The Dead Tell Lies: an absolutely gripping mystery thriller
Page 17
She nodded. The chip had a mercifully quick death.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, getting up and heading for the door.
‘Wait a minute,’ he shouted after her. ‘Am I paying for yours?’
She didn’t answer.
Four hours later, it was getting dark outside. They reconvened back in the Evidence Room.
‘Still nothing on Alfred Ellerton?’ she asked.
‘Nope, and zilch on finding a dead Dreamer,’ Matthews added, while munching crisps. Technically there was no food allowed in there. Technically, Matthews had said, crisps aren’t food, they’re a snack. Fat logic. She’d heard it all before. Still, he needed to eat in order to think.
She stared at the Evidence Room wall, Greg’s mugshot now the centrepiece. A nice pattern, two red murder leader-lines flowing directly to him. And there was the problem. It was never, ever so straightforward, except in domestic violence cases, which she stayed away from.
The Motive-Opportunity-Method matrix for Greg as a suspect had ticks in all the boxes. If Greg’s ex was found dead… At least her face wasn’t on the wall yet, as she hadn’t been missing for the statutory forty-eight hours. And at least Greg didn’t know she was missing. That wouldn’t help him.
She tried to clear her mind. She needed to stop the next murder, whether it was Greg’s ex or someone else. But clarity didn’t always bring insight.
‘We’re getting nowhere,’ she said.
Matthews twisted the crisp packet, twirled it into crinkly rope, tied a knot in it and tossed it straight into the bin. He took a noisy sip from his technically-not-Coke can.
‘So why don’t we use your method?’ He upended the can to slurp down the last bubbling dregs, then lobbed it straight in the bin without looking. ‘You know, the one from ’Ghan.’
Don’t call it that. Only people who were there have the right to call it that.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But nothing goes up on the board.’
He jumped up like a schoolboy, dashed out of the room, only to return a minute later with a single sheet of paper and a black felt-tip with a cap on it.
‘One page?’ she said. ‘What if I make a mistake?’
‘You won’t.’ He stared at the blank page and pen, like a puppy.
‘Do you miss primary school, Matthews?’ she said. He just grinned back at her. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘Okay, just do it.’
He picked up the felt-tip and drew one horizontal and one vertical line, dividing the sheet into four quadrants. She wondered if he’d remember the order. He did. Top left he wrote HOME, in caps, top right, BAZAAR, bottom left, WILDERNESS, bottom right, MOUNTAIN PASS.
She folded her arms. ‘Why don’t you continue?’
His brow furrowed, then he put the pen down. ‘No, you do it, I’ll just mess it up. One sheet, remember?’
She’d never wanted kids. So how the hell did she inherit Matthews? She picked up the pen. But she never missed an opportunity to train, because her mentor, the General, had always said a lesson missed was a lesson lost.
‘So, “HOME” means…’
‘What we believe, what our gut tells us.’ His exuberance was back. She’d never wanted a puppy either.
Under HOME, she wrote ‘Greg innocent’. Then she added ‘killings connected’. ‘What else?’ she said, pen poised.
Matthews closed his eyes, as if the words were forming on the inside of his eyelids. ‘Dreamer dead. Jennifer next.’ He opened his eyes.
She wrote it down and then moved to the next quadrant – BAZAAR. This quadrant was for all the clues and noise mixed in together, a detective’s job to sift through it all and see what made sense, what was irrelevant. In her mind she recalled the frequent trips to the colourful and chaotic market in downtown Lakshar Gah. They went there to shop for intel, anything they could pick up. The General never went there himself; he’d have been too tempting a target, but he sent his troops to mingle, trawl, bring back trinkets and baubles of information, most of it useless, some of it misinformation, occasionally a few scraps of gold.
She began writing in a stream of consciousness.
‘Kate – Dreamer – Tattoo – Fergus – drug – hammer – Raj phone call – second phone call – electronic bracelet – Jennifer – Painter – drawing Greg – two killers.’
She paused, then added the modus operandi of Greg’s serial killers she could link to the victim list so far:
The Dreamer – Kate
The Reaper – the young bully, his throat cut
The Divine – the desiccated night-watch woman
The Surgeon – dismembered Raj
She paused again. ‘Lock the door,’ she said. Matthews did so, then leaned forward to see what she wrote next.
The Gravedigger – Jennifer
The Torch – Greg
‘Am I missing anything?’ she asked.
Matthews shook his head.
She moved to WILDERNESS, her least favourite quadrant, the one that kept her awake at night. The place where you could see for miles, but where there was no civilisation or water, and you were surrounded by invisible conundrums. And scorpions. The place haunted by doubt.
She drew three lines in a triangle, The Painter at the top, and two empty spaces below. Who were the two serial killers? Was one the main killer, the other an apprentice, or were they equal partners? She wished Greg were there; this wasn’t her territory. She moved on and drew two arcs that made a circle with two gaps in its circumference. In the first gap she wrote ‘Fergus killed between 6 and 10pm’. In the second she wrote ‘Greg visits Fergus 8pm’. This was the bit she didn’t get. She trusted Sarah in her job, especially as another forensics expert had verified the time-of-death estimate. Yet Greg was adamant about the time. Fergus being killed before Greg arrived made no sense, since they did meet, and if it was afterwards, it must have been fairly close to when he left. But if the motive was to maintain Fergus’s silence because he knew something about the death of The Dreamer, then waiting to kill Fergus until after Greg had seen him made no sense either.
‘Greg must be wrong,’ Matthews said.
‘Why?’
‘Well, the dead don’t lie.’
‘What does that even mean?’ she asked.
‘Well, you know,’ he said, a little flustered, ‘death is the ultimate fact. The last statement any of us makes. Our very own full stop.’
She did know, and like any detective had accepted it long ago. But what if… what if the dead could lie?
She moved on, drew another gap-circle, and wrote in one gap ‘Raj phones Kate’, then in the other, ‘Kate takes second call’. Again, a question mark, but this time against the second call she wrote ‘Who?’
She sat back. She could write more, but this was enough for now. Her eyes darted over the landscape: the fourth quadrant still empty. That was for later.
Matthews got up and made an espresso. He didn’t drink coffee. The small paper cup appeared before her. She picked it up and took a sip, and instantly she was back there, at the command base in Helmand, the creaking fan stirring the stifling, sweaty air around the room as they pored over maps, trying to work out where the enemy had gone to ground, and how they could get to them with minimal casualties; they’d given up aiming for zero casualties long ago. She recalled what the Sarge used to say when they made their plans to go on an offensive and anyone mentioned potential casualties, because he needed his men and women to go in focused, not distracted by wondering who might get killed that day. ‘They’re already dead.’
The words echoed in her head as if someone had struck a bell. She refocused. Her cup was empty.
Matthews stared at her expectantly. A grin broke out. ‘You’ve figured something out, haven’t you?’ he asked.
Already dead.
She picked up the pen. She wrote ‘7pm’ next to ‘Fergus killed’. Then she wrote ‘8pm’ next to ‘Greg-meets-Fergus’. She then linked the two empty spaces underneath The Painter, representing the two unknown serial kille
rs, to ‘Fergus killed 7pm’. She changed the time to 6pm, because maybe it was, after all, earlier rather than later. She linked the hammer to the updated item, ‘Fergus killed at 6pm’.
‘Christ!’ Matthews blew out a long breath as he sat back.
She nodded, the enormity of it hitting her, too.
‘Greg never met Fergus,’ she said.
‘He met one of the killers,’ Matthews said, completing the deduction. ‘That’s why Fergus’s face was bashed in, his eyes missing. Which means–’
‘We at least know the rough size and stature of the killer. Greg met the killer, then saw Fergus’s body later. If they’d been significantly different, he’d have noticed.’
Matthews pointed to the empty quadrant. ‘What are we going to do?’
That was what the last quadrant was for. Deciding how to go through the mountain pass without being picked off by snipers.
Someone tried the door, then tried it again.
‘We need to keep this just between us,’ she said. ‘For now, until we’re sure.’
Matthews grabbed the piece of paper and began scrunching it up. Someone shoved against the door, then began knocking hard on it.
‘Open this door immediately.’
Rickard. They heard a jangle of keys.
Matthews had squashed the piece of paper down to the size of a marble. He put it in his mouth, made a gulping sound and swallowed.
The door burst open.
‘Sorry,’ Finch said, twirling the capped pen between her fingers. ‘We needed to think without being disturbed.’
Rickard’s eyes flashed from her to Matthews, to the evidence board, and back to the empty table in front of them. Donaldson was behind him, holding the keys that had opened the door.
‘Did you find anything?’ he asked, bustling past Rickard into the room.
She shook her head. Later, she promised silently to Donaldson.
‘Well, we have a situation,’ he said. ‘Greg’s ex-wife is formally declared missing and now connected to this case.’
‘We should question Greg,’ she said, going pre-emptive.
Rickard gave her an incredulous stare. ‘There is no we this time. I will question him first, alone.’
She looked to Donaldson, but he said nothing, his hands evidently tied.
She stared at the table to where the paper had been a minute earlier, to the mental image of the fourth quadrant. It would have to wait. You run headlong into the mountain pass, you get cut down.
‘Then we’d better find her,’ she said, rising. ‘Nothing for us here.’ As they all filed out of the room, Matthews in front of her, he burped. She slapped him on the back.
Maybe kids weren’t so bad after all.
22
Finch was in the wilderness, running. After a fruitless evening trying to locate Jennifer with the full resources of Scotland Yard and Birmingham Metro, she’d gone to bed and got up at 6am to catch the sunrise over the Ash Ranges, like she did religiously every Monday. Some of her colleagues back at the Yard still ribbed her about it, asking if she really did the run every week. She’d tell them to be there at 7am and find out.
No one ever came.
Not that far from Sandhurst, the Ash Ranges were a world apart. Whereas Sandhurst was all sculpted gardens, immaculate lawns, curving pathways and idyllic swan-blessed lakes, the Ranges were wild and rugged, the closest she could get to wilderness this side of the Welsh border. It was hilly, few clear tracks, soft and treacherous orange-clay soil, with tall, spiny trees spiking up erratically at odd angles, casting mottled shadows on uneven terrain.
Just the way she liked it.
When she’d been a grunt, an infantry girl – aka cannon-fodder – she’d been based in nearby Aldershot, and had trained here often, including at night, both with and without night-vision goggles. Back then she’d been carrying a backpack, and the best you could do with forty pounds on your back was jog on the jagged terrain and pray not to bust a kneecap. Now she was in a one-piece running suit, with a headband that was special to her. She’d been drunk while on a two-day break in Islamabad, where she’d first spied Simon, and after a few vodkas he’d dared her to play strip poker. He was cheating, and she let him, until she was down to her panties and the headband. He could have put down a queen, but instead he lay down a jack, to see which single item she’d take off next.
She slowed. Simon, her lover, still locked away in Reedmoor. At least she’d had five minutes alone with him. As the guys in her platoon had often reminded her, five minutes was more than enough.
She got back into her stride, scanning four yards ahead when the terrain was even, two when it wasn’t, letting her peripheral vision take care of the rest. She used her memorised map to track her movements, as if viewing herself from a helicopter hovering above the Ranges, employing the location of the rising sun to make minor corrections when she drifted off course.
Sweating nicely, though it was barely twelve degrees, she hadn’t come simply to run, but to think. This was wilderness, after all. She spotted her favourite spot coming up on the right, a hillock with a single tree, half its roots exposed in the crusty earth, a single egg-shaped boulder glistening dew in the low sun’s rays. She bounded up in three big strides, careful to stretch but not strain her hamstrings, and slowed to a stop. Sitting down wasn’t a good idea; harder to restart afterwards. Instead she stood with one foot on the boulder and did a three-sixty. Trees, hills, bushes, dirt. She inhaled the smell of autumn leaves damp from last night’s rain. From one direction, when the breeze blew, she heard the whisper of the M3 traffic rushing headlong towards the morning jam on the M25.
Sod it. She squatted. A compromise. She wasn’t twenty anymore, or thirty for that matter, the big one due in two years. She’d come here to make up her mind about something. She and Matthews had drawn a blank on Alfred Ellerton, yet her gut screamed at her that he was the missing link. And with Jennifer having disappeared…
The Gravedigger took longer than others to kill. Correction: it took longer for his victims to die. He’d buried his first victim alive in a not-too-shallow grave, which strictly speaking didn’t take that long, then moved on to coffins, and the last victim he’d walled up. The poor bastard had lasted eight days before succumbing. They’d found him on the ninth. That is, she and Matthews had found him. Matthews had swung the sledgehammer like a fucking superhero, but they were too late. She’d seen people starved to death before, but…
Matthews had raged, tears in his eyes. She’d never seen him like that. She’d stayed as cold as the boulder next to her until they put The Gravedigger down. Then she’d gone to Sandhurst, met up with a few of her ex-trainers, and got seriously plastered.
She wondered if she could turn Rickard around, because she needed Greg’s insight on all of this. But Rickard was locked into his own hypothesis, no doubt Jennifer’s disappearance cementing it in his mind.
She thought about the fourth quadrant, the one currently residing in Matthews’ colon: the MOUNTAIN PASS. She remembered one day coming through the Hindu Kush mountains, heading towards Kandahar. They’d had to pass through a narrow gorge, steep rises on either side, plenty of rocky cover at the top. She’d held her platoon at the entrance for an hour, listening, watching, waiting. They’d called for a Predator drone to check out the ridge and take out any insurgents, but the reception was shit and they’d had no confirmation.
She was sure the enemy were up there, biding their time, waiting until she and her men were well inside what would become a kill-box. And she needed to move her platoon, or else they’d not make it out of the mountains before nightfall, which would be worse. She had solid intel on a major attack planned for the next evening, but the radio wouldn’t work in the mountains, and she needed to deliver it personally to the General. Which meant she had to flush the gunmen out from the rocks up above, tip their hand.
She’d been watching the birds. Where they flew, where they didn’t. Then she sought out her only sniper, Hawkings.
Hawkings didn’t say anything. She got four others ready to lay down cover-fire, and another four to dash toward the single point of shelter in the pass when the firing started, to take out any other shooters.
She knew she might lose somebody that day. Which was why she ran with the first wave into the pass. She recalled that run. A twenty-second sprint. No backpack, the semi-auto gripped in front of her with both hands, two spare mags strapped to her thighs. Twenty seconds. After five, the firing began, bullets zipping around her feet, gunfire clamouring all around them, and then Walker stumbled, hit in the leg, and she’d had that split-second decision to make: stop and help him, or keep running. She’d skidded to a stop, puffs of dirt spewing up in the ground right in front of her where she’d have been if she hadn’t turned back, and pulled Walker to his feet. The other three stopped where they were, out in the open, sheltering her and Walker until she could join them in showering the rocks above with bullets. Two more of her men went down before the mountain top was suddenly drenched in fire, like a volcano, hurtling rocks down into the canyon like deadly hail.
The Predator had arrived.
The rest of her platoon came quickly through the pass, picking up the two dead soldiers on the way, while she helped Walker. As they filed out the other end into more defensible country, Hawkings said two words to her.
‘Got him.’
But she’d lost two men, another one wounded, and prayed the intel was worth it. The General told her later that it had been: they’d caught an entire insurgent cell and prevented a string of bombings. Saved two hundred lives minimum, he’d said, soldiers and citizens.
It was something.
There was a saying in the ranks. Body bags triggered two things in equal measure – medals and blame. Four of her men, those who ran with her, got the Victoria Cross, the highest medal in the British Forces. Usually it was gained posthumously – as it was for two of her men – because it was awarded to those rare soldiers brave enough to run headlong into enemy fire. She earned a demotion and a desk job, because those two extra deaths tipped the statistics back home that month into a string of bad headlines for the Defence Secretary. As her Sarge used to say, war’s got nothing on politics. But word got around. What the Predator had also picked up was another group of insurgents creeping up behind them from a hidden tunnel. Another few minutes and she and her platoon would have been wiped out, even with drone cover. At the unofficial tribunal, the Brass said she couldn’t have known that, which was true. Her men said that was bullshit. They’d trust their CO’s gut over intel any day of the week.