Primed to Kill: SINISTER MURDERS ARE RIFE (The Dead Speak Book 2)

by Emmy Ellis

  Yep, he worked hard all right.

  “DI Langham, and my associate, Oliver Banks,” Langham said, revealing his ID. “Mind if we look at the van before we take your statement?”

  “Oh, hello. That was quick. Yep, hang on a sec while I put me slippers on.” He moved to walk away then turned back. “Want to come in a minute?”

  “No, thanks. We’re fine waiting out here.”

  “Righty-ho.”

  Mr Littleworth disappeared through a doorway to the left then came back, tartan slippers on and a set of keys in hand. He opened a door beneath the stairs to the right then pulled out a jacket. He shirked into it, the fleece lining looking like it would be warm on his bare arms.

  “Come on then.” He stepped out and pushed between them. “I’d like to make this quick cos the footy’s on in a bit.”

  Oliver and Langham followed him to the van. Mr Littleworth handed Langham the keys and stayed with Oliver on the tree-lined path. Langham put gloves on, opened the back doors, and peered inside.

  “Weird business, this,” Mr Littleworth remarked, sniffing. “You don’t expect your van to get nicked then put back, do you.”

  “No. I think you’ll find it’ll need to be taken away,” Oliver said. “Have you got other means of transport?”

  Mr Littleworth nodded. Sniffed again. “Yeah, got another couple of vans down the yard, but it’s not the point, is it? Pisses me off that someone feels they’ve got the right to pinch me motor.”

  “And you didn’t see them take it?” Oliver asked.

  Langham climbed into the back of the van.

  “That’s the weird thing, see.” Mr Littleworth twitched his nose. “Like, I was awake till late, would have heard the engine start cos it’s a noisy fucker. Kind of does this popping thing, gives a bit of a strangled splutter, know what I mean?”

  Oliver nodded. “And you didn’t hear it?”

  “No. Reckon they must have pushed it up the road or something. I did have the thought it must have been someone who knew the van made that noise, but then I told meself I was just being a daft sod and to pack it in.”

  Oliver went cold, and goosebumps assaulted his skin without warning. The roots of his hair seemed to waver, as though something was telling him that what Mr Littleworth had said was right. Holding a hand up so the man didn’t speak again, Oliver walked to the rear of the van and stared inside. Langham crouched by the right-hand-side door, frowning at the spot his torch beam illuminated.

  “Mr Littleworth just said something interesting,” Oliver said quietly, relating the bit about the car being taken by someone who knew it made strange noises when being started.

  “Oh really?” Langham jumped out and closed the doors. “I can’t find anything in there. Forensics will have to give it a good going over. I’ll have to get uniforms down here for door-to-door, see if any neighbours saw or heard anything.” He rang that in, then moved to where Mr Littleworth stood. “I’ll need a full list of the people you work with, if that’s possible, sir.”

  “More than possible,” Mr Littleworth said. “I can give you names and addresses. I’m the boss, see, so I know where every single one of them lives.” He strode towards his path and said over his shoulder, “Come on then. Like I said, the footy’s on soon. I don’t want to miss Man United giving Arsenal some welly, know what I mean?”

  * * * *

  Mr Littleworth had two bald employees, so Oliver and Langham started with them. One was a portly man in his fifties. As Adam or Dane hadn’t mentioned any of the men they’d seen as being of the bulky persuasion, and he had the alibi of playing after-hours darts down The Golden Swan off Drummond Road until four-thirty in the morning, they discounted him. The other, a Martin Eggleton, wasn’t in at the time they called, but a middle-aged female neighbour kindly, and with much excitement, lost no time in telling them he was a weird sod who came and went at odd hours and ate a lot of Indian takeaways. Oh, and pizza, too, pepperoni—she knew that because once there’d been a circle of meat on the lid when the man in question had tossed the box out onto the path for the recycle collection.

  “Reckon he has something to do with it?” Oliver asked as they made their way back to the station so Langham could file a couple of reports. He hoped Eggleton was guilty so they could sort this shit out and get back to normal—normal until the next case, that was.

  “Who knows,” Langham said on a sigh. “Can’t be sure until we speak to him. Get him down the station. If he gets antsy when we ask him to be in a lineup so Adam and Dane can see if they recognise him, we’ll be closer to knowing whether he’s just a weird git who doesn’t like cooking for himself or if he’s been up to no good.”

  “Wonder when he’ll turn up?” Oliver licked his lips in anticipation of the hot, if somewhat over-stewed coffee back at the station. It was better than a kick in the teeth, and he needed the caffeine. Looked like it was going to be a long night.

  “Time will tell.”

  They reached the station and went inside, Langham waylaid by another detective on the case. Oliver left him to it, striding down the hall towards Langham’s office. He stopped to fill a Styrofoam cup with jet-black coffee along the way. He dumped three sugar cubes in it for good measure—it would take the bitter taste away—and took a seat behind the desk.

  He leant back, thankful when his head met the top of the seat, and closed his eyes. It had been a bitch of a day, full of revelations, those revelations coming much faster than the ones in the first murder. The deaths were related, no two ways about it, and he could only hope they managed to wrap this up before a third was committed. Somewhere out there was a gay man, minding his own business, unaware he might already be in the sights of a bunch of bald-headed killers with a mind to chain him up and whip him.

  Oliver sighed with frustration. Jason Drum and Thomas Brentworth were keeping what they knew to themselves—or maybe they weren’t able to get through to Oliver for some reason or other. Whatever, he wished they could. Wished they’d give him a bit more to go on, otherwise, what was the point in him even being there?

  Chapter Eleven

  The call came at two in the morning, jolting Langham away from his office and springing Oliver upright in the chair where he’d been dozing, or ‘resting his eyes’.

  “Right,” Langham said into the receiver, “I’ll let them know.” He put the phone down then looked at Oliver across the desk. “Got to give Adam and Dane a call later. Martin Eggleton’s been picked up. They’re bringing him in now. We’ve got time to question him then set a lineup for first thing. Let’s say nine, gives us a chance to let Adam and Dane know they need to take a couple of hours off work. The lads might recognise him.”

  “If he’s one of the men.” Oliver yawned, groggy from his catnap. He dragged a hand down the side of his face, the feeling that he’d been run over almost taking him for a funny turn. He winced as his stomach churned, the nasty coffee swirling with no hint of coming to rest soon. “I need something to eat.” He rose then walked to the office door. “You want anything?”

  Langham grinned. “A plate of pie and mash wouldn’t go amiss, but seeing as the vending machine only spits out crisps and chocolate, that’ll have to do. Thanks.” He bent his head and resumed typing.

  Oliver left him, walking out into the hallway where the vending machine sat, a rectangular hulk, wide and black, its front glass bowed as though the manufacturers had aimed to make it more attractive. It hadn’t worked. Flyers were attached to the sides with sticky tape, telling whoever read them that by calling Crimestoppers you could remain anonymous—they just wanted any information you might have. Another poster announced some officers needing support for a charity event—paragliding, then upon landing they’d be running ten miles—and he used the pencil dangling beside it on a thin, dirty length of string to scribble his name and that he’d pay them ten pounds max if they got to the finish line.

  Oliver fed coins into the slot and selected them both a packet of Walkers—cheese and onion
for Langham, salt and vinegar for him—and a couple of Snickers. It wasn’t ideal, but like Langham had said, it would have to do. They’d work through the night, Langham interviewing Eggleton, Oliver standing behind the two-way glass trying to get a feel for the bloke and waiting for Thomas or Jason to speak. They’d been ominously silent. That happened sometimes, but with Sugar Strands, he’d got used to being contacted quite regularly, and, luckily for them, just when they needed help. This time…well, it looked like they’d be doing a lot of the detective work the old-fashioned way.

  He waited for the food to drop into the tray then scooped it out. He nipped into the office to put it on Langham’s desk then made his way towards the small kitchen on the other side of the large, main office area. Coppers sat at desks, some bleary-eyed, some bright, as if they’d had a good night’s sleep, and Oliver got the very real sense that there was a mission to be accomplished—solving the case before another man got killed. They’d been told about his prediction, that Thomas’ death was the first of many if they didn’t catch those responsible soon, and with Jason’s murder, he’d been proved right.

  He went into the kitchen, opening the fridge, not expecting to find the two Cokes he’d stashed there months ago, behind a loaf of bread that, at the time, had been on the turn. The bread was gone, but the Cokes weren’t, and he took them out and wondered whether someone had borrowed and replaced them continually until today.

  Back in Langham’s office, bored and useless to anyone, Oliver munched his crisps and Snickers. Everyone else was busy, and Oliver felt that deep, gut-wrenching sense of being un. Unnecessary. Unwanted. Un-bloody-noticed.

  He shouldn’t be feeling that way, not when the most important thing was preventing death, but how could he help prevent it if he couldn’t do something constructive? He opened the spare laptop to do a search on Eggleton, see if he could dig up any dirt that might be useful when Langham interviewed him. Someone had already done this, but Oliver wanted to make sure nothing had been missed.

  The man was clean, not even a parking fine. He appeared the model citizen, and Oliver went deep inside himself to test out that new sense of his. He closed his eyes, resting his forehead on his crossed arms on the desk. Relaxing his body, he went into a state where he was aware of everything around him yet was inside his mind, floating, then soaring, flying to the farthest reaches in search of something, anything to give them hope.

  An image formed, blurry, so indistinct he couldn’t make it out. Frazzled edges appeared, sharpening quickly, rendering the visual into several bald men, naked. A communal hum started, so abruptly Oliver jumped. Was this just a scene from his imagination? After all, he knew about the humming men, knew what would happen next, too, but what if it wasn’t what had gone before? What if he was seeing something in the future? He couldn’t risk not finding out.

  He went with it, waiting for the men to become sharp. Then he moved, mingling with them, leaning towards each one and sensing their breathing, erratic and heavy, their thoughts, ‘got to kill, got to kill, got to kill’, their body language, fluid, easy…sure. They were a different breed, people he couldn’t understand because they inhabited a place in their minds where only the bad lived. Their bloodlust was up, and he knew without understanding how or why, that their escalation from straight strangulation to strangulation and torture had given them power. A heady, rich sensation, abrupt and blunt took over him—no soft edges here, just pure, unadulterated feeling. These men thought what they were doing was right, just, and wholly what they’d been born to do.

  How did you compete with that? How did you explain to them, if they were captured, that what they’d done was wrong when they believed it was so incredibly right?

  Oliver floated some more, pressing up against a man who he thought might be the leader and letting his essence enter his body. Like rancid, organ-shrivelling poison, evil swarmed through him, infiltrating every part of him, his mind swirling with much more information than he’d thought he’d get.

  That evil, that venom, showed him a vision of the next person they planned to kill and where it would be. His blood seemed to freeze to ice, sweat popped out of every pore, and nausea swept up his windpipe until he heaved, raising his forehead from his arms then smacking it back down.

  Oliver saw another barn, a tractor parked in one corner and a plough in the other and, standing in the centre, his eyes gaunt, fright etched on his face, was himself.

  * * * *

  Eggleton sat opposite Langham at a white Formica table scarred with countless gouges from countless criminals, maybe from a few coppers, too. A coffee or tea stain, a circle the exact size of a Styrofoam cup base, looked worn and faded, the station cleaner probably unable to get the damn thing off.

  Oliver eyed him through the two-way glass, aware of a uniformed policeman standing in the shadows by the door, and waited for some telling body language or a vocal slipup that would give them the opening Langham needed to go full pelt into interrogation mode. Eggleton remained normal, so normal Oliver thought they’d picked up the wrong man and it was useless continuing. He’d been wrong in the past, though, so didn’t alert Langham in his earpiece that this might be a pointless exercise.

  Eggleton had alibis for both murder nights, which were being checked as the scenario in front of Oliver played out. This man would get to go home, maybe with extra weight on his shoulders in the form of huge chips, or maybe with relief that he was in the clear. Either way, Oliver felt this wasn’t their man.

  But he knew the men responsible, Oliver sensed that keenly. Only Eggleton didn’t know it yet. He was helpful, eager to give any and all information, and Oliver decided to try that floating thing again. With no idea whether it would work but vowing to give it a damn good try, he stared at Eggleton’s forehead and let everything else fade away. His eyes glazed, and although he was aware of where he stood—in an empty, shit-coloured room—he was no longer there but hanging in time and space, in a limbo land between the waking world and another that was inexplicable and so new to him he only had instincts to rely on, to guide him.

  Far from being afraid, Oliver entered Eggleton’s head. He was there in spirit, waiting with a scurry of thoughts racing in front of him in the form of hazy lights, the kind caught on camera, car lights, streaks of white and red eels, their tails tapered. Eggleton’s mind was full of them, darting, streaking thoughts that pinged against the inside of his skull in his attempt to find something that could be of help.

  Questions came from Langham, and the answers zipped in front of Oliver, echoic, ghostly voices that began firm and ended weak.

  “Who do you think would have stolen the van?”

  “No idea. Everyone I work with is a decent sort as far as I know.”

  “Who else has a bald head at work?”

  “No one except me and that fat bloke…what’s his name…? Can’t bloody think of it.”

  “Has anyone given you cause to feel uneasy? By that I mean, has anyone’s demeanour changed recently? People acting furtive, jumpy?”

  “No, everyone’s the same. Except Len, but then his wife’s just lost a baby, poor cow, so…”

  “Have you encountered anyone who has been talking in a group, or even someone talking on a telephone, and they seem…different?”

  “No! There’s nothing. I mean, it’s not like I go about listening to every Tom, Dick, and Harry’s business, is it? I go to work, pick up my van and job list, and get on with it.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t heard anything? Think about it for a second. I’ll go and get you a coffee. Or would you prefer tea, water?”

  “Tea, milk and two sugars, thanks.”

  Langham left the room. Oliver waited for Eggleton’s thoughts.

  Tea. Reminds me of something… The break room earlier. Peter going on about some barn dance. Barn… Coincidence? Yeah, that’s all it is. A barn dance they were going to invite some psychic wanker to. They. Who are they? Who else was there? Peter. And that limp-wristed fucker with the dodgy e
yebrows. Monobrow. But they’ve all got hair. What’s with this bald shit anyway?

  Oliver reversed out of Eggleton’s head, returning to his body with a nauseating whump. Langham had come back and placed the tea down.

  “What did you remember?” he asked.

  Oliver wanted to throw up. Some psychic wanker…

  Eggleton babbled his thoughts, sheepish, apologising for his information, that it was nothing, just a load of bollocks he’d overheard.

  “That’s for us to decide,” Langham said. “If you could remember all who were present, all their names?”

  “Peter. Definitely Peter. And the bloke with the eyebrow. Fuck, what’s his bloody name?”

  Eggleton paused, and Oliver imagined those darting lights, pistoning through his head at speed.

  “Chad someone.” Eggleton frowned. “No, Brad. That’s it, Brad. Don’t know his surname, though.”

  “That isn’t a problem. Anyone else?”

  “Yeah, but I can’t think who they were. I can see them in my head—not much fucking use to you, though, is it?”

  “Can you try to recall what else they said? Times, dates?”