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

by D. E. White

  Eventually, clearly satisfied Gaia was stable enough to move, they strapped her to a stretcher, wrapped in foil and blankets. Quinn picked up his bag and jogged over to Dove as the stretcher party went ahead. “She should be okay but, of course, you know . . .”

  “Yeah . . . secondary drowning and all that. Jeez, Quinn, I never thought I’d be doing CPR on my own sister.” Dove walked with him as they headed up the beach.

  “Knowing you three, I’m surprised you haven’t had to do it before.” Quinn winked at her. “Seriously, babe, you did a good job, and thank God that man spotted her when he did.”

  “Did she say anything about what happened?” Now that she was more confident Gaia was going to be okay, her mind was turning back to why she was in the sea in the first place.

  “Not really. Sounds like a robbery that went wrong, though. She said she went to get another bag of change for the tills and someone hit her on the back of the head while she was kneeling down at the open safe.”

  “At her club?” Dove was trying to take this in, thinking of the message she had left for Gaia about two hours ago. The club should be busy with customers and staff, and Gaia had an excellent security system. Dove tried to remember the layout of the office where the safe was installed. There was a fire door leading to the alleyway behind the building, she recalled, but that was alarmed.

  “Yes, at California Dreams,” Quinn confirmed.

  “So why the fuck was she floating in the sea down here?”

  “Babe, I don’t know any more than you do. Are you coming in the truck with us?”

  “Yes, of course. Oh shit, and I must ring Ren as soon as we get to hospital,” Dove said, checking she had her phone securely in her pocket. Her hands were still shaking, and she fumbled with the device until Quinn closed a warm strong hand around hers.

  Together they climbed into the ambulance and travelled to the hospital, Quinn in the back, monitoring the patient, and his colleague driving on blue lights.

  Gaia seemed a bit hazy, and kept trying to pull her oxygen mask off. Quinn spoke firmly. “Mate, I know you feel like shit and you want to tell us exactly what happened, but can you just keep this on for a bit?”

  Furious amber-brown eyes met Dove’s concerned gaze and she gave a shaky laugh. “Don’t look at me for help, you know what he’s like. We’ll get this sorted out, and don’t worry, police have gone straight to the club to check everything out, and I’ll ring Ren when we get to the hospital. Okay?”

  A tiny jerk of a nod and Gaia turned her head back on to the stretcher, closing her eyes, apparently resigned to her fate.

  * * *

  Gaia turned out to be the last shout on Quinn’s shift, so while he and his crewmate headed off to base to return their vehicle, Dove stayed at the hospital. As usual, A&E was full to bursting, but Gaia was taken straight into Resus for monitoring. Two uniformed police officers went into the bay where Gaia was lying, and spent half an hour in muttered conversation.

  When they came out, Dove introduced herself and received an update. Her sister was indeed making a rapid recovery, and had repeated her statement to Dove’s uniformed colleagues — that she had been getting money for the tills out of the safe when she was hit. She had neither heard the attacker approach, nor seen them, but was confident her CCTV would have captured everything.

  Dove sat on a hard plastic seat until Ren arrived. The sisters hugged and she blessed ever-practical Ren, who had brought a flask of coffee for Dove and a small bag of clothes and toiletries for Gaia.

  “I can’t believe it,” Ren said, as they sat side-by-side, half watching the ebb and flow of the walking wounded.

  “It was one of the worst moments of my life,” Dove admitted, gulping scalding coffee, burning her lips.

  “But why was she in the sea? I mean, if she was attacked at the club that means someone must have driven her down to the beach while she was unconscious,” Ren said, her brow furrowed with worry.

  It wasn’t long before a harassed doctor informed them they could see Gaia, but she was sleeping. As far as he could tell, there was a good chance she would suffer no long-lasting injuries, but they would have to wait for further test results.

  Dove studied her sister, so peaceful and young-looking, neatly tucked into the hospital bed. Some of her hair had been shaved to allow access to her wound, which was now neatly stapled. The bruising extended down her forehead and one cheek, and Dove caught her breath, tears threatening again.

  “I’ll stay for a bit,” Ren said. “Didn’t you say Quinn was coming by to give you a lift home? He must be exhausted, so you get off.”

  Dove hesitated, reaching a hand down to hold Gaia’s, feeling the reassuring warmth, the steady pulse. “If you’re sure. And for God’s sake ring me if there is any change, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  They kissed, and Dove bent down and dropped her lips briefly on Gaia’s forehead, her long hair brushing her sister’s face, but Gaia never moved, just carried on breathing slowly and evenly.

  * * *

  Dove was silent on the drive home from the hospital, her tired brain turning over this new and unexpected incident. “I guess we need to wait for the CCTV,” she said finally, fidgeting with her phone. “But it seems like someone knew her routine, when she would go and get more bags of money for the tills . . . She doesn’t remember anything after the blow to her head.”

  “She’ll be okay, babe. She’s tougher than anyone I know and I almost feel sorry for whoever did it by the time she finds out who they are . . .” Quinn pulled up outside their house. “Her lungs were clear, and she’ll have to stay in for observation, but she’s very fit and healthy, so chances are they’ll send her home after forty-eight hours.”

  “I hope so.” Dove got out and slammed her door, the sound deafening in the darkness. “You know what I was just thinking, as well?”

  “Who the hell jumped her at the club and how you can find and possibly hurt them?” Quinn suggested, leading the way up the garden path.

  “That too,” Dove admitted. “But actually I was thinking there have been quite a few people getting bashed on the back of the head and robbed recently.” Her own injury throbbed in painful memory. “What if our Claw Beach perps have changed MO?”

  “Perhaps they thought Gaia was dead and panicked, trying to dispose of her body? It’s very different to what you said before, about luring men out to rob them. This was inside her club and she’s a woman,” Quinn pointed out, pulling off his green uniform shirt with a sigh of relief, and padding barefoot and bare-chested to the fridge. “The only connection, really, is the blow to the head, isn’t it? God, I’m starving — if only I could just sit inside the freezer cabinet for a bit to cool off . . .”

  “Please don’t, you’ll make all the ice cream melt.” Dove reached past him to the high cupboard for wine glasses, before grabbing the loaf of bread from the counter. “I’ll make you a toastie” She began peeling off her own damp clothing, her T-shirt stiff with drying seawater, as she perused the menu.

  Layla was waiting for them sit down, her elegant grey body bolt upright in the middle of the living room, her tail switching crossly, green-gold eyes wide.

  “I suppose you fed her?” Quinn queried, catching the feline disapproval as they finally collapsed on the sofa.

  “Of course.” After her first mouthful of white wine, Dove lay down, swinging her bare legs across Quinn’s lap, closing her eyes. “Oh shit, my brain is literally fried right now. Poor Gaia.” One hand still clutched her mobile phone, and she brought it up to her face, checking for the hundredth time since they had left the hospital for missed calls.

  “I think my theory about getting rid of the body is bang on,” Quinn told her. “Hey, we should switch uniforms for a bit. You did a good job with Gaia on the beach.”

  “Green so isn’t my colour,” she told him sleepily.

  * * *

  Dove almost overslept the next morning, having woken with a jump from a nightmar
e at 3.30 a.m., so convinced she had missed a call from the hospital about her sister that she crept downstairs and placed a call, only to be told by the sleepy-sounding nurse on duty that Gaia was fine and reading a magazine.

  By the time she had gone back to sleep it had been half past four and she now felt bad-tempered and gritty-eyed. Quinn, who slept at any time and generally anywhere like a cat, was snoring as she now padded wearily out of the bedroom.

  Her phone buzzed with a text as she hit the shower and she reached out a wet hand to check the message. It was from Ren:

  Gaia fine & v pissed off she has to stay in until they finish running some more tests, but don’t worry she’s ok. Will stay with her as Eden opening the shop x

  She felt herself relax a little, the memory of Gaia’s limp body and lolling head fading slightly. Despite Quinn’s lazy humour and his gentle banter last night, she knew he had also been shocked. He was very fond of his soon-to-be sisters-in-law, and having no other family, had assimilated neatly into her slightly odd set-up. But humour was Quinn’s way of dealing with things, was in fact one of the reasons he could do such a demanding job, she thought, drying herself and walking naked down to the kitchen for much-needed coffee. She checked the time and hastily accelerated her routine.

  Packing her bag, she discovered the note from last night, wedged between her iPad and notepad. For a second she studied it again, before stuffing it back in. It would wait.

  * * *

  Usually one of the first to check in at the office, today Dove rushed into the briefing room with minutes to spare and sat down next to Steve. He raised his eyebrows at her but she made an I’m fine gesture, and turned her attention towards the whiteboard.

  DI Blackman kicked off, immaculate in a grey suit and pale blue tie, and apparently full of energy. “Right, we are getting somewhere with our timelines now.” He indicated the board. “Dionne Radley left work at 11 p.m. and walked alone to the public toilets opposite Kenny’s Irish Bar. She changed and left her bag there, and we assume she was going to collect it later on. She left her main phone in her bag, probably accidentally.”

  DI Lincoln, who was pinching his forehead between finger and thumb, as though to draw some ideas out, continued. “Dressed to party, she then met Ellis Bravery at the roadside and they took a taxi to the Beach Escape Rooms, arriving at just after midnight. Pete?”

  DS Wyndham nodded. “Maya and I spoke to Oscar Wilding’s neighbour last night. She rang back just after we left the brief, had only just picked up our message so we went straight round.” He paused, glanced down at his notes. “She confirms she saw a woman matching Aileen Jackson’s description arrive by taxi at his house at around half eleven. The woman, probably Aileen, went in, and around fifteen minutes later they both came out and started walking towards the town centre.”

  “We pulled CCTV and they are caught on the seafront cam on the west end of the pier at just past midnight. Looks like Aileen was very sure her husband was at work, and quite happy to be seen out on a nice romantic stroll with another bloke,” Maya commented.

  “But he wasn’t at work, because his manager confirmed he never showed up, and he sure as hell wasn’t at home because otherwise his wife wouldn’t have been hitting the town,” Josh said. “Perhaps he set her up and followed them to the pier?”

  “Get on to it. Dig deeper into Billy Jackson’s background as well as his wife’s,” DI Blackman said grimly. “Moving on, we need Jamie Delaney in for an interview to review his statement. Steve?”

  “I rang this morning and the baby is fine. They are all back home, so Dove and I will get it done ASAP. We’ll go and pick him up because they don’t have a car.” Steve looked down at his iPad. “Jamie and Caz said in their statements initially that Jamie was working all evening, locked up and went home at half past eleven. She was at home with the baby all evening.”

  “Convenient, considering our illicit foursome began arriving half an hour later,” DI Blackman mused. “No prints from the supposed break-in, and no sign our victims were carrying bolt cutters. From their previous text messages it seemed like this was a planned event, suggested by Ellis, and yet nobody even mentioned an illegal entry of the premises. The phones, as far as they knew, were safe, so why would they leave that part out?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Dove’s phone rang as the briefing finished. It was DI Rankin, responding to her message from last night.

  “I’ve got the note, and I’ll drop it off downstairs in about fifteen minutes if that’s okay?” Dove paused. “My sister was attacked at her club last night. I realise the circumstances are different but I wondered if all of this could be connected to our Claw Beach perps?”

  “Right, California Dreams. Okay, I’ll look into any connections. You must be known there . . . Any suspects? Someone who might be doing a bit of dealing on the side maybe . . .”

  “None. Gaia runs a tight ship, and a clean one, but I’ll keep thinking,” Dove told him.

  “Call me any time. Sorry to hear about your sister.” He rang off.

  Dove rummaged for a packet of sweets, opened it and tipped the lot into her mouth, feeling the sugar hit her bloodstream.

  Steve was watching her curiously. “What’s happening now?”

  She told him, and he gave a low whistle. “It’s all going on with you at the moment, isn’t it? How’s Gaia doing?”

  “She should be fine, they are just waiting for a few more test results,” Dove said gratefully. Worry for her sister sat heavily at the back of her mind, despite the intensity of their case. “Now back to our escape-room victims and Mr Jamie Delaney.” But she couldn’t stop herself quickly checking she had lots of battery life in her phone, and that there were no new messages from the hospital or Ren. Satisfied, with an effort, she shoved everything else to the back of her mind and focused on their case.

  With the Jamie Delaney interview imminent, it was important to spend a little time checking through the statements, looking for red flags and tripwires, basically anything that didn’t seem right, or contradicted the actual events as they currently knew them.

  Dove was checking the mobile phone records, ticking off numbers on the printout with her pen. “Jamie made a call, look, at 12.20, to Caz.”

  “He was walking home by then?” Steve suggested. “They live on Ship Street, don’t they, so that’s maybe a half-mile walk.”

  Dove pulled up the maps and studied them, before she swung her chair round. “Which means he should have been nearly home, but according to the triangulation he was on the pier. With the cell sites, that means he was still very much in the vicinity when the victims arrived.”

  “Any street cam in that area?” Steve took his glasses off, gave them a rub on his shirt and perched them back on his nose.

  She scrolled through. “There’s one on the corner of Ship Street and Coast Road . . . Hang on.” She rewound the footage and studied the blurred figures, the light traffic. There was a pedestrian crossing to the east of the camera.

  Steve was looking over her shoulder. He poked a finger at the screen. “They live at 110, which is two houses up from the corner. What’s going on there?”

  There was still no sign of Jamie but a light-haired woman carrying a baby was caught walking swiftly towards the crossing at, Dove squinted at the clock in the corner, 12.30 a.m.

  The woman was caught again on the next street cam, which faced down the promenade to the beach. The security cameras on the pier had been damaged so this was the last sighting but Dove was sure it was Caz. She sat back in her chair. “So Jamie called his girlfriend and whatever they discussed was so urgent she had to take the baby down to the escape rooms?”

  “I can’t wait to ask him what he said to her,” Steve said grimly. “Let’s get moving.”

  Outside it was hot but muggy. Purple-bruised clouds were massing in the sky and white-tipped waves out at sea promised a hell of a storm later. The wind had got up too, but was more like a dragon’s breath than any relief fro
m the heat. The beach was a mass of squirming kids, colourful striped umbrellas and yelling parents. Lifeguards in their red Portakabin huts scanned the tourists with binoculars, and Dove was instantly taken back to last night and Gaia.

  Keen to discover any updates, and as her sister’s phone had not been recovered, Dove rang Colin at the club as they sat in the inevitable traffic jam on the coast road.

  Colin was Gaia’s manager and sidekick, a capable, gentle man with heavily gelled blonde hair and a penchant for leather bracelets. He had been shocked by the attack on his employer, but could only tell Dove the police had been round and checked out the crime scene.

  “I wasn’t working last night because it was my night off, or I might have been able to help her,” Colin said, his voice strained with emotion. He was devoted to Gaia and the club, and Dove knew the staff adored him.

  “Did you see the CCTV?” Dove asked quickly.

  “Yeah. Bloke with a hood pulled down over his face. Big bloke smashed Gaia over the head with a baseball bat. Bastard!”

  “Just the one attacker?”

  “Just him, and after he hit her, he took the money out the safe and ripped her jewellery off. There was a few minutes’ time-lapse there, where he went out of the room, perhaps checking nobody had heard him? Anyway, he was back quickly enough and he dragged her body out of the fire exit. Fuck me, Dove, I’m so glad she’s going to be all right.” Emotion spilled over and he gave a ragged sigh. “I’m going out on my board later, this kind of stress makes me head for the waves.” Colin was also an avid surfer.

  “Me too, to both of those things. Can you keep me updated? Oh, and anything you need, just let me know, and I’ll try and sort things until Gaia gets back,” Dove told him gratefully. Worry for her sister had settled into a tight little ball deep in her gut, and she had to work hard to get rid of constant replays of Gaia hanging lifeless as she was dragged from the waves.