Taunting the Dead (DS Allie Shenton)

by Sherratt, Mel

  A light knock on the door and Kirstie came in with a mug of coffee. ‘Thought you might like this, Dad.’ She smiled. ‘You’ve been working in here for ages.’

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart, I have to go out.’ Terry stood up. ‘Where did you get to last night?’

  ‘I stopped over at Ashleigh’s.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  ‘Yes, we had a few drinks in Stoke and then got a takeaway.’

  Kirstie’s smile was a bit too confident for his liking. Did she think he was born yesterday? She was a good-looking young woman in her prime, and Terry knew it would prove tough to keep Kirstie away from scrotes like Lee Kennedy, whom he’d seen her with a couple of weeks ago. Despite working for him, Terry couldn’t stand the lad and had only taken him on because his father, Phil, had said he’d keep him in line. Lee Kennedy was eighteen, a cocky little bastard and a no-good layabout who would amount to nothing. Besides, no matter how much Kirstie liked him, there was no way Terry was going to let his daughter get involved with the nephew of one of his rivals.

  Terry continued to stare, long enough to watch his daughter blush. Luckily for Kirstie Ryder, he had other things on his mind.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The sound of Terry slamming the front door woke Steph up. She listened to him racing off in his car, wincing at the sound. Lord knows what the neighbours would think. There might only be ten houses in their exclusive avenue, allowing far more privacy than when they lived back on the estate, but she knew the curtains would still be twitching.

  Lying in the foetal position, she pulled her knees up further to her chest. Now that she was awake again, more of last night started to come back to her. She remembered being in the car park at The Potter’s Wheel. She remembered cuddling up to Phil to keep warm before getting into his car for a lift home.

  Actually what she remembered was pressing herself up to him and shoving her tongue down his throat. Christ, how stupid they’d been. She prayed no one had seen them together. After all, Tracy Smithson had gone home early when her husband picked her up at eleven thirty and she knew better than to shout her mouth off anyway. Like the drunken fool that she was, Steph had stayed there rather than have a lift home. She’d sat with the regulars for a while until she’d sauntered over to Phil, acting all casual as if they were catching up on chat. But it only took one nosy git to spill and she would be for it. She had to get a grip on things.

  She tried to focus on the bedroom. When they’d moved in, she hadn’t wanted to change a single thing. But when the recent fashion emerged for bold, flowery patterns, she’d hired an interior designer and created a room to die for: pale green walls covered in large floral patterns, a vivid green rug at the side of the bed that matched the petals of the flower in the paper precisely. In their previous home, there hadn’t been room for anything other than a bed and a small flat-pack wardrobe. In this room, she often did aerobics in front of the gigantic wide-screen television mounted on the wall. And that was just the bedroom – off that was an ensuite bathroom that was bigger than her previous living room. It was pure luxury.

  Her eyes filled with tears. She’d been living in her dream home for ten years now, yet the minute she’d set foot in it she knew she’d ruin things eventually. Steph the fuck-up, she called herself. Having a powerful man for a husband, having money when she needed it and not having to get her arse up and out to work like most of the friends she’d lost wasn’t enough for her. If Terry found out that Phil had been here, her cosy life as she knew it would be over.

  Some mornings she hated herself so much that she couldn’t bear getting out of bed. Let’s face it, what had she? Her daughter hated her. Her husband tolerated her. She had parents and a sister living nearby whom she didn’t have contact with. She’d mouthed off at them so many times they couldn’t forgive her outbursts any more. And her friends were few and far between since they had moved there – if they had ever been her friends to begin with.

  Wearily, she pulled back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. She lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and stumbled across to the bathroom. Daring to take a look in the mirror, she gasped at her reflection. Christ, she’d need dark glasses to hide the state of her eyes today. At thirty-eight, weekly facials and monthly hair treatments went some way towards keeping age at bay but not as much as she would have liked. Her blue eyes seemed navy today, matching the dark bags underneath them. The blonde dye on her muddy brown hair made her skin tone look harsh. Still, once she had her slap on, she supposed she’d look half decent. And the cigarettes kept her thin – no appetite.

  Not bothering to shower, she wrapped herself up in a dressing gown and dragged herself downstairs to the family room. Kirstie sat at the breakfast bar, magazine in hand, cake and a mug of coffee in front of her. Steph swiped the mug from underneath her nose.

  ‘Hey!’ Kirstie protested. ‘That’s mine. Make your fucking own.’

  ‘Do another one, Kirst, for your old mum,’ Steph slurped noisily. ‘I’m parched.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you? You look like fucking death warmed up.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Steph shook her head trying to rid herself of its fuzziness. She lit another cigarette and threw the lighter onto the black granite worktop, sucking in hard and then blowing the smoke out noisily into the room. As it cleared in front of her, through the window she noticed ice still formed in patches on the lawn and the greyness of the clouds and wished she’d stayed in bed. At least the family room was tidier than she’d left it last night. It looked like she wouldn’t have to sit on the settee while Jeanie cleaned around her again.

  ‘Has he gone?’ said Kirstie.

  Steph gasped and froze. The smoke trapped inside her lungs made her cough. Through watery eyes, she looked at Kirstie for signs that she suspected something. As far as she knew she’d kept her affair close to her chest.

  ‘Has who gone?’ she asked as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

  ‘Dad. He tried to wake you up twice.’

  ‘Oh.’ Thank fuck for that. ‘Yes, I heard him screech off earlier, in a bit of a mad panic about something, no doubt. Did he say why?’

  ‘Did he say why what?’

  ‘Did he say why he tried to wake me twice?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Steph sighed with relief. It was looking like she’d got away with it. She was never going to let that happen again – ever. There was too much to lose. She took another drag of her cigarette, blowing the smoke out noisily again.

  Kirstie looked up from underneath a heavy black fringe. ‘Do you have to do that in here? It’s fucking disgusting.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Miss Holier than Thou.’ Steph took another long drag and blew the smoke in Kirstie’s direction. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t pulled it out of my mouth, the amount you steal from me.’

  Kirstie pulled a face. ‘I hope I don’t look like that when I’m smoking.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like a puckered-up old witch. You have wrinkles on your crow’s feet.’

  Steph glared at her daughter. ‘You’re such a bitch.’

  ‘Yeah, well I’m turning out to be exactly like my mother, aren’t I?’ Then, in a moment’s breath, her tone was sweetness and light. ‘Have you got twenty quid I can have? I need a sub until my allowance at the weekend.’

  ‘Not even a please?’

  ‘Don’t know the meaning of the word.’

  ‘I’m not made of money!’

  ‘You’re not made of money at all. It’s all down to my dad. Look, I –’

  ‘You should try making some of your own.’ Steph leered at her pointedly. ‘You could make a small fortune. Men would love your scrawny ass, especially in that skirt. It’s far too frigging short.’

  Kirstie stared back wide-eyed. ‘I’m no fucking slag!’ she declared.

  ‘Different to what I’ve heard.’ From the tears welling in her daughter’s eyes, Steph knew she’d
touched a nerve.

  ‘You’re such a nasty cow.’

  ‘Takes one to know one.’

  ‘And you’re an embarrassment.’ Kirstie slid down from the stool. ‘Look, can I have the money or what?’

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘Fine! I fucking hate you, do you know that? You can stick your shitting money. I don’t want it.’

  Kirstie stormed out of the room. Steph followed close on her heel and grabbed a handful of her hair before she could leg it up the stairs. She twirled her round with so much force that Kirstie landed in the middle of her chest.

  ‘You ungrateful little bitch,’ she raged. ‘Take a look around this place. Do you think you would have got this without me? Your dad didn’t do it all by himself. Do you hear? Do you fucking HEAR?’

  ‘And what part did you play in the money-making?’ Kirstie’s voice was defiant.

  ‘Haven’t you heard of the saying, “Behind every successful man, there’s a woman”?’

  Kirstie grimaced and purposely moved her head away from the stench of Steph’s ghastly beer breath.

  ‘You’d be better taking note of that, dear daughter, as you’re going to find yourself in my situation one day. Married to a man who isn’t around enough as he’s too interested in money and his fucking reputation.’

  Tears formed in Kirstie’s eyes. Steph noticed them immediately.

  ‘Don’t start your whinging. You’re big enough to dish it out. You should be big enough to take it back.’

  Kirstie shrugged her arm, trying to release Steph’s grip. But Steph’s fingers tightened further. She squeezed harder, until they were hurting, but she never lessened the pressure. Finally, she pushed Kirstie away.

  ‘Go on, get out of my sight.’

  Kirstie stumbled but managed to stay on her feet. She ran up the stairs, turning back as she got to the top. ‘I hate you, you stupid, bitch!’ She sneered. ‘I hope you rot in Hell!’

  ‘Why, you little –’

  Steph charged up the stairs after her. By the time she reached the landing, Kirstie had made it to the family bathroom. Steph heard the lock slide into place behind the door. She banged hard on it. ‘Come out here, you little bitch,’ she screeched. ‘I’ll kill you, I will. I’ll fucking kill you!’

  Moments later, breathless and hands stinging, Steph dropped to the floor in a heap. What the hell was happening to her lately? It was as if everyone she knew wanted to take advantage of her. First Phil and then Kirstie. Who’d be next, she wondered?

  She grabbed hold of her hair and bunched her hands into fists, pulling harshly. Then a noise came from deep within and she screamed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Early Monday morning Allie parked the unmarked police car, switched off the engine and stared down the bank in front of her. Georgia Road was on the outskirts of Hanley. It wasn’t a road that was frequented much after dark; it was busy during the day, though, due to the short-cut through from the estate to the city centre. To her left was the shell of unfinished flats. To her right were twenty-two houses in a row, all with identical floor plans. For anyone passing through, Georgia Road would seem to be a pleasant row of terraced houses. But anyone living in Stoke-on-Trent would be sure to know that they were owned by local property developer Terry Ryder and known locally as Ryder’s Row.

  There were frequent shout-outs to Georgia Road. Domestics were par for the course, a regular weekend trip. There were often loud parties but no complaints of noise. No one ever saw or heard anything that happened. So trying to question anyone there had always proved fruitless.

  None of the door-to-door enquiries regarding the murder of Sarah Maddison had turned up anything. No one in Georgia Road had heard or seen anything happening at number fourteen, where Andy Maddison and his family had resided until a week ago. He’d even left the back door open and legged it, not thinking for one moment of his sleeping children upstairs. Although the properties had tiny walled yards, most of them with gates that fastened, either of his young boys could have wandered out.

  It struck Allie as odd that Maddison hadn’t abandoned the knife where he’d stood after the mist had dropped and he’d seen what he’d done. Yes, he’d confessed and was likely to be telling the truth because he was off his head on heroin at the time. But Allie still had her doubts that he had done it all by himself.

  After arresting Andy Maddison last week, they’d found enough DNA at the crime scene and on Maddison’s person for a conviction, as his wife had been beaten to a pulp with his fists as well as receiving a fatal stab wound to her stomach. But that was strange in itself. Sarah and Andy had been together for years – ten that Allie knew of, at least. And although they’d had their fair share of domestic call-outs, for that level of violence to occur, it didn’t add up.

  And the knife he’d used – possibly the middle size of a set of five missing from a kitchen drawer – to inflict the fatal wound hadn’t been found. Neither had his clothes, or his shoes, which would be splattered with her blood. As much as she knew Maddison was a crack head, Allie didn’t think he had it in him to use a knife on the woman he loved.

  A lorry rumbled by and she looked to number fourteen again after it had passed. For all intents and purposes it was as if nothing had happened there now. Not even the back door had been forced to gain entry. She switched the car engine on and blasted the heater for a moment, rubbing her hands together. No doubt Terry Ryder would have another tenant in there soon, causing them more problems as they flitted from property to property playing the numbers game.

  Although he liked to stay under the radar, doing the numbers was Terry Ryder’s thing. It was part of a bigger plan so that the authorities didn’t know who was living where. Apart from Phil Kennedy at number two, each hand-picked tenant flitted from house to house at Terry’s say-so. The police knew it was part of a larger benefit scam – money laundering at its best. To the outside world there might appear to be three tenants claiming income support, but they would be using false names and identities.

  And they didn’t just stay in one property. Only one could be staying in each. The other two could be living with someone else, most of the time under their legal names, or living with partners but claiming single benefits of their own.

  Allie sat forward and glanced upwards at the roofing. For once, she wished she was a super hero with x-ray vision. The row shared a communal loft space. Well, technically speaking it didn’t, but the old-style terraced housing had only one layer of bricks between each property. In the lower edge of each triangle at the back, some of the bricks had been taken out to form a rat run from number two right through to number forty-four. Another way they scammed as to who was living where. It was usual for a tenant to be living at number twenty but never to be seen coming out of that front door.

  Things like that had messed up the paperwork for a while but the fraud investigation team had cottoned on. It would take years for something to stick if they were to take Ryder to court, and this was only a small part of what the joint investigation was looking into; but it was a start. One of the many ways they were keeping an eye on Ryder and his crew. So until then, Allie could do nothing more than sit on her hands and watch that handsome-bastard lowlife get away with everything.

  She let her mind wander to the first time she’d encountered Terry Ryder. She’d met him quite early on in the job when she was a police constable, about a year after Karen’s attack. She’d pulled him over when one of his rear lights had been out on his car. Allie remembered it because at the time it was a top-of-the-range Porsche, black with sexy chrome work. A few smiles and charm personified and Allie had let him off with a caution. But she’d never forgotten him. Terence Steven Ryder, born locally in 1969. From the age of nine, he’d been raised in a children’s home after watching his father beat his mother to death and then shoot a bullet through his own head. Through his years in care, he’d been in and out of trouble – petty theft, breaking and entering, stealing cars – but nothing major. At sixteen, he
’d been saved by a local builder, Maurice Sterling, as whose apprentice he’d learned the trade that would make him his money. He’d married his childhood sweetheart, Stephanie Miller, and they’d had a daughter a couple of years later.

  Six years after he’d started working for Sterling, Sterling’s head had been splattered across concrete when he’d lost his footing on scaffolding thirty feet high. It had been early one morning. His hard hat had never been located. Terry Ryder had been twenty-two when he’d taken over his business. From then, he had grown from property to property and his stature had become grander by the year. Not all his dealings were legitimate but all of them were above board as far as the police nailing him were concerned. Still, they had time on their side.

  Of course she’d remember him – what woman alive wouldn’t? He was a charmer, blessed with good looks that models in Milan would cut off another’s ear to have. Chiselled features, the fashion magazines would say. Just in his early forties, he had an impish smile and a perfect set of teeth, a strong Roman nose and deep-set blue eyes. He was tall and slim and wore the latest in designer clothes and accessories. He drove the best cars. He ate at the finest restaurants. He and his wife hosted a number of charity events throughout the year – one of which she and Mark would be grudgingly attending tomorrow evening. He was known as a man with a good heart yet a very bad soul. Allie often thought about him without realising. Just the mention of their charity, Ryders Dreams Come True, would remind her of a venue, a time, a smile, a touch. A police meeting would have her thinking of a shared joke, a double-entendre, a quick drink at a packed bar in the name of business. Terry Ryder didn’t leave just a money legacy wherever he went.

  A few years ago, he and his family had moved off the notorious Marshall Estate, Allie’s regular patch, into one of the newer houses on Royal Avenue. Sometimes she’d catch a glimpse of him as he drove past in his midnight blue Mercedes soft-top or his black Range Rover, personalised number plates on both. Always she would be left remembering the image for quite some time afterwards.