The Rules of Murder

by The Rules of Murder (epub)

  ‘Boss, what have you got?’ Easton shouted over.

  ‘Come and take a look.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s wise, DI Stephens?’ Ledford shouted over.

  ‘Easton, just come over the same spot I did.’

  She could hear Ledford grumbling about something but seconds later there was shuffling the other side and then two hands appeared at the top of the wall. Easton grunted as he hauled his body to the top, likely with the help of Tariq, before he jumped down and stumbled out into the road next to Dani. He brushed himself down, doing a lousy job of removing the damp green mould that had rubbed off the wall onto his clothes.

  ‘Just there,’ Dani said, pointing to a spot by the edge of the wall, about a yard away from where she’d climbed over, almost directly in line with where the stream passed under. It looked as though the weeds and grass had been flattened.

  Easton’s eyes narrowed as he stepped closer. Dani went with him and both were soon crouching down as they stared at the ground in front of them. Easton slipped on a glove and put his hand forward to push the nettles and other weeds aside.

  He looked to Dani then pulled his hand back. Dani stared at the red smudge on his fingers.

  ‘Send your team over here, now,’ Dani shouted to Ledford and Tariq.

  ‘We know Sophie was bleeding,’ Easton said. ‘And we’ve now got a blood trail to follow. Does that mean she’s the killer?’

  ‘No,’ Dani said. ‘I’m pretty sure she isn’t.’

  ‘I know she was slight, from what we’ve seen,’ Easton said, ‘but I struggled to get over that wall on my own, never mind carrying another person. So if you’re saying she was kidnapped by our killer, who the hell is he? Arnie?’

  ‘No,’ Dani said. ‘But like you said yourself, he is someone who is well planned, and who had plenty of time on his hands last night.’ Dani straightened up and looked up to the edge of the blue stones on top of the wall. ‘Do you see it?’

  Easton squinted again as he stood up straight. He reached up with one gloved finger and touched the wall as gently as Dani imagined he could, right at the spot where there looked to be a faint scuff mark on the lower edge of one of the coping stones. He pulled his finger back and Dani stared at the tiny and thin piece of brown fabric that was now stuck to the end of the glove.

  ‘Rope?’ he said.

  ‘Looks like it. What if he hoisted Sophie over the wall?’

  ‘So she is a victim?’

  ‘A victim, yes. And unless our culprit likes collecting corpses, it’s very possible that she’s still alive.’

  Chapter Seven

  I drive my knuckle into the side of my head, as though I’m trying to bore right through my skull and into my brain. It’s a pathetic attempt to try and erase the noise of the rats. My eyes are squeezed shut as they tear around me, the thoughts of what I’ve already done, the smell and taste of blood, the sight of flesh parting, consuming my senses and only making the rats’ movements more frantic.

  I roar in desperation and, finally, with my knuckles digging into my temples so hard it feels like I’ve burrowed right through bone, the noise begins to die down.

  You did it, you took the first step. I’m so proud of you.

  I close my eyes. I’m not sure whether or not the words are congratulatory. I’m not sure whether I should feel happiness right now, or if I’ve sealed my own doom through my actions.

  But Oscar was just the start. You can’t stop now. You have to keep going. Go and get the list.

  I’m soon back in the bedroom. I open the drawer.

  Take the list. Take it. You’re doing well, but there’s plenty more still to come.

  The list is in my hands now. The list.

  That’s good. You know what comes next. Make sure you’re ready.

  ‘I will be ready.’

  I have to be.

  * * *

  Later, I’m kneeling on the cold metal floor as I stare at her. She’s so pretty it makes my eyes sting and my head pound with confusion. Even with her dirty and torn clothes. Even with her skin all scraped and red raw and bleeding in places from where I dragged her away. Even with the black streaks underneath her teary eyes.

  I’m still not sure why she’s here. I know it’s not the plan. Did I feel sorry for her? Am I trying to prove to myself that I’m not all bad, that I’m not here to hurt innocent people? Or is it the look in her eyes, the look I saw then, the look I see still, a look which has somehow touched me and convinced me that I—

  I thought you were ready. You must see this is a mistake?

  I try to block out the voice, even though I know my disobedience will not be ignored.

  ‘You need to drink,’ I say as I push the plastic cup along the floor of the van towards her. ‘Move forwards and I’ll take the tape off.’

  She glares at me defiantly and doesn’t move from the back of the van at all. She hates me. She hates me even more than she’s scared of me. I see that. But I’m not the monster she thinks I am.

  ‘Please, you have to drink.’

  Stop this! You can’t do this. You have to kill her. You’ll ruin everything.

  I shake my head. ‘No. No, I won’t. Not like this.’

  Now she looks at me curiously as her chest heaves in and out. She doesn’t understand. How could she?

  She’s seen your face. There’s no going back. Finish this. We have to move on to the next.

  I grind my teeth as I try to block out the demand. My jaw is clenched so tightly that it feels like my teeth will shatter. The front of my head begins to stab in pain.

  ‘You need to drink,’ I say to her. I sound angry, but it’s not with her. I want to be calm. I want to be nice. But I’m being pushed closer and closer.

  I’m on my feet. I grab the water and stomp towards her. She cowers back, as best she can with her wrists cuffed to the railing on the side of the van. Her legs writhe about to try and fend me off, but I crouch down and dig my knees into the flesh on her thighs and it’s enough to halt her protest.

  I rip the tape from her mouth. She cries. Pain? Then screams. I slap her across the face to try to quieten her, then grab her hair and yank it back to tilt her head. She purses her lips as I tip the water towards her mouth.

  ‘Drink.’

  Her mouth is closed.

  ‘Drink!’

  The water goes everywhere. She opens her lips for barely a second. She takes some in – I can see that she swallows. But the cup is empty now. She’s blown it for herself.

  ‘That was stupid. You shouldn’t fight me.’

  ‘Why?’ she stammers as tears begin to roll. ‘Why… are you doing this?’

  It doesn’t matter why. Kill her!

  ‘Please. Just let me go.’

  She’s sobbing now. It’s a horrible sound. Together with the voice in my head, I’m not sure I can take it.

  I thought you were stronger than this.

  ‘Please. I want go home.’

  I thought you could see this through.

  ‘I won’t tell anyone. I just want my mum.’

  She’s nothing. Get rid of her. We have to keep going! Kill her! Kill her now!

  ‘JUST SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!’

  Spittle flies from my mouth as I bark. Sophie, that’s her name, she scrambles back until she’s pressed up against the far end of the van. She looks even more petrified now, even if my words weren’t directed at her.

  Then… the inevitable. Silence.

  I close my eyes. I begin to tremble. I can already hear the rats beginning to move.

  ‘No, no, no!’ I say. My words are shaky, pleading and desperate.

  I lurch forwards and push the tape back onto her mouth, then turn and more or less fall out of the open back doors of the van onto the mottled concrete outside. I slam the doors shut.

  The noise inside me is already growing, already unbearable. I push my palms against my temples and squeeze.

  When I open my eyes again I’m sure I see a tiny little grey fig
ure darting across the floor of the dank space in front of me. A rat. Just one. Nothing like the thousands that are now devouring my insides.

  My hands still to my head, I stumble across the floor for the loading doors. I need to go. I have to get home. I need my fix. Despite my words, my actions, I can’t operate like this. I have to follow through. I have to keep going.

  More than anything though, as the rats take over, as they begin to consume me, I’m just desperate to have the voice – a voice of reason and control – back in my head once more.

  Despite everything, I simply can’t function without her.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Do you want another?’ Dani asked Jason, pointing to his empty glass.

  ‘Better not,’ he said as Dani beckoned the waiter over.

  She looked back at him, disappointed. She ordered two Diet Cokes. She’d really wanted another large merlot, but trust Jason to see sense. She had to love his control.

  As the waiter walked away, Jason was staring at her. Trying to read her, no doubt.

  ‘Good golf?’ Dani asked.

  Jason forced a laugh. His contemplative mood was beginning to irk her.

  ‘I’ve had worse,’ he said, ‘but I’m sure you’ve other things on your mind than that.’

  Dani scoffed. She looked away, around the half-empty restaurant. Giovanni’s was one of their locals, just five minutes’ walk from their house near Harborne High Street. Near closing time on a Sunday night it was pretty much dead, and she was sure the staff couldn’t wait for them to leave. Really Dani should have been tucked up in bed by now, yet she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  ‘I don’t have to go away tomorrow, if you don’t want me to,’ he said.

  Dani thought about that one for a moment. In many ways she’d enjoyed their recent new routine. For the past month he’d been away pretty much the whole time Monday to Friday, and she’d enjoyed having some space to herself, knowing that he was only on the other end of the phone, and that he’d be back by the weekend. It was certainly true that she was still getting used to the idea of being shacked up with someone. Not that this was the first time they’d lived together, but after coming out of hospital following her brain injury, Jason had been more a carer than a lover, and their relationship had soon broken down – something which Dani knew she was almost entirely to blame for. This time though, their living together felt all the more permanent, not least because they’d actually bought this house together, joint mortgage and all, and there was little doubt that she was madly in love with him.

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ Dani said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  Jason looked at her as though he didn’t believe a word of it. He’d left the police force barely a year ago, and his inner policeman was still brimming away right near the surface. His leaving the force had been a joint decision, of sorts, in no small part due to the trauma – mental and physical – that both of them had suffered as they’d brought a demented mother and son killing team to justice. Well, technically, they’d put them both six feet under, which as far as Dani was concerned, was justice enough. That case was Jason’s last for West Midlands Police, and his first real taste of personal trauma. But not Dani’s.

  What did it say about her that she was still fighting away, still determined to prove to everyone that she could be a good copper, even after all that she’d suffered?

  Jason meanwhile was already rapidly making another life for himself as a freelance management consultant, following in his father’s footsteps. She admired his ability to get on and get ahead, even if she worried that part of him was in denial about everything.

  She was hardly one to talk about such things.

  Jason sighed. ‘It’s not a problem,’ he said. ‘My clients will understand.’

  ‘There’s nothing to understand,’ Dani snapped. ‘I already said I’ll be fine on my own.’

  She was about to add, ‘I don’t need my hand held constantly,’ but she really didn’t want to hurt him, and she wasn’t even sure if that statement was true any more, despite her bullishness.

  ‘Why don’t we just get back to the house?’ she said.

  Jason said nothing to that. Just nodded his head before he held his hand up to ask for the bill.

  * * *

  Dani was badly in need of coffee when she headed into HQ, a little before seven a.m. the following morning. After fixing herself a strong black coffee, she headed to her desk, hoping to have at least a half hour on her own to get her thoughts together before everyone else arrived.

  Actually she got more than forty-five minutes before the next person walked through the doors – her boss, DCI McNair – though Dani by then had made little headway, such was the commotion taking place inside her head.

  ‘Morning, DI Stephens,’ McNair said as she came to a stop by Dani’s desk.

  ‘Morning, ma’am.’

  In many ways McNair was a strange creature to Dani. Stuck somewhere between the old school and the new in virtually every aspect of her job, she’d just recently started to occasionally use the first names of those who worked under her, rather than their titles, when speaking to them or about them, but always looked seriously put out if any of those same people reciprocated in kind. It seemed she’d forgotten about that change today.

  ‘Big day, eh?’ McNair said.

  Was McNair referring to the Clarkson trial or the Redfearne investigation?

  ‘Something like that,’ Dani said.

  ‘Anything else I should know beforehand?’

  OK, so this was about Redfearne, and the team briefing due to take place in just a few minutes. Dani had already briefed McNair a couple of times from Drifford House yesterday, so there probably wasn’t much need, particularly given she was still trying her best to work through a million different thoughts herself.

  ‘No. I think we’re all good.’

  ‘Very well. And good luck later. I’m sure it’ll turn out exactly as we hoped.’

  Dani nodded but said nothing, and McNair took a step away, then paused. When she turned back around she had an uncomfortable look on her face. Dani was sure she wasn’t going to like this.

  ‘I don’t get to see you on your own very often,’ McNair said, looking around the otherwise empty office space. ‘But how’s everything now?’

  Dani shrugged. ‘It’s all good, thanks.’

  What did McNair really expect her to say? It wasn’t as if they’d ever been close confidantes.

  ‘I know the Clarkson trial has been heavy for you. Especially coming directly after the Grant case.’

  ‘This is my job. I don’t get to pick and choose my cases.’

  ‘No, you don’t. But you have an unfortunate habit of getting the worst ones. Your efforts don’t go unappreciated, though. As long as you know that.’

  That was about as big a compliment as McNair had ever dished out. What did it even mean, though? At more than one point over the past few years it had been suggested that Dani was a spent force, so it wasn’t as though McNair and the other top dogs felt she was infallible. Yet Dani kept on delivering, despite it all, and even if McNair’s praise was fleeting, it did still carry a lot of weight.

  ‘And DI Barnes?’ McNair said. ‘You know, I’ve not heard anything from him since his leaving party.’

  ‘He’s just Jason now, ma’am.’

  McNair laughed. Or was it a scoff? Perhaps something in between.

  ‘I guess he’ll always be DI Barnes to me. It really was a shame to lose him like we did.’

  ‘He’s not lost, ma’am. If anything, I think he’s found his true self now.’

  That scoff again. ‘That’s good to hear. I’m very pleased for you both.’

  Although she sounded anything but. Would McNair have preferred it if Jason had been the one still on the team and Dani the one who’d sacked it in to chase an alternative career, and to give the other the space to flourish?

  ‘Tell him I said hi,’ McNair said.

  ‘O
f course. When I see him. He’s away all this week trying to woo some new clients.’

  ‘He always was a charmer,’ McNair said with a strange look of pride. She turned and walked away, leaving Dani with an uneasy feeling. McNair and Jason? Dani quivered at the thought.

  * * *

  At eight o’clock the meeting room was filled with over a dozen weary-looking detectives, most of whom had been working until late the previous night. Dani and Easton stood at the front of the room and Dani began her opening spiel. McNair was sitting off to the side, away from the others, the only one who looked fresh, although a heavy frown had soon found its way onto her face and Dani wasn’t sure if it was because she was deep in thought or because she disapproved of something. If the latter, Dani was sure she’d hear about it sooner or later.

  ‘We need to put every effort we can into finding what’s happened to Sophie Blackwood,’ Dani said, coming to the end of her initial briefing. ‘She remains out of contact. From what we’ve been told her family have heard nothing from her at all. If there’s even a tiny chance she’s still alive, we need to find her before it’s too late.’

  A hand went up towards the back of the room.

  ‘Yes, Claire?’ Dani said to DC Grayling. Usually her long blonde hair was flowing, and she would have neat make-up over her blemish-free skin. Today her face was puffy, and her hair was messily tied back.

  ‘Has triangulation given any clues as to what happened to Sophie?’ Grayling asked.

  ‘The phone was turned off just before eight p.m., or the battery ran dry. We can’t trace its movements since that point, but we know it was still on the property then. It’s not been found by the forensics team, so we have to assume it went with Sophie.’

  ‘And that’s consistent with the time of the attack,’ Easton said. ‘We know Oscar and Sophie must have first been at the murder scene around six fifteen. Whether the attack took place immediately or sometime after, it’s not clear; but we know for sure that the killer was on the premises for a good while.’