Praise for DM for Murder
Shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Crime Book of the Year Award 2015
“Riveting.” Peter May
"A well-crafted plot peppered with some dark humour makes for a thoroughly modern murder mystery." Sun
“A real page turner that draws you in from the first sentence. Excellent story telling.” Lorraine Kelly
“Tracking their quarry through Glasgow’s mean streets like a dysfunctional Holmes and Watson, Presley and Lavender must surely be the hottest contenders for Scotland’s next big TV crime series.” Alex Norton, star of Taggart
“A murder mystery for the digital age – #GreatFun” Mason Cross
“With plotting tight as a tweet, yet funny enough to have me LMAO, this fast-paced read will generate hordes of followers.” Douglas Skelton
Praise for Killing with Confidence
“A gritty yet compelling read. I would recommend it to anyone.” Alex Salmond
“Quite simply the best piece of crime fiction I’ve ever read. A new star is born.” Mark Millar, Hollywood writer/producer
Also by Matt Bendoris
Killing With Confidence
DM for Murder
Matt Bendoris
Contents
Praise for DM for Murder
Also by Matt Bendoris
DM for Murder
Prologue
1 #Doughnuts
2 #TweetToWho?
3 #Teabagging
4 #ThisIsNotAHoax
5 #BraveNewWorld
6 #HeHadItComing
7 #AnOrdinaryLife
8 #MysteryCaller
9 #FacingTheMusic
10 #BluePill
11 #RoundTwo
12 #DeadManTalking
13 #Taunting
14 #WhoseBillIsItAnyway?
15 #Room1410
16 #WarpedSenseOfHumour
17 #MakingAHashOfIt
18 #Fidel
19 #AvengingAngel
20 #VirginTweeter
21 #BryceSuspects
22 #WhatsAMatterYou?
23 #PersonOfInterest
24 #Help
25 #ProfessorPainInAss
26 #DeadCheerleader
27 #Blagger
28 #OldDogsNewTricks
29 #HardAss
30 #CouncilHolmes
31 #TheRingRound
32 #BridgeToNowhere
33 #JetLagged
34 #HeavenSent?
35 #LetTrainTakeStrain
36 #NonCompliant
37 #PressPack
38 #HeadingNorth
39 #CheshireCat
40 #Scarred
41 #TheWire
42 #TheHerogram
43 #CyberAttack
44 #Lonely
45 #Charade
46 #ReluctantWitness
47 #HeadingEast
48 #TheNewVic
49 #DeadPorter
50 #TrollHunting
51 #HowTheOtherHalfLive
52 #BeerOClock
53 #TheLordsWork
54 #TaxiDriver
55 #HungForASheep
56 #RecordTraffic
57 #StreetWise
58 #Commission
59 #Prohibition
60 #Alibis
61 #QuestionTime
62 #LostInTranslation
63 #BossyBoots
64 #TheList
65 #BalTaMoore
66 #IHateSatNavs
67 #AskONeill
68 #Everest
69 #HelpingWithEnquiries
70 #LoveRival
71 #Clinique
72 #Tetchy
73 #OddManOut
74 #CallMe
75 #TheWholeTooth
76 #Contact
77 #TheDMs
78 #GoingCommando
79 #CoopsConfession
80 #DealMaker
81 #NorthAgain
82 #TheFinalCountdown
83 #SpillingTheBeans
84 #Retribution
85 #ReverseBug
86 #TheSkiSet
87 #HiredCar
88 #Timing
89 #Solitaire
90 #AvyMore
91 #WhiteOut
92 #TheFinalPost
93 #NanookOfTheNorth
94 #TooLate
95 #HeadlineNews
96 #Farewell
97 #TheBaltimoreBlues
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
To my wife, Amanda;
children, Andrew and Brooke;
and Aunt Sam for always being there for us.
My mum, Annie, for never giving up the fight,
and my brother, Sean, for his constant support.
Finally, this book is for
beleaguered journalists everywhere.
Prologue
Bryce Horrigan couldn’t speak after the first bullet ripped open his throat. It was the first time the shock jock television presenter and chat show host had been lost for words in years. The only sound he made was the audible hiss of air escaping from his lungs through the horrendous wound. He clawed desperately at his neck, in the same manner as John F Kennedy when the first bullet had struck in Dallas. Ironically, if Bryce could have chosen a celebrity death, he would have wanted to be ranked alongside such luminaries as JFK.
But Christ how it hurt.
The shock in his eyes was exactly what his killer wanted to see. The giant ego of the man Americans loved to loathe had finally been burst.
Bryce slumped to his knees, clutching the mass of blood and sinew that was once his neck.
How had it come to this? Scottish-born Bryce had been one of the UK’s brightest Fleet Street stars, before becoming one of the highest-paid television presenters in America. He continually made headlines in his adopted homeland with his outspoken views, especially standing up for the pro-abortion lobby. Privately, he cared little for the plight of expectant mothers or their unwanted babies. But he loved how it riled the right-wing Bible bashers and helped fuel his nightly talk show, which was broadcast coast to coast across the States and beamed around the world by satellite. He revelled in the number of threats upon his life he had received via his Twitter account – ‘90,000 and rising,’ he’d proudly say – and would deliberately goad his haters: Come on, you lot, let’s see if we can make it six figures by the end of the week. Naturally, they were only too happy to oblige. Bryce Horrigan was smugly satisfied about his ten-million-plus followers on the micro-blogging site – easily outstripping some of the biggest Hollywood stars.
The second bullet hit his shoulder, exiting through his spinal column, paralysing Horrigan completely. He knew his time was up.
His killer smiled, before slowly taking aim and emptying the rest of the 9mm’s magazine into his head and face, destroying all that expensive plastic surgery Horrigan had always denied having.
The murderer had been very careful and would leave behind no trace of his own DNA. But it wasn’t the forensics that would prove to be the most problematic issue for detectives – it was Horrigan’s Twitter account.
Just where do you start investigating 100,000 serious death threats from all fifty states and beyond?
1 #Doughnuts
‘Did I ever tell you about the time I worked in a doughnut factory?’
April Lavender was speaking to her younger colleague Connor ‘Elvis’ Presle
y as they made their way from the staff car park to their usual breakfast pit stop at the Peccadillo Café.
Connor thought he’d heard about all of April’s previous jobs since they had been thrown together a year ago as the Daily Chronicle’s special investigations team and given their own office, which was little more than a converted broom cupboard. To date, they included barmaid, cleaner, secretary and Royal Navy Wren. Then there was her stint as something called a ‘Go-Go Dancer’, which Connor was pretty sure was some early form of lap dancing.
So his ears pricked up at this new occupation to add to the list. ‘Nope, can’t say you did.’
‘Well,’ she continued, ‘on my first day on the production line one of the guys asked if I wanted a doughnut, but I said, “No thanks, they’ll make me fat.” But this guy, Rick Fullerton, thought I said, “No thanks – they make me FART,” and told everyone. Well, I tell you, I have never been so embarrassed – make me fart, indeed! From that day on, until I left, I had to put up with gas jibes; about it being “windy in April” and how “Lavender smells”.’
‘They’re some pretty sophisticated insults,’ Connor said sarcastically.
Ignoring him, April said, ‘What a terrible first impression, though.’
Connor was quickly losing interest. ‘If I were you, I would have farted whenever I was around this Rick character, just to get him back – what did you have to lose?’
‘Oh, I did,’ April replied. ‘I used to break wind in his vicinity all the time – so much so that everyone eventually thought he had a serious bowel problem.’
‘Ah, revenge of the reekie woman – you never fail to amaze me, April. Sailor, secretary, lap dancer, doughnut factory worker and able to break wind on demand. I have to admit the latter is probably your most impressive attribute. Now, how do you fancy some beans on toast at the café? That should clear the pipes.’
He didn’t need to ask twice; April loved her food. He would regularly tease her, saying that she continually grazed throughout the day, like a cow. The insults sailed over her head. She’d grown a very thick skin during her thirty years in the rough and tumble world of journalism.
2 #TweetToWho?
Captain Sorrell surveyed the crime scene, taking in everything. Technically, he didn’t possess a photographic memory, but he had the next nearest thing. His attention to detail and powers of recall were almost freaky. All his detectives needed to do was mention a suspect’s name and he would repeat it a few times, then the light bulb would burst on somewhere in his head and he’d declare something like, ‘We picked him up four years ago on a grand theft auto,’ before his subordinates had even logged on.
Sorrell had ordered that no one should roll the body, or touch anything until he got there. He looked at the wrecked corpse and stood up to his full 6’2”. Although Sorrell was tall, it did little to conceal the fact that he was overweight, passing the 300-pound mark long ago. He put his overeating down to his poor upbringing, when food had been scarce.
Bernard Sorrell was born and bred in Baltimore, Maryland, to a large African-American family. His father had been a plumber while his mum had the toughest job of all – raising Bernard and his eight brothers and sisters, trying to keep them from the wrong side of the tracks, what with the area’s gang problems.
The teenage Bernard had just one close brush with the law when a friend shot dead a convenience store owner during a bungled robbery. Sorrell was meant to be there, but fate had intervened and he had failed to meet up, which meant he narrowly escaped an accessory to homicide charge. From that moment on he’d decided enough was enough and buckled down to his studies to graduate from high school. He distanced himself once and for all from the pack when he enrolled at the state’s police academy. In his twenty-five years on the force since then, he had personally investigated more than 300 murders.
It’s said you never forget your first case, but after a while Sorrell discovered he became numb to witnessing the expressions of the victims’ last moments on earth, forever frozen onto their faces. Eventually all those tortured souls just blended into one. Except those of the children. As a father of two daughters, those were always the hardest cases to deal with.
Smell is one of the strongest of the senses, which was a pity for detectives like Sorrell. He could never forget the stench of decomposing flesh on the hot summer day he discovered the body of a ten-year-old boy killed by his mother’s boyfriend, who turned out to be a predatory paedophile. The odour was so overpowering that Sorrell swears he can still taste it. The detective had literally stepped on the boy’s body – hideously bloated from the searing heat of a Maryland summer – disturbing a swarm of flies that had been feeding on the corpse’s multiple stab wounds.
When Sorrell had brought in the killer, he confessed immediately, claiming to have been in love with the boy and flying into a jealous rage when he got himself a little schoolyard girlfriend. But the love affair had all been inside the killer’s own head. That had been what’s termed a ‘dunker’ – a slam dunk – as Sorrell had wrapped up the case by the end of the day.
His attention returned to the here and present in a hotel suite of the Baltimore City Hotel by the city’s bustling waterfront.
Sorrell took one look at what was left of Horrigan’s face and muttered, ‘Robbery, my ass.’ That was before he looked towards the bed, where he saw a wallet lying open with its contents apparently intact.
The tinkling of melting ice in the champagne bucket suddenly caught his attention. Sorrell noted there were four champagne glasses, an unusual number, and all of them filled and untouched. The bed was also still made up, the starched white sheets pulled tight flat in the way only chambermaids and nurses seem able to do.
Lieutenant Haye disturbed his boss’s thought process when he approached brandishing his iPhone. ‘You gotta take a look at this, cap’n.’
‘Can’t this wait, Haye? I’m kinda busy,’ Sorrell snapped back.
‘No, sir. Someone has already tweeted a photo of the crime scene,’ Haye replied, with the look of a worried man.
Captain Sorrell took his reading glasses from his top pocket, perched them on the end of his nose and squinted as he tried to focus on the smartphone’s tiny screen. He then said in his slow, steady, measured drawl, ‘Can someone please explain to me, what the hell is a tweet?’
3 #Teabagging
‘I’m reading that Fifty Shades Of Grey,’ April announced, her mouth half-full with food, as was always the case when she was in the Peccadillo Café.
‘That was all the rage ages ago,’ Connor replied dismissively.
‘I ended up having to Google “fisting”. I had no idea what it was.’
Connor had not expected that. He laughed and said, ‘Do you not remember the comic Julian Clary? He practically ended his TV career when he claimed he had been fisting the Chancellor of the Exchequer.’
‘Yes, yes, I remember all that,’ April said impatiently, ‘but I didn’t know what it meant back then, either. I mean, how does it even fit?’
Connor decided he’d have some fun. ‘What about rimming? A donkey punch. DP? I’m sure as a former Wren you’ve tried all of them, even if you didn’t know their names.’
‘No, I certainly have not. You’re a dirty boy. Honestly, the things people do to each other. Where’s the romance?’
Connor ordered the bill from Martel, the waitress and his occasional lover, then said to her, ‘April’s going to try a spot of teabagging later.’
‘Oh, good luck with that,’ Martel said, stifling a laugh.
April ignored them both, saying, ‘That reminds me, I need to buy a box of Earl Grey.’
They made their way to the newspaper’s Glasgow city centre office where April switched to her favourite topic – her retirement plans.
Connor loved winding her up whenever she mentioned it: ‘You’d miss the broom cupboard, my relentless wit, my occasiona
l practical jokes that keep you on your toes.’
‘Nope,’ she’d reply confidently, ‘I won’t miss any of it. When I leave I’ll finally have the time to lose weight and write the book, just like I’ve always wanted to do.’
The book. For as long as Connor had known April Lavender she’d always talked about writing the book. She had bought not one, but two laptops; eventually both ended up in the care of her eternally ungrateful daughter from one of her three failed marriages, with the book not even started, never mind completed. April had attempted to move with the times and bought an iPad, but she couldn’t master the touchscreen keyboard and began moaning how this new technology was all that stood between her and writing a bestseller. So Connor convinced her to buy a wireless keyboard for the iPad, which effectively just turned it back into a laptop. Still, she did not commit one word to screen. Eventually, after relentless ribbing by her colleague, she confessed, ‘The problem is, I don’t have a single idea for a plot in my head. Not one. My brain is a blank canvas.’
‘Well, it perfectly matches your face,’ Connor retorted. ‘Did you know E L James wrote Fifty Shades on her BlackBerry on her way to work? So there’s no excuse for not writing your book.’
‘It’s not even very well written,’ April said a little bitterly.
‘Who cares? One hundred million people can’t be wrong. It’s mummy porn. To get your old boiler fired up. Talking of which, how is the Italian stallion?’
‘Hmm, not too sure about old Luigi.’ Widowed Luigi owned April’s favourite restaurant in the city’s Shawlands district. She had been a shoulder to cry on after his wife had died. Now the ageing lothario had April in his sights, repeatedly asking her to marry him.
‘He’s obsessed with my boobs.’ For the second time that morning April had said something Connor wasn’t expecting. ‘He’s always finding excuses to give them a feel. I wouldn’t mind so much but it’s usually in front of his customers. He even jokes about it. “April, I a-love your a-boobies,”’ she said, giving a near perfect impression of Luigi’s curious half-Glaswegian/half-Italian accent.
‘At least he leaves your growler alone,’ Connor said thoughtfully.
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