Dark Tides Thrillers Box Set

by Tony Hutchinson

  Bev nodded. ‘Where’s your other brother?’

  ‘Why?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Well you’re both here and I know you don’t live at home.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Luke interrupted. ‘Your sources are not as good as you think. Let’s hope they’re good enough to find my father.’

  ‘So where is Mat?’ Bev pressed.

  ‘God knows.’ Luke told her. ‘He’s a big boy and I’m not his keeper.’

  Marge was fumbling for another cigarette, hands still shaking.

  ‘I haven’t seen him and Geoff for…’

  ‘Mother!’ This time Luke’s voice was pulled tight, anger barely under the surface. ‘The detectives aren’t interested in Mat, they’re here about dad.’

  Bev moved on but she knew something was wrong.

  ‘Can you think of anybody who would want to kidnap your father?’

  ‘Are you fucking serious?’ Mark shouted.

  Bev watched Luke’s right leg tap his brother’s shin.

  Only one person doing the talking…

  ‘I don’t know if we can help you officer,’ Luke again. ‘Any businessman makes enemies. My father was no different. Half the time you have no idea who those enemies are.’

  Bev upped the ante but not the level of her voice.

  ‘Most businessmen don’t tend to make the type of enemies who plan an ambush, smash the windows of your car and beat you senseless before dragging you…’

  Marge yelped like a tiny puppy accidentally trodden on.

  ‘…before dragging you into the back of a waiting van.’

  Bev let the statement hang in the air.

  ‘You might want to give my question some serious consideration. It might be the only way you see your father again.’

  When he came around Billy Skinner was lying face up on a metal workbench. Panic and adrenalin kicked in. He pushed his back against the cold surface, bucked upwards but couldn’t move.

  Freezing…

  The coldness confirmed his nakedness. Cable ties dug into his ankles and wrists, the nylon ropes around his legs, torso and neck were tight but not life threatening. Through puffy eyes he could just about make out the corrugated ceiling twenty feet above.

  ‘Fuckers!’ he shouted. ‘Cocksuckers!’

  His head was pounding in the silence.

  Skinner sensed more than heard movement behind, straining again against the bindings.

  A man’s voice, gentle as a therapist but without the

  empathy.

  ‘Good afternoon Mr. Skinner.’

  Skinner shouted again: ‘I have no idea who you bunch of cocksuckers are but you better untie me before your worst fucking nightmares come true.’

  ‘You’re going nowhere William,’ monotone man said calmly.

  Skinner pushed his back hard into the workbench but it was useless. His throat felt like it had been peeled and he could taste blood. His words were quieter this time.

  ‘What do you want? Money?’

  A small laugh; a polite stage cough.

  ‘You haven’t got enough money to get yourself out of this situation William.’

  The quiet voice was driving Skinner mad. He went back to shouting.

  ‘Be a fucking man,’ he yelled. ‘Show yourself you bottleless wanker and stop calling me William.’

  ‘Calm down, William,’ another laugh, more natural this time. ‘You’ll give yourself a heart attack.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘Nobody can hear you, that’s why we didn’t tape your arrogant mouth,’ the voice getting closer. ‘Besides we’ve got some of your product for you to try so we’ll be needing your nose and mouth.’

  Skinner thrashed against the table, foam at his mouth, white saliva running down his chin. His body, stiff with aggression, was still tied fast. Breathless he continued his tirade.

  ‘My lot…my lot will come after you…come with everything they’ve got.’

  The quiet, invisible voice seemed amused.

  ‘Really William? I’m shitting it. Your lot couldn’t win an arse kicking contest against a group of one-legged men.’

  A quicker movement now and monotone man appeared at Skinner’s side.

  Billy Skinner had never been easily shocked but now he gasped, eyes as wide as the swelling allowed.

  ‘You?’ he said, in disbelief. ‘Are you fucking insane? Do you expect me to talk?’

  Monotone man shook his head and smiled, recalling how Skinner loved James Bond, remembering the words of Auric Goldfinger.

  ‘No Mr. Skinner, I expect you to die.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ‘Jesus how many is Elgin shagging?’ Ed said, overtaking another lorry.

  Sam reached for the bag of toffees, unwrapped one for Ed, and then popped one in her mouth.

  She had decided to see Elgin the next day, tackle him about Jeremy Scott and Linda Pritchard.

  ‘He might say nothing but at least he’ll know we know,’ Sam said. ‘He’s not short of motives for all three murders.’

  They knew already two of the dead had abused Elgin’s grandson, the other his lover’s son. Now it looked as though Elgin himself had been a victim.

  ‘Why wait so long though?’ Ed said. ‘It was years ago.’

  Sam was unwrapping two more toffees.

  ‘Who knows?’ she passed one to Ed. ‘Maybe hearing about boys close to him being abused tipped the balance, maybe he didn’t have the connections before, maybe…and this is a possibility…maybe he didn’t know Jeremy Scott was in Seaton, maybe he just found out.’

  That’s an awful lot of ‘maybes’, Samantha

  Ed chewed on the toffee, recalling something Scott’s neighbor Debs Lescott had told him, how Scott was a serial complainer, forever on to the council or the local press.

  ‘Remember that big hoo-ha a while back about a planning application to open a pub on the Avenue,’ Ed said now. ‘It didn’t get the nod but it did go before the planning committee Elgin sits on and I’m sure I read in the Seaton Post the meeting was packed.’

  Sam gave it some thought.

  ‘Could be something as daft as Elgin finds himself in the same room as Scott and recognizes him,’ Sam said.

  Add a ‘could be’ to the ‘maybes’ whilst we’re at it…

  Her phone rang and she took it from the centre console, Bev Summers again. Sam leaned back into the headrest and listened then sat upright when it was her turn to speak, her words a stream of orders not conversation.

  ‘Fast Track Actions,’ she told Bev. ‘Witness statements, especially from this Helen Larney. Leave the daughter for now. Check the field where she saw orange smoke. CCTV on the roads back into town, see if we can pick up the Transit.’

  Ed glanced at Sam, eyebrows raised at the mention of a Ford Transit van.

  ‘Identify the traffic lights,’ Sam went on. ‘See if they were the ones stolen the other day. Who’s the Senior SOCO at the scene? Good. Get Julie to liaise with Firearms and make the gun safe. Anything else give me a call. Update me in an hour. Cheers.’

  Sam disconnected.

  ‘Billy Skinner’s been abducted.’

  ‘Fucking hell!’ Ed so surprised he let the car drift, the boom-boom-boom of the wheels over the hard shoulder cat’s eyes putting his attention back on the road.

  Sam gave him the details, told him there had been a gun in the BMW glove box but Skinner hadn’t had a chance to use it, that Skinner had been on his way to the cemetery when he was taken.

  ‘What’s the date?’ Ed had seemed lost in thought.

  ‘14th,’ Sam told him.

  Ed glanced at Sam and nodded towards the toffee bag between her feet.

  ‘I know why he was going to the cemetery,’ he told her. ‘It’s the anniversary of Irene’s death. He goes every year.’

  ‘Irene?’ Sam said, wondering how many more characters, dead or alive, would end up in play.

  ‘His mistress years back,’ Ed told her. ‘The love of his life some
reckon. It’s no secret he takes flowers to the cemetery for her every year.’

  Sam shook her head. How do you know all this stuff?

  ‘So he’s on his way there,’ she said. ‘Stops at some temporary traffic lights…’

  ‘The ones that were stolen?’ Ed nipped in.

  ‘Probably,’ Sam remembered the toffees, reached down for the bag. ‘Fancy a quick cup of coffee?’

  Two minutes later Ed was pulling into the service station car park, plenty of spaces even near the entrance to the shops and cafes.

  ‘Who’s got the balls to take on Billy Skinner,’ Ed wondered aloud, switching off the engine.

  ‘Time will tell,’ Sam told him. ‘And Bev’s got it into her head that Mat Skinner’s missing as well.’

  Two men appeared either side of Billy Skinner, each with a half brick of cocaine in plastic bags, Skinner shouting ‘wait!’ as they ripped them open.

  An avalanche of white powder descended on his face while fingers gripped his nose. Skinner had two options…hold his breath or swallow the snow. The result would be the same either way.

  Marge Skinner was standing in the kitchen, a half-finished gin and tonic in one hand, cigarette in the other.

  ‘I’m really worried about our Mat,’ she gulped at the drink. ‘I can’t get hold of Geoff either. Both their mobiles go straight to answer phone.’

  Luke and Mark stared at their mother and said nothing.

  Marge began to wail as loudly as a lifetime of smoking would allow. ‘What if they’ve got Mat as well?’

  A coughing fit whose raspy origins lay somewhere in the bottom of her lungs sent her rushing to the sink, Luke and Mark looking away as she spat into the plughole.

  Flushed and still wheezing, Marge returned to her drink, picked up the bottle of Hendricks, and filled her glass to the brim.

  Fuck the tonic.

  She took a huge gulp. ‘Who’s behind this Luke?’

  ‘No idea,’ Luke shook his head. Best not to tell his mother he thought it was Mat.

  But who was helping him? Mat knew his father would be going to the cemetery, but stealing traffic lights? Making sure their father’s BMW was first in the queue? That was way beyond Mat’s planning capabilities. Wasn’t it?

  ‘I used to tell him that cow would be the death of him.’ Marge lit another cigarette. ‘But who’d go after your dad in broad daylight. And why wasn’t Stuart McFadden with him?’

  ‘Leave Stuart to me,’ Luke said, a plan already forming in his head.

  ‘We might get a phone call,’ Mark got their attention.

  Marge’s eyes, wide as flying saucer sherbet sweets, blazed at her middle son.

  ’Why would we?’ She loved all her boys equally but Mark wasn’t the sharpest, she knew that. ‘Nobody’s in the kidnap and ransom game. Did your father ever ask for a ransom? This is about taking us on. Us!’

  She hit the sink with the palm of her hand.

  ‘Who the fuck do they think they are?’ she shouted before gulping the gin, willing herself to calm down, the booze helping. ‘Your father played this game for years. Now someone’s doing it to us. But who?’

  Luke took a thick blue glass from a tall cupboard, walked to the sink, and used the cold water tap.

  ‘We need to protect our assets,’ he said as the glass filled. ‘If mum’s right this is only the start. Whoever’s behind it knows we’ll come after them so they’ll be ready. I’ll increase all of the security at our clubs and I’ll have two lads in here.’

  Marge eyed the remaining two fingers of gin in her glass and the Hendricks bottle close by.

  ‘I don’t want anybody here,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been involved in your father’s business.’

  She lit another cigarette.

  ‘You’re involved because you’re his wife,’ Luke said, all patience gone. ‘Let’s just do it for a couple of days and see what happens.’

  Mark’s mind was on Stuart McFadden, hating him more than normal, the smart arse forever in their home, eating their food.

  ‘If McFadden’s involved I want him sorting Luke,’ Mark said. ‘Sorting slowly.’

  Luke was watching his mother, concern struggling to break through his emotional dead space.

  His mother wanted Stuart dead. She’d thank him for sorting that.

  But she was already so worried about Mat she was vulnerable. If Mat got to her first, she’d believe anything and everything he told her.

  It was a very big if…

  Harry Pullman wiped his hands on a grubby bar-towel and pulled a pint for the man on the stool.

  ‘Quiet today,’ the customer said. ‘Seen more life in a tramp’s vest.’

  Lone drinkers were scattered around the place, some reading tabloids, others staring into their pint glasses, nobody saying a word.

  An old man with long fingernails the colour of coal was engrossed in a paperback that looked like it had spent a long, battered life being read down a mine.

  Harry sometimes felt like a librarian with an on-licence.

  ‘Definite touch of the Moon Bar about it,’ the customer was saying now.

  He responded to Harry’s quizzical look. ‘No atmosphere.’

  Dean Silvers burst through the door. Some jumped at the interruption; everybody looked at the cause of it.

  Dean, head wet with rain, was as excited as a toddler in a ball-pool and just as breathless.

  ‘He’s only gone and done him,’ he shouted.

  ‘Who?’ Harry said, ‘and keep your voice down. Done what?’

  The drinkers went back to their pints, newspapers and books. No one needed reminding who owned this pub. They knew better than to get involved.

  Dean hurried behind the bar, his voice quiet but still fast with adrenaline.

  ‘Billy Skinner. He’s only gone and done him.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ Harry said.

  ‘The filth’s everywhere…’

  ‘Watch your mouth boy,’ the man on the stool cut in.

  Silvers turned, his face reddening quicker than a gas fire.

  ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘No offence Mr. Reynolds.’

  Ray Reynolds took a mouthful of beer and wiped his mouth. ‘Apology accepted. Now continue. Sounds interesting.’

  Dean looked at his uncle. Harry nodded.

  ‘The car’s near the cemetery, Billy’s BMW,’ Dean told them. ‘Right next to some traffic lights that weren’t there when I went past earlier. Cops everywhere…armed cops, cops in those white suits. The doors of the car are open, the passenger window’s broken, and the airbags have gone off.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot,’ Ray said.

  Silvers tapped his head: ‘Photographic memory.’

  ‘Surprised the police let you get close enough to take a photograph,’ Reynolds grunted.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Silvers bridling, ex cop or not.

  ‘Nothing. Continue.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Silvers said. ‘They’ve obviously done Billy.’

  ‘Who has?’ Reynolds said.

  ‘Somebody,’ Silvers suddenly wary, reluctant.

  Reynolds still had his pint in his hand but now he put it back on the bar without taking a drink.

  ‘When you came in you said ‘he’s only gone and done him’ not ‘somebody’. So who’s the he?’

  ‘Come on Ray,’ Harry said, sensing the danger. ‘You’re retired.’

  Reynolds kept his eyes on Dean.

  ‘Just professional curiosity, Harry. We tried for years to nail that bastard. So who exactly is this he?’

  Dean Silvers looked like a man who had already said too much.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sam was driving now, the wheels running down the miles on the A1, the home stretch.

  Ed’s lungs felt like he’d inhaled every drag of Sam’s cigarettes and his clothes stunk of tobacco, but she could blow smoke over him all day if he could just get his 6’5” body out of the car. His backside was numb and his le
gs were as rigid as speed camera poles.

  ‘So run past me again what Bev said in the last service station,’ Ed said.

  He’d missed the phone call, racing to the loo then telling Sam the tuna sandwich had gone through him ‘like a Porsche.’

  Sam hadn’t laughed. Sometimes, Ed knew, he just got things wrong.

  Now she repeated Bev’s update, the traffic lights had been identified as the ones stolen from the Highways Depot.

  ‘Got to admire the planning,’ Ed said.

  Sam reached forward and closed her air vent.

  ‘No sign of the van on CCTV,’ she said. ‘A spent marine distress flare was found in a field. Looks like that was used as the signal to activate the lights.’

  ‘How easy are they to get hold of?’ Ed wouldn’t have known where to start.

  ‘Any chandler will sell them.’

  ‘Any what?’ Ed looked at Sam as if she had switched to Swahili.

  She sighed, explained it was a shop that sold things for boats.

  ‘You can buy them off the internet as well,’ she went. ‘Before you ask they have a shelf life of about four years and orange smoke is the daylight flare.’

  A Black Rat zoomed past, blue lights flashing, the Roads Policing Unit driver, hands positioned on the wheel in the classic ten to two, concentrating on the road ahead.

  ‘Another one late for the card game,’ Ed deadpanned.

  Sam watched the rear end of the BMW opening up an ever increasing gap.

  ‘We might be able to trace whoever sold the flare but it’s probably a long shot and certainly there are no prints on it. Julie reckons it’s been wiped clean.’

  Ed wiggled his toes, a futile effort to ease the stiffness in his legs. ‘If you go to the extent of stealing traffic lights you’re not going to be daft enough to leave prints.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Sam agreed. ‘So who do you think is behind this?’

  Ed unwrapped two toffees, passed one to Sam, and slipped the other into his mouth.

  ‘If you’re asking do I think any of the local crews would take Billy Skinner on, no chance, not without outside help,’ Ed said. ‘But if Skinner’s upset someone from Newcastle, Leeds, wherever, anything’s possible.’