by Steven Dunne
Copyright © 2016 Steven Dunne
The right of Steven Dunne to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook in Great Britain
by Headline Publishing Group in 2016
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
Cover photographs © Mark Owen/Trevillion Images (man), MediaWorldImages/Alamy Stock Photo and Shutterstock (background)
Ebook conversion by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire
eISBN: 978 1 4722 1496 6
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette UK Company
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50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.headline.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About Steven Dunne
Praise
Also by Steven Dunne
About the Book
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
About Steven Dunne
STEVEN DUNNE was born in Bradford, Yorkshire but moved to London after attending Kent University and St Mary’s College in Twickenham. He became a freelance journalist writing for The Times and the Independent and, after co-writing a comedy pilot, wrote the book for The Latchmere Theatre’s award-winning pantomime Hansel and Gretel.
Since moving to Derby he has written six highly acclaimed thrillers, including THE UNQUIET GRAVE, DEITY and A KILLING MOON, all featuring DI Damen Brook of Derby CID.
Praise
‘A well-paced, dark thriller from an author who’s clearly going places’ Irish Independent
‘Brook is one of the most memorable characters in recent British crime fiction’ Stephen Booth
‘A truly pulsating story which will leave readers breathless’ Lancashire Evening Post
‘Well written and superbly plotted’ Closer
‘I was left reeling with shock’ victorialovesbooks.wordpress.com
‘Truly brilliant’ lizlovesbooks.com
‘Deeply unsettling and totally engrossing’ loiteringwithintent.wordpress.com
By Steven Dunne
The Reaper
The Disciple
Deity
The Unquiet Grave
A Killing Moon
Death Do Us Part
www.stevendunne.co.uk
About the Book
Even death cannot part these couples …
DI Damen Brook is on a rare period of leave and determined to make the most of it by reconnecting with his daughter Terri. But with her heavy drinking proving a challenge, Brook takes the opportunity to visit a local murder scene when his help is requested.
An elderly couple have each been executed with a single shot to the heart and the method echoes that of a middle-aged gay couple killed the previous month.
With the same killer suspected and the officer currently in charge nearing retirement, Brook knows that he has little choice but to cut short his leave when forced by his superiors to take the lead on the case.
Brook believes that he can catch this ruthless killer, but already distracted by Terri’s problems, is he about to make a fatal mistake and lead the killer right to his own door?
For Keith and Christine
Acknowledgements
Love and thanks to my wife Carmel for her support and encouragement. To Jeff Fountain for his editorial comments that are always to the point and insightful. Also to Keith Perch for his help with my website.
My vast team at Headline whose skills have contributed so much to the DI Brook series, chiefly my indispensable editor Vicki Mellor and publicity maestro Elizabeth Masters.
A special mention for my guides through the ins and outs of British policing. Thank you Steven Matthewman, Myles Lound and Joseph McDonald for your invaluable advice on various aspects of procedure.
Thanks to my agent, David Grossman, for continuing to believe in me and using his expertise to promote the series around the world.
A warm embrace for my favourite book chain, Waterstones, for the passionate and knowledgeable staff who have welcomed me so often through their doors to peddle my wares. A special mention for the hardworking staff in my local stores in Derby, Burton-on-Trent, Loughborough, Chesterfield and Nottingham, especially Dan Donson, Glenys Cooper, Matthew Brigg and Dawn Godfrey Jones, to name just a few of the friendly faces who’ve helped me to reach fans of the series in the East Midlands.
Finally a massive thank you to Tracy Fenton at The Book Club (TBC) for championing my work and introducing DI Brook to a whole new audience of enthusiastic fans at TBC. Special mention must go to super fans Sharon Bairden, Helen Boyce, Timea Cassara, Lynda Deutrom, Alexina Golding, Amanda Oughton, Susan Hunter. I wish I could list you all but you know who you are.
And finally, hello to Jason Isaacs.
One
October
Reardon Thorogood gripped the door handle and tried to turn it, but her palm slipped on the
cold metal. She stared at the blood on her trembling fingers, unable to remember what it was, who it belonged to, how it had got there. Instinctively she went to wipe the sticky mess on her clothes, but remembered she wasn’t wearing any.
‘It’s okay. It’s okay,’ she panted, trying to accept the lie. ‘You’re alive. You’re alive.’ Her eyes flicked round the room, sliding past the bleeding carcass lying half on, half off the bed, knees on the floor, naked to the ankles, his jeans bunched and crumpled like a concertina. His face was to one side, eyes glazed and open.
She ran to pick up her mobile, lying broken apart on the floor, and tried to piece it together, but it wouldn’t respond after its violent collision with the wall.
Closing her eyes, she sucked in a deep, calming breath before stepping over JJ’s long legs and padding into the bathroom to run cold water over her hands. She dried herself on a damp bath towel, blood smears staining the pale yellow cotton. Her blood or JJ’s? She couldn’t be sure.
Catching sight of her battered face in the mirror, she recoiled in horror at the stranger staring back. Her mouth was bloodied and swollen, he
r nose leaking a mixture of snot and blood, her left eye bruised and beginning to close. Wet hair trailed across her shoulders, mopping up some of the arterial blood spatter from JJ’s neck. Using the bloodied towel, she wiped more splashes of red from the top of her breasts and shoulders before dropping it into the bath, the draught causing some of the tea lights burning around the porcelain ledge to gutter.
Unable to look at her disfigured face, she moved across to the wardrobe to find clothes. She yanked at the doors, but they wouldn’t budge with JJ’s massive feet blocking them. She stooped to move them but withdrew her hand, reluctant to touch his still-warm body, momentarily transfixed by the trickle of blood that had rolled down his muscular thigh to collect in the well at the back of his knee. His shocked face glared at her, the frozen expression still trying to make sense of the sharp pain in his neck as the knife was drawn across his throat.
‘What the fuck, JJ!’ she mumbled, feebly kicking his thigh, remembering the blows inflicted on her by the ex-boyfriend from her school years, long since discarded in her teens.
With a clench of fists to dispel the shaking in her hands, she composed herself. Luke Coulson was still out there roaming the house. Another old schoolmate, though him she barely knew. Luke had been the quiet one, awkward even – nobody invited him to parties or pubs as teenagers dipped toes into adulthood.
Her brother Ray knew him better, had kicked around with both Luke and JJ all through primary school and beyond.
How long ago? Seventeen years since that first day of primary school. She remembered it like yesterday.
Ray, a year older, had been ordered to walk his sister to her first day. He was annoyed at Mum and Dad for weeks after, and she remembered how he chivvied her along the country lanes, impatient to be there so he could cut the umbilical and play football with his mates.
JJ had been in her form, though, had marched in that first day like he owned the place, the only new kid not cowed with fear on that first step towards distant maturity. Even at five years old, JJ wasn’t scared of the teachers, with their big rooms and bigger voices.
Reardon stared at his lifeless corpse, baffled that she could ever have imagined herself in love with him. It hadn’t ended well.
JJ had started drinking in local pubs at fifteen, where he’d found his one true love. Alcohol. From that time onwards he was regularly drunk, and when JJ drank, he resorted to his fists. With his height and power, plenty of people had felt the weight of his destructive anger. And though he had never actually hit her during their courtship, there was the occasional push and shove. Towards the end his manner was rarely less than aggressive, and the one time he’d threatened to slap her was all the reason she’d needed to dump her ‘bit of rough’.
By the time the police got to know him, his life was already turning sour, leaving school at sixteen with no qualifications and few prospects. Reardon had stayed on for A levels followed by university, and as their paths diverged, they lost touch with each other.
Ray had kept tabs on him, though, and it was no surprise when he reported that JJ had slipped seamlessly into a life of petty crime, picking up a two-year sentence for burglary and assault when he was eighteen.
She closed her eyes to the gore but opened them immediately. Concentrate. Luke was still out there – and he had a knife.
You have to leave. Looking around, she discounted the clothes she’d been wearing when JJ had burst into her bedroom – the T-shirt and skimpy shorts lay in tatters on the floor, torn to shreds in his powerful hands.
Instead, she picked up JJ’s sweatshirt, discarded gleefully not ten minutes ago, and pulled it over her head. It reeked of his body odour and she had a flashback to him grinding his teeth as he struggled to pacify her, his breath reeking of cheap brandy and cigarettes, his underarms damp and pungent.
She found sensible cotton knickers in a drawer and stepped into them, being careful not to overbalance, then pulled them delicately over her thighs.
Padding barefoot to the door, she opened it and moved warily into the corridor, closing the bedroom door behind her. She crept along on the thick wool carpet towards the kitchen, placing her bare feet carefully to avoid the trail of bloody footprints coming in the opposite direction, trying to tamp down visions about their source. Everything felt so unreal, so incongruous in the deep quiet of a Monday lunchtime in the Derbyshire countryside.
As she moved, she barely noticed the sonorous tick of the grandfather clock in the entrance hall until it struck twelve thirty and she leapt out of her skin, pushing herself back against the wall to regain her breath.
Twelve thirty? Is that all? Hard to believe JJ had burst into her room only twenty minutes before – a lifetime seemed to have passed since then.
She glanced up at the security camera at the end of the hall. The ever-present red dot was gone, the camera switched off. At that same moment, she saw the door on her right and tried the handle. It opened, so she bolted inside, closing the door behind her then flicking on the light in the tiny, windowless cupboard of a space, an ideal location for the farm’s security control room.
It was Ray who’d insisted his parents put in cameras after several outhouses had been broken into. In fact he had personally overseen their installation. But now the bank of closed-circuit monitors was dark. Reardon sat at the console and examined the controls. The system’s master switch had been turned to ‘Off’, so she pushed it back up and pressed the reboot button. The drone of waking machinery was immediate.
‘Come on, come on.’ She looked anxiously behind her, waiting for the monitors to spring to life, expecting Luke to rush in at any moment and investigate what seemed to her a deafening noise. Finally the monitors flickered into life and she clicked urgently at the control button, maximising the camera feed throughout the one-storey house, room by room. Living room, sitting and dining rooms, corridors leading to the other bedrooms of the sprawling bungalow. There was no sign of life. ‘Where are you?’
Finally she loaded the kitchen camera and for a second was forced to turn her head away. She looked again at the grainy image of her father lying draped over her mother’s contorted body, dark stains covering his neck and back. Both appeared lifeless.
Panting, she scrolled through the other cameras again but found no sign of the prowling Luke. She checked the front and back doors, which seemed clear, the drive too. Ray’s silver Porsche wasn’t there. Only her father’s Range Rover stood on the gravel.
She turned off the security suite light before opening the door, putting her eye to the crack. The hall was still clear, so she skittered to the front entrance, looking all about her, senses supercharged.
She glanced up at the entrance camera, red light now winking at her. ‘Ray?’ she mimed softly towards the lens as though he might see her. ‘Where are you?’ Torn between flight and fright, she opened the heavy front door, allowing the sharp autumn air to sweep in from the grounds, damp and soothing. A couple of large leaves tumbled on to the welcome mat, sucked in by the draught.
With a deep breath, Reardon stepped barefoot across the threshold on to the chilled stone flags beyond. On the point of fleeing, her eye alighted on the closed kitchen doors. She hesitated.
What if Mum and Dad are alive? She couldn’t just leave. Not without knowing. She took a moment to gather her nerve and approached the ranch-style double doors. After pressing an ear to the lacquered wood, she turned the handle and stepped inside.
Unlike the black-and-white world of the security monitor, the tableau that greeted her literally dripped with colour. The floor was awash with blood, some pooling beneath her parents’ heads, some smeared into a slithering pattern where her father had crawled across the terracotta tiles to reach his dying wife. His arms enfolded her and his head sagged next to hers, their cheeks touching.
Reardon closed her eyes, forcing out a tear, which rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away and inched closer. To her bare feet, the floor seemed hot to the touch, and the bloody footprints of killer an
d victims were already drying to a stain.
Reardon spied her mother’s orange Crocs at the edge of the scarlet pool, so she slipped them on to her feet and crept towards her parents through the coagulating blood. She knelt in the warm, sticky liquid, holding the back of her hand to her mouth, the smell of death, feisty and invasive, assaulting her nostrils.
She pressed fingers against her father’s wrist then her mother’s. Neither had a pulse. She held her hand to her mum’s mouth and nose but could feel no breath, then withdrew it when she noticed it trembling.
Finally she knelt by her father, leaning in to listen for sounds of breathing. Her long hair trailed in the blood. No sign of life. Her parents were dead.
She leaned back on her haunches, kissed her fingers and pressed them to both her parents’ lips in turn. Her eye was caught by the phone on the wall, and she rose to her feet to hold the receiver against her ear, leaning an arm against the adjacent thermostat to support her bruised forehead, seemingly on the point of collapse. The landline was as dead as her parents.
Blindly she pushed the bloodied handset in the vague direction of the cradle. She missed and tried again. Again she missed and the receiver fell to earth, the cord dangling in space, twisting and jerking like a bungee jumper. Now she covered her face with both hands, her shoulders shuddering with emotion, slumping against the wall in an effort to hold herself upright.
Turning, she spotted her mother’s handbag on the kitchen table and hurried over to it, emptying the contents on to the pitted wooden surface. She scoured the debris and plucked the elderly mobile from among the junk her mum habitually kept in her bag – mints, empty lipsticks, cheap mascara and eyeliner. Her thumb trembled as she pushed at the buttons.