The Keeper of Secrets: A stunning crime thriller with a twist you won't see coming (Detective Arla Baker Series Book 2)

by M. L Rose

“I can’t run far with my hands tied.”

  “Shut up.” He pulled her again, her feet bouncing painfully on the hard ground. Arla looked up at the sky. The first stars were appearing like diamond studs on a black cloth. A bird swooped down from the sky: all she heard was the cry and the flutter of wings. A smell carried to her in the wind, something wet and humid.

  They didn’t have to travel far. Arla sensed a building around them, and then James pushed a door with his back. There was a stone floor over the doorway, and she heard something new. Another voice. She listened hard, but they spoke in whispers.

  Arla felt a sharp sensation against her neck, like a needle. A female voice spoke in her ear.

  “If you move, this needle will go right into your neck and paralyse you. We are now going to let you walk. Try anything and you know what happens. Do you understand?”

  Arla nodded. The needle became sharper on her neck, till she felt it puncture her skin and draw blood. Arla winced, but didn’t jerk her head back. She felt a rope being loosened around her legs, and she could walk all of a sudden. She almost collapsed with the first step, but James held her up.

  Sensation returned to her numb feet after a few more steps. The needle stayed constant, a sharp, deadly presence at her neck. They went through a stone walkway, footsteps echoing in the dark. A door creaked open in front, and Arla was propelled into a large room. It smelled dank, humid, musty.

  A light came on overhead, and she closed her eyes in the sudden glare. When she opened them, a strange sight greeted her eyes. The room was large, with windows on opposite sides, both boarded up. There was a bed in the middle, with two chairs next to it. On one of them, a familiar old man was strapped to the back. Her heart lurched as she recognised her father’s form. His head was drooped over his chest.

  “Dad!” Arla whimpered. He didn’t respond.

  Arla was moved to the chair next to him, and then strapped by belts, which pressed against her boobs and tummy. She called out to her father again, but was rewarded with silence.

  “I wouldn’t be calling him now,” a voice said in front of her.

  Arla stared forward. A short, stocky woman stood close to James. She was wearing a T-shirt and baggy jeans. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. With a flourish, she removed the kitchen knife from her belt. She came close to Arla, grabbed her hair, and bent her head back. Arla gasped.

  “Hello. My name is Cindy.” Arla shivered as the blade of the knife slide down her forehead to the side of her face. “Now let’s see if you bleed the same colour as us.”

  CHAPTER 72

  The incident room at Clapham Common Met Police Station looked like a war zone. Detectives hunched over laptops. Harry and Johnson stood next to the whiteboard, shoulders drooping. Papers were strewn on the floor. Lisa and Rob were typing away feverishly on their PCs.

  Lisa was the first one to look up. “Got the CCTV images, guv.”

  “The ones I got from James’ garage?”

  “Yup. These are the missing images from the film of Brockwell Park, of the night when Maddy disappeared.”

  “Good.” Harry strode over to the desk. “Can we see them?”

  Lisa angled her screen so people could crowd around her table. The projector wasn’t working, and they had no time to call IT to fix it. Lisa clicked on the link, and the images came to life as a panel of six screens.

  Lisa pointed a finger to the middle screen. “Look.”

  A black VW Golf had appeared on the screen, and it was coming out of the T-junction. It indicated right, and waited for traffic to let it move. Lisa zoomed into the registration plate.

  “Bloody hell,” Harry said. “That’s James’ car. Same reg number.”

  “All Points Bulletin is out with Highways Police, all ports, docks and airports. Anyone sees the car, they stream us a live link and we jump on it,” Rob said.

  “Good,” Harry said. “Anyone called back from Cybercrime?”

  Banerjee had called, reminding Harry of the high concentration of diazepam that had been injected into Maddy’s shoulder. Diazepam was available as tablets illegally on the normal internet, but as liquid or injectables it was only available on the dark net. Cybercrime technicians could access the dark web without an IP address, and snoop on the illegal drug traders who plied their trade.

  “Yes,” Sandford, the uniform officer, said. “Told me to call them when you’re free.”

  “That would be now, John. Call them and put them on loudspeaker.”

  The crackly voice that came on the loudspeaker of Harry’s phone was high-pitched. “Hello?”

  Harry introduced himself and explained the urgency of the situation. The high-pitched voice came back again. “My name is Mathew, by the way. So, for injectable diazepam, we found three places in London that had placed orders, one in Scotland and another in Kent.”

  Harry took down the addresses in London, and Sandford started a search on them. They were scattered around in the north, west and east, nowhere close to south-west. Harry chewed his lower lip. Scotland was too far. That left Kent.

  “Whereabouts in Kent?”

  “Close to Folkestone, just off the M20. Village called Newham, not far from the English Channel.”

  “Send us the address please.”

  “They’re all in the same email. Should be hitting your inbox now.”

  There was a sound of running footsteps, then the flushed face of a uniform sergeant banged open the door of the incident room.

  “Guv!” he shouted at Harry. “Highways Police are on the line for you. They spotted a black VW Golf, with matching registration plates, heading down the M20 two hours ago.”

  CHAPTER 73

  Arla felt the tip of the knife press close to her left ear and she flinched. Cindy laughed. The knife travelled down her cheek, and nicked her lower jaw. Arla felt a trickle of blood down her neck.

  “Easy,” James said. “Save her for later.”

  Cindy stepped back, looking critically at her handiwork. “You should see what we did to your dad.” She smiled.

  Arla looked at her father, who was beginning to stir. His neck was craned back, and there was an expression of pain on his face. The right sleeve of his shirt was ripped open and bleeding, showing a gash on the forearm. Blood still dripped from the fresh wound, gathering on the floor.

  “What do you want?” Arla seethed.

  James spoke. “What we want? You still don’t know?”

  Arla stared at the handsome young man. Her breath caught when she saw the lines of Nicole’s mouth in his face and the similarity of his stance. How had she missed it?

  “No, I don’t.” Arla’s head was aching, and her arms were going numb. “Look, just let my dad go. Please. He’s an old man, his body can’t take it.”

  James ignored her. “We want our lives back. All the way to when I was born, and abandoned by your sister.”

  Arla closed her eyes, feeling a pressure build behind them. “I knew nothing about that. I tried to look for Nicole, but she didn’t want to be found.”

  “And what about me?” James asked.

  “You? Believe me, if either I or my father had known that you existed, we would have moved heaven and earth to make you safe.”

  “But you didn’t. I was left to rot, just like Cindy.”

  “I am sorry for that,” Arla said, feeling the blood beginning to soak into her shirt collar. “And I know my apology won’t make that right. But don’t let this become the end, James. The police will find you. And when they do, there won’t be any escape. Please listen to me.”

  “Only if you listen to me first,” James said. He pointed to Cindy. “And then to her.”

  “I will,” Arla said. She needed to keep him talking, buy more time. By now, Harry and the others would know she was missing. Good job she had sent Harry the photo when she did.

  “Why did you kill Maddy? She was young, innocent.”

  James smiled, a sickening, calm expression on his face. “Well, we had to find so
mething to jog your memory. A dead teenager, just like your sister.”

  Arla’s head fell on her chest. She couldn’t speak for a while.

  James continued. “Besides, we wanted to punish Charles Atkins.”

  Cindy hissed next to him. “That idiot thought he could be our saviour. He counselled us. Told us to write everything down, and he would take it to the police.”

  Arla looked up. “And did you?”

  James said, “Yes, we did. Guess what happened then? He changed jobs, and that was that.”

  “You could have contacted the police yourself. Why didn’t you tell Sharon Stevens, the matron at the care home?”

  A look passed between James and Cindy, and they both smiled. Arla felt a chill run through her.

  “She’s next on your list, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. We want to take you two up to Nottingham, and meet up with her. Kill all the birds with one stone,” Cindy spat.

  James stepped closer. “Enough with the questions. Now it’s time you heard our side of the story.”

  He began to peel back the layers of his first memories. The horrors he had faced as a child, the cruelties inflicted upon him by men and women he trusted. The beatings he suffered as a little boy when he didn’t obey the filthy commands he was subjected to.

  Tears flowed down Arla’s face as she listened. It was unimaginable, incomprehensible, that human beings could be so cruel to a child. But they weren’t human. James had been subject to life with evil monsters, and they had shaped him into the monster he had become.

  “Stop!” Arla cried, unable to bear it any longer. Her heart heaved with agony. It was awful that he had been through this; what made it far worse was that he was related to her. She shook her head, sobbing. “I don’t want to know. Just stop. Please.”

  Cindy spoke up loudly. “No. It’s my turn now.” She came closer to Arla. “Do you know the nights I lay awake, hearing children sob?”

  Arla said, “Maybe you can help them. We can do it together.”

  Cindy grinned. “Oh, I help them already. I saved a number of children from their drug-addled parents. I work as a council housing officer, you see.” She explained to Arla how she had rescued the children from the homes she had visited.

  Arla shook her head, aghast. “You killed the parents? How does that help things?”

  “They deserved to die anyway,” Cindy said forcefully. Then she carried on with her story, which was similar to James’: the untold horrors they had been forced to endure together.

  Arla felt sick with pain as she listened. She wanted to cover her ears, but her hands were tied.

  James smiled for the first time, a grin that twinkled in the corners of his eyes like a maniac. He turned to Cindy triumphantly. “See, I knew she wouldn’t be able to deal with it.”

  He stepped forward, his face suddenly a mask of hatred. He slapped Arla hard in the face, then again and again. Arla felt pain explode inside her head, her skull rocking back with each blow. Her eyes dimmed, then her head rolled forward, blood streaming from her nose and mouth.

  James stepped back, breathing hard. “Now you know!” he shouted. “And this is only a small part of what is to come.” He indicated towards Timothy. “Get started on him.”

  Cindy moved towards the chair, when a loud sound reverberated across the room, shaking the ground beneath their feet. The boarded-up windows rattled. The sound grew louder, and with it came the staccato bursts of a helicopter’s wings beating in the air.

  A strobe of light flashed outside, bursting in small filaments through the rafters. Over the commotion, a voice yelled from a loudspeaker in the sky.

  “This is the police! We know you are in there! Come out with your hands raised, right now!”

  “Move!” James screamed at Cindy. He jumped towards the chair, and began to unfasten Arla. Cindy was doing the same to Timothy when James stopped her.

  “No, leave him. She is who we want.” He grabbed Cindy and kissed her passionately. “Get the car out. We have our route planned.”

  Cindy kissed him back, then ran out the back. The garage was an extension of the barnyard, with a steel gate that opened out onto a country road that led out over the hills, down the cliffs to join the M20 motorway. Once on it, they were only minutes away from the Folkestone Channel Tunnel.

  CHAPTER 74

  Harry’s face was illuminated blue in the light from the MH-70 helicopter’s cabin. He was sandwiched between two armed officers, Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine guns strapped to their vests, fingers on triggers.

  Lunch rose to Harry’s mouth as the helicopter banked sharply, as the man near the exit repeated his warning on the loudspeaker. Good job he was strapped in. He almost fell off his seat, then looked alive as the barn came into view briefly, before the helicopter righted itself. They had lost a lot of altitude already, and now the machine skimmed the roof of the barn as it prepared to land.

  There was a frantic shout in their headphones, and Harry winced as his eardrums were pounded.

  “Vehicle seen exiting building. Repeat, vehicle to ten o’clock. Black VW Golf.”

  Harry looked to his right just in time to see the black Golf streak out like a bat out of hell from the barn. He could just make out James driving and a figure next to him. A human shape was laid out on the back seat. It looked familiar. His pulse leaped up into his throat.

  “There, there!” Harry screamed, pointing to the car. “Don’t land, take the tyres out.”

  One of the firearms officers calmly crouched on the cabin floor and lifted the rifle to his shoulder. He aimed for a couple of seconds, and just when Harry thought the car would disappear from view, a prolonged burst of bullets were fired. The empty cartridges leaped up in the air, and the smell of burned cordite was heavy. Harry snapped his head back, and watched the car do a crazy zigzag as the bullets ripped open one of the back tyres.

  The Golf passed underneath the helicopter and kept moving. It was going down a path that was heading straight for the cliffs and… Harry’s mouth went dry.

  Right ahead was the English Channel, its inky expanse now the same colour as the sky, the twinkling lights of ferry and cargo ships like spaceships on the calm waters.

  The car’s headlights were hurtling down the hill path.

  “We need to stop it!” Harry screamed.

  One of the officers said, “It’s not easy to shoot a moving vehicle without hurting the passenger. Let the pilot do his thing.”

  “Hold on,” the pilot’s voice crackled on their headphones.

  The machine whined and roared, and its wings beat louder than the waves crashing far below them. It went lower still, till it was level with the trees. The car appeared on their left, heading for the cliffs that ended so sharply: there was nothing but a sudden drop to the beach below.

  “I cannot hold for long like this.” The pilot sounded stressed for the first time. “Any lower and we could hit the trees. You have 30 seconds and counting. One, two…”

  Harry counted, feeling each second tick in the loud thud of his heartbeat. The armed officer bent on one knee again, as if in prayer, a stock-still image, the black butt of the rifle rock steady on his shoulder.

  The car was weaving its way down the path, heading dangerously close to the jagged cliffs.

  A split second was all they needed, but the seconds were ticking down fast.

  Please shoot, Harry whispered. Please shoot.

  “Eighteen seconds,” the pilot’s voice said in his ears. “Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen…”

  The sudden gunfire sent yellow sparks streaking out of barrel, and slammed into the car. Harry saw them hit their mark, and there was an explosion as the second rear tyre blew up, belching black smoke. Now the car slowed down to almost a crawl, the front wheels struggling to keep the vehicle moving.

  “Get down!” Harry shouted. “Get down!”

  The car’s headlights were on, and it showed the driver jump out and open the passenger door. He reached inside and pulle
d out a supine form, and put it across his shoulders in a fireman’s lift. Then he ran for the cliff’s edge. Harry saw another shorter, chubbier figure emerge from the passenger side and follow him.

  The sound of the helicopter was now deafening as it prepared to land. The ground rushed up, and when they were six feet away, Harry shook off his lanyard and belt, and jumped. He landed with a blinding pain in his ankles, but he rolled over and was up.

  Then he ran, pumping his long legs like he never had before. He could see the driver, who was James, running up ahead. Harry speeded up, then felt a glancing blow at his legs, and he tumbled over. Before he could stand up, he saw the glint of a blade flashing in the air. He moved just in time, and caught the hand that wielded the weapon. Harry pulled on the hand and stood up in the same movement. The figure stumbled. Before it could turn, Harry punched it in the face as hard as he could. There was a grunt and the figure toppled over. Harry took out his Maglite and flashed it on.

  A woman lay on the ground, knocked out cold. She was short and stocky, and the knife had fallen from her hand.

  Harry looked up, and his heart froze. Wind whipped at his hair, roared against his ears. James was at the cliff’s edge. The shape on his back was on the ground, and James was pushing it to the point of no return.

  CHAPTER 75

  Through a mist of pain and nausea, Arla felt cold wind on her face. It jerked her awake. She drew in a sharp breath. She could feel hard ground beneath her flimsy shirt, and stones poked her ribs. In front of her stretched out an unbelievable sight.

  She was at the edge of a mountain, and once the slope rolled over sharply, there was nothing. Ahead, she could see twinkling lights, and she didn’t know what they were. Arms tugged at her chest, ripping buttons. Arla froze. She couldn’t go any further or she would die.

  She suddenly realised what was happening.

  “James!” she screamed. “Let me go.”

  He didn’t answer. She could see his dark shape, his face dim as it turned away from her, heading towards the edge. Arla looked down at the hands pulling her shirt and fought him, but he was too strong. She opened her mouth wide, then bit down viciously with her teeth, clamping down with every ounce of strength in her jaws.