Death on the Levels

by David Hodges

  DEATH ON THE LEVELS

  An addictive crime thriller full of twists

  DAVID HODGES

  (Detective Kate Hamblin mystery book 6)

  Published 2019

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  © David Hodges

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of David Hodges to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Before The Fact

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  AFTER THE FACT

  The Detective Kate Hamblin mystery series

  A Selection of Books You May Enjoy

  Glossary of English Slang for US readers

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my wife, Elizabeth, for all her love, patience and support over so many wonderful years and to my late mother and father, whose faith in me to one day achieve my ambition as a writer remained steadfast throughout their lifetime and whose tragic passing has left a hole in my life that will never be filled.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although the action in this novel takes place within the Avon & Somerset Police area, the story itself and all the characters in it are entirely fictitious. Similarly, at the time of writing, there is no police station in Highbridge. This has been drawn entirely from the author’s imagination to ensure no connection is made between any existing police station or personnel in the force and the content of the novel. I would also point out that I have used some poetic licence in relation to the local police structure and some of the specific procedures followed by Avon & Somerset Police in order to meet the requirements of the plot. Nevertheless, the policing background depicted in the novel is broadly in accord with the national picture and these little departures from fact will, hopefully, not spoil the reading enjoyment of serving or retired police officers, for whom I have the utmost respect.

  David Hodges

  Before The Fact

  There was not as much blood as might have been expected. The sharpened pencil penetrated the cornea of the psychiatrist’s right eye and buried itself in the sixty-year-old’s brain with the ease of a breadstick sliding into a guacamole dip. Death was instantaneous, of course, and when the body had stopped twitching, it was a simple enough matter to exchange clothes with the victim before hauling the cadaver into the private flat that adjoined the consulting room, closing and locking the door afterwards, and pocketing the key. Dumped in there, it could be days before the body was found, and probably only then when the sweet, sickly smell that accompanied the natural process of early decomposition attracted attention.

  George Lupin had been a ‘guest’ at a succession of mental institutions since early adulthood, before finally ending up at Larchfield Secure Psychiatric Hospital. In fact, at the start of it all, decades ago, the then assize court had obviously intended to throw away the key when they’d passed judgement. By recording a verdict of ‘unfit to plead by reason of insanity’, they had in effect handed down an indeterminate sentence. Not that that had been much of a surprise to George, who had admitted to the torture of some halfwit kid in a shed at the young offenders’ institution, just months after the teenager had been sent there for fatally stabbing a pervert at the orphanage.

  Mind you, it had not been too bad in the hospital. Actually, it had been a bit like staying in a hotel. Except for the massive outer wall, the surveillance cameras, electronic gates, tight perimeter security, and the compulsory pharmacological medication, which had at times produced similar psychedelic effects to those experienced by Jack Nicholson’s character in the early stages of the film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

  George had even enjoyed the regular visits of the ‘shrink.’ It had been fun pretending to respond to the treatment and all that counselling claptrap – deceiving the hospital’s naïve hierarchy into believing that their pathetic treatment programme had made a difference to one of their most dangerous psychopaths, even though release was unlikely to be an option. Not after what Patient 174 had done.

  But then the worst news possible had been delivered by the hospital’s senior consultant after George had noticed some bleeding, accompanied by substantial weight loss. A tumour, they’d said; a nasty, aggressive one that was inoperable and eating away at the essential organs, like something out of the film Alien. As yet, there was no real pain, just discomfort, but they’d admitted it would come at the end. Their resident psycho had just a few months left, with the grim prospect of inheriting a nice little plot in the hospital’s cemetery before Christmas arrived. It wasn’t fair. All those years of incarceration and now the final turn of the screw.

  What would they inscribe on the tombstone, George wondered? ‘George Lupin’ or maybe just ‘Patient 174’, with a date of birth and death, plus the usual ‘RIP’? In short, just another deceased inmate passing into obscurity like all the others. No, there had to be something better than that, something more enduring; a reason for society to remember this sad, sick psycho, as they had remembered others who had earned a prominent place in history through their notoriety, like the Moors Murderers or Dr Shipman.

  It was then that George Lupin had made the decision to ditch the mind-bending drugs the hospital had been prescribing – to secretly regurgitate the little coloured tablets after they had been issued and consign them to the toilet – before breaking out of Larchfield altogether, to spend the last few weeks that remained giving free rein to the paranoid desires which the medication had so far suppressed.

  The whole thing had taken meticulous planning.

  First, pre-escape preparation. That had meant deciding on a weapon for what George had in mind. Sharps of any sort were out of the question, so it had to be something that could be adapted. A biro? No, that wouldn’t be permitted. A pencil, then? No, the same would apply on this wing, unless … the art classes had been boring, but they had provided access to some basic kit, including pencils; nice, sharp pencils. The dotty art teacher Larchfield brought in from outside the hospital was more concerned with the creative aspects of her role than monitoring the return of the kit she had issued.

  So far, so good – the weapon had been obtained. Now for the second part of the plan; a haircut. George had quite long, blond hair, but
it needed to be much shorter and of a similar style to the blond hair of the psychiatrist, who was to be Patient 174’s ticket out of Larchfield. To avoid attracting attention – any sudden change always aroused suspicion – the trim had to be carried out over a period of weeks. A little bit shorter to start with, so that everyone got used to it, then a bit more and a bit more, until it was done. That meant eating into the last two months of George’s remaining life expectancy, but it couldn’t be helped and, in any event, it still left enough time for what needed to be done on the outside, so it was worth the risk.

  Next on the agenda was the ‘going away’ outfit. The shrink was about the same build as George, with similar size feet, so borrowing his clothes and shoes after the victim had been dispatched hadn’t seemed to pose too much of a problem.

  But then had come the difficult part – getting past security – and that meant choosing precisely the right moment. One-to-one psychotherapy sessions were organized on a pretty regular basis and every fourth one-to-one was on the Thursday afternoon, just before shift change, when the ‘rock apes’ who maintained hospital security were either reporting for duty or signing off, creating mass movement and an element of confusion. The hospital’s programme could not have been more tailored to George’s plan, coupled with which, the bank holiday weekend was now about to get underway, meaning that just half the regular staff complement would be on duty, with the administration unit already closed altogether.

  As a result, no one would be checking up on the Thursday therapy session until much later on the Tuesday morning and, under the innovative regime that had been set up as an experiment at Larchfield (God bless the liberalists), patients on George’s wing had much more freedom of movement and association than was the case in other secure units up and down the country. Doors were seldom locked and, apart from the compulsory therapy sessions, there was little physical supervision or individual monitoring, which meant that it would be a while before George was missed.

  As for the unfortunate psychiatrist, it was common knowledge that he lived alone in a city semi, 10 miles away, using the private hospital accommodation only when he was on cover duty. In any event, he had revealed to his scheming patient that he was about to go on a week’s holiday, so it was unlikely anyone would miss him until Monday week, by which time Patient 174 would be long gone.

  Now dressed in the shrink’s gear, including the distinctive black Fedora hat and long, dark coat of the true eccentric, and carrying the dead man’s red patient file – the Lupin file – under one arm, it turned out to be relatively easy to walk out the front door of the building into the grounds, which were always accessible to trusted patients during the day.

  Finding the doc’s ancient red VW Beetle in the staff car park was also proved straightforward, as it was always parked in the same place, although mastering the car’s gears proved to be a bit of a problem at first. Fortunately, in common with some of the other trusted patients at Larchfield, George had been given the opportunity of learning to drive the hospital’s internal flatbed truck, and had used it from time to time to transport bed linen, refuse bins, and garden waste from one part of the site to another, so all the basic driving know-how was there. As a result, when Patient 174 finally pulled away, the process was achieved without too much rough handling and the guard in the gate lodge, who was well used to the good doctor’s own ham-fisted driving, even gave a casual, half-humorous salute as the car drove through on to the external service road.

  Out and free. The feeling was truly exhilarating. Out and free to do what should have been done so long ago and which a lifetime of incarceration had made impossible, and where better to head for than where it had started all those years ago? The depths of the beautiful Somerset countryside.

  But first there was a little job that needed doing. Pulling into the next motorway services and slipping on a pair of thin leather gloves discovered in the driver’s door pocket of the VW, George bought a notebook, a pen, an envelope and a first-class stamp from the shop with the dead psychiatrist’s money. Then Patient 174 sat down over a cup of coffee in the cafeteria to write a letter, a very special letter indeed.

  CHAPTER 1

  The spot would have made an ideal set for a spooky Hollywood movie. But it wasn’t ghosts that Detective Sergeant Kate Lewis was thinking about as she perched on the edge of the overturned crate in the woodshed. She shivered in the damp rising from the concrete floor, in spite of the heavy coat and thick corduroy trousers she was wearing. Her eyes were glued to the window through a pair of night-vision binoculars, watching for the slightest movement in the supposedly derelict mansion 20–30 yards away across the swathe of moonlit lawn.

  Beside her, junior colleague Detective Constable Danny Ferris stretched his heavy frame carefully and rubbed the back of one hand across the stubble on his chin, the rasping sound drawing an irritable glance from Kate.

  ‘Reckon anyone will show, skipper?’ he growled, pulling his woolly hat even tighter over his mop of black curly hair. ‘Been here for two hours now already and not a dicky bird. Bloody waste of time, if you ask me.’

  ‘Well, no one is asking you,’ Kate retorted tartly, dropping the binoculars into her lap on the end of their thin leather neck-cord. ‘So, cool it and have a bit of patience.’

  ‘Cool it?’ he snorted. ‘Can’t get much cooler in this shit-hole, can we? My friggin’ bollocks are frozen. You’d think it would be warmer at this time of the year. Bloody weather is all to cock.’

  Kate smiled faintly, unfazed by his colourful language. In her mid-thirties and with over ten years police service behind her – most of them on Highbridge nick’s Criminal Investigation Department – there wasn’t anything anyone could come out with that she hadn’t heard before.

  ‘And what is this drum we’re watching anyway?’ Ferris went on. ‘What was it they called it at briefing – Talbot Court, wasn’t it? Fancy name for a bloody ruin. The place gives me the creeps.’

  Kate’s gaze travelled over the moon-splashed stone walls, prominent buttresses and broken sash windows of the derelict building, and, for some unaccountable reason, she shivered.

  ‘It was once a Georgian mansion, I’m told,’ she replied. ‘Footmen, coaches and horses – that sort of thing. But over the last two hundred years it’s also been an asylum, an approved school for juvenile delinquents, and lastly an orphanage with a very dodgy reputation. The orphanage was actually closed down after a series of nasty incidents, including the murder of a member of staff, complaints from some of the inmates of sexual abuse, and a serious fire which virtually gutted the place.’

  Ferris grunted. ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me? Dirty paedo bastards seem to be everywhere nowadays.’ He grinned. ‘Talking of which, where’s Hayden tonight? I thought he’d be here with us.’

  Kate glared at him in the gloom, failing to appreciate his humour when her detective constable husband was the target.

  ‘Sick,’ she replied tersely.

  She thought of the lame excuse given by her other half that an upset stomach meant he was unable to take part in the surveillance operation. More likely he hadn’t wanted to miss the big match on television, she mused unkindly, conjuring up a vision of him slumped in an armchair before a roaring log fire in their little thatched cottage, no doubt warming a glass of wine in his hands.

  ‘He’s got the runs,’ she added finally. ‘Some sort of bug, it seems.’

  Ferris snorted. ‘Nice. Been trying to poison him, have you?’

  ‘Don’t tempt me,’ she muttered under her breath, then her focus abruptly returned to the task in hand. ‘Watch out, we’ve got company.’

  Raising her night-vision binoculars, she watched as the dark Transit van that had appeared suddenly through the arched entrance gateway pulled up on the gravel hardstanding by the front door of the house and cut its lights. A couple of minutes passed before the passenger door was thrown open and a tall figure dressed in black climbed out, studying his surroundings. Apparently satisfied,
he went round to the back of the Transit, to be joined by the driver who unlocked the rear doors and pulled them open.

  Kate adjusted the plastic earpiece which linked to the radio pack-set strapped to her chest, pressed the transmit button, and spoke quietly into the mouthpiece.

  ‘Green One-zero,’ she announced softly. ‘Targets present at front of building.’

  The gruff voice of Detective Inspector Ted Roscoe growled back, ‘Understood One-zero. Hold your position for present. Report when they enter premises.’

  Kate could feel the excitement welling up inside her as she acknowledged the instruction and she clenched her fists involuntarily in an effort to control the sudden heady surge of adrenalin.

  The moon disappeared behind scudding clouds, returning the night to almost Stygian blackness, then re-emerged, flooding the scene with renewed brilliance. The Transit was still there, its rear doors wide open, but the two men had disappeared, and as the fact dawned on her, she saw a glimmer of light in a downstairs window of the house.

  ‘Green One-zero,’ she breathed. ‘They’re in.’

  ‘Blue tactical units only,’ Roscoe rapped. ‘Go! Go! Go!’

  Ferris jumped to his feet, but Kate grabbed his arm tightly.

  ‘Blue units only,’ she reminded him. ‘They have to clear the building before we can go in. Didn’t you listen to the briefing? Patience.’

  As Ferris reluctantly sat down again, a stream of armed figures in black military-style uniforms and NATO helmets emerged from woodland on both sides of the house and quickly encircled the building. Seconds later a small contingent broke away from the main group and burst through the open front door, shouting hoarsely to warn those inside that they were armed police.

  In just over twenty minutes it was all over without a shot being fired, as two uniformed policemen appeared in the doorway, manhandling what looked like the tall passenger from the Transit out into the moonlight. His wrists were securely handcuffed, but he was struggling violently and snarling abuse at his captors as they dragged him to a waiting police patrol car. Another man, possibly the van driver, was brought out afterwards, though he seemed to have accepted his fate and walked docilely between two more officers to a second patrol car. Then, with blue beacons flashing, both police vehicles turned around in a swirl of gravel and drove back out through the archway, signifying the end of the operation.