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

by D. E. White

  Dove had been in the closing stages of one of her undercover operations when it had happened, but the case of fourteen-year-old gymnast Mickey Delaney had caught her attention, much as it had caught the attention of the press. Mickey’s picture had been everywhere, and speculation had been rife as to who had been responsible for her attack.

  She thought back, tapping a pen on her teeth, staring unseeingly at the ceiling. At the time, Dove had been infiltrating an organised crime gang with the aid of her CHIS (Covert Human Intelligence Source). She’d had a meeting behind a dive bar with her CHIS and his brothers. His brothers had no idea that every word they uttered that night was incriminating them, or that their brother was earning a nice amount for grassing up their illegal enterprise and bringing a copper into their midst.

  The night she’d learned about Mickey Delaney, the meeting had finished, and Dove had hung around, nonchalantly in character, smoking a cigarette, laughing at something her CHIS said, but all the time aching for the close, the kill. The investigation had gone well, and everything was in place, according to the plans.

  She remembered watching a few of the girls from the brothel sharing cigarettes and whispering in the corner of the yard. In was a hot summer night, but their cheap, skimpy clothing would have been the same if it had been freezing cold and snowing. One of the girls was swigging from a bottle, another passing round pills from a plastic bag.

  Dove and her CHIS had just finished their cigarettes and were turning to go, when there was a noise from the girls’ corner. One of them had swung herself up on to the high concrete ledge that surrounded the yard area on two sides.

  Poised for a moment, barefoot and skinny in her thin blue dress, she calmly started to dance, turning cartwheels and doing backflips before finally landing in an easy handstand on the narrow crumbling ledge, dark hair tumbling around her face.

  She could have been an Olympic gymnast — like Mickey — but then she jumped lightly down, slipped her heels back on and was just another skinny teenage prostitute in Ari’s Bar.

  “Does she do that a lot?” Dove had asked, impressed but hiding it. What a waste of talent.

  Her CHIS shrugged, clearly not interested. The girls were money, not people, to him.

  Dove feigned slight amusement, disdain even, and they went back through the scummy, smoky dive bar, and out on to the street. Next day the bar was raided by her colleagues. A large quantity of drugs and knives were seized, but the girls seemed to have vanished into the night — except for two.

  Later, after a forensic search of Ari’s Bar, two dead bodies were discovered in the cellar. They had been tortured before being shot. Two young girls. One of them was the gymnast in the blue dress.

  It was one of those things that stayed with Dove, skittering in the far reaches of her memory, a sore place in her heart. It turned out some members of the criminal gang thought the girls were responsible for leaking information and therefore they had been punished.

  Dove glanced up sharply at the window, half-imagining a shadow moving swiftly back in the darkness, a blurred face, a tall figure. She was still half lost in her own past, confused, heart beating hard and fast. A quick thud of footsteps on the pavement outside. She flew to the window, throwing it open, peering into the night. In just the T-shirt, she suddenly felt naked and vulnerable.

  Her chest was tight, breathing quick and shallow. The hand clutching the catch on the window was sweaty. But the cool night breeze only threw back a distant echo of waves on the beach. She listened for a moment longer, but if there had been someone watching her, they were long gone now.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I’m not sure what really happened, how I managed to survive, to still be walking around sane today. To an outsider, nothing has changed, but to me, it feels like a hole has been torn in my heart. The pain is so bad I want to curl up in a corner and scream.

  I watched them carefully at first, trying not to stare in the darkness. They looked happy, excited, like two normal couples out on a Friday night date. I could smell perfume and cigarettes and sweat. But they weren’t couples. Not really.

  I wondered for a few seconds about the others, about their pasts, and what led them to this moment. I didn’t really care, because I was only focused on one person, but I needed to wait, to make the most of the opportunity fate had delivered to me.

  Later that night it hit me for the first time. Perhaps she thought I didn’t know! She may truly have had no idea how much it would hurt me, but it makes no difference, it’s done now and nothing can change the past.

  It can be hard when people try to hurt you, when they turn on you for no apparent reason, or when you are blamed for something that simply wasn’t your fault.

  I know this better than anyone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dove smiled at Quinn’s sleeping form. His face was peaceful, one tanned arm flung over the thin sheet, and she longed to snuggle up for a much-needed lie-in. But work beckoned.

  The parking was limited in her road, and she usually had to tuck in on the end, behind all the nine-to-fivers who arrived home before her. Today she jogged across the road in the sunshine, mind already on the case, turning over what she had learned last night about Jamie Delaney.

  On the one hand, so what if the poor man’s sister had been the victim of an attack? On the other hand, was it relevant to this case? In her job, true coincidences were rare. She pressed the button to unlock her car, and stopped dead.

  “Fuck.” The vehicle had long, deep scratches along the side, from the driver’s door all the way to the rear wheel. The black paint was scarred with vicious silver claw marks. She traced them with her fingers, furious at the wanton vandalism. A key or screwdriver probably, and it would cost a lot to get it fixed.

  “Fuck!” she said again, remembering her impression of someone outside last night. Normally, this was a quiet road.

  She decided to get to work before she made any calls. Anger made her movements sharp, and adrenalin was still pumping around her body as she wrenched the car door open.

  “Hello, Dove. What happened?” It was Mary, her next-door neighbour, calling from her front garden.

  “Someone keyed my car,” Dove explained, trying to calm herself.

  Mary frowned. “Unusual for round here. Maybe someone couldn’t find a parking space and took it out on your car.”

  “Can’t see any other vehicles that have been damaged. Such a nuisance, but I’ll sort it out later, or I’ll be late for work.” Dove liked Mary. She was an unobtrusive neighbour, dedicating her later years to her art, her garden, and indulging in her passion for football.

  “Off you go then! I’ve recently had one of those doorbell cameras fitted. I’ll check and see if it picked anything up from last night,” Mary said, stepping on to the pavement with her shopping basket, latching the gate behind her.

  Dove, already in the driver’s seat, called her thanks, and with a pang of regret, remembered Aileen Jackson’s husband walking away up the hill with his empty shopping bags.

  * * *

  Down at the police station, carefully parking in an end space, Dove encountered DI Rankin, the lead on the Claw Beach case.

  “Morning, DC Milson. Can we have a quick word later? Shit, what the hell happened to your car?” He bent down and squinted at ragged scratch.

  “Got keyed last night. It’s fine, I’ll sort it later, and sure . . .” Dove checked her watch. “We can have a word now if you like. I’ve got a few things to do, but if you need me . . .”

  He led the way inside through the main entrance, to one of the downstairs offices. “The victim from the Claw Beach attack, Mr Harbor, isn’t talking, and doesn’t want to press charges.”

  “Really?” Dove was surprised. “Did he say why?”

  “CCTV from his office shows he left work yesterday evening at . . .”

  “Seven p.m. I know. One of the victims from our quadruple homicide worked as part of the cleaning team who has the Pearce and Partners cont
ract.” Dove couldn’t yet see how those invisible threads might connect Alex Harbor and Dionne Radley, but she felt it was fair to give the DI a heads-up.

  He was a short man, with a pouchy face and a mass of wrinkles collecting under his eyes. Like a cartoon bloodhound, Dove thought. But his brown eyes were kindly, and his smile wide, even if he did stink of fags and coffee.

  “I heard a rumour about that. George Lincoln is on the case, isn’t he? We go way back. I’ll swing by for a chat, just in case we’re missing something.” He nodded slowly as though adjusting his thoughts, choosing his words. “For your information, we are aware of several other incidents similar to the Claw Beach attack, which could be the same perps. Stolen getaway car, remote location. All three of the robbery victims are exactly the same demographic: male, married, fairly wealthy. And all three claim not to have seen the attackers well enough to give a good description.”

  “Sounds like a scam,” Dove said after a moment’s hesitation. She was still having trouble getting her head around her own case, and if the Claw Beach attack was just one in a series, her colleagues could be looking at a serial offender, or offenders. “What if the second person is a woman? Easy bait for a certain kind of man.”

  “And she arranges the meet? Maybe a prostitute, and she and her pimp are working a classic pincer scam? Picking on victims who aren’t likely to squeal. I’ll look into it and keep you posted, like I said,” he added. There was a yell from the custody suites next door and an increase in foot traffic through the open-plan office to their left.

  “No worries. I wish I’d seen more or at least held on to him,” Dove told him.

  She jogged upstairs. It seemed likely DI Rankin and his team were correct. The scam was an old one, but a good one. If your victim had a lot to lose, they were more likely to give up their valuables and respond favourably to blackmail. Why the beatings, though? Were some of the victims trying to fight back, or were drugs involved after all?

  Dove knew she needed to compartmentalise. Three cases were filling her mind now: Claw Beach, the Beach Escape Rooms murders, and the cold case of teenage gymnast Mickey Delaney, Jamie’s little sister. It was enough to give her even more of a headache. She sighed, dumped her bag on her chair, and headed straight for the kitchen, beating Lindsey to the kettle.

  “Make one for me, will you, Dove?” her colleague asked, as she rubbed her tired eyes. “Hey, you look like shit as well. That makes me feel better.”

  “Were you up by 3 a.m. trying to crack the case too?” Dove knew Lindsey’s habits well and the two women were similar in their single-minded approach to their jobs.

  “Don’t think I even went to bed,” Lindsey admitted. “This is a big old sprawling mess, isn’t it?”

  “Black with three?”

  “Ta.” Dove passed over the mug. Lindsey held the steaming brew up to her nose and inhaled deeply before taking a sip. “Thanks, I feel half-human again now. How’s your head?”

  “Bit sore.” She told Lindsey briefly about the link to the Claw Beach attack and the Beach Escape Rooms investigation.

  “I suppose it’s a small town really, so coincidences do happen,” her colleague said slowly. “You checking out Camillo’s today?”

  “My first stop after the briefing. I already rang the owner. Hey, did you ever hear of the Mickey Delaney case? Five years ago?”

  “No. I wasn’t here five years ago, was I?” It took Lindsey no more than a second to assimilate the information. “Any relation to Jamie?”

  Dove had momentarily forgotten Lindsey transferred from Yorkshire a year before Dove herself joined the Major Crimes Team. Steve wouldn’t have been in this area five years ago either, nor DI Blackman. “Actually, yes. I was looking into Jamie Delaney’s family history last night — the name kept bugging me, until I remembered his sister, Mickey. She was brutally attacked five years ago. She’s still in hospital. I wonder if there is anyone on the team who worked that case? It might be interesting to see the files.”

  As they walked down the corridor towards the morning briefing, DI Blackman called out to Dove, “Can I have a quick word?”

  “You’re probably in trouble now.” Lindsey winked at her, but Dove ignored her colleague’s good-natured jibe and went into the DI’s office.

  “Firstly, DC Milson, I didn’t realise how serious the attack at Claw Beach on the twenty-fifth was. You certainly didn’t mention you had hospital treatment.”

  Dove shifted uncomfortably as the grey eyes drilled into her brain. He was sitting perfectly still, waiting.

  “DI Rankin spoke to you?” she asked.

  “He just rang the office looking for George. By the book, you should be on sick leave,” he told her sternly. “But leaving that aside for a moment, we are considering whether the cases are linked. I also got your email last night regarding Jamie Delaney. Did you have a reason for dredging it up, or is it just interesting background on our owners?”

  “The latter, really.” Dove explained about the gymnastic girl in the brothel and how the case of Mickey Delaney had caught her attention because of it. “I can’t see how it could be related to our investigation, but I was wondering if anyone on the team had worked the case.”

  “I checked the files after I read your email, and DCI Franklin did indeed work that one as a DI. He was one of the leads, and he is fully recovered so I’m expecting him at the briefing today. He can let us know if he sees any red flags regarding the cold case and our current investigation.” He narrowed his eyes, studying her face. “But I did have a quick look and the main suspects were Mickey’s gymnastics coach, ‘Colly’ Hawthorn, who is now deceased, and her best friend, Jenna Essex.”

  “Her best friend? Ouch,” Dove said.

  “Quite. Both suspects eventually scraped through with slightly questionable alibis. Colly Hawthorn was arrested but later released without charge.”

  “Okay, boss, it was just a thought,” Dove told him.

  “Fine, get on with it. Camillo’s is your first point of call after the briefing, I presume?” He was picking up a pile of documents now, attention already moving towards the next job.

  “Yes, boss,” said Dove as they walked across to the group gathered for the morning briefing. “We’re chasing up Dionne Radley’s journey from Pearce and Partners to the Beach Escape Rooms.”

  The briefing centred on further information from the press appeal, which had gone out the previous afternoon, and later also featured in the local evening news. After choice details of the murders had been made public a flood of phone calls from the eagle-eyed general public had yielded a few leads.

  This was fortunate as the Beach Escape Rooms CCTV cameras had been rendered almost useless during the break-in, so the only evidence from that source was the sketchy footage the tech team had managed to clean up, showing the bodies in situ at 2 a.m.

  “A taxi driver brought Dionne and Ellis to the pier. He picked them up on the seafront opposite Kenny’s Irish Bar at about 11.45 and dropped them off at the end of the pier. Said he remembers telling them the pier was all closed up for the night, but the woman said she wanted to walk along the beach towards White Cliffs or something,” DI Lincoln said. “Traffic cam from across the road picked them up getting out of the taxi and walking down the pier at five past midnight. It isn’t great but it is footage we can use.”

  He played the video, and Dove squinted to see the two figures. They were blurry but just about recognisable, and a thought occurred to her. “Dionne was carrying a large white bag over her shoulder, like a beach bag. When she left Pearce and Partners she was wearing her blue work overall. She must have stopped to change somewhere.”

  “Right, get on to that after you’ve seen the owner at Camillo’s,” DI Blackman told her. “As we know, mobile phone signals have pinged three of our four on the pier by half past twelve. We are still missing Dionne’s day-to-day phone. If she stopped at a friend’s place or something to get changed she may have left it there. And I want to know where she met
Ellis. They were picked up together and they arrived together. Where was she between leaving work and her taxi ride?”

  Josh, sitting next to Dove, was sipping his coffee and swiping through notes on his iPad. “Shame Billy Jackson topped himself, poor bloke.”

  Dove agreed and glanced at her watch. Steve was sometimes a couple of minutes late, but he was going to miss the briefing at this rate.

  “Lindsey and I are going to meet with a bloke who claims to have known Aileen back in the day. He says she was an escort.” Josh rolled his eyes. “But he could just be after a bit of the action, because he wanted to know if he was going to have to appear on the news or Crimewatch.”

  “Sounds flaky,” Dove told him. “Even if she’s been involved in crime in her past, it does seem like she cleaned up her act when she married Billy. He certainly thought so, anyway.”

  “And yet here she was back to her old ways, maybe, hooking up with Ellis Bravery and the others for a bit of sex in a glass box.”

  “It sounds far kinkier when you say it,” Dove told him, pulling a face, as she texted Steve.

  Josh grinned at her and went back to his notes.

  DCI Franklin was sitting between the two DIs, dwarfing them both with his massive shoulders. He was similar in physique to Dionne’s husband, Tomas, Dove thought, watching his quick eyes dart from one face to another, making the odd note, nodding at each piece of new information. His silver hair and shaggy eyebrows made him look like a genial giant, but the piercing blue eyes told another story.

  “Thank you, George,” the DCI said now. “I’m sorry to have missed the first day, and I can see it will take me a while to get up to speed.” He indicated the incident board, which now covered two sections of wall, with green straggling lines and photographs on timelines stretching like spaghetti between scrawled updates and names. “This is a big case, and clearly it will take a while to untangle the links between our victims and the perpetrator, but the press are loving the novelty aspect, if you can call it that, so for our sake and the sake of the poor families waiting for answers, let’s wrap this up as soon as we can.”