Who's Next?: A completely gripping and unputdownable crime thriller (Detective Lockhart and Green Book 2)

by Chris Merritt

  Nick shook his head. ‘I’m just trying to do the right thing for all of us.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m here to let you know we’re going ahead with the claim.’

  ‘No. You can’t do that.’ Lockhart’s voice was low, menacing.

  ‘Yeah, we can.’

  Lockhart flexed his hands. ‘I’ll challenge it. We’ll challenge it, won’t we, Mum?’

  Before Iris could respond, Nick spoke. ‘Well, good luck with that. But if the judge finds in our favour, and she’s declared dead, then we’ll be entitled to a share of her estate. Which means you’ll need to sell the Hammersmith flat, or buy us out.’

  Lockhart snapped. He shot up from his chair, took two steps around the table and hauled Nick to his feet by the lapels of his jacket. His chair clattered to the floor. Lockhart walked him backwards to the kitchen doorway and shoved him through it. ‘Get out! Go on, get the fuck out!’

  ‘Daniel!’ exclaimed Iris.

  Nick didn’t resist as Lockhart followed him down the hallway, opened the front door and pushed him onto the balcony. He stumbled and regained his balance, straightening his jacket.

  ‘This is happening,’ said Nick, his face flushed. ‘The sooner you realise that, the better.’

  ‘I don’t want to see you here again,’ Lockhart growled.

  ‘You won’t.’ A smirk twitched at Nick’s mouth. ‘But you will hear from our solicitor. I’ll tell Mum and Dad you said hello.’ He walked away, casting one look back over his shoulder.

  Lockhart watched him turn into the stairwell and disappear. Then he smacked his fist hard against the open front door. ‘Fuck!’

  He heard his mum from behind him and turned to see her in the hallway. Her eyes were wet. ‘I’m sorry, love.’

  ‘You should’ve let me know he was coming over.’ Lockhart was still furious.

  ‘If I did that, you wouldn’t have come. He said there was something important. I knew it’d be about Jess, but I had no idea it was going to be that.’

  ‘You told him about Whitstable, too.’

  ‘I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. If you found something about Jess, he’d have every right to know. He’s part of our family, like it or not. If we believe she’s alive, we have to accept that.’ She reached out a frail hand, touched his sleeve. ‘But we’ll get through this. You and me, together. Just like we’ve done ever since your dad died.’

  Suddenly, the rage dissipated, and Lockhart drew her into an embrace. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, hearing his own voice catch as his throat constricted. ‘I love you, Mum.’

  He held her closer this time. Partly because it felt good to be hugged by someone. And partly so she couldn’t see the tears he was trying to fight back.

  Twenty

  Martin Johnson was enjoying his round of golf. He was only five over par and, with just four holes left to play, it was shaping up to be an excellent round. Of course, solo rounds couldn’t contribute to a handicap. The powers that be didn’t trust golfers not to cheat when playing alone. They obviously hadn’t realised that it was perfectly possible for two friends playing together to collude on a falsified scorecard. But he didn’t care. It was Friday night, the air was pleasantly cool and dry, and this was his time. No one could bother him out here. No calls, no emails, no whining clients, no self-righteous judges. And no secretaries complaining about his touching. He hadn’t exchanged more than a few words with Eva this week and briefly wondered if she was plotting something.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  The voice snapped Johnson out of his rumination, and he turned towards it.

  ‘I’ve lost a ball. Would you mind helping me look for it, please?’

  Johnson exhaled noisily. Normally, he wouldn’t waste time assisting anyone. But he couldn’t abide the thought of someone playing behind him.

  ‘Fine,’ he replied, leaving his trolley on the fairway and crossing to the rough. He carried an iron to prod the long grass under the trees.

  ‘I think it’s somewhere round here. Shanked the bloody thing.’

  ‘Right, let’s have a look,’ he said, turning towards the thicket of mature evergreens. His strategy was to check for about half a minute, then tell this idiot to take a one-stroke penalty and play out from the edge of—

  The impact spun him around and he dropped like a sack of potatoes, the club slipping from his hand. But he was still conscious, at least. What’d happened? Had he been hit by a ball? He felt his feet rising and, next, he was being dragged deeper into the trees where it was almost dark. He cried out and managed to grab something, but it was just a tuft of grass that came away in his hand. He scrabbled around desperately for anything that could help him.

  Then an almighty blow connected with his ribs, and another, sending raw bolts of pain through his torso. Eyes shut, Johnson crossed his arms in front of him just as a fist connected with the side of his face. He tasted the warm tang of blood and turned away instinctively, confused and terrified. As the punches and kicks continued to rain down, Johnson curled up, shielding his head, desperate to protect himself.

  But there was nowhere to hide.

  Day Five

  Twenty-One

  It was mid-afternoon on Saturday by the time Lockhart arrived at the golf course. After the shock of the news he’d received from his brother-in-law, he’d risen early from a broken night’s sleep and gone swimming in the Thames. Wetsuit, cap and goggles on, he’d battled upstream through the cold and foul-tasting water towards Putney Bridge. Now and then, the sheer physicality of struggling against the river would take his mind off Jess and the idea that she could be declared legally dead. But, each time, his thoughts quickly returned to her, and to the possibility of that terrible verdict. He’d fight it with every ounce of energy he possessed.

  After drying off and changing out of his wetsuit, he’d driven back to their flat and spent the rest of the morning online, researching how to challenge a claim of death for a missing person. He’d not stopped, even to eat, until he’d received the call around 2 p.m. A flustered PC Leo Richards – one of the MIT’s uniformed officers – had informed him that a body had been discovered at Wimbledon Park Golf Club. Lockhart had initially demanded to know why, at the weekend, the on-call team wasn’t dealing with it. Richards had told him about the triangle drawn on the victim’s neck. Then it had made sense. Since Porter was at City Hall, speaking at a conference on Crime and Policing, it fell to Lockhart to attend. Somewhat reluctantly, he’d shut down the laptop and grabbed his jacket.

  Dropping his Defender in the golf club car park, Lockhart stepped out and glanced around. He saw a couple of white vans he knew belonged to the SOCOs, and a grey coroner’s van, but there were also a dozen civilian vehicles he didn’t recognise. At the sound of crunching gravel, he turned to see PC Richards walking across to him. He wore a blue Tyvek protective suit that’d been unzipped to the waist.

  ‘All right, guv,’ said the young man.

  ‘Leo. What are all these cars doing here?’

  ‘Oh, er, they’ve still got the bar and driving range open. Plus a few holes near the clubhouse. They said that—’

  ‘I don’t care what they said. Get inside and tell the manager to close the whole place down immediately. Any part of it could be a crime scene, if they haven’t destroyed every bit of evidence by now. Jesus.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘How did this happen?’

  ‘The club was open when the body was found,’ Richards explained. ‘The manager told me they didn’t want to scare the members, so they’ve kept it all quite low-key. Business as usual, you know?’

  Lockhart rubbed his eyes. He suddenly felt exhausted. ‘What about the HAT?’ He knew the Homicide Assessment Team would’ve been first on the scene and might have crucial early evidence.

  ‘They’ve gone, guv.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Yup. Once I was here and they knew you were on the way, they buggered off. Called to a stabbing in Highb
ury, apparently.’

  ‘They speak to anyone?’

  Richards shrugged. ‘The manager, I think. And the woman who found the body when she hit a shot into the trees on the fifteenth hole.’

  ‘You got handover notes?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Lockhart tried to contain his frustration. He was on a very short leash. ‘Please tell me some good news.’

  ‘Er, the duty pathologist’s here.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Dr Volz.’

  ‘OK.’ That was a start, at least. ‘What do we know about the victim?’

  ‘Manager reckons it could be a Mr Martin Johnson. He signed in alone for a round at six p.m. last night and hasn’t been seen since. They just assumed he’d left without signing out. But his car was still here this morning. That’s it, there.’ Richards indicated a black Porsche 911 across the car park. ‘And they found an abandoned set of clubs, which probably belongs to him.’

  ‘Right. I’ll go and take a look. First thing I need you to do, Leo, is get in there and shut this place down. Completely. Find out the names of everyone who was here last night, staff or players, and ask any of them that are here now to stay put. Get the contact details for anyone else. Work out what CCTV we have access to.’

  ‘Will do, guv.’

  ‘The club should give us Mr Johnson’s home address,’ Lockhart continued. ‘There might even be a next of kin listed. We need to confirm it’s him and not some other poor sod. But don’t make any death calls just yet, all right?’ Lockhart took out his phone and began dialling Smith. ‘I’ll get some reinforcements.’

  After changing into protective gear and registering with the Crime Scene Manager, Lockhart lifted the tent flap and entered. He found Volz inside, squatting beside a body. The scene was disturbingly familiar.

  ‘Hi, Mary.’

  ‘Dan.’ Volz stood and slipped her mask down. ‘PC Richards told me you’d be coming. This is very similar to the Charles Stott murder. I haven’t examined him a great deal, yet, but you can see that the facial injuries are worse than those inflicted on Mr Stott.’

  Lockhart looked down at the corpse. It was a pitiful sight. The man was almost in a foetal position, as if still trying to defend himself, though Lockhart knew some of that was probably the result of rigor mortis. Where a face had once been, there was now a bloodied pulp. The front of the skull was caved in, some white teeth jutting grimly from red flesh.

  ‘Christ.’

  No sooner had he begun to imagine the brutal end to this man’s life than the memory came to him. He was back inside the house in Helmand. The interior was smoky from the flash-bang grenade he’d dropped, but cooler than the baking, still air outside. He’d lowered his weapon onto the floor tiles so that he could climb in through the window. As he stood and the smoke dissipated, a man appeared in front of him. Lockhart recognised the sniper rifle slung over the guy’s shoulder, the camouflage wrapping around its long barrel. He had to make a split-second decision. And, without further thought, he charged forward.

  ‘What I would expect,’ continued Volz, her voice snapping him back to the present, ‘is that an attack this frenzied would’ve left some evidence. I’ll make sure that the SOCOs gather plenty of samples here, and I can look for more back at the mortuary. Let’s see if we can extract foreign DNA, fibres, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Lockhart cleared his throat. Tried to gather his thoughts. His pulse was racing, his mouth dry. He swallowed. ‘And the symbol?’ He could see half of it already on the side of the neck that faced upwards.

  ‘I presume that’s why you were called,’ Volz said. ‘Quite apart from the other similarities.’ She knelt and lightly drew away the collar on the victim’s jacket. ‘Appears identical to the one drawn on Stott’s neck.’

  ‘Except it looks like it’s facing the other way. Pointing up.’ He thought of Green’s initial observation. ‘Could the direction of it be significant?’

  Volz angled her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She paused. ‘But what I can tell you is that this man has been dead for over twelve hours.’ She took the victim’s hand and applied some pressure to bend his arm and wrist back out, but it stayed in position. ‘He’s in the peak phase of rigor mortis. So, since we know that his golf round started at eight, you’re looking at a similar time of death to the previous victim. Between seven and eleven p.m., I’d say. Might get a more accurate time from his stomach contents if you can find out when he last ate.’

  ‘Thanks, Mary. Let me know if you find anything the killer might’ve left.’ He glanced towards the tent flaps. ‘We’re in the dark right now.’

  Lockhart stepped outside, somehow relived to be out in the open air again and away from the bloodied corpse, particularly after his flashback to Afghanistan. Why was this happening now? It was years ago that he’d been there. Must be the new case. Green would call this a ‘trigger’. He ought to ask her about it. And he should probably also let her know that, now, they appeared to be dealing with a serial perpetrator.

  Twenty-Two

  The display on Lockhart’s Suunto watch read 18:52. Having spent nearly four hours at the crime scene, this was the first chance he’d had to go to Jubilee House and brief DCI Porter. On the way back, he’d finally acknowledged that he was ravenous and made a pit stop at one of the local cafés. He’d grabbed a sausage-and-egg sandwich and inhaled most of it by the time he returned to his Defender. This was how the job ruled your existence: bodies, suspects and witnesses dictated your working hours and routinely trumped in importance anything else you were doing. Lockhart wondered if, should Jess return, he could continue to live such an unpredictable, all-consuming professional life. The thought vanished as he approached Porter’s door and knocked. Inside, he could see the boss was still in his dress uniform from the conference. Porter finished a call on his mobile as Lockhart entered.

  ‘Linked incidents then, eh, Dan?’ The DCI looked quite pleased with himself. Lockhart didn’t think it was cause for self-congratulation.

  ‘Appears that way, sir. Significant similarities in the MO. And, more importantly, we never went public with the triangle symbol.’

  ‘Of course, you know what that means.’ Porter tilted his head. It reminded Lockhart of a schoolmaster. Or an officer from his military days. The exercise of authority. He understood what he was expected to say in reply, but he didn’t want to play Porter’s little game.

  ‘That the killer was likely to have crossed paths with both Charles Stott and Martin Johnson at least once before the time of their murders, since it appears they were targeted.’

  They’d tentatively confirmed the lawyer’s identity less than an hour ago, after cross-referencing the clothing worn by the victim with CCTV from the golf club car park and reception. In those video images, his face was recognisable and matched the sign-in time on his membership. Volz would confirm it tomorrow with his dental records, probably, although such was the destruction of Johnson’s face that even that wasn’t a given.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Porter raised his eyebrows. ‘And, crucially?’

  ‘Well, unless Jemima Stott-Peters, Xander O’Neill or any of the women on our list who might’ve had a grudge against Stott also knew Johnson, we’ll need to overhaul our suspect strategy.’

  ‘Exactly. Which means leaving Ms Stott-Peters and her friend Mr O’Neill well alone. They’re obviously nothing to do with this.’

  Lockhart knew his boss could be right, but his gut told him he’d still need to clear them both for last night. ‘Given their connection to the first murder,’ he began, but Porter lifted a hand to silence him. ‘I think we should—’

  ‘Leave them alone, I said.’

  Lockhart didn’t respond. He wasn’t going to argue about this now. But neither was he intending to follow orders. He concluded that, on this occasion, it was probably easier to seek forgiveness than permission.

  ‘And, the wallet was gone?’ asked Porter. ‘Phone and car keys left?’

  ‘That’s r
ight.’

  ‘What about a watch?’

  ‘Still on his wrist,’ replied Lockhart.

  ‘Hm. Well, cast the net wider on those violent muggers. Whole of the Greater London area.’

  ‘Sir, my sense is that there’s something more complex than a robbery going on here. There’s the triangle symbol, and if Lucy can run the data, I reckon we can find the link between Stott and Johnson. There has to be one,’ he added, hoping he was right.

  Porter leant back in his chair and regarded Lockhart with something approaching sympathy. ‘Go home and get some rest, Dan. You look like shit.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘You’re welcome. I mean it, though.’

  ‘About me looking like shit?’

  ‘About getting some rest.’

  ‘Right. I’ll just write up some notes and rally a few more troops for tomorrow morning, then I’ll be off.’

  ‘Good man.’ Porter pressed his lips into a half-smile and picked up his phone again. ‘I’m going to convene a short press briefing.’

  ‘Will you need me there?’

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary. Maybe you could do an appeal from the golf club, though, a bit like with the Stott murder on the Common. See if that jogs people’s memories.’

  Lockhart groaned inwardly. He’d do whatever was required to help progress the case, but he had no desire to be a media figure. And a cynical voice told him it was simply box-ticking by Porter, anyway. Investigating by numbers. He imagined the boss reeling off the checklist during his Superintendent’s assessment: crime scene piece to camera, impact statement from victim’s loved ones, simultaneous TV broadcast and upload to the Met’s YouTube and Facebook channels…

  ‘Sir.’ He turned and walked towards the door. Gripping its handle to let himself out, he paused and swivelled back to Porter, who was already scrolling on his mobile screen.

  ‘Maybe we should bring in a psychologist,’ said Lockhart.