Her Last Breath: The new crime thriller from the international bestseller (Sullivan and Mullins)

by Alison Belsham

  Danielle looked blank. ‘I don’t know who her friends were.’

  Sally Ann started to cry. Her mother leaned forward to give her a hug.

  Watching them, Rory made a decision. He didn’t want to, but he needed to tell Danielle Ellis what was happening to her daughter. To tell her Sally Ann was dying.

  ‘That’s enough for now,’ he said.

  Angie let out an audible sigh of relief. ‘Thank you, Sally Ann. You’ve been really helpful.’

  ‘Can we talk outside?’ said Rory, turning his attention to Danielle.

  She waited a few moments for Sally Ann to calm down and fall asleep again. ‘Only for a minute,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t want her to wake on her own.’

  In the corridor, Rory flagged down one of the nurses.

  ‘Is there a family room we can use?’

  ‘This way,’ said the nurse.

  ‘Will you watch Sally Ann and let us know if she wakes up, please?’ said Rory.

  The nurse nodded and showed them into an empty room.

  More scared, even more desperate than before, Danielle looked from one to the other of them as they sat around a scarred coffee table.

  ‘Danielle . . .’ Rory started. ‘When did you realise Sally Ann was missing?’

  The woman looked broken. ‘I didn’t. I was working nights . . . sometimes we don’t see each other for days.’

  ‘Nights?’

  ‘I work at a care home.’

  Rory couldn’t put it off any longer.

  ‘Danielle, there’s something you need to know.’

  ‘Can I have a glass of water?’ she asked.

  Classic delaying tactic. She must have suspected she wasn’t going to like what she was about to hear.

  There was a water cooler in the corner of the room. Angie filled a plastic cup and brought it back for Danielle. She drank noisily from it, and Rory realised the poor woman had been here, and probably awake, all night. He wondered when she’d last eaten.

  ‘Danielle, last week a girl was attacked in a very similar manner to Sally Ann.’ He paused to let her digest the information.

  ‘What happened?’ she said.

  ‘That girl was also tattooed, and she died. We have reason to believe the tattoo was made using poisoned ink.’

  Danielle Ellis reeled with shock, her whole body slumping to one side.

  ‘No? No . . .’ At first it was questioning. Then it became a drawn-out howl.

  A nurse ran into the room.

  ‘You need to come now,’ she said sharply to Danielle.

  The nurse took her arm and pulled her to her feet. Angie went to the other side of her and together they propelled Danielle Ellis back to her daughter’s room.

  It couldn’t have been more different to when they’d left a few minutes before. The room was full of people and a male medic was leaning over Sally Ann, administering CPR. Danielle took a step into the room, then collapsed against the nurse who was guiding her.

  Angie hovered on the threshold. Rory stepped away along the corridor and wiped the sweat from his brow with a shirtsleeve. He didn’t need to watch Sally Ann Granger die.

  iv

  19 July 1990

  Aimée, Aimée, Aimée! Today you became a teenager. How does that feel? Any different to when you were twelve? No, of course not.

  Thank God.

  This year you don’t care that there’s no party. Your friends gave up on you a long time ago, didn’t they? No one comes to the house to see you. The only visitors are a stream of nurses and carers when your mother’s home, then no one when she’s in hospital. She’s in hospital most of the time now, since she relapsed, so it’s just you and Valentine alone in this huge house mostly. Jay spends as much time as he can anywhere but here – college, at friends’ houses, just out.

  Mummy was well for a while and everything seemed to go back to normal. On the surface, at least. She wasn’t always in bed, and for a bit you all did things as a family. For a while you ate more. But it wasn’t the same. She’d changed. You’d changed. And Valentine had stayed the same. He still followed you around the room with his eyes. You still never felt comfortable being on your own with him. He still tried to be alone with you as often as he could.

  Then she got ill again. The cancer came back and poisoned her. It made Valentine sad and angry. For a while he left you alone. Did he think your mother’s illness was his punishment for the way he behaved with you? It didn’t last long. He can’t keep away from your bedroom. And you have no one you can turn to for help. Not even your brother.

  Jay is seventeen now. He thinks that makes him a grown-up, and though he’s not mean to you in the way he used to be, he doesn’t have much time for you. He has his own problems. When he’s here there are fights with your father and doors being slammed. He’s kind to you if ever he notices you. But really, you think he’s forgotten you exist. And how your heart aches for that not to be true. How you wish he would act as your protector – if you could ever talk to him again about who you need to be protected from.

  This year, instead of a party, your father takes you out to dinner. The restaurant is smart, the menu’s in French. He asked you to wear something pretty but you read disappointment in his eyes when you came downstairs in your everyday clothes. Jeans and a sweatshirt large enough for you to hide your skeleton in. That’s practically what you are now – you never eat. He doesn’t start a row about it – just sighs, and leads you out to the car. Jay was supposed to be coming with you, but this afternoon they had another row. Maybe Valentine started it on purpose, just so he could have you to himself this evening.

  You feel uncomfortable in the restaurant. The women at the other tables are different to you. Or more precisely, you’re different from them. They have the shiny veneer of expensive grooming. You feel like a child, the only child in the room. Your father orders for you and, when the waiter’s gone, he pours you a glass of wine.

  ‘Thank you, Valentine.’ You know he hates it when you call him Valentine.

  You drink all the wine and ask for some more. You don’t touch a morsel of the food that’s put in front of you.

  He gives you more wine and the rest of the evening becomes a blur. You knock over a glass, and stumble against another table on your way to the ladies. Your father laughs and gives you a silver bracelet in a blue box. Another piece of jewellery you’ll never wear.

  He takes you home.

  You black out.

  Things happen that you have no memory of.

  But in the morning, there’s blood on your sheets. When your father has left for work, you go into his bathroom and open his cabinet. You take a new razor blade out of the small paper package they come in. Sucking in breath, you drag the blade across the soft skin of your forearm. Not once, but three times.

  The blood is bright red and so pretty as it drips onto the white china of the basin. Just like the blood on your white linen sheets. But to you, it’s poison.

  Is that what your father wanted, when he asked you to be pretty?

  24

  Sunday, 20 August 2017

  Angie

  Working on a Sunday was par for the course with a murder investigation ongoing. Angie didn’t mind. Two girls were dead and she felt the team owed it to them, and to the killer’s next intended victim, to solve the case. Bradshaw had called a team meeting for ten, so after picking up a decent coffee from the café over the road, she headed up to the incident room.

  On the way up in the lift, she met Rory.

  ‘Any word on the boss?’ she asked.

  ‘He came to the crime scene yesterday but he’s not really up to it, so I told him to stay home till next week. A parent’s death hits you harder than you think.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Angie. She acted as Family Liaison Officer for the team, and had spent countless
hours in the company of newly-bereaved parents, husbands, wives and children.

  The lift came to a stop and the doors opened – but Rory didn’t step out.

  ‘Ange, can I have a moment?’

  ‘Of course.’ What did he want?

  She stood and waited. Rory took a moment to find the words.

  ‘You and Tony . . . that a thing?’

  Oh, shit!

  ‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I know his marriage is off the boil.’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s nothing, Sarge. Honestly.’

  She tried to act casual but he locked eyes with her. His expression was stern.

  ‘Don’t let it become anything. For your sake, Ange. I’ve seen it happen over and over in this station and others. Don’t shit in your own nest – it always turns out bad. Worse for the woman than for the man.’

  Inside, Angie bristled. Typical that the woman would bear the brunt of the blame.

  ‘Like I said, it’s nothing.’

  Could he tell she was lying?

  ‘Just be careful. If Sullivan gets a sniff of it, one of you will get transferred – and it won’t be Tony.’

  ‘Of course it bloody wouldn’t.’

  She wanted to close this conversation down, and more than anything she didn’t want to cry in front of Rory. She was exhausted and it made her emotional. She took a sip of her coffee to put up a shield between them.

  Rory stepped out of the lift. ‘Come on, better not keep the chief waiting.’

  Bradshaw was already holding court by the time Rory and Angie walked through the incident-room door. He looked pointedly at his watch as they made their way to join the group gathered round the whiteboard that ran the length of one wall.

  ‘Get a move on, Mackay. You’re the ranking officer in this team now that Sullivan’s off. You should have been here before I was.’

  Angie winced. Bradshaw’s tone didn’t contain an ounce of sympathy. There was a rustling of papers and general fidgeting – the rest of the team reacting to the chief’s words. Much as she wanted to, she didn’t dare catch Tony’s eye in case Rory was watching. And anyway, Rory was right. They needed to be far more careful.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Mackay. He turned his attention to the white- board. ‘Two attacks so far, and both girls have died approximately twenty-four hours after being attacked. It’s pretty safe to say that it’s the same perp – both girls were given stigmata, both girls were tattooed using ink laced with taxine, a poison most easily available from yew trees.’

  ‘What do these tattoos mean?’ Bradshaw could always be relied upon to interrupt with an awkward question.

  Rory studied the board. They now had an image of Sally Ann Granger’s tattoo – one of the SOCOs had been given permission to photograph it in the hospital. Like the one on Tash Brady’s back, it was gothic lettering. He assumed it was also in Latin.

  Quid sum tibi responsurus,

  actu vilis corde durus?

  ‘The words tattooed on Tash Brady’s back meant, “The nails in Your feet, the hard blows and so grievous marks I embrace with love”,’ he said, reading off the translation that was pinned up on the board. ‘Kyle, have you got the translation of the other one, please?’

  Kyle Hollins started searching through a fistful of documents.

  Bradshaw rolled his eyes.

  ‘It’s a line from the same piece by Buxtehude,’ said a voice from the doorway. ‘“What answer shall I give You, Vile as I am in deed, hard in my heart?”’

  It was DI Sullivan. Angie looked round at him as he came across the room to join Rory at the whiteboard. He looked as if he hadn’t slept or eaten in days.

  ‘Boss,’ said Rory, ‘you shouldn’t be here. Not today.’

  ‘I’m not going to sit at home and do nothing while the killer strikes again.’ He sounded annoyed. Angie wasn’t surprised – he wouldn’t want to talk about his mother’s death in front of the whole team.

  Rory persisted. ‘You should be with your sister.’

  The sarge clearly didn’t want to relinquish his moment in control.

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Francis, shutting the conversation down.

  Bradshaw’s condolences were conspicuous by their absence.

  ‘Can we just get on?’ he said.

  Francis took control and Rory stepped back.

  ‘As I was saying, they’re verses from the same choral piece, but we can’t say yet what their significance is. These are ritual killings with a religious element to them. The big question that needs answering is whether these particular girls are targeted for some reason or whether they’re random victims, selected simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘Weren’t you looking at Brady’s boyfriend?’ said Bradshaw.

  Of course, he’d want to tie things up as quickly as possible.

  ‘We are,’ said Rory.

  ‘We’ll need to reconsider in the light of this second attack,’ said Francis. ‘We’ve got no circumstantial evidence to tie him to the scene of either crime so far. And although we know he argued with Tash before she was attacked, what would be his motive for killing Sally Ann?’

  ‘Just because we don’t know what it is, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one,’ said Rory. ‘She certainly knew Alex Mullins. She was at college with him and Tash Brady, before she dropped out.’

  ‘Sir?’ It was Kyle Hollins.

  ‘What is it, Hollins?’ said Francis.

  ‘I’ve been checking Sally Ann’s mobile phone record this morning. She texted Alex Mullins’s number on Friday evening at twelve minutes past six. It was the last call she made.’

  Bradshaw snorted indignantly. ‘You need to be applying pressure to Alex Mullins. Get him back in here, and take apart his house for some kind of evidence – tattooing equipment, traces of the poison, weapons, whatever.’

  ‘We’ll talk to him again,’ said Francis. ‘But we still need some more convincing evidence. The Mullins house has already been searched. I think we need to keep an open mind and start looking further afield.’

  Bradshaw scowled. ‘You need to put all your efforts into finding the evidence on Mullins.’

  Francis gave him an equally dark look but didn’t respond. Angie knew they didn’t have enough on Mullins yet and it seemed reasonable to open out the investigation – but if the boss defied Bradshaw yet again, they could all end up paying the price.

  25

  Monday, 21 August 2017

  Francis

  ‘I swear that the evidence that I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.’

  Francis swore the oath with one hand on the bible and his eyes on the jury.

  So help me God. But God hadn’t been there for him in recent days and weeks, and he wondered if he should have taken the affirmation instead.

  It was the third day of the so-called Tattoo Thief trial, and Francis had been called to Court One at Lewes Crown Court, to give evidence against Sam Kirby, charged with three counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder. It had been Francis’s first murder case in charge, and seeing her standing in the dock brought back memories. A wave of nausea flooded his mouth with saliva, as he relived the discovery of the abandoned farm where she was curing tattooed human skin into leather.

  He stared across at her. Nudging six feet tall, Kirby’s broad shoulders and sturdy legs lent her an air of strength. She wore a man’s suit and tie, and her iron-grey hair was clipped even shorter than when Francis had last seen her. As she sat down, a smug expression settled on her face, and she looked around as if she were the star player on a stage and those assembled her adoring audience. George Elphick, her lawyer, grinned reassuringly at her, and she smiled back at him.

  Elphick, a slime ball in a silk suit, was a clever man. He
was orchestrating the defence case, priming his witnesses and conniving with his barrister to manipulate the jury to suit the needs of his client. Francis despised him – he’d been nothing but trouble through the arrest and interview process. Now he was trying to railroad the case with a verdict of diminished responsibility.

  The lawyer twisted in his seat and gave Francis an ironic salute. Francis stared back at him, without returning the greeting. In this gladiatorial contest, he didn’t want to let Elphick see any chink in his armour.

  When he looked once more at Sam Kirby, her eyes were upon him. Francis saw a flash of hatred but then she smiled. A supercilious smile that reminded him of a snake. He looked away from her as the prosecution barrister stood up to question him. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of looking at her again, if he could help it.

  As the CPS-appointed barrister – a man called Don Martin – posed his first question, Francis felt his system flooding with adrenalin and his back prickled with sweat. What if it all went horribly wrong? What if Kirby walked free with a not guilty verdict? He needed a conviction against Kirby or his work as the Officer in Charge would be picked over, dissected and critiqued, not only by his superiors but also in the media. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that.

  ‘DI Sullivan, I’m going to run through with you the series of events that started with the discovery of a man’s body in a dumpster in the Pavilion Gardens in May last year.’

  Francis was prepared for this. Don Martin had schooled him with all the questions he intended to ask, as well as those they thought the defence barrister would ask when his turn came. He cleared his throat and the cross-examination began.

  A couple of members of the jury had been doodling or looking at the ceiling, but they were all eyes forward as Sullivan started to speak. Slowly and clearly, prompted by Don Martin, he recapped the harrowing events that had made up his investigation into the crimes.

  ‘. . . the victim’s skin had been flayed . . .’

  ‘. . . a headless corpse under the pier . . .’

  He faltered several times. The courtroom was as hot as a sauna and Francis desperately wanted to take off his jacket and loosen his tie. He had to get it right. Every last detail to make sure Kirby ended up in prison. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. She was watching him like a hawk with steely-eyed hatred.