The Rules of Murder

by The Rules of Murder (epub)

  Dani looked over to Daley, sitting next to her brother like the good little guard dog he was.

  ‘Same to you,’ she said. ‘Are you too afraid to speak to us by yourself now this has all blown up?’

  ‘Not in the slightest,’ Ben said, pure nonchalance. ‘So who’s the new face?’

  ‘DC Constable,’ Constable said as he and Dani took their seats.

  Daley and Ben shared a look but said nothing.

  ‘You got him then,’ Ben said to Dani.

  ‘Curtis? Of course we did. We always do in the end. Take yourself for example.’

  ‘Very clever.’

  ‘But not as clever as you obviously think you are. And I’m also guessing by now that you’ve heard the news about Dr Collins?’

  ‘The news that she’s dead? Or that she might well have been the person who set Curtis up for all of this?’

  ‘Well obviously you’ve heard both then,’ Dani said. ‘Though I do have to ask myself how the press found out about the latter, given the police haven’t made any public statements about Collins’s alleged involvement.’

  Ben shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re asking me?’

  ‘You see, the problem any detective has, with any murder, is that to gain a conviction, it’s vitally important, in virtually every single case, that we have a motive.’

  ‘OK?’

  ‘And my big problem with Dr Collins and this theory working through the tabloids that she somehow put Curtis up to all this by implanting a voice in his head… what’s in it for her?’

  ‘Once again, you’re asking me?’

  ‘Well I can’t ask her. She’s dead. So why not you?’

  ‘Other than I’m locked up in here with virtually no access to the outside world?’

  ‘Though you do have your crony here to do your dirty work outside these walls, right?’

  Dani glanced to Daley.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, genuinely offended.

  ‘Didn’t the papers suggest Collins was having it off with Henry Redfearne?’ Ben said. ‘That the wife, Caroline, I think her name was, was going to smear him in the press pretty soon. Scandal, divorce, lots of money involved. The tabloids would have loved it. So maybe Collins did have motive.’

  ‘You really are clued up,’ Dani said.

  ‘I have a lot of time on my hands.’

  ‘Except it’s all bullshit.’

  ‘It is?’ Ben said.

  ‘So I ask myself again and again. If not Collins, then who else not only had a position of influence over Damian Curtis, but something to gain from his nasty mission of revenge?’

  ‘Why does there have to be anyone else at all?’

  ‘Let’s just say there is.’

  Ben shrugged. ‘OK then. Another doctor, perhaps? Certainly, someone trained in psychiatry or something like that, wouldn’t you say? I mean, where would you even start?’

  ‘Sounds like you’ve already been thinking about this. Never have the answers slipped off your tongue so easily, Ben.’

  He glared coldly at her now.

  ‘Detectives, is there a point to this meeting?’ Daley said. ‘A particular question or questions you’re looking for answers to from my client, relevant to your case?’

  ‘I know it was you,’ Dani said, her eyes narrowing as she focussed in on Ben. ‘I know it was you. I don’t know exactly how you did it, but I won’t stop until I prove it.’

  ‘There’s nothing to prove,’ Ben said, trying his best to look perplexed. He glanced over at Daley. ‘Can you believe how ridiculous this is?’

  Dani got to her feet, Constable followed. ‘But you made one big mistake,’ she said.

  Ben looked at her quizzically.

  ‘We’ve got Curtis now. And sooner or later he’ll talk. He’ll tell us exactly what you did.’

  For a fleeting second Ben looked just a little bit unsure of himself, but the look was gone again in a flash.

  When Dani reached the door, she looked back to her brother one last time.

  ‘Happy hunting,’ Ben said, with a sly wink.

  * * *

  It was getting late by the time Dani finally made it back to HQ. She’d deliberated whether to head straight to the hospital, to check on both Easton and Jason, but ultimately decided she wanted to go back to the office, given there was so much that she and McNair needed to catch up on.

  ‘Quite a couple of days,’ McNair said, standing behind her desk with her arms folded.

  ‘You could say that,’ Dani said.

  Behind McNair the sun was just creeping down behind the shimmering multistorey office block across the road. The end of another hot day, though McNair’s office was ice cold from air conditioning, and a wave of goose pimples rose across Dani’s bare arms.

  McNair remained standing, and Dani similarly didn’t bother to take a seat. She couldn’t read the look on McNair’s face.

  Was this good or bad?

  ‘How’s Easton?’ McNair asked.

  ‘Last I heard he’s had quite a few stitches, and it’ll be weeks before he can move about properly, but he was lucky. The knife didn’t damage any organs. He should be absolutely fine.’

  ‘And I’m certainly glad about that. But there’s going to have to be some serious thinking about how all this played out, and why we’ve now got one PC dead, and another of our team in a serious condition in hospital.’

  Dani nodded again, a lump in her throat at the thought of PC Oxley’s death. She felt truly terrible about that, even though she was sure she wasn’t at fault. Regardless, she understood how the bureaucracy worked, no point in fighting it unless she had to. There’d be an internal investigation not just into what had happened to Oxley and Easton, but about every aspect of the case.

  ‘Where’ve you got to with the press leak?’

  ‘I simply don’t know where their information came from,’ Dani said. ‘It’s a small team, and honestly? I trust them all. Maybe there isn’t even a leak here. The team have crawled over the Redfearne data we have. There’s nothing in there to suggest Collins even knew Henry Redfearne, let alone was having an affair with him that would give her a motive for wanting Caroline or anyone else dead.’

  ‘Hmm,’ was all McNair said to that.

  ‘And… I really don’t believe Collins put Curtis up to this. You didn’t see the way she looked at me, or hear what she said. I believed her. She didn’t make Curtis kill those people.’

  ‘Which, according to you, leaves only your brother.’

  Dani nodded.

  ‘Except you have absolutely no evidence how he could have done this.’

  ‘No,’ Dani said, trying to keep her head held high, though it was a struggle. ‘But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep looking. He had access to Curtis, he had motive for this—’

  ‘What motive?’

  ‘All those games about the offer of information for leniency. He wanted Curtis to kill because the information would give him leverage.’

  ‘Except he never gave us any useful information until it was too late.’

  ‘No. But then there was the attack on me and Jason. Ben’s own personal revenge. Plus, the fact his lawyer is now busy discrediting Collins for their own sick gain. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Daley had that story about Collins’s involvement leaked, had the bogus story of Collins and Redfearne put out there too, just so they can claim her expert testimony is tarnished.’

  ‘Quite some accusations, from where I’m standing.’

  Dani sighed. ‘That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. But it does mean I have to consider very carefully what we do next here. We’ve already had a complaint from Henry Redfearne’s lawyer.’

  Dani tutted. ‘Another one? He doesn’t waste any time, does he?’

  ‘No, he does not. But you know someone in Redfearne’s position is going to fight hard against whatever we throw at him. We’re going to need a watertight case against him.’

  ‘Sexua
l harassment, obstruction of justice, what else do you want here?’

  ‘Make your case then,’ McNair said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Explain it all to me. Convince me.’

  Dani took a deep breath to compose her thoughts. ‘OK. January 2016. Oscar Redfearne takes his dad’s car for a joyride. He causes a crash, but he’s fine. The occupants of the other car are Damian Curtis, his girlfriend and her son.’

  ‘You can prove this?’

  ‘We have plenty of corroborative CCTV evidence. My brother’s testimony, if we can get it admitted. If we get Curtis talking, even better. We managed to get hold of evidence of the repair work carried out on Redfearne’s car.’

  ‘So the crash happened. You need to tie Henry Redfearne to it.’

  ‘I’m trying. That night, Curtis was drunk, high on drugs and in a rage, and the car trip followed a blazing row. He confessed to my brother he wanted to kill his girlfriend because she was trying to leave him. But the crash didn’t kill her. In fact, Oscar witnessed Curtis step from that car and choke his girlfriend and then her son to death. Then Oscar panicked. He fled. Told his mum. She and her lawyer, Johansson, did some dirty deals to make sure Oscar’s presence that night never came out.’

  ‘Again. Can you prove any of this?’

  Now it was Dani who sighed. ‘It’s going to be hard, given most of the people involved in that aspect are dead. But we’ll try. Following the money has to be the best way. It’s possible Henry Redfearne was all part of this too.’

  ‘Possible, but not very proveable. And then?’

  Dani slumped a little, already sensing where McNair was going to come out of this. ‘Curtis is sentenced to manslaughter, which he was disgruntled about to say the least. Dr Collins was assigned to assess him as part of the trial, and was holding sessions with him up to his release.’

  ‘But not since his release? I thought I was told we saw Curtis’s van in and around Collins’s home and workplace multiple times over the last few weeks?’

  ‘That’s right. But I now believe Curtis was just watching her. Like he did all his victims.’

  ‘But it’s equally likely she was holding secret sessions with him. That if there was a master manipulator here, it was her. Is it not?’

  Dani sighed again. She guessed McNair was right, evidentially at least, even if she didn’t believe that to be the case. The one person who could corroborate her theory was Curtis. Would they ever get him to talk? Given his mental state, would his confession even be admissible evidence if he did?

  ‘And these voices?’ McNair said.

  ‘We’ll need professional help to explain this, but Curtis has a long history of psychosis. Basically, he has voices in his head. I don’t know how, but I’m certain someone implanted a new voice in him. A voice that persuaded him to kill.’

  McNair scoffed. Dani felt her cheeks flush a little. She knew it sounded outlandish, but she was absolutely sure that’s exactly what had happened.

  ‘And you think that was your brother. A fellow inmate at prison, with zero experience of psychiatry, as opposed to Dr Collins, a long-standing therapist?’

  ‘Collins had nothing to gain. My brother does.’

  ‘It’s a hell of a story,’ McNair said.

  ‘And I wouldn’t be standing here telling it if I didn’t believe it one hundred per cent.’

  McNair took the longest sigh that Dani had ever heard in her life, then sat down behind her desk.

  ‘We have Curtis locked up,’ McNair said. ‘We’ll push forward with the murder charges against him. I also think it’s worth pursuing Henry Redfearne. Find a money trail that links him to knowing about the crash and the cover-up. But this voice in Curtis’s head? The idea of someone using him like a puppet?’

  Dani bit her lip.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dani. Without something direct, a confession at the very least, then it’s a no go. The CPS would never go for it, no jury would ever buy it. We have our killer, Curtis, behind bars. If Collins was the mastermind, she’s already dead. If it’s your brother, he’s already locked up. I can’t advocate wasting resources chasing the impossible. I suggest it’s time to move on.’

  Dani simply had nothing to say to that, but it felt like a hole had been punched right through her chest.

  ‘Are we done?’ McNair said.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Three Weeks Later

  The sun was shining outside, its warm rays cascading into the room and bathing everything in lustrous light. It didn’t help Jason much, nor was it helping Dani, who remained as low as ever, regardless of how much medication she took. One positive was that she’d heard today that Sophie Blackwood had returned home to her parents. Her physical wounds were still healing, her mental scars might never, but Sophie still had a chance for a life.

  And Easton, he’d be back at work in no time.

  As for Jason…

  ‘I think we got Redfearne,’ Dani said to him. ‘He’s still saying nothing, his lawyers barely let us get a word in, but everything around him is crumbling. We have nearly twenty witnesses now alleging sexual harassment. We think we might have a chance at hitting him with conspiracy to rape too. Our biggest breakthrough this week? We found the money trail. We can link him right back to what happened to Oscar that night, and the bribes paid in the aftermath.’

  She took her hand back and stared at Jason’s face. As ever there was no movement, no reaction to her talking to him, though she only hoped he could hear. His brain function was improving bit by bit, day by day, even if he remained in a coma. His condition made her wonder all the more about Curtis. About herself, even. About how incredible and complex the human brain is, but also how utterly vulnerable it is too.

  Damian Curtis wasn’t a good person. He hadn’t been since the day he took his girlfriend’s and her son’s lives, perhaps even before that he was bad too. But Dani remained convinced that he was only the monster he’d since become because of expert manipulation.

  In a way, Dani actually felt sorry for Curtis, even despite the fact that it was his hand that had led to Jason being here, and all those other people losing their lives.

  ‘I just don’t know how we’re going to get him, Jason. I know it was Ben. It had to be. All this time, I questioned whether he just lost it all those years ago. But maybe he really has been a psychopath all this time. What does that say about me?’

  Once again Collins’s words about psychopaths, about the mimicking of emotion and ‘normal’ human behaviour, rattled in Dani’s head. Were both she and Ben guilty of doing that?

  ‘At least we’ve got Curtis,’ she said. ‘He’ll spend the rest of his life in a mental hospital, I’m sure. It’s something, even if I’m still tormented by all the other people who were hurt and killed… people that could have been saved if only we’d got him sooner.’

  A tear rolled down Dani’s cheek at those last words. Whatever words of encouragement she’d had from the force, she still felt responsible. Even if she’d apprehended Curtis that day in her home, it would have saved four more lives.

  ‘But do you know the worst part?’ Dani said. She picked the newspaper up and put it onto the bed, the headline facing up towards Jason, as if he was going to suddenly open his eyes and read it and give her comment and comfort.

  ‘I saw this coming. Ever since the last time I went to the jail to see him. I knew Ben, and that bastard Daley, would find a way to play this for their own gain. Without trial, Dr Collins has been disgraced. They’re asking for all of her work, all of it, to be thrown out. Several applications have already been made for mistrials in cases where she gave evidence. All because of little more than tabloid sensationalism, spurred on by Daley.’

  Dani wiped at the tears now as she tried to pull herself together.

  ‘I know it wasn’t Collins. I just don’t know what I can do to prove it.’ She paused now as her eyes flicked over the newspaper’s headline story, the call for Collins’s lifetime of trial work to be disregarded. The t
hreats of applications for mistrials. ‘I’ve spoken to people in the know… It’s possible, I mean, really possible, that if they succeed with this, that Ben actually has a chance of getting out. He could walk free, despite everything I know he did.’

  Dani was trembling now, with fear and shame and something else she couldn’t even describe.

  She reached out and took the paper away and dropped it onto the floor. Then she held Jason’s hand again. She squeezed.

  ‘And I’m terrified,’ she said. ‘I’m terrified for me, I’m terrified for Gemma and for the kids. She’s already talking about what protection the police could offer her.’

  Dani closed her eyes and shook her head in despair.

  ‘I need you for this, Jason. I really need you for this. I can’t do it without you any more.’

  What was that?

  As the words had passed her lips, she was sure she felt a twitch in his hand.

  She opened her eyes and stared down. She squeezed his hand a little harder, then relaxed her grip.

  There it was again. Just one finger. Just the slightest of movements.

  Had he heard her? Was he giving her a sign? A sign that she wasn’t going to be alone. That he’d be right there by her side.

  She looked up to his face, almost overcome with emotion.

  ‘Jason?’

  She waited. And waited.

  And waited…

  But there was nothing more from him.

  Nothing at all.

  Dani lay her head onto Jason’s chest, as her tears continued to fall.

  A Letter From Rob

  Thank you so much for reading The Rules of Murder, I really hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  If you didn’t know already, The Rules of Murder is the second book in the DI Dani Stephens crime thriller series (after The Essence of Evil), and she’s a character that I’ve really developed a great affinity to over the last two books. A strong and complex character, and one whose backstory is as dark as it is incredible, I’ve rarely had such pleasure in taking a character on a journey as I have to date with Dani. I know I don’t always make life easy for my protagonists, but you can always be sure that whatever I throw at Dani, she will fight to the bitter end, and have no doubt that there are plenty more of DI Dani Stephens’s escapades to come yet!