Nails In A Coffin (Demi Reynolds Book 1)

by Luis Samways

  “Let’s get this wanker,” Hamish said, hitting the gear into second and wheel-spinning out of the forest enclosure.

  Thirty-Seven

  DCI Francis and DI Craig were still in their boss’s office. The room had been silent for a while. All three of them had been arguing prior to the silence. A few threats had been made by DCI Francis, threats that her boss wasn’t all too impressed by. It was one thing to be so passionate about your job and threaten to leave if you didn’t get your own way, but it was another thing entirely to badmouth your boss and threaten to tattletale on him.

  “I don’t like where you’re going with this, Amy,” her boss said, crinkling his face as he attempted to massage the patience back into his skin.

  “I don’t care what you like, sir. And it’s Detective Chief Inspector Francis. Not Amy.”

  Her boss looked at her blankly for a second, then turned his attention to DI Craig, who was remaining quiet.

  “She speak to you like this?” he asked, smiling a little.

  Craig nodded over-dramatically and said, “All the time, boss. I’d listen to what she has to say. She can be a right bitch when she doesn’t get her own way.”

  “I can see that,” their boss said, still crinkling his face a little. The pressure of the situation felt like a furnace. Everybody was feeling hot and looking flustered. All three of them were firing on all pistons. It was safe to say, as they sat there in that dank office, passion and pride were on the menu.

  “I think it’s absolute bollocks that you and the Met would rather play it safe than go after a suspected kidnapper,” Amy let out, her face looking pink in the dim light.

  “We’ve been over this. It isn’t something I can change just like that. Once Division’s mind is made up, it’s made up. I’m not on the board. I don’t have any clout. I can’t just magic up authority out of my ass and expect anybody up there to give me a second thought,” their boss said. This time he was biting his nails. He looked a little uncomfortable behind the chair, as if he had ants in his pants.

  “I don’t expect you to work miracles, boss. I just want you to do your fucking job,” Amy said, giving her boss a stern look.

  He stopped biting his nails and sighed loudly. “Look, we aren’t getting anywhere with this back and forth. Let’s make a deal,” he said.

  In the meantime, Lionel was remaining quiet, counting his chickens. “Just drop it, Amy,” he finally said.

  Both his boss and Amy gave him a look. It was one of surprise. Lionel very rarely made any statements. He didn’t like causing waves. But once in a while, more like once in a blue moon, he’d speak up, and everybody would tell him to shut up. But they always knew Lionel had his head screwed on. He wasn’t one to just speak for the sake of it. The man knew how to articulate his thoughts.

  “Now you speak,” Amy mumbled.

  “Yeah, now I speak,” Lionel quipped back. He sat up straight and looked at Amy, who was seated next to him. She looked just as uncomfortable in the seat as her boss. He could tell she was agitated and didn’t appreciate being belittled. But sometimes she needed to be put in her place. Sure, she had rank over Lionel, but he didn’t care for such things. Rank didn’t mean she could be an asshole 24/7. So on occasion he’d have to reel her in. It was to protect her and her job. If she looked bad, he looked bad. That came with the territory of being partners.

  “I just think you need to calm down, Amy. I’m sure the Met does what it does because they have their own reasons,” Lionel said.

  Amy turned to him and gave him a scornful glance. “I don’t care what their reasons are. Justice should be put in front of any political bullshit. It seems like these days, the police force is run by a bunch of namby-pamby dimwits who worship the PM and strive for political correctness over justice. Last time I checked, justice doesn’t come with health and safety warnings. Justice doesn’t come with understanding or forgiveness. Justice comes swift and hard. No matter what color you are. What creed. What gender. When justice comes, it comes for everybody. All this crap is getting out of hand. I don’t know if I want to be part of an entity that puts those sorts of things in front of justice.”

  Their boss stood up and sighed loudly once again. “Fine. Be melodramatic if you want, Amy. But know this. I’m only doing this because I believe you are on to something with Donny the Hat. I could lose my job for this, but so be it. If you want to investigate the matter yourself, do it on your own time. I’m giving you permission to do so. Take a few days. Dig around a little. See what you find. But keep it to yourself. If any of this gets out, I’ll deny it. And you’ll lose your job.”

  Amy nodded her head and said, “I’m going to get to the bottom of this. With or without you.”

  She stood up and walked to the door. She turned the handle and walked out. Lionel gave his boss an apologetic smile and said, “Well, at least she didn’t hit you.”

  Thirty-Eight

  “I can’t thank you enough for coming after me, Hamish. It just proves that there are good people out there,” Demi said as she watched Hamish shift gears and put his foot down on the accelerator. She was sweating, and so was he. The whole experience was obviously affecting both of them negatively. Demi didn’t think she’d ever see daylight again, so the sight of the night sky was a disappointment as well as a relief.

  “You would have done the same for me,” Hamish said as he made a swift right onto an even narrower road. This one was loaded with pebbles and rocks. The car’s suspension was bouncing up and down in protest. Demi felt as if her insides were being jumbled around in a washing machine. She felt a little sick, but she knew that they had to do what they were doing. There was no way they could allow Donny the Hat to escape justice. If they did, they wouldn’t be safe. Donny wasn’t the sort of man to let things lie. He was the sort of man to make people pay for the minutest of transgressions.

  Demi looked at Hamish’s profile as he drove. The deep scar on his face reminded Demi of who they were dealing with. As they took another hard right and the surface of the road got bumpier, Demi closed her eyes and attempted to form some sort of plan. A plan that would help them stay alive. After all, staying alive was the only thing they had left. They couldn’t go back to their old lives. Not with Donny around. Not with the knowledge that he was out there, still breathing. They couldn’t risk such a thing. They needed to have him killed. They needed to have him buried.

  “Where do you think he could be?” Demi asked, looking straight ahead through the windshield. Specks of dirt and water residue sprayed the glass. The wipers came on and smudged the dirty brown liquid off the car. It was starting to rain, and the darkness that engulfed their car became thicker and blacker. Demi could see that the road stretched for a good mile and a half straight ahead. There were trees and bushes on either side. They were the only people in the vicinity. The road looked as if it belonged in a desert. It was desolate and lonely.

  “I don’t know where Donny is, but when I find him, I know where he’s going,” Hamish said, taming the steering wheel as it twisted from left to right as the wheels clipped against the rough surface of the road.

  “He must be around here somewhere,” Demi said.

  But then they saw something. Something strange.

  “Look, on your right!” Demi shouted.

  Hamish pushed both feet down on the brake pedal. The car came to a screeching stop. Dust and dirt settled around them as both Demi and Hamish looked out of the windows at their surroundings. On Demi’s side, it was clear. The bushes were intact, and the road lay still and silent. But on Hamish’s side there was a hole in the bushes. A car-sized hole. Leaves and branches caked the entrance to the hole. Tire marks scorched the surface of the dirt. They wound their way into the darkness, through the hole in the bushes. The marks were blacker at the tip as they curved into a turn.

  “Looks as if he lost control of the hearse and went through some bushes,” Hamish offered as he sat there staring at the tire marks in front of them, just to their right.


  “Should we follow the trail? Maybe we’ll find him hiding someplace?” Demi asked.

  “I don’t know. But whoever went through there didn’t do so on purpose. He lost control. He could be injured. Going through a bunch of bushes is going to cause some damage to his radiator. And let’s not forget, he’s driving a hearse. They aren’t exactly built to go off-roading.”

  Both of them sat in silence for a few minutes. Neither of them knew what to do. Demi thought that maybe it could be a trap. Hamish thought that maybe the tracks were old and belonged to a car accident from a while back. People were always crashing into trees and whatnot in the sticks.

  “We should investigate. I don’t want to be driving down the damn road, only to find out he’s behind us,” Hamish said as the car began to move forward slowly. Demi could hear the revs being tamed. Usually Hamish drove the car like it belonged on a rally circuit, but right then he was being cautious about the whole thing.

  They took the right and followed the tire marks. Hamish made the turn into the bush and went through the gap. The sound of loose branches crunching under the tires made Demi squirm. Everything was dark. Hamish turned the headlamps on the car to full. A massive field appeared in front of them, the bright white lights bouncing off all sorts of emptiness. But something caught Demi’s eye. The grass surface in front of them had deep tire marks that stretched away from them. She followed the tire marks with her eyes and noticed they led to a barn around three hundred yards ahead.

  “Right there!” she said, pointing at what looked like a small black smudge moving.

  “Fuck! I see him!” Hamish said, immediately revving the engine and roaring down toward the figure. The car’s engine stuttered but continued to fire on all cylinders. After half a minute or so, they had reached the end of the field and came to a little barn. The tire marks that originally led them there were now meshed into two sets, theirs and the original set.

  The barn in front of them was painted white and had paneled wood on its side. It looked like some sort of cowshed. Hamish pointed at a long row of bushes that were a few feet in front of them. Demi saw what looked like the back end of a vehicle sticking out. The wheels were slightly raised off the ground. Someone had gone flying into the bush. The car was obviously stuck, and three-quarters of it lay hidden in the brush.

  “You reckon that’s the hearse?” Hamish asked.

  “I don’t know, but whoever crashed that vehicle was running into the barn when we drove into the field. You saw it, and I saw it. I’m betting that whoever is in there will be needing medical attention. And if they don’t receive any, they’ll die. It looks like a bad crash.”

  “And if Donny is in there, we might as well do him the courtesy of speeding up the process. We wouldn’t want him to suffer, now, would we?”

  Both of them smiled. It was the first time either of them had done so in a while. They looked at each other, and then Hamish nodded. He reached for his shotgun and opened the driver’s door. He got out and slammed it shut. Demi sat there for a millisecond or two. Alone and peaceful. For a split second in time, she was free. Free from fear. Free from anger. But then it all came back to her. The sound of Hamish cocking his shotgun after sliding in some ammo shook her back into reality.

  If she wanted her freedom, she’d have to fight for it. And that’s exactly what she was about to do. She got out of the car and joined Hamish. She looked at him and smiled once again. It was strange, smiling twice in such a short amount of time. He smiled back at her and said, “You ready to make Donny the Hat brown bread?”

  Demi nodded and replied, “With pleasure.”

  They both held hands for a second or two, and then released their grips. Hamish stood in front of her and raised his gun to shoulder level. He was now aiming down the sights, ready for whatever was waiting for them on the inside of that barn.

  Thirty-Nine

  DCI Francis and DI Craig pulled into a car park. Francis was driving and biting her lip at the same time. She was obviously distracted, and Lionel decided to try to calm her down a little by attempting a joke.

  “What did one shark say to the other while eating a clownfish?” he asked, smiling a little already.

  As Amy parked the car she gave him a look.

  “Ah, come on! Lighten up!”

  She shook her head and reluctantly said, “What did the clownfish-eating shark say?”

  “This tastes funny!” he said, cackling a little.

  She turned the engine off and sat there for a few seconds, looking blankly at Lionel, who was still smirking. His smile soon evaporated once he saw Amy wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

  “I was only trying to make you smile a little. I know how bad you’re taking all of this,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a gum strip.

  “I’m not taking this bad at all!” she exclaimed, rather defensively.

  “I’m just saying, Amy. Lighten up. We’re police officers. Not guardians. We don’t owe anybody anything. As far as I see it, if some gangster kidnaps a scumbag and evidently said scumbag goes missing, why is it our job to find that scumbag? Surely there are real victims to console. Real people to protect. Actual victims to attend to.”

  Amy shook her head emphatically and said, “So Demi Reynolds isn’t a ‘real’ victim?”

  “Exactly! She’s the bane of society. No wonder the Met don’t want to waste valuable time and money on searching for this she-devil.”

  Amy rolled her eyes and abruptly turned to face Lionel. The sound of her body twisting in the car seat made him pull a face. She was obviously pissed off, and he didn’t want to piss her off more. That was the least of his intentions. Amy Francis was a hard person to get along with when she wasn’t on a personal rescue mission, let alone when she was itching for “misplaced justice.”

  “You don’t know the last thing about being a woman in this city,” Amy said bluntly, still staring a hole into her doting partner as he chewed on his gum and blinked a few times. “You don’t know what it’s like growing up on an estate and expected to be a certain way. Act a certain way. Like certain boys. Kiss the popular ones. Fuck the ones your friends consider cool. God forbid you find somebody who’s smart and fall in love with them. Oh, no! That won’t do. They won’t like that! They’ll tease you because you’re with some ‘wasteman.’ They’ll heckle him for learning and acting right, whilst all the hood rats fuck and suck all the ‘badmans’ out there. Before you know it, the people you once called friends go missing. They don’t come out to play anymore. They don’t hang out at the supermarket. They don’t drink in the park. They don’t attend the prom. They miss their GCSEs, and then I get worried. I ask for them. I call for them at their house. Their mother tells me they don’t live at home anymore. That they flew the nest. Met a nice lad with a car. Dresses smart. Acts tough yet is a softy. But I know different. I see it for what it is. A few years pass, and we’re all grown up. I bump into her at a supermarket. She’s got two kids by her side. One of those double pushchairs. They’re little brats. Don’t stop screaming. She looks like she hasn’t slept in years. She has circles around her eyes. I go in to kiss her on the cheek. She flinches. I see marks on her neck. Purple ones. Bruises on her arms. A fading shiner on her right eye.”

  Lionel sat there and frowned.

  “So girls like Demi Reynolds may be criminals. They may be ‘hood rats,’ but they’re survivors. Sometimes a girl has to do what a girl has to do,” Amy said, finally turning and facing the windshield again.

  “I guess I never saw it that way. But I do have one question,” Lionel said.

  Amy didn’t answer, she just sat there, staring.

  “If every woman who ever lived in these places decided to take the law into her own hands, I’m sure the courts wouldn’t be saying, ‘Well, they did what they had to.’ Crime is crime. Murder is murder. Theft is theft. No matter the circumstances, people should pay for what they do wrong. If we looked at it the way you looked at it, then maybe we’d
let everybody off. Everybody who grew up poor. Who lived in a broken home. The ones that were beaten and abused. Sexually and mentally. Why not let everybody go scot-free?”

  Amy shook her head and opened the door. She got out and slammed the door shut. She walked off toward the building in front of them. Lionel read the sign above the entrance. It read: “Greater City of London CCTV Centre.”

  If they were going to get a fresh lead on the missing Demi Reynolds, they’d find it here.

  Lionel got out of the car and caught up to Amy. She was visibly upset, but he didn’t say anything. They remained silent as they entered the building. The two of them were scheduled to meet a contact at the building known in their profession as BIG BROTHER. It had eyes and ears everywhere in London. If somebody went missing, BIG BROTHER was the first port of call.

  Amy was just hoping that it wouldn’t be the last.

  Forty

  Hamish was just about to reach for the door handle when Demi stopped him.

  “Wait!” she barked, pointing at the blood dripping off the handle. The door to the barn looked as if it had been smudged with a hand print, as if whoever had gone in there was badly injured.

  Hamish turned his head slightly and looked at their surroundings. He could hear his car’s engine ticking as it cooled down. The darkness of the field engulfed them, the only light visible coming from the cracks in the barn. The door looked like it had some sort of light source behind it. A small one, but enough to give off some light. Hamish felt his nerves biting away at his hands. They were shaking violently. He was anxious about whatever was behind the door.

  “We should go in. We’re wasting time standing out here. He could hear us and catch us off guard,” Demi stated, lightly brushing her hand against his for comfort.

  Hamish nodded. He was trying to regain his composure. He didn’t want to come off as a bag of nerves. The last thing he wanted to do was show Demi how he truly felt. He knew she was grateful for what he’d done for her, rescuing her from being buried alive, but what she didn’t know was it cost him a lot to do so. He was now terrified of what was going to happen to him. He didn’t know if he could contain his fear. But he knew that he had to. After all, he was the one with the shotgun. He was the one who’d rescued a trained killer. Even if he failed at pulling the trigger on his boss, he was sure that Demi herself would step in.