once, long legs, big breasts, perfect teeth, fingernails like claws, flawless skin. A truly beautiful woman.
‘I can’t allow it, Ross. If one gets away without paying, why should any of the others feel an obligation? I can’t let you back on the street. You’re bad for business, Ross.’
‘But I’m just a junkie.’
‘Sorry, Ross.’
‘I’ve no money.’
‘I know. You’ve no future either.’
Barrie turned and walked away along a long curving corridor. Automatic sensors in the walls switched the lights on ahead of him as he walked along and switched them off behind. Soft music followed him too, a female’s sweetly hoarse voice whispering words of love.
Sorley stood where he was, still frowning in puzzlement as he watched Barrie’s broad shoulders and thick arms dwindle in the moving bubble of light and music. He couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He took a step forward, wanting to follow, reaching out, wanting to explain. But a hand grabbed his outstretched arm. Billy Jones was in front of him, blocking the way.
‘Go to hell,’ Sorley said angrily.
‘After you, smackhead,’ Billy replied and pushed him in the chest.
Sorley did not see the twelve-inch length of razor wire that Sandy Jones looped over his head from behind. He felt it, though, as the blades sliced cleanly through the outer skin of his throat causing a dozen tiny wasp stings of pain. An instant later the artery had been torn open and blackness bubbled up to cloud his eyes. It mixed with the tinny echoing music and flashing lights from the pinball machine.
Sorley wasn’t afraid. He didn’t even struggle. He smelled the leather seats of his silver Porsche and the perfumed body of his beautiful woman. Within a matter of seconds he was dead.
3
The bath water was so hot it took David Fyfe’s breath away. He lowered himself through the thin layer of soapy bubbles slowly, enduring the infuriatingly itchy tingling sensation caused by the oily liquid against his skin because he knew it would not last more than a few seconds. When he finally lay down, stretching out to his full length, only his head was visible with his chin resting on the surface. His entire body was wrapped tightly in a winding-sheet of hot water. He thought he was releasing a quietly satisfied sigh but it came out more like an astonished gasp.
Detective Chief Inspector Fyfe was greatly irritated by the thought of going in to work the next morning. There were so few hours between then and now. So little time to rest. So little time to himself. The treadmill was turning and he had to keep pace with it or suffer the consequences.
It was a pity he needed to earn money to live on. He had no savings, no capital except for the heavily mortgaged house and the equally heavily mortgaged flat in the city that Sally had bought when they were living apart. The rent from the flat paid that mortgage, but the latest tenants had just left and it had become a liability again. He and Sally were back together again and she didn’t have a job. If he stopped working, he stopped earning and, in the worst case scenario, he stopped eating. It might not be true, but it was the way his mind was programmed. The Calvinist work ethic had been dinned into him as a child in a relatively poor family doing his milk round in the morning and his paper round at night. He had always worked, always had a regular income and good money. He was a wage slave grown so used to the chains he was terrified of what might happen if they were ever broken.
Fyfe lifted both his arms out of the water. He wiped them dry with a towel and picked up the glass of malt whisky on the edge of the bath beside his head. He had placed it there before immersing himself. The ritual of the hot bath and the good whisky had served him well over the years. It was a soothing influence that rarely failed to calm him and restore his equanimity when things began to get on top of him. A womb substitute.
His work with the Fraud Squad had been frustrating him horribly for the last month. Cases going round in circles, getting nowhere. Every night he came home with a sore back and stiff neck from hunching over files and accounts that were like a foreign language to him. That afternoon he had spent four hours with a bunch of tax inspectors and accountants trying to decide if some fat rich bastard had committed a crime or not. The answer had been a reluctant no.
Fyfe wanted his old job in the mainstream CID back. He needed to meet real people, catch real criminals. But they didn’t want him back. They didn’t want him there at all, that was why he had been shunted sideways into Fraud and passed over when the last superintendent’s post had fallen vacant. He had too much of an extra-curricular track record to be a serious candidate, though he hadn’t given up hope until another less controversial name was posted on the noticeboard. Sometimes he thought it was a miracle he ever got to DCI level. He must have been good at his job, must have enjoyed it at some stage. It was just that he couldn’t remember when.
Fyfe sipped the whisky and closed his eyes. Wednesday night, he thought. Only two days to go before the weekend. He shifted lazily in the luxurious warmth and the latent heat tightened its grip, warning him to remain motionless. He imagined that every pore in his body was gaping wide open and the bath water was filling him up. He had been born too late, he thought drowsily. He should have been a Victorian gentleman with a country estate and independent means. Having to work for a living was rather vulgar, after all.
The phone sta
rted ringing. He assumed Sally would answer it. The bubbles were evaporating rapidly on the bath’s surface, leaving a film of white that separated into a dozen different islands. Steam rose upwards in columns like unravelling strands.
The phone was still ringing. He remembered that Sally was out on the hill walking the dogs. Fyfe had to climb out of the bath, grab a towel and go through to the bedroom. Damp footprints darkened the carpet.
‘Hello?’
‘David, is that you? Sir Duncan here.’
Fyfe hesitated, suspecting a hoax. Sir Duncan Morrison, the Chief Constable, phoning him at home so late at night? Something was wrong.
‘David, I hoped to catch you at home.’
It was Hunky Dunky. The inflection in the voice was unmistakable. It really was him. What was it all about? Something was wrong.
‘I just wanted to check you would be around tomorrow. I want to see you first thing.’
‘Yes, I’ll be there.’
‘Good. I’ve got a little job that needs doing. It’s something a bit off the beaten path. You’re the man I need.’
Hunky Dunky had saved Fyfe’s career when he had been struggling with woman and drink problems. He had given him a chance and Fyfe had taken it. The penalty was never being fully trusted again. So what was this little job? Hunky Dunky knew Fyfe owed him. He knew Fyfe would do what he wanted. Whatever it was.
‘Very intriguing, sir.’
‘I’ll see you first thing, then.’
Fyfe put down the phone and hurried back to the bathroom. He pushed the white net curtain to one side and looked out. The sky glowed with its cargo of stars but at ground level the darkness of the countryside was total. The trees and the hills were all hidden in it. The only things visible were the elongated raindrops streaking through the faint light thrown from the window. A blustery wind rattled the frame and shattered brittle dead leaves against the glass. Fyfe shivered and sought the sanctuary of his hot bath.