Killing Mind: An addictive and nail-biting crime thriller (Detective Kim Stone Crime Thriller Book 12)

by Angela Marsons

  ‘Your thoughts on Unity Farm?’ he asked.

  ‘Place appears to be nice enough, everyone I saw seemed happy, a bit quiet but content. A lot of money has gone into the place. I’m not sure whose money as he evaded the financial set-up pretty well.’

  ‘Any suspects for the murders?’

  Kim shook her head.

  ‘Then leave it alone for now. We don’t want to appear to be harassing a group of people who have chosen to live an alternative lifestyle.’

  And that’s why he was in charge, she reasoned.

  ‘I’ll need to speak to Myles Brown again, sir and I may have to roll my sleeves up just a little bit. I know he’s not telling me everything.’

  ‘Okay, but don’t roll them up too far,’ he warned. ‘And keep Bryant with you at all times.’

  Bryant had dropped her off at the entrance and then shot off, and the rest of her team were waiting to be sent home too. She chose not to share that information.

  She continued. ‘Myles Brown claims Samantha left of her own accord and Jake Black says she didn’t.’ She shook her head. ‘But that’s not why I requested the meeting.’

  He eyed her suspiciously.

  She took a breath, ‘Sir, we need to drag the lake at Himley Park.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘The shoe’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Just the shoe, sir.’

  ‘Oh, Stone, and here was me thinking you were making a serious request.’

  This response was not good. Irritation, disbelief and scepticism she could work with, but instant dismissal of her request was a harder nut to crack.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Rarely has my day ended positively because of you, Stone,’ he said, standing and reaching for his briefcase. ‘But today…’

  ‘We need to see if there’s another body in there,’ she said, continuing to plead her corner as he placed files into the case. If necessary she’d follow him down to the car, wittering in his ear until he drove away.

  ‘You have anything other than one rogue shoe buried in the mud? Other clothing?’

  ‘No.

  ‘A suspicion of a missing person who might be in there?’

  ‘No.’

  He stopped packing his case. ‘Then you know my answer.’

  Kim understood the massive considerations involved in dragging a lake. In addition, the lost revenue and inconvenience to the property owners were factors to be considered. She knew he had spent the afternoon in a budget meeting, but he was a police officer at heart not a paper pusher, which made him an exceptionally good boss. Except when he was saying no to her.

  ‘Sir, this case is…’

  ‘Stone, anything further on this subject is a waste of breath for you and a waste of time for me. The answer is no.’

  Kim growled on the inside. It didn’t matter if she followed him all the way home and sat on his bedside table while he drank his cocoa. He wasn’t going to change his mind unless she could give him something more.

  She just didn’t know what that something more was.

  Thirty-Six

  Bryant knew he was doing himself no favours but it was something he had to see for himself.

  All day he’d waited for a text message or call to say they’d changed their mind, that they’d realised they’d made a huge mistake and that Peter Drake was not going to be released after all.

  He’d fought through the evening traffic after dropping off the guv at the station and had made it with just minutes to spare. He wasn’t surprised to see Richard Harrison’s car already parked. He pulled up, leaving one space in between.

  ‘It’s really going to happen, isn’t it?’ Richard asked, leaning against Bryant’s rear door. ‘That bastard is going to be free any minute now?’

  Bryant said nothing as he appraised the man who appeared even more gaunt than the day before. Yesterday his suit had been clean, his shirt pressed and his hair combed tidily. Today, the creased clothing, the greasy hair and black shadows beneath his eyes told Bryant Richard hadn’t had a moment of peace since the decision had been made. The man was in decline and there was nothing Bryant could do to stop it.

  ‘You know he’s going to do it again, don’t you?’ Richard asked.

  Bryant heard the crack in the man’s voice and thought about what the guv had said about Minority Report and not being able to predict future crimes, but damn it, his gut told him the same thing.

  ‘Another girl is going to suffer just like Wendy did,’ he said, as the doors began to open.

  Richard straightened up and moved away from the car.

  And then suddenly there he was.

  Peter Drake was standing on the wrong side of the prison doors for the first time in over a quarter of a century.

  Richard leaned against the car as his legs appeared to weaken beneath him at the sight of the man who had viciously ended his daughter’s life.

  The prison officer beside him finished speaking and then offered his hand. The gesture annoyed Bryant immensely. How anyone could shake the man’s hand was beyond him. But of course, Peter Drake had lived a whole other lifetime behind those walls.

  The guard stepped back into the prison leaving Peter Drake alone. Bryant could feel the tension in the man beside him as they both stared in silence.

  This Peter Drake bore little resemblance to the slim, dark-haired man Bryant had watched being taken away all those years ago.

  The man’s face had slackened beneath the grey hair and beard. His stomach now spilled over the waistband of his dark blue jeans. His neck thicker and his hands meatier, Bryant noticed as Drake took a roll-up from a tin and lit it.

  They both watched as he stood, looking around as though trying to process everything he was seeing. His gaze passed over them but it didn’t linger and there was no recognition.

  Bryant guessed that they too had changed significantly in the intervening years.

  A taxi pulled onto the car park and moved slowly towards the entrance. Peter Drake puffed heavily on the cigarette before the taxi came to rest before him.

  ‘Part of me wishes he’d died in that place,’ Bryant admitted to the only man he could.

  ‘Not yet,’ Richard said. ‘He can’t die yet.’

  Bryant turned to look at the man. Richard had lost everything. He hated Drake for what he’d done to his daughter and yet he didn’t wish him dead.

  Richard returned his gaze but Bryant got the feeling he was looking through him instead of at him. ‘If there’s an afterlife and he gets there before me, how will I protect her? She’ll be alone and I can’t let her down again. I won’t fail her twice.’

  Bryant could feel the man’s despair and opened his mouth to offer reassurance when he heard an urgent response request over his police radio; something he’d never stopped carrying.

  He listened more closely. Squad cars were racing to the scene of an attempted murder. And it was an address he recognised.

  Thirty-Seven

  Kim tapped the door lightly and entered. Stacey followed with her notebook and pen and closed the door of Interview Room 1 behind her.

  Myles Brown had arrived ten minutes earlier, which should have given him enough time to consider the starkness of his surroundings and contemplate giving them the whole truth.

  He looked almost relieved to see her.

  She didn’t smile as she took a seat opposite.

  ‘Have I done something wrong, Inspector?’ he asked, looking from her to her colleague.

  ‘Mr Brown, I think…’

  ‘Myles, please,’ he interrupted, wishing to bring their rapport back to the informal tone they’d enjoyed at his home.

  This was a different kind of conversation and she had to make sure he knew that.

  ‘Mr Brown, I understand that you’ve suffered a tragic loss; however, I feel that you’ve failed to be honest about all of the circumstances surrounding the murder of your daughter, which is not helping us find the person responsible.’

&nbs
p; ‘Have you been to Unity Farm? Have you questioned anyone there?’

  Kim nodded. ‘I was there earlier today and I have to say that your description of a cult seems overly dramatic and far-fetched.’

  ‘Yeah, and Jonestown was just a village in South America,’ he replied.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘When Jim Jones moved his religious sect to Guyana it wasn’t to enjoy the weather. It was to escape prying eyes into the practices of The Peoples Temple. And look what happened when those prying eyes followed him.’

  ‘Wasn’t there an American Governor that visited that group?’ Stacey asked.

  ‘Leo Ryan; a Congressman who went to investigate mistreatment. He and his party were shot dead as they were about to board the plane to go home. Within hours nine hundred people were dead when Jones ordered a mass suicide. But it was just a nice peace-loving church,’ he added sarcastically.

  ‘We met Jake Black,’ Kim offered. ‘Seemed a nice enough…’

  ‘Well of course he did. Very few people will follow someone who looks like the Elephant Man.’

  ‘Are you saying people go to Unity Farm because the top guy is good looking?’ she asked with disbelief.

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not about good looks. You’ve only to look at Charles Manson to know that, though being handsome didn’t hurt David Koresh. It’s about charisma. Every group leader must possess that charisma, that something that makes you want to believe every word they say and follow them anywhere.’

  Kim had no clue what her colleague was scribbling down because for her the man had yet to say something of interest.

  ‘Mr Brown, you’re talking about famous, well-documented cases of brainwashing and mind control that happened many miles from here. This is the Black Country in the West Midlands. Nothing like that—’

  ‘Inspector, how many families of crime have you visited that thought things like this could never happen to them, that gun crime, even knife crime happened somewhere else.’

  She silently conceded his point. But still, she couldn’t believe what he was saying.

  ‘I’m sorry but there’s no murderous cult right here on our doorstep.’

  ‘You can be sure of that.’

  She nodded. Pretty sure.

  ‘How long did you spend at Unity Farm?’

  ‘About an hour?’

  He leaned forward resting his forearms on the table.

  ‘And do you think you saw anything that Jake Black didn’t want you to see in that time?’

  She’d seen his office and a golf buggy.

  ‘Wouldn’t your job be so much easier if murderers looked like monsters, if they all had horns and they didn’t appear as normal people? Cults very rarely look like cults, Inspector. They always dress up as something else.’

  ‘Go on,’ Kim said. She didn’t believe him but she was keen to know how the man had convinced himself.

  ‘They look like religious groups, political, racial, psychotherapeutic, even outer space. The fastest growing are the ones that centre around New Age thinking and personal improvement training, like Unity Farm.’

  ‘So, you’re saying that Sammy was lured to this evil place and brainwashed somehow because she was at a low point due to being dumped?’

  He shook his head with frustration.

  ‘You’re not going to believe anything I say, are you?’

  ‘It’s hard, Myles,’ she said, thinking about the girl selling vegetables in the shed. The girl hadn’t looked brainwashed, apprehensive perhaps but certainly not brainwashed. ‘Look, we’re getting off track here. Jake told us something that disputes your story about your daughter. He says that Sammy didn’t leave Unity Farm of her own accord. He states that she was taken by force. Is that true?’

  His face fell into despair, and Kim knew that Jake was telling the truth.

  ‘But why, Myles? Why would you do that to her?’

  His watery gaze met hers but he held back the tears. He was teetering on the edge of letting go. She could tell he wanted to free himself of the burden.

  ‘I need the truth now, Myles. All of it.’

  Thirty-Eight

  Bryant made it to the Crossley house in record time. The guv would have been proud.

  Outside the house was an ambulance, two squad cars and a group of people bathed in the flashing blue lights.

  Bryant pushed his way through and flashed his badge at the door.

  He spied Sergeant Teagen from the station.

  ‘You been assigned?’ he asked, doubtfully. He was clearly waiting for CID and he expected an Inspector.

  Bryant shook his head. ‘I know these people.’

  Teagen eyed him suspiciously while he tried to see what was going on in the property.

  He could see Tina’s wheelchair in the lounge. Her body appeared to be slumped forward. Police officers surrounded her.

  ‘Is she?…’

  ‘She’s fine. She’s the one that carried out the assault. The victim is in there,’ he said, nodding to the first bedroom.

  Bryant tried to process the scene. Only this morning he’d spoken to them both and although not the happiest couple he’d ever seen he could never have imagined this.

  ‘May I?’ Bryant asked, nodding towards the door.

  Teagen gave him a look that he understood. He was to say or do nothing that would affect the investigation.

  Bryant slipped into the room as Damon Crossley let out a cry of pain.

  Two paramedics were tending a wound to his right side. A blood-soaked cloth lay on the floor beside the bed but the bleeding appeared to have stopped.

  ‘What the fuck you want?’ he asked, forgetting his pain for the moment.

  Bryant ignored his anger, as one of the paramedics turned towards him. ‘Be quick, mate, we need to take him in for assessment.’

  So, his injury wasn’t life threatening.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s your fault,’ he accused wincing. ‘Fucking bitch didn’t speak a word after you left. Just stared out the window. Relived the whole bloody thing after seeing you.’

  ‘Damon, I never…’

  ‘Did her fucking tea like I do every night. She never touched it. Wouldn’t even look at it. Fucking years I’ve looked after the bitch,’ he raged. ‘Gave my life to take care of her and this is how she fucking thanks me.’

  ‘But, how, I mean…’

  The woman was confined to a wheelchair.

  ‘Went to get her plate. Didn’t realise she had the knife. Leaned over her and in it went. She’s fucking lost it. Bitch tried to kill me, after all I’ve done,’ he shouted as the rage produced droplets of spittle.

  ‘Hey, mate, calm down,’ one of the paramedics warned as a spot of blood appeared on the fresh dressing. He turned and shot Bryant a warning look. ‘Enough,’ he said, getting to his feet.

  Damon stood but looked at Bryant.

  ‘So, if you wanna do your job right this time get her the fuck out of here, cos I’m pressing charges against the loony bitch, so she’d best be gone by the time I get back.’

  Thirty-Nine

  ‘Okay, talk,’ Kim said, as Stacey removed drinks for them all from a tray. ‘And I want the truth this time, Myles, all of it.’

  He nodded his understanding. ‘It’s true that Sammy was heartbroken after her split with Callum. If I’m honest I didn’t pay too much attention. Par for the course of growing up and, truth be known, I was relieved. Didn’t like the guy one bit.’

  And after meeting him that was certainly something she could understand.

  ‘So, I didn’t get too involved in the upset. I left the tea and sympathy to my wife and waited for it to pass. But it didn’t. It all seemed to get worse. She withdrew from her friends, stopped going out. Stopped showering and taking care of herself.’

  ‘College?’ Kim asked.

  ‘Occasionally but she’d see Callum there so that didn’t help, but we had to do something.’

  ‘Like what?’
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  He looked uncomfortable with what he was about to say.

  ‘We tried to shock her out of it. We showered her, we dressed her and I walked her into her first college class of the day. I felt sure that once she was back amongst her friends and her studies everything would snap back into place. It was a break-up, for God’s sake.’

  Kim felt her stomach react unfavourably to how he had treated his daughter, but she wasn’t here to judge his parenting style. He had wanted to bring her back to herself. Yet a part of her felt there had to have been another way.

  ‘Worst mistake I ever made,’ he said, staring down into his drink. ‘Although I didn’t know it at the time.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She came home with a smile on her face. Still retreated to her room and stayed there but there was a smile. It was a triumph. Next morning, she went to college of her own accord. I didn’t question it. I was just relieved that she seemed more herself.’

  ‘So, why the regret?’ Kim asked, wondering how they’d got from that stage to where they were now.

  ‘Because what I didn’t know then that I know now was that was the day everything changed.’ He paused. ‘That was the day she met Britney.’

  ‘Who the hell is Britney?’ Kim asked.

  ‘A recruiter for Unity Farm.’

  ‘Are you joking me?’

  He shook his head. ‘They have them all over the place: colleges, homeless shelters, even AA meetings; anywhere they might find people open and vulnerable to the process.’

  ‘Go on,’ Kim said. Tyler Short had attended Dudley College too.

  ‘A cult has two objectives: to recruit and to make money.’

  ‘Did Samantha have money?’ Kim asked, wondering if there was a trust fund she didn’t know about.

  Myles shook his head. ‘No, we had some savings but I’m getting ahead here. You have to understand how it works. Sammy wasn’t taken to a dark room and indoctrinated with the group’s ideology. There was no instant injection. It was much more gradual than that. She mentioned this girl’s name a few times. We were sad she hadn’t reconnected with Cassie or any more of her old friends but pleased that she was spending time with someone.