THE ABBERLEY BEACH MURDERS an addictive crime thriller with a fiendish twist (Detective Dove Milson Book 3)

by D. E. White

  “I can’t think of anything else. He was just normal, just Ellis. He was so busy and smart but really caring too, you know?” Ally said now. “My friends said we were made for each other, with our names and everything. You know, Ally and Elly . . . That’s what he liked me to call him, Elly. He was so supportive of me building my career as a model and influencer, and told me how much he believed in me.”

  “Yes, we understand. I’m really sorry, Ally, but are you happy to sign a statement based on what you’ve just told us?” Dove felt she might need a motion sickness bag if the girl gushed about her relationship any more. Ally and Elly.

  A sideways glance at Steve showed her he was holding in laughter and she deliberately avoided catching his eye. It might even be true, all these hearts and flowers, Dove supposed, but Ellis’s girlfriend certainly seemed to have no idea what he got up to. Although she had lit up at the memory of Dionne, perhaps that had just been a safe path for her to travel down, to show the police how helpful she was being.

  Dove turned at the door as Ally showed them out. “Just one last question . . . Do you have a cleaner, or a housekeeper?”

  “Of course. We have a cleaner.” She waved a slender arm. “I couldn’t possibly clean all this myself and work on creating new content.” The half-smile again, quickly followed by the sad little glance from under her lashes.

  “What’s your cleaner’s name?” Dove asked casually, but her heart rate was accelerating. There was something here, she could feel it. Connections being made, almost invisible threads weaving the victims’ lives together . . .

  “Oh, I don’t know, sorry, the firm sends different people every time, and I’m often out shopping or at the gym at the time they arrive.” She smiled. “I prefer not to be around to watch them work. It makes me feel a bit guilty. I do have a card for the firm, though. Hang on a sec . . .” She headed for the vast marble kitchen and rummaged around on the magnetic whiteboard on the wall, before passing a card to Dove.

  Dove took it with thanks and glanced at the details:

  Camillo’s, for all your cleaning needs.

  Industrial and domestic contracts undertaken.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  After talking to Ellis Bravery’s girlfriend and taking her statement, Steve and Dove had made it back to the station with half an hour to spare and were hastily using the time to collate their notes before the evening briefing.

  The two DIs were already back and most of the team were now filing in, sweaty, exhausted and carrying takeaways and iced drinks. Clearly nobody imagined work was over for the day.

  “Ally, Ellis Bravery’s girlfriend, was arrested for shoplifting last year, but the store dropped the charges. Looks like it was the wine store on North Street, and she was laying in supplies.” Steve was reading out loud. “Says she was going through a bad patch and was going to get help for her drinking.”

  Dove thought back to the perfect and polished girl in the gleaming apartment. The flashes of personality beneath the painted exterior. Had she just been playing a part for Ellis? “I reckon she’s a lot smarter than she gives out . . . She seemed a bit disdainful that Dionne and her friends were drinking heavily at the club. If she had a drinking problem previously it might mean a lot to her that she’s kicked it?”

  “Right, and if she hasn’t managed to kick the habit, she might be extra careful about her pristine reputation. Maybe Ellis didn’t know she’d had any alcohol problems?” Steve pulled a face. “If you must eat those disgusting things, please keep them away from me. They smell of plastic.”

  Dove swept her packet of jelly sweets off his workspace but planted her elbows next to his keyboard, studying the statement they had just taken from Ally. “And what would she have done if she found out he was out playing games with other women, and therefore perhaps not quite the perfect fiancé she thought he was?”

  “If she’s turning a blind eye to his activities maybe that extends to illicit meet-ups?” Steve suggested. “She mentioned the money a few times and seemed a bit defensive about it. Perhaps it was worth putting up with his quirks to stay as the live-in girlfriend?”

  “Let’s send the whole lot over to the DI.” Dove pushed herself upright, tipped the packet and poured the last of her sugar rush straight into her mouth.

  “You are a class act, DC Dove Milson,” Josh said, catching her stuffing her face as he walked past with Lindsey, laughing.

  She stuck a middle finger up at him and followed Steve out to the briefing room.

  DI Lincoln kicked off the briefing, methodically running through his notes, including the information that had already been sent to the entire team during the day.

  “He reminds me of my year-eight history teacher,” Steve muttered to Dove.

  “Is that a good thing?” she murmured back, eyes on the whiteboard, tracing the tangled lines relating to the last movements of all their victims. There were a lot of blanks still left to fill in.

  “I failed history GCSE, so probably not,” Steve admitted.

  “Thanks, George. A quick summary is now up on the board and circulating via emails, so I won’t bore you with the whole update now,” DI Blackman interjected, jumping in as his colleague stopped to take a sip of his tea. Clearly seeing the team had switched off, he continued. “Main points being, as DI Lincoln has just mentioned, none of the relatives, other halves, friends we know of, have so far admitted to knowing where the four victims were last night. Lindsey?”

  She nodded in agreement. “Both female victims had husbands, and they claim to have had no idea the women were out last night. Dionne’s husband, Tomas, has an alibi, which checks out, and we are still confirming Aileen’s husband, Billy, who says he had started off working the night shift at the local Tesco’s before being called to check on his mother.”

  “Maya. Did you get anything?”

  “Oscar Wilding seems to have been a bit of a loner, keeping himself to himself. Can’t find any family, friends, etcetera, but his neighbours say he’s . . .” she looked down at his notes to quote, “. . . a nice polite man. He always helps with the bins and chucks the kids’ football back when it goes over his garden fence. Works as an odd-job man, and does deliveries in his van. You know, man with van for hire.”

  “Got it. Steve?”

  “Ellis Bravery’s girlfriend says she was asleep in their apartment, that Ellis often worked late and she didn’t notice him go out,” Steve said. “And we have a link between Dionne Radley and Ellis. They were both out at the same club last month, and the cleaning firm she works for, Camillo’s, also cleans his apartment.” Steve shuffled his notes. “Kind of a weird set-up, and it seems like she just turns a blind eye to everything apart from their relationship.”

  “Good. Dig a bit more on that one,” DI Blackman told him. “Great work in general, everyone. Email is just in with a report from the lab on mobiles and other tech devices. Mobile phone records were expedited, so there will be more to come, but . . .” He clicked the mouse and various text messages appeared on the drop-down screen. “So, three of our victims look to have had two phones each. Dionne Radley just had the one phone, a burner, on her. But they all had a burner and a normal phone that contains pretty much their whole lives. It is possible, and hopefully probable, that Dionne’s other phone will turn up during our searches.”

  “Secret phones?” Josh winked at Maya, “How original.”

  Ignoring him, the DI continued, “As you can see from the screen up here, text conversations between them suggest this was a planned meet-up, and they all knew exactly what they were getting into. There are a lot of conversations to pick through, but these are from last night. Hang on, I’ll put them up on the screen . . .”

  Dove studied the copy of the transcript of the recent group chat on WhatsApp:

  Oscar: You gonna be late again E?

  Ellis: Just gotta make a call & wait till baby is asleep. It’s all good. Meet you there.

  Aileen: OK.

  Dionne: On my way. Wearing
the black dress ;-)

  “Just before midnight,” DI Lincoln added, “Oscar and Aileen, from the mobile triangulation, were on the pier, and he sent this.” He clicked through to another message.

  Oscar: We’ve just arrived. This is gonna be best yet!

  “Finally, all four were on the pier by twenty past midnight. None of them used their everyday phones during this period, although Aileen Jackson’s phone has an answerphone message from her husband, left at 1 a.m., saying his mother has had a fall and he’s going to leave work and drive straight over to her nursing home.” DI Blackman raised an eyebrow at Dove and Steve.

  Steve nodded. “Corroborates his statement.”

  Josh was leaning back against the wall. “So from the group chat, this suggests clearly they all knew each other previously.”

  “Certainly well enough for this to be a prearranged meeting,” DI Blackman agreed. “They were all headed for the escape rooms, not suggesting meet-ups in a bar or for dinner. Doesn’t look like a spontaneous thing. I’ll send you all copies, and trawl through the rest of the chat. Dionne’s everyday mobile phone is currently switched off. Her husband says he called her twice last night to ask if she was working next Tuesday, as he wanted to make plans to have an estate agent visit.”

  “Ellis Bravery doesn’t have a baby,” Dove pointed out the obvious. “But his girlfriend did make a slightly odd comment about the fact he likes the fact she sleeps like a child . . .” Suddenly their slightly off-kilter relationship didn’t seem that amusing after all.

  “So he can go out swinging when she’s tucked up past her bedtime, maybe?” Lindsey suggested sarcastically.

  DI Lincoln’s phone rang and he picked it up, turning away into the corridor to take the call.

  “What about the owners of the escape room?” DC Maya Amin queried. “When we spoke to them they seemed really shocked, but I’m certain their CCTV would have captured any break-ins. They said they paid a lot for the system to be installed.” She glanced at DI Blackman, who was now adding to the timelines on the whiteboard in his neat handwriting.

  “Most of the CCTV is not going to be recoverable, unfortunately,” the DI answered. “And the owners do seem more worried about their insurance than who killed four people on their premises last night. They are childhood sweethearts apparently, both originally from further along the coast in Salthaven. They’ve got a young baby, Lila, so are pretty distracted by her too.”

  The team began to disperse, chat volume levels rising as they compared notes and theories, Dove and Steve drifting with the tide. DS Pete Wyndham opened a packet of chocolate digestives, looking meditatively out of the window as he crunched the biscuits, staring at the timelines.

  DI Lincoln finished his call and returned to the room, his expression sombre. “Extra update for you. Aileen Jackson’s husband, Billy, has just been found dead at the train station. He jumped in front of the 8.07 Southam–London service. Never had a chance. Numerous witnesses say he was sitting on one of the benches drinking from a bottle of whisky, suddenly got up and took a running leap. He left his phone and wallet in a shopping bag on the bench.” The DI paused and glanced around the room. “There’s a suicide note, handwritten and taped to his phone, stating he’s sorry for everything.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Quinn was eating pizza in the garden with a beer dangling from his hand when Dove finally arrived home. Nobody joined the police force expecting a nine-to-five job, but sometimes even she was exhausted by the seventeen- or eighteen-hour shifts they all put in at the start of a murder investigation.

  Her fiancé called a greeting and she dumped her gear and went straight out into the sunny patch at the rear of the house. The late-evening light, gold stained with pink, cast a gentle glow around the small garden.

  “Hi babe, how’s your head?” He squinted up at her from the blue-striped sunlounger.

  “It’s fine.” She kissed him. “Okay, it hurts a bit, but I’m okay. I feel like I haven’t seen you for weeks.”

  It was always like that when Quinn had a run of shifts, especially nights. They could go days just communicating by texts and the occasional kiss hello and goodbye. Demanding jobs with stressful implications. Typical, Dove thought, perching on the end of his lounger and snagging a beer from the ice bucket, that her fiancé now had some days off and she had just started what was looking like one of the most complex MCT investigations she had worked on yet.

  Quinn smiled lazily up at her. His messy black hair flopped across his forehead and his green eyes glittered in the late-evening sun. He had acquired freckles across the bridge of his nose along with his tan. Her heart, as always, gave a lurch of love for him. Her rock.

  “Hey, let’s go out on the water,” she said now, forcing her mind away from the investigation. Her mind was exhausted and her body ached, but she was craving the best stress release she knew, and the one she could share with Quinn. It was tough, but she had been working extra hard on trying to switch off when she was at home with him. “Although on second thoughts, how many of those beers have you had?”

  He sat up, sweeping his arms around her. “Just the one. You can have my last pizza slice before we go.”

  Half an hour later, marvelling at the warmth of the water at ten o’clock at night, they were jogging through the shallows with their paddleboards. Dove could feel her exhaustion washing away as they went further and further out. The sun was a fierce orange gold, blazing a trail across the sea, by the time they turned back to the beach, paddles dipping rhythmically, lazily, the gulls calling, soaring on huge wings overhead.

  Afterwards they lay on the beach as darkness approached. Dove prodded Quinn’s bare leg with her sandy toes. “Are you still awake?”

  “Starving,” he replied. “Let’s get some food on the way home.”

  Dove dived into the corner shop at the end of their road, picked up snacks and some ready-made seafood salads. Her T-shirt clung to her damp body and her hair was still wet, hanging heavily across her shoulder blades. She could taste salt on her lips, feel the sand crunching inside her flip-flops, and the intermittent throb of her healing injury.

  As she came out, she bumped straight into a man heading in the opposite direction. Hard. “Ouch! Sorry . . .”

  He was wearing a red baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, but nodded, smiled and brushed her apology away, continuing into the shop, brown shoulder-length hair flopping around his face.

  She looked after him for a moment, supposing she must be more tired than she thought to walk straight into someone.

  * * *

  Later, curled up on the sofa, with the glass doors to the tiny garden thrown open, despite her best efforts, Dove went back to pondering the case. Suspects galore, but nobody who stood out apart from Billy Jackson. Was his suicide as a result of trailing his cheating wife and causing the deaths of four innocent people, or had her death just hit him hard? She dipped back into the crisp packet, half watching the Netflix film they had chosen.

  “I was thinking next June for our wedding date,” Quinn said suddenly, dragging her mind away from murder.

  “You were?” Dove smiled at him. They had batted dates around for a while, but so far not committed to anything. “How about exactly a year from now and we make it the twenty-sixth of July?”

  “Church, and then a beach party?”

  “Sorted. Hell, Quinn, we’re in the wrong jobs. We should be wedding planners,” Dove joked, as her fiancé rolled his eyes.

  * * *

  It wasn’t until she had just settled down to sleep, begun shutting down her mind, finally submitting to weariness, that she thought of it.

  Dove sighed. She hated it when this happened, but for her that moment between consciousness and sleep was often when her mind made connections she had been too busy to pursue in daytime.

  For a few moments she tried to unfocus, to sleep, but the desire for knowledge, for a new lead, was too tempting. Carefully, so as not to wake Quinn, she slipped out of bed an
d stood up.

  The cool night breeze floating in at the open window touched her naked body and she shivered. She picked up a discarded T-shirt from the floor and slipped it over her head, before padding carefully downstairs to the kitchen.

  It was warmer and slightly stuffy down here. The windows were shut for security reasons but she had left the vent open at the top of the back door. Dove grabbed her laptop, jumped violently as Layla slid silently in from the living room, and sat down at the kitchen table.

  The cat watched her with enquiring eyes, uttered a squeaky meow and started to purr. Clearly she approved of Dove’s nocturnal wanderings.

  Mickey Delaney.

  Wide awake now, pushing her hair back from her eyes, Dove logged on to the internet. After a quick search, she found what she was looking for. Almost every story showed pictures of Mickey competing in sparkly leotards, her body stretching out into incredible poses, red ponytail flying out behind her, or standing in happy family snaps. Jamie had been a redhead then, just like his younger sister, and she noted a family photo, with him smiling proudly and protectively down at his little sibling.

  Mickey had been a promising teenage gymnast, when she was severely beaten and left for dead “by assailants unknown”, almost five years ago. She had been attacked in the woods above a derelict sandstone quarry, a popular hang-out area for the local teens, and miraculously survived a thirty-foot fall on to sharp rocks below. She was discovered by forestry workers. Mickey had suffered so many trauma injuries, including damage to her spleen and lungs, doctors had been certain she wouldn’t survive. But she had been in a coma ever since.

  This was what had dragged her from her bed. Steve had said earlier Zara wanted to call the baby Michaela if it was a girl, she recalled, and finally her brain had made the connection with what felt like a sharp click.

  It must have been horrific for the family, especially as the case had never been solved. And now Jamie Delaney was involved in a murder inquiry, which was . . . interesting.