DARK HOUSES a gripping detective thriller full of suspense

by Helen H. Durrant

  “Interrogating him again today will do no good. He’ll shut us out. I know him. I know how he is when he’s confused and frightened.”

  Greco had heard enough. He stormed out of the office. He could not sit around waiting for test results that would maybe prove Neville Dakin was high on some drug or other.

  “Stephen! Wait!” Grace shouted after him. “I’m coming with you.” She pulled on her jacket as they took the stairs.

  “I’m going to the florist in the precinct. They should have some information for me.” If they hadn’t, in the mood he was in right now, he might just arrest the flaming lot of them.

  “You need to calm down,” she said.

  “I need to find Suzy.”

  Chapter 20

  “What was all that about?” Speedy asked the others. “Who is this other woman the boss got all riled up about?”

  “There isn’t one, is there?” Scarlett looked at them and then at the incident board.

  “Greco has been a bit weird for the last day or two. He may not be telling us everything.”

  “Why wouldn’t he tell us, Speedy? What’s there to gain by keeping stuff to himself?” Craig asked.

  “I don’t know him well enough to have an opinion,” Scarlett said, sitting down at her computer. “But I bet Grace knows what’s going on. While we wait for that tox screen to come back, I’m going to look at the statements again and do some research.”

  “I’m going down to the canteen — get some coffee.” Speedy was puzzled. Greco had never lost it like that before. He strode off down the corridor, only to be collared by DCI Green.

  “I heard the shouting. Is everything alright?”

  “Yes, sir.” Speedy didn’t want to elaborate. He usually did his best to avoid the DCI. He hadn’t met him yet without getting a bollocking.

  “Is DI Greco in the office?”

  “No. He’s gone to check something.” Speedy tried to smile but failed.

  “What’s happened? Has he heard from his wife yet?”

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  The DCI’s office phone rang. Speedy took the opportunity to dart away. Greco’s wife? What did that mean? As Speedy got to the canteen a terrible thought came into his mind. Was it possible that Suzy Greco was the third woman?

  * * *

  “Someone bought those flowers within the last couple of days. They were expensive — roses, lilies and the like. You must have some record other than a simple receipt.”

  “Jackie has checked them all,” the manageress explained. “But it can only be one customer.” She handed him a piece of paper. “It’s the lilies — we should have realised. They were the expensive pink ones. We only had half a dozen in total and he bought the lot. And he paid by debit card.”

  Bingo — it was Neville Dakin. But that didn’t make any sense. Suzy would never go for anyone like him. He was far too young. This had to be another instance of the killer laying a false trail.

  “Do you remember this man?”

  “Not really,” Jackie replied. “We get so many folk in.”

  “And everyone buys expensive bouquets like this one?”

  “Well, no, but we see so many faces. I’m more likely to recall the flowers rather than the person buying them.”

  “Do you think you’d recognise him from a photo?”

  The girl shrugged and looked at her manager.

  Grace nudged Greco. “You’re making her nervous, sir.”

  “Those lilies . . .” the manageress said thoughtfully. “You were chatting, remember? About the pollen allergy.”

  “Ah, that man. Yes, it was him. As I was putting the blooms together, he was going on about his mother and how she couldn’t be in the same room as lilies. We had a laugh about it.”

  “Get someone from the station to text me a photo of Dakin. Make it quick,” he said to Grace.

  Within a few minutes Jackie was staring at an image of Neville Dakin. “It definitely wasn’t him. The man I spoke to was tall, good-looking. A bit of alright, actually. Now that I come to think about it, I quite envied his girlfriend.”

  “Would you recognise him, do you think?”

  “I might.”

  “An officer will come and take a statement from you,” Greco said. He and Grace left the shop.

  “How dare he buy flowers for my wife,” Greco muttered.

  “Ex-wife, sir,” Grace said.

  “A mere formality.”

  Suddenly he stopped. Greco stood in the middle of the precinct, stock still, staring at nothing.

  “The cameras! I know what’s been bothering me. Mrs Hope said her husband had been at the house but we didn’t pick it up. He was definitely there, so we should have seen him.”

  “No. Can’t happen. We won’t have missed him. The cameras pick up everything. We get an email when they’re triggered, and anyway George monitors the images from that house constantly. She has a window open in the corner of her desktop.”

  Greco’s stomach was churning. Their killer knew about the surveillance. Who had Greco told?

  “He’s done something. He’s fixed the cameras so he can come and go without us knowing.”

  “What are you saying, sir? No one knows about the cameras except us.”

  “That’s not strictly true. Mr and Mrs Hope know. So does the estate agent — and Laycock.”

  “Laycock?”

  “He was on the street when they were being fitted. He guessed what was going on.”

  “Any one of them could have told the wrong person. We need to get down there. I’ll call Speedy and get him to meet us with the keys,” Grace said.

  They drove in silence. If Suzy was being kept there, what were her chances? Given what had happened to the others, they weren’t good.

  “Speedy won’t be long,” Grace said. “He says not to do anything until he gets there.”

  Greco hardly heard her. He couldn’t possibly wait. As they pulled into Percival Street he jumped out of the car and went straight to the house. “This door is heavy, made of oak. There’s no way I can break in through this.”

  “There’s no need to break in at all. The keys will be here any minute,” said Grace.

  Ignoring her, he checked the window. The curtains were shut tight. But the window was single glazed and large enough for him to get through. He looked around the small front garden for something he could use. He picked a large ornamental stone and hurled it at the glass.

  Glass flew everywhere. Using another stone, Greco tapped out the shards left behind.

  “If you must do this, use your jacket. Put it over the bottom edge before you climb inside,” said Grace.

  “Sir!” A voice called out behind them. “Don’t! Let me go in first.”

  It was Speedy.

  “You don’t know what you’re going to find in there,” he said. “Better I go in first.”

  “He’s right, sir.” Grace grabbed Greco’s arm. “Do you have the keys, Speedy?”

  He shook his head. “Craig gave them back to the agents. Give me a few minutes. I’ll get in there and see what’s been going on.”

  They watched anxiously as Speedy eased his long legs through the smashed window.

  Chapter 21

  She was still, hanging limp from a beam. Her eyes were shut, her body cold. Speedy put his fingers on her wrist for a second time. He still couldn’t feel a pulse. He was struggling to take in what he was looking at. Suzy Greco was trussed naked to a beam in the same manner as the other two. He didn’t want to look too closely. He was terrified of finding out what had been done to her.

  “Get an ambulance!” he shouted. “Tell them to make it quick.”

  He looked around. There was an old sofa with a knitted woollen throw over the back. He snatched it up and put it gently around Suzy Greco.

  He heard banging on the door. He’d have to let them in.

  “She’s here, sir.”

  Greco rushed past him, pushing Speedy aside.

  “I don’t
even know if she’s still alive,” Speedy whispered to Grace. “I can’t feel a pulse and she’s stone cold.”

  “It’ll finish him if she’s . . . you know . . .” Grace said.

  Greco gave a strangled cry.

  “She is tied up like the others. Do we take her down, or what? If she’s dead, we should leave her and call the Duggan.” Speedy glanced towards the room. He didn’t want to go back in there.

  “Speedy, you’ll have to call it. This has to be your shout now.”

  Grace took a deep breath and went to Greco. He had taken Suzy down and was cradling her in his arms. He was muttering, his lips brushing her face.

  “I can hear the ambulance siren, sir,” Speedy said from the doorway.

  “He’s hurt her.” Greco told Grace. His voice broke.

  “She hasn’t been burned, though. He must have intended to come back,” said Grace.

  “She has burns on her back. There are several small puncture wounds there.”

  Grace winced.

  Speedy met the paramedics outside and ushered them in. The poor woman had suffered. But the injuries were not consistent with what had been done to Jessie and Jenna. They had been taken, tortured and killed in one night. This wasn’t the killer’s usual MO. So what had happened to make him change?

  “We’ll take her now,” a paramedic said to Greco.

  Speedy tapped him on the shoulder. “Let them help her, sir.”

  The medics got to work. Seconds ticked by.

  “There is a faint heartbeat,” one of them said finally.

  Greco took a deep breath and stood back. Speedy could see that he was shaking. “You go to the hospital with her. I’ll contact the Duggan.” He already had his mobile in his hand. “I’ll get forensics down here. We might be in with a chance. I don’t think he’d finished.”

  “Because she isn’t dead?” Greco spat out the words. “Because she wasn’t hanging there with her heart burned out?”

  “No . . . well . . . it’s obvious. She’s not been left like the others,” Speedy said. “So he was coming back. It means he’s not cleaned up yet.”

  Greco looked dazed, like he couldn’t understand what Speedy was saying. He went outside and climbed into the ambulance after Suzy.

  Speedy turned to face Grace. She was weeping. He grabbed hold of her arms. “I know this is bad. I know you want to help him, but you can’t. The best thing we can both do for the boss now is to find this bastard, and put him away where he belongs.”

  Grace nodded and wiped her face.

  “Good lass. It’s no good getting all emotional. We need to do this right. We can’t afford to miss anything.”

  “He did something to those cameras. We’ve seen none of this back at the station. So much for technology!” Grace said. She stood on a chair and looked at the camera in the sitting room. “The smart bastard had it pointing to a photo of this room. Look, Speedy. He’s changed the angle and stuck the image a couple of inches away on a bracket. We were never going to see anything else.”

  “Very crafty.”

  “Damn clever if you ask me.”

  “What about the others?”

  “The one outside failed or was deliberately tampered with. The one in the hall has been moved. It’s now too high up. It could easily be avoided if you knew it was there.”

  “And we never noticed.”

  “We wouldn’t, would we? All we can see is the top of the door and part of the hallway.”

  Grace snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves and gently removed the photo. She touched only the corner to preserve any prints or evidence on it.

  “You knew, didn’t you? About his wife?” Speedy said.

  “Ex-wife. And yes, he told me.”

  “How long has she been missing?”

  “The morning after you dealt with that body in the park. She was having an affair. He saw her with the bloke that afternoon. They were kissing by the boating pool.”

  “That’s why he went all weird on me.”

  “He got some CCTV from the college. It showed her getting into the Focus. That was when he knew.”

  “We’ve still got Dakin in custody,” Speedy said. Could that be the reason the killer hadn’t come back?

  “Dakin didn’t do this. Suzy Greco would never go for a man like that. He’s too young and too stupid. Dakin was being manipulated. We just need to find out who was pulling the strings.”

  * * *

  “Speedy!” Craig greeted him as he and Grace walked into the main office. “Doctor Atkins from the Duggan has been on. She wanted Greco but you’ll have to do.”

  “I’ll ring her back. Anything exciting?”

  “She didn’t say. Where is Greco anyway?”

  “He’s gone to the hospital with Suzy, his ex. We found her at that house on Percival Street.”

  “What was she doing there? Is she okay?” Scarlett asked.

  “No, I don’t think she is,” Grace replied, biting her lip. “She’d been taken by this monster we’re looking for. It was really awful. She was trussed to a beam like the others and he’d started to hurt her. Speedy said she was cold. I thought she’d gone, but the medics found a pulse and whisked her off.”

  “We’ll just have to get on without him. That means all of us, Grace. The best way to deal with this is to find the bastard,” Speedy said. He rang Roxy Atkins. He’d been wanting to ask her out since their first meeting, but now obviously wasn’t the time.

  “Your prisoner,” she began. “We got the blood sample but given it’s drugs we’re testing for, I came over, took another sample and ran a saliva test too — the results are in quicker. The drug your suspect’s been taking is crystal meth, probably in tablet form. There was little evidence in his blood of the anti-psychotic drug he should have been taking, so the meth was most likely substituted for his usual pills.”

  “Thanks, Roxy.”

  “Crystal meth,” he told the others. “We need to talk to that doctor from Springbank again.”

  Ignoring Speedy, Grace said, “Someone set that room up. And that someone knew about the cameras. They sabotaged them. Greco told me that, apart from us, the Hopes and the estate agent, only one other person knew about them — Oliver Laycock from the Herald.”

  “You think it’s him?” Craig asked doubtfully.

  “I don’t know. But perhaps we should find out what he was doing on the nights the girls were killed, and if he was the one seeing Suzy. We might not like him, but he is a good-looking guy and the age is right.”

  “We’ll bring him in,” Speedy said. “Craig, you can come with me. We’ll try the Herald’s offices first. Grace, would you and Scarlett speak to the doctor? Find out how crystal meth would affect someone like Dakin.”

  “I’ll have to have a cup of tea first,” Grace told Scarlett. “Seeing her like that — it really shook me up.”

  * * *

  “You are having a laugh,” Laycock bellowed at the two detectives. “If you want to speak to me it’ll have to be here. I’m a busy man. I don’t have time to waste in your poxy station.”

  “You don’t have much choice, Mr Laycock. If you don’t come willingly, I’ll arrest you,” said Speedy.

  “This is a load of rubbish. I’m a reporter, not a criminal — despite the rumours. I know your boss doesn’t like me. If this turns out to be a waste of time, I’ll make mincemeat of the lot of you. You’re already a hot topic in my column.”

  They drove in silence back to the station. The reporter was left to wait in an interview room.

  “Do we have any background on him?” Speedy asked.

  George tapped away on her computer. “There’s very little. He’s married — no children. And he’s a member of Leesworth golf club.”

  “C’mon, Craig, let’s get this done with.” They went into the interview room.

  “Right, Laycock. I want you to get your thinking cap on. I want a full rundown of your whereabouts from last weekend onwards.”

  “That’s a lot of
time, Sergeant.” Laycock looked at his mobile. “Last weekend, nothing. Worked every day until about six. I had a drink and a meal with your boss in the Crown a couple of nights ago.” He smiled smugly at them. “Apart from that — more nothing.”

  “Can anyone vouch for all this nothing you do?”

  “Why? Is it important? What do you think I’ve done?”

  “Do you know either of these young women?” Speedy put the photos of Jessie and Jenna in front of him.

  “Yes, I know her.” He pointed to the one of Jessie. “She used to work in the Crown until she was murdered.” He stared at the detectives, his eyes jumping from one to the other. “You think I know something?”

  “Do you?”

  “No. Last time I looked, that was your job.”

  “You still haven’t told us what you were doing, Mr Laycock,” Craig said.

  “I’d prefer not to.”

  “That could give you a problem.” Speedy looked at Craig and they both nodded.

  “No. It gives you a problem. I haven’t done anything. You are wasting your time. Time that would be better spent catching the real murderer.”

  “Make yourself comfortable. Until I get a proper answer, you’ll be staying here.”

  Speedy got to his feet and gathered up the papers from the desk.

  “Okay. I was at home. When I’m not working, I’m always at home.”

  Speedy sat down again. “Go on. Tell us more.”

  Laycock was silent. Speedy’s fingers drummed on the desktop.

  “My wife has MS. After six I’m her main carer. Same at weekends. She’s looked after during the day while I’m at work, but the rest is down to me.”

  “And someone will vouch for that?”

  “The nurses who attend, the carers — an entire army of people, Sergeant,” he said. He sounded resigned.

  “I’ll check it out.”

  “You’ll need this.” He wrote down a phone number on Speedy’s notepad. “That’s our GP. Ring him. I’ll give him the nod and he’ll give you any further information you need.”