Hope to Die: A gripping new serial killer thriller (The DS Nathan Cody series)

by David Jackson

  The boy is silent for a few seconds, and Cody realises that he’s staring at the Merseyside Police logo on the front of the notebook.

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  Cody reaches back into his jacket to find his warrant card. ‘We’re from the police. I’m Detective Sergeant Cody, and this is Detective Constable Webley. We just need to have a little chat with your dad. Nothing to worry about.’

  The boy chin-points at Cody’s ID. ‘How do I know that’s real? My mate Jez has got some ID that says he’s eighteen, and he’s the same age as me.’

  ‘Why would we be making it up?’

  ‘I dunno, but neither of you look like detectives to me.’

  Cody can’t stop a smile creeping onto his lips. ‘What do detectives look like, then?’

  ‘Older. Fatter. Less hair. And with a better car than that tiny Corsa.’

  ‘We’ll take the first three as a compliment. I agree with you about the car, though. All they had left today, I’m afraid. If I go over to it and switch the siren on, will you believe me then?’

  The lad studies Cody’s face, then Webley’s, then seems to reach a decision.

  ‘Dad’s in the shower.’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Yeah, judging by his singing. At the moment, he thinks he’s Rihanna.’

  ‘So why did you tell us he was dead?’

  ‘Dad’s orders. For when cold-callers turn up at the door. You know – Jehovah’s Witnesses, charity workers, people trying to get you to switch energy providers. They’re never sure what to do when I tell them that everyone in the house is dead except me.’

  Cody smiles again. ‘I’ll bet. Mind if we come in while you fetch your dad?’

  The boy looks uncertainly into the dark hallway. ‘I suppose.’ He pulls the door wide open and allows his visitors in, staring at them intently as they pass.

  ‘In there,’ he says. ‘Don’t sit on the cat.’

  He shows them into a small living room at the front of the house. A battered and faded sofa and a matching armchair are arranged in an L-shape in front of a huge television. In the bay window a dark wooden table is strewn with paper, textbooks, pencils and a laptop. On a ledge in one alcove sits a fake Christmas tree complete with colourful flashing bulbs, while the smiling lit-up face of a plastic Santa stares down at them from above the fireplace. In the other alcove is a display cabinet, on top of which is a framed photograph of a grinning man holding up a huge ugly fish.

  The middle seat of the sofa has been claimed by a large tabby cat, curled into a ball and apparently fast asleep. As Cody and Webley sit down on either side of it, the cat wakes up and takes an immediate interest in Webley, much to her apparent discomfort.

  ‘I’ll fetch my dad,’ the boy says, and disappears from the room.

  Webley’s frown turns to disgust as the cat clambers onto her lap.

  ‘What’s it doing?’ she asks.

  ‘He’s being friendly,’ says Cody. ‘Give him a stroke.’

  ‘The only one having a stroke here will be me. You know I don’t like cats.’

  ‘Actually I’d forgotten. Just relax. He’ll settle down in a second.’

  ‘I don’t want him to settle down. I want him to piss off.’

  Oblivious to Webley’s antipathy, the cat gyrates a couple of times on her lap, then curls up again and goes back to sleep.

  ‘It’s heavy,’ says Webley. ‘And hot. And I bet it’s got fleas. If I come away from here with bites on my legs, I’m blaming you.’

  Cody laughs. ‘Do you want to reword that last sentence?’

  She throws him a glare. ‘You’re not helping, Cody.’

  The boy comes back into the living room. ‘Dad says he’ll be a couple of minutes. He says I have to talk to you till then.’

  Cody watches the lad traverse the room and sit at the table where the books and notes lie open – presumably his homework.

  ‘Is this about the murder?’ the boy asks. His voice is matter-of-fact. As though this is the sort of question he asks all the time. At his age, maybe he does.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ says Cody.

  ‘Dad said it would be. He said the police have spoken to everyone else at his school. Only a matter of time before you came to speak to him too.’

  ‘It might be,’ says Cody. ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘Ewan.’

  ‘All right, Ewan. Know about the murder, do you?’

  ‘I’ve heard things.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘Like about the woman. The way she was killed.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And what way was that?’

  Ewan leans forward in his chair. ‘The killer chopped her to bits. Cut her legs and arms off, then swapped them about. Cut her head off, too, and put it between her hands.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘My mate Jez.’

  ‘He knows a lot of things, your mate, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah. He reads up on that kind of stuff. He likes weird things. What’s the weirdest murder you’ve ever worked on?’

  Cody looks to Webley for help, but after the episode with the cat, she’s leaving him to fend for himself.

  ‘Er, I’d have to think about that one. Most of them aren’t as weird as you might think.’

  ‘Is it true,’ Ewan asks, ‘that it’s impossible to strangle yourself?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jez says you can. He says you can strangle yourself to death, but I think you’d pass out before you died. Which is right?’

  Cody catches Webley staring at him, her eyebrows raised as she waits to hear his expert reply.

  ‘I, er . . .’

  The door opens and Colin Daley breezes in. Cody is grateful for the interruption to his interrogation.

  ‘Right, lad,’ Daley says to his son. ‘Take your work upstairs, will you?’

  ‘Oh, but Dad . . .’

  ‘No buts. Up you go.’

  Sulkily, Ewan gathers up his belongings and trudges out of the room.

  ‘Nice lad,’ says Cody.

  ‘Most of the time,’ says Daley. ‘Asks too many questions sometimes, as I’m sure you’ve found out. I’ve got enough to do around here without trying to find answers to everything he wants to know.’

  ‘Just the two of you living here?’

  ‘Yeah. My wife died a few years ago. Cancer.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’

  ‘S’all right.’

  Colin Daley is a slim, wiry man. He has thrown on a white T-shirt and grey jogging pants. His thinning hair is still damp from the shower. He doesn’t take a seat, but stands in front of the fireplace, bouncing on his heels and rubbing his hands together.

  ‘So,’ he says, ‘you’re the police?’

  ‘DS Cody and DC Webley,’ says Cody. ‘How are you, Mr Daley?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ says Daley, but he looks puzzled by the question. ‘A bit tired, but I’m okay.’

  ‘So you’ve recovered then?’

  It takes Daley a while to catch on. ‘Oh, you mean because I was off work on Monday. Yeah, I’m over that now.’

  ‘What was the problem?’ says Webley.

  ‘Dunno. Something I ate the night before, probably. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to have been in this house on Monday. It wasn’t pleasant.’

  ‘But the school were okay about it?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. I’m hardly ever off, me.’

  ‘Must make it hard on your assistant, though, eh? When he has to fend for himself, I mean.’

  ‘Well, he’s not stupid. He’s perfectly capable of holding the fort.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Webley. ‘I spoke to him.’

  She pauses at that point. Cody knows that she is trying to unsettle Daley by hinting that she might already know more than she is divulging.

  Daley thrusts his hands into his pockets. ‘Does that . . . I mean, is that anything to do with why you’ve come to see me?’

  Webley pauses a few seconds lon
ger. ‘No, not at all. We’re just covering all the bases by making sure we speak to every member of staff at Oakdale.’

  ‘That makes sense. Yeah. Understood.’

  ‘In particular, we’re trying to build up a picture of Mary Cowper. Trying to find out why she would be attacked and murdered.’

  Daley nods along vigorously. ‘Yeah. Okay.’

  ‘So how well did you know Mary?’

  ‘Me? Ooh, not very well at all, to be honest.’

  ‘No?’

  Cody hears the feigned surprise in her voice, and again he knows that she is trying to catch Daley out by suggesting that Jamie Morgan may have intimated otherwise.

  ‘Well, we had the occasional brief chat, I suppose. But only when we bumped into each other, or I was doing a job in her form room – that kind of thing.’

  ‘Ever discuss her with Jamie?’

  ‘Not that I recall. She was never really on my radar, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Ever see her outside school hours?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did you ever socialise with her?’

  ‘No. Mary wasn’t exactly a party animal. She didn’t even go along to the staff Christmas meal.’

  ‘Ever go to her flat?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Could be any number of reasons. Maybe she asked you to fix a leaky radiator or something.’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  ‘What about the other members of staff? Did she mix with them?’

  ‘I guess so. You’d have to ask them. The thing you have to understand is that there’s a bit of a hierarchy in a school – bit of an “upstairs downstairs” mentality. The teachers are in one gang, and we’re in another.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘The caretakers, the cleaners, the dinner ladies, the lab technicians . . .’

  ‘Okay, but you must see things. You must hear things. Didn’t you ever hear anything bad said about Mary?’

  ‘Can’t say I did. Nothing serious, anyway.’

  ‘What about personal relationships? Anything you can tell us on that score? Anyone that Mary was particularly close to?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t want to drop anyone in it.’

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Daley. We don’t reveal our sources.’

  ‘There’s Andy Puckleton, I suppose.’

  Cody sees Webley nodding along, but she can’t hide her disappointment. She was obviously hoping for a juicy new titbit, but this is stale news.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘we’ve already spoken to Mr Puckleton.’

  ‘Then you know about the problems he’s been having. His beliefs.’

  ‘Yes. Doesn’t look like he’s made a very good job of keeping them private. Do you know him well?’

  ‘No. Why do you think that?’

  There’s a touch of anger in Daley’s words that puzzles Cody.

  ‘I just wondered how you’d heard about Puckleton’s issues, if it wasn’t directly from him. Was it from his girlfriend?’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘Laura. One of the school secretaries, I believe.’

  ‘Is that what—? No, it wasn’t from her. To be honest, I can’t remember how I found out. Like you said, I hear things all the time. Some are true, some aren’t.’

  Again Cody is puzzled. Daley was about to say something, then suddenly changed tack.

  ‘Mr Daley,’ says Cody, ‘is there anything else you’d like to tell us? Anything you know that might help us to find Mary’s killer, even if it doesn’t seem particularly important?’

  Daley shakes his head slowly, but his foot is tapping on the carpet at a much faster pace.

  ‘Nope. Sorry, I don’t think I’ve been much help.’

  Cody stands up, leaving Webley to work out how to remove the animal still occupying her lap. He thanks Daley for his time.

  He’s not sure why yet, but he’s not as convinced as Daley that this has been such a wasted journey.

  18

  Friday night is party night.

  Or perhaps not. Not for Cody, anyway.

  He has an excuse. He’s busy trying to solve a baffling murder, which means that tomorrow is just another working day for him.

  But that’s not the real reason. He doesn’t like to dwell on the real reason. He doesn’t like to remember that it wasn’t much more than a year ago that he would have been perfectly happy spending his nights at the bars and clubs, knocking back pints and telling bad jokes and strutting his stuff on the dance floor.

  And look at me now, he thinks. Friday night and I’m reading a book and sipping a glass of orange juice. Woo-hoo.

  He doesn’t go out much now. He finds it difficult to get in the mood. He’s tried it several times, but while his mates get increasingly pissed and find everything increasingly hilarious, he just gets increasingly anxious and depressed.

  Sometimes he thinks he’d like to jump off the wagon again. He’d love to get so stupidly shit-faced that he ended up climbing a lamp post with a traffic cone on his head. But it’s a trade-off, you see. Alcohol brings more of the bad guys into his head at night. Oh, yes – those maniacal, leering, homicidal clowns like nothing better than a booze-addled brain to make them feel welcome. Gives them all the encouragement they need to wreak their blood-drenched craziness.

  So he hasn’t touched a pint in months. Well, save that one time with Webley, and look where that led.

  Trouble, is where it led.

  He dropped his defences, and now she knows far too much about him. She’s inside his head, which is a dangerous place to be right now.

  She isn’t about to give up on finding out why he stayed away from her while she was convalescing. She isn’t quite past the anger stage of dealing with that, but she has at least created room for the dogged detective in her to pursue the matter.

  It shows she still cares. And it’s for that reason he wishes he could give her a more truthful answer. An answer that wouldn’t wound her more than he has already.

  She also knows that something has happened in his life recently. It’s not just a suspicion that he can shake her out of; it’s a solid belief.

  And of course she’s right. The difference in him is obvious to her. But he can’t confirm that. He can’t let anyone know what’s happening until he understands it himself. It’s like trying to appraise a book having only read the cover blurb.

  And that’s the other thing. The other reason why he’s spending his Friday night alone in his flat.

  For what must be the hundredth time tonight, his gaze drifts to the telephone. A small piece of technology that could be capable of changing his whole life. But his willpower alone cannot cause that phone to ring. Somebody else must do that.

  Someone who carries a key to Cody’s fate.

  *

  Friday night is party night.

  But not for Grace Meade.

  Wouldn’t that be a thing? Grace Meade out on the town. Getting drunk. Dancing on a table. Snogging the face off some random stranger. Flashing her knickers. Throwing her guts up in an alley.

  Don’t be ridiculous.

  It’s not me, she thinks. Wouldn’t want it to be me. I’d die of embarrassment. People would make fun of me. I’d be a laughing stock. Or some disgusting man would take advantage of me while I was drunk. I could never live with myself.

  Although occasionally . . .

  She thinks it would be nice to be able to let her hair down now and again. More than nice. It would be . . . liberating. She has watched with envy how other women of her age can simply enjoy themselves without worrying what others think of them, and sometimes she wishes she could be like that. Sometimes she wishes she didn’t spend so much time caught up in her own thoughts and worries.

  Like tonight, for example.

  She is sitting on her bed, in her dressing gown. Her legs are pulled up and she is hugging her knees.

  This was supposed to have be
en her week. Her opportunity to shine. To make an impact.

  But it hasn’t worked out like that, has it?

  The software is good. It does what it is supposed to do. It works.

  But if what she hoped to find isn’t out there to be found, there’s nothing she can do about it.

  She worries that she got too cocky, that she expected too much. She was really hoping at some point in the week to make a major announcement. To say to everyone in this room, ‘Look. Here’s your man. This is your killer.’

  Wouldn’t that have been brilliant? A room full of trained detectives, and little Grace Meade solves the case. Wouldn’t that have been such a feather in her cap?

  But it didn’t work out. Things never work out. Doesn’t seem to matter how much effort she puts in, how many hours, how much enthusiasm – it never pays off.

  And now she’s in the doldrums. This is how it always happens. She gets excited and optimistic, and then her dreams get dashed, and the gloom descends. It’s as though the black clouds are always waiting in the wings – waiting for their cue to roll in and rain down on her.

  It isn’t fair.

  Life isn’t fair.

  I try my hardest – I really do – and all I ask is a little bit of recognition, a little pat on the back, but for that I need some success, and the success never comes for me, and why is that? Why is it that everyone else, most of whom don’t have a fraction of the qualifications and intelligence that I’ve got, always come up smelling of roses? I don’t want money, and I don’t want fame, and I don’t want a million friends or a big house or to be better looking. I’m a good person and I try hard and I want people to see that, and to let me know that they’ve seen it. And yes, maybe then I will get up and dance. Maybe then I will cry some happy tears instead of these sad ones. Maybe then my life will be what I want it to be.

  She stops thinking then, because it hurts. And it’s not just mental pain.

  She raises one hand. Sees the blood on her fingertips, the skin under her nails.

  She looks down at her legs. At her thighs, just above the knees.

  She sees the long scratches and gouges she has made, and the rivulets of blood running down onto the sheets.

  No short skirts for me tomorrow, she thinks.

  Everyone count your blessings.

  19