by Mike Craven
Caffeine Nights Publishing
Born in a Burial Gown
Mike Craven
Fiction aimed at the heart and the head...
Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing 2015
Copyright byMike Craven 2015
Mike Craven has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work
CONDITIONS OF SALE
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher
This book has been sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental
Published in Great Britain by
Caffeine Nights Publishing
4 Eton Close
Walderslade
Chatham
Kent
ME5 9AT
www.caffeine-nights.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-910720-01-1
Cover design by
Mark (Wills) Williams
Everything else by
Default, Luck and Accident
As always, this book is dedicated to my wife, Joanne and my late mother, Susan Avison Craven. Without either, this wouldn't exist.
Also by Mike Craven
Assume Nothing, Believe Nobody, Challenge Everything
Paperback & eBook
Acknowledgements
Like any published book, the author is just one member of a team. I’d therefore like to thank Morgen Bailey for her invaluable input early on in the process (her explanation of why I should be using the word ‘began' rather than ‘started’ continue to haunt me...), my editor, Emma who polished the novel beyond recognition and my friend, and fellow author, Graham Smith, for all his support and for convincing me to attend the marvellous Crime and Publishment event in 2014. Last but never least, I’d like to take the time to thank Darren Laws of Caffeine Nights Publishing who spotted something worth pursuing in the rough manuscript I sent him a year ago.
Mike Craven 2015
Chapter 1
It started as it always did, with a breeder. A married man with a burning need he couldn’t sate at home. A married man wanting something discreet, something the boy had, and was willing to sell. He’d met him in the toilets of a club in Whitehaven. Nervous at first, the man had quickly gained his confidence and let out a stifled yell as he finished. After the money had exchanged hands, he’d made the boy a proposition. In no position to negotiate, the arrangements were made quickly.
Each transaction the boy made carried a risk, he knew that. He was in the highest risk group of what was statistically the most dangerous profession in the world but sometimes there were no more choices left to make. Some breeders paid extra to bareback, increasing the risk of disease tenfold. Others hated what they’d just done and became violent. For some, violence was part of what they wanted, what they enjoyed, as if paying for sex gave them unlimited rights over someone else. The boy’s profession attracted a disproportionate amount of sadists. It wasn’t just the breeders he feared. Roaming gangs of youths, eager to find someone with no social value to vent their frustrations on, were a constant threat. Even the police had been known to stick the boot in. Sometimes after enjoying the boy’s companionship.
Occasionally the violence went further than a beating. Sometimes men killed to keep their secrets. He’d known four others like him who’d died before they’d reached thirty. One had been murdered, two had died from complications after being assaulted and the fourth had simply given up and hanged himself. It was a fool who thought he could beat the odds forever, and the boy was no fool. How would his time come? At the hands of a breeder or in a hospital bed, wasting away? He thought about his own mortality often.
But he wasn’t thinking about it that night.
This breeder had been different. He was kind. He’d found the boy somewhere to sleep. So that night he was warm, he was safe, and had something to look forward to. Earlier, he’d played the game and won. Now he could enjoy the spoils.
That night he wasn’t thinking about death.
Perhaps he should have been.
Kicked out of the family home at the age of eleven when his stepfather had made his mother choose between them, the boy had spent sporadic years in various children’s homes before finally being abandoned by everyone.
A friend, and despite what had happened to him since, he still thought of him as a friend, had lured him into the trade with promises of more money than he’d ever seen before.
For the first few years, his friend had been right.
He often thought of what he called his “golden age”, when the heightened value of youth meant he was in demand. He could charge what he wanted, choose whom he wanted, and always had cash in his pocket. He’d thought he was happy then. But boys in his line of work reach a sell-by date. It was a gradual decline. Previously loyal customers moved to younger, fresher products. His value decreased at the same rate as his age and before long, he was struggling to survive. Without the USP of youth, he had no choice but to drop his prices. Ten years ago a breeder would have happily paid two hundred pounds for an hour of his time. Soon he was struggling to get twenty pounds for what were becoming increasingly extreme acts.
And like countless boys before him, he tried to blot out the violence and depravity meted out to him by taking heroin. As his drug use spiralled out of control, his appearance deteriorated and his value plummeted until he was reduced to selling blowjobs in dank pub toilets for a fiver a time. Unable to afford essentials like rent or food, he became a street creature; homeless, and penniless, surviving anyway he could. In the previous year, he’d been strangled to unconsciousness twice, raped four times and beaten more times than he could count.
But two weeks ago, he’d had a break. A breeder he’d been with had offered him a place to stay during the night. Free of charge. The only cost was repaying the favour every morning. A favour for a favour. Somewhere warm and safe in exchange for something he’d done a thousand times before. The boy had accepted happily. He was still there. Sleeping safely at night, repaying the favour first thing when the breeder arrived. The boy had to leave after the act was over, forced to stay away during the day until the place was empty and he could let himself in again. A daily routine he and the breeder were happy with.
Earlier that day, he’d scored another job and surprisingly, the man paid more money than normal. He supposed he was new to the game and didn’t know what was a fair price. With cash in his hand and somewhere free to stay, the boy bought the only thing he ever wanted: heroin.
He took the key the breeder had given him and let himself in.
Experience had taught him that carrying as little paraphernalia as possible was preferable to carrying dirty kit with trace residue. Residue was enough to get you locked up on a possession charge, and while brushes with the law were an occupational hazard in his line of work, he never took risks he didn’t need to. A new syringe, citric powder and sterile water, all provided free by the NHS, and an empty can of Coke were all he carried. Nothing he could be arrested for. Dirty spoons, covered in heroin r
esidue, were for beginners.
Bending the can until it was thin enough to tear in half, he used the concave base as a dish to mix the citric, water and heroin. With his only real possession, a Zippo, he heated it until the solution bubbled and darkened.
The real amber nectar.
Liquid sunshine.
Trembling with anticipation, he drew the brown solution through a cigarette filter into the syringe. Carefully setting it to one side, he removed his trousers.
A nurse had once described him as the most unsophisticated injector she’d ever seen and it had been a long time since his abscess-strewn arms and legs had offered up viable veins. He had to inject into his foot and he didn’t need experts to tell him it was one of the most sensitive parts of the body. Flinching at the excruciating pain, he persevered and pushed the needle between his toes. He found a vein and pressed the plunger. The pain was replaced instantly by the rush.
This was what he did it for. The perfect moment when he was in his bubble, when nothing mattered but the high, when his ruined life made some sort of sense. That was what the nurses, outreach workers and probation officers would never understand. Why he would never, could never, quit. He didn’t want to. For a brief moment in time, he could forget who he was. Why would he not want that? The initial rush was replaced by the familiar warmth and well-being that spread throughout his whole body. At peace, he settled down on the carpet to enjoy it for as long as he could. Eventually, his breathing steadied and slowed. He slept.
A noise woke him. For a second, he thought he’d overslept and panic set in. He didn’t want to upset his breeder. He was supposed to be ready and waiting, with brushed teeth and combed hair. Sitting up, he realised he was wrong. It was still dark outside. He didn’t have a watch but instinctively knew it could only be a couple of hours past midnight. Carefully, he peered out of the window to see what had woken him.
A dark vehicle was parked twenty yards from the building. The headlights were off but he could hear the engine was still running. The internal lights didn’t come on when the driver’s door opened but there was enough light coming from the nearby hospital for him to see a man in silhouette get out and stretch. The boy moved closer to the window to get a better look. It had been the first time anyone had ever been there after dark.
The man walked away from the building, switching on a torch to navigate the darkness. For thirty yards he walked, casting his torch left and right as he searched for something. Whatever it was he was looking for, he found it. The torch stopped moving and pointed downwards instead. Apparently satisfied, he turned round walked back towards his car. A sixth sense, developed over years of avoiding violent punters, told the boy something was wrong and his curiosity turned to apprehension. The man walked to the back of the car, looked around carefully and opened the boot. The boy shrank back into the darkness of his room. He instinctively knew nothing good would come from the man seeing him. Apparently satisfied he was alone, the man reached into the boot and dragged out something large and heavy. Despite being twenty yards away, the boy heard a sickening thud as it fell to the floor.
It could only be only one thing, and as the boy gasped in recognition, his apprehension turned to abject terror.
That night, he hadn’t been thinking about death.
Chapter 2
Detective Inspector Avison Fluke stared at the dripping blood without making a sound. It was crimson, almost black, in the subdued lighting, and he watched as each drop grew until it could no longer resist the pull of gravity, and fell, only for the process to start all over again.
The drips were slowing, an indication it would soon be over. Until the next time.
Fluke hadn’t used his bed in nearly a year, preferring an armchair as he waited for exhaustion to give him the temporary release of sleep. He was still tired and the metronomic drip of the blood helped him achieve an almost Zen-like state. He looked at his watch and realised that he’d lost nearly an hour. He felt oddly refreshed at the thought of that. An hour was more than he’d managed at home the previous night.
His peace was interrupted when his mobile phone rang. A nurse at the other end of the cramped ward gave him a dirty look. Fluke mouthed ‘sorry’.
‘Bollocks,’ he said, as he looked at the caller ID. Detective Superintendent Cameron Chambers. Fluke had hoped to be left alone that morning. He stared at the phone before deciding to answer it.
Chambers didn’t wait to be acknowledged. ‘Fluke, where are you?’ He was the type of man who thought he was plain-spoken when in fact he was just rude.
‘Home,’ he replied, his voice raw. He’d smoked far too many cigars the previous night. Brooding and smoking. A bad combination.
‘Home? What the hell are you still doing at home? It’s nine o’clock, man.’
Fluke didn’t answer and there was an uncomfortable pause, one he knew Chambers would fill.
‘Yes, well. I need you in West Cumbria. There’s a dead woman waiting there for you. I’m still on this armed robbery and will be all week, so it’s your case.’
Fluke had seen the bank depot robbery update on the news the previous night and watched his boss being interviewed. There was no way Chambers was giving up the limelight. He had ambitions to be chief constable and a high-profile case like that was a wet dream for him. In his mind, he was earmarked for great things. In everyone else’s, he was an isolated careerist. Everything he did irritated Fluke. They were going to come to blows before long.
‘Who can I have?’ Fluke asked. Most of the Force Major Incident Team were still on the robbery but he’d need help. He also knew that Chambers equated a big team with importance so would want to keep everyone he could. The bigger the case the bigger the team.
‘You can have Sergeant Towler, DC Vaughn and DC Skelton. Can’t let you have anyone else. The robbery’s at a crucial stage. Get local help if you need more. Towler’s already on scene. Get the details from him.’
Towler, that was expected. The only person people liked working less with than Towler was himself. Towler was too unpredictable, too violent. Jo Skelton, as a middle-aged mother of two, didn’t conform to Chambers’s vision of a young dynamic detective and Vaughn was plain weird with his whole ‘I don’t like to be touched’ thing. With Fluke, the four of them represented FMIT’s untouchables. They occasionally referred to themselves as the outcasts and preferred working independently from the main team when they could. Sometimes managing them was like herding cats but Fluke wouldn’t have swapped any of them. What Chambers, that colossal moron, failed to see was that they were all brilliant detectives. Like him, they preferred to put orders through a filter of common sense first but they got the job done. They’d have been an asset to his precious robbery case if he hadn’t been more concerned with how the team looked on TV rather than how they performed.
Fluke was distracted by someone pausing then looking in as they walked past the open-style ward. Whoever it was, he got the impression they’d recognised him. Before he could turn and look properly, they’d disappeared. Probably a gawper. Embarrassed to be caught looking. People often didn’t know how to act round certain wards.
‘And Fluke?’ Chambers asked, interrupting Fluke’s train of thought.
‘Sir?’
‘Don’t milk it. If it’s a straightforward domestic, find out who the dead woman is and arrest the husband.’
Fluke jabbed the end call button. ‘Arsehole,’ he said. It was strange though, what did Chambers know that he didn’t? If it were straightforward, there was no way Chambers wouldn’t have led on it, taking a day away from the robbery to solve a murder would, in his mind, only enhance his reputation. If he didn’t want it, there was something wrong.
Fluke scrolled down his recent contacts and rang Matt Towler. He answered on the first ring.
‘Ave, we’ve got a body, a woman. I’ve shut down the scene until you get here.’
‘Where?’ Fluke asked.
‘The new hospital in the west, part of the ground they�
�re still developing. She was under some mud in a foundation hole. The foreman found her at eight this morning.’
That almost certainly ruled out a natural death or a suicide. Dead people didn’t bury themselves. A concealed corpse normally meant a homicide. Murder or manslaughter. He knew that, statistically, the street was the most dangerous place for men and the home was the most dangerous place for women. As unpleasant as he was, Chambers was right; when a woman was killed, her partner or ex-partner was usually the culprit. Most of the time for the police, it was a whydunit rather than a whodunit. Few perpetrators of domestic homicides are forensically aware. There were always breadcrumbs to follow when crimes were committed in anger, jealousy or passion. The weapons used were chosen for expediency rather than efficiency and their murders were normally solved within twenty-four hours.
‘What do we know so far?’ Fluke asked.
‘Nothing really. Probably a relationship gone bad. Maybe premeditated,’ Towler said. ‘She was in a golf travel bag. It’s a deposition site, not the murder site.’
‘Shit!’ So that was why Chambers didn’t want anything to do with it. If it was premeditated, it could take time to get to the bottom of it, time away from the robbery, and more importantly, time away from the TV cameras. Anything longer than a day and he risked handing the limelight over to someone else.
By making Fluke the senior investigating officer, Chambers could sit back and poke holes in his efforts. If Fluke charged someone it would be because Chambers had delegated correctly and if he didn’t, then he’d have someone to blame. He’d either take the glory or distance himself from a badly run investigation. A win-win for Chambers and a lose-lose for Fluke.