The Dead Tell Lies: an absolutely gripping mystery thriller

by J. F. Kirwan

  ‘False alarm,’ she said. Then she texted Matthews. Okay here. Watch your back.

  She pocketed the ‘Thank you’ note, and they locked up the flat together. Then she walked Mrs Appleby to a nearby pub while they waited for Matthews to join them.

  Appleby fished something out of her handbag. ‘I… I wasn’t sure what to do with these,’ she said. There were two keys attached to a small fob fashioned as a silver skull. ‘I found them on my last viewing to sell the property, and have no idea where they are for, or who to give them to.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Finch said, taking them. ‘What’s your daughter’s number?’ she asked.

  Appleby gave it to her. Finch dialled.

  ‘Hello. This is DCI Finch of New Scotland Yard. You need to come and look after your mum this evening, she’s had a bit of a shock.’

  ‘What? Who did you say you were? Is… is she all right?’

  Finch handed the phone to Mrs Appleby. Then she began wondering why the killer hadn’t gone through with whatever he’d planned to do. Had he guessed she was armed? Or was he just trying to rattle her? In which case his plan had bloody-well worked.

  Matthews arrived. She ordered him a pint and gestured him to sit down.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘time to share.’

  She told him about the Ash Ranges, and had to buy him pie and chips, with extra curry sauce. Appleby-the-younger arrived and embraced her mum, and they headed off. Okay, Finch decided, I’ll call mine in a few days. When this is all over.

  She made to leave, just as Matthews held his palms out face down and lowered them. She sat back down.

  ‘You haven’t asked me about my day.’

  True. She waited.

  ‘I think I’ve found The Dreamer’s corpse. A guy OD’d in Elephant and Castle.’

  A stone’s throw from Lambeth. She took one of his chips. Make that two.

  ‘I’m not surprised it was missed. Nothing special, except the drug used, which was why the coroner raised a query on the file.’ He paused.

  She thought it through, then got it. ‘A hallucinogenic. The same one that was used on Fergus.’

  He raised the last dregs of his pint in toast. ‘Bingo.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘James Palmerston. Adopted at the age of six.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Parents died in a gas explosion at home. James was out playing in the local park at the time.’

  ‘New parents?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. Details were redacted to protect the child, apparently. I was heading to Records to get the intel when I got your message.’

  ‘Do it,’ she said.

  ‘They’re closed.’

  ‘Open them. For all we know the killers have Jennifer walled up somewhere.’ She didn’t really believe that, but it would be enough to get them to grant Matthews out-of-hours access.

  ‘Okay.’

  She made to leave again. ‘I need to go and see Greg, see what he can make of all of this.’

  Matthews made a face. ‘You haven’t heard?’

  She sat back down. Matthews told her what had happened to Greg, and she felt her blood boil. She put on her coat.

  ‘Where are you going, exactly?’ Matthews asked.

  ‘To see Rickard.’

  ‘Want me to come?’

  ‘No. Find the kid’s parents. Besides, if I punch Rickard in the face, I don’t want any witnesses. Oh, and take these. It’s a long shot, but see if anyone back at the Yard can find out what they’re for.’ She handed him the keys with the silver skull fob, and left the pub, to go back home and get her car, and then drive out to see E. R.

  25

  Six hours earlier

  Greg had been turning over everything in his mind. There was little else to do in the twelve-by-eight whitewashed cell complete with metal toilet, sink and single bed. He still believed all the killings were connected: Alfred Ellerton, Kate, the bully-boy, the security woman, Fergus and Raj. He was being set-up for the murder of Fergus and Raj. But he’d updated his hypothesis about the motivation. Partly it must be revenge, because, well, he was being set-up. But it was as if the current frame was there to distract attention away from the previous murders, to shove them back into the cold case folder, to be forgotten. Why? What was the bigger picture of these copycat murders?

  The only motive he could think of that connected the two aspects of this killing spree, was that it was all somehow a rite of passage. If killing The Dreamer was the first murder, it could be akin to taking out the competition before getting really started. But it could also be some form of initiation, followed by a set of killings that would make the serial killer… a grandmaster? It didn’t necessarily make a lot of sense to a normal person, but it certainly had the hallmark of a warped mind.

  He considered The Painter again, and the sketch he had drawn. Boris was painfully smart, and so Greg had to look beneath the surface of what it showed – three figures including Greg – to a deeper metaphor, because The Painter had intimated it was a clue. What if the three figures in the sketch had nothing to do with Greg or Boris? What if one was the serial killer, going through some kind of rite of passage, or training? What would he need? He’d need a guide. That would have to be another serial killer, someone who knew what they were doing. Who, he had no idea. His formal training told him that this was a dead end, that serial killers never worked together. But he persisted because he’d gone as far as he could with all other lines of inquiry, and still had no actionable outcome.

  So, three positions in the sketch: trainee serial killer, actual serial killer, and… Ah, of course! Some kind of mentor. An actual grandmaster, overseeing everything, probably holding it all together and preventing the two serial killers beneath him from murdering each other. Who could that be? Maybe one or two others at Reedmoor, not one of Greg’s catches. But if they were locked away, how would the killers get to see the grandmaster?

  Something clicked. It was so outrageous his mind tried to censor it, but it formed anyway: Rickard. He kept visiting Reedmoor. For his research, his book. No, it couldn’t be. He was arrogant, but Greg had known him for years. He was successful, at the top of his public game, if not his actual work game. Nope, it was too much. He brushed it aside.

  So, who else was on his virtual evidence board?

  Alfred Ellerton.

  Greg mentally slid the name from the ‘victim’ column to the ‘suspect’ one. A bit old for a serial killer. What about the role of grandmaster or mentor?

  He put his analysis on pause as he heard footsteps approaching, and the creaking wheel of the meals trolley. About time. More than one set of footsteps. Maybe Donaldson or Matthews. Not Finch, unless she’d transitioned to flat shoes. He didn’t care who it was. He needed to bounce ideas off someone, to do some reality checks, and maybe gain further new pieces of data that could either solidify or destroy his theories.

  The door unlocked and swung open. Surprisingly it was Rickard, accompanied by the usual thickset guard who brought a new depth of meaning to the word ‘taciturn’. Rickard was carrying two Styrofoam Starbucks coffee cups with lids on. The guard plonked Greg’s tray down onto his meagre table, spilling the local coffee, which was almost certainly stone cold. He handcuffed Greg’s left wrist to the table.

  ‘Protocol,’ the guard said in a gruff voice, and left, closing but not locking the door.

  ‘I’ve come to give you an update, Gregory. Last time I was a little… harsh.’

  An olive branch from Rickard. That was a first. But he was desperate to know what was going on. ‘What news, then?’ Greg asked.

  ‘Finch and her sidekick are chasing down a dead end, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Alfred Ellerton?’

  There was a flicker of reaction in Rickard’s eyes. Greg couldn’t decipher it.

  ‘Yes.’

  Greg indicated the two cups, as if to say, which one is mine?

  ‘They’re both the same,’ Rickard said. ‘I
haven’t taken a sip yet.’

  That made it easier, because there was still a sliver of doubt in his mind about Rickard. He picked up one of the Styrofoam cups, removed the lid, and then waited.

  Rickard took the other cup, removed its lid, and took a large gulp.

  Greg relaxed and took a sip of the double espresso macchiato. It was just the way he liked it. He didn’t think Rickard, of all people, would remember. A little too much sugar, but otherwise just what he needed in order to concentrate.

  ‘How do you know it’s a dead end?’ he asked, wiping froth from his upper lip.

  Rickard glanced at Greg’s cup. ‘Ah well, confession time I suppose.’ He shifted position. ‘I knew him.’

  Greg had to play it back in his head to be sure what he’d just heard.

  ‘What?’

  Rickard shrugged. ‘It was a very long time ago. His adopted son, Christopher, and I used to play together as kids. We went to different schools, but met at a park and became fast friends for a while.’ He drank down half his coffee.

  Greg sipped some more and decided to state the bleeding obvious. ‘You should have mentioned that in the report,’ meaning both parts, that he knew the victim, and that Ellerton had an adopted son. That hadn’t been in the file. A thought occurred.

  ‘Where’s Christopher now, we should interview him.’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘We could trace him–’

  ‘No, I mean he’s gone.’

  Greg tried to work out what this news could mean, but his brain felt fuzzy. He sipped some more coffee to clear his head, and suddenly felt woozy. He put down the cup, almost spilling it.

  And then it happened. He stopped. Unable to move, unable to speak. He could breathe, with an effort.

  Rickard bent forward and moved his forefinger straight towards Greg’s right eyeball, then touched it. Greg recoiled internally, but outwardly he couldn’t even blink.

  Fuck. Rickard. It was Rickard… But the coffees? Both drugged. Rickard must have already ingested an antidote.

  ‘If only you’d pulled the trigger a third time, Gregory, and ignored the call,’ Rickard said, matter of fact.

  Greg’s mind spun. The call. It had been Fergus. While Rickard had watched Greg almost blow his brains out.

  ‘When you decided to see him, he texted you the address. We had to move fast and improvise. You were beginning to understand, Gregory, though you haven’t worked it out yet. I have to admit you are good at what you do. That’s always been a source of irritation for me. Unfortunately, Finch is now following the same trail.’ He shook his head, and then grimaced, his voice steeling with anger. ‘Why couldn’t you have just killed yourself, Greg? You were wracked by guilt, as you should have been.’

  Greg’s shock at these revelations was deluged by a rising tide of anger. He wanted to spit in Rickard’s eye. All this time. He must have been the one who called Kate after Raj’s call. He had violated her, then carved her flesh after she was dead.

  In The Painter’s sketch, Rickard was The Initiate.

  ‘She called out for you, you know, that evening.’ He imitated her voice, a crude parody, which made it sting all the harder. ‘Where are you, Greg?’ He leaned close, his words grating in Greg’s ears. ‘Where the fuck are you?’

  Greg’s anger wobbled, first derailed by guilt, then submerged by grief. He imagined her, writhing on the floor, calling for him, and he wasn’t there.

  ‘Still, there is one last chance to stop the inevitable chain of events, to stop this train that has left the tracks, so to speak.’

  Rickard produced a syringe, bent over and eased the needle into the soft flesh in the crease in Greg’s groin. Greg knew why – it was hard to detect, yet it had ample blood flow and could shoot whatever was in the syringe straight up into the brain.

  ‘You’ll begin to feel a tingling. Your muscle control will return quickly. And then you are going to experience pure, primal rage, and you will attack me. If you’re quick, who knows, maybe you can even kill me. In any case you will attack, and then I’ll have you committed. Then I’ll get my friends in high places to order Donaldson, and therefore Finch, to close the case. You can look at it this way: if you do attack me, you save Finch, because at the moment my partners want to take her off the board.’

  Partners. Plural. The Painter’s sketch was right.

  He did feel tingling, though it was more like acid on his skin, pricks on his face, which was burning up. He considered his options. If he left Rickard alone, he could tell Donaldson everything he’d heard…

  It was as if Rickard read his mind. ‘Oh, by the way, even if you do nothing, I’m having you sectioned and sent to Reedmoor for treatment. ECT or lobotomy, I haven’t decided which one yet. Maybe both.’

  Greg’s insides were on fire, his muscles tense to the point of cramping. But he felt something much darker, more primal, a caveman’s rage and bloodlust bubbling up into his head.

  ‘I fucked Kate, you know. Well, you probably do, you saw the report. I think she enjoyed it actually. Especially in the ass. She wanted me to take the condom off, said she needed to feel a real man come inside her.’

  Greg tried to resist, knew Rickard was baiting him, but his mind swirled with images and his amplified emotions shut off all logic. There was a rushing noise in his ears, like a train passing at high speed. Before he knew it, his fist slammed into Rickard’s face, and then he used the table as leverage to raise his foot and kick hard into Rickard’s chest, propelling him back into the wall.

  Rickard staggered back in front of Greg, picked up the tray, and handed it to Greg. ‘Do it. Or Finch is next.’

  Greg could only feel white fury, and he took the tray in his free hand, raised it high, his arm shaking. He could kill him here and now. Rickard stared at him, not with fear, but with a morbid anticipation, because a serial killer ultimately craves a violent death.

  The blood swirled around Greg’s brain, and he wanted to smash the tray down on his face, but no, he wasn’t a killer, and he was about to lower the tray when he heard a sharp clicking noise. He began to shake violently, his fingers in spasm, locking around the tray. Then he slumped to the floor, seeing the guard’s boots next to him, along with two Taser wires vibrating as the guard held the switch down until Greg blacked out.

  Greg woke up, opened his eyes, and then squeezed them shut.

  No.

  He opened them again. He couldn’t move at all. Held in a strange position, his arms folded across his body, knees bent, arms and feet bound by… He closed his eyes again.

  This can’t be happening.

  He took a deep breath, opened his eyes a third time, and stared down at the tight-knit stitches and coarse white material. He was in a straitjacket, tethered to a hospital bed.

  And he was gagged. Not exactly standard practice when leaving a patient alone.

  The cell was different, too. He didn’t recognise it, and yet he did. Almost no furniture, but he could see the metal door with its rectangular pane of reinforced glass. There was a face there, silhouetted by the light behind, because it was near dark in Greg’s cell. Just a silhouette, but he had an idea who it was.

  What comes after a nightmare?

  The door opened. The Painter sauntered over. He stood with his groin close to Greg’s face. Greg inched his head back as far as he could.

  ‘Why, dear boy, whatever are you doing here?’ He stroked Greg’s hair. ‘Ah, attacking that nice Professor Rickard. Won’t do, dear boy. Bad form, you know.’

  He crouched down, his face level with Greg’s. ‘I’d love to stay and chat, but, well, here’s the thing. You put me away, at least your testimony did, and now, well, clearly… So, tomorrow I’m being moved from Reedmoor to a lower security facility, which is nice. But it means we won’t be spending time with each other, I’m afraid.’

  He stood and walked to the door. ‘I really do think I’ll be out soon, for good. I’ve so missed painting with real subjects.’

  Greg l
ay there for a long time, until the screams and shouts down the corridor from other patients’ night terrors ceased. It would have been easy to thrash about, pull at his restraints, utter muffled shouts and screams, or even weep at what had happened to him. He did none of those things. Because he had friends on the outside, and they were in danger. Rickard would kill again – Greg had seen the hunger in his eyes – and that little scene back in his cell must have primed Rickard for the next murder.

  He hadn’t heard from Jennifer. But if Rickard had her, he would have boasted about it, used that as well as taunting him about Kate. No, Jennifer had evaded the killers. Rickard had said that if Greg attacked him, he would spare Finch. Greg wasn’t convinced. It depended on how much Finch knew, and whether she’d found any new evidence that could connect Rickard with Ellerton.

  He didn’t know Finch that well, but she was definitely one of the good guys. Tread very carefully, Finch. But well-wishing wasn’t enough. Maybe if he did thrash about, he could get some attention, get someone to listen to him just long enough to warn Finch or Donaldson. He began to squirm and kick and grunt, fully aware he was behaving just like the other inmates in the ward. It didn’t matter. He’d failed to save Kate, Fergus and Raj. He needed to save Finch. He thrashed so hard, the gurney he was on toppled over. That got him attention, but the wrong sort. Without removing his gag, a male nurse injected him with a sedative, and Greg’s mind tumbled out of the straitjacket, plunging into a hell full of nightmare scenarios of how Rickard would kill Finch.

  26

  Finch was almost there, just a couple more minutes on the road. After she’d quit the pub, Matthews had phoned her, insisting that he should come along as backup, but Finch knew that if the gloves came off she and Rickard might end up debating why her lover Simon was still locked up, and she wanted that particular discussion to be held in private. Besides, finding out the adult identity of The Dreamer – this James Palmerston – was primary at this point. She needed to delve into what Rickard knew about Alfred Ellerton, to see if the note in the book was actually referring to him.