SECRET CRIMES a gripping crime thriller full of suspense

by MICHAEL HAMBLING

  Rae pulled herself up and limped to the door, holding her side and gasping for breath. As she opened the door she heard a car starting up, and she watched helplessly as a small, dark red car accelerated away. Her vision was blurred and she couldn’t even make out the registration number. She sank to the ground, panting, drawing in gulps of cold air. Something was wrong. As it turned away, the car’s passenger side had been closest to her, yet she hadn’t seen anyone in that seat. Only the driver had been visible, an indistinct blob behind the steering wheel. Either the second person was hunched forward and hidden from view, or he was lying down on the rear seat. Or? Supporting herself against the wall, she groped her way back inside. She held her chest where she’d taken part of the impact. Blood was trickling steadily down her face. Why was she feeling so dizzy? She pushed her way through the double doors, dropped the catch on the lock, found her umbrella and pushed it through the door handles as an extra security measure. Then she looked up. It seemed quiet enough. Her vision began to clear and she peered through the glass panes of the doors. Was that a movement, just on the edge of her vision? She looked for a switch in order to turn off the lobby lights, then realised that they must be automatic. She stood still, leaning against the wall on one side of the doorway. It could have only been a minute or two but it seemed an age before the internal lights went out. She cursed when the exterior light remained on, illuminating the outer porch and doorway area. Of course, it would stay on all night. She kept watching. There it was again, the faintest flicker of movement in the shadows at the edge of the car park. She needed to be at an upstairs window, looking down. Paul Derek’s flat would be ideal, its bedrooms overlooked the car park.

  Rae limped to the lift. The bright corridor lights snapped on the moment she moved. She looked back as she reached the lift, noting the streak of blood smeared against the wall from her head injury and the trail of bloodstains along the carpet. No wonder her head throbbed so badly. She’d hit the wall on a protruding corner and the top of her skull had taken the full force of the impact. How much blood was she losing? She passed her hand over the back of her head and felt a mass of soggy hair clumped around the point where she’d hit the wall. The lift door opened. She lurched inside and leant against the button for the first floor. All she wanted to do was curl up in the corner and go to sleep. The lift stopped, the doors opening onto a silent corridor. She groped her way towards the apartment. It wasn’t the near darkness, she needed the wall for support. Her head felt as if it was about to break open, and the side of her chest ached badly from her crash against the wall. She stepped carefully inside, listening for any sounds of movement. There were none. She went to the main bedroom and looked out of the window. This was a much better view. She could see her own car and a vacant slot at the end of the row. What had occupied that slot? Rae shut her eyes and tried to visualise the cars that had been there when she’d arrived. No good. Her mind was still whirling. She opened her eyes and saw him. There, below. A dark-clad, hooded figure moving in the shadows towards the entrance. She couldn’t make out his features in the dim light. She moved away from the window and back to the hallway, where a telephone sat on a shelf. She needed to phone the boss. Good job she’d made the effort to memorise the DCI’s mobile number. She prayed that her umbrella would hold the entrance doors secure for a little longer and began to press buttons on the phone’s keypad. But the numbers jumped before her eyes. She sank to the floor, with the handset still in her hand. She could hear a voice talking in her ear. It sounded familiar and reassuring. She tried to speak but her mind went blank.

  Time passed. Rae sat on the floor in the hallway, leaning against the wall. She could hear a banging in the distance. What was it? What had the voice said? She struggled to her feet, then suddenly doubled over and vomited. She looked at the mess. Leave it, she thought. It’s not important. She had to do what the boss had told her. Her mind seemed to have cleared a little. Supporting herself against the wall, she made her way through to the kitchen and took hold of a chair, leaning against its back as she struggled for breath. Why was she so weak? Leaning against the wall with one shoulder, she tugged the chair through to the hallway, moving only a few feet at a time, gasping with the effort. She coughed and spat up a mouthful of blood. Now there was a double stain on the hall carpet. Would she have to pay for the cleaning bill? How much would it cost? She had her own rent to find and she really needed a new car. Everything was so expensive. How would she cope . . ? She started to sob. She heard a faint voice coming from somewhere nearby. It took her some time to realise that it was the phone, still lying on the floor. Ah, yes. The door needed the chair to keep it shut. She pushed it forward and managed to get its back propped under the handle. She sank down to the stained carpet and tried to grasp the phone, but it seemed to slip out of her hand. She put her face down to the floor and tried to speak into it.

  ‘Okay,’ she whispered. ‘It’s okay. I’ve done it. But I’ve been sick on the carpet and got blood on it. I can’t clean it up, not by myself.’

  ‘Rae, I want you to keep talking to me,’ the voice said. ‘Did you lock the door? Is it propped shut?’

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘He can’t get in. I’m alright, really.’ She vomited again, noisily.

  ‘Hold on, Rae. There’ll be an ambulance and a local squad car with you in a few minutes. Keep listening to me and answer my questions.’

  Rae watched the door handle turn silently.

  ‘He’s outside,’ she said. ‘But it’s okay.’

  There was a slight sound as a key slid into the lock and rotated. The door was pushed from the outside but the chair wedged under the handle held it firm.

  ‘What’s happening, Rae?’ asked the telephone voice. ‘Talk to me.’

  ‘He’s here,’ Rae whispered. ‘It’s okay.’

  Sirens wailed in the distance. Rae watched the door, listened to the voice on the phone, but nothing made sense anymore. She slumped back against the wall.

  Chapter 19: Questions

  Saturday morning

  In the intensive care unit lights and dials blinked and murmured in the silence. Sophie sat beside Rae’s bed holding her hand and watching her face. Rae’s eyes flickered open, dark against her pallor.

  ‘I fucked up, didn’t I?’ she whispered. ‘All I ever wanted. To be a woman, to be in the police, and I’ve ruined it all.’

  ‘No, you certainly haven’t. The exact opposite. We’ve got him. Shapiro. We’ve got him under lock and key. And we wouldn’t have done that without what you did last night.’

  ‘But what I did was wrong. It was nuts. I shouldn’t have gone.’

  ‘Well, maybe what you did was a bit foolhardy but it also showed great initiative and courage. You’ve passed my test with flying colours. By the way, I told the staff in A and E last night that you were transgender and that you’d be on hormones. I thought they’d need to know. Was that okay?’

  ‘Of course. It was the right thing to do. They’ve been in touch with my GP to see what I’m on, and they’ve all been fine about it.’

  ‘Good. So how are you feeling this morning?’

  Rae paused as if testing to make sure. ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘That’s common police terminology for “I feel like shit.” You can’t fool me, Rae.’

  ‘Do I look that bad?’ she asked. ‘It really was stupid of me ma’am, and I can’t even remember much of it. I can vaguely recall getting in the lift to go back up, but that’s as far as it goes. What happened after that?’

  ‘Somehow you managed to get into the flat and phoned me. I told you to prop a chair under the door for extra security and you must have been listening because the officers from the first squad car had to shove it out of the way. You were on the floor, unconscious, and I was still burbling away on the telephone. Barry drove like a mad thing to get there, but it still took us an hour and you were in A and E by the time we arrived. You were badly concussed, that’s why you were losing consciousness and being sick. Shapiro
tried to escape down the stairs and ran straight into the guys from the second car.’

  Rae yawned and sighed. ‘What’s he like? Shapiro?’

  ‘We’ll be questioning him this afternoon. He was in here last night for a while, getting treatment for bruising. He’s got some injuries to his nose and mouth where he hit the wall. I’ve just spoken to the local forensic chief and she’s fairly clear about what happened from the bloodstains and your injuries. But to answer your question, he’s got a mean temper. He’d obviously been trying to kick the door down and even when he was caught they had to haul him off, cursing. A bit aggressive, you might say. Even the staff who treated him last night commented on it.’

  ‘Why did he come back? Why didn’t he just run?’

  Sophie shook her head. ‘God knows. I can only guess that there was something in that flat he needed to find. You must have disturbed him when you first arrived. Maybe it was the same thing you went looking for.’

  Rae seemed to struggle with her memory. ‘But it wasn’t him in the flat. Not when I first arrived. He must have been waiting downstairs, keeping a lookout. He must have warned whoever was inside that I was coming up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There was someone else in the flat. The person I chased. I was faster and would have caught them up, but this second man, Shapiro, came out at me. The other one drove off in a car. I only got a quick look.’ Rae closed her eyes. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. It might not have been a man at all. The face was just a vague flash, but she looked at me as she drove past.’

  Sophie could see that the effort of remembering was exhausting Rae, but they needed a complete picture of what had happened before questioning Shapiro.

  ‘Rae, I need you to tell me what happened. Take it slowly and tell me if it’s getting too much. But if there was someone else, we have to find out who it could have been. Everything you can remember is going to be vital. Are you okay to do this?’

  Rae nodded weakly and pressed Sophie’s hand.

  * * *

  Later that morning Sophie and Marsh questioned Brian Shapiro at Portsmouth’s police headquarters.

  He snarled at the two officers as they entered and sat down. ‘I don’t know why I’m being held. Christ. Anyone would think I was the guilty party. Just look at the state of my face. It’ll take weeks for the bruises to go.’

  ‘So the person you slammed into a wall, and who’s currently in intensive care by the way, she’s the one we should be charging, is she?’ asked Marsh.

  ‘She’s one of my officers, Mr Shapiro,’ Sophie broke in. ‘Maybe you didn’t realise that. She was on a routine visit when she stumbled across you. Now, let me introduce myself. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Sophie Allen from Dorset police, and this is Detective Sergeant Barry Marsh. We’re currently investigating two murders that have recently occurred on our patch and we have reason to believe that you can tell us a lot about those deaths. In fact, as I’m sure you’re aware, we’ve been looking for you for the past week. And then when we do find you, you end up assaulting one of my officers for no apparent reason. So what’s going on, Mr Shapiro? Please enlighten me. The floor is all yours, as they say, but whatever you say had better be convincing. I don’t like having my time wasted, especially not by people who stand in the shadows, only to come out and seriously injure one of my team. I’m sure you can imagine how I feel about that, with you being ex-police yourself.’

  She looked at the man who faced her. Rosemary’s description had been very accurate. He had mousey hair and blue eyes that bulged slightly. And his nose did, indeed, turn up at the tip. Doesn’t look very Italian, she thought. He was wearing grey denim trousers and a blue, zipped jacket. His feet were bare. His shoes had been removed for forensic examination.

  ‘I need protection,’ Shapiro finally said. ‘He’ll be after me, too. And that woman? I didn’t know she was a copper.’

  Sophie looked at him with distaste. ‘She called out that she was a police officer. All officers are trained to identify themselves in a chase situation as you well know, and she confirmed that she did.’

  ‘How could I have known? She was by herself with no walkie-talkie, no phone, nothing. She certainly wasn’t dressed for work. She’s not police, that’s what I thought. I thought she was just shouting that to scare somebody. She’s okay then? I mean, if she spoke to you?’

  ‘It looks as if she’ll recover. Luckily for you. Otherwise you’d have been facing something a bit more serious than an assault charge.’ Sophie paused. ‘So who did you think she was?’

  ‘I panicked. I thought she was with the bastard that killed those two across your way. That’s what I thought. I thought he’d caught up with us. He must be a fucking psychopath. For all I knew, he was out there as well, waiting for me.’

  She looked at him with renewed interest. ‘Who are you talking about, Mr Shapiro?’

  ‘I don’t fucking know. I haven’t a clue who he is. I just know he’ll be after me. And I’ll end up going the same way as bloody Derek and Sarah. Tipped off a cliff or stuck with a knife in my back or brained with a lump of rock.’

  Sophie looked sideways at Barry and nodded.

  ‘Why were you there last night, Mr Shapiro? What were you looking for?’ asked Marsh.

  Shapiro shrugged. He said nothing.

  ‘If you had nothing to be guilty about, why did you resist when the police arrived last night?’

  ‘Look, I wasn’t going to try and escape. But I panicked when I realised how it would look. If I’d really wanted to get away I could’ve done. And I did want to see how she was. I knew she was hurt and how it would look if I left her. I was scared. Whoever killed those two last week is still out there, and he’ll be looking for me. And if he finds me I’m a goner. I’m safer with you lot.’

  ‘Do you expect us to believe all this, Mr Shapiro?’ said Marsh. ‘It sounds very improbable to me. Two people you were with were murdered last weekend and you immediately vanished. Why would you go into hiding if you weren’t involved in their deaths? And then when one of my colleagues does stumble across you, you assault her, leaving her seriously injured. And you haven’t even asked about her injuries. Concussion, a fractured skull and two broken ribs. You obviously don’t feel any remorse about it. I mean, come on. What do you take us for? The way you reacted last night is exactly how someone guilty of two murders would react. Violently. And who was the other person with you?’

  Shapiro was silent.

  ‘Well if you’re not going to even tell us why you were there and who was with you, how do you expect us to believe you about the other stuff? I think you’ll find that we’ve got plenty of evidence against you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the only psychopath in this case.’

  ‘What happened last weekend, Mr Shapiro?’ said Sophie. ‘On the Friday evening of the Blues Festival? How did you get there?’

  ‘We came by car. Derek’s. We arrived early evening and checked in to the B and B. We dumped our stuff then went out for some food and a drink in one of the pubs. That was where we met the two women. Derek hit it off with the brunette, Sarah. I wasn’t so lucky with the other one. They talked us into going to another pub, the White Swan, I think it was called. That was later in the evening. I still wasn’t getting anywhere with the blonde. She was more interested in some other guy. When the band finished we walked back to their hotel. Derek was doing okay. Sarah did a deal with the blonde so she and Derek had the room for the night. The blonde left with the other guy, and I went my own way.’

  ‘Did you go back to your room at the guesthouse?’

  ‘No. You know I didn’t.’

  ‘So where did you go?’

  It was some time before he replied. ‘I walked around a bit, then came back into the hotel by the garden entrance. I knew what room they were in. I checked it was all quiet, knocked on the door and went in.’

  ‘It was unlocked?’

  ‘Yes. I knew it would be. It was prearranged.’

  ‘What
was prearranged, Mr Shapiro?’ Sophie asked. Her voice was sharp and she leaned forward. ‘I want to know exactly what had been agreed, who was involved and what was supposed to happen.’

  Shapiro stared at her. ‘Yeah, I’m sure you do. But explaining it to an outsider . . . it’s difficult. You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Try us.’

  ‘Me and Derek. Sarah. And anyone else who joins in. We’re into group sex. It had all been set up beforehand. The only trouble was, the blonde wouldn’t play ball. It wasn’t even worth trying to talk her into it. Sarah had already decided she was a dead loss. We could tell from the uptight way she acted.’

  ‘So it was just the three of you? Derek, you and Sarah. Is that right?’

  He nodded. ‘And Sarah was fine when I left. A bit tired, we all were. But they were both okay. I swear it.’

  ‘Where did you go then?’

  ‘I took the car and came back to Portsmouth.’

  ‘But it was Mr Derek’s car, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I had the keys. We’d agreed he would stay on a few more days with Sarah — a kind of holiday. I was always going to take the car back with me. I just went earlier than planned.’